François Truffaut’s ode to Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich is an ice-cold femme revenge tale. Jeanne Moreau exacts retribution from five men who made her a widow on her wedding day. Truffaut winds it as tightly as a mousetrap, leaving Ms. Moreau’s psychology a mystery — feminists can debate whether the film is misogynistic. Raoul Coutard’s color cinematography is deceptively warm and inviting; the film’s biggest boost comes from Bernard Herrmann’s powerful music score.
The Bride Wore Black
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1968 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date February 14, 2023 / La mariée était en noir / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Brialy, Charles Denner, Claude Rich, Michael Lonsdale, Daniel Boulanger, Alexandra Stewart, Sylvine Delannoy, Luce Fabiole, Michèle Montfort.
Cinematography: Raoul Coutard
Production Designer: Pierre Guffroy
Film Editor: Claudine Bouché
Original Music: Bernard Herrmann
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard from the novel by William Irish...
The Bride Wore Black
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1968 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date February 14, 2023 / La mariée était en noir / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Brialy, Charles Denner, Claude Rich, Michael Lonsdale, Daniel Boulanger, Alexandra Stewart, Sylvine Delannoy, Luce Fabiole, Michèle Montfort.
Cinematography: Raoul Coutard
Production Designer: Pierre Guffroy
Film Editor: Claudine Bouché
Original Music: Bernard Herrmann
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard from the novel by William Irish...
- 2/4/2023
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The inarguably true cliché about Jean-Luc Godard was that the late filmmaker, who died this week at the age of 91, was a rule-breaker, an artist whose style changed the course of film history by revealing the medium for everything it had already been and pointing to the future of what it could eventually be. Obviously, his body of work has been influential — but that’s an understatement.
And not only for his extensive, time- and media-spanning filmography, ranging from his cucumber-cool debut, Breathless, to the didactic political experiments of the 1960s and 1970s,...
And not only for his extensive, time- and media-spanning filmography, ranging from his cucumber-cool debut, Breathless, to the didactic political experiments of the 1960s and 1970s,...
- 9/14/2022
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
Pathé’s 4K restoration of No Fear No Die is a highlight of the Revivals program Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Film at Lincoln Center has announced the Revivals selections of the 60th New York Film Festival. Highlights include Pedro Costa’s O Sangue (Blood); Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, and Françoise Lebrun; Jacques Tourneur’s Canyon Passage starring Brian Donlevy (with Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg consulting on this restoration); Claire Denis’s No Fear No Die with Isaach De Bankole, Alex Descas, and Jean-Claude Brialy; Mikko Niskanen’s Eight Deadly Shots; Manoel de Oliveira’s The Day Of Despair on the life of Camilo Castelo Branco, played by Mario Barroso; Edward Yang’s A Confucian Confusion starring Ni Shujun, and Balufu Bakupu-Kanyinda’s Le Damier, screening with Radu Jude’s short The Potemkinists (in the Currents program).
The 60th New York Film...
Film at Lincoln Center has announced the Revivals selections of the 60th New York Film Festival. Highlights include Pedro Costa’s O Sangue (Blood); Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore, starring Jean-Pierre Léaud, Bernadette Lafont, and Françoise Lebrun; Jacques Tourneur’s Canyon Passage starring Brian Donlevy (with Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg consulting on this restoration); Claire Denis’s No Fear No Die with Isaach De Bankole, Alex Descas, and Jean-Claude Brialy; Mikko Niskanen’s Eight Deadly Shots; Manoel de Oliveira’s The Day Of Despair on the life of Camilo Castelo Branco, played by Mario Barroso; Edward Yang’s A Confucian Confusion starring Ni Shujun, and Balufu Bakupu-Kanyinda’s Le Damier, screening with Radu Jude’s short The Potemkinists (in the Currents program).
The 60th New York Film...
- 8/24/2022
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Claude Chabrol was the most prolific of the New Wave directors. He didn’t only do murder thrillers; this fine selection of Chabrols from the ten year period 1985-1994 begins with a pair of detective tales but moves on to a masterful adaptation of a great book and two engrossing experiments, one of them picking up where an earlier French master left off. The players are terrific as well: Jean Poiret, Stéphane Audran, Jean-Claude Brialy, Bernadette Lafont, Isabelle Huppert, Jean-François Balmer, Christophe Malavoy, Jean Yanne, Marie Trintignant, Jean-François Garreaud, Emmanuelle Béart, François Cluzet.
Lies and Deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol
Blu-ray
Cop au Vin (Poulet au vinaigre), Inspector Lavardin (Inspecteur Lavardin), Madame Bovary, Betty, Torment (L’enfer)
Arrow Video
1985-1994 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 9 hours and 17 minutes / Street Date February 22, 2022 / Available from Arrow Video (UK website) / Available from Amazon U.S. / 99.95
Common Credits:
Cinematography: Jean Rabier (3), Bernard Ziterman (2)
Production Designer:...
Lies and Deceit: Five Films by Claude Chabrol
Blu-ray
Cop au Vin (Poulet au vinaigre), Inspector Lavardin (Inspecteur Lavardin), Madame Bovary, Betty, Torment (L’enfer)
Arrow Video
1985-1994 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 9 hours and 17 minutes / Street Date February 22, 2022 / Available from Arrow Video (UK website) / Available from Amazon U.S. / 99.95
Common Credits:
Cinematography: Jean Rabier (3), Bernard Ziterman (2)
Production Designer:...
- 3/8/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Éric Rohmer was notoriously secretive about his personal life, giving alternate birth names, birth cities, and birth dates. But according to biographers Antoine de Baecque and Noël Herpe, Rohmer was actually born Maurice Joseph Henri Schérer, in Tulle, on March 21, 1920. Whatever the truth, such resolute devotion to privacy reflected the exclusive and rigorous nature of Rohmer’s working life as well. Often going against the grain of his early French New Wave contemporaries, and from there enjoying a similar autonomy and singularity within the sphere of international cinema, Rohmer directed distinctive films most aligned—emphatically and productively—with his own filmography. Maintaining a remarkable dedication to consistent themes, dramatic interests, and, in nearly all cases, a comparable formal approach, Rohmer placed the nuanced behavior of the individual at the fore of all his work. Above: Le Signe du lionSteeped in studies of history, literature, and philosophy, Rohmer arrived at his burgeoning cinephile comparatively late.
- 11/5/2020
- MUBI
With the passing of Anna Karina, a curtain has fallen on the French New Wave, that fabled cinematic movement that brought fame to the man who made her name, Jean-Luc Godard. Yes, Godard is still with us, as is “Breathless” star Jean-Paul Belmondo (practically the last of the living New Wave legends), but his moviemaking compatriots François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jacques Demy, and, most recently, Agnès Varda are gone, and with them the spirit of playful abandon that Karina perfectly embodied.
In such Godard classics as “A Woman is a Woman,” “Pierrot le Fou,” “Alphaville,” and “Made in USA,” Karina appeared as a gamine and a femme fatale at the same time. Not since Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich had there been a director-and-star tandem so potent. The closest to it would be Philippe Garrel’s partnership with Nico — although the avant-garde blue plate specials made by...
In such Godard classics as “A Woman is a Woman,” “Pierrot le Fou,” “Alphaville,” and “Made in USA,” Karina appeared as a gamine and a femme fatale at the same time. Not since Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich had there been a director-and-star tandem so potent. The closest to it would be Philippe Garrel’s partnership with Nico — although the avant-garde blue plate specials made by...
- 12/16/2019
- by David Ehrenstein
- Variety Film + TV
Costa-Gavras, who is still making films at 86, was just a beginner when he made Un homme de trop (a.k.a. Shock Troops) in 1967, and arguably wouldn't hit his true stride until he made the Oscar-winning Z a couple of years later. The '67 movie, a French Resistance drama produced by James Bond mogul Harry Saltzman, was a big-budget flop. But it's also a genuine unknown masterpiece.Speculating as to why the film wasn't a hit, the director supposed that maybe there was "too much action." Action, he said, is easy to do. Well, not for most filmmakers, not the way he does it. The movie is simply incredible—the most headlong film I can think of outside of Mad Max: Fury Road. True, there isn't quite as much fighting as all that—it isn't a single chase one way followed by another chase going back (see also Keaton's The...
- 9/18/2019
- MUBI
The decision to celebrate Delon’s career has sparked criticism from #MeToo activists.
Controversial French actor Alain Delon declared it was the women he had met throughout his life who had propelled him to success as an actor, at a masterclass in Cannes on Sunday as the festival proceeded with its tribute to the French star in spite of protests by #MeToo activists.
The actor will be feted with an honorary Palme d’Or on Sunday evening. He has appeared in seven competition titles over his 60-year-career, including Luchino Visconti’s Palme d’Or winning The Leopard, but has never won best actor.
Controversial French actor Alain Delon declared it was the women he had met throughout his life who had propelled him to success as an actor, at a masterclass in Cannes on Sunday as the festival proceeded with its tribute to the French star in spite of protests by #MeToo activists.
The actor will be feted with an honorary Palme d’Or on Sunday evening. He has appeared in seven competition titles over his 60-year-career, including Luchino Visconti’s Palme d’Or winning The Leopard, but has never won best actor.
- 5/19/2019
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Varda passed away following a short battle with cancer.
Agnès Varda, the Belgian-born director whose work played a pivotal part in the French New Wave, has died aged 90.
She died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer, according to a statement from her family given to French news agency Afp. It said: ”The director and artist Agnès Varda died at home on Thursday night due to cancer, with her family and loved ones surrounding her.”
Her death comes just weeks after Varda put in a fitting final appearance at the Berlin International Film Festival with the documentary Varda By Agnès.
An extended filmed masterclass of sorts,...
Agnès Varda, the Belgian-born director whose work played a pivotal part in the French New Wave, has died aged 90.
She died shortly after being diagnosed with cancer, according to a statement from her family given to French news agency Afp. It said: ”The director and artist Agnès Varda died at home on Thursday night due to cancer, with her family and loved ones surrounding her.”
Her death comes just weeks after Varda put in a fitting final appearance at the Berlin International Film Festival with the documentary Varda By Agnès.
An extended filmed masterclass of sorts,...
- 3/29/2019
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- ScreenDaily
Mubi's retrospective For Ever Godard is showing from November 12, 2017 - January 16, 2018 in the United States.Jean-Luc Godard is a difficult filmmaker to pin down because while his thematic concerns as an artist have remained more or less consistent over the last seven decades, his form is ever-shifting. His filmography is impossible to view in a vacuum, as his work strives to reflect on the constantly evolving cinema culture that surrounds it: Godard always works with the newest filmmaking technologies available, and his films have become increasingly abstracted and opaque as the wider culture of moving images has become increasingly fragmented. Rather than working to maintain an illusion of diegetic truth, Godard’s work as always foreground its status as a manufactured product—of technology, of an industry, of on-set conditions and of an individual’s imagination. Mubi’S Godard retrospective exemplifies the depth and range of Godard’s career as...
- 11/19/2017
- MUBI
Every so often, usually while walking around Toronto on a busy day, I'll be struck by the vividness and accuracy of Agnès Varda's singular portrayal of a day in the life (barely two hours, really, making it even more remarkable) spent in the various layers and spaces of the urban environment. I speak, of course, of Cléo from 5 to 7, Varda's 1962 classic and the first film of hers I fell in love with. In those instances, I'll find myself returning to the moments I've cherry-picked as my favorites over the years, skipping across the linear sequence of events that follow the titular singer (Corinne Marchand) across Paris as she waits for the results from a medical examination within the film's designated timeframe (minus half an hour, as the film famously ends at the ninety minute mark). More than for any other film, engaging in these mental replays feels very much like replaying the events of a day I had once experienced myself long ago—albeit one that I’ve been able to revisit and come to know nearly by heart, complete with all of my favorite moments and details waiting in their proper places, so often have I gone back to that June 21st in Paris, 1961.Varda has even made it relatively easy for anyone who wishes to explore and investigate to their heart's content the events of that fateful first day of summer from so long ago now, not only by making such a crisp cinematic itinerary of the various locations visited in the film itself, but also by helpfully providing a map in her book Varda par Agnès complete with a color-coded legend indicating the locations of key scenes from the film, practically inviting the reader to recreate Cléo’s journey for themselves on the streets of present-day Paris. At once attentive and relaxed in its tour of the city (mainly focused in the Left Bank), Cléo is ably conducted in a number of different registers: as an uncommonly lovely essay-poem on the ebb and flow of urban life, an at-times somber meditation on the precarious balance between life and death, and a revealing and honest study of female identity and the ways it is scrutinized and distorted in the public’s relentless gaze. In a feat of remarkable economy and resourcefulness, the film was shot in chronological order across a five-week period, beginning on the date of the story’s events, synchronized as closely as possible to the times in the day Cléo experiences them, in keeping with narrative fidelity and proper quality of light for each scene. Neatly arranged into thirteen chapters, each with its duration clearly stated so we can easily keep track in real time, Cléo’s lucid odyssey through the various public and private spaces that make up her day is observational cinema at its most fertile, free, and magically attuned to its subjects, partly the result of Varda and her team’s carefully planned and executed shoot, partly that of simply being in the right places at the right times.Together, the films of the French New Wave make up one of the most valuable and immersive audiovisual documents of a specific time and place in history—namely France in the late 1950s and early 1960s—that we have. This is especially true of the Paris-situated films, which create the alluring image of an interconnected network of overlapping stories concentrated in a single city. The sharing of certain actors, cinematographers, writers, composers, and other key artists and technicians across different films by different directors especially helped make the impression of one Paris holding an eclectic anthology of New Wave tales. This perception was further reinforced by the cheeky self-referential winks and nods that so many of the New Wave directors—Jean-Luc Godard in particular—lovingly included in their films as gestures of solidarity and support with their nouvelle vague comrades. This is why the eponymous hero of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le flambeur, noted by many as a crucial New Wave precursor, gets name-checked by Jean-Paul Belmondo in Godard’s Breathless, why Truffaut muses Marie Dubois and Jeanne Moreau both pop up in A Woman Is a Woman, with Moreau getting asked by Belmondo how Jules and Jim is coming along, and why Anna Karina’s Nana glimpses a giant poster for the same Truffaut film as she is being driven to her fate in the final moments of Vivre sa vie.Varda got in on the fun herself in Cléo from 5 to 7 not only by casting Michel Legrand, who provided the film with its robust score, as Cléo’s musical partner Bob (a part that gives the legendary composer a substantial amount of screen time and amply shows off his incandescent charm), but also by extending the invitation to Godard, Karina, Sami Frey, Eddie Constantine, Jean-Claude Brialy, producer Georges de Beauregard, and Alan Scott, who had appeared in Jacques Demy’s Lola. They all show up in Les fiancés du pont Macdonald, the silent comedy short-within-the-film that serves triple duty as a welcome diversion for our stressed heroine, a loving cinephilic tribute to the legacy of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, and an irresistible, bite-sized New Wave party. And yet I find Cléo to be perhaps the most enchanting of all the New Wave films not for the aesthetic commonalities and cleverly devised linkages that bind it to The 400 Blows, Breathless, Paris Belongs to Us, and its other cinematic brethren, but rather for the tapestry of curious details that root it in its specific time and place and entice on the power of their inherent uniqueness and beauty. “Here,” Varda seems to say as she follows Cléo across the city, “let’s have a look at these interesting people and places on this first day of summer here in Paris, and see what we can see after watching them for a while.” The film’s opening scene continues to extend this invitation as it draws us in closer. It shows us, through the sepia-hued Eastmancolor that deviates from the rest of the film’s silvery monochrome and the “God’s eye” overhead shots (long before Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson adopted the technique as their own), the cryptic spectacle of Tarot cards being shuffled, placed down, and turned over to reveal the story of Cléo’s potential fate before we’ve even gotten a chance to properly meet Cléo herself. The slightly macabre illustrations to which Varda and cinematographer Jean Rabier dedicate their tight close-ups and the elderly card reader’s accompanying explanations of their meanings lend an air of prophecy to the events to come while also fueling Cléo’s anxiety surrounding her fate (when pressed for a clearer forecast of the future through a palm reading, the reader’s evasive response is less than inspiring). This introduction effectively locks us into Cléo’s perspective, preparing us for the next hour and a half that we will spend quietly observing as, following her distraught exit from the reader’s apartment, she grapples with her fears and insecurities, contemplates and revises her appearance and the identity behind it (tellingly, we discover late in the film that Cléo's real name is Florence), and comes to terms with the ultimately fragile nature of her own mortality. In our allotted chunk of time with her, we see the pouty girl-child subtly shift and adjust her attitude, inching a little closer towards a place of earned maturity, grace, and acceptance regarding her fate, wherever it may take her.Along the way, the film seems to expand to take in as much of the people and places around Cléo as it can. Scene by scene, her Paris makes itself felt and known through key peripheral details: a pair of lovers having an argument in a café near where Cléo sits, listening in; the procession of uniformed officers on horseback heard clip-clopping through the street on the soundtrack and seen reflected in the array of mirrors placed throughout a hat shop; a spider web of shattered mirror and a cloth pressed against a bloody wound, indicating some incident that occurred just before Cléo happened along the scene of the confused aftermath. Other stimuli fill a dazzling program of serendipitous entertainments for us to take in one by one: whirlwind rides in two taxis and a bus, an intimate musical rehearsal in Cléo’s chic, kitten-filled apartment (with Legrand, no less, clearly having a great time, his nimble fingers releasing ecstatic bursts of notes and melodies from Cléo’s piano as if they were exotic birds), the aforementioned silent short, a sculpting studio (the space alive with the indescribably pleasant sound of chisels being tapped at different tempos through soft stone), a frog swallower, a burly street performer who wiggles an iron spike through his arm, and the soothing sights and sounds of the Parc de Montsouris, among a hundred other subtle and overt pleasures scattered throughout this gently orchestrated city symphony, a heap of specificities found and sorted into a chorus of universal experience.Very much in her own way, across a body of work informed by a boundless spirit of generosity, Agnès Varda has gone about carefully collecting and preserving a marvelously varied assortment of subjects throughout her busy life, shedding fresh light on some of the most unlikely (and overlooked) people and places in the world. She refers to her self-made approach to filmmaking as ciné-criture (her own version of Alexandre Astruc's caméra-stylo), which, as we’ve come to know it through Varda’s intensely personal works, is a little like cinema, a little like writing, and uses aspects of both media to make a compassionate, genuine, and wholly original film language. Just as Antoine (Antoine Bourseiller), the dreamy young man whom Cléo encounters in the Parc de Montsouris, translates the world around them into a stream of fanciful observations and flowery speech, so too does Varda, in allegiance with poetry, ditch any semblance of objectivity, going instead for presenting the world simply as she sees it, investing it with her own unmistakable blend of charm, warmth, eloquence, and empathy, all somehow executed with nary a shred of ego or preachiness.“All these stories we simply can’t understand!” randomly exclaims a café patron to her young companion at one point late in Cléo’s journey, perhaps suddenly becoming aware, as we gradually have, of the unfathomable multitude of trajectories that trace themselves across every city every day in a dense tangle of narrative strands. In picking up Cléo’s and diligently following it with her camera for an hour and a half, Varda draws our attention to all those other strands that make up the lives of other people, leading off into their own directions, fated to become entangled with others still. Wisely, deftly, one discovered strand at a time, she helps us better appreciate, again and again, the humble miracle of so many lives coursing and thriving alongside each other, each one special and strange, each rooted in its own distinct flavor of being-ness. Cléo from 5 to 7 in turn roots us in another person’s life for its short time span and ends up giving us a whole universe, casually overflowing with meaning, life, lives, and the myriad details that shape and define them. No, we can’t understand all the stories we come across in a day. But then again, sometimes we don’t really need to understand so much as simply see. See, and accept, and appreciate what is...and then move along to whatever’s next.
- 6/20/2017
- MUBI
Director Jacques Rivette just passed away back in January. There's more interest lately in his 12-hour opus Out 1, but if you'll settle for just 2.5 hours, this unique early New Wave feature will take you inside Rivette's world of artists, students, and refugees from political persecution, all in conflict in a sunny Paris of 1958. It's just as revolutionary as an early Godard or Truffaut, but in a style all Rivette's own. Paris Belongs to Us Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 802 1961 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 141 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Paris nous appartient / Street Date March 8, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Betty Schneider, François Maistre, Giani Esposito, Françoise Prévost, Daniel Crohem, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Marie Robain, Jean Martin. Cinematography Charles L. Bitsch Film Editor Denise de Casablanca Original Music Philippe Arthuys Written by Jacques Rivette, Jean Grualt Produced by Claude Chabrol, Roland Nonin Directed by Jacques Rivette
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The French New...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
The French New...
- 3/15/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
She's beautiful, desired and enjoys a social mobility in the improving Italian economy... but she's also a pawn of cruel materialist values. Stefania Sandrelli personifies a liberated spirit who lives for the moment, but who can't form the relationships we call 'living.' Antonio Pietrangeli and Ettore Scola slip an insightful drama into the young Sandrelli's lineup of comedy roles. I Knew Her Well Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 801 1965 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 115 min. / Io la conoscevo bene / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 23, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Stefania Sandrelli, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Brialy, Joachim Fuchsberger, Nino Manfredi, Enrico Maria Salerno, Ugo Tognazzi, Karin Dor, Franco Nero. Cinematography Armando Nannuzzi Production design Maurizio Chiari Film Editor Franco Fraticelli Original Music Piero Picconi Written by Antonio Pietrangeli, Ruggero Maccari, Etore Scola Produced by Turi Vasile Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Did a new kind of woman emerge in the 1960s?...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Did a new kind of woman emerge in the 1960s?...
- 3/15/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
For the first time in the Us, Jacques Rivette’s 1961 directorial debut, Paris Belongs to Us is available thanks to an accomplished new restoration from Criterion. A neglected title associated with the same crew of vibrant auteurs eventually known as the Nouvelle Vague of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Rivette’s thunder was stolen by more famous films from critics turned filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol, and Francois Truffaut (even though it technically went into production before several of theirs). The initial lackluster response explains Rivette’s slower rise to notability, his particular methods and idiosyncrasies eventually embraced nearly a decade later when items like Mad Love (1969) and the monolithic Out 1 (1971), the legendary near thirteen hour production, were released.
Anne (Betty Schneider) is a young literature student in Paris, following in the footsteps of her older brother, Pierre (Francois Maistre). Afetr a disturbing interaction with a neighbor at her hostel,...
Anne (Betty Schneider) is a young literature student in Paris, following in the footsteps of her older brother, Pierre (Francois Maistre). Afetr a disturbing interaction with a neighbor at her hostel,...
- 3/8/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Love is most definitely not a many splendored thing in the bedazzled artifice of Rome’s swinging 60s, at least as far as the good time gal depicted in Antonio Pietrangeli’s obscure 1965 title I Knew Her Well is concerned. A director lost in the shadows of other 60s Italian auteurs, where names like Antonioni, Fellini, Petri, Pasolini, Risi, or Visconti dominate contemporary conversations of the cinematic period, Criterion enables the resuscitation of Pietrangeli, a director whose filmography, notable for his complex portraits of women (sort of like the Italian version of later period Mizoguchi), is deserving of wider renown.
Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli) is a young, beautiful woman who thrusts herself into the burgeoning social scene of Rome after fleeing her rural roots. A series of random lovers finds her elevating her occupational merits through a variety of professions before she begins to land opportunities as a model and budding actress,...
Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli) is a young, beautiful woman who thrusts herself into the burgeoning social scene of Rome after fleeing her rural roots. A series of random lovers finds her elevating her occupational merits through a variety of professions before she begins to land opportunities as a model and budding actress,...
- 2/23/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Ingrid Bergman ca. early 1940s. Ingrid Bergman movies on TCM: From the artificial 'Gaslight' to the magisterial 'Autumn Sonata' Two days ago, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series highlighted the film career of Greta Garbo. Today, Aug. 28, '15, TCM is focusing on another Swedish actress, three-time Academy Award winner Ingrid Bergman, who would have turned 100 years old tomorrow. TCM has likely aired most of Bergman's Hollywood films, and at least some of her early Swedish work. As a result, today's only premiere is Fielder Cook's little-seen and little-remembered From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1973), about two bored kids (Sally Prager, Johnny Doran) who run away from home and end up at New York City's Metropolitan Museum. Obviously, this is no A Night at the Museum – and that's a major plus. Bergman plays an elderly art lover who takes an interest in them; her...
- 8/28/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Living cinema legend Jean-Luc Godard has no doubt created an oeuvre that remains appreciated, argued over and reinterpreted to this day. A new supercut video from Cinema Sem Lei showcases four Godard classics —“A Woman Is A Woman” (1961), “Contempt” (1963), “Pierrot le Fou” (1965), and “Made in U.S.A.” (1966)— filtering images and key scenes from each through the three basic colors of blue (bleu), white (blanc) and red (rouge), coincidentally the same ordered color arrangement of the French flag. Hence the title of the piece: “Blue, Blanc, Rogue - A Godard Supercut”. With the exception of “Contempt,” all the films shown star Godard’s frequent collaborator, lover and muse Anna Karina, with many frames of the video presenting colored interpretations of memorable moments performed by the iconic actress. Other frequent Godard collaborators such as Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Pierre Léaud are shown wearing sharp suits, flirting with girls, carrying...
- 6/15/2015
- by Timothy Tau
- The Playlist
Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...
- 2/28/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...
- 2/6/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Marie Dubois, actress in French New Wave films, dead at 77 (image: Marie Dubois in the mammoth blockbuster 'La Grande Vadrouille') Actress Marie Dubois, a popular French New Wave personality of the '60s and the leading lady in one of France's biggest box-office hits in history, died Wednesday, October 15, 2014, at a nursing home in Lescar, a suburb of the southwestern French town of Pau, not far from the Spanish border. Dubois, who had been living in the Pau area since 2010, was 77. For decades she had been battling multiple sclerosis, which later in life had her confined to a wheelchair. Born Claudine Huzé (Claudine Lucie Pauline Huzé according to some online sources) on January 12, 1937, in Paris, the blue-eyed, blonde Marie Dubois began her show business career on stage, being featured in plays such as Molière's The Misanthrope and Arthur Miller's The Crucible. François Truffaut discovery: 'Shoot the...
- 10/17/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
‘La Cage aux Folles’ director Edouard Molinaro, who collaborated with Catherine Deneuve, Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, dead at 85 Edouard Molinaro, best known internationally for the late ’70s box office comedy hit La Cage aux Folles, which earned him a Best Director Academy Award nomination, died of lung failure on December 7, 2013, at a Paris hospital. Molinaro was 85. Born on May 31, 1928, in Bordeaux, in southwestern France, to a middle-class family, Molinaro began his six-decade-long film and television career in the mid-’40s, directing narrative and industrial shorts such as Evasion (1946), the Death parable Un monsieur très chic ("A Very Elegant Gentleman," 1948), and Le verbe en chair / The Word in the Flesh (1950), in which a poet realizes that greed is everywhere — including his own heart. At the time, Molinaro also worked as an assistant director, collaborating with, among others, Robert Vernay (the 1954 version of The Count of Monte Cristo, starring Jean Marais) and...
- 12/8/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
To accompany the exhaustive retrospective of the films of Jean-Luc Godard (49 programs in 21 days) that started as part of the New York Film Festival and runs through the end of October, I had planned to select my ten all-time favorite posters for Godard’s films. But when I sat down to the task and laid out the ten I’d chosen in front of me, the result was a selection of posters so overly familiar as to be banal. It looked like the postcard rack of any film bookstore in Paris. Much as I had hoped to choose less obvious designs, when it came down to it the posters created for Godard’s films in the 60s are hands down among the greatest film posters ever made: Clément Hurel’s Breathless, Chica’s Une femme est une femme, Jacques Vaissier’s Vivre sa vie, Georges Kerfyser’s Band à part and Une femme mariée,...
- 10/18/2013
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
Few works of cinema are as gleefully alive as Jean-Luc Godard's A Woman Is a Woman, made when the conventions of storytelling were fast eroding. Not so much a story as a freewheeling string of gags, puns, and set pieces, the film concerns the fallout after Émile (Brialy) tells his stripper girlfriend, Angela (Karina), that he's not interested in having a baby with her but that she's perfectly welcome to have one with his buddy Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo). This being a Godard film, the situation is not a setup for realistic psychological drama but rather a pretext for expressively depicting the ways in which couples fight, make up, and fight again—often all within a matter of minutes. One of Godard's funniest pictures, the film rattles off gag after gag with a machin...
- 7/31/2013
- Village Voice
Actor with a natural and rebellious style, she helped to launch the French New Wave
Bernadette Lafont, who has died aged 74, could have claimed to be the first female star of the Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut chose the sensual, dark-haired, 18-year-old Lafont and her new husband, Gérard Blain, to play lovers in the director's first professional film, Les Mistons (The Mischief-Makers, 1957). In this charming short, shot in Nîmes one summer, a group of pubescent boys spy on Lafont and Blain's lovemaking in the fields. Blain and Lafont were also picked to appear in arguably the first French New Wave feature, Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958). In this film, about a young man returning to his childhood home, Lafont played the "village vamp".
Lafont's fresh look and performance style crystallised the movement's ideological and cinematic ambitions. Truffaut and his colleagues found mainstream stars inadequate to their needs, using instead unknown and non-professional actors,...
Bernadette Lafont, who has died aged 74, could have claimed to be the first female star of the Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut chose the sensual, dark-haired, 18-year-old Lafont and her new husband, Gérard Blain, to play lovers in the director's first professional film, Les Mistons (The Mischief-Makers, 1957). In this charming short, shot in Nîmes one summer, a group of pubescent boys spy on Lafont and Blain's lovemaking in the fields. Blain and Lafont were also picked to appear in arguably the first French New Wave feature, Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge (1958). In this film, about a young man returning to his childhood home, Lafont played the "village vamp".
Lafont's fresh look and performance style crystallised the movement's ideological and cinematic ambitions. Truffaut and his colleagues found mainstream stars inadequate to their needs, using instead unknown and non-professional actors,...
- 7/26/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
(Claude Chabrol, 1958/59, Eureka!, 12)
Coined in 1957 by the French journalist François Giroud to describe a rebellious generation of young French people polled by L'Express, the term "nouvelle vague" was rapidly applied to an amorphous group of innovative film‑makers, the most vociferously self-publicising of whom were the critics working for Cahiers du Cinéma, who embraced "la politique des auteurs".
The first of them to direct a feature film was Claude Chabrol, co-author in 1957 of the first book on the Cahiers hero Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol used his wife's windfall inheritance to make what has been called the first new wave movie, Le beau Serge, followed immediately by a companion piece, Les cousins. Both were shot in a naturalistic manner by key nouvelle vague cameraman Henri Decaë, and star Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain.
In Le beau Serge, Brialy plays a Parisian who goes back to his home village to save the life...
Coined in 1957 by the French journalist François Giroud to describe a rebellious generation of young French people polled by L'Express, the term "nouvelle vague" was rapidly applied to an amorphous group of innovative film‑makers, the most vociferously self-publicising of whom were the critics working for Cahiers du Cinéma, who embraced "la politique des auteurs".
The first of them to direct a feature film was Claude Chabrol, co-author in 1957 of the first book on the Cahiers hero Alfred Hitchcock. Chabrol used his wife's windfall inheritance to make what has been called the first new wave movie, Le beau Serge, followed immediately by a companion piece, Les cousins. Both were shot in a naturalistic manner by key nouvelle vague cameraman Henri Decaë, and star Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain.
In Le beau Serge, Brialy plays a Parisian who goes back to his home village to save the life...
- 4/13/2013
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Le beau Serge
"The story of Les cousins could be straight out of one of the Balzac novels that the film's lead character Charles peruses at a second-hand bookshop," suggests Andrew Schenker in Slant: "Ambitious provincial comes to Paris and receives his moral education in the hotbed of corruption and/or decadence that characterizes life in the capital. In Claude Chabrol's film, his second directorial effort following his 1958 debut, Le beau Serge, the milieu in question is the debauched world of students, young women, and older hangers-on that the director delineates with superb specificity of detail and a virtuoso display of sickening verve." Criteron's presentation, he adds, "is a fitting testament to the late director's brilliance."
Criterion's also releasing Le beau Serge today and the essays by Terrence Rafferty that accompany each have been posted in Current. When Le beau Serge premiered out of competition in Cannes, notes Rafferty,...
"The story of Les cousins could be straight out of one of the Balzac novels that the film's lead character Charles peruses at a second-hand bookshop," suggests Andrew Schenker in Slant: "Ambitious provincial comes to Paris and receives his moral education in the hotbed of corruption and/or decadence that characterizes life in the capital. In Claude Chabrol's film, his second directorial effort following his 1958 debut, Le beau Serge, the milieu in question is the debauched world of students, young women, and older hangers-on that the director delineates with superb specificity of detail and a virtuoso display of sickening verve." Criteron's presentation, he adds, "is a fitting testament to the late director's brilliance."
Criterion's also releasing Le beau Serge today and the essays by Terrence Rafferty that accompany each have been posted in Current. When Le beau Serge premiered out of competition in Cannes, notes Rafferty,...
- 9/22/2011
- MUBI
Your Weekly Source for the Newest Releases to Blu-Ray Tuesday, September 20th, 2011
Boccaccio ’70 (1962)
Synopsis: Four legendary filmmakers direct some of Europe’s biggest stars in Boccaccio ’70, a landmark anthology film. Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), Federico Fellini (8½), Luchino Visconti (The Leopard) and Vittorio De Sica (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) direct Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider and more through four stories of unashamed eros. Modeled on Boccaccio’s Decameron, they are comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy. Monicelli’s “Renzo e Luciana” (cut out of the original American release) is a frothy tale of young love and office politics in the big city. Fellini’s notorious “Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio” features Ekberg as a busty model in a milk advertisement whose image begins to haunt an aging prude. Visconti’s “Il Lavoro” stars Romy Schneider as a trophy wife enduring her husband’s very public affairs,...
Boccaccio ’70 (1962)
Synopsis: Four legendary filmmakers direct some of Europe’s biggest stars in Boccaccio ’70, a landmark anthology film. Mario Monicelli (Big Deal on Madonna Street), Federico Fellini (8½), Luchino Visconti (The Leopard) and Vittorio De Sica (Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) direct Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider and more through four stories of unashamed eros. Modeled on Boccaccio’s Decameron, they are comic moral tales about the hypocrisies surrounding sex in 1960s Italy. Monicelli’s “Renzo e Luciana” (cut out of the original American release) is a frothy tale of young love and office politics in the big city. Fellini’s notorious “Le tentazioni del dottor Antonio” features Ekberg as a busty model in a milk advertisement whose image begins to haunt an aging prude. Visconti’s “Il Lavoro” stars Romy Schneider as a trophy wife enduring her husband’s very public affairs,...
- 9/19/2011
- by Travis Keune
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
DVD Playhouse—September 2011
By Allen Gardner
In A Better World (Sony) Winner of last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, this Danish export looks at two fractured families and the effect that the adult world dysfunction has on their two sons, who form an immediate and potentially deadly bond. Director Susanne Bier delivers another powerful work that maintains its drive during the films’ first 2/3, then falters somewhat during the last act. Still, well-worth seeing, and beautifully made. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Commentary by Bier and editor Pernille Bech Christensen; Interview with Bier. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.
X-men First Class (20th Century Fox) “Origins” film set in the early 1960s, traces the beginnings of Magento and Professor X (played ably here by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy), and how the once-close friends and colleagues became bitter enemies. First half is slam-bang entertainment at its stylish best,...
By Allen Gardner
In A Better World (Sony) Winner of last year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar, this Danish export looks at two fractured families and the effect that the adult world dysfunction has on their two sons, who form an immediate and potentially deadly bond. Director Susanne Bier delivers another powerful work that maintains its drive during the films’ first 2/3, then falters somewhat during the last act. Still, well-worth seeing, and beautifully made. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Commentary by Bier and editor Pernille Bech Christensen; Interview with Bier. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS-hd 5.1 surround.
X-men First Class (20th Century Fox) “Origins” film set in the early 1960s, traces the beginnings of Magento and Professor X (played ably here by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy), and how the once-close friends and colleagues became bitter enemies. First half is slam-bang entertainment at its stylish best,...
- 9/11/2011
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Criterion will issue two long-unavailable early films by the late, great French New Waver Claude Chabrol (Inspector Bellamy) on Sept. 20.
Le beau Serge (1958), writer/director Chabrol’s first feature, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD for the suggested retail prices of $39.95 and $29.95. Les cousins (1959) on Blu-ray and DVD will carry the same prices.
The drama Le beau Serge, Chabrol’s first film, follows a successful yet sickly young man (Jean‑Claude Brialy) who returns home to the small village where he grew up only to find himself at odds with his former close friend (Gérard Blain)—now unhappily married and a wretched alcoholic—and the provincial life he represents.
In Les cousins, Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil,...
Le beau Serge (1958), writer/director Chabrol’s first feature, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD for the suggested retail prices of $39.95 and $29.95. Les cousins (1959) on Blu-ray and DVD will carry the same prices.
The drama Le beau Serge, Chabrol’s first film, follows a successful yet sickly young man (Jean‑Claude Brialy) who returns home to the small village where he grew up only to find himself at odds with his former close friend (Gérard Blain)—now unhappily married and a wretched alcoholic—and the provincial life he represents.
In Les cousins, Chabrol crafts a sly moral fable about a provincial boy who comes to live with his sophisticated bohemian cousin in Paris. Through these seeming opposites, Chabrol conjures a darkly comic character study that questions notions of good and evil,...
- 7/5/2011
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
Welcome to the second installment of Guest Author month at Criterion Files: a month devoted to important classic and contemporary bloggers. Each Wednesday for the month of April, a writer and fellow Criterion aficionado from another site will be giving their own take one one of the collection’s beloved titles. This week, Joshua Brunsting, writer for CriterionCast and Gordon and the Whale, takes on Jean-Luc Godard’s beloved musical, A Woman is a Woman. Tune in every week this month for an analysis of a different title from a new author. Sometimes, the splash a filmmaker makes with his or her first feature ultimately breeds a wave too harsh to ride as a career living up to the beginning. While everyone and their mother points to a film like Jean-Luc Godard’s debut feature, Breathless, as the (in my eyes definitive) auteur’s crowning achievement, it’s almost as common to hear the director discussed as...
- 4/13/2011
- by Guest Author
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
The Academy confirms that filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard will not be making the trek across the pond to attend the November 13 Governor's Awards at the Kodak Theatre. Last year, when ailing John Calley couldn't accept the Thalberg award, a heavyweight roster of past winners turned up to honor him, including Steven Spielberg, Dino De Laurentiis, Norman Jewison and Warren Beatty. Who will honor Godard? Gone are Eric Rohmer, Francois Truffaut, Samuel Fuller, Juliet Berto, Eddie Constantine, Akim Tamiroff, Jean-Claude Brialy, Suzanne Schiffman, Yves Montand, Norman Mailer, Burgess Meredith and Jean Seberg. But over the decades Godard worked with an amazing range of international collaborators who are still around. I'd love to see Jeanne Moreau, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anna Karina, Pierre Rissient, Claude Chabrol, Raoul Coutard. Michel ...
- 10/25/2010
- Thompson on Hollywood
Prolific French director of films with murder at their heart
The film director Claude Chabrol, who has died aged 80, created the first ripple of the French new wave with his first feature, Le Beau Serge (1958). Unlike some of his other critic colleagues on the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who also became film-makers, Chabrol was perfectly happy in the mainstream. Along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, he paid serious attention to Hollywood studio contract directors who retained their artistic personalities through good and bad films, thus formulating what came to be known as the "auteur theory".
In 1957, he and Rohmer wrote a short book on Alfred Hitchcock, whom they saw as a Catholic moralist. Hitchcock's black humour and fascination with guilt pervades the majority of Chabrol's films, most of which have murder at their heart. However, although Chabrol's thematic allegiance to Hitchcock remained intact, his...
The film director Claude Chabrol, who has died aged 80, created the first ripple of the French new wave with his first feature, Le Beau Serge (1958). Unlike some of his other critic colleagues on the influential journal Cahiers du Cinéma, who also became film-makers, Chabrol was perfectly happy in the mainstream. Along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette, he paid serious attention to Hollywood studio contract directors who retained their artistic personalities through good and bad films, thus formulating what came to be known as the "auteur theory".
In 1957, he and Rohmer wrote a short book on Alfred Hitchcock, whom they saw as a Catholic moralist. Hitchcock's black humour and fascination with guilt pervades the majority of Chabrol's films, most of which have murder at their heart. However, although Chabrol's thematic allegiance to Hitchcock remained intact, his...
- 9/14/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
It’s always sad to write about anybody who dies in the film business, but today’s loss is a big one. Claude Chabrol, a fellow critic and one of the founders of the French New Wave, which is a very big part of the Criterion Collection, has died at the age of 80. And like most filmmakers, he was working right until the end which is what all artists do when they love the medium as much as they do. So I wanted to take a few minutes out of your time to showcase a top 10 of his films. Sadly he isn’t featured within the Collection, but he is one of many directors that deserves a place within its walls. So without further adieu, let’s get into the wonders of Claude Chabrol.
10. Le Beau Serge (1958)
Why not start this list with Chabrol’s first film? It was an...
10. Le Beau Serge (1958)
Why not start this list with Chabrol’s first film? It was an...
- 9/13/2010
- by James McCormick
- CriterionCast
The French New Wave veteran has died aged 80. We look back over his career with a selection of clips from his films
Along with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol ushered in the New Wave that washed over French cinema at the end of the 1950s. Like them a critic turned filmmaker, Chabrol shared their appreciation of classical genre form – to some, he appreciated it too much, exploring rather than subverting its strictures. But his prodigious output and technical mastery assure his place as one of the great figures of cinema's first century.
Born in 1930 to a middle-class family, Chabrol studied law before joining Godard, Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette in making Cahiers du Cinema, the epicentre of auteurist celebration of 'low' Hollywood. In 1957, he and Rohmer published their influential study of Hitchcock – a director who would have an enduring influence on Chabrol's work behind the camera – and,...
Along with François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol ushered in the New Wave that washed over French cinema at the end of the 1950s. Like them a critic turned filmmaker, Chabrol shared their appreciation of classical genre form – to some, he appreciated it too much, exploring rather than subverting its strictures. But his prodigious output and technical mastery assure his place as one of the great figures of cinema's first century.
Born in 1930 to a middle-class family, Chabrol studied law before joining Godard, Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Jacques Rivette in making Cahiers du Cinema, the epicentre of auteurist celebration of 'low' Hollywood. In 1957, he and Rohmer published their influential study of Hitchcock – a director who would have an enduring influence on Chabrol's work behind the camera – and,...
- 9/13/2010
- by Ben Walters
- The Guardian - Film News
'Dostoevskian' French actor with an aura of tormented youth
With his emaciated but hypnotically handsome face and lithe body, the French actor Laurent Terzieff, who has died of respiratory infection aged 75, graced the stage and films for more than half a century. There was always an aura of tormented youth about Terzieff which he carried into the classic roles of his maturity such as Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV (1989) and Shakespeare's Richard II (1991). His perfect diction and rhythmic precision made his rendering of Jean Cocteau's narration of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex in Bob Wilson's production at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1996 particularly exciting.
Terzieff's special talents were used by many of the great theatre producers of the day: Jean-Louis Barrault, Peter Brook, Roger Planchon, Maurice Garrel, Roger Blin and André Barsacq. He also directed dozens of plays, many at the Théâtre du Lucernaire in Montparnasse. Paradoxically, given his tormented persona as an actor,...
With his emaciated but hypnotically handsome face and lithe body, the French actor Laurent Terzieff, who has died of respiratory infection aged 75, graced the stage and films for more than half a century. There was always an aura of tormented youth about Terzieff which he carried into the classic roles of his maturity such as Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV (1989) and Shakespeare's Richard II (1991). His perfect diction and rhythmic precision made his rendering of Jean Cocteau's narration of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex in Bob Wilson's production at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1996 particularly exciting.
Terzieff's special talents were used by many of the great theatre producers of the day: Jean-Louis Barrault, Peter Brook, Roger Planchon, Maurice Garrel, Roger Blin and André Barsacq. He also directed dozens of plays, many at the Théâtre du Lucernaire in Montparnasse. Paradoxically, given his tormented persona as an actor,...
- 7/21/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Let’s face it: few things look better than Anna Karina in a movie poster. Even Anna Karina in a wimple. We're all familiar with Karina’s most iconic Godard posters—balancing Belmondo and Brialy on her hands for Une femme est une femme, glancing over the shoulder of Lemmy Caution in that amazing black and white Alphavlle poster, wearing that fabulous checkerboard sweater dress, and balancing a beer and a gun, in Made in USA—so it was a treat to come across this rarely seen Romanian poster for Jacques Rivette’s La religieuse (1966) which, with its posterized cut-out figures and its lack of color, is like the dour devout cousin of the boisterous Femme est une femme affiche.
I also love this rare Japanese poster for Alphaville (1965, below), in which Karina (again in profile), rather than Eddie Constantine, is the main focus (along with that awesome blue thingamajig...
I also love this rare Japanese poster for Alphaville (1965, below), in which Karina (again in profile), rather than Eddie Constantine, is the main focus (along with that awesome blue thingamajig...
- 5/28/2010
- MUBI
Only one movie to talk about this week, but I did finally finish reading Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" for the first time and it's frustrating I hadn't read it prior to seeing The Book of Eli as it would have given me another angle to evaluate the movie as it most definitely drew inspiration from this classic even though it's not even mentioned in the production notes.
I had, however, seen Francois Truffaut's adaptation, which I watched about two years ago and wasn't particularly all that impressed with, but now have a much greater interest in revisiting and am happy to see it's still available on Netflix Instant Play. I don't necessarily want to revisit it for a comparison as much as I'm interested in having a greater understanding. I'm not sure I gave it my full attention the first time around and after enjoying the book so much...
I had, however, seen Francois Truffaut's adaptation, which I watched about two years ago and wasn't particularly all that impressed with, but now have a much greater interest in revisiting and am happy to see it's still available on Netflix Instant Play. I don't necessarily want to revisit it for a comparison as much as I'm interested in having a greater understanding. I'm not sure I gave it my full attention the first time around and after enjoying the book so much...
- 5/2/2010
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
When Dustin "Cinnamon" Rowles assigned me to produce a canon of the top ten foreign language films of the aughts, I felt incredibly intimidated. When Dustin assured me that I was the critic for the job, as I had probably seen the most foreign films out of the entire staff, my anxiety only deepened. I admit that I watch a lot of foreign language flicks, thanks to Netflix, the American Cinematheque's wonderful programming, and owning a region-free DVD player. However, when I spoke to my cinema and media studies classmates and colleagues, I quickly began to realize that I had still missed a torrent of films that could have made this list (Caché, Downfall, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, Maria Full of Grace, and Werckmeister Harmonies to name a few). Moreover, to consolidate all the films I had seen over the past decade from all the non-English speaking countries around the world was,...
- 12/10/2009
- by Drew Morton
Italian model and film actor, she left the cinema and joined the jet set
Rosanna Schiaffino, who has died aged 69, was one of those Italian beauty queens who began a promising acting career in the post-neorealist cinema of the 1950s. She gave up the cinema in the 1970s and married the handsome playboy and steel industry heir Giorgio Falck. Their marriage and, a decade later, their break-up and divorce, had overtones of melodrama more piquant than the content of any of the 45 films in which Schiaffino had starred.
She was born in Genoa, in north Italy, into a well-off family and, although her father wanted her to pursue studies as a surveyor, her mother encouraged her showbusiness ambitions, helping her to study privately at a drama school and then to take part in beauty contests, which she usually won. These led to modelling jobs, with photographs in important magazines, including Life.
Rosanna Schiaffino, who has died aged 69, was one of those Italian beauty queens who began a promising acting career in the post-neorealist cinema of the 1950s. She gave up the cinema in the 1970s and married the handsome playboy and steel industry heir Giorgio Falck. Their marriage and, a decade later, their break-up and divorce, had overtones of melodrama more piquant than the content of any of the 45 films in which Schiaffino had starred.
She was born in Genoa, in north Italy, into a well-off family and, although her father wanted her to pursue studies as a surveyor, her mother encouraged her showbusiness ambitions, helping her to study privately at a drama school and then to take part in beauty contests, which she usually won. These led to modelling jobs, with photographs in important magazines, including Life.
- 11/18/2009
- by John Francis Lane
- The Guardian - Film News
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