Quick Takes, January 2025

So This is Paris

Ernst Lubitsch's So This is Paris, from 1926, is the director's third and final silent film done while under contract for Warner Brothers. He went out with a bang. What starts as a typically droll bedroom farce concerning two married couples, one bourgeoise and one bohemian, erupts into a dance party sequence that sums up the mad hijinks of the era. For the "Artists Ball" sequence, the director whips up a freneticism in his work barely glimpsed since 1919's Die Puppe. Lubitsch employs superimpositions, kaleidoscopic effects, and, when his characters get tipsy, double exposures. A under sung masterpiece currently streaming in a gorgeous print on Max. 

With nearly a century of hindsight, Walter Ruttmann's Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, from 1927, seems more successful in its documentary evocation of a bygone metropolis than in its attempts at constructivist poetry. Certainly, Ruttmann's celebration of industrial and  technological might seems dated. What does not is the fabulous cinematography of Karl Freund and his cohorts.

Quentin Dupieux has crafted an amazing number of short and peculiar features with soupçons of surrealism since I came upon his films starting with Rubber almost a decade and a half ago. Yannick, a one act coup de théâtre set entirely in a jewel like Paris playhouse clocks in at only 67 minutes, but is his most accessible and successful film. Raphaël Quenard plays the titular parking lot attendant who pulls a gun and disrupts a numbingly routine boulevard comedy entitled The Cuckold. The cultural conflict between populism and elitism that currently grips the West is enacted by a uniformly excellent cast. Quenard, already a César award winner delivers a titanically amusing performance that finds him balancing charisma with sociopathy. Funny and unsettling.

Despite its title, Román Viñoly Barreto's El Vampiro Negro is not a horror film, but a remake of Fritz Lang's M. The expressionism of Lang's film is very much in evidence, but this 1953 Argentinian film adds a dollop of feminism to the mix. Barreto's misanthropic regard of his character rivals that of Lang and Joseph Losey, director of the 1951 American redo. Barreto's marshalling of memorable and disturbing images marks him as a distinctive original.

Damian Mc Carthy's Oddity has been marketed as a horror film, but I would describe it as a slow burn revenge thriller with supernatural elements. The film represents an incremental advancement rather than a great leap forward for Mr. Mc Carthy after the promising Caveat. This time he has written some actual characters and devised a much more complex plot, but his cast is subpar. I did enjoy the performances of Carolyn Bracken, Tadhg Murphy, and Steve Wall, though.

Molly Manning Walker's How to Have Sex is a coming of age film in which three young British females travel to a cheesy resort in Crete. The usual hijinks ensue in a film not all that dissimilar to Where the Boys Are. Lead Mia McKenna-Bruce, who emanates a star's talent and charisma, provides rueful notes that ground a film teetering on the brink of insubstantiality.

Zoë Kravitz's feature debut as a director, Blink Twice, shows promise. The film is slick, maybe too slick. However, the script ends up regurgitating White Lotus and Knives Out with Channing Tatum starring as Jeffrey Epstein. I did like the supporting cast, especially Alia Shawkat, Christian Slater, Geena Davis, Simon Rex, and Adria Arjona.