Saturday, January 25, 2014

Limite (1931) :(((

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If all you can think about is how much you wish you had a handful of Dramamine and speed while watching a film then you are not having an enjoyable viewing experience.

Director Mario Peixoto’s Limite (1931) is not the worst “art” film I’ve ever seen, but it surely wasn’t good, either.  In general, I don’t like experimental film. This admission capped with the fact that this was also a silent experimental film only seemed to heighten my abhorrence.  And, unlike other avant garde films that I disliked (see L'age d'or and Un Chien Andalou), Limite also had the indecency to be exceedingly long—114 minutes of pain.

limite045axIn a rowboat to nowhere three nameless people—two women (Olga Breno and Tatiana Rey) and one man (Brutus Pedreira) indefinitely and aimlessly drift at sea.  Some semblance of what led them to this sea of abyss is told via flashbacks—but even those don’t really explain how the hell these people ended up floating in a boat together.  As such, the “story” made absolutely no sense and drug on forever—hence my need for a handful of speed.

And what of my desire for Dramamine?  Spinning, swerving, spiraling, and twirling cameras, surprisingly, capture those types of images. I suppose this is where the experimental comes into play and why this is viewed as a “cult” film, but it just gave me a migraine. 

Overall, I hated it.  The best part of the film was when they showed a clip of an old Little Tramp film.  For one blissful minute in Limite I didn’t want to scream, “Is it over YET?”

10 comments:

  1. I sympathisize with your ordeal. It helped to digest it piecemal, but not much. Frankly I cannot tell what is going on in this film. I kept losing attention or maybe it is just that nothing really happens. You are right, it is the boredom which is the real killer here.

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  3. I agree with you 100%, and so does every other blogger who has reviewed it that I've read. Other than the fact that this was a far earlier Brazilian film than any other in the book I see no reason whatsoever for including it. With almost no dialogue to listen to I freely admit that I hit the fast forward button.

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    1. I always think about fast forwarding films like this, but then I stop myself, foolishly thinking that I might skip the one part that made sense. LOL!

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  4. You mean that you didn't find meaning in extended shots of a spool of thread? Or of a continued, repeated zoom of a water spigot?

    Ugh. Evidently, people like Orson Welles and David Bowie found/find this incredibly important. I think the original stock would make great kindling. What a waste of two hours.

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    1. I read that about Bowie and Welles in the book. I can see Bowie saying how much he liked it, but Welles is a mystery to me. Citizen Kane loses some of its luster now, as it may have some underlying meaning that I was unable to comprehend.

      Oh, and I agree--burn, baby, burn! Can you believe Scorsese put up money to have this restored!

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  5. Kim,
    Putting in work to save us the trouble of watching films like this stinker. ha ha
    Glad the Little Tramp gave you a moment of reprieve.
    Also, which program did you use to make your banner collage? I've been wanting to create one with Cary Grant photos for my Twitter background.
    Have a nice weekend!
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    1. I make and save my collages in Picasa, and then I open it up in PowerPoint to add my text and then save it as a JPEG.

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    2. Thanks Kim!
      I have Picasa but I had no idea you could make collages there. : (
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