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J.D. Hansel

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1940

Fantasia Review

March 11, 2017 by JD Hansel

As a film student who’s grown tired of hearing that “film is a visual medium,” there’s something quite refreshing about seeing a film that is famous for its visual achievements, yet serves as a great example of how sound can drive storytelling.  The way that Disney and his team turned ballets and symphonies that could have been interpreted in any of a thousand ways into memorable audio-visual experiences is extraordinary.  The method of letting music guide a film’s story (or, in this case, stories) can have widely varying results, yet this presents one of the best, employing a special reworking of “Vertical Montage” theory that creates exactly the sense of audio-visual harmony Sergei Eisenstein would have loved.  I have been fascinated for the past couple months with the idea of creating video productions that experiment with creating shapes and streaks of color that depict what musical sounds might look like, but I see that Disney has at the very least laid the groundwork in this area if not beaten me to the punch.

While it’s true that the film gets tedious and tiring rather quickly, it’s delightful when broken up into bite-sized parts and spread out over a few days, and I suspect that it might work well as the kind of film one could play in the background at a party without worrying that everyone would get distracted.  Not every piece is animated in the style I would have chosen, but the visual style is, overall, gorgeous, with beautiful shades of blue in the cartoons and even more beautiful lights and colors in the brief live-action portions.  I’m not inclined to give a film a good review for its visuals alone, but I don’t think I’m doing that here.  Fantasia strikes me as an artistic achievement that advances cinematic storytelling and paves the way to new kinds of experimental film, all while showcasing Disney’s unassailable power as a creative force.

Filed Under: Film Criticism, New Movie Reviews Tagged With: 1940, 1940s Movie Reviews, Animation, Art Film, Disney, Essential Classics, Family, Fantasy, Four Stars, G, Musical, Roger Ebert's Favorites

Stranger on the Third Floor Review

September 29, 2016 by JD Hansel

This surely must be one of the most fascinating and strange films I have ever seen.

Stranger on the Third Floor is generally considered to be the first movie in the film noir genre, and yet it is very different from the standard conceptions that come to mind when most people think of noir (based on films like Out of the Past, Double Indemnity, or the Bogart films).  The lead in this story is no stone-faced, stoic Bogart type – he’s an emotional basket-case – and the relative normalcy of the characters makes the film feel very different from how I’d come to think of noir based on what I saw in Out of the Past.  It starts off like a simple enough old-timey Classical Hollywood story about two young lovebirds, but the second act takes a turn when it becomes an experiment in expressionism, before finally returning to reality for a third act that breaks Hollywood in the strangest way.

The second act features an elaborate and creative nightmare sequence, composed almost entirely of elements that were shown (or at least discussed) earlier in the film, now warped into something entirely unreal.  This sequence is expressionism gone wild, blatantly stealing from German, French, and Russian artistic styles, but clearly forming a new style of its own at the same time that would be very influential in future film noirs (not to mention Tim Burton films – even if indirectly – and other dark dramas).  Simply put, it all looks gorgeous, and its exaggerated theatrical style makes the whole nightmare scene explode with all the wild emotion that burns in the protagonist’s shredded heart.  I’m not sure I can think of any other film that manages to be so vibrant without having color, so over-the-top without getting silly, or so animated without being . . . well, literally animated.  Then comes the ending.

The final act is incredibly bizarre seeing as how the protagonist vanishes from the movie, leaving his girlfriend to take over the role of being a hero (of sorts).  This is not so much a feminist move as a clumsy one, because this was not done to make any sort of statement about gender equality, from what I saw/heard in my repeated viewings and careful reading, but I’m not sure what exactly it really is supposed to be.  This move seems to serve little purpose and just make the narrative awkward.  Even more awkward is the conversation the leading lady has with the insane antagonist, which had so little logic to it that there were multiple moments of laughter in the screening room when I saw it.  Then, at the end, the antagonist is randomly hit by a car and presumed dead, only for the police to look at him and start talking to him as his body lies in the street, revealing he is alive.  This is finished off with one of the most forced “tag endings” in movie history, making for an overly cheery, cheesy conclusion that just doesn’t feel human.

On the whole, however, the film is very strong.  The expressionist visuals are used not just for show, but to saturate the conflict, making the emotions of the protagonist that much stronger and the drama of the story that much more powerful.  Its commentary on how flawed the American justice system may very well be is truly chilling.  The performances by some of the actors, particularly the great Peter Lorre, served the film very well, making for a very special mood to the work overall.  I recommend this film not only because it was inspirational for filmmakers historically, but because it is inspirational to me.  It’s weaknesses may be absurd, but its strengths win me over, and I cannot help but have a massive crush on this gorgeous, gorgeous film.

133-stranger-on-the-third-floor

Filed Under: Film Criticism, New Movie Reviews Tagged With: 1940, 1940s Movie Reviews, Approved, film noir, NR, Three and a Half Stars

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