Change Your Image
Bz-3
Reviews
Fireworks (1947)
Violent and disturbing dream-movie
'Fireworks' is a violent and disturbing manifesto, a short experimental dream-movie that throws in a couple of images that are real eye-openers, and enough homoerotic weirdness to keep those eyes open. What it 'means' of course is anyone's guess. Anger 'awakes' from troubled sleep, and wanders out to get a light for his cigarette, finding instead only torture at the hands of a bunch of muscle-bound sailors. The title refers, at least superficially, to a particularly jaw-dropping episode of sexual imagery, though as with much of what goes on in the film, there are probably any number of magical and sexual allusions that are tied in with it. Beyond a handful of frames that are burned into my memory, quite possibly until the end of time, I'm not sure what there is to take away from the film when you leave- possibly it has something to say about the all-consuming power of violence, but really that's just a shot in the dark. But of course one could argue that a handful of jaw-dropping frames is enough to justify any film. The fingers- in- nostrils scene is a real wow...
A Canterbury Tale (1944)
Magical wartime fable
This magical wartime fable creates a fairytale as an antidote for war. Plot and narrative drive is foregone- the quest for the 'glueman' is simply a device to bring the characters together- and instead is created an ode to the spritual in man, as necessary in wartime as at any other time. Three young and diverse persons arrive by train in Kent when, about to go their separate midnight ways, the female in their company has glue poured in her hair by an unseen assailant. For the rest of the film they pool resources to discover the wrongdoer while finding themselves sucked in by the countryside of England and the lure of Canterbury. The film is flawed, but only with the flaws of one you love- the casting, notably the American soldier, is frequently untrained, and the dialogue doesn't always hit the poetic heights of the visuals, but these are asides and nothing more than asides, because away from being the greatest essay in visual poetry Britain has ever produced, the film whispers also profound things about modern day life, about our links with the past, about the essential oneness of all life. In the Canterbury showdown all wishes come true and all hearts are filled, and that's as it should be for a film which is at heart a children's story for grown-ups, but there was never a necessity for the film's ends to be tied; it's a beautiful dream rather than a drama. One has to remind oneself at the end that no, actually this isn't how people always are, that life isn't always like this, and that is a measure of the film's success.