The Green Fog

The Green Fog
Directed byGuy Maddin
Evan Johnson
Galen Johnson
Edited byEvan Johnson
Galen Johnson
Production
company
Development Ltd.
Distributed byBalcony Booking (USA)
Release date
  • April 16, 2017 (2017-04-16) (San Francisco International Film Festival)
Running time
63 min
CountryCanada/USA
LanguageEnglish

The Green Fog is an experimental film directed by Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson, that loosely revisits the plot of Alfred Hitchcock's 1958 film Vertigo through a collage of found footage repurposed from old movies and television shows set in San Francisco.[1] The film was commissioned by the San Francisco Film Society for the 60th San Francisco International Film Festival’s and premiered at the festival's close on April 16, 2017.[1] It then entered limited release on January 5, 2018 and began to tour international festivals.The film features an original score by composer Jacob Garchik and Kronos Quartet.[2]

Festivals

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The Green Fog was selected to screen at the following film festivals:

Awards

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The Green Fog was nominated for the C.I.C.A.E. Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2018, and has won the following awards:

  • 2018 Golden Lady Harimaguada (Best Film), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Festival Internacional De Cine[3]
  • 2018—Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, The Douglas Edwards Experimental Film Award[4]

Critical reception

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The film received overwhelmingly positive reviews, with review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reporting a 95% approval score from critics based on 22 reviews.[5] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from film critics, posts a rating score of 78 based on 10 reviews.[6]

While the film has not received any negative reviews, New York Times critic Ben Kenigsberg, noted Maddin's "slight arrogance in presuming that one of the greatest films of all time [Hitchcock's Vertigo ...] could be approximated, even a little, using clips from lesser directors" but also notes that "if trying to recreate a lost object of obsession from the materials at hand was Hitchcock’s subject, then he couldn’t ask for a more fitting tribute" and calls the movie " a marvel of film scholarship."[7]

Ty Burr, writing for the Boston Globe, called the film "eerie, witty, and unexpectedly moving" and compared it to Christian Marclay's installation film The Clock.[8] Critics also noted that, in addition to serving as a tribute to Hitchcock's Vertigo and a method of deconstructing its own self-critical aspects (which Maddin has discussed in interviews),[9] the film pays homage to the city of San Francisco and its stature in film history, serving as "a scrambled history of San Francisco told through moving pictures."[10]

References

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  1. ^ a b Eric Kohn (2017-04-15). "'Vertigo' Revisited: Guy Maddin Explores Hitchcock's Classic With Found Footage — SF International Film Festival". IndieWire.
  2. ^ ""The Green Fog"". Balcony Releasing.
  3. ^ a b ""The American Film The Green Fog, By Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson And Galen Johnson, Receives The Golden Lady Harimaguada"". Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Festival Internacional De Cine.
  4. ^ ""'Roma' Named Best Film of 2018 by L.A. Film Critics Association"". Variety. 2018-12-09.
  5. ^ "The Green Fog". Rotten Tomatoes. Flixster. Retrieved 2019-01-11.
  6. ^ "The Green Fog". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Retrieved 2019-01-11.
  7. ^ Ben Kenigsberg (2018-01-04). ""Review: 'The Green Fog,' a Salute to Hitchcock's San Francisco"". The New York Times.
  8. ^ Ty Burr (2018-07-18). ""Guy Maddin reimagines 'Vertigo' in 'The Green Fog'"". Boston Globe.
  9. ^ ""Guy Maddin on Reinventing 'Vertigo' with 'The Green Fog,' Male Gaze, and the Bressonian Qualities of Chuck Norris"". The Film Stage. 2018-01-07.
  10. ^ Justin Chang (2018-03-26). ""Guy Maddin's 'The Green Fog' is an ingenious found-footage homage to 'Vertigo'"". Los Angeles Times.
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