October. The last third of the year. Already, the holiday season is underway. No surprise that Criterion is filling up the month with several new films with the exception of one re-edition, a masterpiece of 1920s German cinema. Fitting with Halloween, three different horror films make their introduction into the Criterion, plus a shocking loose narrative of violence from an independent rakontur, and a contemporary film from Turkey’s most prestigious director today.
Pandora’s Box (1929)
The sole re-edition from the closet, G.W. Pabst’s legendary silent film with lead star Louise Brooks is 95 years old, but still a haunting picture on the excesses of partying. Brooks, who couldn’t make it in Hollywood, was recruited to go to Germany where Pabst’s special touches made Lulu, a highly exotic dancer, into a symbol of scandal that was shocking for the time. A stylish melodrama, Pabst and Brooks’ collaboration forever eternalized Weimar cinema of the 1920s with its depictions of loose morals (and a lesbian relationship) and murder in a state of unrestrained freedom.
I Walked With A Zombie/The Seventh Victim (1943)
Val Lewton, RKO Studio’s horror expert, produced a double feature with two acclaimed directors that went into the darkness of two different religions. First, director Jacques Tournuer, fresh from Cat People, heads to the Caribbean where a Canadian nurse (Frances Dee), out of the winter snow, takes care of an ailing plantation owner’s wife. The encounter with the island’s natives and their use of voodoo allows the nurse to witness the terrifying possibility of communicating with the dead and resurrecting one.
In The Seventh Victim, director Mark Robson (Valley Of The Dolls, Earthquake) made his debut with a story about a Satanic cult. A young woman looks for her missing sister and traces her to an apartment where, with a chair and noose in place, she discovers what has suddenly happened. It is as chilling as Rosemary’s Baby and maintains a consistent bleakness which does not allow for any reprieve.
Demon Pond (1979)
Masahiro Shinoda was one of those from the Japanese New Wave who made a mark with his interests in the popular yakuza genre and traditional samurai stories. (Shinoda also directed the first adaptation of Silence before Martin Scorsese made his version.) Here, he takes this folk-horror tale of a professor who goes in search of the titular area and awakens the mysterious dragon who threatens the villages nearby with total destruction. An electronic score with Shinoda’s surrealist directing makes the film a New Wave classic that is beyond other dark fantasies.
Gummo (1997)
After shocking viewers with his script for Kids (1995), Harmony Korine made his directorial debut with this portrait of rural voidance between two friends who make their day killing cats, getting high on glue, and passing others on the fringes of society. It remains a major cult film, hated by the critics, but supported by major figures including Gus Van Sant and Werner Herzog. Highly transgressive where almost nothing is off-limits, it showed off Korine’s taste of storytelling he was to follow up with Julien Donkey-Boy, Trash Humpers, Spring Breakers, and Aggro Dr1ft.
About Dry Grasses (2023)
Palme d’Or winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s (Winter Sleep) latest is about a troubled school teacher (Deniz Celiloğlu) who feels trapped in a remote village and a female colleague (Merve Dizdar) who tries to change his feelings. However, it is threatened by another teacher (Musab Ekici) who is also interested in the same woman as they are all held within the rural Anatolia region. With amazing scenery and philosophical development, Grasses won Dizdar Best Actress at Cannes last year and the film, a filling 197 minutes long, was Turkey’s Oscar selection for Best International Feature.
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