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The Orphanage (El Orfanato, Spain, 2007)

Boy or ghost?

WARNING: THIS IS FULL OF SPOILERS. This movie pinned me back in my seat in the cinema but, as it's an example of the 'fantastic' - where everything might simply be a figment of the protagonist's imagination - I wondered whether it would work on a second viewing: it does. The opening half hour, certainly, is less successful if you know the ending, but after that the sheer craft of the film is more than engaging.

The film uses many of the tropes of the ghost story (though, as my son noted, 'thank god someone in a horror movie has turned the light on') and so, although there's nothing supernatural about the 'ghosts', it is a truly horrific story as we find that the mother, who loves her son deeply, has inadvertently killed him. The moment of realisation is one the most chilling moments in cinema.

Couscous (La graine et le mulet, France, 2007)

Father-daughter love

This is a terrific film. I don't think I've seen scenes of such emotional rawness since Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies (1967). The improvisation gives certain scenes a documentary intensity.

The use of narrative is also striking: the two set piece 'meal' scenes go on for an extremely long time compared with the succinctness of much of the other action (eg Slimane losing his job). This also contrasts with the 'thriller' set up: there's clearly doom lurking in the couscous' journey to the restaurant and Slimane's chase after his moped takes an age: on the one hand suspense is set up, on the other it's unbearably stretched.

However, there are problems: the sexual objectification of Rym for example. Or maybe this is working in a Godardian way (such as in British Sounds, 1970) where the (temporally) long shots of a woman's body leads the audience to question what they are looking at.

Blimey! A riveting family melodrama that links Wiseman to Godard.

West Side Story (US, 1961)

Ultra-stylised violence

Prompted by going to see this in the London revival later this week, I watched the Bernstein-Robbins-Sondheim classic again. It was even better than I remembered. Terrific music, choreography and book with stylish, often Expressionist, direction. Whilst there is a tension between the oxymoronic dancing-hoodlums, the emotion on show heightens the hackneyed narrative. Great acrobatics from Russ Tamblin and Rita Moreno's Anita is magnificent.

It's half a century old but knife crime's high in the news agenda as is the position of immigrants in society. It's a indication of failure that this musical remains timely. Let's get all the thugs into to see the show and they'd see the futility of violence! 'Ha bloody ha'.

Killer of Sheep (US, 1977)

Staying close in adversity

16mm black and white does look good particularly in this film where Burnett uses long lens and unusual angles to great effect. The elliptical storytelling works well too, almost a collage of events with kids doing what kids do punctuated by Stan (Henry G Sanders) trying to make ends meet.

The 'killer of sheep' metaphor works well as we're left to observe his work in the slaughter house and so it never becomes heavy handed. Great to see this film revived; that's what the Bfi should be for.

From the Life of the Marionettes (Aus dem Leben der Marionetten, W.Germany, 1980)

Consoling passion?

It was interesting watching this 'German' Bergman in the midst of the New German films I've been looking at. Whilst I think of Bergman as a 'philosophical' filmmaker often dealing with characters' metaphysical angst, watching these characters try to deal with their anomie, after yesterday's Fassbinder, suggests that - in this film at least - Bergman is critiquing the bourgeoisie.

This probably out-grims the Fassbinder. Partly this is to do with the bleak monochrome cinematography (Nykvist: brilliant of course); partly the devastating, opening murder - shot in lurid red - that sets the rest of the film up as an investigation into the protagonists' motivation.

The Merchant of Four Seasons (Händler der vier Jahreszeiten, W.Germany, 1972)

Hans holds court

It's striking that this bleak, overtly stylised film should have been a commercial hit. Whilst Fassbinder draws upon Sirkian melodrama, no one would mistake this for a Hollywood film. Fassbinder had the talent to create an almost surrealist mise en scene from a banal setting. For example, Irmgard is framed against a shop window featuring a wedding dress when she's mistaken for a prostitute in the street; the image above shows Hans pontificating about how hard done by he is to an almost mute coterie of men.

The stylisation is probably most notable in the performances; the robotic-like postures and glances of dehumanised bourgeoisie. Except Hanna Schygulla's Anna, the commentator on the corruption of her family; even Renate, Hans' and Irmgard's daughter, looks like (a Hitler youth) automaton though she may just be traumatised by her parents.

If Herzog and Wenders, in the films blogged recently, were searching for identity then Fassbinder explains why they are looking.

Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten, West Germany, 1973)

Peter and Alice try to understand where they are going

This film is a terrific, improvised road movie. Wenders, apparently, based the idea of the film on the rapport between his actors (pictured above) in The Scarlet Letter (Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe 1973). This fits well with Stroszek (blogged three days ago) as here the movement is opposite: from America to West Germany. Phil (Rüdiger Vogler) is trying to write an article about America but his experience of its commercial soulessness has emptied him of identity. He watches Young Mr Lincoln (1939) on television but finds it infuriating that it's interrupted by advertising - he destroys the TV. Later, he reads John Ford's (Lincoln's director) obituary - his disillusionment with America is complete as what he loved about it has died.

It's striking how debates about the malign, commercial influence of America have subsided considerably since the 1970s. The post-World War II anxiety about Americanisation still exists, but the commercial aspects of American culture are generally accepted in Britain now; and, probably, Europe.

The search for identity was an important theme of New German Cinema: trying to rebuild self-respect after the Nazi-inspired atrocities tempered with disillusionment with the authoritarian nature of the West German state in the 1970s.

Although the film sags a bit in the middle, the visualisation of 'souless' America is brilliant. The final, unresolved, journey is to Munich - is that meant to be into the heartland of the Fatherland?

Sophie Scholl (Germany, 2005)

Sophie tells the Nazis what she thinks

This is an intensely moving film. It dramatises the strength of will required to stick to your principles whatever the circumstances. However, the individual needs to 'collective mass' to resist the tyrants and it was the failure of the German people to stand up to the Nazis that precipitated the War. The characterisation of Sophie's interrogator, however, gives an understated insight into why many ordinary people collaborated. It is the 'strength' of fascism that it guides people who don't want to think for themselves (a bit like religion).

The judge, the representative of Nazi bile, was the double of Norman Tebbit - a terrific piece of casting.

Stroszek (West Germany, 1977)

Stroszek tries to earn a living

Bruno S plays Stroszek and there are clearly autobiographical elements in the character; whilst he's patently a non-actor this works well in the role but might be off-putting at first. He and two other misfits go to live the American Dream where everyone who works hard can get rich. Does anyone outside of America still believe this; or are many people in such desperate straits that even badly paid dead-end jobs in America can count as riches?

The getting into debt is perfunctorily done but that works as part of the episodic narrative. The climax is truly bonkers with Stroszek clinging on to two American icons: a thanksgiving turkey and a gun. The final 10 minutes are hallucinatory.

Stroszek is from Berlin, then a centre of Cold War politics. Now East and West are reunited (see Yella) the political dynamics have changed. America, 'the leader of the free world' could then more readily justify its hegemonic position. After the invasion of Iraq and its concomitant abuses, such as Guantanamo, the lack of morality in America's leadership of fawning nations - such as UK - is evident to all except cynics. Would Stroszek even be allowed into American now?

Herzog is great at framing scenes and offers a compelling view of the middle of nowhere.