My Write Up

The beginning
I had a difficult time figuring out what to do for my Winter Term project this year. I had lots of ideas, but nothing I was really excited about. While I was trying to figure out what to do for my project, I kept adding to and refining my list of films I wanted to see over break. When I narrowed my list down to about fifty films I absolutely wanted to see over break, I realized there was no way I could watch that many and do another project. There were movies on my list that I’d wanted to see for years: The Godfather, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Dreams, The Big Lebowski. In our Cinema 390 class, so many films kept getting referenced, and I started to feel like I’d barely seen anything! It finally hit me, as it probably should have before, that my Winter Term project could be sampling all of these different directors, most of whom I wasn’t familiar with at all.
For this learning experience, I’ve tried to follow Langois’s method of learning by osmosis. I want to take in a lot of films before I start writing (hopefully I won’t start writing too late). I’ve read Roud’s A Passion for Films and Lopate’s
Totally Tenderly Tragically so far, and they’ve both been helpful in starting my project. The latter has inspired me to try to see as many films as possible. The former has helped me to develop my cinematic eye. Both gave me plenty of films to add to my list of films that I want to see before I graduate.




My Top Thirteen (because I couldn’t stick to just Ten)
To be completely honest, I haven’t written anything formal yet, and I’m already back in Oberlin. I wanted to write a lot this month (or I guess, last month, as it’s already February), but every time I sat down to write, I thought, “I could be watching a film instead”. So, I did. I watched around 80 movies, a dozen or so of which I’d seen before. I think I would have made it to 100 if I hadn’t supplemented movie watching time with watching Project Runway. When I tell people what I did over Winter Term, they either say, “Wow, that’s really easy.” or “Didn’t you get sick of watching movies?” Well, no, it wasn’t, and no, I didn’t. I got to see about 70 films that I thought were wonderful, and about ten that I thought were just okay. The only movie I listed that I couldn’t finish was Fanny and Alexander. It was my fault for trying to watch the television version. I thought it was 112 minutes (thanks to its worn out case) versus the theatrical version’s 188 minutes; it’s actually 312 minutes.
Getting to see so many films was amazing, and also strangely addicting. For a couple of weeks, I would go to the public library almost everyday and check out three new DVDS (and bring back the three that I’d watched the previous day), all the while keeping up with my Netflix 4-at-a-time subscription. After the month was over, I felt like I’d really accomplished something, which might sound silly, but I got to see many films that I might not have otherwise seen the rest of my life, but that I’m so grateful to have seen (Diary of a Country Priest, for example). The most important thing that this month has done for me though was give me many more films to look forward to. I want to see so much more of Ozu and Bresson, I still haven’t seen anything of Molière, Mizoguchi, Bunuel, Satyajit Ray, and too many others. I’ve barely seen any silent films. I never got around to see El Mariachi or The Killer of Sheep, or any other films by directors in the Austin Film Society.
Even though it was great to get to watch all of the movies, it was also demanding in a way. Certain movies demand to the viewer to think about them for days: Do the Right Thing, Citizen Kane, Ace in the Hole, The Bicycle Thief, Sullivan’s Travels, the Up Series. Movies can be a great escape from thinking (National Treasure II), but those usually aren’t the most satisfying to watch for me. I often found that two random films I paired up on a day would have strong connections, despite having different directors, being from different times and different countries. I often get caught up in thinking about the writing process that goes into making a film. For example, I try to imagine how Ernest Lehman put together all of those weird elements into North by Northwest. That can sort of distract me from the film itself at times. I am beginning to internalize the process of analyzing a film’s stylistic elements, which is harder for me than analyzing the thematic elements. This Winter Term project really cemented my love of cinema, and has opened me up to new directors: Ozu, Bresson, De Sica, Wenders, Wilder. I’ve come to understand (or begin to understand) what I love most about films: I love films that don’t hurry, with long segments that don’t move the plot forward, and are calm and contemplative. (My favorite part of Nights of Cabiria, which I didn’t watch over break, is when Cabiria travels around to the caves with the man.) I can’t stand movies where the main character is in trouble the whole time because of misunderstandings, such as in North by Northwest, because they literally make me tense to the point of feeling sick. I guess I empathize too much. Characters are more important to me than plot. I love stark lighting. I love the soft glow around movie stars, like Ingrid Bergman. Films centered around faith, doubt, desperation (so long as the character’s not misunderstood), and identity resonate with me most. I appreciate intelligent characters who aren’t evil masterminds, which is fairly rare in my experience. I’ve never seen a film that comes close to my own day to day experience of life. (I wish someone would create an image of lower-middle class, middle America that is closer to the “truth” and less vulgar than the TV series Roseanne.) I want there to be more representations of old people in film, ones that show them as complex, dynamic human beings, and not just cranky old men or grandmas who rap at weddings. I guess the only thing to do is to start making films myself. So, here were my favorites of the month. I included Picnic only because it was filmed in Kansas, making it one of the only, and probably the most successful, film ever made in my lovely home state. My responses to the films are, unfortunately, less specific than I would have liked and than they would have been if I’d actually written them right after my viewings.
The Kid
When I was little, one of my uncles had an 8mm projector that he used to project movies in my grandparents’ basement. The only thing I really remember watching was Laurel and Hardy. I liked the juxtaposition of the short, skinny man with the (slightly) taller fat man, and I liked all of the onscreen physical gags. As I watched the Chaplin films over Winter Term, they seemed vaguely familiar, although I’m not sure if I’d seen any of them when I was little. They reminded me a little bit of Laurel and Hardy, and I regret not making the time to watch their collection, so as to compare the two.
I loved every Chaplin film I saw this January, and I think I loved each one more than the last. I think I chose The Kid as my favorite partly because it was the last one I saw. I watched it immediately after seeing Vertigo; both films have famous rooftop chase scenes with the police, one of the dozens of strange connections I saw between films over break.
The film’s tagline is, “A picture with a smile, and perhaps a tear…”, and I think this is fitting, because the movie is both one of the best comedies and dramas I’ve seen. The film dealt with the thin line that separates comedy and tragedy so well, I think perhaps because some aspects of the film were adapted from Chaplin’s own life. I read (online, so I don’t know if this is true) that Chaplin had lost a newborn son shortly before the filming of The Kid began, and this helped to make his onscreen relationship with the child so moving. The scheme of the child breaking the windows, while the father followed behind to repair them was supposedly taken from the real life of a man Chaplin once worked for, the comedic theatre actor, Fred Karno. Perhaps most importantly, the scene where the boy is pulled away from his father is also supposedly taken from Chaplin’s life, when he was taken from his mother to go to a workhouse. My uncle with the projector has several books on Chaplin, which I discovered during my last week at home, but I will hopefully get to read some of them over the summer so I can see how Chaplin drew on his own life in his films.
I love this movie for so many reasons. The plot is simple, there are few developed characters, but the film is emotionally rich. We talked in Cinema 390 about how annoying it can be when directors use heavy-handed symbolism or images that are so obviously supposed to draw an emotional response. Even though The Kid does play on the emotions of the audience by mixing the comedy and tragedy, I think the emotional moments are well supported. Seeing the child get taken away by the authorities not only devastates the characters involved, it devastates the audience as well. I think Chaplin’s Tramp character is one of the most lovable characters in cinema because he is a simplified form of what people hope to be on a basic level. His most important quality is, as sappy as it may sound, that he puts the wellbeing of others before his own, lovingly and ungrudgingly . He takes on the enormous responsibility of raising a child whose parents are strangers to him, and despite seeming to be totally unfit to be a parent, he loves the child simply and completely. The only recent film I can think of to compare to The Kid in its humor and its poignancy is La Vita è Bella.
Dreams
I’ve seen Waking Life so many times, and I’ve always wondered what movies are shown during the section with film screening and the monkey. I think (or at least I don’t remember) if it’s included in the commentary of the film, but I used to periodically check Wikipedia to see if anyone had added the names of the films to the Waking Life page. Now that I’ve finally seen Dreams, after about three years of trying to find it, the information is now on Wikipedia, but it was more fun to find it out myself. I’m talking, of course, about the clip of the man running down the hill.
This film was stunning. It was the kind of film that invites the view in to be part of it. The landscapes were incredibly beautiful, and it felt like a spiritual experience to be watching the film for me. I admit that I fell asleep during the part where the men are frozen in the snow (I was very tired, and I’ve fallen asleep during Waking Life plenty of times). The film is interesting and compelling, but it’s not urgent, and because it’s broken up into segments, the audience is able to leave and rejoin the film. I would like to see the whole film several more times, but it was rather pleasant to be in a half-sleep state during part of the film. Dreams put me in a calm, meditative, happy state, but I need to think more about why the film seemed so great to me and had such an affect on me.
Tokyo Story
One of my biggest regrets of Winter Term is that I watched this film so late in the term. I think I watched it a day or two before I came back to Ohio, technically after the end of Winter Term. If I’d seen this earlier, I definitely would have made the time to watch much more of Ozu. This was listed as one of Linklater’s favorite films on the Criterion website, and it’s easy to see how he was inspired by this in making It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books. Somehow, even though the camera stays still at all times and in the same positions throughout the film, a feeling of movement is still conveyed. To me, the camera doesn’t seem static or stuck; when it cuts from one shot to the next, like when someone leaves one room and enters the next, the camera seems to glide along with them. One that note, when someone leaves a room, the shot usually continues, staying on the empty room. Each place has its own identity and presence in a way. I think in one of the books I read over WT, the other said that Ozu (similar to what I said about Dreams) invites the audience in to be part of the place. I watched Late Spring much earlier, and I think I made a mistake in watching it with other people. It made me anxious for something to happen. Watching Tokyo Story alone gave me the patience to enjoy each moment of the film without trying to look forward to where it was going. The themes of family and duty also resonated with me deeply. I didn’t watch the whole film alone, because my mom came in and watched part of it with me. She said it was nice to see a foreign culture from its own perspective, because seeing a caricature of the culture (I’m paraphrasing), you get to see how much people everywhere are alike.
The Bicycle Thief
I watched this film with my mom, and I think it may have been the first full movie she’s seen with subtitles, or at least the first one in a long while. With its simple plot and fairly simple characters, this film was incredibly powerful. I knew the man wasn’t going to get his bicycle back, but I still found myself desperately hoping he would. My mom and I both loved the film; the situation was so close to experiences in our own lives. I’ve been told that one’s reason for liking something shouldn’t be based on how much one relates to it, but I don’t think you can be moved by this movie to the same extent if you haven’t been through desperate circumstances. In Sullivan’s Travels, the main character goes looking for trouble and ends up finding it in a way he’d never imagined. I can’t imagine many people at Oberlin seeing The Bicycle Thief and really understanding it, not to imply that my family too has had to sell the sheets right off of their bed. I left the film, not feeling in despair exactly, but somewhat hopeful. The man has lost his bike forever and his job, he’s been humiliated in front of his son, he may lose his home, his spirit has been broken in a way. However, maybe because my own experience has shown me that no matter how bad things get, they usually can get better, I felt inspired by the man’s determination to find his bicycle, and I believe that determination can be turned elsewhere to make his life better (because, of course, characters keep existing after the film).
The Up Series
The Up Series is incredible. I decided to watch it because it was mentioned so many times in my cinema class last semester. The first segment, Seven Up, didn’t seem that remarkable to me. The angle the director is trying to take is fairly obvious, that the lives of children are fairly predetermined by their socioeconomic background, which I think is a horrible way to look at people. I believe, as the professor at UT says in Waking Life says, that we are not just a “confluence of forces”. I tried to space out watching the programs. I found myself depressed after some of them, especially 35 Up. Far from getting better as they got older, most people seemed to be getting worse, or at least not progressing in any sort of way. By 35 most people had sort of given up on the idea of improving their lives, either because they were content with them, or because they felt it was hopeless to try. My favorite person in the series is Bruce, because I identify with him well, and I hope to be like him in many ways as I get older.
Picnic
Picnic was over acted in parts, edited strangely (or poorly), and the ending I thought was terrible. But it was shot in Kansas! It was filmed in Hutchison (where my mom grew up), Nickerson (where my best friend’s grandma lived), and Salina. For a brief moment in the film, you can see on the newspaper that they’re in Salinison, which doesn’t actually exist. It was neat seeing a movie filmed in places that I’m familiar with. So many times, we’ve driven by the grain elevators in Hutchison or the other locations in the other towns, and my grandma always points them out. I am running out of time, so I will list the rest of my favorite films of Winter Term.
They are:
Diary of a Country Priest
Vertigo
Ace in the Hole
The Third Man
Do the Right Thing
Lost in Translation
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Films I Watched Over Winter Term

Films (mostly by director)

Chaplin:
City Lights (87 m)
Gold Rush (96 m)
Modern Times (87 m)
The Kid

Harold Lloyd:
Grandma’s Boy
I Do
Just Neighbors
Bumping Into Broadway

Kurosawa:
Dreams (119 m)
Seven Samurai

Ozu:
Late Spring
Tokyo Story (135 m)

De Sica:
The Bicycle Thief (93 m)

Leone:
Il buono, il brutto, e il cattivo (161 m)
C’era una volta il West

Fellini:
I vitelloni (103 m)

Pietro Germi:
Divorce, Italian Style

Silvio Soldini:
Bread and Tulips


Bergman:
The Seventh Seal (96 m)
Fanny and Alexander (Television Version) (312 m)

Wim Wenders:
Wings of Desire (127 m)

Kieślowski:
The Decalogue

Bresson:
Diary of a Country Priest

Antonioni:
Blow up (111 m)

Renoir:
Rules of the Game (110)

Godard:
Masculin féminin (110 m)
Contempt
Week End

John Ford:
The Searchers

Hitchcock:
Rear Window (112 m)
Strangers on a Train (101 m)
Vertigo (129 m)
Notorious
North by Northwest

Wilder:
Sunset Boulevard (110 m)
Ace in the Hole
Some Like it Hot

Welles:
Citizen Kane (119 m)

Carol Reed:
The Third Man

Preston Sturges:
Sullivan’s Travels (90 m)

Hollywood:
The Maltese Falcon
Casablanca
The Philadelphia Story
Singin’ in the Rain (103 m)
Arsenic and Old Lace
The African Queen
My Fair Lady

Powell & Pressburger:
The Red Shoes

Woody Allen:
Annie Hall
Manhattan (96 m)
What’s Up Tiger Lily

Jarmusch:
Coffee and Cigarettes
Down By Law (107 m)
Stranger than Paradise (89 m)
Dead Man (121 m)
Night on Earth (128 m)

Wes Anderson:
Rushmore (93 m)
Bottle Rocket (91 m)
The Royal Tenenbaums

Spike Lee:
Do the Right Thing

Francis Ford Coppala:
The Godfather Part I (175 m)

Sophia Coppala:
Lost in Translation (102 m)

The Coen Brothers:
The Big Lebowski (118 m)

Gondry:
The Science of Sleep (105 m)

Tim Burton:
Sweeney Todd
The Nightmare Before Christmas

Judd Apatow:
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Knocked Up

Apted:
7 Up, Seven plus Seven, 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up

PBS:
American Experience: Mary Pickford

Kansas:
Picnic

Epic movies about Indians:
Gandhi

Christmas Classics:
It’s a Wonderful Life
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
A Christmas Story
A Charlie Brown Christmas

Disney Channel Original feat. Joan Cusack:
Ice Princess

Robert Zemeckis:
Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Harold Ramis (the dad from Knocked Up):
Groundhog Day

Dilbert?:
Office Space

Mount Rushmore Conspiracy Theories:
National Treasure II

A Great Day in my Life

Bill Murray came to my high school!
My uncle told me, "There's no way to make you look like a normal human color" after 15 minutes of modifying this picture

Angst, Flowers of St. Francis, The Newton Boys, School of Rock, Blackout in Rome

I think Angst (or Fear) is my least favorite of the Rossellini films with Bergman. The structure of the narrative is pretty simple: Bergman's character is cheating on her husband and won't come clean about it, and so is forced to payoff her lover's ex-girlfriend to keep the affair quiet. The twist, which I saw coming, is that the husband already knows about the affair, and is paying the girl to agonize his wife, so that she will confess. For a relatively short film, it seemed to go on and on, and I just couldn't get myself to care about either of the characters. She's unfaithful, he likes to cause her agony, and I guess the moral ambiguity of the situation could be interesting, but it wasn't. On the MoMA website, it said this, "the film was made because Rossellini was interested in the idea of Germany’s reconstruction (both material and moral) ten years after Germany Year Zero". There's probably a whole layer of social commentary or something that I'm missing. I think simple stories can be amazing, but I think I just didn't get this one.

I love Flowers of St. Francis, and it's a great example of how well simple stories can work. I like that the title also translates as "Francis God's Jester". This film really impressed me, because I think that as Rossellini obviously grew up in and was living in a strong Catholic country, there would be a lot of pressure to glorify the saints, and this film could have turned out very badly. He made Francis look a little less than humble, like when he would command people to follow his own rules. The character of Francis wasn't portrayed as a simple, devoted man, but seemed a little bit more intelligent or complicated than the men around him. I love the scene with Francis's friend (I can't remember his name) and the leader of the barbarian tribe, where the monk just looks at him and doesn't have to say anything.

The Newton Boys didn't feel like a typical Hollywood movie, but it didn't feel like a Richard Linklater film either. I like the way the film was directed, I liked the casting and the story, but I left the film feeling like it was only mediocre. I felt like the movie was trying to be made patable to a wider audience, and so some of the quirkier aspects of Linklater's style were left out. My inclination is to blame the studio system and believe that the final film was not Linklater's vision. However, in interviews with him I've read, he said he was happy with The Newton Boys and he was pretty much left alone by the studio when making it. I've been thinking about why this and School of Rock don't feel like Linklater films, or as Aaron put it, they seem like they could have been directed by anyone. I definitely don't agree with that, but I'm not sure why Linklater's personality does not come out in them more, even though he says that there is no difference in the way he approaches directing something like Bad News Bears and something like Before Sunrise. It could be because The Newton Boys is a western and a bigger budget film, so it's obviously going to be different from his other work. Maybe it just doesn't feel like Linklater unless there's someone going off about something (whether a conspiracy theory or an article by a biochemist) and there's not very much action in the plot.

I don't think School of Rock could have been directed by anyone else and have been as successful as it was, but the first time I saw it, I didn't even know it was directed by Richard Linklater. Like Dazed and Confused, this film feels like a celebration, and there are no negative consequences. I think the movie is sweet, without being sappy, and Jack Black is great at working with kids. Joan Cusack is also amazing in this, and brings a good balance to her character. The principal is anal but not heartless, awkward but endearing, and ultimately a sympathetic character, but not just because we feel sorry for her. Jack Black is able to convince us (or at least me) that even this uptight principal is cool. This film does well what so many other teacher-inspires-students films do so badly (and so help me god, I've had to sit through Stand and Deliver in so many math classes in my life).

Finally, Blackout in Rome. I think it's funny we watched this (I'm pretty sure) on the day after there was a big ice storm in my hometown and almost everyone lost electricity for several days (Blackout in Manhattan, KS). Anyways, I liked that the film starts off with a narration saying that the Italian people are such kind, generous people, who hide soldiers even though they could lose their lives for it. The narration pretends to be an objection observation of what's happening, but then turns out to be satirical, given what follows. Three women dress up as nuns, I'm guessing because it helps them bargain for cheaper prices, and end up getting a good bargain on a bunch of food in return for taking some hidden soldiers off the hands of this family. As soon as the one woman realizes that there could be serious consequences for housing the soldiers, she immediately wants to get rid of them. I'm surprised this film was never widely released in the US, because I would think there would be some interest in it in the US.

Farenheit 451, A Scanner Darkly

Farenheit 451 was goofy to me. Maybe the way the future is depicted in movies today will seem ridiculous to us in the future, but from the costumes and the set to the way people interacted, this whole movie felt a little silly to me. I don't know if the dialogue was awkward because it was meant to be that way or if was just because Truffaut was uncomfortable with English. Either way, I love the book Farenheit 451, but this film was lacking. Whereas in The Two English Girls I could pick out parts that I liked in the whole mess of a film, this whole film seemed to drag on to me.

I thought A Scanner Darkly was a much more successful adaptation of a science fiction novel. I know Linklater wanted to stay as faithful to the book as possible, but I actually liked the film better than the book (which is pretty rare). As we already talked about in class, the animation worked really well for the film, though I didn't like its style as much as Waking Life. The consistent style makes the story seem more cohesive and it's also more sophisticated and life-like, but I like the rawness/paint-like quality of the animation in Waking Life. Everytime I see A Scanner Darkly, I always forget that Hank is Donna. The casting for this film is really interesting. Everyone seems to almost be playing themselves, only a little crazier. I actually really don't like Keanu Reeves in this though, and that distracts me from really enjoying the film at points. It's interesting that Linklater chose to use all big name stars for this, but ultimately I liked the mix of actors.

The Story of Adele H., The Wild Child, and Day for Night

I never want to see the Story of Adele H. again. As a woman, it was really painful for me to watch the story of another woman who is so pathetic, so dependent on a man, and who acts selfishly toward her family. I understand that it's based on a true story, and while I may have liked reading about it on wikipedia, I don't want to watch a film about it. The whole film can be summed up in one simple phrase, as spoken by the man Adele stalks to Adele, "You're ridiculous!" Adele's identity is defined by her relationship to a man, her father (she will always be known as Victor Hugo's daughter), and she wants to breaks free of that and define herself. But, she is too weak to do that, so she tries to reform her identity around another man. As in all Truffaut movies, people only want what they can't have, so of course he can't love her back. An interesting point brought up in class was Jared's idea that Truffaut trusts the visual more than the written or spoken word. When Adele reveals her identity to the hypnotist, she does not speak her name aloud, but writes it in the dust on the glass.

The Wild Child really reminded me of the Elephant Man, and I wonder if Lynch saw this film and was inspired by it. Both films are in black-and-white, and they're about doctors who try to civilize another human being. Also, both doctors go through a crisis in which they wonder if they're doing things for the right reasons. As Chris pointed out in class, the film, although it seems like it wouldn't be autobiographical, as some parallels to Truffaut's own life. Both Truffaut and the wild child were illegitimate, and were treated badly by their parents. Truffaut plays a role in Victor's life that is similar to Bazin's role in his own. Bazin helped to "civilize" Truffaut in a way. The story does move slowly and does not try to gloss over how tedious the learning process can be. There are some jumps in time, but there is no montage of progress (that I can remember at least). The story of the wild child isn't really a story of success in terms of how much he learned as in reading and writing, but I think it is in terms of how much he learned to connect with other human beings, which I would say is more important (not to be too sappy).

Watching Day for Night was an experience, because I've never seen anything dubbed except MXC and kung-fu movies. The dubbing was really awful, but it added a layer of humor to the film. I think the film does a really good job in showing the joy and agony of filmmaking, and makes the cast seem like a big family. To paraphrase what Kate said in class, the film shows you how the truth behind the magic of film, but that just makes the film all the more magical. Now, everytime I see a shot of someone driving a car from the front, I think of Day for Night. After running into all kinds of problems in the first half of the film (that they are making), most of the second half is glossed over with a montage of progress. I kind of hate montages that are the turning points of movies, because they make me think of every made-for-TV Disney movie ever, but I understand that when things come together when working on a film, it probably is a big blur. A couple more things: When Truffaut is sleeping and we see the images transposed over him, I thought that was a little silly. I guess it's supposed to remind the viewer that the director never leaves his work, even when he is sleeping. Finally, the relationship between the young actress and the old doctor was interesting. At first, it's just kind of gross, because of the age difference. When she cheats on him, I had sympathy for him because he seems like this kindly old man, but then again, he did leave his whole family for some young actress. I was happy for them to be together in the end, but I still wonder what that storyline was doing in the film.

Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, Love on the Run

I remember loving Stolen Kisses when I first saw it, but now I can barely remember what it's about because I mix it up with all of the other Doinel films. I think this is probably a common experience. I'm not sure this moment was in this movie, but I loved when Doinel addressed his bosses wife with a masculine title and then ran away. As Doinel, Leaud is able to be a total scoundrel and still be a sympathetic character. I loved the series of jobs he had in this film. He went from being in the army to working at the front desk of a hotel, being a detective, being a stock-boy (as an undercover detective), and finally being a TV repair man. The autobiographic thread of Truffaut's life continued in this film, except I think he added some elements he wished happened in his own life, like having a relationship with a very beautiful, older woman.
Something else I thought was interesting that we didn't really get to in class was the end of Stolen Kisses, where the strange man professes his love to Christine. His love for her isn't really any more ridiculous than Doinel's for the women in his life (especially when we get to Love on the Run). The man acts like Doinel isn't even there, and Doinel just sits and listens to the man, without defending his own love for Christine.

Bed and Board
I enjoyed Bed and Board as well. I loved the "strangler" and the way the neighborhood reacted to him. When no one knew who he was, he seemed to always be lurking, like he was up to something dark and secretive. When they see him on TV though, the neighborhood's whole reaction to him changes. Being on TV changes him from a nobody to a somebody, and knowing no more about him than they did before, the neighborhood embraces him and views him as a source of pride.
I liked the way the library staircase was used as a metaphor. When Christine asks him why they need a staircase when they don't have a library, Antoine responds that someday they will. The staircase is something useless and a little bit ridiculous right now, but represents hope for growth and the future.
Another thing I really liked about the film is that it shows how quickly the new and exotic can become tedious and monotonous, through Antoine's relationship with the Japanese woman.

Love on the Run was a bit of a let-down for me. I’m going to have to watch it again after there has been more time since I’ve seen the other Doinel films. I didn’t like how much of the film was flashbacks, and I literally had to leave the room because I couldn’t take it. When we were forty minutes into the film, I felt like nothing new had happened and there was no point to it except to make another movie with Léaud. The most interesting part of the film was when Antoine meets with her mother’s old lover. We get to see a glimpse into someone else’s perspective on his life, and it shed a little light on how biased towards Doinel the other films in this series have been. The fact that Doinel does not even come to his mother’s funeral and hasn’t ever visited her grave makes him less sympathetic. Overall, I liked that the film showed that the stories of people’s lives aren’t stories of progress, but that people remain pretty much the same over time. This may not be very inspiring, but it’s more real, and I’m more interested in films that show people as they are than as we’d like them to be.