A Cinematic Convergence: From Bresson to...Nolan?

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—I have only one reason for this post: to wonder aloud if it's at all weird that, when I first encountered this image from Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1951) a couple of months ago...

...I immediately thought of the Joker from The Dark Knight?

Bresson's Priest of Ambricourt feeling a sense of freedom, however fleeting, while getting a ride on the back of a stranger's bicycle? The Joker feeling a similar sense of freedom, in a far different context, while riding in the back of a police car? Eh? Eh?

More proof that my movie-loving mind sometimes makes the strangest connections. (By the way, yes, I am seeing The Dark Knight Rises in legit IMAX tomorrow morning. As someone who wasn't a huge fan of The Dark Knight, I'm not going into it with especially sky-high expectations or anything.)

A Human Desire...to Ape Fritz Lang?

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—Here's a taste of the kind of weird connections the visual side of my brain is wont to make when it comes to the movies.

On Saturday, I took in a double bill of Fritz Lang's Human Desire (1954) and The Big Heat (1953), the first two films being shown in Film Forum's "Fritz Lang in Hollywood" series, in which all of the great Austrian director's Hollywood films are being screened. I had seen neither film previously, by the way; both turned out to be terrific, especially The Big Heat, which still carries a shocking, brutal charge decades later in its pull-no-punches depiction of a whole system of corruption, on both sides of the law. But Human Desire is quite good, too; it's an adaptation of the same Émile Zola novel that Jean Renoir adapted into La Bête Humaine (1938), and in some ways Lang's chilly determinism suits the material better than Renoir's warmer humanism. 

Anyway...at one point in Human Desire, there is a shot of Glenn Ford lying on a bed smoking, in a contemplative state of mind:

This composition looked rather familiar to me. Then my mind turned to this:

Yes, folks, that is Kevin Bacon from the original Friday the 13th (1980), enjoying a post-coital cigarette, completely unaware of the arrow he's about to get through his throat. Doesn't the mise-en-scène in that shot seem at least somewhat similar to that shot of Ford on the bed in Human Desire? Was Sean S. Cunningham possibly paying tribute to Lang with that shot?

Or is it just me?

Vienna...in Brooklyn? A Convergence of Tree-Lined Roads

BROOKLYN, N.Y.—In early October, I commemorated the beginning of autumn in this post by grabbing a still frame from the desolate final shot of Carol Reed's The Third Man:

Only recently, though, did I realize that, in my neighborhood, there is actually a visual equivalent to this Viennese setting near my apartment in Brooklyn:

This is a median running along the Eastern Parkway, a stretch of boulevard that runs from Grand Army Plaza to Evergreen Cemetery. I haven't yet walked the full length of the Eastern Parkway, so I'm not sure if tree-lined medians run all the way through...but scrub away the color, and this could be somewhat Third Man-esque, don't you think?

So if anyone is itching to remake The Third Man in New York...well, here's a setting you can use. Not that I'm necessarily encouraging anyone to remake that classic noir, mind you...

A Convergence of Jukeboxes

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—

'Cause no one else understands...

A Convergence of Drivers; Plus, What Am I Doing in South Dakota?

OACOMA, S.D.—

 

My mother and Mike Watt, on a road to...somewhere

Yes, folks: After two long days of driving cross-country, with a precious handful of hours of sleep last night in between it all, my family and I have arrived in South Dakota. Rest assured, we are still on our way to Yellowstone National Park; that ultimate destination has not changed. But we have to decided to take a bit of time to relax and explore South Dakota. We need the rest; for one thing, we all could sure use time for a shower!

I'm not sure what we plan to see here, though. Wait a minute: Isn't the real Deadwood somewhere in South Dakota? This only reminds me that I still haven't actually watched that much-lauded HBO series...

A Cinematic Convergence of Bags of Money, Senselessly Fought Over

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Just because I bought this recently...

"That bag full of money looks kinda small out there, doesn't it?"

On that note: Have a nice weekend, my friends—and try not to spend too much money!

A Cinematic Convergence of Kids At Play

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—

Innocents at play. What adult hardships?

A Cinematic Convergence of Exploding Bodies

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J.—Taking a page from the playbook of the often intriguing, and at times poetically elusive, film blog Vinyl is Heavy (Ryland, I hope you don't mind!)...

Such thrilling destruction. (Wait, there are people being blown to bits?)