Lost in Criterion

This week we start the first Martin Scorcese's World Cinema Project boxset, a growing sub-collection - currently at 5 volumes - containing films from regions under-represented from the broader Criterion Collection. Or unrepresented at all elsewise. Volume 1, for instance, contains our first two Criterion films made in Africa by African directors.

Our first film is one of them comes from Senegal, Touki bouki (1973) directed by Djibril Diop Mambéty. If you must find analogues it's sort of Easy Rider via Jean Cocteau, but the film is one of the most unique we've experienced.

Whew there's a lot to talk about this week: a Robert Altman film with two dozen characters all worth spending time with, interviews with the director across three decades that appear to show a man slowly more willing to believe in Auteur Theory about himself as time passes, and a lot to unpack about political violence against women.

What if all the people in charge were actually criminals, but so insulated by power that no amount of clear evidence could lead to them being investigated? Crazy right?

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) is our only film from Elio Petri in the Criterion Collection, which is disappointing because from what we can tell his work is like if Pier Paolo Pasolini only did mass market genre stuff. Of course it's also just impeccable mass market genre stuff filled with radical politics, which Petri termed PolPop, political popular film. It's right up our alley.

Greta Gerwig's writing and acting in the titular role go a long way to make us like our second Noah Baumbach film much more than our first. While Kicking and Screaming (Spine 329) was a little too Whit Stillman for us - and over half the podcast ago - we found 2012's Frances Ha much more relatable and entertaining. It also helps that our friend Casey B. dropped everything to talk with us about a movie she loves.

Charlie Chaplin's first movie with synced sound (as opposed to his first film to feature onscreen dialogue) is the great silent film star saying no thank you to the concept of synced sound. City Lights is a great first start as we decompress from 24 Zatoichi films and relearn how to do the podcast, but I'll be honest it's rough going rewiring our brains from that.