Saturday, April 07, 2012

A brief history of French cinema

John & Ali happy at the cinema and in our best clothes and new blue contacts.
After Thursday's great cinematic and ice cream (Baked Alaska no less) experience I followed it up yesterday with a view of Hugo (on DVD), a film I've been looking forward to seeing. Well it wasn't quite what I expected, I'd forgotten just how odd and self indulgent Martin Scorsese can be and how irritatingly American he can be in his interpretation and portrayal of things European. I was also distracted by the feeling that I was watching a lengthy Keystone Cops pantomime chase featuring a young Noel Fielding trying to get away from the comic French policeman from 'Allo Allo. It was that kind of abstracted and badly translated France he had created. Here and mostly there well placed cultural icons Salvador Dali and Django Reinhardt  turned up in the background; there to bring credibility over at the  edges of  a convoluted film that was really about George Melies and the birth and death of the special effect. So it really was all a big tribute piece with not quite enough Steampunk ingenuity for me - I should've checked the book first. I fell asleep twice but  I did so want to like Hugo, maybe I'll watch it again in a more receptive state of mind and my hard automaton heart will be all melted away.

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