333 Fists in the Pocket

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solent · #26 Post by **solent** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 11:34 pm

My copy is on its way so I won't need my BFI video anymore. Good thing since I've watched it too many times.

dOc review

Cinesimilitude · #27 Post by **Cinesimilitude** » Thu May 04, 2006 9:28 pm

just finished it, and upon initial viewing, it's ok. I liked it more after I heard what bertolucci had to say about it, and will probably watch it a few more times to see if I like it a lot. one things for sure, Guilia (Paola Pitagora) is rediculously beautiful in this film, and ofcourse, the transfer is fantastic.

Dylan · #28 Post by **Dylan** » Fri May 05, 2006 12:18 am

I watched this a few nights ago, and I think it's great. A very, very interesting, strange film about a profoundly dysfunctional Italian family in the upper class. Bellocchio has a strange way of introducing the characters (all brothers and sisters): passing notes to each other, having strangely ambiguous passionate dialogue toward one another, referring to things that we couldn't possibly be in the know of that sound suspiciously ˜obsessive-romantic', it struck me at first almost as if this is some kind of ambiguously incestual family.

HerrSchreck · #29 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Fri May 05, 2006 12:32 am

Dylan wrote:.. it struck me at first almost as if this is some kind of ambiguously incestual family.

You're first impression was correct, I suspect.

gubbelsj · #30 Post by **gubbelsj** » Fri May 05, 2006 12:44 am

HerrSchreck wrote:You're first impression was correct, I suspect.

Yeah, the incest between Alessandro and Giulia is hinted at pretty strongly. That subtext adds greater drama to the shockingly violent fight they break into at the table - almost a fierce lovers' quarrel.

Paola Pitagora - whew. And Lou Castel's performance ranks right up there with DeNiro in Mean Streets, a nerve-shattering display of barely contained psychotic energy. This film really has no mercy.

And how about that interview with Castel? He looks like a boozy monk, swaying in a psychedelic hammock, twirling a tin cup, and later appears to be fixing his eye glasses with an antique nail file or tweezers. One of the best video interviews yet.

HerrSchreck · #31 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Fri May 05, 2006 12:51 am

His acting in the film is very remeniscnet of Brando (I think it's no accident that he's dipping his chip in his sister and she simultaneously has a Brando pic on her mirror), so it's hilarious that as he got old he wound up looking JUST like Brando, aged... complete with interview eccentricities.

Dylan · #32 Post by **Dylan** » Fri May 05, 2006 1:10 am

You're first impression was correct, I suspect

I definitely caught onto the incest betweel Ale and Giulia, I meant that at first it seemed like it was going on with Augusto as well (and maybe it was, but that's not as strongly confirmed)...Leone certainly never seemed part of this, though there is a strange fascination involving him as well. And I can't believe I forgot to mention the Brando parallels with Castel's looks and the Brando pic Giulia has on her mirror...it's a great, fascinating touch. There was definitely some sensual tension (and fascination) between them (I'll second the passionately bickery fight scene), and this makes the ending all the more terrific.

Paola Pitagora...any other films with her worth seeing?

gubbelsj · #33 Post by **gubbelsj** » Fri May 05, 2006 12:16 pm

Dylan wrote:Paola Pitagora...any other films with her worth seeing?

Hmmmm, it's pretty dismal. Henri Verneuil's Night Flight From Moscow (1972) and Sergio Sollima's Revolver (1975) are out on dvd, but neither of these look like large roles.

A bigger role came in 1983's Flipper, but it's about pinball, not an adorable dolphin. Sounds like Bellocchio's the only one to frame Pitagora in a role and setting worthy of her stunning beauty, but there may be smaller, obscure Italian films I haven't come across.

evillights · #34 Post by **evillights** » Sun May 07, 2006 6:37 pm

Among his other fine achievements, Castel in recent times (say, within the last decade and a half) has been cast to kind of encapsulate the "post-'68" generation, to stand in for (and lend a presence onscreen via his own experience as one of) the dashed great hopes. The pairing by Philippe Garrel of him and Jean-Pierre Léaud in Garrel's 'La Naissance de l'amour' (The Birth of Love) has a lot of resonance for me -- as does his turn in Olivier Assayas's 'Irma Vep' in which he's used to invoke not just post-'68 but his place in the cinema of Garrel. (Whose entire body of work can be seen as "writing on the wall" of May's aftermath.) He's a captivating performer.

solent · #35 Post by **solent** » Tue May 16, 2006 10:02 pm

Here is an interview with Lou Castel which includes references to FISTS. I like the fact that Bellocchio and I share one thing in common: we both get bored 10 minutes into a Fellini film.

tavernier · #36 Post by **tavernier** » Wed May 17, 2006 12:04 am

solent wrote:I like the fact that Bellocchio and I share one thing in common: we both get bored 10 minutes into a Fellini film.

Nobody's perfect.

Dylan · #37 Post by **Dylan** » Wed May 17, 2006 12:20 am

I like the fact that Bellocchio and I share one thing in common: we both get bored 10 minutes into a Fellini film.

Umm, where did he say this?

solent · #38 Post by **solent** » Wed May 17, 2006 3:59 pm

As to Fellini, his Catholic complexes push him in a direction where I can't follow at all. I am always bored after ten minutes of a Fellini film.

--Bellocchio, from a 1967 interview, page 14 of the Criterion booklet of FISTS IN THE POCKET.

Don't you guys read the booklets?

(I must admit that one Fellini film didn't bore me and that was LA STRADA.) Can you Fellini fans out there really sit through three hours of LA DOLCA VITA without getting even a little restless?

Here are quotes by Rcihard Roud [p. 347, CINEMA: A CRITICAL DICTIONARY, 1980] which make sense to me:

...I am one of those (few) people who cannot accept Fellini as a major film-maker. I liked the earlier films, but from the moment he became convinced of his intellectual importance, I have found the films hard to take."

...Fellini's persistantly Manichean view of mankind - people are either good and beautiful, or ugly and bad - seems simple-minded. There is nothing wrong with embodying your personal vision in a film provided that vision is really interesting: Fellini's, I submit, is not.

I don't see anything too glaringly incorrect about these views. They are personal observations which I happen to agree with. (I still find it amusing to see 81/2 as a top ten film. I see it as a good film but not a masterpiece.)

tavernier · #39 Post by **tavernier** » Wed May 17, 2006 4:04 pm

This of course belongs in a Fellini thread, since you moved away from Bellocchio's comments. But quoting Richard Roud doesn't help your case about Fellini's filmic failures. And no, La Dolce Vita doesn't make me restless, and 8-1/2 is a masterpiece, so there!

Dylan · #40 Post by **Dylan** » Wed May 17, 2006 5:07 pm

Don't you guys read the booklets?

Well, I didn't buy "Fists," I Netflixed it, so I couldn't. Otherwise I would've because I thought it was quite great.

I only asked you because I thought Fellini and Bellocchio were acquaintances (though of course that doesn't necessarily mean they liked each other's work).

Can you Fellini fans out there really sit through three hours of LA DOLCA VITA without getting even a little restless?

The first time I saw "La Dolce Vita" I wiped the tears from my face and started it over, then watched it yet again the next day, then again the next week. It either clicks or it doesn't, but for me "La Dolce Vita" was one of the most important cinematic discoveries of my life. But yeah, I understand that it really bores some people (though at least most agree that the look and milieu is astonishing).

from the moment he became convinced of his intellectual importance, I have found the films hard to take

A lot of people say the same exact thing when dismissing post-Annie Hall Woody Allen. I guess what this means is that the works themselves tell the viewer that "I'm an important intellectual?" That the filmmaker's growth as an artist is just pretensions? Sorry, that doesn't make any god damn sense to me.

people are either good and beautiful, or ugly and bad

Come on! This quote ranks with the last line in Roger Ebert's "Elephant Man" review. Who's "ugly and bad" or "good and beautiful" in a Fellini film? Shit, who's ugly & good and bad & beautiful in a Fellini film? Watch a George Lucas film for that, this really doesn't apply to Fellini.

Fellini mix of both physical extremes is just one element of his circus allegory to illustrate a destructive (emotional or otherwise), decrepit, and at times deceptively beautiful and sexy world, and none of these people are good or bad. I have no clue where somebody got signifying good and bad or beautiful and ugly out of Fellini. This is the heart of Italian cinema, which is not a genre, and we certainly are not dealing with conventions here.

There's nothing wrong with not liking Fellini (we're all here for one reason: to praise, discuss, and bitch about the spectrum of film we're in love with). But you actually seem to like him ok if you think "8 1/2" is 'good' and "La Strada" is 'not boring.' However, some of these reasons you quoted baffle me...and rightfully so I suppose, since I think so highly of Fellini.

To rear us back in...have you seen any post Fists Bellocchio, any more of his black and white works?

tryavna · #41 Post by **tryavna** » Wed May 17, 2006 5:42 pm

To be honest, I can sympathize with Solent's point of view -- at least insofar as I also get restless during some of Fellini's longer films. I don't actively dislike Fellini, mind you. Rather, my attitude towards him is much like my attitude towards Faulkner: I can understand why each one's respective work thrills many people, yet neither really does very much for me. So they hold my respect but not my attention.

It's a bit odd, though, how some major artists just don't seem to connect with certain viewers who are still intelligent and perceptive. This echoes something we've talked about recently in the thread for Onibaba.

solent · #42 Post by **solent** » Thu May 18, 2006 6:53 am

SPOILER

Getting back onto the topic; I only saw the interview with Bellocchio once but I could swear he said that the protagonist [Castel] doesn't die at the end. I think the film's editor argued that he should die to make sense of the plot. When I first saw the film I didn't accept his 'death' since the final frames are frozen but I assumed he did. I have a similar problem with MacCabe's 'death.' if you look carefully you can see him breathing before the final cut to Julie Christie. Unlike FISTS I believe McCabe will die.

In regard to Fellini: I have done it again haven't I? The last time I criticised him [2 years ago?] I got a flood of 'hate' mail as well. I think I will lay off this subject, I seem to be alone in my views - apart from Roud, if he is still living.

If D.H. Lawrence is a great writer then why do people find the reading his novels a chore?

Narshty · #43 Post by **Narshty** » Fri May 26, 2006 3:48 pm

The folks at Criterion have generally done us proud with their annual â€˜forgotten Italian director' tradition, but I thought this was a bit of a clunker. A rather shapeless and aimless movie, wasting a good premise on a script that barely held together in both logic and psychology, it had none of the promised â€˜coolly assured style', nor â€˜masterwork' status. Lou Castel's actor's shortcut of showing his unbalanced mental state by glowering at everything then bursting into manic laughter every 5 minutes got very old very quickly. I was dismayed at the screeching awfulness of Ennio Morricone's score as well. It clearly got backs riled at the time, but precious little of it remains shocking nowadays, or for that matter engaging.

Lemmy Caution · #44 Post by **Lemmy Caution** » Fri May 26, 2006 5:58 pm

Really enjoyed Fists in the Pocket.
Something impressively neo-Gothic about the whole affair.
A family of misfits tucked away in a big house. And then murder, for rather disturbed, though logical reasons.

Definite undercurrents of incest. Not just the early love poem incident, but especially Gulia and Alessandro lying on the floor forgetting about Leone. Also, an interesting choice to have Gulia first introduced to us as a girl that Augusto picks up and brings home. It takes a while for us to learn that it is his sister.

One way to parse the incest theme, is that Augusto and Alessandro are opposite sides of the same character. Augusto being confident, dutiful, responsible. While Alessandro is uncertain, selfish, monstrously irresponsible. Both try to lead and direct the family in their way. Gulia functions as the counterpart to Augusto's girlfriend, Lucia. [Note that Alessandro goes to a pro for sex]

Of course there is a third male (Leone) and third female (the Mother). So an argument could be made that beyond the doubling of Augusto and Alessandro, there is in fact a tripling. There is the psychological interpretation of id, ego, superego being Leone, Alessandro, Augusto respectively. Each one paired with a feminine counterpart-- the Mother, Gulia, and Lucia. Leone and the Mother merely functioning on a basic level of needs. Ale and Gulia acting selfishly and recklessly, according to impulse. Augusto and Lucia caring for others and future-oriented.

Another interpretation of the tripling is that they represent the stages of development from helpless infantile (Leone and the Mother), to confused rebellious adolescence (Ale and Gulia), to responsible adulthood (Augusto and Lucia).

The film has the youthful vibrancy of a first film. But I thought it captured the rhythms and boredom and claustrophobia of a family context quite well. And I could watch Paola Pitagora doing nothing for hours. Too bad it was never her turn in the bath.

HerrSchreck · #45 Post by **HerrSchreck** » Sat May 27, 2006 9:17 am

For me this film was one of the finest cinematic discoveries of the past ten years, the absolute crux of the function labels like CC & Kino serve on my behalf. THE KNACK won the golden palm that year (then again to be fair I can't remember if this film was even entered)...

This film is so breathtakingly beautiful on so many levels. The resonance of it's symbols and images vibrate with such an unusual depth, so open ended, tickling along the borderline of so many meanings. The foggy open-endedness, the Shufftan-like cinematographic gloom, the occasional motif of smiling melancholic over a stabbing grief, the hugeness of the psychic agonies ripping at these folks, and the hazy quiet bleakness with which those agonies are portrayed (along with the keep-from-losing-your-head-laughter-bursts) it's like a 180 proof drink that rolls down like ice water and blows up in your stomach & blooms in the back of your head with euphoria. Throw into these poetics the sick fucking subject matter-- incest, borderline insanity, messing with the heads of (and dancing at the deaths of) the blind and the mentally-disabled, murder.. ah.. finest rare delicacies.

There may be some folks who aren't predisposed to back up from the moment to moment melodrama, to get at the distance that prompts the poetry and ambiguity to blow open with so much hidden material; but boy, if you do, you'll see what the hoo-ha is about this most sublime, healthy-fucking-sick film. As good at it gets and a cast & filmmakers with balls as big as a bull elephant. On an emotional level (though perhaps not philosophical), I find this far more satisfying than VIRIDIANA, with which it shares some very obvious basic, surface ideas.

Jean-Luc Garbo · #46 Post by **Jean-Luc Garbo** » Sat May 27, 2006 1:17 pm

When I read Women In Love and Sons and Lovers, I found the dialogue to be wooden. Plus, everyone's heard of Lady Chatterly's Lover and chosen to read only that novel so people may be a little burned out on Lawrence after that.

Michael · #47 Post by **Michael** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 11:19 am

Oh. My. God. I'm still slapping my face for not having heard anything about Fists in the Pocket till the Criterion released it. I fail to find the words to justify my awe of this film.

I totally love the films beautifully eerie atmosphere and also its bizarrely sympathetic treatment of each character no matter how chilly or fucked up the character is. The portrait of the broken Italian family is so vividly intimate and earthy that it feels like we're sitting right at their dinner table.

Narshty expressed his frustration with Leo Castel breaking out in a seizure every five minutes. I didn't mind that a bit because it was completely impossible to blink my eyes away from him. His seizures may be repetitive and predictable but I've seen that way too common at a group home I used to work at but his character is still very unpredictable. We have no idea where he's heading to, what he's going to do. He's a ticking bomb waiting to explode no matter how boyish or cute or innocent he looks. Every time he drives, the intensity is sickeningly unbearable and much worse than all the Hollywood action flicks put together.

I also love the use of the villa. It has a magnificent feeling of abandonment and isolation especially with that glorious expansive view of the wintry mountains. The villa appears like a hollow cicada shell clinging to a bigger life force, waiting to fall anytime. And the people living in that shell are like ants scurrying, working, living about without a queen.

The ending...wow. I was frozen stiff in my couch for at least 1/2 hour. I love love love the last frame with the scratches and the music continuing playing after. GORGEOUS.

I've recommended Lucrecia Martel's La Cienaga too many times to count on this forum. It is one of my all time favorites and this film is so much like Fists in the Pocket .. so much that I think both films would make perfect companions. La Cienaga is another portrait of an impossibly fucked up family.. just as fascinating and intimate and poetic and scary as Fists in the Pocket. Both films feature old run down family estates that were once glorious and also refuse to resolve any issues. The sheer beauty, brilliance, uniqueness and open-endness of those films make those my favorites for as long as I live.

Narshty · #48 Post by **Narshty** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 11:34 am

Michael - I ask you in absolute honesty without snarkiness of any sort - does this sort of reaction (ie. the "I exploded with joy and amazement as the credits rolled and am now typing this with one foot" stuff) genuinely strike you with every movie you've enjoyed or are you just exaggerating for comic effect?

Michael wrote:Narshty expressed his frustration with Leo Castel breaking out in a seizure every five minutes. [...] He's a ticking bomb waiting to explode no matter how boyish or cute or innocent he looks.

WTF? My disagreement about the character aside, he's the most glowering, sinister-looking fucker you ever saw. The last time I saw anyone more menacing was on a night bus.

I now realise what Fists in the Pocket reminded me of - a not-nearly-as-entertaining retread of Seeds of Sin.

Michael · #49 Post by **Michael** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 11:47 am

Michael - I ask you in absolute honesty without snarkiness of any sort - does this sort of reaction (ie. the "I exploded with joy and amazement as the credits rolled and am now typing this with one foot" stuff) genuinely strike you with every movie you've enjoyed or are you just exaggerating for comic effect?

Huh? Exaggerating? Who are you to judge the way I feel about movies? So fuck off.

There are tons tons tons of movies that I hate but I don't bother writing about them on here because they don't worth my time anyway. I did once at a great length.. look at Brokeback Mountain.

When a movie knocks me out because it's so unexpectedly damn good, then I get very excited to write about it. If you don't like it, then move on and worry about more important things. I'm not a movie critic...I just come here to express my thoughts and emotions whenever I feel like it.

You had the right to express your thoughts of Fists in the Pocket earlier.. then me have mine.

#50 Post by **Matt** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 12:01 pm

Narshty wrote:I now realise what Fists in the Pocket reminded me of - a not-nearly-as-entertaining retread of Seeds of Sin.

I love you. And you're so right. I thought the same thing.