2021 in Review: The Best "Not New but New to Me" Movies I Watched

 

This is the third in a series of posts looking back on the past year in film in television.

I retired from my corporate job on December 31, 2020, in the midst of both an icy winter and the second wave of a global pandemic.  As a result, I was stuck at home with no pressing commitments during daylight hours and a very long list of classic films on my "to see" list.  Take a wild guess how I spent my time...

I watched 274 movies in 2021: 98 of these were new 2021 releases, 34 were repeat viewings of old favorites, and the remaining 142 films were pre-2021 movies I was seeing for the first time.  What follows are a list of my favorites of those discoveries - not necessarily the best of them, but those I found most memorable and that I'd watch again in a heartbeat.

In no particular order:

Unfaithfully Yours (1948; dir. Preston Sturges)

I took full advantage of the Criterion Channel's library of Preston Sturges comedy classics in early 2021.  Most I had seen before (albeit sometimes as long as forty years ago), but  Unfaithfully Yours had eluded me for years.  

My takeaway from all those Sturges films, especially this one, is how delightfully racy and adult they manage to be, even when governed by the rigors of a notoriously puritanical production code.  Unfaithfully Yours kicks off with a famous orchestra conductor (Rex Harrison) arriving home from a European tour. He's greeted at the airport by a rather large coterie of friends, but the only person he really wants to see is his wife (Linda Darnell); it's painfully obvious that he can't wait to get her in the sack.  When he finally extricates himself and Darnell from the crowd, Sturges immediately cuts to a scene of the two of them hastily tying on dressing gowns, having just arisen from a rumpled, shared bed. (They're not actually shown in the bed, that's how Sturges got away with it.)

I'd forgotten - or, more likely, never really knew - what a skillful and delightful comic actor Rex Harrison could be.  There's a whole fantasy sequence in the film's middle where Harrison imagines murdering the wife he thinks is cheating on him, along with the suspected lover. It's followed by a series of mishaps when he actually tries to actually carry out the fantasized plan. Harrison is brilliant in both.

The 1986 remake, with Dudley Moore in the Harrison role, isn't really as bad as critics claimed. But, not surprisingly, this original film is the gold standard.

The New World (2005; dir. Terrence Malick)

The gorgeous cinematography and the impressionistic emphasis on imagery over straightforward narrative is entirely to be expected from a Terence Malick film. What's unique and especially notable in this historical drama about the  romance of John Smith and Pocahontas is that most of the story is told from Pocahontas' point of view.  Colin Farrell and Q'orianka Kichler (who more recently appeared on the television series Yellowstone) play the legendary lovers, but their story is not nearly the romance of legend. Pocahontas is banished from her tribe, Smith chooses to go an expedition to the East Indies and leaves her behind.  What follows is a sometimes painful exploration of her assimilation into white European culture before finding another love and reconciling the disparate societies in which she has lived.  I really can't believe it took me so long to get to this film; it is superb.

La Piscine (1969; dir. Jacques Deray)

I watched this during the languid, sweltering final days of the summer when it was too hot to be outside but too soon to think about donning sweaters or carving pumpkins. Turns out, that was the perfect moment to appreciate its sensual pleasures. Often called 'the most stylish French film ever made," La Piscine wraps the loosest of plots around its visual delights. Chief among these is the vicarious thrill of watching gorgeous people in skimpy bathing suits languish around the pool at a luxurious vacation villa. Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, two of the most beautiful actors in European cinema (and former offscreen lovers) play host to one of Schneider's former lovers and his gangly daughter (Jane Birkin). There's sex, heartache, betrayal and intrigue - but also scenic coastline drives, Henri Courreges couture, and sumptuous poolside breakfasts. In a pandemic summer when our travel options were severely limited, this was a particularly welcome escape.

Jesus of Montreal (1989; dir. Denys Arcand)

A group of French-Canadian actors mount a outdoor production of the Passion that attracts large audiences but challenges and angers the local Catholic hierarchy. Meanwhile, the actors' lives begin to conform to the storylines of their characters, particularly the actor playing Jesus (Lothaire Bluteau, also known for his role as a Jesuit priest in a later Canadian film, Black Robe). I've always liked films or books that present fresh perspectives on the Gospels, and I found this one thoroughly engrossing, with modern allegorical takes on familiar New Testament stories that were illuminating and respectful. Interesting that writer/director Denys Arcand is a lapsed Catholic turned atheist; I wouldn't have guessed that after seeing his film.

Birth (2004; dir. Jonathan Glazer)

One of the weirdest movies I've ever seen, but unaccountably mesmerizing. Nicole Kidman plays a  widow who's about to remarry. A young boy who lives in her building shows up out of nowhere at a party in her home, claiming to be the reincarnation of her late husband.  There's a terrific extended scene of Kidman attending the opera with her fiancé which consists entirely of her in a tight close-up as she struggles to get her mind around the idea that the boy may actually be her husband. You have to see to believe it, but Kidman pulls it off beautifully. It may be the single greatest piece of acting she's ever committed to film.  There's a trancelike vibe to this film that pulls you in from the very first scene and seduces you into accepting its bizarre premise. It's like walking into someone else's dream.

Army of Shadows ( 1969; dir. Jean Pierre Melville)

Melville's tribute to the WWII French Resistance is a film about heroes that feels entirely non-heroic.  Lino Venturo plays the Nazi's most wanted Resistance fighter, but he looks and acts like a middle-aged accountant who nonchalantly signed on to a covert operation. He's almost Monty Pythone-sque at times, particularly in one sequence where he parachutes into enemy territory having no prior experience with skydiving but no discernible concern over what he's about to do.  He just gets on with it.  There are still a few nerve-shattering moments of suspense, and a fine performance by Simone Signoret as a fellow Resistance fighter, but the understated, almost detached tone of the film has the strange effect of making its characters' exploits even more honorable.

One Sings, the Other Doesn't (1977; dir. Agnes Varda)

The 1970s saw an outpouring of films about female friendship, several of which I watched in the past year, including Claudia Weill's Girlfriends and Jacque Rivette's surreal, epic-length Celine and Julie Go Boating. But I have a special fondness for this film. Although it's not among Varda's most acclaimed work, it has a pleasant, rambling vibe and highly likable performance by Valerie Mairesse as a feisty singing feminist. Her friendship with a more traditional wife and mother (Therese Liotard) is the focus of a story that underscores its subtle political points with music, humor and affection. Sometimes the best recommendation for a film is that the actors/characters are just fun to 'hang out' with. This is one of those films.

Fedora (1979; dir. Billy Wilder)

Wilder's penultimate film is a bit of a call back to his earlier classic, Sunset Boulevard. It takes awhile to find its groove; the initial scenes are uncomfortably stilted, which I think is partly attributable to the source material. (It's based on a section of Tom Tyron's Crowned Heads, a novel I found clunky and unreadable, even as a teenager.) William Holden goes in search of answers when a revered, aging film star is found dead; the story that evolves is weird, shocking - even grotesque- but ultimately tragic. The tone is more elegiac than sardonic. It's shot through with a weary sadness, as if Wilder were subtly acknowledging that the film industry as portrayed here is passing into permanent oblivion.

The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film ( 1959; dir. Richard Lester)

A delightfully daft little film - just under eleven minutes long - conceived by Peter Sellers and directed by Richard Lester (billed as Dick) just a few years before his career took off with A Hard Day's Night and other classics of swinging 60s Britain. I discovered it on the Criterion Channel around the anniversary of my father's death (that's significant because my father was a diehard Peter Sellers fan; I watched a  lot of Sellers' films that week just to feel close to Dad again.)  It's just a series of absurd comic sketches starring Sellers, Spike Milligan and a few other British actors. It's very, very funny - and shows clearly the lasting influence that Sellers and Milligan would have on Monty Python and other British comics. You can watch the whole thing here for free.