Le Deuxième Souffle, Werckmeister Harmonies, & Osaka Elegy

Le Deuxième Souffle is another gangster film from Jean Pierre Melville, but unfortunately it's his worst gangster film. That's still quite a good film, but it just isn't as strong as his other films, as I think that it is missing a strong central performance, or particularly a good plot. I was kinda disappointed, but I figured that he couldn't keep up that 1.000 batting average on gangster films.

Werckmeister Harmonies starts out with a great scene (done in one shot) with the main character explaining the universe using others in the pub. Unfortunately, the film never quite reached that again, and instead goes into some mumbo jumbo about revolution and a huge taxidermied whale. And two hours after that first scene, the movie ends, and I'm not sure what the hell just happened.

Osaka Elegy is a look at the unfair double standard towards women and men in affairs. The boss goofs around, gets embarrassed, and mocked lightly by his coworkers, while the woman gets slowly destroyed, forced to have an affair and prostitute herself for the extra money to protect her father who is in trouble due to embezzlement. Of course, this is clearly extremely frakked up, and this is unfortunately something that we still deal with today, the stud/slut dichotomy that tortures young women. Screw you, patriarchy. The film itself isn't all that good, an early sound film with some overacting typical of the time. Just save yourself the time and go punch someone who congratulates some dude for having lots of sex and then attacks some woman for having lots of sex.