I saw a couple 4K restorations at my local art theatre this week. Good stuff...
Rome, Open City (8.5/10) - An incredible document if only for the time period it captures (and apparently Rossellini even used POWs as film extras?), it's also a powerful anti-fascist drama that is really fucking eerie watching in today's climate (I swear, some of the dialogue here is like shit I'm reading on the internet right now about the rise of global populism). It goes broad in places where it really doesn't need to (the drunk German officer giving a speech about how everybody hates the Germans and that's why they'll lose just feels completely out of place, dramatically), but the characters are mostly well lived in, particularly the priest and Anna Magnani's character, and the way the film builds a strong, fictional narrative out of some real life details (there's one incredible plot twist here that was based on a real life event that occurred only a year before filming) is impressive, and an impressive marriage of form and content, in a film so keen on examining the relationship between the personal and the political.
This was also one of the weirdest and most memorable theatrical screenings I've ever attended, because it was mostly full of seniors, specifically of the rowdy, passionate Italian kind, who laughed and cheered their way through many scenes and were even shouting dialogue back at the screen. I couldn't even get a read on the context half the time. There is either something profoundly Italian about this film that I just can't appreciate (I'm not Italian, obviously), or my theatre was randomly packed with dusty old Rossellini stans who treat Rome, Open City like it's The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was a novel experience, all the same.
The Red Shoes (9/10) - I'm not sure, but this might be the first time I've seen something from Powell and/or Pressburger. And it was incredible. It certainly lives up to its reputation as one of the most incredible three-strip Technicolor films around. Absolutely stunning filmmaking from beginning to end. The first hour is the most compelling, as we delve into the theatre world, and I was impressed by how well the setting and characters are established in such a short amount of time. There's a strong sense of this world, its place, and especially of the ballet troupe and how it has operated as a family for years, long before the movie begins. The film is as richly detailed as its legendary cinematography.
I did kind of feel the ending was borderline lousy, in how quickly it contrives a binary choice for Vicky to force a conclusion, but from another perspective I can see how that's keeping with the fairy tale origins of the film. Vicky's final decision should have been "door number three" but ends up feeling a little too much like picking one guy over the other (as far as what they represent, symbolically, in that final dressing room scene). Perhaps I'm overthinking it, though, or thinking about it in the wrong context. Given how richly drawn the film is otherwise, I think maybe all I would have needed here is a bit more time to explore the drama of the final part a little more, make it as believeable as the first part. It's a two hour movie, but given the breathtaking filmmaking on display, I was begging for it to be longer.
But I'll get on it!