Desperately Seeking Cinema

The first and last feature film by vivacious French director Jean Vigo before his untimely death at the age of twenty-nine, L'Atalante was poorly received upon its release in 1934, but now appears in the top ten of every recent critics' poll of the greatest films ever made. Initially a commercial and critical failure, (one prominent critic called it "amateurish, self-indulgent and morbid"), the film was largely forgotten by the late thirties, but after being re-released in New York in 1947, it received rave reviews. In the years since, restored versions and screenings the world over have perpetuated the mythology surrounding the film and its director, whose influence continues to reverberate today.

An unprecedented success in Turkey upon it's release in 1996, Yavuz Turgul's quasi-mythic crime drama The Bandit is credited with kick-starting the Turkish film industry after domestic fare had failed to gain box office traction for years. Turkish film critic and historian Rekin Teksoy suggested the movie "brought Turkish audiences back into their seats". About an old mountain outlaw who searches for revenge and his long-lost love after spending thirty-five years in prison, the film winds through colorful yet sordid sections of old Istanbul, and examines a clash between modernity and traditionalism in the Turkish underworld. Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta:  @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter:  @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes  Twitter @jimmydbarnes

Andrei Tarkovsky, still in his late twenties, was quoted as saying that his debut feature would establish whether or not he was capable of being a film director. Upon it's release in 1962, Ivan’s Childhood quickly gained Tarkovsky international recognition, eventually winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Ethereal landscapes, poetic imagery, and hallucinatory dream sequences powerfully capture a child's loss of innocence and the harrowing consequences of war. Ingmar Bergman said that his “discovery of Tarkovsky’s first film was like a miracle", and when Italian newspaper L'Unita ran a highly critical review of the film, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote an article defending it as one of the most beautiful movies he'd ever seen. Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta:  @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter:  @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes  Twitter @jimmydbarnes

In episode 3, Jimmy and Andy watch 1954's "Johnny Guitar", directed by Nicholas Ray (best known for directing "Rebel Without a Cause").  Joan Crawford is butch and dazzling as a gun-toting, strong willed saloonkeeper in this underappreciated classic that Francois Truffaut called a "hallucinatory" western. Roger Ebert felt the film contained a hidden commentary on the McCarthy witch-hunts, and The New Yorker called it a "proto-feminist masterwork".   Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta:  @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter:  @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes  Twitter @jimmydbarnes

On episode 2 we watch Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1974 film "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul", hailed by many as a masterpiece and a touchstone of German New Wave cinema of the 1970s.  Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta:  @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter:  @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes  Twitter @jimmydbarnes

Andy Rankin and Jimmy Barnes watch Kenji Mizoguchi's 1953 film, "Ugetsu", considered to be one of the greatest Japanese movies of all time, and then immediately discuss.    Check us out: Patreon: http://bit.do/eSgD8 Insta:  @desperatelyseekingcinema Twitter:  @desperatecinema Facebook: Desperately Seeking Cinema Jimmy: Insta @jimmydbarnes  Twitter @jimmydbarnes