wings ( 1966 film )
wings is a 1966 film from the soviet union, directed by larisa shepitko .
maya bulgakova in wings (1966), one of two films by larisa shepitko now available on dvd .
a south wing was added in 1966 and a north wing in 1971. gunnar birkerts designed the wings in a contrasting modernist style .
not to be confused with the 1927 film wings, about world war i fighter pilots .
detail from daisies [ selmikrásky ] (czechoslovakia, 1966), directed by vera chytilová .
chytilová, “chytilová parmi les marguerites, ” interview with adriane aprà, cahiers du cinema 174 (1966): 14 .
wings is a lackluster attempt at something that could have been a wonderful piece of art .
votes for krylya (1966): the greatest films of all time 2012 ,
sight & sound. retrieved: 1 february 2014 .
wings is about someone who, as a female ex - fighter pilot and stalinist, feels displaced during peacetime .
and there’s another reason for the jungle book’s totemic status within the disney canon. disney died before the film was completed, in december 1966. the studio closed for a day – just the one – before production continued apace .
rosenbaum, jonathan .
review: wings .
chicago reader, 1 september 1996. retrieved: 31 december 2013 .
bingham, adam .
no angels: larisa shepitko' s wings .
senses of cinema, cinémathèque annotations on film, issue 53, december 2009. retrieved: 31 december 2013 .
ultimately, wings of desire is a visionary film about vision: the act of watching, with all its fascinations and limitations. here, then, are some of the visual strategies at play .
the film isn' t terrible, neither is it bad in any way—the film is rather mediocre. of all the content in the film, there is scarcely anything tying it all together. the true flaw with the film: due to its lack of a cohesive tie, the film' s messages and emotions result in nothing .
wings was released on dvd by the criterion collection in 2008 through its eclipse series as part of a box set together with the ascent .
academy award - winning filmmaker howard hawks directed only angels have wings, sergeant york, scarface, bringing up baby and gentlemen prefer blondes .
wings is a great effort on part of shepitko but pales in comparison to her masterpiece and final film with the ascent. i do feel with seeing the latter aforementioned film first it impacted my expectations of the previous. while it may have lacked the emotional connection and devastating power of…
sterritt, david. review: krylya aka wings .
tcm: turner classic movies, 1 february 2014. retrieved: 26 december 2016 .
wings was released on dvd by the criterion collection in 2008 through its eclipse series as part of a box set together with the ascent. [ 2 ]
this is in keeping with chytilová’s statements to a french film critic several years earlier. in a 1966 interview, chytilová described daisies as a “philosophical documentary in the form of a farce, ” a “bizarre comedy with strands of satire and sarcasm with regard to the two heroines, ” whom she defined as
film critic paul schrader, as well as director ben wheatley, chose wings as one of their top 10 favorite criterion releases. critic jonathan rosenbaum has called it a
lovely and nuanced character study ,
an analysis repeated by critic michael koresky' s description of the film as a
penetrating character study .
wings tells a poetic and subtle tale, not trying to force any major themes or motifs, but rather lets itself play out to the lonely tedium that is life .
future learning and skills – giving everyone the opportunity to build a lifelong relationship with film .
film critic paul schrader, as well as director ben wheatley, chose wings as one of their top 10 favorite criterion releases. [ 3 ] critic jonathan rosenbaum has called it a
lovely and nuanced character study ,
[ 4 ] an analysis repeated by critic michael koresky' s description of the film as a
penetrating character study .
[ 5 ]
as the film’s english title makes plain, desire is the driving force behind both the film and its angel protagonist damiel’s fervent longing to leave behind immortality and become human. as this wish percolates and he meets marion (solveig dommartin), the wistful circus performer with whom he falls head over wings in love, alekan’s exquisite monochrome gradually gives way to vibrant colour .
the problem with wings is that it mistakes vapidity for subtle poetic gold. the film does not have a lot contained within its runtime, most of it entails various menial excursions of work or brief human interactions, yet the content is heralded as something more than it actually is .
given its central characters, wings of desire is an exceptionally watchful film, both clinical and voyeuristic. wenders’ unseen angels are basically unable to engage human beings directly. and yet, the very act of quietly watching over them, able to hear their innermost thoughts and desires, and occasionally even offer some kind of palliative aid, is one of the film’s most touching aspects .
founded in 1999, senses of cinema is one of the first online film journals of its kind and has set the standard for professional, high quality film - related content on the internet .
it' s not an unusual story that soldiers find themselves feeling lost and displaced after war, unsure what their function is. but wings tells this story so well, so subtly. the memory…
feature film debut of shepitko, who had just graduated from soviet film school. one of only four feature films made by shepitko before her tragic death in a car accident at the age of 41 .
this film is not currently playing on mubi but 30 other great films are. see what’s now showing
( this film is perhaps best seen after one of the others, like a “chaser. ” )
michael koresky is the editorial director of the film society of lincoln center in new york; a cofounder and editor of the online film magazine reverse shot; and a frequent contributor to film comment and the criterion collection. he is also the author of terence davies (university of illinois press, 2014) .
it’s been voted the second best film of the 1980s, but what makes wim wenders’ fantasy about two angels observing life in berlin still so resonant today? these five extracts give a clue to the film’s enduring richness .
wings is the story of two men who have gone to war and the girl they both leave behind. director william a. wellman makes one of his most humanistic statements as he explores the devastating results of war .
the first half of wings is lukewarm. you do not get a complete impression of what it is maya bulgakova really achieved and what it meant, and the dialogue often devolves into on - the - nose commentary about the stalinist regime .
by the early 1960s, hawks started to slow down professionally. his earlier work began to receive some critical attention and was featured in a career retrospective at new york city & apos; s museum of modern art. while others were looking back on his accomplishments, hawks continued to work, making a handful of films, most of which starred wayne. they worked together on the african adventure film hatari! (1962) and the western el dorado (1966) with robert mitchum. for his final film, hawks directed wayne in the western adventure rio lobo (1970) .
an experimental film poem in celebration of life and visions. techniques include live action, animation, montage and found images .
i begin by sketching the debate between chytilová and the government detractors whose severe disapproval kept this bril - liant, singular director from film production for six years. work - ing within the constraints of state - supervised film production in the czech new wave of the 1960s, chytilová fashioned a “prop - erly revolutionary” critique of the insipid bourgeois existence of the fashion model, a theme that she had pursued in a prior film. despite chytilová’s insistence that the film be seen as a moral alle - gory critical of its heroines, socialist censors took issue with the film’s depiction (and seeming celebration) of dissipated youth .
this cannes success and prominence angered the authorities, and the film was pulled from its planned role in the moscow film festival of that year. the film’s commercial paris opening was even put into doubt before its western distributor asserted his commercial rights. andrei roublev ’s success and attention in paris and elsewhere further delayed its domestic release. see johnson and petrie, p. 81 .
bliss (felicidad) cua lim is an assistant professor in the film studies program at the university of california, irvine. her work on film has appeared in positions: east asia cultures critique, the velvet light trap, asian cinema, the journal of english studies and comparative literature, philippine critical forum, and the anthology geopolitics of the visible: essays on philippine film cultures. her research interests include film theory and genre studies, fantastic cinema and the philosophy of history, postcolonialism, feminist, and philippine and chinese cinemas .
a speech by deputy pruzinec delivered in the national assembly on may 17, 1967 concerning the film “daisies” by vera chytilová, urltoken daisies .
these two harsh but hauntingly beautiful fables — “wings, ” released in 1966, and “the ascent, ” from 1977 — are the best - known films of the soviet - era director larisa shepitko. they have now been released in a boxed set from eclipse, the no - frills label of the criterion collection. these are extraordinary works, rich in moral complexities and spiritual underpinnings, filmed with a blend of brutal realism and a lyricism that at crucial moments passes into pure abstraction. they belong to a period in soviet filmmaking that would come to be forgotten as the empire collapsed: a moment when creative expression was tolerated, and even subsidized, by a totalitarian government .
dvd verdict wrote that the
most astonishing thing about wings is how young shepitko was when she directed it. it feels like the work of an older director, one who would understand what it' s like to live in the shadow of your younger self
and that much of the film' s
success leans on the performance of bulgakova, and she does deliver a phenomenal performance. on a whole, the film doesn' t stand out in terms of its storytelling or cinematography, but as a sensitive human portrait, it truly is remarkable ,
and critic dennis schwartz called it a
brilliantly conceived work of art .
in sight & sound' s 2012 surveys of the greatest films ever made, two critics (sergio grmek germani and erica gregor) and two directors (carol morley and vlado škafar) voted for wings .
hamish ford is a lecturer in film, media and cultural studies at the university of newcastle, and a regular contributor to senses of cinema .
linda williams, figures of desire: a theory and analysis of surrealist film (urbana: university of illinois press, 1981), 11–12 .
in this portrait of a world askew, filmmaker mccabe composes an apocalyptic lullaby, a landscape film meditating on the end of the world and subtly the end of film as a medium. incorporating timelapse cinematography shot at the salton sea, big sur and joshua tree, the film provides a canvas of empty and beautiful spaces with narration about the benefits of radiation with a plea to the viewer to preserve the message for the future .
andrei roublev ’s treatment of art, as first staged in the prologue and gradually, variously moulded throughout the ensuing film, is certainly more heroic than that found in the other more recognisably “modern” films of 1966, and their treatment of art and authorship (particularly a film like blowup). in many ways, such a comparison is unfair, and makes tarkovsky look like a decidedly religious and conservative proselytiser of pre - modern ideas about artistic worth and cultural purpose. but any simple comparison overlooks important historical, political and cultural contexts. such a view also reinforces a rather self - satisfied, sceptical western attitude that insists that we know how one should think about such matters. but tarkovsky’s mysterious, quintessentially romantic address is at its heart a meditation on what the artist, or “author”, is, and how (s /) he reacts and seeks to turn reality into art. idiosyncratically heroic it might be, but the film keeps asking questions familiar to more sceptical (and post -) modern minds and films as well (for example, via much darker treatment in ingmar bergman’s persona, 1966): is art relevant to contemporary life, or is it merely a self - indulgent and ideological deification of the individual subject ?
i quote skvorecky’s views on the film at some length because his illuminating commentary recognizes that daisies’s “mischievous” tone is both constrained and produced by the real - ities of the nationalized czech film industry of the 1960s. he is the only commentator on daisies to engage with two key issues that most others miss: the ironic quality of the film and the overdetermined and possibly strategic nature of chytilová’s pro - fessed intentions regarding daisies. he writes :
against this are juxtaposed nadezhda’s remembrances of things past. shepitko reinforces a sense of fracture by introducing successive acts of the drama through aerial shots soaring through clouds. these majestic flights of remembered freedom contrast markedly with the tight compositions of the myriad drab interiors that nadezhda often finds herself within. ultimately, away from the immediate setting of war, this tension within the protagonist of wings can more aptly be taken as a potent symbol of her nation (as a figure caught between looking back and moving forward, and who is placed, in 1966, at the forefront of exaggerated displays of visibility on the world stage that edged the soviet union ever closer to another war). this is understated and implicit in shepitko’s deceptively straightforward drama, but it goes some way to conveying the film’s rich layers of meaning, a sense of its own interior life .
the artist in a nationalized film industry wages a constant struggle with his first viewer and producer in one person, the political establishment... .
dvd verdict wrote that the
most astonishing thing about wings is how young shepitko was when she directed it. it feels like the work of an older director, one who would understand what it' s like to live in the shadow of your younger self
and that much of the film' s
success leans on the performance of bulgakova, and she does deliver a phenomenal performance. on a whole, the film doesn' t stand out in terms of its storytelling or cinematography, but as a sensitive human portrait, it truly is remarkable ,
[ 9 ] and critic dennis schwartz called it a
brilliantly conceived work of art .
[ 10 ] in sight & sound' s 2012 surveys of the greatest films ever made, two critics (sergio grmek germani and erica gregor) and two directors (carol morley and vlado škafar) voted for wings. [ 11 ]
few modern films have made the transition to classic status as quickly as wim wenders’ wings of desire (1987). his tale of a guardian angel in a still - wall - divided berlin who falls in love with – and to earth for – a melancholy trapeze artist is a canny merging of cerebral formal experimentalism and unabashed popular romanticism. it swept up highbrow critics alongside a much larger mainstream audience than was typical for ‘challenging’ foreign - language cinema of the day. leading us film magazine premiere’s 1980s wrap - up poll voted it second only to raging bull (1980) as film of the decade .
while consumption and destruction are the elements of the film most often remarked by film reviewers, in the final por - tion of my discussion i focus instead on daisies’s thematic and for - mal preoccupation with collage and fragmentation in relation to an ironizing of gender performances. chytilová has stated that the film’s theme — an ethical critique of its destructive protago - nists — was inextricable from its form: “the form of the film was really derived from the conceptual basis of the film. because the concept of the film was destruction, the form became destructive as well. ”5 the “destructive form” that daisies employs, with breath - taking results, is collage, a result of cinematographer jaroslav kucera’s experiments with this technique. daisies’s surrealist motifs of montage and collage are epitomized in striking images of the heroines’ bodies splintered and recomposed. these formal strategies suggest an appropriation of surrealist tenets — incon - gruity and surprise, the denial of mimetic representation, and the revelatory power of fragmentation—by a czech feminist film - maker. though collage as a formal strategy was meant to support the film’s cautionary warning against vacuity, it also serves to unmask gender attributes as naturalized masquerade. the for - mal devices of fragmentation (in sound, image, and spatio - tem - porality), as well as the narrative depiction of cutting and dis - memberment, underscore the film’s allegorical presentation of the heroines as transgressive assemblages of gender attributes .
the movie’s back story is itself fascinating: it’s the latest of several remakes of a 1966 film that has long been lost. set in seattle, it stars ms. tang as a prison inmate on a furlough who falls in love with a korean gigolo, played by hyun bin. it was the highest - grossing korean film in china on release in 2012, and it’s a surprisingly low - key work, with an excellent albeit very quiet performance by ms. tang. i also checked out “so i married an anti - fan” (2016), whose boy - meets - girl, hate - love - hate - love plotline will be familiar to hallmark movie fans, but it builds up interest through its peppy depiction of asian fan culture .
wings is the debut feature of director, larisa shepitko, a contemporary of tarkvosky and parajanov but who only produced four films before her untimely death at the age of 42. the film tells the story of a former fighter pilot, nadezhda petrovna, who now works as a headmistress at a provincial school. yet her life is incomplete, her daughter is leaving to be married, nadezhda herself is in a passionless relationship and she longs for the past she once had .
artists contending with political repression have frequently made use of the artfulness of allegory. the strictures of nationalized filmmaking were also paradoxically productive, inspiring “an oblique, coded film culture” that “could tell quiet, often painful truths, ” qualities that a film industry subjected to the vicissitudes of the marketplace could never have sustained. 25
“wings” begins with a seemingly prosaic sequence in which nadezhda is measured for a conservative new suit that reflects her status as a member of the soviet bureaucracy. by breaking the action into isolated close - ups — an arm, a shoulder — as the tailor dryly recites his measurements, shepitko makes it clear that nadezhda is being fitted with a straitjacket, a garment that will leave her no room to spread the wings that war had given her. repeatedly, nadezhda looks up from her desk to examine a sky covered in milky clouds, a beckoning whiteness that finds its abstract counterpart in the snow - covered fields of “the ascent. ”
howard hawks was born on may 30, 1896, in goshen, indiana. his first script, tiger love, was produced in 1924. he made his directorial debut in 1926, with the road to glory. hawks directed only angels have wings in 1939 and sergeant york in 1941. the last film he directed was rio lobo, released in 1970. four years later, hawks won an honorary academy award. he died on december 26, 1977, in palm springs, california .
as director vera chytilová put it, “each of my films has met a cer - tain resistance on the part of authority. ”1 daisies [ sedmikrásky ] (czechoslovakia, 1966) was no exception. denounced by state deputies in czechoslovakia for “hav [ ing ] nothing in common with our republic, socialism, and the ideals of communism, ”2 daisies was initially banned and only eventually allowed public screening, and chytilová herself was barred from filmmaking from 1969 to 1975 .
there has been a lot of conjecture about what it was that the soviet authorities found so objectionable in the film. vita t. johnson and graham petrie suggest that the first official complaints in 1966 singled - out the film’s “excessive violence”, “naturalism”, and “anti - historical and anti - russian, cruel and harmful” qualities (8). but once the film was finally released, five years later, any negative reaction was just as likely to concern rather more prosaic issues, equivalent versions of which are familiar in many other national contexts. there were huge expectations upon its eventual release for this historical epic about the country’s most famous icon painter, but in failing to “live up to genre expectation for an audience nurtured on patriotic epics glorifying russia, it questioned such films’ underlying cultural myths of russia’s historical greatness” (9) but, more broadly, what proved problematic for the film in the brezhnev - era soviet union was also a key factor in tarkovsky’s ultimate ascension – after his death and in post - communist russia – to the status of the greatest post - war soviet film artist. he has been subsequently seen as the filmmaker who mined the deepest, most mystical veins of russian cultural identity, moving beyond the vicissitudes of modern history and politics. in the post - communist period, tarkovsky’s reputation has only expanded and globalised .
requests for even more cuts followed. tarkovsky refused. subsequently, the film was discussed extensively at the highest levels of the soviet film bureaucracy (at mosfilm and goskino) and of the communist party itself. the resulting stalemate meant that the film was effectively shelved until it was requested for the screening at the 1969 cannes film festival (5). after more stonewalling by the soviet authorities, andrei roublev was eventually screened at cannes out - of - competition (at 4 am .), and was subsequently awarded the international critics’ prize (6). the film was not released in the ussr until 1971, when it became a huge success (despite tarkovsky’s complaints about the lack of publicity and press coverage), partially as a result of being recognised as the most famous shelved film of its era. finally, following tarkovsky’s death, in 1988 the original 205 - minute version was released in the ussr as, once again, the passion according to andrei, receiving a rapturous critical and audience response (7) .
a masterwork and a great debut. a moving film about nostalgia, changing times / eras, middle age, womanhood, generational and class disputes, and moving from the past. i need to see more of larisa shepitko' s work. i' ve only seen one film by her and i can already tell she is a master .
1966 was indeed something of a high - water mark for world cinema: persona (ingmar bergman, sweden), 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (two or three things i know about her, jean - luc godard, france), blowup (michelangelo antonioni, britain / italy / usa), szegénylegények (the round - up, miklós jancsó, hungary), sedmikrásky (daisies, vera chytilová, czechoslovakia), and even erogotoshi - tachi yori: jinruigaku nyûmon (the pornographers, shohei imamura, japan), all emerged in that year. such films are frequently “self - reflexive” essays / meditations on the vexed issues surrounding the relationship between authorship or art and present - day modernity. in screening modernism: european art cinema, 1950 - 1980, university of chicago press, chicago, 2007, pp. 338 - 348, andrás bálint kovács tellingly devotes a chapter to andrei roublev, persona and blow up as the key films of 1966 .
daisies’s avowed critique of its overindulgent heroines notwithstanding, the film was, for a time, prevented from exhibi - tion due to official outcry over the “wastage of food. ” deputy pruzinec, a member of the national assembly, attacked daisies’s depiction of food orgies “at a time when our farmers with great difficulties are trying to overcome the problems of our agricul - tural production. ”18 many czechs at the time considered this to be an “unbelievable” interpretation of the film. public support for the film finally convinced the government to allow its screening, but the entire debacle gives the point to the postdedication of daisies: “this film is dedicated to all those soured by the sight of trampled down lettuce — only! ”19
a beautiful prescient film. in a world where the most basic animal material needs are fulfilled the human questions and needs are left wanting in a rigid hierarchical society based on capital accumulation .
this study has pursued several lines of inquiry in relation to daisies. given the strictures of the nationalized czech film indus - try of the 1960s, chytilová claimed that the film worked as a dis - guised denunciation of its heroines, two nonpositive, unethical, and self - absorbed young women who meet with a just, if terrible, end. yet this declared didacticism is not all that meets the eye: daisies affords an alternative view, one that upholds, with great rel - ish, the defiant unruliness of the heroines the film purports to disparage. this ironic undercurrent in the film, whose potential for radical critique so alarmed socialist censors, is precisely the reading i have attempted to elaborate and redeem. i have argued that the doubleness of daisies is owing to its allegorical structure; crucially, the use of dolls as allegorical ciphers for superficial and rapacious materialism opens the path to another reading of the film in terms of satirical feminist humor. at the heart of the film’s joke on blinkered masculinity are those stratagems whereby the perceived resemblance between women and dolls is exploited to ruthless effect by the two maries .
contemporary western screenings of the film are often accompanied by exclusively feminine laughter. equally, male viewers frequently feel an antipathy toward the film’s “heroines. ” this division no doubt relates partly to the fact that the film is on target and partly to a sense of humor that is sometimes only “seen” by one - half of the audience. also, the girls fail to conform to the stereotypes expected by a male audience... . socialism in czechoslovakia tended to institutionalize existing inequalities between the sexes, and daisies certainly constitutes an attack on some identifiable targets. 34
a lovely and nuanced character study of a once famous world war ii fighter pilot named nadezhda petrovna (maya bulgakova) who becomes a provincial schoolmistress, raising her adopted daughter as a single mother. larissa shepitko' s 1966 black - and - white feature is stately and reflective in a way that reminds me of some of the late films of john ford; its commentary on the pervasive effect of stalinism on postwar russia is multilayered and provocative. written by natalia ryazantseva and valentin yezhov. in russian with subtitles. 90 min .
wenders brought legendary cinematographer henri alekan – responsible for the haunting gothic chiaroscuro in jean cocteau’s 1946 la belle et la bête – out of retirement to shoot wings of desire (and named the film’s circus in his honour). alekan famously used a silk stocking as a filter for his textured, sepia - tinged black - and - white imagery, depicting the angels’ muted vision of the world. ironically, his rich, creamy monochrome might appear too gorgeously tactile for the angels’ non - sensory world, but its silent - cinema feel helps instantly convey their timeless existence .
a eerie parallel between film and reality with its director larisa shepitko is how at age 41, the protagonist nadezhda comes to terms with the disenchantment of a monotonous life she lives in post - war russia with loss of spirit and being virtually dead on the inside. shepitko died prematurely at age 41 ending a short but superb film career before it had the chance to blossom into supreme greatness .
daisies’s distant and disparaging view of its mannequinlike hero - ines is reminiscent of the narrative of the “reformed fashion model” chytilová pursued in ceiling (1961), her graduation film from famu (filmová a televizní fakulta amu), the state film school located in prague. like that earlier film, daisies is a parable about the ills of bourgeois acquisitiveness and materialism (symbolized by the two maries’ obsessive and ultimately destruc - tive consumption). this properly “revolutionary” narrative was present at the level of the screenplay in ceiling, though czech film critic joseph skvorecky notes that even in that early film chytilová’s avant - garde innovations undermined the script’s moralistic core: “although the schematic morality remained, the director blunted it by completely shifting the emphasis to form. ”13 skvorecky found ceiling’s emphasis on “rosseauvian communion” deplorably didactic, exemplifying the “then fash - ionable ‘return to the people for cathartic purposes, ’ ”14 and con - sidered chytilová’s clear allusion to ceiling in daisies to be unmis - takably ironic in tone .
“i’m going to eat in restaurants every day. ” get it, girl. a stitching of numerous poetic moments and phrases on faded significance and identity. that sounds depressing, except this one has fun moments like a russian doll play, a confused meeting of a daughter’s husband to be, and two women twirling each other in an empty bar. in wings, there’s such warmness added to such sadness .
contested intentions, or “a philosophical documentary in the form of a farce” antonin j. liehm describes the predicament of the filmmaker in czechoslovakia’s state - controlled film industry during the period of the czech new wave :
this is a film directed by larisa shepitko - - a woman whose life was cut very short at age 41. because russian movies are generally pretty tough to come by here in the us and because her career was short, there aren' t a lot of opportunities to see her films .
wings
is a very slow - moving film. this isn' t necessarily a criticism - - just a comment on the style. instead of telling the viewer a lot about the lady who is the subject of the film, you slowly begin to learn more about her as she appears to be in the throes of an existential crisis. nadezhda petrovna is a woman in her early 40s, though she appears much older. she is the principal of a high school but seems vaguely dissatisfied with her job and personal life. watching her, she seems rather sexless and emotionally stunted - - and a bit lost. as the film unfolds, you learn through brief flashback scenes that she was a pilot during wwii and apparently since then, she has been in a bit of a fog. and, the only time she smiles or seems at ease is when in an airplane. throughout nearly all of the film, petrovna walks about in a rather tentative and slow - motion manner - - and it may take some getting used to in order to enjoy the film. perhaps' enjoy' is not the right word, as this isn' t meant to be enjoyed but more appreciated for the character study that it is. visually and especially musically, this is a very, very good film - - very evocative but slow and with a rather vague ending that might disappoint many. i give it a 7, as it is a quality production - - but not one that i' d heartily endorse. by the way, while this is not a funny film and won' t elicit a lot of laughs, i did love seeing the school play where a few of the kids were dressed like nesting dolls (matryoshka dolls). this was pretty cute .
hames’s account resembles my personal experience of viewing this film. at the screening where i first encountered daisies, a con - cerned male viewer expressed his objections to the film’s protago - nists, whom he characterized as “annoyingly babyish, infantile girls. ” even then i felt that his understandable reading of the film—as confirming misogynist stereotypes about women as vain, frivolous creatures—merely skimmed the surface of a nuanced text whose objectionable heroines are paradoxically a source of glee for many women. in later screenings and conversa - tions with others about this film, i began to recognize the con - tours of a particular feminist reception of daisies. this reception, only one of many possible feminist readings, is characterized by delight in the diabolical heroines’ capacity to controvert gender expectations even when they appear to uphold them and by a double - tiered, allegorical reading of the film that allows the monstrosity of these unruly girls to come across as powerfully women - positive. it was this first glimpse of daisies’s radical disin - genuousness regarding gender performance that prompted my examination of allegory’s entanglement with feminist reception .
andrei tarkovsky’s epic film about andrei roublev, russia’s most famous icon painter, is a remarkable, deeply reflexive examination of the artist’s role in his particular social - historical reality. it is also concerned with the split that occurs between an artist’s elevated desire to create an art of clear, transcendent beauty and one that is responsive to the immediate world as it is: characterised by violence and suffering. although tarkovsky’s film is suffused with an idiosyncratically heroic vision of the artist, its insistence on an art informed by the world as it is rather than as we might like it to be, informs and problematises its content, immediate context and reception. its titular character, the young monk roublev, renounces his art in the face of its apparent irrelevance to reality, and then wanders through the film / world in often - silent observation. the film itself presented a very different vision of heroism and history than the one desired by soviet film and state authorities of the time. it also confounded the expectations of audiences awaiting an exotic widescreen epic about a famous russian artist from the middle ages .
of all the dazzlingly talented filmmakers to emerge from the soviet union, larisa shepitko has remained one of the least widely known. while many of her film school contemporaries, including andrei tarkovsky, sergei parajanov, and her eventual h…
ana lily amirpour is an iranian - american director, writer, producer, and actor best known for her award - winning debut film, the persian - language vampire western a girl walks home alone at night (2014) .
a loving film tribute to russian filmmaker larisa shepitko, who died tragically in a car accident in 1979 at the age of 40. this documentary by her husband, elem klimov, includes excerpts... see full summary »
the first time is an abrupt cut as she swings on her trapeze (wearing, naturally, angel wings); the second, more tender and deliberate shift comes just after she confesses her innermost feelings in damiel’s presence. as damiel departs, the image slowly shifts into colour: foreshadowing the union to come in the real world. for a film so intent on conjuring and then conquering a state of timelessness, this disruption of the image is the ultimate signifier that life and love within time are the only true reality. seeing blood as red. tasting coffee. feeling the cold. for wenders and his characters, the realm of the senses is the one that truly makes sense .
andrei roublev couldn’t have been made anywhere else or at any other time. by the time it was completed its moment had passed. the liberalisation of the cultural sphere in the ussr during the period of nikita khrushchev’s leadership, commonly known as “the thaw”, and which enabled the making and release of tarkovsky’s celebrated first feature, ivanovo detstvo (ivan’s childhood), in 1962, was the context in which andrei roublev was first approved and budgeted. by 1966 much had changed (khrushchev himself had been deposed in 1964). and yet following a moscow screening of the film for various critics and “officials”, it was declared a “significant work of art” and provisionally garnered the necessary approval for release. however, tarkovsky’s film was also denied the all - important certificate necessary for a proper release (3). soon substantial cuts were requested. desperate to get his film seen by the public, tarkovsky acquiesced, ultimately shortening it to a length of 186 minutes. this version then screened at the prestigious dom kino, garnering both ecstatic responses and further criticism. that this version is the one most commonly seen today is partly a result of tarkovsky’s later claims that it was his preferred cut. although many critics have subsequently treated the second official cut as definitive, tarkovsky’s declaration needs to be seen in its personal and historical context (4) .
don’t forget that the film’s original title is der himmel über berlin – the sky or heavens over berlin – and that the project began as an investigation into germany’s then - divided city. indeed, its angels were only brought in as an inspired afterthought. perhaps acknowledging the tradition of early ‘city symphony’ silent films like dziga vertov’s man with a movie camera (1929) or even walter ruttmann’s berlin, symphony of a city (1927), wings of desire is also in part a wonderful time capsule of wintry, pre - unification berlin. its roving aerial camerawork and ground - level tracking wide shots highlight the city’s desolate no - man’s - land expanses bound by the ever - present wall .
for her first feature after graduating from the all - russian state institute for cinematography (vgik), larisa shepitko trained her lens on the fascinating russian character actress maya bulgakova, who gives a marvelous performance as a once heroic russian fighter pilot now living a quiet, disappointingly ordinary life as a school principal. subtly portraying one woman’s desperation with elegant, spare camera work and casual, fluid storytelling, shepitko, with wings, announced herself as an important new voice in soviet cinema .
the career of larisa shepitko, an icon of sixties and seventies soviet cinema, was tragically cut short when she was killed in a car crash at age forty, just as she was emerging on the international scene. the body of work she left behind, though small, is masterful, and her genius for visually evoking characters’ interior worlds is never more striking than in her two greatest works: wings, an intimate yet exhilarating portrait of a female fighter pilot turned provincial headmistress, and the ascent, a gripping, tragic wartime parable of betrayal and martyrdom. a true artist who had deftly used the soviet film industry to make statements both personal and universal, shepitko remains one of the greatest unsung filmmakers of all time .
get ready to take notes: the centerpiece of sight & sound’s october issue is an annotated list of 100 overlooked films by women. in an article titled “the female gaze, ” the magazine’s editors write, “we aim to challenge official film hi…
larisa shepitko directed only four features in her short career (the other two are “heat, ” her 1963 diploma film, and the 1971 “you and i, ” her only color film). in 1979, while searching for locations for a new feature she and four members of her crew were killed in a car accident. the film, based on valentin rasputin’s 1976 novel “farewell to matyora, ” was finished by klimov in 1981 and promptly shelved. its story of a siberian village, drowned by a new dam in the name of progress, its peasant population shipped off to a soulless housing project, ends with a group of figures fading into a white mist. (eclipse, $ 29. 95, not rated )
the film does offer, nevertheless, a kind of thematic heroism, but of a kind unfamiliar to both hollywood and soviet models of the time. this is especially clear in light of brezhnev - era repression and the ussr’s overall attitude (at least from stalin onwards) towards artistic freedom. but this heroism is also troubling, at least in retrospect, accounting for a key part of the film’s role and reputation as a misty talisman for the reactionary russian orthodox resurgence of the last two decades .
the final half, though, is all the more effective for its simplicity. maya becomes a fully - realised and very sympathetic character. the film' s climax is marvellously done, and evokes some unexpected emotions as its themes finally culminate at once .
on the czech new wave and the nationalized film industry in czechoslovakia, see peter hames, the czechoslovak new wave (berkeley: university of california press, 1985) and bjorn ingvoldstad, after the velvet revolution: an industrial survey of the czech and slovak film industries in the cold war era, urltoken, which summarizes the effects of the 1945 nationalization of the czech film industry. the czech new wave refers to “the emergence of a group of talented young filmmakers” during “the political thaw of de - stalinization” in the 1960s. this era came to an end in august 1968 when the “liberal vision of ‘socialism with a human face’ ” espoused by president alexander dubcek was “shattered by direct soviet military intervention. ” some of the directors associated with the czech new wave left for the west (milos forman and jan nemec), but others, like chytilová, remained in czechoslovakia “despite being barred from working in film for several years”; moreover, “many new wave films were ‘banned forever’ by subsequent government decree” (ingvoldstad) .
i am entirely in agreement with skvorecky that daisies must be seen in an ambivalent and tacitly adversarial relation to the dic - tates of state - supervised film production. seen in this light, it becomes possible for him to suggest that daisies’s credit sequence, whose footage of explosions and air strikes links the heroines’ consumption to social destruction, 16 might be a knowing attempt to avert criticism. given the atmosphere of intense censorship surrounding the productions of the czech new wave, skvorecky’s remarks suggest that the film, as well as the discourse of authorial intent surrounding it, are not straight communicative perform - ances. this might help explain why chytilová, on whose vehe - ment feminism film reviewers and scholars constantly remark, repeatedly articulates the philosophical critiques at work in daisies but remains surprisingly silent about the feminist content so often detected in the work. 17 in stressing the overdetermined nature of daisies’s regard for its heroines, it is not even necessary to impute conscious calculation or canniness to the filmmakers, as skvorecky does. the nationalized, state - controlled film indus - try simultaneously provided conditions of possibility and exerted productive constraints upon daisies and its director; given that the film was censured for seeming to endorse its unruly heroines, maintaining the converse is an understandable and expected line of defense .
the dia' s historic auditorium, the detroit film theatre, is unlike anywhere else in metro detroit, with state - of - the - art projection, luxurious seats, and original décor from 1927. the dft is perfect for large meetings and conferences .
originally from philadelphia, kate mccabe now makes her home near joshua tree, california where she founded the art collective kidnap yourself. she is a graduate of the university of the arts and she obtained her mfa in experimental animation from the california institute of the arts under the innovative jules engel. she is an award winning independent filmmaker who has shown films globally since 1995 in both film festivals and galleries. sabbia, her first feature film, a visual album for brant bjork, is distributed internationally. her current work includes paintings, photography, short fiction, and art books, her most recent being a sketch comic book called “mojave weather diaries. ” kate has taught film as a visiting artist at calarts and uc san diego and works as the archivist for filmmaker pat o’neill .
longtime friends, hawks and faulkner worked on a number of films together over the years. their next project was the film noir thriller the big sleep (1946) with bogart and bacall. based on the raymond chandler novel, the film is considered to be one of the great classics of its genre. two years later, hawks made one of his most famous westerns with john wayne. red river (1948) starred wayne as a cattleman who must grapple with his difficult relationship with his adopted son played by montgomery clift .
“when i work with film i play with light and time, rhythm and shadow. i started to shoot milk and honey and i knew i had begun to capture moments that could transport the viewer between worlds of light and shadow to a place of tangible nostalgia .
making the leap to sound, hawks directed his first talking picture, the dawn patrol, in 1930. the wwi drama starred douglas fairbanks jr. and featured many exciting aerial fight scenes. switching genres, he tackled the gangster saga scarface with paul muni, george raft, and boris karloff. the violent tale was caught up in a censorship battle waged by the producer howard hughes against the film industry & apos; s production code administration. finally released in 1932, the film was a big hit and paved the way for more such crime dramas .
in the 205 - minute version of the film we see the complete arcs of these sublime shots. in the “short” version we sometimes only see the first and last minute, the unique continuity of these quintessential “time - images” (to use gilles deleuze’s famous phrase) is curtailed .
the crux of my argument is this: daisies can be read multi - valently as enabling both a critique of the heroines’ excesses (cor - responding to the state - approved screenplay and chytilová’s declared intentions) and a latent feminist delight in the hero - ines’ ability to effect reversals in the patriarchal order. this study espouses a counterreading of daisies that corresponds neither to the director’s account nor to the censors’ ill - considered objec - tions to the film. while my allegorical reading of the film might be at variance with declared authorial intent, it remains apprecia - tive of that strong chord of defiance in daisies that government officials were quick to impugn and chytilová eager to gainsay. my counterreading of the film discerns, beneath daisies’s apparent condemnation of its heroines, a feminist allegory in which the doll metaphor is retooled as a celebration of female recalcitrance.
wings ( russian : крылья , tr . krylya ) is a 1966 soviet black and white drama film directed by ukrainian filmmaker larisa shepitko , her first feature film made after graduating from the all-russian state institute for cinematography . in 1979 , the little known director , screenwriter and actress died in a car accident , leaving behind only a small artistic output of four films . 
wings (russian: крылья, tr. krylya) is a 1966 soviet black and white drama film directed by ukrainian filmmaker larisa shepitko, her first feature film made after graduating from the all-russian state institute for cinematography. in 1979, the little known director, screenwriter and actress died in a car accident, leaving behind only a small artistic output of four films.
wings (russian: крылья, tr. krylya) is a 1966 soviet black and white drama film directed by ukrainian filmmaker larisa shepitko, her first feature film made after graduating from the all-russian state institute for cinematography. in 1979, the little known director, screenwriter and actress died in a car accident, leaving behind only a small artistic output of four films.