Gutbrain Records

Friday, 14 January 2005

There's an interview with Jorge Luis Borges here. I like what he says at the end about "the myth of countries". Last weekend I was listening to a recording of a lecture he gave at Harvard in the late '60s. It's available as part of a 4-CD set which contains six lectures Borges delivered at Harvard. I listened to "The Riddle of Poetry" and was touched by how much charm, gentleness and humility accompany Borges's erudition.

Last night I watched Pepe le Moko. I tried to watch it several years ago, but the video cassette I had at that time lost all the sound about halfway through. I found out how it ended eventually, not by watching either of the well known remakes, Algiers and Casbah, but by listening to Orson Welles's "Mercury Theatre on the Air" radio adaptation of Algiers. You can download that program (and many others) here. They're all worth listening to, and many of them have original music by Bernard Herrmann. (His work for Orson Welles's radio shows is what led to his first movie-soundtrack gig: Citizen Kane.)

After finally watching the movie from beginning to end — and it was riveting — I found myself thinking that Pepe le Moko is the Father, Bob le Flambeur is the Son and Breathless is the Holy Ghost. It also occurred to me that Hitchock must have appreciated the scene where Régis is killed. Did he ever say anything about Pepe le Moko?

The Criterion Pepe le Moko DVD I watched had some weird problems with focus. About half of the shots looked beautiful, just gorgeous, but the other half had a strange fish-eye focus, where only the center of the image was sharp and clear. On Criterion's web site it says, "Certain imperfections in the negative have been retained in order to preserve the richness of the black and white". Maybe this focus problem is what they mean. I don't know.

Continuing with the subject of DVD quality, if you watch Criterion's DVD of Tokyo Story, you'll probably want to turn the contrast on your television set all the way down. I'm not trying to make Criterion look bad, by the way. I'm very enthusiastic about their releases and, remember, I want them to put out a DVD of King Hu's The Valiant Ones. While I'm at it, I'd like to suggest that they put out a DVD of Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows and a "Director's Signature" edition of Elaine May's A New Leaf, restored to its original running time.