Author: Steve Schweighofer

Without giving too much away about the 10 Best Pedro Almodóvar Films coming up tomorrow, but with no Matador (1986) and High Heels (1991) making the…

Rather than try and describe in words the ongoing legacy of Vittorio Storaro in honor of his birthday, let’s instead revisit a few of the indelible visual memories he has given us. May there be many, many more to come.

The musical became Nashville, the private dick, The Long Goodbye, and the psychodrama, Images. Thieves Like Us was the deglamorized gangster flick, California Split the chaotically atmospheric gambling pic. The language of American film had begun to evolve again, after a very long nap.

He broke every rule in the standard cinematographers’ catechism – and caught much flack for it early in his career. Then people began to catch on. This was a new visual language, an impressionistic wash that Zsigmond applied that elevated the films – and the directors he worked for – into a unique category, all their own.

The secret to Littman’s film is that there is no proselytizing. We don’t see the bomb explode; we don’t know the political circumstances or which megalomaniac (elected or dictator) started the deluge. We only see things from the point of view of the innocent who pay for the folly with their lives.

In a time laden with remakes and sequels, today’s filmmakers should take a tip from what happened in 1983, when two cinematic giants showed us how to re-imagine classic tales, and how to forge new and creative pathways into the core of our mythical parables.

Heat and Dust was Merchant/Ivory’s biggest hit to date internationally. Britain was in the throes of nostalgia for the period of Raj India – Lean’s A Passage to India was about to break on the big screen and, on TV, The Jewel in the Crown would dominate.

Hot off the success of his now-classic anti-war epic, Peter Weir took on the adaptation of Christopher Koch’s potboiler about a collision between romance, journalistic obligation and revolution, The Year of Living Dangerously, which would become his last purely Australian effort.

Bob Fosse directed only five films and this, the one with the odd licence plate title, was his last. The dancer/choreographer/screenwriter/director had a penchant for…

Streamers was a far cry from ’83 box office hits like Jennifer Beals, lady welder/dancer, seeking respect by getting buckets of water dumped on her in Flashdance or the Star Wars version of Teddy Bears’ Picnic, Return of the Jedi, but I’m certain that was precisely the way Robert Altman wanted it.

It’s all there, from the big moments on the launch pad that played-out on the international stage to the small moments like chasing your love on horseback through the desert. Intimacy and grandeur, the key elements in the classic epic filmmaking, share the screen equally as if to remind us that all heroes do not necessarily make it to the TV screen.

This time around, the brothers are the Boy Scouts who prank by soaping the windows of an institution and then set fire to a bag of dog poop at the front gate. They appear to be on a lark, having some harmless fun, until a stomping-out of the flames reveals the contents of the bag.

If society can be considered the organism, the family is the structural adhesive that holds the cells of that organism together. As every organism is bombarded daily by threats and external pressures, the family is where these challenges are met and dealt with; problems are examined and the family unit adapts, and the organism evolves. Things can get dicey, however, when the adjustment that works for the family does not exactly jive with society’s expectations, and this makes for inimitable drama onscreen.

What started with I am Curious Yellow in the late 60s begat 1971’s challenging jamborees such as A Clockwork Orange, WR: Mysteries of the Organism, Ken Russell’s The Devils. 70s auteurs pushed the envelope without remorse – or fear. To experience Last Tango in Paris in the same context in which it first appeared is simply impossible now, but we were ready back then.