On this, the 100th anniversary of Ingmar Bergman‘s birth (7.14.18), I am holding to my conviction that the darkest, hottest and most despairing Bergman film of all time is The Silence (’63). And therefore my favorite, in part because it’s so crystalline and unified — a perfect distillation of a sensual gloomhead mentality.

A ten year-old boy (Jorgen Lindstrom, who’s now 67) travelling with his ailing mother Ester (Ingrid Thulin) and her younger sister Anna (Gunnel Lindblom) through a grim Central European landscape, and then renting a couple of rooms at an old-world hotel. The boy watches as Anna settles into a kind of scowling sensual abandon. As always, Sven Nykvist‘s black-and-white cinematography is exquisite, and his capturings of of the sultry, vaguely self-disgusted Anna in various states of undress in that hotel room and bathroom are the stuff that lifelong dreams are made of. For me anyway.

I’m mentioning The Silence because you can’t buy a stand-alone Bluray version, not from Criterion or anyone else. You can watch it on Filmstruck and The Criterion Channel but I’m not yet a subscriber. (For whatever reason my initial reaction to Filmstruck was “a bridge too far” — lame, I realize.) It’s included in Criterion’s $239 Ingmar Bergman Bluray box set, and you can buy a DVD version in a 2003 Bergman trilogy package that includes Through A Glass Darkly and Winter Light. So right now it’s FilmStruck or nothing. Bummer.

In a 5.27.13 Criterion-posted essay, David Blakeslee wrote that “as significant as The Silence was in Bergman’s development as a filmmaker and person, there’s no doubt that it marked an even bigger advance in terms of expressive freedom in dealing with human sexuality, especially as it involved both nudity and the portrayal of women in pursuit of their own erotic fulfillment rather than as passive sex objects.

“With the Palme d’or winner Blue is the Warmest Color and Lars Von Trier‘s Nymphomaniac, we can trace a tangent that didn’t necessarily begin with Bergman’s 1963 masterpiece but is clearly continuous in using on-screen sex to drum up interest. And it works! Through its lasting influence and continuing beguilement as to what it’s all about, The Silence still makes a lot of noise.

A new trailer for Pawel Pawlikowski‘s Cold War appeared a few hours ago. It was also announced earlier today by The Playlist‘s Charles Barfield that Amazon will release the Polish-produced film on Friday, 8.31 rather than the previously announced date of Friday, 12.21. That’s incorrect. The IMDB actually says that Cold War will be released in England on 8.31, and not in the U.S. The IMDB is still saying that Cold War is being released stateside on 12.21.18.

Even before the mistake was revealed it seemed a little head-scratchy that Amazon would decide to release a leading contender for the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar just as the 2018 Telluride Film Festival (where I’d expected Cold War to a leading attraction) is getting underway.

Cold War is the latest Pawel Pawlikowski masterpiece, destined to win the Best Foreign Language Feature Oscar and HE’s favorite Cannes film by a country mile. Jewel-perfect, exquisitely photographed, tight as a drum.

5.19 HE blurb: “Cold War is so perfectly composed, a masterwork on every level. Pawlikowski’s story-telling instincts couldn’t be more eloquent or understated. Every plot point is always conveyed in the most discreet and understated terms, but you’ll never miss a trick. And the economy! A story that spans 15 year sis handled within 84 minutes, and you never sense that you’re being rushed along.”

On 6.2.18 I posted my latest best-of-2018 piece — i.e., “Ten Serious Winners.” I was restricting myself to films that have commercially opened. If I were to include the Cannes entries, my list would read as follows: Cold War, First Reformed, Hereditary, A Quiet Place, The King, You Were Never Really Here, Filmworker, Happy as Lazzaro.

“As the hearing stretched deep into the afternoon, it broke into pandemonium when Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, invoked [FBI agent] Peter Strzok’s extramarital affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page to question his character. “I can’t help but wonder when I see you looking there with a little smirk, how many times did you look so innocent into your wife’s eye and lie to her?” Gohmert said. Democrats shouted that the statement was “intolerable witness harassment.” Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman, Democrat of New Jersey, demanded, “Do you need your medication?” Strzok replied that he had “always told the truth” and said that Gohmert’s invocation of “a family member who I have acknowledged hurting goes more to a discussion about your character and what you stand for.” — from Nicholas Fandos‘ 7.12 N.Y. Times report about the Strozk hearing.

Not a rumor: According to today’s indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for political hackings during the 2016 electon, Hillary Clinton’s personal emails became a Russian target “on or about July 27, 2016” — the exact same day presidential candidate Donald Trump called on Russia to find her missing emails. Trump later said that he wasn’t entirely serious about asking for Russian assistance, that he was just fooling around.

Rosenstein: “The defendants falsely claimed that D.C. Leaks was a group of American hackers and that Guccifer 2.0 was a lone Romanian hacker. In fact both were created and controlled by the Russian GRU” or main intelligence directorate.

The indictment identified the Russian hackers as two specific units of the GRU, called “Unit 26165″ and “Unit 74455.” An apparent cover term for these units is “Fancy Bear.”

The indictment declares that “on or about 8.15.16, the Conspirators, posing as Guccifer 2.0, received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the U.S. Congress. The Conspirators responded using the Guccifer 2.0 persona and sent the candidate stolen documents related to the candidate’s opponent.” So who was that candidate?

Furthermore, the indictment said the Russians had communicated with a mystery person who was in regular contact with unnamed Trump campaign officials.

Wired‘s Garrett Graff: “News that paid employees of the Russian government — military intelligence officers, no less — interfered and sought to influence the 2016 presidential election, coming just days before the victor of that election will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, amounts to nothing less than an international, geopolitical bombshell.”

Out magazine is reporting that Scarlett Johansson has exited Rub and Tug a little more than a week after her casting as transgender massage parlor owner Dante “Tex” Gill sparked backlash among transgender activists. Johansson was accused of “ciswashing.” Her initial response (about 10 or 11 days ago) to the protestors: “Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment.” But today she changed her tune.

“In light of recent ethical questions raised surrounding my casting as [the late] Dante Tex Gill, I have decided to respectfully withdraw my participation in the project,” Johansson told Out. “Our cultural understanding of transgender people continues to advance, and I’ve learned a lot from the community since making my first statement about my casting and realize it was insensitive. I have great admiration and love for the trans community and am grateful that the conversation regarding inclusivity in Hollywood continues.”

“While I would have loved the opportunity to bring Dante’s story and transition to life, I understand why many feel he should be portrayed by a transgender person, and I am thankful that this casting debate, albeit controversial, has sparked a larger conversation about diversity and representation in film. I believe that all artists should be considered equally and fairly. My production company, These Pictures, actively pursues projects that both entertain and push boundaries. We look forward to working with every community to bring these most poignant and important stories to audiences worldwide.”

Later this month Warner Archives is releasing a modestly-priced Bluray of Peter Ustinov‘s near-great Billy Budd (’62). 11 years ago I posted the following about a Warner Home Video DVD version:

“Black-and-white CinemaScope is one of my favorite visual formats, and what an exquisite and luscious silver-toned transfer this is — spotless, velvety smooth, ultra-crisp perfection with each carefully-lighted value and tiny detail on view, and assembled exactly right. The cinematography is by Robert Krasker (The Third Man, Odd Man Out, El Cid, Fall of the Roman Empire).

“The film itself is taut and intelligent and finely sculpted. If you have the patience to get into a film that delivers in an exacting, step-by-step way and which uses the technique of just-so dialogue and characters that build and build upon themselves, it will hold you every step of the way.

“The dialogue is plain and straight in the way that seamen and gentlemen officers presumably once spoke (‘I’m sorry for the manner but not the matter’), but heavy with the irony and immense sadness of Herman Melville‘s classic tale, which is basically about a meeting of child-like innocence and craggy evil aboard a British warship in the 1790s.

“And the performances! Much better than I remembered them, especially Robert Ryan‘s Claggart , Melvyn Douglas‘s wise old Danish sailor (‘I look around this room and sense…finality’) and Terence Stamp‘s Billy — one of the more striking debut performances ever.”

Claggart: “The sea is calm, you said. Peaceful. Calm above…but below a world of gliding monsters, preying on their fellows, murderers all of them. Only the strongest teeth survive. And who’s to tell me it’s any different here on board or yonder, on dry land?”

The Film Stage‘s Jordan Raup reports that Jim Jarmusch is currently shooting a “’70s zombie movie” in the small Delaware County town of Fleischmanns. Pic costars Adam Driver, Bill Murray and Chloe Sevigny as cops; Selena Gomez and Austin Butler are also featured. Collider’s Jeff Sneider is reporting that Steve Buscemi and Tilda Swinton have also been cast. The tentative title is either Kill The Head or The Dead Don’t Die. In an Philadelpha Inquirer article Murray calls Jarmusch’s zombie script “hilarious.” Hilarious but deadpan, he surely means.

“It’s mind-boggling that one freakish American election, resulting in a presidency that a majority of Americans never wanted, could do so much damage not just to the United States but also to the global order that the United States created in the wake of World War II. But Germans know as well as anyone the havoc a single demagogue can wreak when the forces of decency are exhausted and unsure of themselves, and they can’t help seeing Trump through the lens of their own hideous history.”

Klaus Scharioth, who served as Germany’s ambassador to the United States during the Dubya and Obama administrations: “When I talked to my American friends in 2016, I always reminded them of what happened in Europe. Nobody thought in the early 1920s that Italy would become a dictatorship. Nobody thought that Germany, supposed a quite cultured nation, would get rid of democracy in a very short time. Maybe when you have this European experience, you might be more pessimistic than others.” — from 7.13 N.Y. Times opinion column, “Evil Has Won — Pro-American Germans feel betrayed,” by Michelle Goldberg.

Work Without Author, the latest from Oscar-winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others), is opening in Germany and the Netherlands on 10.3. It screened for German press last week. A friend says it will “apparently” screen a few weeks hence at the Venice Film Festival “but nothing’s official.” Said to be somewhere in the vicinity of 170 or 180 minutes, give or take.

This teaser-trailer posted on 2.5.17 — I’m told that a new, much longer trailer (allegedly four minutes) has been assembled but isn’t out yet. Another source says pic is “a lightly fictionalized bio-pic of Gerhard Richter and, like The Lives of Others, focuses on the tension between an artist and the changing political landscape around him.”

An insider calls Work Without Author “impressive and highly personal, and warrants its long running time. One of the best German screenplays I’ve ever read, super ambitious and a more than worthy follow up to The Lives of Others, covering 30 years of German history beginning in World War II and finishing in the mid to late 60s, a period rarely covered in German cinema. It’s basically about a painter finding his voice.”

I kept my word last night by revisiting Matt Tyrnauer‘s Studio 54 at an opening-night gala for 2018 Outfest. It’s a fascinating, well-told tale — sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad — that invites you to really sink in to that mad Manhattan era (’77 to ’80) that was a real bacchanalian sweet spot — post-pill, pre-AIDS, sexual liberation and an abundance of quaaludes and cocaine.

As I was driving home it hit me why I’m so affected by Studio 54, above and beyond the nostalgia vibes. It’s because Tyrnauer’s strategy for the first hour or so is to give you a great contact high with the saga of Studio 54’s amazing success — the cinematic equivalent of dropping a Lemmon 714 on an empty stomach — and then abruptly shift into wistful melancholy as he relates how partners Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager struck it rich only to see the whole thing collapse less than two years later.

Schrager recovered and went on to great success as a boutique hotelier; Rubell died of AIDS in 1989 at age 45.

On 4.26.77 Rubell and Schrager opened the legendary late-hours club — an immersive alternate-reality trip on West 54th near 8th Avenue. Studio 54 quickly became known for enforcing a brutal door-admission policy while at the same time passing through top-tier celebrities and allowing all kinds of hedonistic, wild-ass behavior once you got in (especially in that big dark balcony). They hit the cultural jackpot, revelling in bass-thromp music, mountains of cash and all kinds of druggy good times for a year and and two-thirds until New York State prosecutors and the IRS raided their offices in December ’78, and then filed tax-evasion and skimming charges the following summer.

The last third of Tyrnauer’s 98-minute film brings it all home. The mood of the film suddenly quiets down and shifts into “yeah, the success went to our heads and then we went to prison and then a few years later poor Steve died.” Almost anything having to do with loss tends to get me emotionally. Studio 54 is about striking it rich but lacking the wisdom or being too arrogant or wrecked to avoid dumb mistakes, and how recklessness and the overplaying of one’s hand leads where you might expect. The finale includes an admission from the now-72 year-old Schrager (who’d never consented to being interviewed about the Studio 54 saga until Tyrnaeur came along) that he and Rubell acted foolishly and that life is short but the pages turn regardless.

Why did Studio 54 get to me? Because I made a mistake or two when I was young and somewhat brash, and it took some time to correct or counter-balance them. Life is choices, whether rashly decided upon or not.

Hollywood Elsewhere will be picking up an Outfest press pass in a couple of hours, and then early this evening I’ll be attending the opening-night gala screening of Matt Tyrnauer‘s Studio 54, which I fell for during last January’s Sundance Film Festival. Two motives: I want to see how it plays with an enthusiastic gay crowd and whether or not a second viewing will still give me the tingles. Zeitgeist Films and Kino Lorber have picked up U.S. rights and will presumably open it sometime in the fall. Outfest runs from tonight through Sunday, July 22nd.

“Many of the viewpoints Maher ridicules seem outrageous only because mainstream society is not yet accustomed to hearing them and having to ponder their validity. In this regard and many others, Maher’s material is reactionary in the dictionary sense of the word: opposing political or social liberalization or reform, or at least dramatically signaling his annoyance with the idea that there might be another way to live and think beyond whatever he’s comfortable with.

“That’s unfortunate, considering that a big part of his routine is based on self-identifying as a liberal. It’s as if he just wants things to go back to the way they were in the ’90s, when he could plausibly sit on the left-hand side of the set on his old ABC talk show Politically Incorrect. The Overton window shifted while he was ensconced at Real Time on HBO, and he’s mad that he can’t move it back.” — from Matt Zoller Seitz’s 7.12 Vulture piece, “Bill Maher Is Stand-up Comedy’s Past — Hannah Gadsby Represents Its Future.”