How Had I Never Seen... "Girlfriends"?

by Cláudio Alves

This month, the Criterion Channel added Claudia Weill's 1978 debut feature Girlfriends to their roster. Since last year, the film has been part of the collection, but it's now available for streaming. Coincidentally, I've also recently purchased the European edition of the Blu-Ray. Taking this into account, as well as the fact that I've been hearing and reading wonderful things about this flick for ages, it seems like a good time to finally watch Girlfriends and share my first impressions with you, dear readers…

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Almost There: Marlene Dietrich in "Shanghai Express"

by Cláudio Alves

A cabaret performer and silent film actress during the Weimar years, Marlene Dietrich left Berlin at the dawn of the 1930s. She abandoned Germany, traveling to Hollywood with director Josef von Sternberg who'd go on to make Dietrich into Tinseltown's most glamorous star. The pair of creative partners and off-screen lovers shot seven films together, all of them classics whose sensuous allure and grotesque opulence make for some of the weirdest pictures to come out of Hollywood at the time. Theirs was a cinema of provocation, hedonistic spectacles that overwhelmed the senses even as they moved at a lethargic pace as if the films themselves are bodies recuperating in the aftermath of an orgasm. As an avowed fan of Marlene Dietrich, this septet represents some of my favorite flicks, their dreams of celluloid working as siren songs that never fail to seduce and enchant.

The Criterion Channel is now streaming these seven glistening gems, so it's a good time to explore a Sternberg-directed Dietrich performance that came palpably close to an Oscar nomination. Let's talk Lily in Shanghai Express…

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How Had I Never Seen... "Monsoon Wedding"?

by Cláudio Alves

Last year, Chloé Zhao won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Nomadland. Unlike Cannes, which only awarded one woman (Jane Campion for The Piano) with the Palme d'Or in its history, Venice has named five female directors as the grand victors of its main competition. One of them, Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, I hadn't seen.  Since the Criterion Channel has just added Mira Nair's 2001 Venice-winner, it seems like a good time to correct this lacuna. Without further ado, let's delve into the rainy festivities of this Monsoon Wedding…

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Mae West on Criterion

by Cláudio Alves

When she's good, she's very good. When she's bad, she's better. 

Mae West was one of the great stars of the Pre-Code era, though her reign as one of Hollywood's most popular queens was short-lived and curtailed by the advent of the Hays Code. Like Orson Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz after her, West was a target of William Randolph Hearst's ire. According to legend, the millionaire wanted revenge on West after she had made insulting remarks concerning the acting abilities of Marion Davies, his mistress. Such conspiracies are fun and it's easy to paint Hearst as Old Hollywood's perennial villain, but they're rarely 100% true. Mae West's fall from grace is more complicated than a vendetta from a mogul and a bunch of outraged Catholics. She was one of a kind, a symbol of licentiousness and indecency, a provocateur whose triumph was as amazing as it was temporary... 

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How Had I Never Seen... "Beau Travail"?

by Cláudio Alves

People cope with stress in different ways. Earlier this month, when the US presidential election was unfolding and the world held its breath, I turned to Twitter to reminisce about 2020 cinematic excellence and try to calm my nerves. I also scoured the internet for good deals on physical media, a bit of retail therapy, adding more DVDs and Blu-Rays to a collection that has long ago surpassed a thousand films. Part of the new additions were my first ever Criterion editions! 

All this to say that the discs arrived this week and, since the Criterion Channel has a new collection of Claire Denis films, I decided to finally watch the much-lauded Beau Travail and write about the experience. And what an experience it was…

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