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The Man Who Sleeps (1974) Original title: Un homme qui dort

I remember watching this movie 10 years ago, while in college. Me and a couple of friends used to watch a lot a existentialist movies, this one felt just like another one. One of many,  I remember liking it but not a lot, thinking "It has an interesting vibe, it grabs your attention" but not much more.

Today I look at this movie as one of the scariest and emotionally impactful pieces of media. All because of how tangible, how close the experiences this movie take you through feel. It terrifies me how I could understand some of seemingly unimportant non meaning holding shots, why they are there. And to finish you off, emotions the ending strikes you with are really agonizing in their power.

It's incredible how drastically some pieces of art transform through years of ones life.

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The Dark Mirror (1946) One of the most unambitious movies I've encountered, pretty cinematography though. A simple noir crime mystery with a bit of “psychology”. But how unambitious one should be to go about creating a detective story about identical twins while constantly showing them on screen with those stupid big letter necklaces\brooches with character names. What's sad, the actress is awesome in those roles and in every scene you could immediately tell who’s supposed to be whom. And even when someone supposed to be pretending, you could see who, how, why and all thanks to good acting.

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Moontide (1942)

A simple story told in a way that really feels like you are in some kind of a dream. The movie does effortlessly what The Trial \ Le procès (1962) tries so hard and bluntly to do (it succeeds to). Giving you the unease of a nightmare and blissfulness of a happy dream. It’s interesting how going from scene to scene something seemingly random happens while keeping you feeling that it’s actually must be connected and highly significant.  

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Scandal Sheet (1952)

Gotta love those 50s era movies. Those gimmicky simple and bold\engaging ideas, nice professional shots, a bit of shock value (compared to the movies from 40s). Cant go wrong with these 📽️📽️📽️

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You are what you eat watch.

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Distracted boyfriend meme recreation from The killers (1946)

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Hat 🎩 - check; Gun 🔫 - check; High waist pants 👖 - check; Shirt tucked 👚 - check; Shirt tucked in underpants 🩲 - check; Tie tucked 👔 - check; Pants tucked in socks 🧦 - check;

Just like a true gentleman, a mom friend's son if you will.

Movie is Key Largo (1948)

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Tiny tribulations in vast nature

Wide landscape shots with movement in 40s-50s cinema.

It's 1950, television only started to spread recently (although it does grow with enormous speed and it's was in 80% of households by 1950 in the us), it's only B/W and screen sizes are tiny. When shooting a movie one most likely wouldn't even consider the tv as means to enjoy it. Made-for-TV movies aren't even a thing until 60s. So, they shoot it for a big screen. And when you shoot specifically for a big screen you can shoot vast landscapes not only like an establishing shot, maybe bringing attention to your setting. You can fill those landscapes with tiny humans that do something. I guess modern 4k 60"+ TV could be considered a big screen too. At least I wouldn’t consider watching a movie at a theater as being "bigger", it's more about the experiencing it with crowd, anticipation at a lobby etc. Still I don't know if this type of shot is used today.

Those shots are usually found in westerns. They are always pretty tame, silent. Camera either static or just slowly panning. The beauty of those shots is in that they aren't trying to convey "hey we are moving, e.g. we changing the location from a to b, it's a part of the story, they had a journey, ok.". Instead they shot, and arranged with sound that way, so you can feel the tension character might build up from traveling to the PLOT point (whatever good or bad would they find there). Those huge terrains help to convey that there are thing that take time and during this time… there's lots for you to feel.

Through those shots you could also convey the excitement of a person about to inflict some meaningful or terrible change on something bigger than he is.

Movie used for screenshots is The Searchers (1956). Although it's beautifully shot and has a great rating on IMDB, in my opinion it's just an alright western. As always with westerns though there's problematic execution of racial themes. This movie's main message actually mostly anti racist but the execution and many problematic moments are really twisted and off-putting. But I guess if one would want to watch a wester they would have to accept that there gonna be a racist part in them and a lot of people who work on those were pretty racist too. And I guess it's sometimes to overwhelming to enjoy the rest of artistry of a work.

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Phantom Lady (1944) Recommendation: it’s about the beautiful balance of serious and comic book noir, and oooh is it tight and masterful. Right from the start movie hits you with nicely acted heavy emotions and uncomfortable situation. Seeing those scenes for the second time is even more striking, knowing what characters are going through.

As story unravels it masterfully presents those memorable scenes\pictures which work flawlessly even as still frames and completely out of context.  

And even though those scenes are more like something out of comic book... it gets darker and darker. It’s a genius way to make the world feel not just hostile and scary, but CRAZY.

And what great about the ways this films does this... it doesn’t go to caricature at all, it still feels like it set in real world.

You know the famous Hitchcock train tunnel scene, I hate it, it’s so extremely vulgar while trying to be somewhat clever. But on the other hand, hearing a character’s proposition to go “jive” to later found out that he literally took her to his underground band session, is the dictionary definition of writer\director having fun with their material\audience. Not to mention how much this scenes adds to mad world feeling of the movie

People that worked on this movie not only understood movies as a form of art, they used visual media as something to create art with. It’s perfectly artful on both abstract and lowest of levels.

Although visual aspects are the most significant and interesting part of this movie, the story doesn’t lag much behind. In fact those visual nods to comic book ways are corelating to specific plot points. Those plot points work in the same way as visuals, giving simple and striking accents to the whole experience. Overall, the movie is really great and definitely deserves a watch. Not often you see something so close to cliche of film noir while being this good.

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Frank Faylen as Bim in The Lost Weekend (1945)

dir:  Billy Wilder.

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High Sierra (1941) Recommendation: pretty interesting movie in the way it’s super detailed subplot builds on base of main story which is much simpler I love this beautifully textured love interest subplot in “High Sierra”, i love it as much as i hate lazily tacked on love subplots. There’s no love from the first sight, it’s either attraction that grows or desperation that makes you try to believe in love.

The way writing meets acting produces such real characters in the way they work on their relationships. The romance in this film isn’t spiritual, it’s so human, so tainted and sincere.

How rapidly it takes their relationship shows so much about the past of those charters. And this surprisingly works, all because of such great acting and directions.

The film plays so maturely with the definition of love and relationships, with how routine to which relationships fall, shouldn’t mean the loss of affection.

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Gorgeous shot of Mike from “Yellow sky” (1948)

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Brief Encounter (1945)

Recommendation: A great movie that overwhelms with emotions and feelings of a one little human 

I first encountered this movie during my English class at uni a long time ago. Didn’t think much of it, at that time i was not into old cinema (just started to watch Kubrick). We just watched a few main scenes and was tasked to describe what those were about, and what about is the movie generally.  I remember being surprised bu the choice of the movie, considering it touches on cheating from somewhat controversial point of view. But oh god how much deeper it is in actuality, how close and personal it gets in examining it when you watch it from start to end. Overall it’s a great engaging movie... which eternally gonna be tainted by that “English class movie” mark for me. 

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They Drive by Night (1940) Recommendation: it’s pretty alright film-noir story, although not moody, just engaging. Really bold example of straying from three-act structure being hard to direct

Although it’s not a bad film-noir, this movie shows that experimental and more free-form nature of early movie industry isn’t always land great and lovable experiences.  Usually story structures that stray away from simple three acts, with same old emotional journey you took a million time, is what i love the most in old movies. It’s really one of the most surprising experience that the movie can give you, when you just watched 2/3 of the film and you have no idea how it gonna end, even though there’s no simplified random twists, in your mind you genuinely have a couple of ways that story can be resolved and they are all relevant... at the moment, and even after the movie, when you realize that it’s a masterful directing work that made you think that. Here though, this free-form approach results in pretty much disjointed jumping from one plot to another without utilizing what was built in every of them. It gets rid of the substance and just makes the movie a small collection of... not even stories, just plain description of what had happened to characters with a bit of flavoring by actually giving characters personalities (without it making any difference at all).

Considering other aspects of the movie, acting is great, cinematography is good.... this scene with closing gates is EPIC, so bold and confident without getting to pretentious territory.

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Jack looking into your soul. Never noticed it before... in like 50 viewings.

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Art of perfecting a forgettable movie, RULE 3:

- After character been shot make sure that his words are almost poetically constructed and his moves are really artistic and almost unhindered. As a finishing touch make him die in a snap going from vengeful speech to suddenly dead. From: The Gunfighter 1950 (it actually not that bad and engages you in this pretty small story pretty well)

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When you spilled hot soup on yourself