#130 - The Shop on Main Street

This was a great film and the 1965 Academy Award winner for best foreign film.  It's a product of what we would call the Czech New Wave, and featured some masterful acting.

The year is 1942, and a small village is starting to deal with the effects of Aryanization and the Nazi Ruling party starting to remove the Jews from their conquered territories.  A small carpenter is given the chance to take over a Jewish Widow's shop, but her inability to understand his role ends up with him more or less becoming her assistant rather than her boss.  In the end he's more her protector, repairing her furniture, and looking out for her as events ramp up in the 2nd half of the film.   The first hour or so is almost comedic and humorous, but as the film winds along, he has to determine if he is going to help the innocent, or collaborate with the regime coming to deport the Jews for the Holocaust..   This film is done without any shock or trauma as you might expect, but it ends up being the kind of film where you quietly watch in horror knowing what is going to happen, but is never said or seen on camera.   A woman cries out for a son who's missing, and she tells the protagnist to let her boy know where she is so he can join her, and inside you're recoiling as you realize if he does show up, it's a death sentence.  You also see the transformation of people who know what is right and are willing to do it turn into people desperate to save their own skins.

Meanwhile you see it all occurring, literally, from the p.o.v. of the Shop on Main Street listed in the title - it ends up becoming where everything plays out or where we see everything playing out.

I'm always fascinated by movies that happen under these Communist Regimes, and in this case it does make it a pretty good anti-Nazi film.   It's comedic and tragic, and is part of a big batch of Czech New Wave films currently showing up on the Criterion Channel this month as part of their features.

This kind of film is why I do this - otherwise it would have escaped my radar but it's a masterpiece of a film.

#129 - Le Trou

So back to some fun stuff - this is a thrilling prison break film set in the La Sante Prison Paris. 

I guess we're lucky to have the Criterion Channel as this is out of print and even the website doesn't have any essays on it - sorta slipped thru the cracks but I enjoyed this more than most of the films in the first half of the 100's so far

So one of the things I didn't know was at the beginning, one of the characters looks up from a car he is fixing, addresses the camera and says this is his true story of a prison break - (the 2nd guy on this DVD cover) - so a couple things..

This is based on a book that was based on a true story of a convict escape from this prison..

and, get this, this guy IS THE CONVICT who helped plan that escape and served as a consultant and under a stage name basically agreed to act the part he played in the escape - he seemed familiar to me and I thought he was an actor, but he was the real deal - which may be the most incredible "appearing as himself" cameo I've ever heard of :)

So, of course, what we have here is a prison break film - 4 guys get a new fifth guy and so they're going thru the motions of getting out as well as figuring out if the new guy is good news or bad news.   One of the things that struck me in this film are the long monotonous prison sequences - there is a 4 minute prison sequence banging thru concrete, and there's a long 2-3 minute sequence of a guard unlocking a cell, letting someone exit, on to the next cell, etc.   I suppose here we're catching the monotony of prison life, but during the concrete breaking, you're also freaking out that they can make this much noise in a cell without being caught and can they get away with it and the suspense keeps you on edge

Obviously I'm not going to spoil the film but it was very suspenseful and entertaining to watch   Something else that struck me, and it's probably fictional, was the easy way the convicts and guards got along - it felt more like Hogan's Heroes than the prison environments we're familiar with today. 

This is the first time I've heard of Jacques Becker, the director but he was assistant director on The Grand Illusion - (all the way back to spine #1) and this was his last film, from what it appears.   Obviously being French, and a dramatic sort of heist, it reminded me a lot of Rififi, especially the scenes where the illicit acts are carrying out - but the tension runs pretty high, and it's a really good film

on we go

RB