was if anything more confused than 2020. The previous year we went into lockdown; last year we emerged only to go back to lockdown due to Delta, partially re-emerge, partially go back in response to Omicron--a chaotic state. I think the best films didn't reflect that confusion so much as express themselves despite, raising their collective yet distinct voices above the turmoil. Hence:
I'd been meaning to see more Guy Madden films before they leave the Criterion Channel on July 31, but somehow got sidetracked by Death Takes a Holiday. I mean--Fredric March as The Grim Reaper? I know Madden is an important experimental filmmaker with a high reputation and what films I've seen (Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary; The Saddest Music in the World; Archangel) reveal a cineliterate talent with a taste for silent film exuberance and, in the case of Dracula, the influence of Gerardo de Leon's The Blood Drinkers--but morbid romances are impossible to resist. Besides there's a cadaverous quality to March--his performance here suggesting an antediluvian theatrical style irretrievably lost--that makes him the perfect Death.
