So, today we wrap up The Week of The Dissolve. It’s been a fun, occasionally melancholy stroll down meta-memory lane. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.
As should be abundantly clear by now, The Dissolve meant a lot to me, and still does.
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The Week of The Dissolve soldiers on.
At this point, you may well wonder how much more I could possibly have to say. It’s not an unreasonable thing to wonder, but you may be surprised — I’ve actually been pretty moderate in my gushing praise so far.
We kicked off The Week of The Dissolve with some personal reflections on what the site meant to me, and then followed that up yesterday with a few of the many highlights from its editors, staff writers, and contributors during its too-brief run.
Yesterday, we kicked off The Week of The Dissolve with what the site itself, in one of its “Movie of the Week” features, might’ve called a Keynote. Today, continuing this meta-One Year Later appreciation thread, we move on to some Essentials.
Quick! Free association game. I’ll go first: Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov, Melina Mercouri! Did you answer: Topkapi?
Probably not. (Though congrats if you did.)
These are huge names, but Topkapi is not. Between the three leads, they amassed 86 prestigious awards and nominations, including Oscars, Emmys, Grammys, Cannes triumphs, and whatever a CableACE award is.
It’s been a year since The Dissolve shuttered its virtual windows, packed up its stuff, and moved on.
Welcome to a week commemorating its passing.
Recently, I was talking to a friend, and started wistfully recalling it, in the hushed terms we usually reserve for good friends.
In 1928, following the one-two punch of his celebrated U.S.-made releases Faust and Sunrise, and four years after he made The Last Laugh for UFA, the great German director F.W. Murnau predicted that the “films of the future will use more and more of these camera angles, or, as I prefer to call them, these dramatic angles.
A crumbling city wall runs along the hillside above the Dai estate, a once-great residence in similar disrepair. Through its cracks, we see the empty skyline stretching forever, and stones are scattered among the weeds. It’s an image of loneliness, faded glory, and nostalgia, and it forms the metaphorical centerpiece of Fei Mu’s 1948 masterpiece Spring In A Small Town.
James White, currently streaming on Netflix, announces its focus right away, in its title. Probably, prospective audiences might rightfully imagine, this will be a film about a guy called “James White”. There’s something vaguely old-fashioned about it, Victorian. Not even “The Sorrows of James White” or “The Continuing Adventures of James White.”
Towards the end of Fernando de Fuentes’ 1936 epic Let’s Go With Pancho Villa!, Miguel Ángel del Toro ‘Becerrillo’ (Ramón Vallarino) asks, “The Revolution will triumph. Why do we stay?”
It’s the central question in this stridently anti-authoritarian, anti-militarist, and (possibly) anti-Revolutionary drama, considered to be the first Mexican “super-production”.