But first, two house keeping points from the last installment. Firstly, I wrongly said that after Amarcord (1973, #4) the next Fellini movie in the Criterion Collection was Variety Lights (1950, #81). I somehow missed both Nights of Cabiria (1957, #49) and And the Ship Sails On (1983, #50).
Secondly, I never explained why this project is called the Criterion Death Race. Every year there are a group of people that attempt to watch all the Oscar nominated films before Oscar night, and this is known as the Oscars Death Race. I chose the name because this project has a similar completionist impulse, though it puts less emphasis on a race and more or the deadly difficult nature of the task.
Criterion Death Race Progress, July 6th through 10th, 2024
#1. Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir, 1937
#2. Seven Samurai, Akira Kurosawa, 1954
#3. The Lady Vanishes, Alfred Hitchcock, 1938 (watched on Dec. 21st, 2023)
#4. Amarcord, Federico Fellini, 1973
#5. The 400 Blows, François Truffaut, 1959
As I briefly mused about last time, I think this idea about the first movies to join the collection is an interesting one. When Grand Illusion started things in late 1999 (only 25 years ago!), it would be difficult to imagine anyone anticipating how notable the Criterion Collection brand would become to cinefiles...or how essential it would be to the preservation of film. These first five films present some of the heaviest hitting directors of all time, but with some less than expected movie picks. The Lady Vanishes is probably the biggest shock here. When I was a teenager, I watched more than a few Hitchcock movies, but I only knew about his later Hollywood productions. I heard about The Lady Vanishes a year or two ago. I think it’s a significant pick in terms of the mindset of Criterion even from the earliest days: Of course you know Hitchcock, but do you know this Hitchcock?
I’m also struck by the range of these 5 movies, covering 4 different countries and spanning nearly 40 years. Yes, this group was all made by very well known, mostly European, men, but there’s still a lot of variety to be found.
I’ll have a bit to say about Seven Samurai at the end, but most of my comments this time concern The 400 Blows and Amarcord. Both films are highly autobiographical concerning the childhood of their directors in France and Italy respectively. Watching The 400 Blows, I was struck by the frequent caged-in imagery. This is a film interested in exploring the traps that exist in boyhood, and for Antoine (Jean-Pierre Léaud), they are numerous. He’s not a bad kid, just a bit of a troublemaker, and this causes problems at school and at home. There’s a contrast between how his parents seem trapped in their domestic life versus how Antoine does. His mother is having an affair while his father (not by birth) is burdened by this knowledge and his work. One gets the feeling that Antoine’s mother raised some hell in her day, or at least as much as societal and gender norms would allow before she got pregnant with Antoine quite young. But now she chafes against domestic confines and acts out in the form of an affair just as Antoine attempts to cut class or run away from home. Truffaut leaves it up to the viewers to draw the connections between Antoine as his mother.
Such themes play out against a backdrop of Paris. Obviously, there are a lot of French New Wave films set in Paris, but rarely does Paris feel as significant as it does here. It’s Antoine’s whole world, and it’s a world still full of whimsy and mystery, danger and possibility. In the streets, Antoine is free from the societal structures that adulthood and education bring.
Elsewhere you’ll find extensive analysis of the film’s famous final moments, but I want to talk about another scene that takes place at a carnival of sorts during his day off. Antoine steps into a room that’s going to spin around, and when it does, he’ll be able to defy gravity, climbing the walls and such. There are some other people on the ride with him and, more interestingly, people not on the ride looking down at him. This is another time in the movie when Antoine is contained—when the ride starts, he cannot get off until it stops—but he isn’t trapped. Here he’s at his freest, even denying the pull of gravity. Adults are still looking down at/on him, but they have no power over him here. The other adults with him on the ride suggest a possibility that he can survive into adulthood, too.
Fellini’s Amarcord is also a portrait of childhood, but beyond that, it shares little similarity with Truffaut’s film. The 400 Blows was Truffaut’s first feature while Fellini made Amarcord after most of his major works and over 20 years into his career. But even more than that, The 400 Blows presents Antoine as a clear stand-in for its director, and Amarcord does no such thing. There are young boys running about the streets of the small Italian seaside town, battling all manner of rules and regulations, but there are also older women and men floating through numerous scenes.
The film begins with the first puffballs of spring and ends with a wedding a year later just as the puffballs return. This is a logical framing as time is the most dominant character. The film has no rigid chronology or sense that a scene connects meaningfully to any other scene (in this way it reminds me a little of Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher (1999, #162), which I’ll obviously get to a 160 movies from now). It’s just a series of reasonably average scenes held together by the fabric of the film. In Amarcord, Italian for “I Remember,” time is not something that one can master or easily catalogue, yet, ironically, this is what Fellini hopes to do with the film. It’s a film of his memories from childhood screened through a lens of fantasy and magic realism. It’s not a “trustworthy” account, but there’s nothing dishonest about it. This is how childhood feels or might be. Surely, there aren’t 5 foot snow drifts, but if you saw one day of snow in five years, wouldn’t it feel like that?
But childhood is only part of the story as many of the most prominent presences in the film are adults. There’s also a seriousness in the air as World War II looms not far off. In one sequence, Mussolini visits the town and is greeted warmly by all. Incredibly, Amarcord shows fascism as a very real and scary thing while maintaining sympathy and humanity toward characters under its sway. Furthermore, it does this while never threatening the childlike sense of unreality that anchors the film. That’s an impressive accomplishment, and I guess that’s why Fellini is one of the greats.
I should also add that compared to 8 ½ (1963, #140) and La dolce vita (1960, #733), I found this film to be really watchable and easily accessible. I didn’t have to look up the plot details and I didn’t worry that I’d missed something important. I really appreciated La dolce vita when I saw it (I’ve yet to successfully watch 8 ½), but this is the first time I simply enjoyed a Fellini movie. Of the 4 films I watched from this set, Amarcord is one I would recommend the most.
I’ll close with a few comments about Seven Samurai. People love this movie and I can see why. It’s epic in scope, features some great action and character moments, and keeps a good pace despite the length. The first time I tried to watch it, I fell off at intermission. I got through it this time, but I still really don’t care very much for this movie. I won’t dispute that it’s very well made and technically proficient, but I just didn’t like it very much. You may as well know now, I struggle with long movies usually preferring ones in which less happens. I also don’t like action as much as most other genres (there are a couple of John Woo movies upcoming which will be interesting). So Seven Samurai is tailor made to not appeal to me very much, and it didn’t. But I’m happy that so many people do love it.
I didn’t have much to say about Grand Illusion or The Lady Vanishes. I liked Grand Illusion better than Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939, #264), though I’m excited to revisit that one when we get to it. The Lady Vanishes is a really wonderful movie. It’s got more comedy than most Hitchcock movies, but it’s handled deftly. Hitchcock made a lot of movies, and while it’s understandable to praise the likes of Vertigo (1958) or Rear Window (1954), we shouldn’t ignore that Hitchcock made a few movies that are just plain fun. The Lady Vanishes is one such film, a darn good one in my book.
Thanks for reading and joining this journey. For now, I’m going to try and release newsletters on Mondays, and we’ll see how that goes. It was easier to accomplish those first few watches than I feared it might be, so things are off to a great start. The format will probably vary a bit week-to-week depending on what I have to say about the various movies. Till next time!