milkeyedmonster

The Harpy of the West

(drawings, plants, books, movies, and way too many hobbies. if i can make it by hand i probably will. banjo amateur. professional field botanist. will categorize your soil horizons for food.)


i had never seen this movie and managed to get through my life not knowing anything about it. yet every time i watch a classic movie expecting to fall asleep i end up liking it a lot and not getting any sleep at all.

i'm sure plenty of film student theses have been spawned around any possible analysis i could come up with so i won't try to get deep here. i really like old movies that have these slow long shots where you can take everything in. in particular this film has such a strong use of light and contrast and shadow images that i don't think i've noticed in another movie! that kind of lighting seems to be a big strength of black and white film. i was drawn in by the atmosphere and the closeups of the actors, really watching them act. i also had fun recognizing the famous lines that i now know are all from Casablanca lol.

i would like to see more movies in this style; i was told to look into film noir but am not usually a crime/detective thriller kinda person?


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in reply to @milkeyedmonster's post:

hmm - film noir is definitely a good shout for that style but tricky if you're not all that into crime stuff.. i'd recommend trying some of Nicolas Ray's films - specifically They Live by Night or In a Lonely Place (In a Lonely Place has Humphrey Bogart too). maybe even some non-English films - Wadja's Ashes and Diamonds is very visually striking and tells a really great story. Bresson stuff like Pickpocket or Diary of a Country Priest are beautifully shot.

thank you for the recommendations! i'm not opposed to watching crime thrillers--i watched Rififi a while back and had a good time, heist movies are fun--but i don't seek it out on my own. i was reading that the director Curtiz was inspired by German Expressionism, so i might also look into The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu, which are very much up my alley (the weird horror-adjacent stuff).