The Horse's Head

The Plot: While on a train traveling through Austria, American Jesse (Ethan Hawke) strikes up a conversation with French Céline (Julie Delpy). The two have an instant rapport, and Jesse convinces Céline to get off the train with him upon its arrival in Vienna. Over the course of a day, the two walk around Vienna, learning about each other and having deep conversations about love, pain, gender, death, and everything in between. With Jesse’s pending flight back to America in the morning, how deep will their newfound relationship go…before sunrise?

Why It Matters: The NFR write-up is mostly a salute to Linklater and “[h]is innovative use of time as a defining and recurring cinematic tool”. The film gets a shout-out as “one of cinema’s most sustained explorations of love and the passage of time”.

But Does It Really?: Richard Linklater is one of those filmmakers who should have multiple entries on the NFR, and “Before Sunrise” is a good choice. I had never seen “Before Sunrise” prior to its NFR induction, and overall I enjoyed its lowkey vibe and the chemistry between Delpy and Hawke. Above all, “Before Sunrise” made me nostalgic for the impulsivity of your early 20s when you know everything and can go anywhere, a feeling this movie captures perfectly. As another standout in Linklater’s filmography, and the first in a surprise trilogy, “Before Sunrise” earns its NFR status.

Everybody Gets One: Linklater spent nine months trying to cast his two main characters before finding Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke. Julie Delpy was born in Paris to artistic parents and began acting at a young age in such films as “Europa Europa” and Krzystof Kieślowski’s “Three Colours” trilogy. Ethan Hawke also started off as a child actor in Joe Dante’s “Explorers”, and was initially reluctant to pursue an acting career until his supporting turn in “Dead Poets Society” led to more acting opportunities. Both actors were segueing into more adult roles when “Before Sunrise” came their way. Fun Fact: Because I had to put this somewhere, Ethan Hawke directed the music video for Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)”. It’s incredibly random until you learn that Loeb was a member of Hawke’s Malaparte theater company in the 1990s.

Wow, That’s Dated: I imagine this whole movie would have been quite different if both Jesse and Céline had smart phones. If nothing else, they could exchange contact information quickly and/or stalk each other on social media.

Seriously, Oscars?: No Oscar nominations, but “Before Sunrise” received an MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Kiss, losing to Jim Carrey and Lauren Holly for “Dumb and Dumber”. Both “Before” sequels received Oscar nominations for their screenplays.

• Is this what people think backpacking through Europe looks like?
• I get where the screenplay authorship questions come into play, because this all sounds very natural. As far as I know, everything in this film was scripted, down to the pauses and the overlapping dialogue. This is a Cassavetes-level of natural film acting, easily the hardest type to pull off, and Hawke and Delpy do it with ease.
• Linklater very quickly applies an important filmmaking rule: If you’re going to have a lot of talking scenes, stage them with a lot of movement. Whether it’s on a train or a trolley car or just two characters walking, the background is always changing, which helps keep things visually interesting as all these philosophical ideas get tossed around.

• I was wondering if Jesse and Céline were going to take the “Sound of Music” tour, but then I remembered that’s Salzburg, not Vienna, so never mind.
• As the author of a film blog it is my duty to point out that the ferris wheel Jesse and Céline ride on is the Wiener Risenrad, the same one from “The Third Man”. Do with that information what you will.
• Jesse and Céline take in a game of pinball while discussing their past relationships. This begs the question: Why pinball? This is the most important conversation they’ve had up to this point, and you’re practically muting it with pinball? That’s a choice.
• Céline’s American “dude” accent made me laugh. No further observation, just an amusing moment as this movie rounds the corner into its third act.

• The other thing this movie makes me nostalgic for is the kind of deep late night conversations you have with friends. Good times.
• I’m glad that after all this talk Jesse and Céline are finally entertaining the notion of hooking up. That was driving me nuts the whole movie: they’re in their early 20s, they’re in Europe, and they’ve shared plenty of emotional intimacy. How are they not getting it on like rabbits?
• [Spoilers] Aaaaugh that ending. After much hesitation, Jesse and Céline agree to meet at the train station in six months’ time without exchanging information. It’s equal parts romantic and frustrating. Imagine seeing this in 1995 and leaving the ending at this without knowing that there will one day be sequels. On a more positive note: This may be the last movie to feature a tearful farewell at a train station, a cinematic mainstay of the ‘40s and ‘50s. I assume it was replaced by “dramatically running through the airport”.

• Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy cameo as Jesse and Céline in Linklater’s animated film “Waking Life”, elaborating on conversations they had in “Before Sunrise”. Where this fits into the continuity of the “Before” films I have no idea.

• Richard Linklater’s immediate follow-up to “Before Sunrise” was 1996’s “SubUrbia”, and he has continued cranking out movies for the last 30 years, including several collaborations with Ethan Hawke (“Boyhood”, “Blue Moon”, etc.). Personally, I’m looking forward to Linklater’s most ambitious time concept yet, an adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Merrily We Roll Along” filmed over the course of 20 years. See you in the early 2040s!

December 27^th 2006: The Library of Congress gives the world a belated Christmas/Hanukkah present (or a right on time Kwanzaa present) with 25 more films on the National Film Registry, making it a total of 450 movies. Here now for the 20^th anniversary is the Class of 2006 (with selections from my posts on each film):

Traffic in Souls (1913): “a heavy-handed, oft-confusing film”

Tess of the Storm Country (1914): “I have nothing to say about this film. It happened, I saw it, I can cross it off the list. Moving on.”

The Curse of Quon Gwon (1916/1917): “written and directed by a Chinese woman, a rarity of both ethnicity and gender.”

Flesh and the Devil (1927): “helped launch [Greta] Garbo’s star.”

The Last Command (1928): “a fine showing for [Josef] von Sternberg, but can it stand on its own as a classic?”

Applause (1929): “the film’s usage of its soundtrack…is downright revolutionary by 1929 standards.”

St. Louis Blues (1929): “the only existing footage of Bessie Smith.”

The Big Trail (1930): “a unique enough curio in film history to warrant a spot on the NFR.”

Red Dust (1932): “[Clark] Gable and [Jean] Harlow are irresistible together”

Daughter of Shanghai (1937): “an underrated, largely forgotten film that was vastly ahead of its time.”

Early Abstractions #1-5, 7, 10 (1939-1956 or 1946-1957): “a seven-part collision of art, film, shapes, and music.”

Siege (1940): “an on-the-ground account of [World War II’s] first two weeks.” “lightning in a bottle documentation”.

Notorious (1946): “an excellent example of [Hitchcock’s] signature style.”

In the Street (1948): “a unique collaboration between three people who, as far as I know, had never made a movie prior to this.”

A Time Out of War (1954): “proved there was an audience for [student] films outside of the classroom.”

Think of Me First as a Person (1960-1975): “strikes the right tone with its delicate subject matter”

The T.A.M.I. Show (1964): “the greatest American film ever made, and I will fight you on this one.”

Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania (1971-1972): “a sort of film collage…[with] an emotional story at this film’s core.”

Blazing Saddles (1974): “my favorite Mel Brooks movie”, “uproariously funny”.

Rocky (1976): “gave the world something that had been missing from the ‘70s movie scene: Hope.”

Halloween (1978): “an effectively scary movie”, “a fresh 90-minute adrenaline rush”

sex, lies, and videotape (1989): “an erotically charged character study with a well-cast ensemble.”

Uksuum Cauyai: The Drums of Winter (1989): “an engaging glimpse at an oft-ignored culture.”

Groundhog Day (1993): “may in fact be a perfect movie”.

Fargo (1996): “one of [the Coen brothers’] more accessible, twistedly funny films.”

The Plot: Graham Dalton (James Spader) returns to Baton Rouge to visit his college friend John Mullany (Peter Gallagher). While Graham realizes he now has little in common with John, he hits it off with John’s wife Ann (Andie MacDowell), who is unaware that John is having an affair with her sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo). As their friendship grows, Ann learns that Graham is impotent, and can only achieve an erection while videotaping women talking about their sexual experiences. Sex is frankly discussed, lies are exposed, and videotape is…taped in the directorial debut of Steven Soderbergh.

Why It Matters: The NFR write-up on the movie is two brief sentences; one celebrating the film’s “low-key style”, the other declaring that it “launched an independent film renaissance.”

But Does It Really?: I feel like every decade has a movie that reignited the American independent film scene (“A Woman Under the Influence”, “Pulp Fiction”, etc.), and if “sex, lies, and videotape” happens to be that movie for the ‘80s, so be it. As a film, “sex, lies, and videotape” still works as an erotically charged character study with a well-cast ensemble. As an NFR entry, the film represents its era of independent film, as well as the filmography of Steven Soderbergh, who somehow still only has one film on the Registry. And if nothing else, this movie fully delivers on its title. While it’s not the most excited I’ve ever been about a film’s NFR status, I understand and support the induction of “sex, lies, and videotape” into the Registry.

Shout Outs: We meet the annoying barfly character while he’s doing an impression of Marlon Brando in “Apocalypse Now”.

Everybody Gets One: Born in Atlanta and raised in Charlottesville and Baton Rouge, Steven Soderbergh became interested in filmmaking in his teen years, and shortly thereafter moved to Los Angeles and became a freelance editor. Soderbergh had been thinking about “sex, lies, and videotape” for a full year before he started penning the screenplay on a road trip from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles (hopefully he wasn’t driving). “sex, lies, and videotape” was Soderbergh’s feature directorial debut, and was filmed in the summer of 1988 in Baton Rouge on a budget of $1.2 million. Oh, and Soderbergh was 25 while he was making the film. Let that sink in.

Wow, That’s Dated: Well obviously a third of the title. Speaking of…

Title Track: “sex, lies, and videotape” was one of several titles Steven Soderbergh considered for his film, though he favored “46:02” (supposedly the length of Ann’s videotape). And yes, the title is all lowercase. 

Seriously, Oscars?: Despite sweeping the Independent Spirit Awards and winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, “sex, lies, and videotape” only received a single Oscar nomination for Soderbergh’s Original Screenplay. In a stacked category that included “Do the Right Thing” and “When Harry Met Sally…”, they all lost to “Dead Poets Society”, which is a fine film (and somehow not on the NFR), but come on.

• Speaking of San Giacomo’s performance: With her wry line delivery and sex positive attitude, Cynthia is very close to being Roz from “Frasier”.

• As someone with thick eyebrows, I appreciate Peter Gallagher’s lifelong effort to make thick eyebrows sexy (because otherwise all we’ve got is Eugene Levy). Side note about Gallagher’s character: Yes, his name is John Mullany, pronounced the same as but spelled differently from the similarly named comedian. 
• I noticed in the early scenes that the camera is almost always moving. This was deliberate on Soderbergh’s part in an effort to keep the dialogue scenes from being too static. In fact, Soderbergh and cinematographer Walt Lloyd do an overall good job of keeping the film from being a filmed play of four characters talking. Soderbergh also spices things up with the editing, which he did himself before his longtime collaboration with the elusive yet artistically similar Mary Ann Bernard.
• Spader pays $400 rent for a duplex in Baton Rouge, which is a little over $1000 in today’s money. I’ve been saying it for the better part of a decade: We truly suck at inflation. 
• Perhaps the most impressive thing about this film for me: Despite all the talk about sex in this film, we see very little of it. We get a few shots of John and Cyn pre and post “the act”, but there’s no nudity. The film’s surprisingly erotic dialogue more than makes up for this, letting the viewers’ imaginations fill in the blanks.
• Graham’s impotent? Buddy, just give it a few years and Viagra will change your life.
• Either Andie is trying to drop her Southern accent, or Laura is trying to pick it up. The results are in that muddy Leslie Howard gray area.
• I’m guessing the real life version of Graham’s hobby would not nearly be as sexy or appealing to anyone else. Spader crawled so the pervy teen from “American Beauty” could walk.
• One scene I would have liked to see is John, upon confronting Graham about his videotape hobby, asking how to operate the VCR. “Is there an ‘Input’?”, “No, it has to be on Channel 3…”

• Yeah, I had a feeling that rain in the final shot wasn’t planned. According to cinematographer Walt Lloyd, the shoot was occasionally interrupted by “biblical rains”. Having gone through my first summer in the South, I get how those summer storms sneak up on you. Speaking of that final shot: Wait, that’s it?
• The film is dedicated to Ann Dollard, Soderbergh’s agent who died during production.

• Our quartet of actors have all maintained successful careers nearly 40 years after this film’s release. Andie MacDowell parlayed this film’s success into a movie career (though nowadays she considers herself best known as Margaret Qualley’s mother), while Spader, Gallagher, and San Giacomo all found continued stardom on TV. I recall enjoying San Giacomo on the sitcom “Just Shoot Me!”, and Spader’s Emmy-magnet turn on “Boston Legal”. My wife remembers Peter Gallagher as “the hot dad from ‘The O.C.’”

• “sex, lies, and videotape” is one of those movies that still gets referenced every so often, but only for its title. Every TV show has done an episode with a pun-based version of this title. Even an episode of “Goof Troop” got in on the act with “Wrecks, Lies, & Videotape”!

• Soderbergh made “an unofficial sequel of sorts” to this film with 2001’s “Full Frontal”, even though no one can explain to me what exactly the connection between the two films is. Soderbergh has stated in recent years that he wrote a more direct sequel during the COVID pandemic that focuses on Ann and Cynthia 30 years later. MacDowell and San Giacomo have expressed interest, but nothing further than that has happened with the project.

The Plot: In the dystopian future of 2187, humans are under constant surveillance by both man and machine. One human named THX 1138 (Dan Nachtsheim) has escaped, and operators are determined to locate and capture him. That’s about it plot-wise, but behind the camera is the confident hand of a young filmmaker named George Lucas. And now you know the rest of the story!

Why It Matters: The NFR gives a quick rundown on the movie and praises its “technical inventiveness”. An essay by film scholar Matthew Holtmeier follows Lucas’ trajectory from this film to “Star Wars” and Industrial Light and Magic (and of course this film’s subsequent feature adaptation: “THX 1138”).

But Does It Really?: “Electronic Labyrinth” covers two of the NFR’s favorite subgenres: student films and “stepping stone” movies for big directors. Choosing one of Lucas’ student films for NFR inclusion is an inspired choice. In a way, “Electronic Labyrinth” is a peek at both the future and an alternate universe: the future of Lucas’ sci-fi world building skills, and the alternate universe where Lucas isn’t saddled with the crowd-pleasing tropes of the “Star Wars” franchise. As for the film itself, while “Electronic Labyrinth” is bizarre and a bit impenetrable, the production value is so high, and the filmmaking style so impressive, you almost can’t believe this is a student film. A yes for “Electronic Labyrinth” on the NFR for representing George Lucas’ early artistic promise.

Everybody Gets One: Growing up in Modesto, California, George Lucas spent his adolescence reading comic books, watching old adventure serials on TV, and, as he got older, racing cars. A near-fatal car accident at age 18 deterred Lucas from pursuing a racing career, and he eventually ended up at USC as a film major. As a grad student, Lucas taught a cinematography class to U.S. Navy students, and used his students as crew members for a short science fiction film he wanted to make based on an idea he had with classmates Matthew Robbins and Walter Murch. 

Wow, That’s Dated: Good to see that analog technology makes a big comeback in the 2180s. I didn’t realize the nostalgia cycle is 20, 40, and 220 years.

Title Track: THX 1138 is our protagonist, with 4EB his classification: Class 4, Eros Body (whatever that means). The name is allegedly derived from George Lucas’ phone number at the time.

Seriously, Oscars?: No Oscar nod for “Electronic Labyrinth”, but it did win first prize at the 1968 National Student Film Festival. This film predates the Student Academy Awards by six years, where it no doubt would have cleaned up. For the record, the 1967 Oscar for Live Action Short went to Christopher Chapman’s “A Place to Stand”, as seen at the Ontario pavilion at Expo 67.

“The Oath of the Sword” can be viewed on the National Film Preservation Foundation website.

The Plot: In a small fishing village in Japan, Masao (Tomi Mori) is betrothed to Hisa (Hisa Numa), but yearns to go to America to study. Masao gets his wish, promising to return and marry Hisa when he graduates. While at UC Berkeley, Masao meets Captain Dean (Actor Unknown) who ends up shipwrecked in Masao’s fishing village and falling for Hisa himself. Will Hisa remember her vow to Masao? Or will she dishonor her dying father Gombei (Kohano Akashi) and the oath of the sword?

Why It Matters: The NFR provides a synopsis and some historical context, and praises the film for “highlight[ing] the significance of independent film productions created by and for Asian American communities.”

But Does It Really?: As a film, “Oath of the Sword” is fine. There’s some solid storytelling, although due to some missing footage the plot gets a little hazy towards the end. But once you learn that the film is the earliest surviving film produced by an Asian American company (and that it recently received a National Film Preservation Board-backed restoration), you start to see how “Oath” found its way onto the NFR. No argument for the film’s NFR inclusion, and if you’ve got 31 minutes to spare, you could do a lot worse than watch this movie.

Everybody Gets One: Most of the cast had achieved some success on stage and screen in Japan, but most noteworthy is Yutaka Abe, seen here as Hisa’s brother. Abe appeared in a number of American films (including NFR entry “The Cheat”) under the screen name Jack Abbe, and returned to Japan in the early 1920s, spending the next four decades as a prolific film director.

Title Track: The actual oath of the sword within the film is: “If thou do sin, by this Sword ye must die.” Yeesh, couldn’t you just make them King of England instead?