Art House in the Middle of the Street #0: The End's Not Near, It's Here

The end is here. The Earth is one continuous, blighted landscape. Fossil fuels are as distant a memory as the great prehistoric beasts from which they originated. The wastes are ruled by marauding psychopathic biker gangs. Either that or a somewhat minor culture blog is calling it quits. I can't quite remember.

Ending a feature mid-stream as I'm doing with Art House is a somewhat disappointing resolution. Then again, I really only proposed the thing so I could have an excuse to watch a Janus movie every week. And because I still own the box, I could ostensibly keep doing that. Chances are, though, that I probably won't.

Why not? With a few purely enjoyable exceptions (Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast), the movies contained in "Essential Art House" aren't what you'd qualify as "easy watches." They can be agonizingly slow (Ozu's Floating Weeds) or terrifyingly sere (Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain).

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #16: Fists in the Pocket

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

Fists in the Pocket (1965; dir. Marco Bellocchio)

Why It's Important: A bit tougher to tell with this one. It's easy to point at films like The Bicycle Thieves or Vertigo and explain the cataclysmic impact they had on the history of film. But with the lesser-known films in Janus' box set - and Fists in the Pocket is assuredly one of them - it's a tougher game. The film's Wikipedia entry tells us that author Rex Pickett (Sideways) cites it as a big influence, though similarities between Alexander Payne's 2004 version of Pickett's novel are tough to spot. Rovi hails it as one of the last great classics of the Italian neo-realist period, but the film's bracingly experimental editing and grim absurdity are a far cry from the level-headed reality of a film like The Bicycle Thieves. But other than that, the film is little-known outside of a small circle of dedicated film buffs and the filmmakers it influenced so heavily (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci). But they sure seem to love it.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #15: The Rules of the Game

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

The Art House is getting an (extreme) makeover! I'm tired of the old format (or lack thereof), so I'm shaking things up: instead of just writing a traditional long-form review, I'm gonna split my pieces into subheadings, a la my fellow blogger Chris Holden.

In terms of formulating the headings themselves, I tried to think about the purpose behind my writing these pieces. After thinking for a few hours and failing to come up with anything other than "to listen to the sound of my own voice," I decided to focus on why you, the reader, should be reading these pieces. What information do you want to know about these weirdo movies full of funny-talkin' foreigners?

I thought about that for a while longer, and after again failing to come up with anything, I just made up some shit. Enjoy.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #14: M

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

Oh the procedural: so formulaic, yet so stunningly popular. The new millennium has yielded an embarrassment of innovative television riches, but it's the procedural that has kept the vast majority of drama-watching Americans enthralled. CBS's slate of grotesque crime dramas has captivated America for the better part of the last decade: CSI, CSI: NY, CSI: Miami, NCIS, NCIS: LA. It almost seems like Jerry Bruckheimer could pick three letters at random and toss a Who song at the front of the credits, and he'd have another hit.

Fritz Lang's M, then, pulls off a neat trick: it is perhaps the founding document of this most odious of genres, and yet it entertained me in a way that no modern crime procedural could approach. It's probably fair to point out that the founders of a particular genre often do it better than any of their imitators, though. If the crime procedural is grunge rock, then NCIS and CSI are Nickelback and Seether.

I guess I found the procedural's Nirvana, then.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #13: Black Orpheus

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

It had to happen sometime. I knew at a certain point in my journey through the annals of foreign movie history, I'd have to find a movie that I genuinely disliked.

Not that I haven't struggled to make it through certain weeks. Fires on the Plain was trying (and I can't see myself ever wanting to sit through it again), but I admired its gut-punch effectiveness. A war movie, after all, shouldn't be "endlessly watchable."

And Floating Weeds was perhaps the slowest movie I've ever seen, but I came to truly appreciate it (and actually enjoy it) by the end.

I wasn't confident enough at the time to declare that I couldn't stand The Seventh Seal, but I'll say it now: what a bloated, pretentious piece of poop. It had its moments (the parade of the flagellants was great, and I'll admit the danse macabre was truly poetic), but mostly it was formless and in love with the sound of its own insights.

But the time has come, visitors to the Art House. I'm finally ready to say it: I couldn't stand Black Orpheus.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #12: Floating Weeds

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

I won't lie to you: Floating Weeds took some doing to get through. Here's a list of things I did while watching Yasujiro Ozu's deliberative drama, in no particular order. And in case you're wondering, yes I did pause the movie. I'm not a total prole:

1. Reheated some ribs.
2. Pulled up the chords to a song I had stuck in my head all day.
3. Tried to play said song.
4. Failed.
5. Changed into my customary at-home getup (oversized t-shirt, no pants).
6. Realized my roommate was coming home and put on pants.
7. Ate an embarrassing amount of off-brand Fig Newtons.
8. Exchanged 10-15 public Twitter messages with fan-of-the-blog Andrew Woods, who I swear has seen every movie ever made by anyone ever.

This was all in an attempt to stave off the boredom that I, uncultured sonofabitch that I am, felt washing over me as I watched Floating Weeds. I've sat through some pretty slow movies; hell, I managed to make it through Barry Lyndon with only a short nap midway through. But it took just about all my strength to make it through this one.

Was it worth it?

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #11: Beauty and the Beast

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

As my quest to become the Watson of film knowledge grinds towards its inevitably disappointing conclusion, I've come to learn that French film isn't as easy to pin down as I first thought. The first French film I definitely remember seeing was Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless in a film class during my freshman year of college. (I never dated a girl cool enough to drag me to see Amelie in high school.) And, not to sound cliche, the movie just seemed so damn French to me. In its absolute commitment to cool detachment, Breathless seemed to embody everything I thought I knew about French cinema.

Viewed from a slightly wider angle, though, even the French New Wave didn't seem as homogeneous as I'd first thought. The films of Francois Truffaut were far sweeter and, though cutting-edge in their own way, much less experimental than Godard's films, which grew even more daring as his career progressed. Taking the so-called "Left Bank" filmmakers into account distorts the picture even further. From the hallucinatory slideshow of Chris Marker's La jetée to the sweet fancifulness of Agnès Varda to the steely-eyed grimness of Jean-Pierre Melville's Army of Shadows, France's nouvelle vague defied easy categorization.

Toss in the poetic realism of the Jeans, Vigo and Renoir, and the pioneering silent films of Georges Méliès and the Lumière brothers, and my ability to arbitrarily pigeonhole an entire country comes into even further doubt. Let's not even mention Luc Besson, who might cause me to forfeit my very ability to be glib.

Oh Jean Cocteau. What am I going to do with you, and your magnificent, rapturous Beauty and the Beast? Stop generalizing? Maybe.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #10: Rashomon

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

Ways to be philosophical with your movie:

Way 1: Talk about philosophy a lot. Quote from the Bible, preferably the book of Revelation. Have your characters discuss the meaning of life and death. Include a character to personify the latter. Have the death character and the main character interact in some achingly allegorical way. See Seventh Seal, The.

Way 2: Talk about philosophy less. Put together a film that has some philosophical weight but could just be a romping good action movie. Make sure the sum total of your plot points form some kind of coherent philosophical project. Co-opt a beloved modern folk hero. See Dark Knight, The.

Way 3: Don't talk about philosophy. Assemble a beguiling, mysterious scenario. Let us see it from four different perspectives, each as plausible yet doubtable as the next. Give us no hint as to which one is the truth. Tinker with the way we perceive the language of film. See Rashomon.

Seriously, see Rashomon.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #9: Loves of a Blonde

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

What a wonderful world we see in Miloš Forman's Loves of a Blonde, a seminal artifact of the Czechoslovak New Wave. It's a world where a shoe factory owner lobbies a Czech colonel to station his troops in the factory town so that the girls who work in the factory will have men to love them. (The women, after all, outnumber the men sixteen to one in the town.) Where three army stooges argue like little boys over how to approach a table of cute girls. Where a soldier sees a girl putting a tie on the tree and says, "If you keep doing that, you'll dress up the whole forest."

There aren't even any stunning beauties to intimidate us. Forman's film evinces the same free-form quality as the works of Godard or Truffaut, but there's nary a supermodel or foppish midcentury Bohemian in sight. Instead, we get a bunch of grubby, homely teenage girls working at a shoe factory during the day and hoping to find love at night.

Brigitte Bardot would probably vomit. Too bad for her.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #8: Grand Illusion

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion has the distinction of being the first film to be confiscated by Nazi propaganda  minister Joseph Goebbels following Germany's invasion of France in World War II. It's a testament both to the incisiveness of the film's message and the subtlety of Goebbels' sensibilities as a censor that he declared Grand Illusion "Cinematic Public Enemy No. 1." Grand Illusion is certainly an indictment of the creeping fascistic tendencies in 1930s Europe, but it's not simple polemic. Powell and Pressburger's anti-Nazi 49th Parallel traffics in simple stereotypes in order to communicate the clearest message possible: Nazi punks fuck off. (They'd show off their subtler side with the multifaceted portrayal of a blustery Major General in 1943's The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.)

Grand Illusion never settles for something so simple. It's an anti-war film, yes, and it has few kind things to say about the reconstituted aristocracy of fascism, but it never harangues. It's a film that hardly ever raises its voice. But what it whispers about the futility of war and its social, philosophical, and racial underpinnings has reverberated through our discussions of the same since its release more than eighty years ago.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #7: Fires on the Plain

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

It's a testament to the mundanity of a movie's bleakness that you practically hunger for (no pun intended) the moment when the characters resort to cannibalism. I've seen bleak war movies (Apocalypse Now, The Hurt Locker), and I've seen dull ones (The Thin Red Line), but I don't think I've ever seen one that's both.

Of course, I'm (sorta) kidding about the cannibalism thing, but Kon Ichikawa's World War II film Fires on the Plain was certainly something of a grind. The film opens with a bang, or at least a smack. The smacker, in this case, is a haggard Japanese captain who's taking a tubercular soldier named Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi) to task for failing to stay in a military hospital where he was sent to be treated. The company, his captain explains, barely has enough food for the healthy soldiers, and one who can't share in the work can't expect to share the supplies. The Japanese Imperial Army forces in the Philippines have been routed by the Americans, cut off from their supply trains and forced to live off the land. So the captain gives Tamura an order: try to get yourself back into the military hospital. And if that doesn't work? Use that grenade I gave you, and blow yourself up.

What a fun movie night I've got ahead of me.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #6: Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

I like to think that art can be viewed free of context. There's an egalitarian streak in me that makes me want to believe that art isn't good if you need a commentary track. Most of us have had some version of this experience: we read a supposedly great book, for example, finish it, and then think, "Meh. Wonder what all the fuss was about." We relate that view to a friend who's fanatical about the thing, though, and they flip. "You fool. It's all context. You need to understand what was going on when [Book X] was written. " I always wanted to tell those people to go away.

Since my halcyon early days of art appreciation, though, I've inched continually closer to agreeing with them. I've had several conversations, for example, with people who don't see what's so great about Nirvana. "They just sound like every other crappy alt rock band." And I always say, "No, every other crappy alt rock band sounds like them." Nirvana was so incredibly influential and their sound so thoroughly aped that, aside from their incredible songs, they almost sound unremarkable.

This week's entry benefits greatly from some context. Sometimes a great movie is a great movie, and sometimes it's a great movie because of what it accomplished. Saul Turrell's Paul Robeson: Tribute to an Artist is just such a case.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #5: The 39 Steps

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

 It's sometimes a pain to love a filmmaker who wasn't always great. Or, perhaps, he was always great, but he didn't always make great films.

Either way, Alfred Hitchcock can be such a pain if you're a completist. Like a great singles artist who makes lousy albums, Hitchcock made some indelible hits and a bunch of crappy album tracks. For every Psycho or Strangers on a Train, there's Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a botched attempt at a screwball comedy completely unrelated to the Pitt/Jolie joint, or Suspicion, a Cary Grant/Joan Fontaine vehicle featuring a heinously bad performance from Fontaine that through some cosmic fluke actually netted her an Oscar.

But these were made when Hitchcock was already working in the American studio system, when he had a talented stable of actors, big budgets, and a likeminded producer in David O. Selznick. What to make of Hitchcock's British output, a period during which he worked under considerably more restrictive conditions? Probably a bunch of barely-realized messes, showcases for potential at best, right? The 39 Steps was released in Britain in 1935, half a decade before Hitchcock made his debut on U.S. shores with Rebecca. I had my sights set low.

Ho boy. I was wrong.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #4: Jules and Jim

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

I watched François Truffaut's Jules and Jim for the first time with a dude. And not as part of a sophisticated liberal arts kid movie night where we drank wine and ate camembert. It was more, "Yo, I don't feel like doing homework right now. Wanna watch Jules and Jim?" We're both film snobs, so that wasn't an incredibly weird occurence.

I enjoyed my first viewing immensely. The photography, the music, the sheer exuberance of Truffaut's masterpiece was intoxicating. The romance, though, seemed at odds with our particular viewing: two guys drinking skunked Coors Light on my crappy apartment couch aren't the ideal audience for a story about a love so strong it defies the concept of fidelity. I resolved to watch the thing with a girl.

Fast-forward to 2011. New girlfriend, first Valentine's Day, and I need to watch a movie for this feature. Sounds like a job for Jules and Jim.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #3: The Importance of Being Earnest

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

There are messy films. There are big, sprawling films jam-packed with ideas, practically full to overflowing. Robert Altman made an art out of it with movies like Nashville and Short Cuts, films that could credibly claim to have close to two dozen main characters. Paul Thomas Anderson picked up where Altman left off and carried the dynasty of the sprawl into the 21st century with films like Magnolia and There Will Be Blood. Truffaut's made messes, and so has Fellini. And we can't forget about Terrence Malick,  a filmmaker so messy he practically forgets to tell a story.

The messy film is an accomplishment in and of itself, but it's almost innately flawed. If you bring that much to the table, it's inevitable that you're going to leave something off: half-developed plotlines, a grand philosophical project that never quite comes together, performances so brief they could be considered cameos.

Anthony Asquith's adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is perhaps the least messy film I've ever seen.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #2: The Seventh Seal

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

One of the biggest pitfalls of taking on a project like this is how well-tread some of the ground is. Last week's entry covered a little-seen Polish film by a director who isn't Roman Polanski, so I had some more room to stretch. Nobody's going to fault me for seeming trite in my discussion of a film that practically no one has seen.

That is far from the case with Ingmar Bergman's canonical 1957 film The Seventh Seal. So much ink has been spilled picking apart the metaphorical import of the film's images: the knight's chess game with Death; Death leading his charges in the danse macabre at the end of the film; the knight's confession in the country church. Some of these images are so indelible, in fact, that they've been parodied in films and TV shows mostly watched by people who've never heard of Ingmar Bergman. So what to do, other than continue to flog an already battered dead horse?

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #1: Ashes and Diamonds

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

I should have known it was a bad idea to base my decision of where to start this project on the screen cap on the DVD label. The picture on the front of the disc for Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds shows a sunglasses-clad young man gleefully firing a World War II-era submachine gun. "Ooh, this looks like it could be fun. Maybe it's some kind of Polish gangster flick. Like Goodfellas with kolacky."

The gun-toting twentysomething on the front of the DVD is a Polish revolutionary named Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski). It turns out that the ballistic moment depicted is one of only two moments in the film where any character fires a weapon. The scene's the first one in the film, where we meet Maciek and his partner Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski). Andrzej is impassive, as he remains for most of the film, while the two of them lie on the side of a hill waiting for a car carrying a communist commissar and his staff to arrive. Andrzej seems merely to be waiting, but Maciek seems to exult in the quiet moment. He takes a flower from a farm girl who's loafing around the hillside and sniffs it rapturously. Then the car arrives. Maciek sloughs off his peacenik pose and pulls out his gun. He and Andrzej quickly dispatch the passengers and are on their way. Maciek seems to enjoy the execution as much as he did the flower.

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