Just shows low budget films can be the greatest

Of all the films I’ve seen over the past two weeks – and there have been 11 – two especially stand out. Both are low budget flicks and both date from the 1970s. The first was News from Home by the late great (suicide 2015) Belgium auteur Chantal Akerman. Akerman spent some of her early adult days scratching out an existence in New York City. And News from Home seems to reflect her life as an immigrant to the Big Apple. All it is, is a series of long still shots of life in Manhattan circa 1976. The camera dwells on individual locations – intersections, blocks, parking lots - several minutes at a time. Recognizable locations are the Lower East Side, Midtown, 10th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen and various subway stations. Interspersed is voice over of her mother’s letters from home – a typical provincial mother who worries about her daughter in what was then considered a very dangerous American city. But the letters are typical of an overconcerned parent anywhere, dwelling on the little events that make up family life – “Sylvaine is taking her exams, I hope she does well” - and impatient for her daughter to write more often. What the film shows, however, is the stark grit that was Manhattan in the 1970s. The streets look moody, dim, buildings dilapidated and poorly lit, a type of mist – or is it pollution? – enveloping the sky, and the bleakness and indeed filth and anarchy of the subway. Trains pull into stations, each car a canvas of grime and graffiti, the passengers like walking dead, numb to it all. (This was Son of Sam time and before the infamous Bernard Goetz vigilantism). Todd Phillips’s 2019 Joker starring Joaquin Phoenix encapsulated the era……The second film was Alfredo Giannetti’s 1971 The Automobile starring the wonderful Anna Magnani. Magnani may be lesser known to North American audiences but she was a heralded star in Italy with descriptions of her as “volcanic” and “passionate, fearless, and exciting." Tennessee Williams wrote The Rose Tattoo for her. The Automobile is the simplest of stories, yet its magnificence comes from the great Magnani, who no doubt plays herself, a suffer no fools independent woman who brushes would-be pick-ups like dandruff off her shoulders. But she’s aging. “When you are at a certain age what is there but loneliness?” she muses. The solution? Getting a car! Perhaps its midlife crisis. But no one will deter Anna from learning to drive and purchasing a yellow sports car. This film is a quirky character study of a person who won’t conform to society’s rules, living life to the beat of her own drum. A genuinely  engrossing performance…..Both films are available on the Criterion Channel.