I found this old piece of writing that I whipped up for a message board sometime last year or perhaps even the year before and I thought I’d put it here for safe keeping. It’s a collection of Film Comment-style “Moments Out of Time”: various little scenes, performances, or simply aspects of films or even film-related materials that I remember vividly and suspect I always will.
The glass-pane roller-coaster in Playtime. Gertrud breaks Gabriel’s heart, once, again, a third time, until the three seem to meld into an omniscient perpetuity. The hallway stretches into eternity in Poltergeist. Two jumping paper dolls grow into towering beasts in The Wiz (the introduction of terror into my childhood movie-viewing experience). “Say something. My voice is getting tired,” in Taste of Cherry: a sermon becomes comedy. Fish-eyed Rock Hudson getting his skull drilled in Seconds. Gooey eyes returning to their sockets in Black Sunday. Gooey eyes being jammed out of their sockets in The Evil Dead. Jane Wyman’s Christmas weeping in All That Heaven Allows, as she stretches her face with her hands thereby making her inner torment seem to show up in the form of a burgeoning migraine. The moment insanity enters Black Narcissus in the form of a darting P.O.V. shot. A twist of the knife reveals Suspiria’s ancient dust. Robert Downey hits on Mike Tyson in Black & White. Attempted seduction of a priest in Stromboli (and the harvest of the tuna). Myriad kinky “privileged glances” in Rocco and His Brothers. The way the gathering of various persnickety types at the café in Bodega Bay mirrors the massing of The Birds. Mother, after sacrificing her pride in order to save her son from guilt pangs, tells said son that he was always her “favorite” in Make Way For Tomorrow. Nude song and slap-dance in The Wicker Man. Dry run of “Take Off With Us,” All That Jazz. The “Real cats” still in La Jetée. One of Simon of the Desert’s apostles sneaks a lustful peek. The open-faced ham sandwich acting of Patrick (“nothing but shlopp?”) Magee in Tales from the Crypt. Peter Lorre’s anguished “I must” to his jury in M. Bill Lee’s score conveying the pride under Sam Jackson’s roll-call of black music heroes in Do the Right Thing. The musical segue between a Pentecostal baptism to Barbara Jean’s religious anthem in Nashville’s Sunday services. Ed Harris disco dances in Creepshow. Jessica Harper caps off her audition with a loose-limbed go-go in Phantom of the Paradise, and for that matter… Roughly seven-hundred moments from De Palma’s unimpeachable legacy: The Fury’s violent sexual climax, the fevered discovery of the erased tapes in Blow Out, the Cannes heist in Femme Fatale, museum seduction fantasy in Dressed To Kill… Nicole Kidman pauses for a moment and then confesses her deepest secret thought of infidelity in Eyes Wide Shut. Duet between Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish in The Night of the Hunter (and the both frightening and raucous violence to follow). Sermon on the mount, The Last Temptation of Christ. Pam Grier’s opening glide-strut-run in Jackie Brown (like the collaboration between von Sternberg and Dietrich transubstantiating to modern alt-house cinema). A truck bearing the apt name of “Retch” pulls away from Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House. Belle looks through the peephole, scoffs, then looks in again in Belle De Jour. Any moment in any film in which the word “snizz” is used. The chunky, meaty, acid-ruined remains of Mrs. Tremaine (with her way of saying “subtle shadings”) spill out of her coffin in Brazil. A card reading “The End” almost pushes Daffy Duck into full-blown dementia in Duck Amuck; as well as the moment when the preening tenor opens his mouth and is shocked to hear what seems to be tuba belches in Long-Haired Hare. The entirety of Jeanne Dielman, La Region centrale, God Told Me To, and any other number of films I desperately want to see. [NOTE: Thankfully, I've knocked the first and last of those three off my personal to-see list.] The horror of a civilized world without any notion of humanity that informs the stunning finale of L’Eclisse. When a member of the audience I saw Ghosts Of Mississippi with yelled out during Goldberg’s final tearful courtroom-steps speech: “Hey, Whoopi got a booger up her nose!” The framing door frame of The Searchers. The apotheosis of Sunrise’s sponged-up joy: Janet Gaynor, in the evening boat-ride, sways contentedly to music. The extremely funny guttural noise E. Emmet Walsh makes from behind the closed door when shot by Frances McDormand in Blood Simple. Grace Kelly discovers that men are always right, that women need to shut the hell up and follow their orders, and that guns are God’s gift and she was a bitch for ever questioning the fact in the pathetic and disheartening finale of High Noon.
A second-helping of this is almost assured. (Though I’ve said that before.)