Heads Up, Ears Down

This blog accurately identifies depictions of violence and cruelty toward animals in films. The purpose is to provide viewers with a reliable guide so that such depictions do not come as unwelcome surprises. Films will be accurately notated, providing a time cue for each incident along with a concise description of the scene and perhaps relevant context surrounding the incident. In order to serve as a useful reference tool, films having no depictions of violence to animals will be included, with an indication that there are no such scenes. This is confirmation that the films have been watched with the stated purpose in mind.


Note that the word depictions figures prominently in the objective. It is a travesty that discussions about cruelty in film usually are derailed by the largely unrelated assertion that no animals really were hurt (true only in some films, dependent upon many factors), and that all this concern is just over a simulation. Not the point, whether true or false. We do not smugly dismiss depictions of five-year-olds being raped because those scenes are only simulations. No, we are appalled that such images are even staged, and we are appropriately horrified that the notion now has been planted into the minds of the weak and cruel.


Depictions of violence or harm to animals are assessed in keeping with our dominant culture, with physical abuse, harmful neglect, and similar mistreatment serving as a base line. This blog does not address extended issues of animal welfare, and as such does not identify scenes of people eating meat or mules pulling plows. The goal is to itemize images that might cause a disturbance in a compassionate household.


These notes provide a heads-up but do not necessarily discourage watching a film because of depicted cruelty. Consuming a piece of art does not make you a supporter of the ideas presented. Your ethical self is created by your public rhetoric and your private actions, not by your willingness to sit through a filmed act of violence.

Showing posts with label Kitchen Sink. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kitchen Sink. Show all posts

A Taste of Honey

A Taste of Honey. Tony Richardson, 1961.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #829, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 100 minutes.


Summary: A dead sparrow is spotted on a sidewalk near the end of the film; no gratuitous content.


The Criterion BD also includes Richardson’s 1955 nightclub short Momma Don’t Allow. 


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Family Nest

Family Nest (Családi tüzfészek). Béla Tarr, 1979.

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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray # 1215 Werckmeister Harmonies, released 2024. Hungarian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 108 minutes.


Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

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Girlfriends

Girlfriends. Claudia Weill, 1978.

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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1055, released 2020. English language. Runtime approximately 88 minutes.


Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


Come for the very good social realism of this easy-to-watch drama, stay for the generous exterior footage of SoHo in the 70s and one of the most authentic depictions of New York life I recall seeing.


Bonus material on the Criterion BD includes a good discussion with director Weill and actors Melanie Mayron, Christopher Guest, and Bob Balaban, and two short films, both free of animal violence:


• Joyce at 34 (1972, Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill) a 28-minute documentary about the impact of pregnancy on Chopra’s career.

• Commuters (1970, Eliot Noyes and Claudia Weill) a beautiful 4-minute section from the omnibus project Big Town. 

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A Special Day

A Special Day (Una giornata particolare). Ettore Scola, 1977.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #778, released 2015. Italian language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 107 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The Criterion release also contains Edoardo Ponti’s short film Human Voice (2015). 
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Bronco Bullfrog

Bronco Bullfrog. Barney Platts-Mills, 1969.
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Edition screened: BFI ‘Flipside’ #13, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 87 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The BFI release of Bronco Bullfrog also contains the short films Everybody’s an Actor, Shakespeare Said and Seven Green Bottles, all free of animal violence.

Bally Key West machine first seen around 1:00 indistinctly, better view around 10:45. 

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First Love

First Love (Pierwsza milosc). Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1974.
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Edition screened: Included in Arrow Blu-ray box set Dekalog and Other Television Works, released 2016. Polish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 52 minutes.

Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.


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A Time to Heal

A Time to Heal. Derrick Knight, 1963.
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Edition screened: Included in the BFI 4-DVD set Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 36 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

A public service documentary about hospital care and rehabilitation provided to injured coalminers.
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Tomorrow’s Merseysiders

Tomorrow’s Merseysiders. Eric Marquis, 1974.
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Edition screened: Included in the BFI 4-DVD set Shadows of Progress: Documentary Film in Post-War Britain 1951-1977, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 24 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

Daily life in economically depressed Merseyside is intercut with the action of designing and printing the region’s two papers, the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo.
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The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Tony Richardson, 1962.
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Edition screened: BFI Blu-ray, released 2011. English language. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.

The BFI Blu-ray also includes Momma Don’t Allow, a 1955 dance club short by Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz.

1959 Williams Tic-Tac-Toe in the gameroom.



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Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. Karel Reisz, 1960.
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Edition screened: BFI Blu-ray, released 2009. English language. Runtime approximately 89 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.

This superb adaptation of Alan Sillitoe’s short novel is a defining example of Kitchen Sink Realism.

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Loves of a Blonde

Loves of a Blonde (Lásky jedné plavovlásky). Miloš Forman, 1965.
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Edition screened: Janus Essential Art House DVD (Criterion #144), released 2010. Czech language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 85 minutes.

Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
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Kill the Day

Kill the Day. Lynne Ramsay, 1996.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion DVD #162 Ratcatcher, released 2002. Scots English with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 11 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.

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Gasman

Gasman. Lynne Ramsay, 1997.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion DVD #162 Ratcatcher, released 2002. Scots English with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 15 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.

Another excellent short film by Ramsay, dealing this time with affections and understandings in a complex relationship.

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Billy Liar

Billy Liar. John Schlesinger, 1963.
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Edition screened: Studio Canal 50th Anniversary Blu-ray, released 2013. English language. Runtime approximately 98 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.


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My Ain Folk

My Ain Folk. Bill Douglas, 1973.
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Edition screened: Included on Facets 2-DVD set The Bill Douglas Trilogy, released 2008. Scots English with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 55 minutes.

Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.

My Ain Folk is the second film of The Bill Douglas Trilogy.

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My Childhood

My Childhood. Bill Douglas, 1972. 
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Edition screened: Included on Facets 2-DVD set The Bill Douglas Trilogy, released 2008. Scots English with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 46 minutes.

Summary: Depictions of dead bird and cat.

Details:
1) At 18:33 Granny knocks down Tommy’s bird cage while clearing cobwebs with a broom, and at 18:39 beats the cage with her broom. Tommy rescues bird and battered cage.
2) We see the bird cage on the floor again at 28:20, this time with the cage door open and Bill’s cat eating the bird (not graphic in itself). Tommy grabs the cat, and beginning at 28:26 there is a 30-second sequence including the two boys struggling over the cat, brief off-screen sound of the cat being beaten, an image of a cat's body thrown over a banister, and a static shot of a dead cat lying on the ground.
3) 36:12 begins a 10-second sequence of a dead bird unwrapped from dirty newspaper and thrown to the ground.

Additional comments:
My Childhood is the first film of The Bill Douglas Trilogy. The important implications behind the cat/bird sequence and the subsequent killing of the cat are depicted with subtlety and are easily misunderstood. Our lifetime viewing of cartoons and comedies where the cat “gets” the caged bird makes us over-simplify the narrative in My Childhood. In fact, this domestic conflict and sadness was designed by Granny, and is a realistic depiction of the real trauma parents can contrive in the lives of their children. Granny’s first violence to the caged bird was unresolved and unsatisfying, so she then provided the open cage to the cat, resulting in the death of both animals and fortifying the misery that she demands must dominate the home. Too cowardly to suffocate her grandchildren in their sleep, she has murdered the animals that represent them.

Rarely does art dare to expose how adults use pets as surrogates for the resentment felt toward their own children. In the real world, a child's wish for a pet is denied or disdainfully granted to reflect undesirability of the child. The expense and work of keeping a pet is stressed, exaggerated, and used as a threat to express resentment over the time and money required by the child. Pets are treated impatiently and banished outside because of the child’s unwelcome presence. The pet mysteriously disappears or is treated cruelly by the parents because it is illegal to beat or kill a child.

@ BL
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