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nrogershancock
Reviews
Le pont du Nord (1981)
Wide Open Spaces
Alright, this must be said: as difficult as they are to see in many countries, the series of films Rivette made from "Amour Fou" to "Merry Go Round" are some of the most amazing, magisterial works of that decade, of all time even. "Le Pont Du Nord" is at the tail end of this streak, and is a minor achievement in comparison. However.
Even minor Rivette is fascinating, and the prospect of a female Quixote traveling through a late 70s Paris in a period of destruction/reconstruction, with call backs to the radical '60s (and a sly nod to Fassbender's "Third Generation"), and a score by Astor Piazzola, is enough to make anyone excited. There is something else, too, that I have not seen much commented on; the friendship between the two female leads, related as they were in real life, is a genuine pleasure to watch, and exists somewhere other than acting as we are used to thinking of it. Generally recommended, for fans of the director and the performers,I would say very strongly recommended, no hesitation.
Niezwykla podróz Baltazara Kobera (1988)
Bit of a Let Down, Here
Only two reviews and both are much more positive than my response. Has is, genuinely, a fairly interesting director: both his famous "Saragossa Manuscript" and less famous films like "Hourglass Sanitarium" and his early realist period are some of the most interesting films to come out of Poland following the Polish School period. "Balatazar," however, is a bit of a mess -- a tired last work by a talented director, marred by an odd, soft focus approach that comes off more like "Immoral Women" era Walerian Borowczyc than anything else. An adaptation, it has a picaresque structure that makes the enterprise feel like 80 to 90 pages of the script have been cut out, jumping wildly from point to point without building resonance or internal logic. Genuinely extraordinary sequences, like the final boat ride to the underworld or the early appearances of Archangel Gabriel make this worth seeking out to diligent students of fantastic film; everyone else would be better server with any single one of the films Has made in the two or three decades previous.