Film Festival, Part I.i

The Tribeca Film Festival will be in town through this weekend, and I've seen 4 of the 8 films I have tickets for (3 freebies, thanks to some volunteering stints), so figured it was time for a half-time post. Or four, actually, one per film, so if I bore thee, dear reader, you may handily skip over what doesn't interest you.

THE FORTY-FIRST
This restored Russian film from 1956 was introduced live by Martin Scorsese. Seems it had had a powerful influence on him in his youth, and he heartily recommended it to us, along with the cameraman's (Sergei Urusevsky) other work also in the festival, The Letter That Was Never Sent, which, said he, "You must see." The film proved to be, as advertised, a color-cinematographic revelation with not only sweeping water (and sand!) vistas under a glorious "Prussian-blue" sky but a definite sense of the camera as naked-eye-witness to the unfolding drama. The story is of a female Red Army soldier, a sure shot, who handily fells her 39th and 40th enemies, congratulating herself after each one: the 39th! the 40th! She misses when she takes aim at number 41 ... but, dear film-goer, she does get him in the end. She tries not to fall in love with him ... charming her, he wins her over ... and then, alas, circumstances bring on ... an awful deed. A bit of melodrama. A bit of (unfortunately laughable) overacting (Scorsese allowed as how the highly-charged emotional acting was reminiscent of silent film, and he had a point there, he did). Actually, there was sufficient overacting that I might have been upset had I paid the full freight to see this one, but as this was a last-minute freebie for me, I was instead glad to have seen it. The cinematography *was* truly stunning ... the music lovely and understated ... storytelling even in the silences ... all in all a good enough film that it's left me wondering why the choice was made (surely it was a choice) to push the acting / emoting between the two unlikely lovers so far up to and over the edge. Perhaps an antidote to the unblinking eye of the camera? I don't know. I shall ponder further.