The Thinking Machine #104

In their series The Thinking Machine, critics Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin create a new video essay for Filmkrant every month.

An idea that many filmmakers and cinephiles invoke: Pure Cinema! But what is it? Movement. Colour. Action. Choreography. Music. Flow. The perfect fusion of sound and image. No boring, explicatory dialogue.

Of course, there is no single type of cinema that is pure – and, anyhow, purity is a dubious virtue in art as in life. So let us juxtapose two emblems of so-called Pure Cinema. One is a delirious ‘continuous take’ Korean action film, Carter (2022); and the other is the celebrated ‘dolls house’ sequence from Jerry Lewis’ The Ladies Man (1961). Which is the most pure… or impure?