Lost in Criterion

We continue through the World Cinema Project Vol 1 boxset with a 1936 film from Mexico, though with a rather international production crew, that presages Italian neorealism probably.

Redes is among the more openly Marxist films the Criterion Collection has shown us, though I have a feeling that's going to be true for a lot of what we see from the World Cinema Project. It began life as a documentary about a fishing community near Veracruz sponsored by Mexico's Secretariat of Public Education, but collaborators Fred Zinnemann (co-directing), Emilio Gómez Muriel (co-directing), Paul Strand (cinematography), the non-professional cast performing their daily lives, and a myriad of others behind and in front of the camera grew it into a semi-documentary tale organizing against the oppression of capitalism.

This week we start the first Martin Scorcese's World Cinema Project boxset, a growing sub-collection - currently at 5 volumes - containing films from regions under-represented from the broader Criterion Collection. Or unrepresented at all elsewise. Volume 1, for instance, contains our first two Criterion films made in Africa by African directors.

Our first film is one of them comes from Senegal, Touki bouki (1973) directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty. If you must find analogues it's sort of Easy Rider via Jean Cocteau, but the film is one of the most unique we've experienced.

Whew there's a lot to talk about this week: a Robert Altman film with two dozen characters all worth spending time with, interviews with the director across three decades that appear to show a man slowly more willing to believe in Auteur Theory about himself as time passes, and a lot to unpack about political violence against women.

What if all the people in charge were actually criminals, but so insulated by power that no amount of clear evidence could lead to them being investigated? Crazy right?

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) is our only film from Elio Petri in the Criterion Collection, which is disappointing because from what we can tell his work is like if Pier Paolo Pasolini only did mass market genre stuff. Of course it's also just impeccable mass market genre stuff filled with radical politics, which Petri termed PolPop, political popular film. It's right up our alley.

Greta Gerwig's writing and acting in the titular role go a long way to make us like our second Noah Baumbach film much more than our first. While Kicking and Screaming (Spine 329) was a little too Whit Stillman for us - and over half the podcast ago - we found 2012's Frances Ha much more relatable and entertaining. It also helps that our friend Casey B. dropped everything to talk with us about a movie she loves.