The French Dispatch
Episode 0: An introduction
Welcome to the first ever Animus podcast.
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I Even Met Happy Gypsies (Aleksandar Petrović, 1967)
Released in 1967 like Dušan Makavejev’s Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator — which I wrote about on the Substack a few weeks back — Aleksandar Petrović’s I Even Met Happy Gypsies was a hit both in Yugoslavia and abroad. Nominated for the Palme d'
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Love Affair, or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dušan Makavejev, 1967)
The formal inventiveness and freedom of much of 1960s cinema is so striking, and has been so influential, that it can be easy to forget about the bold experiments with storytelling that also boomed during that period. On top of being a pioneering film shot on the streets of Paris
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To Live and Die in L.A. (William Friedkin, 1985)
William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in L.A. (1985) starts off in a delightfully silly mode, similarly to other unhinged cop movies from the era (Russell Mulcahy’s 1991 film Ricochet comes to mind). But that goofiness later goes awry and everything breaks down, specifically around the time
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Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier, 1996)
The question of whether there is a God guiding Bess, the protagonist in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves, is the central mystery structuring the film. From the opening wedding scene right until the film's violent conclusion (in which we finally get a pretty conclusive answer about
Extras
Irony vs. Cynicism – Director João Pedro Rodrigues on ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’
Faced with the consequences of climate change and at odds with his awful relatives, the son of a rich bourgeois family decides to become a firefighter. Providing most of the heat however aren’t forest fires but a hot new colleague, and the two embark on a torrid affair that
Essays
“It is the word and the image…”
Eduardo Coutinho’s film Man Marked For Death, 20 Years Later is a vivid example of his exploratory, equalitarian talking cinema Cabra Marcado para Morrer, or Man Marked For Death, 20 Years Later (1984), is a film that was made, broken down and remade under tremendous pressure and hostility, but
Essays
On Blue Collar and Dog Eat Dog
Paul Schrader’s bookends to life in Capitalist America Separated by nearly 40 years, Blue Collar (1978) and Dog Eat Dog (2016), two films in Paul Schrader’s ever expanding body of work, have seemingly little in common. While one is a highly acclaimed film representing the best of the
Essays
Stop Laughing, This Is England
This sixty-year-old short film based on pictures and observations by Henri Cartier-Bresson is a scarily accurate and perceptive portrait of England then and now (still: ©La Cinémathèque Française) “What’s at the bottom of being English? Perhaps the answer is: no. A prohibition, an inhibition, far from whole hearted but
Essays
Whatever Happened to Utopia?
On Charles Fourier, Dušan Makavejev, sex, and communism (pictured: La Quatrième Pomme (1993), © Friends of Walerian Borowczyk) 1973. A filmmaker from Yugoslavia, let’s call him Dušan, is in trouble. He made a film, a personal response to a radical psychoanalyst, which was banned. Dušan compared the people who banned
Essays
Use-it-or-lose-it: A Proposal
Restrictive legislation around film copyrights is stopping a countless amount of titles from doing what they are meant to do: being watched ‘A film that isn’t screened is dead’ — thus spoke Henri Langlois, the famed programmer of the Cinémathèque Française where Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and their contemporaries found
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On Film Criticism #15: Struggle
Artwork by Neven Udovičić The upcoming edition of the Cannes Film Festival is bracing itself for possible interruptions by striking workers this week, who would certainly ensure their voices were heard by making the screens go dark. Simultaneously in the United States, screenwriters are striking to protest unfair working conditions