Twice in Late Spring, Tokyo is introduced with shots of the Wako Main Building with its clock tower, one of the city's more iconic landmarks back in 1949. In addition to the clock's reference to time, a mural advertising the American publishing company Time-Life is visible on a neighboring wall in each view of the clock tower, even when the angle is flipped. It would surely sound banal to say that Late Spring is about time and life (what movie…
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The Exterminating Angel 1962
There are a couple of implicit riddles in The Exterminating Angel, but let's start with the smaller one, which reveals Buñuel's wicked humor.
On one side of the salon are three closet doors. Each is painted with a religious figure, and each hides something taboo. Once we notice this pattern, the meaning isn't hard to find. Behind the angel are vases used for toilets. Behind the Virgin Mary is Sergio's corpse. Behind the monk Eduardo and Beatriz make love. The…
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The National Prizes 1969
I've read all the reviews here, and everyone misses the point*. Portabella is clearly mocking his subject: at a time when liberal Catalunya was producing world-famous avant-garde fine art (Joan Miró et al.), the Franco regime bestowed its national prizes each year on consistently forgettable, derivative, pietistic, sentimental, and conservative works by unknown artists whose prizewinning paintings were relegated to a storage closet in a Madrid museum. The film revels in the conservative architecture, emphasizes the Spanish flag, puts militaristic…
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Brief Encounter 1945
Most viewers seem to think Brief Encounter is a romance. Laura herself thinks so, and she narrates her affair with Alec as if their love were mutual: “We both knew how desperately we loved each other.” But when Alec leaves her the last time, he won't even look at her, and she attempts suicide. There's clearly an imbalance in their feelings for each other. More than that, if we look at the affair dispassionately, there's every reason to think Alec…
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