The movies Kelly Reichardt uses to teach filmmaking
Over the last three decades, Kelly Reichardt has established herself as one of the key proponents of the slow cinema movement with her movies that often incorporate the minutiae of the day-to-day lives of working-class characters and their doings in rural American settings.
After delivering her feature debut in 1994 with River of Grass, Reichardt continued to progress her cinematic vision with the likes of Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek’s Cutoff, Night Moves and Certain Women. The Florida-born director simply has one of the most unique and interesting styles in the 21st-century film industry.
While Reichardt is best known for her contributions to independent cinema, she has also carved out a career as something of an educator. The director has taught at New York University, Columbia and the School of Visual Arts, as well as being an Artists in Residence at Bard College.
When it comes to teaching film in her classes, Reichardt uses her knowledge of the history of cinema to inform her students. When the director named her ten favourite films of all time, she pointed out two movies that she uses as part of her classes, beginning with Jacques Tati’s Playtime.
“I used to use this in a class I taught on sound,” Reichardt told Criterion. “There’s a part where Tati is in a waiting room and sitting on all these squeaky chairs, and then you hear clickety-clackety sounds in the hallway. I love the contrast between how clean and slick everything in that set is with his little umbrella and raincoat.”
Playtime is Tati’s 1967 comedy movie, in which he once again plays his famous character Monsieur Hulot, who’d he’d performed as previously in the 1950s. Hulot only appears in minor moments of Playtime, but the film is praised for his large set and the way Tati uses sound effects to compliment the many moments of comedy.
The other film that Reichardt uses in the classroom is Todd Haynes’ 1995 drama, Safe. “I never tire of using this film in the classroom because there’s always more to glean from it, and I say this as someone who has seen it many, many times,” Reichardt noted.
Haynes’ film sees Julianne Moore play a suburban Los Angeles housewife who begins to experience distressing physical symptoms that she believes to come from an “environmental illness”. There is indeed much to take from the excellent movie, and it’s one that Reichardt is always sure to use time and time again in the classroom.
