Movie recommendation

Seen on DVD the other night: In a Lonely Place, made in 1950, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, directed by Nicholas Ray. An original and affecting film about a troubled Hollywood screen writer with a violent streak, and the woman he hopes has rescued him.

Another movie seen on DVD in the last few days was 8 Women, a French movie from 2002 starring Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant, directed by François Ozon. There are no male actors, except for the paterfamilias, a strangely reduced figure who is only seen from behind and is murdered early in the story. Half murder mystery, half musical, and filmed in the lush color of a late fifties Hollywood movie, 8 Women is decadent, perverted, weird, and worthless. Looking up the director afterward online, I found that he is an open homosexual. Then I read A.O. Scott’s review of the movie at the New York Times. He found 8 Women to be positively exhilarating. The more sick and nihilistic a movie or any cultural artifact is, the more the Times people love it. The left lives in an anti-universe, breathing anti-air, seeing by anti-light, worshiping anti-values.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 19, 2006 12:37 AM | Send