(Dave Kehr) 'Cinematic Passages: Ocean Liners on Screen' (Friday through Tuesday) Train movies are about speed and time (suspense); ocean-liner movies are about confinement and proximity (romance).
Modes of transportation have always made good subjects for film, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center's "Cinematic Passages" series spotlights movies set aboard ocean liners, such as the Astaire-Rogers musical "Shall We Dance" and Howard Hawks's "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell.
But the regal "Tannhäuser" overture, cinematic "Götterdämmerung" passages and fervid "Tristan" prelude make you long for documents of Klemperer steering complete Wagner operas at his prime, and no "Siegfried Idyll" has more plain-spoken charm.
David Cronenberg's grim little psychodrama "Spider" is a cinematic maze whose dark, cramped passages spiral toward a terrifying cul de sac.
The accelerating passage becomes a cinematic "dissolve" from one movement to another.
In its specificity and its quiet power — the small moment heralding something larger and more important — this passage feels almost cinematic.
Here are some notable attempts: The improbability of its context notwithstanding, the climax of John Huston's classic arguably features the most accurately depicted passages of play in the history of cinematic football.
But when David Gelb, a 28-year-old director, was shooting a crucial passage in "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," a cinematic portrait of Jiro Ono, a legendary and exacting Japanese chef who works near a Tokyo subway station, he had to deal with a race against the clock as tense as a flee-from-the-fireball scene in a Ridley Scott movie.
The President's shift from his wheelchair to his desk chair, with only a round table as a resting place mid-passage, is perhaps the most perilous and heartbreaking cinematic journey of the year.
And then, continuing in a remarkable passage, he seems to suggest the sort of nonnarrative cinematic effect we have been discussing: "Only this is not how it is.
And another one, about Otto Klemperer's recordings of instrumental passages from Wagner, should have read, "But the regal 'Tannhäuser' overture, cinematic 'Götterdämmerung' passages and fervid 'Tristan' prelude make you long for documents of Klemperer steering complete Wagner operas at his prime, and no 'Siegfried Idyll' has more plain-spoken charm".
