The Wily Filipino

Movie Quiz #4: The Answers.

Shot 1:

The philosophical detective Lemmy Caution (played by Eddie Constantine -- what a cool name) walks by a naked woman in a vitrine, in Jean Luc-Godard's pulp sci-fi noir Alphaville (1965).

Shot 2:

Egbert Sousè (W.C. Fields) discovers the perks of his new job as a detective for the Bank of Lompoc -- a free calendar. Edward F. Cline's The Bank Dick (1940) is not necessarily Fields' funniest film -- the honor goes to It's A Gift -- but his prodigious gift for misanthropic, drunken verbal repartee is on full display here. The madcap car chase sequence at the end is a minor miracle.

Shot 3:

The titular character of Ralph Bakshi's Fritz the Cat (1972) gets it on with slumming coeds -- from Columbia or NYU, I can't remember which. The callow, wise-ass Fritz isn't the reason to watch the rather dated and puerile film; it's the set-pieces built around "ethnic" dialogue, that are probably the most interesting.

Shot 4:

Penises are instrinsically funny, as Brian (the late Graham Chapman) discovers to his dismay in Terry Jones's Monty Python's The Life of Brian (1979).

Shot 5:

In one of the most controversial (and fascinatingly unwatchable) films ever, a group of beautiful youths are trapped in a palazzo in the last days of Mussolini's Fascist regime. Pier Paolo Pasolini's gorgeously vile Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1976) is, thankfully, one of a kind, and one designed -- its attention to visual complicity on the part of the audience perhaps makes this clear -- to be seen only once. (Be thankful I'm not using this film for the next quiz's theme.)

Four people got all five films correctly: Chris Bales, Brandon, Greg Levrault, and Rolf Riebig. Congratulate them for being able to identify five movies with naked people in it.

Quiz 5: we've done nudity, so violence is up next…

Posted by the wily filipino at May 19, 2005 07:26 PM