More February Criterion: Buñuel, Cassavetes And Lean

Along with Essential Arthouse Volume II, this February Criterion will be releasing films from indie godfather favorite, John Cassavetes, the ultra-subversive and twisted Luis Bunuel and giant of the English-cinema, Sir David Lean.

The Exterminating Angel
The Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel held more outward-disdain for the Bourgeois class in his pinky then Whit Stillman has ever had in his whole body, and he makes no attempt to hide it in yet another weird, extremely dark social commentary. Following an upper-class party in a mansion, the guest find they themselves unable to leave for typically Buñuelian inexplicable reasons. With supplies running low and their lives on the line, the guest finally expose their ugly, primal traits. Animal and Bourgeois lovers be forewarned. Of course the controversial film caused uproar with both the Vatican and the Spain government who had just invited him back to the country after a long, post-Spanish Civil War exile. They loathed the picture and wanted the negatives destroyed, so Buñuel retreated back to Mexico for a second time. Still, the picture won the Palme d’Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival.

Simon of the Desert
The final film in the Buñuel/ producer Gustavo Alatriste / actress Silvia Pinal trilogy (which included, “Viridiana” and the aforementioned, ‘Angel’), this indictment of the Catholic faith and naturally surrealist flick about a man atop a pillar in the desert, searching for spiritual purification, is the last picture from his Mexican era (France would be next). The lone man’s desert pedestal stay lasts for 6 years, 6 months, and 6 days, he is praised for his piety but in the end is doomed to be Satan’s eternal wing-man in a disco. Odd, and quintessentially random as Buñuel was wont to do, but having actually sat through this will garner you major props amongst the most distinguished of film buffs. But its worth the spin and only 45 minutes.

Shadows
Independent-film legend John Cassavetes’ debut feature is testament to how one can completely fuck up in every way while making their movie and still have it be considered the true-birth of the American Independent film. The film was shot entirely on a 16-mm handheld camera in the streets of New York and the dialogue is mostly just a sketch of improvisation. It follows the troubled romance of a light skinned black woman, living with her two brothers, and a white man. The magnificent jazz score was composed by Charles Mingus, and alone makes the film worth a viewing. Even though the movie is seminal, troubles encountered making the film– like forgetting to record dialogue on the first try — are arguably more fascinating than the finished project, but the film is unquestionably vibrant, inspired and charged with life.

Faces
Made on a higher budget and with more experience than “Shadows,” “Faces” takes on the classic Cassavetes style of improvised outbursts, tangential free-flowing scenes, misogynistic rants and jazzy riffs on troubled romance. The film follows the last days of a disintegrated marriage between a middle-aged couple, through the crippling, drunken realism of Cassavetes penetrating, staring-match lens. Starring John Marley, Gena Rowlands and Wes Anderson fixture Seymour Cassel, it too may be a tiny bit rough around the edges, but its pulse never fails to chart. Like “Shadows,” the film was previously only available in its cost-prohibitive, bank-breaking 5-disc Cassavetes box-set, but is now in a single disc format (as is the the slow burn awesomeness of “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” with Ben Gazarra).

Hobson’s Choice
This story about a vindictive daughter and arrogant farmer from the pioneer of the English blockbuster David Lean (he of the laboriously long winded film mien; “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Dr. Zhivago”), marked a point in the filmmaker’s career before he began the obsession with absurd, over-sized settings, and made pictures about simple and effective human dynamics. A Victorian era shoemaking store owner — who offends his daughter to a level where she marries his trusted employee — opens her own store, drives him out of business and into alcoholism. A must see for those looking to setting those extreme daddy issues.

Criterion in March finally delivers the long-overdue softcore porn of Nagisa Oshima to the collection, more deep cuts in the Kurosawa, Rossellini and Truffaut oeuvres, Terence Stamp in Stephen Frear’s semi-forgotten 1984 picture “The Hit” and “Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé,” which features an original retroactive score written by indie-rockers Yo La Tengo.