Vigour of Film Lines

Detailed and thoughtful film analysis, unique film lists, original perspective on cinema's greatest auteurs

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  • June 25, 2022

    The Chaos of the Stars in Werner Herzog’s “Heart of Glass”

    The Chaos of the Stars in Werner Herzog’s “Heart of Glass”

    Hias, the prophet, speaks: „ I look into the distance, to the end of the world. Before the day is over the end will come. First time will tumble, and then the earth. The clouds will begin to race, the earth boils over; this is the sign. This is the beginning of the end. The […]

  • June 20, 2022

    Black Horse [Poem from the Yet Unpublished Book of Verses]

    Black Horse [Poem from the Yet Unpublished Book of Verses]

    Black horse in golden chains/ in the middle of the main square lies…

  • April 5, 2022

    Catholic and Pagan Heart of Fellini’s Eternal Rome

    Catholic and Pagan Heart of Fellini’s Eternal Rome

    I have hung up my heart―both Catholic and Pagan―as an ex-voto between the obelisk of the Trinità and the column of the Conception. Andrea Sperelli in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s “The Child of Pleasure”

  • February 5, 2022

    Princes and Kings Gazing at the Stars in “The Leopard” and “The Lord of the Rings”

    Princes and Kings Gazing at the Stars in “The Leopard” and “The Lord of the Rings”

    The soul of the Prince reached out toward them, toward the intangible, the unattainable, which gave joy without laying claim to anything in return; as many other times, he tried to imagine himself in those icy tracts, a pure intellect armed with a notebook for calculations: difficult calculations, but ones which would always work out. […]

  • October 5, 2021

    Yukio Mishima on Visconti’s “The Damned”: Dangerous Decadence

    Yukio Mishima on Visconti’s “The Damned”: Dangerous Decadence

    In its Wagnerian manner, its German grotesquerie, its transvestitism, its nervous insanity, its ponderousness, its symphonic sense of psychological danger, its worship of the body, its unceasing dramatic tension, its excesses, its obsession with hurling every single character toward tragedy and death, its ostentation, its sensuality, its love of ritual and ceremony, its intoxication, and […]

  • January 2, 2021

    Art, Life and Spirit in Emile Cioran’s and Thomas Mann’s Youthful Works

    Art, Life and Spirit in Emile Cioran’s and Thomas Mann’s Youthful Works

    But what is it, to be an artist? Nothing shows up the general human dislike of thinking, and man’s innate craving to be comfortable, better than his attitude to this question. When these worthy people are affected by a work of art, they say humbly that that sort of thing is a ‘gift’. And because […]

  • December 5, 2020

    5 Films Reflecting the Tension Between Artistic Types and the ‘Bourgeoisie’

    5 Films Reflecting the Tension Between Artistic Types and the ‘Bourgeoisie’

    In his Reflections of A Unpolitical Man, Thomas Mann writes that he wants to restore the dignity of the term Bürger, (almost untranslatable in English, but ‘citizen’ is the closest translation), since “certain literary circles” have utterly degraded it. He writes that bourgeois is the favorite affront of the littérateurs, and quotes Wagner saying that […]

  • November 23, 2020

    In Werner Herzog’s Words: The Origins of Cinema

    In Werner Herzog’s Words: The Origins of Cinema

    “Film is not analysis, it is the agitation of mind; cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism.“ ̶  Werner Herzog Herzog’s understanding of the origins of cinema in the country fair and circus, not the academia, cannot be stressed enough. When he was making his Aguirre, the Wrath […]

  • November 15, 2020

    Norte, the End of History (2013): Lav Diaz’s Take on “Crime and Punishment”

    Norte, the End of History (2013): Lav Diaz’s Take on “Crime and Punishment”

    The film title refers to the Philippines’ northern province Ilocos Norte, where Diaz’s film takes place. In this way, the narrative has a specific locus, it is, at least provisionally, a hint that it is bound to the territory and the nation of the Philippines. In many ways it is, but in many more, it […]

  • October 4, 2020

    Three Colors: Red (Zagreb, Croatia; October 4th, 2020)

    Three Colors: Red (Zagreb, Croatia; October 4th, 2020)

    “And you will shed tears of scarlet.” Quote from Cowboy Bebop: “The Real Folk Blues (Part I)” More than half a year has passed since the earthquake and the great damage it has done to my home, and I have changed two abodes. One was in the western part of the city, near the river, […]

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