Fanny and Alexander: (1984) Director Ingmar Bergman

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FANNY AND ALEXANDER

A vacuum formed in the core
of an actress
is too hastily filled
by a spiritual smile
attached

to a monstrous man.
Magic and the everyday,
finery and brocade,
nestled all together
like one big happy family
in a huge house, until the monster

had his way, and seduced
the actress away, along with
her hapless offspring
and tortured them.


In the end
family happiness is restored,
and very much in the family way,
when--with the aid of
smoke and mirrors,
and belief,
and theater--
the sinister smiler is slayed, yet

he does not die completely.
For he leaves behind
on the greasy underside
of reality

an unshakeable film


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Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso), 1964, dir. Michelangelo Antonioni

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RED DESERT




He sees a red door and he wants to paint it black.
He sees a green field and he has to paint it grey.
What are the colors of the
spaces in between?
What is the texture of the pain
that is unseen?

He points out something that is not quite yet a fact.
He does it openly and yet behind your back.
Can you really tell a caress
from an attack? At random, people
circle, interact.


Cool colors fight with warm,
opening a crack.
Poison plumes of yellow smoke
roil up to scorch the sky; little birdies
have to learn to
fly the other way.


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METROPOLIS (1927, dir. Fritz Lang)

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METROPOLIS


Every bleak exciting city

emerging monochrome from the mist

owes a little debt

to Metropolis


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SYLVIA SCARLET (1935) starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant


Early in their careers,
Cary conjures the crooked rogue
and Katherine the gender bender.

When the crooked rogue
and the gender bender
don't end up in bed together

you have nice sequences
but a misdirected picture,
and three times Grant and Hepburn

must couple up
to make up for this mistake:
once in 1940 and twice in 1938

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The Philadelphia Story (1940)


If you were Katherine Hepburn
and labeled "box-office poison"
what would you do?

Get your newly-sober ex
and James Stuart
competing for you?

And what if, say, some guy
who used to be a miner
slipped a rock around your finger?

When you're in it, and the sun's
in your blodshot eye--
and people are calling you

"remote," "goddess" and "heartless"
left and right--
it's hard to know who'll win

but admit, it's elementary:

Dismiss the stiff with the diamond,
have a dalliance with young James,
and re-marry Cary--

just like in the play.

That's how you save
an acting career
and win the day--

not to mention, an Oscar

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