Framed to Perfection XXVII

TIEFER BLAUER SCHNEE (1981)

Director: Fred Noczynski

Cinematographer: Martin Rötger

I was unwillingly dragged around the world in my youth, which I genuinely believe has had a crippling affect on my mental health. I know it’s something of a lazy cliche to blame your parents for your personal hangups, but I’m pretty sure the two idiots who pulled me into this world and regularly took me out of crucial school years to indulge their OCD-need to go on pointless holidays, do bear some sort of responsibility for my broken mind.

Needless to say, these series of events led to me skiving off school and hiding in the local woods for a week, which was a major cause for concern because a) my school didn’t bother to ring my parents about my absence for a week and b) I was so scared of school and my parents that I was hiding in the local woods for a fucking week.

I’m pretty sure that’s all pretty messed-up.

Also, out of the dozens of places I’ve lived and the hundreds of people I’ve gotten to know and who’ve learned to hate me, the two things that will surely be said about me are: “Oh, Jim?! Yeah, he’s scared of his biological family and enjoys the cold”.

I was once nearly killed when, in 2009, my ex-girlfriend completely misjudged how far we needed to clamber through heavy English snow to get to an isolated holiday cabin. I subsequently teased her about this for quite some time. Sadly, she passed away in 2022 from heart failure, leaving me very-much alone in Sheffield, so this alarming memory has now become something more bittersweet. 

I’m not selling myself here, am I?!

Anyway, I’ve only just started watching Tiefer Blauer Schee, a one-minute-away-from-being-a-short-film I found on a compilation of German family shorts, so the only thing I know thus far is that it features a family traipsing through the snow to get to… somewhere.

I have a funny feeling this is the whole film.

But, much to my delight, I am being bombarded with thoughtful shot compositions by the minute, which is odd, really, as you’d think little effort would be put into your cinematography under such extreme weather conditions. Unless you’re Renny Harlin, of course.

I’m not usually into wide landscape shots, considering them pretty easy catches, but this one is particularly clever. Hopefully, you get the idea, despite DDR’s usually-poor disc transfer. I’m pretty sure they’re actually designed to self-destruct, like the instructional tapes in Mission: Impossible. 

I hope you are well, as I seem to be experiencing an agonising low-mood attack this week. So, alas, this will probably be the last post you’ll get from me in awhile. Still, as always, should you or any of your IMF Force are caught or killed blah blah blah.

Oh I will be posting so many tributes to Brian De Palma’s wonderful 1996 Mission: Impossible film next year that you will all get fed up so quick. This is a promise, not a threat.

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!