film

Ingrid Bergman at MoMA

/ William Newton / Leave a comment

With the 100th anniversary of the birth of screen legend Ingrid Bergman coming up next month, the Museum of Modern Art in New York has announced a special film festival in honor of the late Swedish actress and three-time Oscar winner. MoMA will be screening 14 of Ingrid’s movies, selected and introduced by her four children, including actress Isabella Rossellini.  Several of Ingrid’s most famous movies will be shown, such as “Casablanca” (1942), “The Bells of St. Mary’s” (1945), and “Notorious” (1948) – my favorite Hitchcock film, as it happens – among others.  In addition several of her European films, less well-known to American audiences, will be screened. These include four of the Italian films she made with her second husband, director Roberto Rossellini, which are considered some of the most important works of European Neorealist cinema in the Post-War era.

While it is great that so many of Ingrid’s performances will be shown to audiences who have never had the chance to see her on the big screen, there are a few notable absences.  I find it somewhat odd, for example, that MoMA of all places would not include “Spellbound” (1945) with Gregory Peck, since certain elements of the production were designed by Salvador Dali. Neither will be attendees be seeing “Anastasia” (1956) with Yul Brynner, for which Ingrid won her second Oscar, nor the now-legendary Sidney Lumet ensemble film, “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974), for which she won her third.  It would also have been nice to see the sophisticated romantic comedy “Indiscreet” (1958) with Cary Grant which, while admittedly more of a specialist taste, has always been one of my favorite films of hers because of its very grown-up, cosmopolitan script, and whose Technicolor positively glows on screen.

That being said, I’m pleased to see that MoMA will be screening “Autumn Sonata” (1978) with Liv Ullman, Bergman’s final film and the only one she made with another towering Bergman of the cinema, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. The two Bergmans had always wanted to work together, but as so often happens, sometimes these collaborations only happen in the autumn of one’s years – appropriately enough for the title and subject matter of this work. For those whose image of Ingrid is of the compassionate but resolute, strong yet tender beauty, this performance is quite a departure. It shows not only that she could act – John Gielgud’s catty comments notwithstanding – but that she could confound your expectations.

At first the role of the famous performer, all warm smiles and graciousness, seems to be Ingrid the actress playing a musical version of herself. Yet as the film develops, she plays against type in such a way that at first you don’t realize that her character is actually quite monstruous. The viewer is both drawn to and, upon reflection, repulsed by her character at the same time. It is not surprising that Ingrid received her 7th and final Best Actress nomination for the role, and that it won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film.  Even if you can’t get to New York to see it, if you enjoy good acting you should definitely add this one to your screening queue.

Ingrid Bergman: A Centennial Celebration runs at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from August 29th to September 10th.

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I’m All About “Eve”

/ William Newton / 2 Comments

This weekend I had the good fortune to view (in convivial company) the classic 1950 film “All About Eve” on the big screen for the first time, at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring, Maryland. Now as regular visitors to these pages know, I have been a huge fan of this film for many years. I have seen it more times than I can recall, and can also recite almost all of the dialogue from memory. I also own a copy on DVD, naturally enough.

However there is something truly unique about seeing a classic black and white Hollywood film from the golden era on the big screen. No matter how familiar you are with a particular movie that you have seen on a television or computer screen, there is nothing quite like the experience of being in a theatre with a large group of people, seeing it on a huge screen, surrounded by sound. And truth be told, despite having lived in Washington for many years, this was only the first time I visited the AFI Silver Theatre, which is a wonderful space showing a wide range of both classic and contemporary cinema.

With “All About Eve”, this film in particular does not necessarily need to be on the big screen to be enjoyed. There are no great action sequences, and the film itself is not unlike a stage play, in which the dialogue is far more important than the action. However because the characters in the film – not unlike the actors who portray them – are so much larger than life, seeing them several stories tall really does add to the feeling that you are watching a hugely important work of American cinema, which “Eve” definitely is.

There are many reasons why I might recommend that you check out “All About Eve” if you have never seen it before. It could be because it is such a devastatingly accurate look at the misunderstandings and conflicts in relationships between men and women, for one thing. Or it could be because of its steely-eyed look at the problem of unfettered ambition and how it can harm other people. Yet I think on the whole if you enjoy hearing the English language well spoken, and you also enjoy a carefully crafted book, fiction or not, that becomes the primary reason to see the film. The words of the magnificent screenplay of “Eve” fill the air on the film set in a way that few films have done before or since. Paradoxically, this is a sensory feast for someone who loves to read.

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Anne Baxter, Bette Davis, Marilyn Monroe, and George Sanders in "All About Eve"

Watching the “Watchmen”: A Beautiful Film from France

/ William Newton / 3 Comments

If you’re interested in seeing good men doing good work on behalf of the whole world, I can highly recommend a film which for some reason had skipped my notice until last evening, “The Watchmen of the Night”.  I was made aware of it through a tweet posted by my friend Sister Veronica Young, a member of the Sisters of Faith who lives in solitude in Utah, but whom I’ve come to know through social media.  [N.B. Incidentally, if you are on Twitter, Sister Veronica should be on your follow list, Catholic or not, as she regularly posts words of encouragement, prayer, and comfort for those who need it.]

No, this isn’t a review of the superhero movie “The Watchmen”, which in fact I debated about with someone the other day.  Instead, this film is about a Benedictine monastery in the south of France, the Abbey of St. Mary Magdalene in Le Barroux, a town in Provence.  The movie examines the day-to-day lives of the monks, as well as allowing us to get to know some of the monks themselves, and why they chose to enter the religious life. And fortunately, you can watch the entire one-hour documentary on YouTube by following this link.

If this sounds somewhat like another film about cloistered French monks, the German documentary “Into Great Silence”, you’d be forgiven for thinking they were rather similar.  Yet while that piece goes through a year in the lives of the Carthusian monks who reside in the Grand Chartreuse in the French Alps, this film is not only shorter and somewhat lighter in tone, it reflects on a slightly different kind of spirituality.  The German film has no narration, very little dialogue, and an overwhelming sense of the mortality of man preparing to enter God’s eternity, whereas the well-narrated French film touches upon these subjects, but presents a more upbeat, joyful tone about the life shared by the brothers in Provence.

Whereas outside of the Divine Office or Mass, the Carthusians spend the vast majority of their day in total silence and rarely if ever see anyone from the outside world, the Benedictines spend a significant portion of their day working in their community and receiving visitors.  This could be overnight visitors making pilgrimages to the monastery for religious services, or interacting with patrons at the monastery shop which helps support the needs of the poor and the monks themselves. The Benedictines have their own periods of silence, particularly at night, but theirs is not the near-total isolation of their brethren in the Alps.

Yet like the Carthusians, the Benedictines in this film respond to the suggestion that what they are doing has no purpose by pointing out that they do not work for a purpose.  They work for God.  As such, they have no need for the secular materialist justifications of this world.  So as the saying goes, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

What I found particularly interesting about Le Barroux was the fact that these Benedictines are not the hippy-dippy sort which one sometimes associates with the Order here in the U.S.  In fact, this monastery was only founded in the 1980’s, although the complex itself looks like it was built 1000 years earlier. Originally, the monks here were aligned with the traditionalist schismatic movement which was spearheaded by the late Archbishop Lefebvre, but they eventually reconciled with Rome, and their monastic community was elevated to an Abbey in 1989.  To see how the monks live and how they worship is to see traditional Roman Catholicism at its most beautiful.

No doubt the lifestyle of the monks is not for everyone – particularly for those of us who could not bring ourselves to become vegetarians.  Yet it would be hard for anyone to look at the lives these men lead, and walk away unimpressed by the faith and the joy which radiates from them, as they go about following the great command of St. Benedict himself: ora et labora – pray and labor.  Particularly for those of you who are curious about traditional Catholicism, or what it’s like to be a member of a cloistered religious Order, or who want a very watchable film to show your children or students about Catholic spiritual life, this would be a fine addition to your film library.

The Benedictines of Le Barroux at prayer

The Benedictines of Le Barroux at prayer