23.2.07. The Saddest Music in the World

The Saddest Music In The World just joined the list of favorites-among-favorites-of-movies.

Surreal, beautiful, soft, and fuzzy, like Institute Benjamenta; but with a classic old showbiz quality and language like Sweet and Lowdown; and a bit of melancholy [even a bit of brutality] like Dogville, Shadows and Fog, and Eraserhead.

It fits in so comfortably with these other films that I love; yet stands on its own in a way that makes me terribly happy as it feels like it glues them all together. It's this one piece that makes all of the above and more (2046, City of Lost Children, etc) all the more lovable.

Isabella Rossellini's beer baroness with the platinum wig is beyond hot. Especially when she shows up with beer filled glass legs.

And Maria de Medeiros is beyond cute as the depression era dark bobbed amnesiac singer and dancer. I guess she's probably best known in the U.S. (if at all) as the wife of Bruce Willis's character in Pulp Fiction. Here, she seems straight out of a Chaplin or Keaton film, while capably leading a spectacle performance of The Song Is You mid film.

I love getting lost in spectacle.