Winter Light (1962)

4/5

Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light follows a pastor who begins to lose his faith in God after his wife dies. Much like Through a Glass Darkly, it examines religious doubt and God's silence during trying times. Except here we have a much more coherent message and powerful story that leaves you in breathless anticipation for its entire second half. What makes this movie so good is that the pastor's ultimate decision on whether to maintain his faith is entirely left up to the viewer. It can be interpreted either way, depending on the viewer's own beliefs. This is a difficult feat that Bergman has accomplished, and would be considered magical if the whole movie weren't so depressing. But depressing is what it is, which may turn some people away from this thought-provoking film.

As I said before, this movie shares a lot with Bergman's earlier film. The dialogue is rich with depth and thematic meaning; he even reuses several quotes and images from his previous film to much greater effect. The cinematography is even crisper and more beautiful than before and the editing is vastly improved. The use of sound and silence is intelligently conceived and effectively carried out. The acting is underplayed the right amount and the characters and their relationships are complex without being incomprehensible. However, it may not appeal to people with little interest in religion or faith. And it can be a bit boring at times (although it is also relatively short, at 80 minutes). Regardless, this is a fascinating study of man's faith during times of apparent abandonment, and can be a potent discussion-starter if you ever find yourself in the mood to think about such topics.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057358/

L'Eclisse (1962)

2/5

Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse is about a woman (Vitti) who breaks up with a rich suitor (Rabal) right before a sudden economic downturn. She then meets a handsome day trader (Delon) and a new attraction begins. But if you asked me to tell you what it's really "about," like love and life and the evils of capitalism, then I couldn't say. The message is far too underplayed. Stuff happens, in the sense that people do stuff, but nothing really ever happens. This is a perplexing film filled with metaphors and imagery that may no doubt blow your mind if they weren't simply figments of your imagination. The camera focuses in on the mundane, forcing the viewer to try and look past it and see some deeper truth, but the only way you'll find a deeper truth is if you make it up yourself. It's better than La Notte, but not by much. All these pretentious art house films put me to sleep.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056736/

La Jetée (1962)

5/5

I take back what I said about The Hire: Powder Keg. At 28 minutes, La Jetée is my favorite short film of all time. The images are indelible, the experience unforgettable. Like Sans Soleil, it is a meditation on time and memory, but a much more poignant and effective one. The plot follows a prisoner in the aftermath of WWIII who is used for time travel experiments. Edited together using still images from the footage, Marker uses motion itself as a representation of time. There is one break from the exclusive use of stills, and the instant we see time start to flow, it is ripped away from us. We are left with the question, is it only a dream?

The black and white cinematography is simultaneously beautiful and tragic thanks to masterful compositions. The story is made more powerful through an expert choice of music. There was very little acting to speak of in the traditional sense, but the timing in the editing and the shot choices managed to be just as evocative as any acting could be. There was only one real problem I had with the movie, and that was the people of the future. They looked preposterous; why not just make them look like us? They are, thankfully, in the movie for a very brief period of time and do not distract too heavily from the beauty in the rest of the film. This is a movie you will remember for many years to come.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0056119/

Knife in the Water (1962)

2/5

This Polish thriller from Roman Polanski takes an interesting premise and turns it into an awful script and a worse movie. The actors are supposed to be attractive but are in fact ugly. Hideous, even. They look and act as if they are in a student production or a low-budget, made-for-TV movie, and much of it seems to be (at one point we can even see the railing of a boat on which the camera is filming the scene). Polanski's dialogue is affected and his shot compositions are stylized in an effort to make them evocative. The story is all over the place, which no central tension or mood on which this drama/thriller can stand. There were senseless, meandering side plots, backstories, and dialogue. The music was off the entire time; it never managed the right mood or timing.

I can see the future Polanski in this earlier piece, but only in his thoughts and ideas. The attempts are genuine conceptually, but the execution is amateurish at best. Every so often there are scenes of anxious nervousness, of waiting in suspense, but they are few and far between in this otherwise drab and pointless film. The last 20 minutes or so were actually quite exciting, with a dramatic and unexpected turn of events. Also, the story of the seaman who jumped on broken glass is a good bookend for the morality tale of the movie (male posturing and oneupmanship). It was not what I expected going in, but it wasn't all bad. I had high hopes knowing what Polanski is capable of, but he does not achieve any of that greatness in this movie. As I said before with House of Games, Criterion does make mistakes. Although not quite the disaster that House of Games was, this movie is still one of those mistakes.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0056291/