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Recording Angel
May. 10th, 2021 09:15 amAnd yesterday I watched Ugetsu Monogatari.
I'd been watching a lot of goodish films- and it was time to watch some great ones.
I started with a couple of Bergmans. The Silence and Cries and Whispers. Then it was Potemkin- which is a great film even if I don't like it much. And so on to Mizoguchi.
Mizoguchi is everything Eisenstein isn't. Ugetsu is as mad and sensational as Potemkin- even madder because it features things which good Bolsheviks have no time for- like ghosts- but rather than pull the viewer into the action with close-ups and montage and all those tricks (jolly good tricks- I'm not knocking them) he stands back and observes, placidly, sublimely, not cutting the action up unless he really has to. His actors emote; the camera doesn't- but swoops and circles and glides around them- like an angel with celluloid running through its guts...
I'd been watching a lot of goodish films- and it was time to watch some great ones.
I started with a couple of Bergmans. The Silence and Cries and Whispers. Then it was Potemkin- which is a great film even if I don't like it much. And so on to Mizoguchi.
Mizoguchi is everything Eisenstein isn't. Ugetsu is as mad and sensational as Potemkin- even madder because it features things which good Bolsheviks have no time for- like ghosts- but rather than pull the viewer into the action with close-ups and montage and all those tricks (jolly good tricks- I'm not knocking them) he stands back and observes, placidly, sublimely, not cutting the action up unless he really has to. His actors emote; the camera doesn't- but swoops and circles and glides around them- like an angel with celluloid running through its guts...
