1966
Noah’s Barks pages covering things relating to the year 1966.
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Seconds
Some compellingly trippy, symbolic imagery here and there, but overall Seconds feels like an extended episode of The Twilight Zone that didn’t need to be extended—at least when it comes to its themes, which seem to deliver the broad message of, “life’s what you make it” with an unrelated, unforgiving pessimism added on top for… (read more)
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Blow-Up
Is Blow-Up a historical representation of the Mod scene? A satirical criticism? The answer matters less than anything that happens in this film. The Mod vanities are quickly redundant, very weak, and fail to make this supposedly attractive pull of no responsibility sympathetic. And yet, for all of this empty hedonism, 10 minutes focused on… (read more)
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Cul-de-sac
Polanski viewed the seminal Repulsion as a stepping stone to this forgotten, bizarre black comedy he intended to be a hit. For all its quirky and amusing antics and characters, Cul-de-sac bears the distinctive mark of a Polanski film in that he psychologically traps his characters and invites us to observe how they respond. There… (read more)
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The Office
Kieślowski captures accurately the experience of dealing with the cold, dreary government bureaucracy. Which means The Office, a five-minute short film, is every bit as painful to watch as it is to go through the machine. Just as I wish to never deal with bureaucracy, I wish to never see this short again. No more,… (read more)
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Tramway
It’s charming to see that Kieślowski is still himself in his first film. Yet again a simple but poignant observation of ordinary people’s lives taking sudden major turns. It’s a story that’s happened to everyone. Still, though it may be Kieślowski, there’s nothing really special about Tramway. I hope Jerzy Braszka eventually plucked that unibrow.… (read more)
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Love – “Da Capo” (1966)
The first half of Da Capo is pretty solid psychedelic pop rock despite Love’s ridiculously hammy vocalist. Listening to “¡Que Vida!” and hearing Arthur Lee’s accent could be a contest for how long one can go without laughing. He’s trying to come across as a sensitive, whimsical poet, but it’s so lamely contrived. Speaking of,… (read more)
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The Mothers of Invention – “Freak Out!” (1966)
The fantastic thing about Freak Out! is that Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention made it as a direct satire of dippy-hippie flower power culture, yet even as a psychedelic rock album it competes at the quality level of its sincere, acclaimed contemporaries. If not, it surpasses them with its sense of humor and… (read more)