lso-soares

Shot in black and white, the film is narrated in twelve frames. As in other films directed by Godard, the camera is an observer who follows Nana (Anna Karina) into the world of prostitution. The film assumes, in many scenes, a documentary, observational tone.

The script is not intended to explain much about Nana. Right off the bat, in a sensational shot, when she and the man she's talking to at a bar are shown from the back, but you can see Nana's face in the mirror in the background, we know the man is her husband who's separated, who left her son with him and who needs money. But it doesn't show us why. These are facts that interest the viewer to understand Nana's decision to prostitute herself.

Nana is cold, doesn't show feelings, with rare exceptions, namely, in the movies when she cries watching The Passion of Jeanne D'Arc, 1928 silent film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, and when she happily dances Swing! Swing! Swing!, music by Michel Legrand, in a bar, around pool tables, with the camera rotating 360º. Interesting to note that Anna Karina would return to dancing in a bar in an iconic scene from the film Band À Part, also directed by Godard, released two years after Vivre Sa Vie.

Even as a prostitute, Nana does not appear naked at any time and we also do not see sex scenes between her and her clients (there is only a hint in a brief passage in the hotel room where she worked as a prostitute).

Godard makes several quotes throughout the film, as usual. Starting with the intertitles that precede each of the 12 frames, which take us back to silent films, which used this device to change scenes. He also silences dialogues twice, putting subtitles so that we know what they are talking about, another reference to silent films, which were also in black and white. It puts an impacting scene from The Passion of Jeanne D'Arc of two more minutes, trying to make a parallel between the suffering of Joan of Arc, masterfully played by Renée Jeanne Falconetti, and the suffering of Nana, who cries at the same moment that the heroine also cries knowing that she will die at the fire. Godard also quotes The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas, shows a character reading Complete Works, by Edgar Allan Poe, and has a great dialogue between Nana and a gentleman at the bar table (Brice Parain), in which Plato and German philosophers are quoted, and they still philosophize about true love.

The soundtrack, composed by Michel Legrand, is a special case. In some scenes, the instrumental music punctuates what is going on with the main character, but is abruptly interrupted, as if it couldn't explain Nana's feeling.

The original title - Vivre Sa Vie - can have two connotations, as it can be read as living your life or as living as a prostitute, since, as in Portuguese, at the time the film was shot, prostitute was also called a woman of life.

Finally, Vivre Sa Vie has a tragic ending, a hallmark of several of Godard's films. This moral lesson at the end is what bothers me, but even so, it's a great movie and should be seen and reviewed by those who really love cinema.

The third film in the franchise goes back to the beginning to show how the English secret society created during the First World War to act against evil began.

The comedy tone of the two previous films, both also directed by Vaughn, is lost in this prequel, which makes this new film more monotonous, with certain very boring passages, such as the attempt by Orlando Oxford, played by Ralph Fiennes, to protect his son Conrad from the dangers of the world, preventing him from going to war at all costs, which obviously doesn't work. We've seen this in countless films, of the most varied genres. Cliché to the nth power.

The film also misses the opportunity to innovate, even being set at the beginning of the 20th century, leaving aside facts that are now considered conservative, such as, for example, the English elite being the great savior of the world, always doing good and fighting evil. The elite always in charge, using the work of the most diverse servants to get their confidential information.

There is also a great concentration of the script on the two main characters, which is a shame, as Djimon Hounsou's talent is visibly underused.

Very good is the fight scene between Oxford and Rasputin, with proper use of special effects using CGI. Surreal, but well executed and with a very interesting sexual connotation.

I also highlight the costumes and the very detailed setting of the time in which the story takes place.

But while fun, it still works fine, although I prefer the previous two.

Wild Strawberries (Smultronstallet) is a 1957 Swedish production, in black and white, directed by Ingmar Bergman.

In the cast, also director Victor Sjostrom in the role of Izak, an elderly doctor who reviews his life while traveling in his car to another city in which he will receive an important award at Lund University. There is also the beautiful Bibi Andersson, a constant actress in Bergman's films, playing the double role (Sara/Hitchhiker). In the present, she is the young woman Izak gives a lift to, and in the past, the young woman the doctor courted.

Dreams and thoughts indicate that the famous doctor, with fifty years of profession, fears the approaching death.

In this whirlwind of thoughts, he rethinks his actions and approaches his daughter-in-law Marianne (Ingrid Thulin), his faithful maid Agda (Jullan Kindahl), also elderly, and his son Evald Borg (Gunnar Bjornstrand).

A contrast between the vigor of youth, both in the physique and in attitudes and debates, and old age, with an emphasis on wisdom, recognition for work and why not, the grumpy characteristic of the elderly.

Beautiful film about old age.

Reviewing it once more, this time for a class on the Bergman Cycle of the Film Analysis Club (Cinema with Theory), I transported myself to the 80s, in a hectic session of the Cine Clube of the Academic Directory of the Faculty of Economic Sciences at UFMG , where I graduated in Economic Sciences.

Right after the film was shown, in a poor VHS copy, the debate was heated, reproducing, in the school auditorium, the discussion about religion that young people have in one of the scenes of the film.

A must-see for all those who love cinema.