Dominated by the 60’s cinema, as well as by B&W films, and arranged in chronological order, my list of 30 favorite vintage premieres is just a small part of dozens of great ‘discoveries’ made in 2022. Here, you will find everything from a stunning noir classic (Double Indemnity) to a hidden gem of the Czech New Wave (Squandered Sunday) to a surreal psychological drama (Almost a Man) to a couple of experiments years ahead of their time (Limit & No More Fleeing)...
One of the earliest pieces of American queer / feminist cinema and the last of Charles Bryant’s three features, ‘Salomé’ is a deliberately hyper-theatrical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s play co-written by ex-lovers Natacha Rambova (also credited as art director and costume designer), and star Alla Nazimova (who employs highly expressive mannerisms to convey a character almost thrice as young as she was back then). Minimalist in set design that channels the spirit of Art Nouveau style, the film shines a spotlight on emotionally unrestrained performances of the entire cast adorned in fascinatingly extravagant creations that appear like a missing link between ‘Triadisches Ballett’ and Jean Paul Gaultier’s outrageous work for ‘The Fifth Element’. Its quirky, decadent beauty is further amplified by 2018 version score composed by award-winning Serbian musician Aleksandra Verbalov who open-mindedly experiments with everything from Byzantine chants (sung by the Kovilj monastery monks) to intense bursts of cello energy and mystical musings of clarinet and piano.
Currently streaming on MUBI, as a part of the ‘Embracing Infamy: Cult Films’ collection, the first and only feature completed by enigmatic and reclusive Brazilian filmmaker Mário Peixoto is a tour de force of avant-garde cinema in its purest and truest form. Simultaneously alienating in its abandon of narrative conventions, and utterly fascinating in its daring, yet delicate maneuvers with unexpected camera angles, negative images, playful cuts, and peculiar tracking shots, this uncategorizable work – decades ahead of its time – feels like a silent revelation.
There is an undeniable poeticism, as well as pristine naturalness to Peixoto’s experimentation with form and structure that turns the mundane into the mysterious, and our conscious awareness into subconscious reverie, as the memories of cipher-like characters invade their aimless present (on a boat sailing across the open sea). Imbued with personal symbolism, his beautiful images – surreal by way of their correlation – create a vast simulacrum in which the viewer’s subjective interpretations are allowed to roam freely and infinitely, as the warmth of the author’s love for his celluloid dream fills the air.
03. Dancing Lady (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933)
If the sparks between Joan ‘mesmerizing eyes’ Crawford and Clark Gable had been materialized (along with a strong sexual tension that culminates in a leg massage scene), there would’ve been a spectacular light show in my living room last night. And what a visually climactic performance that final act is – like a juicy, fiery red cherry on top of the cake! Not to mention that it would’ve been virtually impossible to stage in a theatre; only cinema allows all the wonderful ‘magic’ on display.
04. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944)
Snappy dialogue, brisk pacing, taut direction, beautiful cinematography, but above all, utterly magnetic Barbara Stanwyck as one of the most fatal dames of classic noir, and – more than 50 years later – a ‘role model’ for Patricia Arquette’s character of Renee / Alice in David Lynch’s masterful neo-noir ‘Lost Highway’.
05. Nicht mehr fliehen / No More Fleeing (Herbert Vesely, 1955)
Possessed by the restless spirits of surrealism and early avant-garde, Herbert Vesely’s feature debut works as a crystal ball through which one can glimpse certain points in what was then the future of cinema. A post-apocalyptic meta-film, it precedes (and dare I say it, outshines) French New Wave offerings, and with its punkish attitude and absurd properties, foretells of the filmmakers such as Ulrike Ottinger, F.J. Ossang and Davide Manuli. There’s a strong de Chirico vibe to its desolate landscape setting in which sparse structures and objects throw elongated shadows, and an admirable attention paid to the frame composition, with the deliberate and inspired cacophony of both (jazz to ambient) music and (tricky) montages emphasizing the strangeness of visual juxtapositions. A few of the characters – lost and detached from ever-dissolving reality, and portrayed by non-professionals – act as nothing more than often silent ciphers in a doomy dream pervaded by the mood of ambiguity. A singular, visionary experiment deserving of a wider recognition!
06. Das Totenschiff / Ship of the Dead (Georg Tressler, 1959)
‘Ship of the Dead’ is easily one of the most fascinating pieces of (European) classic cinema that I’ve had the honor of seeing. Based on the novel by the mysterious B. Traven best known for ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’, it follows an American sailor, Philip ‘Pippip’ Gale, who loses his papers to a prostitute in Antwerp and later finds himself slaving away on Yorikke, a decrepit ship owned by smugglers. As things go from bad yet manageable to virtually inescapable worse for our hero, Tressler demonstrates impressive versatility in helming his vessel across both calm and troubled waters, eliciting a diverse range of moods from the viewer, with little to no effort. Assisted by Heinz Pehlke’s expressive, gritty, noir-like cinematography, and Roland Kovac’s doom-portending score, he creates a number of individual scenes worthy of detailed analysis for their own immense strength, as well as for their irreplaceable value for the film as an engaging whole that is charged with anti-capitalist sentiment. Boosting this adventurous drama’s power is a perfect cast, with Horst Buchholz in a leading role that sees him transforming from a charming, if reckless vagabond into a victim of poor life choices, and Mario Adorf portraying a Stockholm syndrome-suffering seaman, Lawski, whose conflicting friendship with Pippip is the very emotional core of the feature’s darker second half.
07. Yōsō / Bronze Magician (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1963)
The second to last offering from Teinosuke Kinugasa – the author of silent cult classic ‘A Page of Madness (1926)’ – is a near-masterpiece of slow-burn cinema and is directed with unerring conviction. Part ‘historical fairy tale’ and part political drama, it revolves around a Buddhist priest, Dokyo (magnetically stoic Raizō Ichikawa) – both a messianic figure and a proto-communist, and his increasingly romantic relationship with the ailing Queen (Yukiko Fuji, solemnly gorgeous) against the backdrop of unscrupulous scheming of her ministers. Although the action takes place in the court, ‘Bronze Magician’ is strikingly minimalist in its (irresistibly elegant!) production design, with the starkly beautiful B&W cinematography and rhythmical interplay of deep silences and ominously haunting score turning it into a ‘mystical noir’. As the purity of supernatural forces clashes with human wickedness, the ideas of equality fall through the generational gap and get buried under the slime of greed and pretense that ruling isn’t as simple as the (tragic) hero of the story imagines it.
08. Girl with Green Eyes (Desmond Davis, 1964)
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She is a ‘mixture of innocence and guile’, her favorite novelist is F. Scott Fitzgerald, she puts a sweet smile when someone quotes James Joyce, and lights remind her of ‘all the people in the world waiting for all the other people to come to them’. Contrary to what her bestie Baba (Lynn Redgrave) thinks of her, she does know how to attract men, even though she bites her nails, isn’t very sophisticated and tends to be jealous, possibly because of her green eyes.
Given the film’s (beautiful!) B&W imagery, we can’t see the color, but we can often feel its intensity in the girl’s gazes and glances, or rather, in her youthful vivacity. And Rita Tushingham is extremely charming in the casual portrayal of this lassie, Kate Brady, whose life is Dublin may be a way to escape her Catholic, not to mention sternly patriarchal upbringing in a country. The story of Kate’s falling for a soon-to-be-divorced erudite, Eugene, who’s twice her age (Peter Finch, superb) couldn’t be simpler, yet it works wonders thanks to both Edna O’Brien’s witty, insightful writing and Davis’s refined, inviting and engaging direction marked by great attention to details. Equally praiseworthy are John Addison’s deeply evocative score, and Brian Smedley-Aston’s playful editing, with spatio-temporal ‘jumps’ emphasizing the increasing power of Kate and Eugene’s love.
09. Popioły / The Ashes (Andrzej Wajda, 1965)
Wow! Epic in scope (the running time is almost 4 hours) and absolutely stunning in its visuals (captured by Jerzy Lipman of ‘Knife in the Water’ fame), ‘The Ashes’ is one of the most fascinating pieces of Polish cinema that I’ve seen so far. Andrzej Wajda – assisted by none other than his namesake Żuławski – directs with a painter’s eye, poet’s heart and keen sense of both humor and grandeur, effortlessly transforming into a madman during the scenes of war which dominate the film’s second half. Particularly memorable in its almost surrealist, disquietingly mesmerizing delirium is the chapter ‘Beyond the Mountains’ which depicts the massacre in the Spanish city of Saragossa. And on its gentler side, ‘The Ashes’ is no less powerful, grounded in strong performances or rather, sympathetic characters of Rafał Olbromski and Krzysztof Cedro.
10. Un uomo a metà / Almost a Man (Vittorio de Seta, 1966)
“I do not exist. I feel like I’m dreaming. I look at the other people... Young, happy... How does it feel to be like that? What do they feel? I don’t know. I never felt it. The important thing... is to know.”
Stunningly captured in high-contrast to milky B&W cinematography by Dario Di Palma, and soaked in deep silences and broodingly atmospheric, texturally rich score by maestro Ennio Morricone, ‘Almost a Man’ is a triumphant psychological drama and an insightful character study that takes the viewer to a dark forest of dreams, memories and fragments from the life of a troubled writer, Michele (the bravura performance by Jacques Perrin). The desperate, disenchanted, sexually repressed and paranoid hero’s slow-burning descent into madness triggered by an existential crisis is directed with a master-level precision and keen sense of cinematic poetry by Vittorio de Seta who creates a hallucinatory atmosphere of oneiric dread, bringing to one’s mind the likes of Bergman, Resnais and Antonioni.
11. Breza / The Birch Tree (Ante Babaja, 1967)
It has always been difficult to be ‘a birch among beeches’, to quote the key line, especially in the Balkans where the ones who think or act differently are usually ridiculed, ostracized or silenced by the vocal majority. For gentle souls, the hardship is even more severe, and leads to their destruction. One such soul that belongs to a beauty, Janica, surrounded by beastly bumpkins including her burly husband, Marko, is in the center of a tragic, poignant story which satirizes the village life with all of its superstitions and hypocrisy, and reflects on the position of an artist in a society of ‘rugged’ mentality. Gorgeously capturing the exuberance of life and bleakness of death are Tomislav Pinter’s mesmerizing cinematography inspired by naïve paintings, and Anđelko Klobučar’s highly poetic and evocative score interspersed by traditional songs and heart-breaking lamentations of Janica’s mother.
12. Dim / Smoke (Slobodan Kosovalić, 1967)
“You are mistaken, young man. No one knows history well!”
Co-penned by director himself and Borislav Pekić – one of the most revered writers from around these parts, and set in an unspecified German town covered by a heavy patina of past traumas, Slobodan Kosovalić’s fiction debut is an unorthodox piece of Yugoslavian / Serbian cinema, as well as an unusual representative of the revenge subgenre. Not even slightly exploitative, it is permeated by a deep sense of melancholy, loss and foreboding embodied in a reticent protagonist – young Jew Georg Anders (Milan Milošević, stoically composed) who is after a former concentration camp commander, Newermann (Janez Vrhovec, at his most repellent in a limited screen time), returning from prison after serving a minimum sentence. The film’s appropriately ‘smoky’ B&W visuals that at times bring to mind early Makavejev and Puriša Đorđević create the atmosphere of suppressed guilt and overarching sorrow, further intensified by the uncannily brooding score from Croatian composer Branimir Sakač. Appearing in supporting roles are always reliable Milena Dravić (as an unnamed, mysterious girl) and Pavle Vuisić (as a compassionate bartender) whose ‘subdued’ performances complement the solemn tone and moody poetics of ‘Smoke’.
13. La Prisonnière / Woman in Chains (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1968)
In Henri-Georges Clouzot’s intoxicating swan song whose strange melody brings to mind ‘Peeping Tom’, ‘Belle de Jour’, and ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’, foreshadowing Grillet’s ‘Eden and After’, op and pop art intertwine with suppressed passion, as petit bourgeois sensibility clashes with the liberating power of submission. Through the spellbinding use of color, the most mundane of scenes open a door towards über-reality, often signifying (or concealing?) the characters’ mental and emotional states, with the simmering chemistry between Elisabeth Wiener as Josée and Laurent Terzieff as Stanislas creating strong erotic tension. And even when the film appears to have lost some of its steam, the power of visuals alone keep the viewer glued to the screen, preparing you for one of the most psychedelically mind-blowing dream sequences in the history of cinema.
14. Stress-es tres-tres / Stress Is Three (Carlos Saura, 1968)
A perfect companion piece for Roman Polanski’s stunningly beautiful feature debut ‘Knife in the Water’ (1962), Carlos Saura’s out-of-the-ordinary drama is, according to the author himself, ‘the study of the crisis in a seemingly developed society’ reflected through the prism of a strained marriage or rather, a love triangle that may only be the figment of the husband’s imagination. Impressively shot in stark B&W which adds to the increasing surreality of the subtly fractured story, ‘Stress Is Three’ weaves together simmering passions, undisclosed desires and fiery jealousies into a fine tapestry of psychological tension and modern alienation. Considering that it was conceived and brought to life under the Francoist dictatorship, the strength of its anticonformist attitude, as well as its somewhat experimental nature prone to deliberate ‘buffoonery’ make it all the more fascinating.
15. Zbehovia a pútnici / The Deserter and the Nomads (Juraj Jakubisko, 1968)
“You’re not God, because God is darkness. And that darkness has no end. And children of God are born in it.”
On his ‘Worldwide Celluloid Massacre’ webpage, film reviewer Zev Toledano uses the term ‘Kusturica-esque’ to describe ‘The Deserter and the Nomads’ which is kind of funny, and not to mention disrespectful, because last time I checked, Emir Kusturica was only 14 when Jakubisko’s anti-war drama had its premiere, and his short debut would be released in 1978, with his subsequent work majorly influenced by Jakubisko; so, something along the lines of ‘proto-Kusturica’ may have worked much better.
Directed with unrestrained anarchic energy and heightened sense of raving poeticism, or simply put, in a fit of creative madness, ‘The Deserter and the Nomads’ is an unadulterated cinematic nightmare, in equal measures dizzying and disorienting, electrifying and overwhelming in its incessant barrage of audio-visual stimuli melded with allegorical mayhem into a feverish stream-of-conscious narrative. Always set at the end – of the WWI, the WWII and the world – it depicts the accelerated corrosion of human civilization in broad and sweeping strokes through three chapters interconnected by the figure of Death perfectly embodied by bald and square-jawed Augustín Kubán. A spiritual predecessor to Żuławski’s ‘On the Silver Globe’ and Lopushansky’s ‘A Visitor to a Museum’, it provides the viewer with an intense experience.
16. Rara (Sylvano Bussotti, 1969)
A reflection on / exploration of the corporeality of music (and spiritual potentials of the body?), the first feature from Sylvano Bussoti (1931 – 2021) – an Italian composer, painter, writer, stage and costume designer, opera director and manager – is a mighty fine piece of the 60’s underground cinema. Operating on the same wavelengths as the works of Anger, Schroeter, Jarman and Pasolini, ‘Rara’ can also be seen as the queer predecessor to the offerings of Experimental Film Society, particularly of its founder Rouzbeh Rashidi, as it seems to embrace a very similar approach to filmmaking. Rather than employing images and sounds to illustrate the scripted story, it lets the abstract narrative(s) emerge from their interaction, or rather occasional, unexpected intersections of the two independent, free-wheeling entities. It starts as a documentary of sorts, but gets increasingly chimeric (and formally challenging) with its DADA-esque mysticism, transcendental eroticism, and cacophonous congregation of haunting piano strokes, delirious violin solos, and uncannily immersive vocalizations.
17. Zabitá neděle / Squandered Sunday (Drahomíra Vihanová, 1969)
“Silence! Forget everything you see and hear.”
Created under the regime which didn’t allow artists to think, let alone philosophy on the absurdity of life, Drahomíra Vihanová’s extraordinary feature debut was confiscated by despotic authorities, with the author herself banned from filmmaking until 1977, when she made the first out of several documentary shorts, only to return to fiction in 1994. Revolving around an apathetic army officer, Arnošt (Ivan Palúch, brilliant!), who can neither mend nor end things that bother him, ‘Squandered Sunday’ balances on a tightrope between the protagonist’s realities and illusions / suicidal thoughts and drunken escapades, his twisted perspective reflected in both the heavily fragmented narrative and bold formal experimentation. From the very first scene set at the funeral of Arnošt’s mother (death portends death), it is absolutely clear that Vihanová knows the rules of the game very well, which allows her to break them in the most creative ways, pulling the viewer ever deeper into a feverish, delightfully irrational (meta)cinematic universe that evokes the likes of Godard, Chytilová and Jakubisko. Her apolitical stance is what makes the film so politically defiant, and the liberty she takes in the oft-freewheeling portraiture of metaphysical meaninglessness intensifies the confrontation. An absolute must-see for the Czech New Wave aficionados!
18. Nippon no akuryo / Evil Spirits of Japan (Kazuo Kuroki, 1970)
A simple, yet heavily fragmented or rather, obscured story of switched identities sees strangely charismatic Kei Satō dandily smirking in a dual role of yakuza and detective, as Kazuo Kuroki employs virtually every trick from the film grammar book, delivering a visually stimulating and formally playful piece of New Wave cinema. Interspersed by the 4th-wall-breaking, at times politically charged musical interludes performed by singer-songwriter Nobuyasu Okabayashi, ‘Evil Spirits of Japan’ provides a somewhat subversive blend of crime drama and pinku eiga, defying description and amplifying your taste for filmic weirdness.
19. Götter der Pest / Gods of the Plague (Reiner Werner Fassbinder, 1970)
The (w)holy cinematic trinity of Fassbinder’s mesmerizing, formally seductive neo-noir, and its antithesis:
- A Godardian antihero, Fritz (stoic performance from Harry Baer), posing as an apathetic, almost desensitized embodiment of disenchanted youth, as well as of the artist’s anti-conformism. His slaps (in the dinner scene with Margarethe von Trotta and Günther Kaufmann) hurt more than bullets. / Hanna Schygulla’s very presence which brightens up the screen even when her character Johanna is struck by melancholy. Despite her deeply flawed nature, there is something saintly about her...
- Dietrich Lohmann’s rigorous, hauntingly beautiful framing, emphasizing Fritz’s nihilistic unconcern, and the society’s cold indifference. / Upbeat soundtrack, at once complementary and opposed to the deliberate dreariness of the atmosphere. Maybe childlike innocence hasn’t died yet?
- The welcome sparseness of dialogue, allowing the viewer to feel the heavy impact of virtually every image. / The placement and movement of actors within mise-en-scène, louder than words.
20. Руслан и Людмила (Александр Птушко, 1972) / Ruslan and Ludmila (Aleksandr Ptushko, 1972)
One of the highest amongst high fantasies, Aleksandr Ptushko’s final film is a wondrous adaptation of his namesake Pushkin’s epic fairy tale chronicling brave knight Ruslan’s perilous mission to rescue the daughter of prince Vladimir, Ludmila, from the clutches of an evil wizard, Chernomor, who abducts her on the first wedding night. Lavish in production values and grandiose in scope, ‘Ruslan and Ludmila’ is familiar in its simple and sincere account of romantic chivalry and magical interventions, yet it rarely loosens its firm grip on the viewer’s attention, bewitching you with its continuous stream of stunningly beautiful, larger-than-life imagery. Many of its shots appear as if lifted from the oeuvre of Russian illustrator Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942), with saturated colors piercing the darkness of an enchanted forest and flowers blooming in stop-motion after Ludmila’s release from Chernomor’s kingdom of coral and crystal gardens, chambers lit by upside-down fountains, and caverns whose walls and ceilings are supported by semi-nude, Titan-like figures. (The latter scenery brings to mind Mario Bava’s sword-and-sandal film ‘Hercules in the Haunted World’ which would make for a great companion piece to Ptushko’s swan song.) Underscoring its surreal, dreamlike qualities is a straightforward approach to the depiction of extreme violence which, albeit bloodless, doesn’t shy away from multiple decapitations and spear impalements in the heat of the battle, not to mention a traitor sliced in two by a court jester...
21. The Driver (Walter Hill, 1978)
A masterclass in style oozing with sheer coolness on so many levels that the content becomes of secondary importance, Walter Hill’s ‘Melville-ization’ of a Hollywood neo-noir actioner takes you into a borderline-mythical world inhabited by stoic or enigmatic archetypes, and bathed in acidic greens, dirty yellows and deep shadows which intensify the brooding mood, as well as the grittiness of a criminal milieu. In such a stripped-down reality, expressiveness comes across as a sign of weakness, which is why the cold Bressonian detachment pervading excellent performances by Ryan O’Neal (as the titular Driver) and Isabelle Adjani (as the Player) makes their antiheroic characters firmly stand above the rest.
22. Golem (Piotr Szulkin, 1980)
Based on Gustav Meyrink’s novel of the same name, ‘Golem’ is a masterclass in feverishly disorienting atmosphere established through a puzzling, decidedly incoherent narrative, oppressive amber-green lighting, the crumbling dystopian setting of dispiriting grays, and insidiously hushed music theme which intensifies the overwhelming feeling of inescapable dread. Relentlessly irrational, to the point of distorting the viewer’s own perception of reality, this tautly directed nightmare engraves itself into one’s memory with some of the sharpest cinematic tools.
23. Agatha et les lectures illimitées / Agatha and the Limitless Readings (Marguerite Duras, 1981)
“Her body’s indecency has all the magnificence of God. It’s as though the sound of the sea covers it with the sweetness of a deep wave.”
There is silent cinema and then, there is the cinema of deep, ruminative silences and soft, silently spoken words that – glacially absorbed by skillfully ‘painted’ negative spaces - put you in a peculiar sort of trance. As it breaks the ‘show don’t tell’ rule, ‘Agatha and the Limitless Readings’ hypnotizes with its incredible formal discipline of long, largely static takes, and nostalgia-driven poetry written by both the rustling waves of the sea, and cold, autumnal light shrouded in the fond memories of summer. A most subtly told tale of incestuous love between a brother and a sister, this experimental drama ignites the viewer’s imagination through the verbalization of a forbidden romance, simultaneously dissolving the notion of time.
24. Czułe miejsca / Tender Spots (Piotr Andrejew, 1981)
Piotr Andrejew comes extremely close to his compatriot and namesake Szulkin in building the oppressively alluring atmosphere of growing despair in a polluted dystopia, but his unorthodox sci-fi romance is imbued with the sense of (slightly twisted) tenderness emanating from a man-child hero – ‘sentimental idealist’ Jan (the superbly whimsical performance from Michał Juszczakiewicz). Stunningly lensed in black and white that emphasizes the bleakness of the retro-futuristic setting, and backed by moody jazz & synth tunes that lend it a noirish edge, ‘Tender Spots’ has its love triangle story distorted through the prism of toxic ambition embodied by Jan’s vain girlfriend Ewa, the tottering system, and unlikely friendship with a little girl who seems to be the only person – beside the protagonist, that is – rejecting conformity and seeing the UFOs...
25. Napló gyermekeimnek / Diary for My Children (Márta Mészáros, 1984)
Personal and collective history clash and intertwine in the first entry of the ‘Diary trilogy’ by the acclaimed Hungarian filmmaker Márta Mészáros. Even if you’re not familiar with the story of the director’s life, you can easily recognize or rather, deeply sense autobiographical elements in a film-loving protagonist, Juli (a fascinating performance by 17-yo Zsuzsa Czinkóczi), whose strong will and rebellious nature are nothing short of inspiring. The young heroine is all the more sympathetic thanks to her confrontational perseverance in the unwelcoming post-WWII environment in Hungary, with Stalinist madness on the rise, and hypocrisy raring its ugly head behind every corner. The harshness of her reality is only alleviated by idyllic memories (growing bleaker towards the end) and the darkness of the cinema venue, as well as by all the small perks of coming-of-age, such as the first love. And it is with great skill, not to mention confidence and gentleness that Mészáros balances between the private and the political / poetic and prosaic, making her 80’s drama appear like a lost artifact from the 50’s or 60’s by virtue of (her son) Nyika Jancsó’s absorbing B&W cinematography.
26. The Element of Crime (Lars von Trier, 1984)
These days, I’ve been reading Stig Björkman’s ‘Trier on von Trier’, realizing it’s about time I checked out Lars von Trier’s early works. And what a killer feature debut ‘The Element of Crime’ is! A hellish noir nightmare that proudly wears Tarkovsky influences on its long-take sleeves, and portends the immensely heavy atmosphere of Lopushansky’s ‘Dead Man’s Letters (1986)’, it plunges you into its post-apocalyptic-like setting, hypnotizing you with the overwhelmingly grimy imagery soaked in the most dismal of yellows, oranges, reds and browns, as well as with the melancholy-induced sound design, particularly the cast’s voices that give off some strong ASMR vibes. It is a film which lays bare its author’s fetishistic relation to cinema and art in general, from the elaborate lighting and peculiar camera angles to literary quotes and the omnipresence of water, and as such, it makes you feel the cold, feverish sweat of its inherent mystery.
27. Egomania - Insel ohne Hoffnung / Egomania: Island Without Hope (Christoph Schlingensief, 1986)
“I saw the Devil. He was more beautiful than me.”
A ruthlessly anarchic phantasmagoria, ‘Egomania’ feels like an unholy cross between Zwartjes and Jarman, with bits of Ottinger and Żuławski thrown in for good measure. It frequently subverts your expectations and keeps you in the state of revelatory befuddlement, as it reaches the deepest and darkest levels of both your subconscious and unconscious mind. Christoph Schlingensief goes absolutely nuts with delightfully abrasive visuals, bizarre musical choices, ravingly poetic dialogue, freakishly fragmented narrative, and decidedly hectic editing, as the entire cast follows him on the bumpy path of creative lunacy. Leading his colleagues is legendary Udo Kier as Baron/Devil/Devil’s Aunt (may be one and the same character?) who munches the scenery with great gusto, and spits it all over the others, with the ethereal Tilda Swinton in an understated performance acting like his angelic counterbalance.
28. Одинокий голос человека (Александр Сокуров, 1987) / The Lonely Voice of Man (Aleksandr Sokurov, 1987)
“The fish floats between life and death. That’s why it’s dumb... It knows everything. It’s a special being, a sacred one. Because it knows the secret of death.”
The deepest of melancholies drenched in all the pain, despair and misery of human condition, then liquefied and distilled into a slow-burning piece of pure cinema that reaches the darkest corners of one’s soul and/or subconscious with its sooty, bleakly poetic visuals, ruminative silences and moody, hauntingly elegiac music...
29. Кайрат (Дарежан Омирбаев, 1992) / Kaïrat (Darezhan Omirbayev, 1992)
Named after its main protagonist – a young man meandering through life, ‘Kaïrat’ is an austerely poetic portrait of transition – from steppe to concrete jungle, from adolescence to adulthood, from being single to being romantically involved (with a girl who walked out of the cinema). She works as a train stewardess, so a lot of inert, yet strangely relatable goings-on are set in and around corridor coaches, although other spaces, such as a shared dorm room or abandoned construction site, also appear to be of liminal nature. Even the minimalist and fragmented narrative possesses a similar quality, hanging somewhere between a day-to-day procrastination and vivid dreams not much different from virtually unconscious reality. The sparseness of dialogue compensated by the brilliant use of diegetic sounds directs the viewer’s attention towards Aubakir Suleyev’s starkly beautiful B&W cinematography which adds ‘extra’ to ‘ordinary’, transforming the banal into lyrical, whimsical and/or metaphysical. First time helming a feature, Darezhan Omirbayev demonstrates formal and technical knowledge beyond his experience (though, he must’ve benefited from previously being a film theorist), and elicits de-dramatized performances from his non-professional cast, enveloping his slice-of-life ‘adventure’ into an aura of existential alienation turned into a silent rebellion.
30. Stella Polaris (Knut Erik Jensen, 1993)
During the film’s brilliant opening scene in which the unnamed heroine wanders the streets lined by mostly dilapidated and abandoned buildings, there is something coldly Żuławski-esque enveloping the gloominess at display. Then comes the awakening, and the gray nightmare turns into a memory-laced reverie set in the northmost part of Norway – the woman’s birthplace somewhere in Finnmark where the author also comes from. Her past and her present intertwine to the point where one cannot distinguish dreams from reality, and personal reflections from the universal pain, in what could be best described as an almost wordless tone poem whose unfaltering lyricism evokes the spirit of Tarkovsky. Jensen’s oneiric, stream-of-consciousness narrative plunges the viewer into the protagonist’s inner world, as the highly evocative, beautifully captured imagery of home, childhood, friendship, love, sex, work, war, death and finally, (re)birth is caressed by gently weeping strings, haunting drones and sparkling chimes...
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