Cabaret surprised me with its evidence. It's very different from everything I ever saw – a well-directed and criticized movie, with a great cast, a picture of show business behind the growing Nazism, sensual outfits and beautiful songs.
At a main plot, we have Liza Minnelli’s character – Sally Bowles –, which is a cabaret’s singer, dancer and star wannabe. Brian Roberts’ character – Michael York – is a reserved British that’s moving into Sally’s building. Getting closer to friends/lovers, Brian meets Sally’s bohemian life in the last days of the German Weimar Republic. Mysterious and with a doubtful nature, Brian involves into a sensual game with Sally and the company of a third gentleman. That is Maximilian von Heune – Helmut Griem’s character –, a wealthy baron who takes Sally and Brian to his country house. The strangest point is when their involvement gets so intimate, that we don’t know where the seduction’s coming from. The narrator and the musical sequences presenter’s Joel Grey, a singer and dancer winner of lot of prizes. His character has an influence a little bit ironic in the role, besides participating with the construction of the film’s idea, his dialogues also works as politics criticizing. While following the movie, it’s indeed intriguing when you notice those influences from the increase of Nazi control – the German Jew passing as a Christian, the sequence with a blond boy singing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” wearing a brown Hitler Youth uniform and the reflections by the characters about communism and politic control.
Another tool that Bob Fosse used is the German Expressionism; some of the musical sequences were shot mainly in low light.
Immeasurable is its music and picture, that Cabaret makes it with 8 Academy Awards.
silviabrigida's Reviews
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"Will you think it's possible that
I was once considered attractive?"These are the arguments of Blanch Dubois, incorporated in perfectly madness by Mrs. Vivien Leigh.
"A Streetcar Named Desire" is a thrilling classic with expressive dialogues, scandalous characters and that wonderful close to their beautiful faces.
The play about a woman on the verge, whose pretensions to virtues and culture only thinly mask delusions of grandeur and alcoholism. An exotic person into a streetcar willing to visit her sister, but the kindness of Marlon Brando’s character passed near something she wasn’t really expecting. His name’s Stanley Kowalski and he was a sensual primal whose nature used to abuse physically and emotionally of her. Stanley’s wife Stella was an ordinary and fearful woman that tried so hard to only see the good things about her sister. She wasn’t really waiting for Stanley to be loving with Blanch, but his wildness was just too much, that it couldn’t led to anything other than what happens next.
When Stanley starts finding secret elements about Blanch’s past, he begin to wonder how she manages to be with them like it’s nothing and after everything she told them, the way that they welcomed her to their house, it made impossible in Stanley’s head to feel well about this situation. Along came his sacred liquor and before he realizes, they were struggling to death.
That’s what you read, that’s what it was.
The final confrontation of Stanley and Blanch.
Regardless of the traditional times that is lived by this masterpiece, Desire’s an expressive word that was subtly and well-used in the plot. Since Blanche seduced by a 17-years-old boy, Stanley sexy and brute pole, submissive Stella attracted by her husband’s aggressiveness… until the streetcar named Desire itself, that in some way symbolizes that feeling which took Blanch to search for her sister.
A streetcar we all got into sometime! -
From a movie that everyone should watch came new colors to the knowhow of Cinématographe. Hitchcock’s masterpiece “Vertigo” made an ordinary romance into a thrilling universe set at San Francisco. This location contributed so much with the plot and gave us, movie freaks, those strange sensations of ‘labyrinth’.
How is that? Well, let me break a little technique. “Vertigo” literally means that weird sensation you’d feel when looking down from a (really) high place. In the same way, John Ferguson, nicknamed Scottie, has the problem in its increased version: Acrophobia. The first sequence of the movie relates his fear as consequence from the experience he lived when working at the police department. Scottie retired from the job at the very day he was chasing a criminal across a rooftop and saw a police officer falling to death. Hitchcock seems to like psychological analysis based on consequences left from a disaster, which was brutal and made Scottie into a frustrated professional. Well, you’d be surprise for how more unusual Scottie’s life can get. That’s so when Gavin Elster, a man he knew from college, hires him as private investigator to follow Madeleine Elster, Gavin’s wife and a mysterious woman who has been acting a little weird. He tells Scottie that she drives a long distance without knowing it, like she’s mad, possessed or something. A well-intriguing situation found when Gavin Elster gave a look at her car’s speedometer, because as you’ll see, this was happening while he was at work. For instance, he was only suspecting, but then it came that wondering feeling about the relation of his wife’s weird actions with the suicide of her great-grandmother named Carlota Valdes.
Finally, back to the part which Galvin needed Scottie’s service, what happens then is a confused private investigator made into a witness for the most unusual issues. Since Madeleine jumping unconsciously into San Francisco Bay until her quiet moments looking for hours at a museum painting of Carlota, everything seemed to be really disturbed in her head or was it just the detectives’ eyes taking him far of places? Not quite sure, dear Scottie…
“Vertigo” is pure technique. Hitchcock does interesting moves through the camera that give us the same feeling James Stewart as Scottie seems to have. The Art Direction’s wonderful in every ways and especially in the color aspects. The meticulous editing made into fast transitions creates a complex impression, even though if these impressions are from just simple facts. The character’s affair is touched deeply by Bernard Herrmann’s “Scene d’Amour” and not only it, but all that thrilling has a Mr. Herrmann’s composition.
Let’s clear these things up; we have an investigator searching for reasons in a mad woman’s actions whose husband hired him in the first place. Now what would happen if this woman falls in love with Scottie for they have met each other in such an unusual way? Right in the moment of this happening, I had an impression that the movie was tearing itself apart into two different ones and though the love scene is the end of one, this beautiful love scene is also the beginning of a retarded trajectory towards the end. Speaking physics, it’s like an object moving with a great acceleration, that starts to lose it until stopping and then making it all the way back in a retarded movement.
Now you’re wondering why all this stuff is relevant.
I’ll tell you my favorite scene – when Scottie has an epiphany through a nightmare.
While Mr. Herrmann’s “The Nightmare and Dawn” plays, Scotties realizes the solution to the greatest mystery of the 7th Art. A real significant thing about this nightmare is its color and form language, especially about the spiral, which deeply means that whole falling concept.
A dream obsessed with death realizes the consequence felt after knowing that even a killer can leave clues or as Scottie says “Souvenir”. -
Rocky Horror is a hit. That touch-a kind of musical that only makes you want to jump of your seat and start shaking your things. To hell with your problems, who wants to have a good time?
Well, if you want, you may need to read this. It happened once upon a time in a distant galaxy called Transylvania, which from its peculiar planet Transsexual came the master lead of this tale. A transvestite scientist who got here through unusual technologies and decided to create him a man. Not any man but a pink-shiny, well-tanned and blond muscle man, which his job would be to relieve the master’s tension with full desire. Frank-N-Furter is the name of the scientist, his goal was to build this creature in only seven days and then name it Rocky.
Now before this creation thing, let me tell you the beginning from another point of view. It has two personalities – Brad Majors and Janet Weiss incorporated by, respectively, Barry Bostwick and that wonderful Susan Sarandon. Brad and Janet are the funniest couple ever; it’s that “you’re so straight, that you’re gay” kind of thing. They manage, in a brilliant way, to make fun of their heterosexuality that it’s almost impossible not to laugh. They met each other thanks to a wedding of friends they had in common. Through this wedding they fell in love with each other and decided to get marry too.
An interesting fact about this movie is that things happen fast and we don’t get lost in it. That’s because of the fancy narrator (that’s also a criminologist) played by Charles Gray, who not only talks but appears in the movie. After he gives us a little peep, we can see Brad and Janet driving to visit Dr. Everett Scott, which was their high school teacher.
An ordinary couple of lovebirds having the time of their lives until…
Wait! What’s the hurry about?
Brad and Janet were having unusual talks when a lot of rain came down. In a power like the sky was falling or something. Just then they got a flat tire. What else could it possibly happen? And that’s a great scene, the sequence which they pass through mysterious people with motorcycles just before of the flat tire situation. They decide then to get out of the car and look for where those people were going to, so they can get some help, let’s say using the telephone or something. It’s very funny there, facing all the rain, Janet protecting her hair by holding a piece of paper that doesn’t seem to be wet above her head. Anyway, the next minutes they find each other looking at a exotic, enormous and peculiar castle, a sensation mysteriously different from everything they have ever felt.
Until now we have been amused with two songs. The first was in the opening credits, in which a mouth appeared singing “Science Fiction/Double Feature”. These lyrics received such a smart touch with a lot of interesting pop culture references, if I can put it this way. The second was when Brad showed his love for Janet through the song “Damn it, Janet”.
Now, back to the rainy part, Brad and Janet walks to the front door of the castle in an effort to get some help. What does it seem that they’re going to find? Of course, it’s exactly what you thought. This peculiar castle was nothing more than that scientist’s home sweet home. Brad and Janet are welcomed with all kinds of fellows wearing funny clothes. Not if it was enough, their master – the scientist Dr. F. – makes his first apparition wearing stilettos, corset, the whole outfit and singing “Sweet Transvestite”.
Do you want to know what this party’s all about? I’ll tell you.
They were celebrating the glorious conquest of their master. That creature or should I say blond and very healthy human being was almost joining their lives. The la-dee-dah I’ve been telling you from the very beginning, it’d take seven days for him to be made into a man.
Doesn’t this story drive you wild with desire?
Don’t you need to know how it ends?
I must take my hat off, agree and get down on my knees (maybe do a little dancing too) for there’s NOTHING like Rocky Horror Picture Show – a British musical/horror/comedy film that parodies science fiction and B-movies in a gore universe of complex characters. Fitting so well in this raving red-blooded-sensation, Frank-N-Furter is played by that talented Tim Curry and never a transvestite was so original in its nature. The set decoration is pure art. Even the pool (HELL, I want that pool!) has the famous Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam” painted on its bottom. So nice to remember that.
It’s very interesting if you relate this whole “touch of life” concept with the fact that Frank-N-Furter’s able to create life his own way and in seven days. Would it be religion criticism?
If you want, Rocky can be the secret to life itself. From the single need of using a telephone to rolling down a pool with desire and untamed things. Among great songs written by Richard O’Brien and directed by Jim Sharman, it has the hilarious pursuit of a straight couple trying to get out of a transvestite scientist’s claws. Although they can, I don’t really think they ever resisted the desire. -
“Did you say you love me?” says Diane Keaton as Linda.
It’s very hard to deny some people’s gift. Woody Allen knows exactly how to turn love into the main psychological problem of a movie universe. It’s not only significant in its pure nature and complete, but also well-absorbed in the major theme: dreams.
Woody Allen introduces us to an insecure recently divorced 29 years old man and his dreams of being seductive like his idol, Humphrey Bogart. In a crazy dimension out of standard, this man named Allan Felix not only has his entire house decorated with Bogart in movies like “The Big Sleep”, “Across the Pacific” and “Casablanca”, but also has him as an imaginary friend.
Who would refuse love counseling by a man considered one of the most important actors of Hollywood Golden Age? And Allan needed everything he could get out of advices.
Those daydreams are increased when his wife, Nancy, decided to divorce him for they have been living in a passive way as she believed. Allan likes movies, art, literature and works as critic for a magazine. He enjoys living quiet, making fun of his sexual life and aspirin. Nancy is one of those “basic instinct” kind of blond that needs an active life, unusual trips and strong emotions.
She claims especially, as an argument for divorce, that Allan is a watcher or someone who watches people’s life more than lives his own.
“Play it again, Sam” essentially develops the consequences of the break-up in Allan’s life, his reactions, the search for forgetfulness and a new life. Something new that probably wouldn’t be possibly without ‘a little help of his friends’, characters of Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts.
The most wonderful thing about this movie is its imagination. Woody Allen played tricks with his character’s mind awfully well and turned it into something really special, like the man’s getting trapped in his own universe. Allan’s a person who constantly thinks, analyzes everything and Woody Allen managed to materialize it in the screen.
Every thought, every feeling and every laugh. It’s right there. I never laughed so hard about someone’s daydream before. The Bogey talks are great. Although it’d be fine to possess all that vanguard style, this movie has a deep message about being yourself, no matter what.
The first sequence is marvelous, in which Allan’s seated fascinated on a theater’s chair watching the end of “Casablanca”. Right during the beginning credits, takes are alternated between a frightened saying of Bergman and Woody Allen’s face, which in his glasses all that tension was reflecting.
It’s voyeur thing making into classic.
