For the first time i´m disappointed with criterion - Le quai des brumes (1939) Discussion

[–] greedoshootsfirst 18 years ago

1. That's what you get for "expecting" something out of Criterion. It's well ahead of it's time, I don't see how you call its style less than average noir, when I don't think it even qualifies for it... just because it's dark doesn't mean a damn thing, this is hardly a crime movie.

2. Every famous film moment has a beginning, the iconic moment at the ending is an icon... for a reason. You don't look down on things for ACTUALLY existing, you admire them for that.

3. Criterion is a dvd distributor. It isn't a "studio", they don't "make" the films in their collection. They get the rights, touch it up, and put it out. Just because you didn't like this particular title doesn't mean their reputation is blemished, in fact, you're in the minority that thinks so low of this film. Damn Criterion nuts drive me insane. Do your own research and find the films that meet your demands, don't go around Sight and Sound, Criterion, and the Top 250 as the almighty voice in what's good and what's not.

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[–] Polygraph 18 years ago

I hate to start message board topics with lists, but whatever...

1. If I wanted your opinion on the criterion DISTRIBUTOR I would have asked for that, thanksalot.
2. The Top 250 / Criterion only serve me as an influence. I know very well, what kinda movies interest me and what not. And if distributors like criterion have built up a reputation with selling high-quality dvds, and have released a long list of forgotten gems you get a feeling, you can trust them with buying movies, you never heard of.

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[–] curls2483 18 years ago

I actually enjoyed this film very much

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[–] caveman_mtz 18 years ago

If you disliked the movie, fine, but what puzzled me is this is the first time you've been dissapointed in Criterion because they released a hard-to-find film by the great Marcel Carne? So you didn't get dissapointed when they released two Michael Bay films just because Bay asked them to, and one of those films is one of the worst films of the 1990s? There are also other movies Criterion released that are not good. Anyways, I loved the film, not as much as Le Jour Se Leve, but I just got wrapped up into the whole story and Gabin is so fantastic.

"Well, men are only men. That's why they lie. They can't tell the truth, even to themselves."

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[–] kramer23 18 years ago

I think that this movie is beautiful. and it is not really film noir, as film noir tends to describe american films made in the 40s and 50s, and this one is french and was made in the 30s.

I said Be careful his bowtie is really a camera

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[–] cokramer 18 years ago

Well, you're in elite company because you join Truffault and Godard in disliking Carne's work. Which is something I don't understand. I believe it takes a child's heart with the understanding about "real" life of an adult to like all three French director's works. Maybe Godard and Truffault are more "naughty" but all three are optimistic or playful cynics IMO, though Godard is looking more and more like just a cynic these days and he probably has good reason to be, given the big-picture state of the world. What little freedom or free-spiritedness there was in his early movies, Godard doesn't believe in anymore. In contrast, Truffault lost some of his edge later in life and actually said he would trade all of his work in if he could've made Carne's "Children of Paradise". A kind of reconciliation, I suppose, between those two.

Carne said Godard ignored him completely at some film gathering once upon a time. That seems so trivial. Criterion does distribute a lot of good stuff, so don't be "tainted" just because of one film you didn't like. Personally, I was more than okay with "Port of Shadows". I have mixed feelings about Carne as a whole, but I don't have anything bad to say about "Port of Shadows". It may look dated, simple, ridiculous or whatever to you but remember, this was made in 1938. To me, there wasn't anything unique in it that I haven't seen before, but that's because we've been spoiled with everything that came after it. Who knows how much the French New Wave directors like Truffault, Godard, or some of the film-noir guys drew inspiration or even took stuff from old films like this? Just remember one thing: historical perspective. End of rant.

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[–] 18 years ago

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[–] yellow-b 18 years ago

I like Godard, but he was full of crap for dismissing Carne and admiring many american B-movie directors. I'm dissaponted at the Criterion DVD though, they could have start by remastering the print, not to mention the lack of extras. I'm still glad they released it, though.

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[–] brainofj72 17 years ago

This is my fifth favorite film ever. It blows me away every time. Beautiful, haunting, funny, masterful, poignant...I just love it to pieces.

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Can you forgive the boy who shot you in the head?

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[–] leiris 17 years ago

You mean 'Armageddon' and 'The Rock' didn't taint your image of Criterion?

I found 'Le Quai des brumes' remarkable...although it's no 'Le Jour se lève'.

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[–] brainofj72 17 years ago

Hmm...I liked Le jour se leve quite a bit, but it almost felt a bit like a diluted version of Port of Shadows.

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Can you forgive the boy who shot you in the head?

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[–] nicholas.rhodes 17 years ago

The film is no masterpiece and its reputation is greatly exaggerated. One or two interesting scenes between Gabin and Morgan remain in people's minds but tend to blur a correct overall vision of the film. The quality of the print is abysmal so that is not perhaps the fault of Criterion, but it's true that they could have sold the dvd cheaper as no re-mastering seems to have taken place !

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[–] mac_alain 17 years ago

...but it's true that they could have sold the dvd cheaper as no re-mastering seems to have taken place !

Maybe Criterion did not think that the film deserved it? Personally, I was not all that impressed by it, except for Gabin's performance. 7/10 on my score card.

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[–] Death_to_Pan_and_Scan 16 years ago

As said by others, Criterion is a dvd company, not a movie studio and as such do not create the films, just release them on dvd.

I enjoyed Port of Shadows and would give it about a 7.5/10.

If this is your first disappointment with a film released by them, then you haven't seen enough of their films yet. I've seen about 100 of the 400+ films released by them (and own about 50 of those), but as I've made educated guesses and picked mostly titles to watch first that I thought I'd like. Aside from the already mentioned Michael Bay films (The Rock being the better of the two), some other disappointing CC titles would include:
Withnail and I (mildly amusing at best) TCM
The Magic Flute (Bergman) dvd blind buy
My Life as a Dog (overrated) TCM

I also found the following extremely overrated:
Passion of Joan of Arc (all closeups make a dull film) TCM
Rules of the Game (maybe my hatred of the female lead character amplified this, I'd have liked it better probably had Simone Simon taken the role when asked) rented dvd
Wild Strawberries (Bergman, I preferred Seventh Seal immensely) rented dvd
Spirit of the Beehive (nice cinematography, but is this film really the best Spain had to offer?) TCM
Picnic at Hanging Rock (some good hypnotic scenes within a sea of boredom) rented dvd

I'm planning on renting Carne's acclaimed "Les enfants du paradis" soon and hopefully will enjoy that even more than Port of Shadows.

P.S. to the OP: Scorsese is good but overrated, but (while I am a fan of his) Tim Burton isn't one of the greatest living directors by a long shot, he's just great at creating interesting worlds to look at - sometimes the stories he tells within those worlds could be much better.

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If you're watching 'Fullscreen' DVDs, you aren't getting the whole picture.

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[–] ALET1984 16 years ago

Hmm, you've just trashed some of my favorite films, LOL!

- Passion of Joan of Arc was fantastic, if you ask me. I've always compared this film to a beautiful symphony to which one must simply surrender, body and soul. Don't overanalyze it--FEEL it!

- Wild Strawberries--this my is my favorite Ingmar Bergman film. A beautiful, quiet masterpiece imbued (for me) with much religious significance. You can see how Bergman's decision to cast Bibi Andersson in a dual role had probably influenced Tarkovsky's Mirror. I understand why most people would prefer The Seventh Seal but (although I love it too) I still think it is much cruder of the two, and ultimately not very profound.

- Spirit of the Beehive--I'm sorry, but if cinematography was all you've noticed about it, then perhaps you have missed its point. The scene with the young girl strangling the cat was more shattering to me than all of the violence in Pan's Labyrinth.

- Picnic at Hanging Rock--much of what you call "boredom" is actually Peter Weir's brilliant style successfully EXPRESSING that boredom to show you what life was like for those girls. No wonder they chose to disappear (in the original novel, they leave the morbid suffocation of their world for another, "freer," time dimension).

But hey, your opinions are your opinions, and you should stick to them if that's what you really believe. I once got ripped apart by an angry crowd of uneducated mobsters when I dared openly to criticize a film. Received tons of hate-mail + 1 death threat within the first hour; did NOT write another negative comment for weeks to come. Then thought, These are only my opinions after all. No one needs to live or die because of them, and I'm not forcing them on anyone. So thank you for your honesty.

Now my own list of the CC titles which I found absolutely appalling runs as follows:

- Ali: Fear Eats the Soul--great acting, but nothing Fassbinder hadn't already covered

- Alphaville--now THAT's what I call boredom!

- Fat Girl--sick and visually uninteresting. But then again, ALL of Breillat's films drive me nuts like that

- The Last Temptation of Christ--ugh! Sorry boys, I LIVE in Brooklyn; I sure as hell do NOT need to listen to those accents any more than I have to.

- Man Bites Dog--visually boring and nothing that Cronenberg's Videodrome hadn't already covered

- The Man Who Fell to Earth--nothing REALLY wrong with this one, and I love Bowie, but I thought it wasn't a worthy addition to this otherwise brilliant collection.

- Salo--an interesting experiment on Pasolini's part, but not his best film. Culturally relevant at best. The rest is bleh!

Regards,
Liam.

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[–] Death_to_Pan_and_Scan 16 years ago

I'm not sure how I can FEEL Passion of Joan of Arc if I have trouble staying awake during it (and it's not that I am against slow-paced or subtle films as usually makes people fall asleep in movies).

Alphaville - yeah this made me wanna doze off and I never finished it before I returned to rental store, will eventually try it again but am getting a feeling I will not be a Goddard fan.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul - I've been wanting to see this one and haven't seen any Fassbinder yet and thought this might be my starting point since it's supposed to be based on a Douglas Sirk film that I also wana see.

I am hoping to like Zerkalo (The Mirror) much more than Wild Strawberries. I keep seeing those visually interesting clips on the TCM Imports commercial all the time.

Didn't care much for Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar or Dreyer's Vampyr though I'd heard they are similar directors in some ways to Ozu, a director whose work I am very fond of and have seen maybe 11 of his films, most of which I really enjoyed. Hopefully Bresson's Pickpocket and les Dames des Bois des Boulognes (sp?) and Dreyer's other Criterion films will be better experiences for me than the 2 aforementioned titles. I'll eventually see all the films in the Criterion Collection either through purchase, rental or TCM channel showings.

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If you're watching 'Fullscreen' DVDs, you aren't getting the whole picture.

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[–] 16 years ago

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[–] leforcat 16 years ago

To Polygraph: Criterion don't put out films they think are great, Criterion is, by the way, many people - Criterion put out films that has had influence on the cinema or on the peoplen involved with cinema, or on the society, or such (well, there are a very few exceptions, I mean Armageddon? Come on....)

To 'greedoshootfirst': Criterion don't just put out any film they lay their hands on - se above. And the second thing: yes. Port of Shadows IS a very noirish film, it has all the necessary elements that would make a film noir, and it's a mistake to think film noir has to be a crime film. Crime film is in fact a genré - film noir is not, it's more like a style or a mood.

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[–] lubin-freddy 14 years ago

It was less than the average film-noir plot....

This was some years before we begin to see noir elements in Hollywood films, and another decade before the French began using the term "film noir".

But the plot is irrelevant. It's all atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere.

"Sometimes you have to take the bull by the tail, and face the truth" - G. Marx

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[–] immerzv 14 years ago

This discussion is so funny -

I worked for The Voyager Company that owned Criterion (it is more difficult than that but that's irrelevant) and saw them from inside - their work is focused on creating the technically best possible discs of hard to find and international movies. They have true artists on staff who know how to transcode a move from celluloid to Laserdisc and now DVD. If you - or anyone would like everything they release they people in the publishing department would not do their job right. There has to be diversity - you are not obliged to buy every single disc they issue (although people do!).

I met Marcel Carné, I met Truffaut and Godard while working at the Cinémathèque Française - different people, different generations - happen to be in the same metier - so Godard dislikes Carné - et alors - so what?

Try something truly different - have you seen the movies by the Prévert brothers - watch Voyage Surprise http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039970/ - hard to find, worth the effort.

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[–] nikos31 14 years ago

Thank you immerzv for your brilliant reply. I just watched for the first time Quai des brumes on the french-language TV5 Monde and I was totally transfixed for the duration. When a film gets 100% of my attention and removes me from reality allowing me to enter a different dimension in space and time, I know that the film achieved its purpose. I am not French but the greatest reward for learning the language is to be able to listen and watch to fully appreciate this film. The dialogue is superb and a lot more instructive that anything taught at the Alliance Francaise. The sense of impeding doom (WWII ?) that permeates the bad characters' behavior contrasts with the innate kindness of humans who help a stranger any-which-way they could, but to no avail as cowardice seems to kill and win -- yet again -- at the end.

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