1. Today was one of my favorite days so far at Vizio University, one of my best ever days on the Criterion Channel. The other day, when talking with Bill and Diane about Matewan and Harlan County, USA, I noticed that Criterion Channel had posted a 6-7 minute interview with John Sayles about Harlan County, USA. I listened to Sayles today. I'd heard him and his partner, Maggie Renzi, talk about Matewan after a screening of it at the American Film Institute theater in Silver Spring, MD. I don't remember if Sayles or Renzi made reference to Harlan County, USA that night, but they sure could have.
All I can say about the Sayles' comments is that in a very short span of time he articulated precisely what makes Barbara Kopple's documentary such a stunning and vital movie and he distilled into a few sentences what makes any well made documentary such a thrilling experience to watch.
2. When I lived in and had more ready access to more densely populated places like Eugene, Portland, New York City, and Washington D.C., I loved giving street photography a whirl.
Today, I watched The Naked City (1948), a police procedural filmed very much in the style of the Italian Neo-Realists. Very little of the movie was shot in a studio. The vast majority of the movie's shots were street photographs, filmed on location in a wide variety of places in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. Watching this movie reminded me of street films I watched at MOMA in Manhattan back in 2019 and at one of the Washington, DC museums back in 2012.
The Naked City made me think that this is what an Law and Order would look like if filmed around 1947 and if the entire episode were devoted to work of the detectives. Like the television show, The Naked City, using an approach never tried before over the course of a 90+ minutes movie, took its viewers into an actual tenement building, the real city morgue, an Astoria row house, Manhattan apartments, a boxing gym and many other places rarely, if ever, seen on a movie screen. Viewers jumped rope with children, sat at diner counters, visited any number of businesses, jumped into the East River, shopped at markets, and participated in any number of everyday aspects of New York City life.
The cinematography in The Naked City thrilled me. All of these street scenes, all of the movie's street photography, gave the murder mystery the movie's plot focuses on depth and excitement.
3. After finishing the movie, I listen to two very different talks on video in the Criterion Channel collection by James Sanders and Dana Polan and a short documentary film looking at the making of The Naked City by Bruce Goldstein's. I was particularly fascinated by Sanders. He partnered with Ric Burns in the making of the great documentary series, New York, and his grasp of the city's geography, architecture, and history was stimulating and illuminating. Polan presented a reading of the movie focused largely on the tension between the filmmakers' progressive political vision and their more conservative exploration of law and order and masculinity in the movie. Goldstein's short documentary was a tour of many of the locations featured in the movie, how they have and haven't changed, and included some fun behind the scenes stories about the making of The Naked City.
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