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by Richard Brody
Hollywood presents exemplary works of ambitious modernism for all to see in the multiplex cinema. Some of them ambitiously trumpet the ambitious art of their filmmakers (think David Lynch), but others arrive (and leave) much more modestly. One of those secret masterpieces, Alan’s 1978 romantic melodrama Rudolph’s “Remember My Name” never made it into the mainstream. Despite a cast that includes Geraldine Chaplin, Anthony Perkins, Alfre Woodard and Jeff Goldblum, it has been poorly published and rated with negative reviews; rarely screened, supposedly not released on VHS or DVD, and has remained largely invisible due to the vagaries of the market. However, it is one of the rarest and most original Hollywood films of the 70s, a decade of innovation and renewal. It is a double demonstration of the maximum musical strength of cinematographic photographs and the pictorial authority of wonderful music in films. And now it airs on Prime Video (for subscribers) and on Tubi (free, with ads).
Rudolph, born in 1943, grew up as a member of Hollywood (his father, Oscar Rudolph, was a longtime assistant film director and head director of television series such as “Batman” and “The Brady Bunch”) and worked as an assistant to Robert Altman on “The Long Goodbye” and “Nashville. “Altman, who produced “Remember My Name,” was a myth-buster who opened the doors of Hollywood traditions to the strong winds of reality, while Rudolph (who is seventy-nine) is a beautification that endows lives with the grandeur of cinematic mythology and the subtle styles that accompany it. complex surfaces. In order not to dwell too much on the subject, this is the story of a stalker, although unusually sympathetic.
Chaplin plays Emily, who has just been released from a twelve-year criminal sentence (possibly wouldn’t say why) and travels to Los Angeles to track down a structure employee named Neil Curry (Anthony Perkins). They were a couple before she was restrained and Neil has no idea she was released. Emily’s effort to reconnect with him is a messy, detective-like operation that starts with jokes, escalates into skillful surveillance, and turns into nameless vandalism, stealth harassment, intimidating intrusion, carjacking. and an illegal entry into the site of the structure where Neil works.
These menacing maneuvers are carried out without any real risk to the brain: they are just Emily’s efforts to break through Neil’s atmospheric barrier to dive back into it. Emily discovers that Neil is now married to another woman, Barbara (Berry Berenson). Moving with a cold, blade-like demeanor, Chaplin’s Emily conveys a quietly devastated majesty as she carries the burden of her memory and the hard force of her exclusive lens. with a lightness of metal and ballet. Rudolph does not live on the corresponding pain of Barbara, whose life is no less disrupted by Emily’s imminent and hidden presence and the flaws of her marriage that she brings to light. Perkins, as always, excels in restless rest; It gives Neil the tension of secrets, while hiding them beyond an appearance that Emily’s back risks breaking.
Working with cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, Rudolph, who also wrote the screenplay, creates lyrical poetry punctuated through probably infinitesimal action. The photographs evoke vast inner worlds of emotion, the stunning beauty of reckless preference and the meticulous moves required to pursue it, such as Emily placing a cigarette in a damaged mirror and practicing walking steadily. Array holds her cigarette high above her with the movie star bravado—in a new pair of high heels she bought in hopes of enjoying Neil. The director’s ornamental virtuosity is on display early on, when Barbara comes home from painting and rushes into the living room to answer the ringing phone. A single long shot, shot from inside the space and through the windows, shows the window frames, walls, doors, and furniture as the car pulls up in the driveway and rushes inside, thinking that she is alone, as in fact she is, that the long-absent Emily, making the call from a phone booth, is a virtual presence in space and is internally imagined.
For all his subtle aesthetics, Rudolph insightfully sketches the social realm facing Emily, the web of political forces in society as a whole. His manners seem strange, stealthy, clumsy; He smokes chain cigarettes, extinguishes one between his hands before lighting another, and supposedly talks to others, beyond them or even opposes them. Much of Emily’s habit, a competitive defense that suggests a perpetual, ingrained mode of survival, evokes the violence of incarceration. She finds a job as a cashier at a discount store, where she has a touching bond with the embattled manager, Mr. Nudd (Jeff Goldblum), who reluctantly hires ex-inmates but we will never tell them they are under constant surveillance. and suspicion.
Rudolph also discerns, through Emily’s experience, the tensions of racial politics, which manifest themselves in relation to elegance and gender issues. She befriends and mocks a black boy named Pike (Moses Gunn), the handyman of the dilapidated apartment complex where he rents a dilapidated room. In order for the apartment to be distributed the way she wants, she demands that she place it and demands it with a blatant vacancy that makes even her vulnerability seem like a ploy. Since Pike himself is a difficult guy, the game recognizes the game and his appointments are squeezed with a slow, streamer force that Emily controls. In the paintings at the sales store, Emily mocks and demands situations from the hard-minded and conscientious assistant, Rita (Alfre Woodard). Rita obviously endured a lot of gaffes from M’s parade of sentimental recruits. Nudd (no doubt, all white women) and she probably wouldn’t take it from Emily. However, Emily, proudly dismissive and coldly rebellious, crashes into without bowing; surprise is inevitable, and Emily plays with existential bets.
Although the dramatic lines of the film are transparent and sharply recorded, the photographs deviate towards opacity, towards hard, flat surfaces (compressed through telephoto lenses) and visual flourishes so visual that they stand out in front of the action, even outdoors. The trope of the film is the slow zoom, which gives the impression that the hand of a clock ticks the screen, evoking urgency and the feeling that time passes at the speed of thought. In those moments, whether the discussion is concise or the action is speechless, the film is complete with the tumultuous and tangled inner lives of its characters. In addition, “Remember My Name” has a soundtrack worthy of this repertoire of photographs: it does not have a classical score, but it is punctuated through songs. written and directed by octogenarian blues singer Alberta Hunter (who had recently resumed her career after working for twenty years as a nurse), accompanied by a notable organization of jazz musicians. Sicians
The grafting of external artistic elements belonging to both the dramatic plot and its commentary, and the composition of photographs as dramatically central to the film as the action itself, are the cornerstones of cinematic modernity. Rudolph is, in fact, a filmmaker of the American New Wave, fusing his distillations of classic cinema with his non-public artistic observations and passions: internal and external status, without vitiating feelings or erasing characters, but prolonging them in additional dimensions, and doing so with the fervent sense of sharing his own pleasures. , The joy of letting the viewer see what he sees, hear what he hears. This sense of first-person awe at the aesthetic whirlwind marks the many highlights of his career, adding the lost generation drama “The Moderns” and “Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle,” and the jazz-infused melodrama “Afterglow. “
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