![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Jag sa förbanne mig inte ett ord om änglar
I am very pleased to report that the Criterion Blu-Ray of The Seventh Seal (1957) has fixed the serious, serious problems I had with the subtitles on their DVD. Some of the lines are still noticeably elided from the Swedish and I could have done with a more formal language in a few scenes, but the traveling players are once again named properly—Jof and Mia—the duel of invective between the blacksmith and the ham actor is intact in all its rude glory, and there is no longer the reckless simplification of dialogue that took out half the humor, subtlety, and mystery of the original script; seriously, I found Criterion's earlier transfer almost unwatchable. I recommended against it in favor of the old Janus VHS. Now I don't have to do that. And this is a good thing, because The Seventh Seal is one of the films I love best (as I have for ten years now) and want to share. It offers no answers. "Jag bär inte på några hemligheter," Death says—"I have no secrets." It is instead, itself, a question. But whether it's fifty years or seven centuries later, it's one that's still worth asking.
(For karmic balance, this year the Boston Lyric Opera is not selling T-shirts for The Turn of the Screw or any other production. I am frustrated in my quest to wear my favorite operas. At least I've still got Rusalka and Les contes d'Hoffmann.)
(For karmic balance, this year the Boston Lyric Opera is not selling T-shirts for The Turn of the Screw or any other production. I am frustrated in my quest to wear my favorite operas. At least I've still got Rusalka and Les contes d'Hoffmann.)
no subject
no subject
Good! I didn't feel comfortable recommending the DVD until I knew they'd fixed it as well, but I couldn't tell from looking at their site. Thank you for letting me know.
That being the case, I do think it's about time I saw this movie again.
I think I've seen it five times now. I expect to see it again. It holds up.
no subject
no subject
no subject
I'm sorry about the lack of t-shirts for the opera.
no subject
I called the theater to find out, so at least I had the opportunity to rave about The Turn of the Screw to the employee on the other end of the line and tell him that I would absolutely buy Britten T-shirts if they sold them. I very much doubt the Boston Lyric Opera will take me into account, but I said that about e-mailing Criterion with titles I wanted to see them release, and look at Major Barbara. It never hurts.
no subject
1. The Lord of the Rings (Extended Edition Trilogy) [2001-2003]
2. Donnie Darko (Director’s Cut) [2001 / 2004]
3. Memento [2001]
4. Eraserhead [1977]
5. The Frisco Kid [1979]
6. O Lucky Man! [1973]
7. 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968]
8. Vertigo [1958]
9. The Fall [2008]
10. The Wizard of Oz [1939]
11. Dr. Strangelove [1964]
12. The Prestige [2006]
13. Blade Runner [1982]
(Fanny and Alexander is as yet unranked but will be somewhere in the top 7 once I re-watch it, I'm quite sure.)
If I had to sum up in a nutshell why I love it:
Most movies that are this serious, thought-provoking, and death-dwelling would do well to balance all that with sufficient mordant wit and ribald humor. In The Seventh Seal, though, these things are not merely in balance but are integrated. Sonya has mentioned that she regards the procession of flagellants as one of the most horrifying scenes in cinema -- and of course it interrupts Jof and Mia's song about the Devil shitting on the shore, which is in turn the soundtrack for Lisa's utterly comic seduction of Skat. Bergman has realized that you can't make a movie that is all about death without making it simultaneously all about life.
This digital restoration looks phenomenal, by the way.
no subject
See, I do not think I love Fanny and Alexander more than The Seventh Seal. It's a masterwork of storytelling. Its clear-eyed symbiosis of the fantastic and the realistic is still rare on film or in literature. Of all the movies I've seen, only Un conte de Noël approaches its ability to immerse the viewer in another family's life to the point where it becomes impossible to tell whether you like or dislike any of these people no matter what endearing or appalling or unremarkable behavior they have engaged in: they have ceased to be characters who can be evaluated in terms of un/sympathy and become simply people who inhabit the world, take them—or avoid them—as they are. It reminds me of Angela Carter. And it is another of those beautiful films whose every frame could be hung on someone's wall, even the horrifying scenes. But I look at it and recognize it as a film. The Seventh Seal feels like a ballad, a mystery play, a painting on wood—atavistic, anonymous. It has always been here. That's an extraordinary achievement for an artist.
(There are a few other filmmakers who work with that spareness, that iconicism. John Ford comes to mind, at least in films like The Grapes of Wrath and The Long Voyage Home (1940); I think Fellini is another, despite his reputation for throwing in not only the kitchen sink, but the taps, the sponges, and the sink-trap as well. Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962) is another pure example. But partly because Bergman is working not only with human archetypes, but with abstractions as historically potent as Death and God, The Seventh Seal particularly feels like something charged beyond the contents of its cinematography or its script. Its characters are Bergman's Tarot pack. Its images are like things we have all dreamed.)
Of course, the same could be said of Casablanca. There's not a line in that movie that could be changed without destroying it a little. It is, improbably, perfect. Perhaps that's all: so is The Seventh Seal, but Fanny and Alexander I'm not sure about.
(And I feel this way about A Canterbury Tale, and so far as I can tell no one else on the planet does—not even Ian Christie, who wrote the Criterion essay and one of the few books on the Archers. Maybe Tony Grist. I might guess you feel similarly about The Red Shoes.)
Bergman has realized that you can't make a movie that is all about death without making it simultaneously all about life.
a) Post this somewhere.
b) Yes. Which is one of the reasons I think it has withstood its kiss-of-death canonization as the ultimate high-art film (and concomitant parodies by everyone from Monty Python to Bill and Ted); it's not didactic and it's not all anguished moral questing, but neither is its philosophy undercut to the point where it loses its bleak and numinous edge: from both directions, the film itself has gotten there ahead of you. And this mixedness extends to almost all the characters, as I've pointed out before. Jof is a visionary; he's also had red paint under his nails. Jöns professes a brutal cynicism; he saves one girl's life and is furious over the death of another. Death can handle a mean frame saw when he wants to; and nothing and no one escapes him, his absolute black and white. Antonius Block is not so tormented by his faith and doubt that he cannot recognize the grace of earth in a bowl of milk and strawberries. If all the characters are symbols—the knight, the squire, the mother and child, the holy fool—they are also human, or the film would be no more effective than an allegory. And humanity occasionally involves threatening to fart someone down to Hell. But the blacksmith's arm is around his wife when Death comes for them: "We had a little spat, but no worse than most people."
This digital restoration looks phenomenal, by the way.
I would love to see it sometime in a theater.
That song about the Devil has been stuck in my head since Saturday. It's done this before. At least I'm used to the Dies Irae.