#156 - Hearts and Minds

 

So I liked this one but not as much as I thought I would.   It's a classic 1974 documentary (mostly argued anti-war documentary) on the Vietnam War.   He does a good job of getting his subjects.   He spends a lot of time stateside on the "rah-rah" crowd that encourages all good boys do their duty.

He spends a lot of time also communicating with the Vietnamese who make it plain at this point that some want the Americans there but most don't.  One of the interviews that struck me was of an entrepreneur preparing for peace, the massive influx of capitalism and tourists, and prosperity.    This is all done between the time the Americans are winding down, but before North Vietnam steamrolls them in '75.   One has to see this footage and immediately wonder if this guy made it out or not.   Maybe the Director's Commentary has something.

Because of the time of filming and the US commitment wrapping down, it's hard to get a full grasp if they knew what was coming or what the final results would be.   I suppose this would hit much harder in 1974, with the anti-war movement still going on, but the full self-reflection hadn't happened yet.   Other documentaries, (thinking of the excellent Ken Burns series) would do a much better job of showing the whole picture and both sides more fairly, but if you hadn't had any anti-Vietnam documentaries out yet, then this one would be pretty incredible.

As it was, I liked it.   I didn't love it but I might watch the special features on the Criterion Channel.

Also, side note - in a stupid, stupid move that makes no sense to me, Wikipedia pulled it's list of movies in the Collection that I have used for years - LOL.   I think it went away a week ago but the last archived copy on Archive.org is golden

List of Criterion Collection releases - Wikipedia

#155 - Tokyo Olympiad

 

It seemed like this one was hard to find for a while - in fact, at one point back in the Filmstruck days I was going to blitz thru 30 movies more or less to get to it before the channel shut down - that would have left us at a very different spot today.   I'd probably be up to 300 by now.

But what we have here is a great film - a triumph of sports, and really a study on the the spirit of athleticism.   I guess this isn't what Japan wanted.   In fact there's alternate edits and Japanese takes on the Olympics precisely because they didn't like Kon's vision here.   In the special features I learned some of his negative was taken and re-cut for an alternate film commissioned by Japan.   The restoration team ended up restoring both films, stating it wasn't their place to make the political or artistic choices.   I guess we do lose the stereo soundtrack in this cut, but all the stereo prints were destroyed at one time or another.

What is left is a vision.  and what is that vision?   It seems to be an exploration of the athletes more than the events.   Quite often we see zoomed in faces before the events, as he is analyzing the strain and stresses on these athletes before they launch the shot putt, or do the 100m dash.   He wants to show their agony before and after the competition, and of course, the triumph of victory.

I often found myself watching an event, getting the final time, and then going to Google to see what the world record was.   Some were set during these Olympics but they would be broken in later years.  Still it's a crazy thing to see in some like the 100m dash, we're taking 4/10th's of a second is all.   Here's some side trivia - the winner, Bob Hayes of USA, would go on to play pro football, and is the only Athlete to have both a gold medal and a Super Bowl Ring.   There was also manual and automatic timing going on and so his actual time is between 10.06 and 9.99 seconds depending on manual, automatic, or whatever you use.   In any case he was thought to be the fastest sprinter in the world before Usain Bolt.

I ended up liking this a lot more than I thought I would and I'm pretty sure it's got to do with the way Kon chose what he edited to see it in a different light than the typical competition films.   I always joked that if I kept doing this for 20 years I'd eventually hit the Olympic box set and then I'd call it quits but hey....maybe I'll keep going after that 

RB

#154 - The Horse's Mouth

This was an interesting little film with Alec Guinness, who would write the screenplay for this film based upon a famous novel in the 40's.   Basically this is the comedic life of an eccentric painter, and the somewhat humorous escapades that surround him as he attempts to get some of his old paintings back, get new ones done, and tries very hard to not get arrested.   

Obviously any Star Wars fan will recognize Alec who by this point has white hair and the same mop top.  The voice is a bit different, but the gruff character does seem to draw you in a bit.   I admit this didn't hold my attention as much as I wanted it to but at the end of the day it was an interesting film.

This will be the first of three entries in the collection by the director Robert Neame.   (The second one is just up ahead in #163)   He directed and worked in quite a large number of films but none of their titles stand out to me although I'm sure to a British Cinema fan they would.   In any case, we have some very interesting and fascinating works ahead so I'm glad to have seen this one