Reaction Shots

Anaïs Nin is known for her diaries, her astutely and sensitively observed novels and short stories and one of the greats of belles lettres in 20th century literature. Her liaisons are well-known and her bigamy a thing of moderate scandal (she did get her marriage to her second husband Rupert Pole annulled, after all).  What is not greatly known or appreciated is her work with her first husband, Hugh Parker Guiler/Ian Hugo, the electronic composers Bebe and Louis Barron, and Kenneth Anger.  Ian Hugo studied and worked with William Stanley Hayter in Hayter’s atelier as an engraver in the 20s and 30s of the last century and turned to film in the fifties. While I haven’t any of his other works to compare this to, “Bells of Atlantis” is available on YouTube and it is a true find.  When I first stumbled across it recently, I was apprehensive that this was going to be along the lines of Hans Richter’s more abstruse work. To be sure, there are similarities, but “Bells…” is...

Mamoru Hosoda’s “Belle” is many things, but most of all, it is simply the most opulent Young Adult/coming of age tale ever. I don’t mean to infer that the visuals distract from the story, at all. If anything, every frame is at the service of a narrative jam-packed with sub-plots and ideas. And for the most part, these are handled with care. The film only seems a little overstuffed now and again but I have no idea how anyone would decide what to prune, what to discard. Hosoda may be best known for 2018’s Oscar(TM) for best animated feature “Mirai” or perhaps for “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” (2006). But he’s been around since 1999, to go by IMDb with his short “Digimon” which was eventually expanded to a feature length film. In any case, Hosoda’s work is characterized with an astute visual sensibility that supports stories suffused with empathy and finding a place in the world.  In his latest, he locates the Beauty and the Beast fable as a thematic pivot point in the life of ...

One of the toughest but greatest roles Bogart ever inhabited was scriptwriter Dix Steele in ‘in a Lonely Place’. What makes it great are the layers he brings to the role. To be sure, it’s dated by the conventions of the time, but you can see a naturalism that presages much of what Brando and the method actors of the next generation would bring. Of course, Bogart had established his own approach to the craft.  The similarities between Bogart and Steele may be a bit heightened or exaggerated, but Bogart did have a volatile temper. One assumes that he was able to draw on some degree of experience. Louise Brooks, in her outstanding essay “Humphrey and Bogey”, wrote of both Bogart and the film, “in a film whose title perfectly defined Humphrey’s own isolation among people. In a Lonely Place gave him a role that he could play with complexity because the film character’s, the screenwriter’s, pride in his art, his selfishness, his drunkenness, his lack of energy stabbed with lightning stro...