A Grin Without a Cat
by Chris Marker
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Actor: Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Regis Debray, Salvador AllendeDirector: Chris Marker
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Portuguese (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Original Language); German (Original Language); French (Published)
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 180 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-05-05
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Icarus Films
DVD Reviews of A Grin Without a Cat
DVD Review: great film at last on dvd!
Summary: 5 Stars
Readers who already know Chris Marker well should be very happy to see this essential film on home dvd at last--and will add it to their libraries immediately. Other readers may know this singular artist through his better known films LA JETEE (the basis of Terry Gilliam's great movie 12 MONKEYS) or SANS SOLEIL. GRIN is much longer and much more historically focused. That said, it is a spectacular documentary by a great artist so what can you say but... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Many of Marker's films are documentary memoirs of and philosophical reflections on the radical left's political dreams of the 20th century in the form of refined and at times explosive film-essays. Although certain critics argue otherwise, these are not propaganda or one-dimensional films in that Marker's own political position is obscured through layers of regret, anger, and irony. His is the elegant voice of the revolution's unhappy consciousness. If he wasn't so attached to cats, one might want to call Marker the owl of Minerva. He is often reflecting on the history of revolutionary propaganda and campaigns from a position of sorrow that nothing goes according to plan, not in this vicinity at least.
So, this is a three-hour film essay and careful argument about the rise and fall of the international New Left in the 1960s and 1970s and its later aftermath. Formally, much of it seems to be found news footage, with additional voice-overs, and spare use of music. The film focuses on political and social developments in Marker's home country of France, but follows the "revolution within the revolution" elsewhere as well. Marker uses Regis Debray's New Left phrase to feed his melancholic argument about a revolutionary "grin without a cat." Much attention is paid to developments involving Castro, Che, and Allende (with lots of great footage of early Castro and Allende), as well as the cultural revolution in China, and the flickering New Left movement in the US. Marker's voice-over "essay" is read by a number of fine voices (available in assorted languages on the DVD) and his selection of documentary footage is amazing as always). This film is like a set of essays that you return to time and again to glean new insights or recall terrific turns of phrases, but you get to see the original speakers making their statements in public. Wonderful.
Also highly recommended for use in university classroom, though students will need lots of assistance identifying the many historical figures treated here. My only quibbles: the cover is very misleading (my partner thought it was a new Penthouse video), there should be chapter selections, and there are no extras (not that we would ever expect to see Marker on screen talking about his films). That said, it does come with a nice insert including a short essay by Marker. The film itself is three hours long, and miles deep, so it's certainly well worth the price.
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Description of A Grin Without a Cat
A GRIN WITHOUT A CAT (its title refers to Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat) is Marker's magnum opus: a three-hour overview of the worldwide political upheavals during the Sixties and Seventies.Marker interweaves footage from the Vietnam War and the antiwar protests in the U.S., May '68 in Paris, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, Salvador Allende and the coup in Chile, Che Guevara and Régis Debray in Bolivia, the Shah of Iran, Fidel Castro, et alia.
Official images, film clips, news coverage trims and neglected reels comprise the basic materials of this major fresco, which concludes with the following credit: "The true authors of this film are the countless cameramen, technical operators, witnesses and activists whose work is constantly pitted against that of governments, who would like us to have no memory."
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