Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

A legionnaire falls in love with a nightclub singer. Possibly best known for it's ending, the film has a strange pacing - I haven't seen that many Sternberg films yet, but I do remember that he seems way more interested in the inner life of the characters than in the display of any kind of action. The story is there alright, but Sternberg's transformation to the screen makes it strangely static - an effect I noticed even more in "Shanghai Gesture". 1.1 00:03 Legion arrives in the city. The legionnaire (Cooper) checks out the women. He is scolded by his sergeant for that. 1.2 00:06 A nightclub singer (Dietrich) and a rich gentleman (Menjou) arrive on the boat. She ignores his advances. 1.3 00:09 A large nightclub. The gentleman is introduced as important. People gossip. Cooper arrives in the night...

A street singer falls in love with one of his neighbors, who happens to be the flame of the local thug. The film pushes its one-song-theme quite extremely, the tune is repeated ad nauseam in hundreds of variations. There is a funny scene in the beginning, where the singer watches his spectators being pick-pocketed. Only when the thief tries to rob the girl that has caught the singer's fancy, he intervenes. Interestingly, the film doesn't have the kind of clean happy-end that all the music and merriment during the first half suggests. There are some interesting shots of the Parisian street that was built on soundstage, which must have been huge in scale. A very impressive camera movement introduces us to the neighborhood and it feels surprisingly real, possibly because of the fluidity of that first camera movement. I am quite amused about how everybody seems quite opportunistic and the romantic interest behaves and is treated in a way that would send platoons of pol...

Young city dwellers enjoy their Sunday off by taking a trip to the countryside on the quest for romance and relaxation. Apart from the superstar-studded cast of emerging filmmakers (Siodmaks, Ulmer, Billy Wilder, Zinnemann) behind this project, there are also many astounding discoveries one can make about Berlin. In an astounding way, this film is timeless. The careless joie-de-vivre in Berlin is just as tangible today as it is in this pre-war film. Would this film be re-made, there are barely anything that would need change. Due to the use of non-actors the makers kept a careful distance to their subjects. They don't ask them to do much or complicated things (a kiss, maybe). This inner distance gives the film its documentary touch which at points nearly drowns the story. This seems intended as the charming little tale is intercut many times with documentary footage of normal people, enjoying their Sunday on the outskirts of Berlin. What surprised me was the open-minde...

The first World War experienced through the eyes of an innocent school boy as he becomes a battle-hardened veteran. The film is not only visually impressive and graphically violent, but has some really beautiful poetic moments, and even a few of them a bit racy, at least in implication. According to imdb it was filmed before production code came into effect and it makes it somehow possible to get a glimpse of how cinema could have developed in later years, hadn't the bizarre moral rules been put into gear - although the hand-cuffing led to those extremely witty double/triple and quadruple entendres in later years which I love (when I get them) The scenes in the war trenches feel absolutely believable and what impressed me the most was the fact that the film actually shows what soldiers really do all day long: They wait. They wait to kill. The chit-chat in between fights and battles does let every soldier tell his post-war plans, but it does so in a very unsentimental way. The...

A farmer collective forays into new grounds, by pulling together and obtaining a tractor - much to the disapproval of the older generation. The construction of the film strikes me as odd. The murder scene is outright bizarre and felt like a very anti-climactic point. The tractor scene was quite funny and gained a lot of tension from the simple and even unseen fact that the vehicle brakes down in sight of its goal. The solution to their problem was as simple, as it was funny - and depicted in a way that would have never been possible in eg. the American film market - although I've just read that it didn't get past Soviet censors too. The photography is gloriously breathtaking and many of the pictures still remain in my mind very vividly. Not only the landscape shots, but also the quality of the faces. This is definitively worth intense study. Especially the father's piercing eyes are easily recalled - a certain brutal honesty gets transported through them with everythi...