Tom's Film History II Blog

               In this film, "Fear Eats the Soul" is the central mantra, and Fassbinder certainly lived by this concept. While he only lived to be 37, he completed 40 films. In his short but prolific career, Fassbinder was bold enough to explore the most controversial themes of his time, including race/immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, Marxism, and Germany's fascist past.  Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is simple, but it is beautiful and poetic. The color palette in this film is probably Fassbinder's strongest.   Because Fassbinder worked so quickly, one might expect his films to lack in attention to detail, but this is generally untrue. While it is clear that his films are produced very quickly, his shots and edits feel entirely natural. He worked fearlessly, trusting his natural talent.     In Fox and His Friends , Fassbinder mirrors his own struggles in love through Fox's character arc. Nobody forced him to make this; if Fassbinder wanted to use his talents to make standard

     Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves is the quintessential neorealist film. However, it uses carefully sequenced, coded filmmaking to manipulate the audience into a sense of reality. While French New Wave directors called attention to form through avant-garde editing and cinematography in order to actively engage the audience, De Sica intentionally conceals the filmmaking process to immerse the audience into the story.      Ricci's character arc in Bicycle Thieves is extremely cruel. In the first shot, a mass of workers stand around, waiting to be called on for a job. Ricci is so hopeless that he does not bother to walk 20 feet over to the group, but he is called upon nonetheless for a job that requires a bicycle. It seems as if every other man in the group has a bicycle except for Ricci, but fate was on his side that morning. The way that Ricci navigates through hardships in the film is reminiscent of the bricolage sequences in Singin' in the Rain; instead of sequenced

          Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows made an undeniable impact on independent film culture. At one point, it was one of my favorite films of all-time. However, when I revisited it this time around, it left me empty.           Perhaps it is unfair to compare Truffaut’s film from 1959 to recent work, but there is a clear line between The 400 Blows and the modern American coming-of-age film. Take, for example, Noah Baumbach, a filmmaker who borrows very heavily from Truffaut (Baumbach recreates multiple shots from The 400 Blows identically in his own Frances Ha ). Baumbach’s films, which are mostly seen as mediocre, exhibit the same kind of Freudian analysis of how certain methods of parenting can lead to neurosis and disillusionment. While Truffaut’s film is not bad in this regard, it feels mostly like a jumping-off point for these sort of themes.           Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird surpasses both Truffaut and Baumbach, developing a complex, potent thesis on how behavioral patterns

Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull is a lightning-in-a-bottle film. A variety of great talents were involved at uncertain points in their careers. The now-legendary director Scorsese had just come off of a drug overdose, and went into the film thinking it would be his swan song. Scorsese enlisted frequent collaborator Paul Schrader (who has a bizarre, fascinating directorial career of his own) for the script. The cast, which is now seen as a collection of legendary acting talents, was thrown together in a series of coincidences.                The visual style of Raging Bull is perplexing. The film’s director of photography, Michael Chapman, only worked with Scorsese on Taxi Driver (1976), The Last Waltz (1978), Raging Bull (1980) and the Michael Jackson-led short film Bad (1987). Like Taxi Driver , it has an almost neo-noir tone, with smoky, dramatically lit scenes. Maybe this is part of why the film is in black-and-white; Raging Bull tackles domestic relationships in a way that evok