Review of Stavisky

We were having one of those parlor - game conversations, and we decided that Last Year In Marienbad was the "Worst Great Film of All Time". Maybe I should start this on IMDb, as a list...It would be interesting to see if people can stick with that as the concept - not overrated, or anything like that. Definitely great, definitely bad. What about Resnais makes this possible? He is gifted, he has things to say, he understands film form. He's not a pseudo - intellectual, but he might be a SHALLOW intellectual. Dropping names, connecting jejune scenes to major historical or cultural events, doing the "life is theater" thing until you're ready to strangle yourself. We know Claridge is a fancy hotel - why do we have to see the marquée as an establishing shot every time it shows up? Belmondo has lost his feral beauty, unreplaced by any particular depth. This film makes me miss '80s French TV with its intellectual surface and its hemming and hawing: "well, yes...Baudelaire...but, still...Girardoux...and, then, also...Trotsky!"

Sometimes I think I've seen every great film I'm ever going to see, and that it is only my love for FILM and not for FILMS that keeps me going. But then I saw Visconti's "Ossessione"...

It was interesting to hear a score by Stephen Sondheim. It had its thing - some feeling for the period. Not a classic film score, but not bad. The look of the film reminded me of Bertolucci's Conformist which is, however, a much greater movie. What were all the little animals about? If they were about the fact that Stavisky was ultimately a trapped animal, then that's terrible.And Resnais is too obvious with the flowers - he should've studied Douglas Sirk more.

I think this has to be my last Resnais film.