The Grin Without a Cat, more

Finally had a chance to digest the whole of this film over the weekend and this certainly lived up to the high expectations I had put on the film in my head.

What really struck me about the movie was the way that Marker took history and made it a representation of history (see my Awkward Family Photos post below). In the first few minutes we see a century and global scale of social demonstrations and see that footage contrasted with Battleship Potemkin. What is that movie? Art? Propaganda? A view of the revolution idealized and left unfulfilled As we watch history collide with an idealized socialist version of the same we do not see a contradiction- we see Potemkin project itself on the twentieth century.

Later we see an Army camp selling war to Latin America and journalists and, what look to be, tourists. They play war for them and then the visitors have a go of it, interrogating a prisoner as the camera interrogates them.

What is a grin without a cat truly but a fantasy of what could be?