Friday, June 30, 2017
181 - Yojimbo, 1961, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.
The Man with No Name walks into the dying town.
Two rival gangs are holed up on opposite ends. Posturing. And cowering.
The cooper works in the middle building coffins.
A dog trots by holding in his mouth a human hand.
The Man approaches one gang announcing his services.
He walks down the middle of the barren street, the wind blowing dust into the air.
The rival gang has made sport of him, calling him a dog.
He drops three men with one unsheathing of his sword.
He tells the cooper, "I need two coffins. No, maybe three."
And so begins his stay in the town, where he sets up the two gangs against each other.
And plays them.
Making each raise its price.
Hoping to win his loyalty.
Until all are dead.
And he has all their money.
No. This is not Clint Eastwood. It is not A Fistful of Dollars.
This is Toshiro Mifune. It is Yojimbo.
When Clint, a television actor, was offered his first starring role in a feature film, in Italy, he read the script and knew it immediately.
This is Yojimbo.
It was in the air.
Yojimbo came out in 1961.
Fistful came out in 1964.
The Italian Western took from the Japanese Samurai movie.
The Japanese Samurai movie had already taken from the American Western.
Kurosawa loved American Westerns.
He admired the work of John Ford.
More than one writer says he "worshiped" him.
Kurasawa said of Ford, "When I'm old, that's the kind of director I want to be."
He referred to Ford's 1946 My Darling Clementine as the model of cinema.
Darling was Ford's telling of Wyatt Earp, starring Henry Fonda, Linda Darnell, Victor Mature, and Walter Brennan.
Kurosawa wrote in his autobiography, Something Like an Autobiography, "Compared to these two illustrious masters, Renoir and Ford, I am no more than a little chick."
Kurosawa may have more masterpieces credited to him than anyone else in the history of world cinema, outside of Ingmar Bergman, yet he honored Ford as the master.
So did others. Many others.
We will get to Ford later this year. And we will discuss more of that then.
Kurosawa understands composition.
He uses 90-degree angles. And straight lines.
Whereas the other great Ku- composition master, Kubrick, reveled in perspective, using largely a single, central vanishing point in his framing, this Ku- composition master, Kurosawa, places his images in flat planes.
He composes his shots in Yojimbo as if we were watching live theatre.
With the characters foregrounded and backgrounded to give depth.
And everything neatly contained in the shot as if between two curtains.
With Akira Kurosawa, all the world's a stage.
The Man with No Name has a name. Whether it is given to him by someone else or himself.
In a Fistful of Dollars, they call him Joe.
In For a Few Dollars More, they call him Monco.
In The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, they call him Blondie.
In Yojimbo, he names himself. When asked his name he looks out the window and sees a mulberry field. He is 30-years old, so he names himself the 30-year old mulberry field.
Or in Japanese, Sanjuro Kuwabatake.
Sanjuro.
I wonder if we will see that name again.
Friday, June 30, 2017
Thursday, June 29, 2017
180 - The Hidden Fortress, 1958, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.
Thursday, June 29, 2017
180 - The Hidden Fortress, 1958, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.
Two creatures walk the barren desert in the midst of the war.
The tall one fancies himself the leader, and he treats the short one with sarcastic abuse.
Yet he needs him and cannot bear to be without him.
A coward, he pessimistically expresses their imminent doom.
They split up. They walk the desert separately. They are captured. They are reunited as prisoners.
Eventually, they will find themselves a part of a ragtag group containing a plucky mercenary as they try to help a princess fight to save her kingdom.
Do you know the names of the bumbling peasants?
No. They are not C3PO and R2D2.
They are Tahei and Matashichi.
Engaged in their antics twenty-three years before Star Wars. George Lucas did not merely admit that he had stolen from The Hidden Fortress; he celebrated it. He loved this film and wanted to pay it tribute.
The master Kurosawa has chosen to tell his story through the point of view of its lowest characters. He begins in medias res--in the middle of things--as the bumpkins continue their journey already begun.
A road movie, a buddy comedy, a swashbuckling action film, an epic adventure, a romance, a war movie, a Western, The Hidden Fortress is a film of films.
Oh, and we might also mention it is a Samurai film.
Now, if only they can find that gold.
180 - The Hidden Fortress, 1958, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.
Two creatures walk the barren desert in the midst of the war.
The tall one fancies himself the leader, and he treats the short one with sarcastic abuse.
Yet he needs him and cannot bear to be without him.
A coward, he pessimistically expresses their imminent doom.
They split up. They walk the desert separately. They are captured. They are reunited as prisoners.
Eventually, they will find themselves a part of a ragtag group containing a plucky mercenary as they try to help a princess fight to save her kingdom.
Do you know the names of the bumbling peasants?
No. They are not C3PO and R2D2.
They are Tahei and Matashichi.
Engaged in their antics twenty-three years before Star Wars. George Lucas did not merely admit that he had stolen from The Hidden Fortress; he celebrated it. He loved this film and wanted to pay it tribute.
The master Kurosawa has chosen to tell his story through the point of view of its lowest characters. He begins in medias res--in the middle of things--as the bumpkins continue their journey already begun.
A road movie, a buddy comedy, a swashbuckling action film, an epic adventure, a romance, a war movie, a Western, The Hidden Fortress is a film of films.
Oh, and we might also mention it is a Samurai film.
Now, if only they can find that gold.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
179 - Seven Samurai, 1954, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
179 - Seven Samurai, 1954, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.
The bandits are going to attack the village.
The villagers know because a farmer overheard the bandits planning. As they sat on their horses on a cliff overlooking the village.
The villagers are filled with terror.
They turn to their elder. Gisaku decides they should hire samurai.
Samurai belong to a different class from the villagers. They are beneath them. It would go against their 16th-century propriety to associate with Samurai. But they feel they have no choice.
They approach Ronin. Ronin are Samurai who have no master. They are freelancers. Available. Desperate for work.
The first half of this epic film (three-and-a-half hours) features the hiring of the Samurai.
The second half features the Samurai preparing the village for battle and fighting the battle.
This is one of the great films.
A masterpiece made by a master.
Starring several of his great actors.
Toshiro Mifune. Takashi Shimura. Kamatari Fujiwara. Minoru Chiaki.
Watch it. You will find yourself wanting to watch it again. Throughout your life.
At least seven times.
179 - Seven Samurai, 1954, Japan. Dir. Akira Kurosawa.
The bandits are going to attack the village.
The villagers know because a farmer overheard the bandits planning. As they sat on their horses on a cliff overlooking the village.
The villagers are filled with terror.
They turn to their elder. Gisaku decides they should hire samurai.
Samurai belong to a different class from the villagers. They are beneath them. It would go against their 16th-century propriety to associate with Samurai. But they feel they have no choice.
They approach Ronin. Ronin are Samurai who have no master. They are freelancers. Available. Desperate for work.
The first half of this epic film (three-and-a-half hours) features the hiring of the Samurai.
The second half features the Samurai preparing the village for battle and fighting the battle.
This is one of the great films.
A masterpiece made by a master.
Starring several of his great actors.
Toshiro Mifune. Takashi Shimura. Kamatari Fujiwara. Minoru Chiaki.
Watch it. You will find yourself wanting to watch it again. Throughout your life.
At least seven times.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
178 - The Great Beauty, 2013, Italy. Dir. Paolo Sorrentino.
Tuesday, June 27, 2017
178 - The Great Beauty, 2013, Italy. Dir. Paolo Sorrentino.
I wanted to be the king of high society.
I didn't just want to go to parties.
I wanted to have the power to make or break them.
So says Jep.
Jep is the Jay Gatsby of early 21st century Rome.
He lives in a posh apartment with a rooftop balcony across the street from the Coliseum.
He wrote a novelette years ago. He has not written since. He is not pretentious. He knows he is not important. He claims not to be an intellectual. He simply goes through life and makes the most of it.
And he does take in things and process them.
Jep has just turned 65 years old, and we attend his birthday party.
We then follow him through Rome through nights and days as he meets people and spends time with them.
The film is lovely to watch and to hear. The production design and cinematography are rich and lush .
The director is sure-handed and takes his time, crafting memorable images.
Every frame a page from a National Geographic coffee table book.
* * * * *
Travel is useful. It exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue.Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.
It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things--all are imagined.
It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so, and he's never wrong.
Besides, anyone can do it. You just have to close your eyes.
It's on the other side of life.
Celine - Journey to the End of the Night
178 - The Great Beauty, 2013, Italy. Dir. Paolo Sorrentino.
I wanted to be the king of high society.
I didn't just want to go to parties.
I wanted to have the power to make or break them.
So says Jep.
Jep is the Jay Gatsby of early 21st century Rome.
He lives in a posh apartment with a rooftop balcony across the street from the Coliseum.
He wrote a novelette years ago. He has not written since. He is not pretentious. He knows he is not important. He claims not to be an intellectual. He simply goes through life and makes the most of it.
And he does take in things and process them.
Jep has just turned 65 years old, and we attend his birthday party.
We then follow him through Rome through nights and days as he meets people and spends time with them.
The film is lovely to watch and to hear. The production design and cinematography are rich and lush .
The director is sure-handed and takes his time, crafting memorable images.
Every frame a page from a National Geographic coffee table book.
* * * * *
Travel is useful. It exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue.Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.
It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things--all are imagined.
It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so, and he's never wrong.
Besides, anyone can do it. You just have to close your eyes.
It's on the other side of life.
Celine - Journey to the End of the Night
Monday, June 26, 2017
177 - The Night Porter, 1974, Italy. Dir. Liliana Cavani.
Monday, June 26, 2017
177 - The Night Porter, 1974, Italy. Dir. Liliana Cavani.
It's a story from the Bible.
That is what Max tells Countess Stein.
Lucia danced for him. She danced a cabaret. She pleased him. So he gave her what she wanted. The head of Johann.
Johann was a prisoner who used to torment her. So of course Max rewarded her with Johann's head.
OK. So maybe Max is not exactly Herod, and Lucia is not Herodias' daughter Salome. But Max compares the situations.
After all, there is nothing like the love between an SS officer of the Nazis and his female prisoner from the concentration camp.
Except maybe when that love is reunited years later.
And the prison camp is recreated in his apartment.
Max works as a night porter at a hotel in Vienna.
Lucia comes to stay at the hotel. She asks for her key. He gives it to her. Her eyes grow large.
She knows him.
She has come with her husband, the American composer. He has an opera performing in town. After that, Frankfurt and Berlin. Then home.
But no. Lucia has run into Max. She will run to him. She will run away with him.
This chance encounter brings back the memories of their past, shown to us in flashbacks.
And it opens the door for them to get together again.
The Night Porter was co-written and directed by Liliana Cavani, who had come up through Italian film school and directing for television, making historical documentaries.
She directed History of the Third Reich (1961-2) and Women of the Resistance (1965). The first was the result of many hours of research using original footage. The second consisted of interviews with Italian female survivors of the prison camps.
She had a long connection to the subject and personal access to primary sources. Her choice to make The Night Porter must have been deeply, personally felt.
The film stars Dirk Bogarde and the great Charlotte Rampling. If you know her, you already love her.
She starred opposite Sean Connery in John Boorman's Zardoz. She starred opposite Robert Mitchum in the Philip Marlowe remake of Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. She won hearts opposite Woody Allen in Stardust Memories and joined Paul Newman in Sidney Lumet's directing of David Mamet's The Verdict. She appeared in Tony Scott's Spy Game, starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. She starred in the independent film Swimming Pool. She was nominated for an Oscar for 45 Years.
177 - The Night Porter, 1974, Italy. Dir. Liliana Cavani.
It's a story from the Bible.
That is what Max tells Countess Stein.
Lucia danced for him. She danced a cabaret. She pleased him. So he gave her what she wanted. The head of Johann.
Johann was a prisoner who used to torment her. So of course Max rewarded her with Johann's head.
OK. So maybe Max is not exactly Herod, and Lucia is not Herodias' daughter Salome. But Max compares the situations.
After all, there is nothing like the love between an SS officer of the Nazis and his female prisoner from the concentration camp.
Except maybe when that love is reunited years later.
And the prison camp is recreated in his apartment.
Max works as a night porter at a hotel in Vienna.
Lucia comes to stay at the hotel. She asks for her key. He gives it to her. Her eyes grow large.
She knows him.
She has come with her husband, the American composer. He has an opera performing in town. After that, Frankfurt and Berlin. Then home.
But no. Lucia has run into Max. She will run to him. She will run away with him.
This chance encounter brings back the memories of their past, shown to us in flashbacks.
And it opens the door for them to get together again.
The Night Porter was co-written and directed by Liliana Cavani, who had come up through Italian film school and directing for television, making historical documentaries.
She directed History of the Third Reich (1961-2) and Women of the Resistance (1965). The first was the result of many hours of research using original footage. The second consisted of interviews with Italian female survivors of the prison camps.
She had a long connection to the subject and personal access to primary sources. Her choice to make The Night Porter must have been deeply, personally felt.
The film stars Dirk Bogarde and the great Charlotte Rampling. If you know her, you already love her.
She starred opposite Sean Connery in John Boorman's Zardoz. She starred opposite Robert Mitchum in the Philip Marlowe remake of Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. She won hearts opposite Woody Allen in Stardust Memories and joined Paul Newman in Sidney Lumet's directing of David Mamet's The Verdict. She appeared in Tony Scott's Spy Game, starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. She starred in the independent film Swimming Pool. She was nominated for an Oscar for 45 Years.
Sunday, June 25, 2017
176 - Salo, 1975, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Sunday, June 25, 2017
176 - Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, 1975, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Not many people will enjoy watching this film.
176 - Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, 1975, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Not many people will enjoy watching this film.
Saturday, June 24, 2017
175 - Arabian Nights, 1974, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Saturday, June 24, 2017
175 - Arabian Nights, 1974, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
A woman is king.
She used to be a slave.
Not as we think of it, but in another culture in another time.
She chose her owner because she loved him.
And he loved her.
They made love. They told stories.
But they were separated.
Zumurrud, the woman, will spend the film getting kidnapped, escaping, wandering, dressing as a man, becoming king, exacting revenge upon her enemies, and hoping that her love will find her again.
Nur Ed Din, the man, will spend the film searching for his love. He will have adventures and do exploits along the way.
Interwoven with their story are other stories.
Zumurrud tells Nur Ed Din two of the stories before they are separated. She acts as a kind of replacement for Sheherazade.
The other stories are told while they are separated and searching for one another.
The stories depict a world that Pasolini proposes for our consideration.
A world that can be read into the literary sources that have informed his Trilogy of Life.
Italy's The Decameron, England's The Canterbury Tales, and Persia's Arabian Nights.
A world where sex is guilt-free and pleasurable, and desire is felt equally by women and men.
A world of innocence.
A pleasant and optimistic vision.
Pasolini had spent much of his life speaking politically, taking adversarial positions, engaging in controversy.
With his Trilogy of Life, he was taking a more positive and life-affirming stance.
He took his gaze away from contemporary political struggle and focused it on other cultures in other times so that he could imagine and share this ideal.
These three films demonstrate his commitment to his vision. They contain abundant and increasingly graphic situations, but it is evident that Pasolini worked hard to maintain his philosophical position and portray this world through the eyes of innocence.
In fact, he would later write a letter denouncing the trilogy in light of contemporary events, expressing his frustration that imitators exploited what he had worked so hard to achieve in favor of cheap titillation and what he called "degradation."
He had aspired to something highly artistic which was hard earned. Others had turned it into a peep show.
Pasolini was interested in the "cinema of poetry."
He uses no master shots in this film.
He does not follow the traditional rules of coverage, moving in closer as the scene progresses.
He frames individuals like portraits.
He chooses camera angles in ways that are unexpected but grow organically out of the moment.
He often never returns to the same camera angle twice.
The final moment between Zumurrud and Nur Ed Din sums up the journey of the Trilogy.
In the end we look upon the faces of joy.
175 - Arabian Nights, 1974, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
A woman is king.
She used to be a slave.
Not as we think of it, but in another culture in another time.
She chose her owner because she loved him.
And he loved her.
They made love. They told stories.
But they were separated.
Zumurrud, the woman, will spend the film getting kidnapped, escaping, wandering, dressing as a man, becoming king, exacting revenge upon her enemies, and hoping that her love will find her again.
Nur Ed Din, the man, will spend the film searching for his love. He will have adventures and do exploits along the way.
Interwoven with their story are other stories.
Zumurrud tells Nur Ed Din two of the stories before they are separated. She acts as a kind of replacement for Sheherazade.
The other stories are told while they are separated and searching for one another.
The stories depict a world that Pasolini proposes for our consideration.
A world that can be read into the literary sources that have informed his Trilogy of Life.
Italy's The Decameron, England's The Canterbury Tales, and Persia's Arabian Nights.
A world where sex is guilt-free and pleasurable, and desire is felt equally by women and men.
A world of innocence.
A pleasant and optimistic vision.
And one for which many have longed.
A return to the Garden of Eden. But in this world. And in our time.
What if people could love one another, physically as well as emotionally, without social stigma and without personal shame?
Pasolini had spent much of his life speaking politically, taking adversarial positions, engaging in controversy.
With his Trilogy of Life, he was taking a more positive and life-affirming stance.
He took his gaze away from contemporary political struggle and focused it on other cultures in other times so that he could imagine and share this ideal.
These three films demonstrate his commitment to his vision. They contain abundant and increasingly graphic situations, but it is evident that Pasolini worked hard to maintain his philosophical position and portray this world through the eyes of innocence.
In fact, he would later write a letter denouncing the trilogy in light of contemporary events, expressing his frustration that imitators exploited what he had worked so hard to achieve in favor of cheap titillation and what he called "degradation."
He had aspired to something highly artistic which was hard earned. Others had turned it into a peep show.
Pasolini was interested in the "cinema of poetry."
He uses no master shots in this film.
He does not follow the traditional rules of coverage, moving in closer as the scene progresses.
He frames individuals like portraits.
He chooses camera angles in ways that are unexpected but grow organically out of the moment.
He often never returns to the same camera angle twice.
The final moment between Zumurrud and Nur Ed Din sums up the journey of the Trilogy.
In the end we look upon the faces of joy.
Friday, June 23, 2017
174 - The Canterbury Tales, 1972, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Friday, June 23, 2017
174 - The Canterbury Tales, 1972, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The Canterbury Tales is the second in Pasolini's Trilogy of Life.
Like The Decameron, set in Italy, Pasolini's The Canterbury Tales, set in England, generally follows some of the stories from the source material while adapting them and adding to them.
The production design--landscapes, wardrobe, colors--is lush and vibrant.
The scenes are shown in long shots and wide shots.
The actors are committed to their roles and robust in their ribaldry.
The stories go further than the previous film, The Decameron, in their appropriation of their respective source book.
Pasolini himself plays Geoffrey Chaucer, as he did Giotto's pupil in The Decameron.
174 - The Canterbury Tales, 1972, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The Canterbury Tales is the second in Pasolini's Trilogy of Life.
Like The Decameron, set in Italy, Pasolini's The Canterbury Tales, set in England, generally follows some of the stories from the source material while adapting them and adding to them.
The production design--landscapes, wardrobe, colors--is lush and vibrant.
The scenes are shown in long shots and wide shots.
The actors are committed to their roles and robust in their ribaldry.
The stories go further than the previous film, The Decameron, in their appropriation of their respective source book.
Pasolini himself plays Geoffrey Chaucer, as he did Giotto's pupil in The Decameron.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
173 - The Decameron, 1971, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Thursday, June 22, 2017
173 - The Decameron, 1971, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Every frame a Giotto.
Can a film be a fresco?
The Decameron is an Italian Renaissance collection of stories similar to The Canterbury Tales in England.
And like The Canterbury Tales, it draws from the traditions of Dante's Comedia (The Divine Comedy), Petrarch, Ovid, and Virgil.
The Decameron was written some time around A.D. 1350, while The Canterbury Tales were written in the A.D. 1390s.
The Decameron contains a frame tale, a story that frames all the other stories and into which they fit. In The Canterbury Tales, it is a group of pilgrims going on a pilgrimage. In The Decameron, it is a group of ten people (three men and seven women) going on a trip to flee the plague of the Black Death.
They agree each to tell a story a day for ten days. Thus, The Decameron is a collection of one hundred stories.
Pier Paolo Pasolini removed Boccaccio's frame tale, added two others, and filmed about nine of the stories. He used one of the stories to create the frame tale of the first half of the movie, and he created a new frame tale--Giotto's best student, played by Pasolini himself--to frame the second half of the movie.
Pasolini was a good fit as a filmmaker to direct this material. He was a painter, poet, playwright, novelist, and actor as well as a director. He had things to say about his view of class structure
And he seemed to be trying to showcase a kind of innocence about this period. One that he fought to be able to show, but which he felt so quickly shifted into something else and about which he was disillusioned.
Like the time period portrayed, his film is bawdy, earthy, and celebratory. But following his own contemporary belief system, it highlights disparities in human behavior. Human behavior based on social and financial status rather than mere humanity.
As well as human behavior driven by carnal desires.
173 - The Decameron, 1971, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Every frame a Giotto.
Can a film be a fresco?
The Decameron is an Italian Renaissance collection of stories similar to The Canterbury Tales in England.
And like The Canterbury Tales, it draws from the traditions of Dante's Comedia (The Divine Comedy), Petrarch, Ovid, and Virgil.
The Decameron was written some time around A.D. 1350, while The Canterbury Tales were written in the A.D. 1390s.
The Decameron contains a frame tale, a story that frames all the other stories and into which they fit. In The Canterbury Tales, it is a group of pilgrims going on a pilgrimage. In The Decameron, it is a group of ten people (three men and seven women) going on a trip to flee the plague of the Black Death.
They agree each to tell a story a day for ten days. Thus, The Decameron is a collection of one hundred stories.
Pier Paolo Pasolini removed Boccaccio's frame tale, added two others, and filmed about nine of the stories. He used one of the stories to create the frame tale of the first half of the movie, and he created a new frame tale--Giotto's best student, played by Pasolini himself--to frame the second half of the movie.
Pasolini was a good fit as a filmmaker to direct this material. He was a painter, poet, playwright, novelist, and actor as well as a director. He had things to say about his view of class structure
And he seemed to be trying to showcase a kind of innocence about this period. One that he fought to be able to show, but which he felt so quickly shifted into something else and about which he was disillusioned.
Like the time period portrayed, his film is bawdy, earthy, and celebratory. But following his own contemporary belief system, it highlights disparities in human behavior. Human behavior based on social and financial status rather than mere humanity.
As well as human behavior driven by carnal desires.
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
172 - Mamma Roma, 1962, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini,
Wednesday, June 21, 2017
172 - Mamma Roma, 1962, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini,
Mamma Roma loves her son.
Ettore.
She has had a difficult life.
Years ago a man found her and pimped her out. He will continue to use this memory throughout her life to get money from her. His name is Carmine.
She attends Carmine's wedding. She brings pigs. She sings an insulting toast. The bride sings insults back.
Years later she has saved enough money to get her son back.
She has been working the streets. He has been living on the streets. She gets him back. She moves him home. She wants his life to be good. Respectable.
She uses manipulative gymnastics to get him a job.
He falls for a girl. Bruna. The boys tease him. They have all had Bruna. He is new and easy to fall.
Mamma Roma tries to get his mind off Bruna. By having a former workmate, who herself is still working, to get his mind on her instead.
Things do not always turn out the way Mamma Roma wants them to. She works diligently to make things happen. But things do not always happen. Her life is hard.
Her life is tragic.
Pier Paolo Pasolini turned down Il Sorpasso to direct this film, his second.
He uses Christian imagery throughout. He begins with the wedding party alluding to The Last Supper. He ends with the crucified Christ. In the middle he places the Madonna and Child. He takes the viewer to church. He uses as a refrain the view looking out on the local basilica.
He took Italian cinema in a new direction.
Let us watch more of him.
172 - Mamma Roma, 1962, Italy. Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini,
Mamma Roma loves her son.
Ettore.
She has had a difficult life.
Years ago a man found her and pimped her out. He will continue to use this memory throughout her life to get money from her. His name is Carmine.
She attends Carmine's wedding. She brings pigs. She sings an insulting toast. The bride sings insults back.
Years later she has saved enough money to get her son back.
She has been working the streets. He has been living on the streets. She gets him back. She moves him home. She wants his life to be good. Respectable.
She uses manipulative gymnastics to get him a job.
He falls for a girl. Bruna. The boys tease him. They have all had Bruna. He is new and easy to fall.
Mamma Roma tries to get his mind off Bruna. By having a former workmate, who herself is still working, to get his mind on her instead.
Things do not always turn out the way Mamma Roma wants them to. She works diligently to make things happen. But things do not always happen. Her life is hard.
Her life is tragic.
Pier Paolo Pasolini turned down Il Sorpasso to direct this film, his second.
He uses Christian imagery throughout. He begins with the wedding party alluding to The Last Supper. He ends with the crucified Christ. In the middle he places the Madonna and Child. He takes the viewer to church. He uses as a refrain the view looking out on the local basilica.
He took Italian cinema in a new direction.
Let us watch more of him.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
171 - Il Sorpasso, 1962, Italy. Dir. Dino Risi.
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
171 - Il Sorpasso, 1962, Italy. Dir. Dino Risi
This is a joyful film.
No matter what the ending may be.
Road trip.
Opposites.
Abbott and Costello.
Laurel and Hardy.
Left-Brained and Right-Brained.
Metapbysical and Cavalier.
Baroque and Romantique.
Apollonian and Dionysian.
Roberto and Bruno.
Roberto is studying law. He comes from the country. From a good family. He is sincere. And shy.
Bruno is a free spirit. From the city. He lives in Rome. He wants to have a good time.
It is August 15. A holiday. The streets are empty.
Bruno can find no one to hang with. His friends abandoned him. He was an hour late. What were they thinking?
He asks Roberto to use his phone.
He asks him to spend the day with him.
And the second day.
They have adventures.
Two new friends.
Opposites.
On the road.
This is the prototype for Easy Rider.
And a dozen other movies.
It is joyful.
Check it out.
171 - Il Sorpasso, 1962, Italy. Dir. Dino Risi
This is a joyful film.
No matter what the ending may be.
Road trip.
Opposites.
Abbott and Costello.
Laurel and Hardy.
Left-Brained and Right-Brained.
Metapbysical and Cavalier.
Baroque and Romantique.
Apollonian and Dionysian.
Roberto and Bruno.
Roberto is studying law. He comes from the country. From a good family. He is sincere. And shy.
Bruno is a free spirit. From the city. He lives in Rome. He wants to have a good time.
It is August 15. A holiday. The streets are empty.
Bruno can find no one to hang with. His friends abandoned him. He was an hour late. What were they thinking?
He asks Roberto to use his phone.
He asks him to spend the day with him.
And the second day.
They have adventures.
Two new friends.
Opposites.
On the road.
This is the prototype for Easy Rider.
And a dozen other movies.
It is joyful.
Check it out.
Monday, June 19, 2017
170 - The Grim Reaper, 1962, Italy. Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci.
Monday, June 19, 2017
170 - The Grim Reaper (La Commare Secca), 1962, Italy. Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci.
Bernardo Bertolucci's father was a famous poet.
Bernardo had himself written a book of poems.
So when he directed his first feature film at age 21, he decided "to give myself over to moments of lyricism."
He had worked with Pier Paolo Pasolini as an assistant the year before, on Accatone (1961).
Pasolini told him he wanted to do a lot of close-ups, as in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).
Yet his visual reference would be the early Tuscan painters, beginning with Sasseta (Stefano di Giovanni)--a Siennese Renaissance painter who painted altarpieces.
Bertolucci observed that Accatone views everything from the front, like an altarpiece. and that it conveys a sense of the sacred.
Bertolucci considered that Pasolini was not a cinephile, not a film buff, so when Pasolini directed he did not search his memory for examples from before (despite the Dreyer exception) in order to guide him.
Rather, it was as if Pasolini made it up from the beginning.
Bertolucci felt that when working with Pasolini, it was as if he were witnessing the birth of cinema, as if Pasolini were inventing it as he went along.
Pasolini had been writing screenplays for several years and was working steadily. He collaborated on Fellini's The Nights of Cabiria (1957). But Accatone was his first film to direct.
He had written the treatment for The Grim Reaper a few years back but was now focused on directing his next film, Momma Roma (which we will see in a couple days).
Producer Antonio Cervi owned the rights to The Grim Reaper, and he hired two young men to write the screenplay: Sergio Citti and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Cervi asked them to write it the way Pasolini would make it. Citti and Bertolucci did their best to adhere to the kind of script Pasolini would have written.
They "invented the 'Pasolinian' genre."
Then Cervi turned to Bertolucci to direct it.
At 21 he had never been on set before, other than working for Pasolini on Accatone, so he had to show himself as confident and calm when he showed up to lead his veteran crew.
He did consider himself a cinephile, and he did have strong opinions about how he wanted to make movies.
So while he honored Pasolini in the writing of the screenplay, he moved it back towards his own style in the directing of the film.
He wanted his camera always to be in motion.
He wanted to use the camera to write poetry.
He added a leitmotif, a refrain, to each episode of this episodic story.
The premise is a crime. Who killed the prostitute?
The story is the set of interrogations and flashbacks of each of the witnesses. What they say happened versus what really happened. Unreliable or semi-reliable narrators.
The leitmotif is the rain.
In each episode, each flashback, the thunder rolls. The rain comes. We move from the witnesses' experience to the prostitute's house as she is getting ready for the day.
Then we move back.
Much of what we see in the film is not the crime nor its preparation nor its aftermath. Rather we see the events in the lives of the witnesses in the hours before.
A slice of life. An ordinary day.
Bertolucci's book of poems--In Search of Mystery--was published a few weeks before his film premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
It won the award for literary debut.
He was hailed as the "Italian boy wonder."
He would go on to international acclaim for groundbreaking films such as The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), 1900 (1976), Luna (1979), and The Last Emperor (1987), and would continue to make intimate romantic dramas such as Little Buddha (1993), Stealing Beauty (1996), Besieged (1998), and The Dreamers (2003).
* * * * *
The interrogators interrogate five witnesses.
Luciano Canticchia Maialetti ("Canti") tells them he went to look for work.
He says he met with two priests for letters of recommendation and that a third arrived, one of the priest's brothers. They helped him secure a job at a place that is open at night and busy.
But we see him meeting with his compagni, his companions, Nino and Sindaco, to steal the belongings of lovers in the park.
He tells his friends, I feel really mean today. I could make all of Rome's lovers cry.
He steals a purse from the first couple. He tries a radio from another couple, but the man catches him and runs him off. On his third attempt, three larger men, all bald and apparently there for the same purpose, presumably rough him up.
He leaves alone.
He tells the interrogators, "I think I saw a woman. But she was far away. I didn't really pay attention to her." He also saw three guys.
They ask if he saw a soldier but he says No.
Bustelli tells the interrogators he has given up his life of crime. He paid his debts and now he is clean and should not be implicated. He met his girlfriend in the park to spend time with her. There is no shame in being in love.
We see him meeting her and telling her to wait for him. He gives her some money and tells her to buy a magazine. He needs to go break up with his other girlfriend Esperia.
He goes to Esperia's house. She and her mother are having a terrible fight over him. Apparently, Esperia has spent all her mother's savings on him. The two go collecting money from others. They act like pimps. They fight. They break up. She comes back to him with a knife. He pushes her to the street. He runs away.
He tells the interrogators, "I saw some people, but I wasn't paying attention. There was a woman in the distance and some guys."
Teodoro Consentino is the soldier. He tells them he had come from going to the movies in Rome and was flirting with some pretty girls.
We see him in montage roaming the streets, smiling and singing.
"Let us praise the God of Abraham."
He gets to the park and sits on a bench and falls asleep.
He tells them when he woke up he saw a blond man wearing clogs running with something under his jacket.
The Man in Clogs says he got off work at the club at 6:30 and went through the park for something to do. He saw all the others mentioned above. The package under his arm was a kitten for his girlfriend.
He saw the three guys and says it must be them. He knows them from the club and knows where they live. The light-haired one is Francolicchio, and the dark-haired one is Pipito.
Pipito says they never saw a woman. They met up with two girls.
We see them, hungry, go with the girls to an older girl's house and hang out.
Later they meet a man, the third "guy" at the park, and he tries to lead them into some other kind of trouble. They steal from him and run away.
The next day when the police come to get them for questioning, they run away scared, and Francolicchio jumps in the river and goes downstream. Suddenly, we are in a Flannery O'Connor short story.
After interviewing these five witnesses, the interrogators will go back and interview one of them again. They will decide he is the murderer, and they will go to arrest him.
170 - The Grim Reaper (La Commare Secca), 1962, Italy. Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci.
Bernardo Bertolucci's father was a famous poet.
Bernardo had himself written a book of poems.
So when he directed his first feature film at age 21, he decided "to give myself over to moments of lyricism."
He had worked with Pier Paolo Pasolini as an assistant the year before, on Accatone (1961).
Pasolini told him he wanted to do a lot of close-ups, as in Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).
Yet his visual reference would be the early Tuscan painters, beginning with Sasseta (Stefano di Giovanni)--a Siennese Renaissance painter who painted altarpieces.
Bertolucci observed that Accatone views everything from the front, like an altarpiece. and that it conveys a sense of the sacred.
Bertolucci considered that Pasolini was not a cinephile, not a film buff, so when Pasolini directed he did not search his memory for examples from before (despite the Dreyer exception) in order to guide him.
Rather, it was as if Pasolini made it up from the beginning.
Bertolucci felt that when working with Pasolini, it was as if he were witnessing the birth of cinema, as if Pasolini were inventing it as he went along.
Pasolini had been writing screenplays for several years and was working steadily. He collaborated on Fellini's The Nights of Cabiria (1957). But Accatone was his first film to direct.
He had written the treatment for The Grim Reaper a few years back but was now focused on directing his next film, Momma Roma (which we will see in a couple days).
Producer Antonio Cervi owned the rights to The Grim Reaper, and he hired two young men to write the screenplay: Sergio Citti and Bernardo Bertolucci.
Cervi asked them to write it the way Pasolini would make it. Citti and Bertolucci did their best to adhere to the kind of script Pasolini would have written.
They "invented the 'Pasolinian' genre."
Then Cervi turned to Bertolucci to direct it.
At 21 he had never been on set before, other than working for Pasolini on Accatone, so he had to show himself as confident and calm when he showed up to lead his veteran crew.
He did consider himself a cinephile, and he did have strong opinions about how he wanted to make movies.
So while he honored Pasolini in the writing of the screenplay, he moved it back towards his own style in the directing of the film.
He wanted his camera always to be in motion.
He wanted to use the camera to write poetry.
He added a leitmotif, a refrain, to each episode of this episodic story.
The premise is a crime. Who killed the prostitute?
The story is the set of interrogations and flashbacks of each of the witnesses. What they say happened versus what really happened. Unreliable or semi-reliable narrators.
The leitmotif is the rain.
In each episode, each flashback, the thunder rolls. The rain comes. We move from the witnesses' experience to the prostitute's house as she is getting ready for the day.
Then we move back.
Much of what we see in the film is not the crime nor its preparation nor its aftermath. Rather we see the events in the lives of the witnesses in the hours before.
A slice of life. An ordinary day.
Bertolucci's book of poems--In Search of Mystery--was published a few weeks before his film premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
It won the award for literary debut.
He was hailed as the "Italian boy wonder."
He would go on to international acclaim for groundbreaking films such as The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972), 1900 (1976), Luna (1979), and The Last Emperor (1987), and would continue to make intimate romantic dramas such as Little Buddha (1993), Stealing Beauty (1996), Besieged (1998), and The Dreamers (2003).
* * * * *
The interrogators interrogate five witnesses.
Luciano Canticchia Maialetti ("Canti") tells them he went to look for work.
He says he met with two priests for letters of recommendation and that a third arrived, one of the priest's brothers. They helped him secure a job at a place that is open at night and busy.
But we see him meeting with his compagni, his companions, Nino and Sindaco, to steal the belongings of lovers in the park.
He tells his friends, I feel really mean today. I could make all of Rome's lovers cry.
He leaves alone.
He tells the interrogators, "I think I saw a woman. But she was far away. I didn't really pay attention to her." He also saw three guys.
They ask if he saw a soldier but he says No.
Bustelli tells the interrogators he has given up his life of crime. He paid his debts and now he is clean and should not be implicated. He met his girlfriend in the park to spend time with her. There is no shame in being in love.
We see him meeting her and telling her to wait for him. He gives her some money and tells her to buy a magazine. He needs to go break up with his other girlfriend Esperia.
He goes to Esperia's house. She and her mother are having a terrible fight over him. Apparently, Esperia has spent all her mother's savings on him. The two go collecting money from others. They act like pimps. They fight. They break up. She comes back to him with a knife. He pushes her to the street. He runs away.
He tells the interrogators, "I saw some people, but I wasn't paying attention. There was a woman in the distance and some guys."
Teodoro Consentino is the soldier. He tells them he had come from going to the movies in Rome and was flirting with some pretty girls.
We see him in montage roaming the streets, smiling and singing.
"Let us praise the God of Abraham."
He gets to the park and sits on a bench and falls asleep.
He tells them when he woke up he saw a blond man wearing clogs running with something under his jacket.
The Man in Clogs says he got off work at the club at 6:30 and went through the park for something to do. He saw all the others mentioned above. The package under his arm was a kitten for his girlfriend.
He saw the three guys and says it must be them. He knows them from the club and knows where they live. The light-haired one is Francolicchio, and the dark-haired one is Pipito.
Pipito says they never saw a woman. They met up with two girls.
We see them, hungry, go with the girls to an older girl's house and hang out.
Later they meet a man, the third "guy" at the park, and he tries to lead them into some other kind of trouble. They steal from him and run away.
The next day when the police come to get them for questioning, they run away scared, and Francolicchio jumps in the river and goes downstream. Suddenly, we are in a Flannery O'Connor short story.
After interviewing these five witnesses, the interrogators will go back and interview one of them again. They will decide he is the murderer, and they will go to arrest him.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
169 - Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958, Italy. Dir. Mario Monicelli.
Sunday, June 18, 2017
169 - Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958, Italy. Dir. Mario Monicelli.
Would you like to go to jail?
It is only for a few months, and it pays well.
Capannelle would do it himself, but he has already been in three times. Next time is life.
Mario is thinking about it.
After all, 100,000 lira is good pay.
But he and his wife did have just had a baby. In fact, he is shopping for a stroller now.
It's not like I don't want to, but what do I tell my mother?
Send the Sicilian guy.
Ferribotte? Michele Ferribotte. He has a sister named Carmelina. He keeps her under lock and key. To protect her. She drives men mad.
He hesitates too. He is trying to get her married off. What would the groom say? You know how those people from the North are.
Capannelle is running out of options.
It is so difficult finding a scapegoat these days.
What can he do?
He owes Cosimo.
He was with him when Cosimo got caught. Cosimo had just broken into a car by smashing the passenger window with a rock. He was trying his set of master keys when the car alarm went off. Capannelle was standing lookout and he came running to tell Cosimo the cops were coming. Capanelle got away but Cosimo did not.
Now Cosimo is in jail.
He is talking to his lawyer.
The best I can get you is the minimum sentence.
Are you kidding? I haven't confessed yet.
Cosimo knows the law.
Better than his attorney.
Cosimo explains that Article 403 is no good. Go to 117 on page 128.
His attorney has to look it up. Cosimo knows it all by memory.
Counselor suggests 521.
That's no good any more. We gotta claim 124 or 606.
Counselor asks about the 1400.
What is the 1400?
That is the model you tried to steal.
Steal? I don't even have a driver's license.
The prisoner next to him is yelling.
Cosimo confronts him.
Can't you yell quietly?
He just told me my grandmother has been asleep for five days.
Well, keep it down or you'll wake her up!
Cosimo needs to get out of jail right now. He met a man in there who told him about this job, see. He needs to get out so that he can do this job so that he can be set for life.
Then he can by his girl Norma a fur coat.
His girl Norma is standing next to Counselor. On the other side of the visitor's fence.
She says she would rather have him ask her to marry him than to have the fur coat.
He says he is in now for a short sentence. Why exchange that for life?
He fires his lawyer.
I'll call you when I need to draw up my will.
He talks to Norma.
That is when he asks her to call Cappanelle and look for a substitute.
Finally, Cappanelle finds someone.
Peppe.
Peppe has a clean record.
He takes the rap.
He takes the money.
He tells the judge it was he who tried to steal the car. That he got away. That when he saw they had arrested an innocent man, his conscience got the best of him, so he came down to confess.
The judge gladly obliges him. And puts him in jail.
But he does not release Cosimo.
Smart judge.
While in jail together, Cosimo tells Peppe about this new job, see.
Then Peppe gets out.
Then Peppe orchestrates the job.
While Cosimo gets left out. Still stuck in jail.
That did not work out.
No worries, Cosimo. Peppe will assemble one of the most incompetent gangs of ragamuffins ever to bungle a burglary.
The Bungling Burglars. The Burgling Bunglers.
The rest of the film follows their foolishness one mistake after another as they take a bad situation and make it worse.
What is better than a great heist film?
A great comedy heist film.
Some critics classify this one as not only one of the great Italian comedies but also one of the great Italian films overall.
If you like Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks or Alexander Mackendrick's The Ladykillers, then you may enjoy Big Deal on Madonna Street.
It showcased Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale before they were famous.
Now which wall were we supposed to bore a hole through?
169 - Big Deal on Madonna Street, 1958, Italy. Dir. Mario Monicelli.
Would you like to go to jail?
It is only for a few months, and it pays well.
Capannelle would do it himself, but he has already been in three times. Next time is life.
Mario is thinking about it.
After all, 100,000 lira is good pay.
But he and his wife did have just had a baby. In fact, he is shopping for a stroller now.
It's not like I don't want to, but what do I tell my mother?
Send the Sicilian guy.
Ferribotte? Michele Ferribotte. He has a sister named Carmelina. He keeps her under lock and key. To protect her. She drives men mad.
He hesitates too. He is trying to get her married off. What would the groom say? You know how those people from the North are.
Capannelle is running out of options.
It is so difficult finding a scapegoat these days.
What can he do?
He owes Cosimo.
He was with him when Cosimo got caught. Cosimo had just broken into a car by smashing the passenger window with a rock. He was trying his set of master keys when the car alarm went off. Capannelle was standing lookout and he came running to tell Cosimo the cops were coming. Capanelle got away but Cosimo did not.
Now Cosimo is in jail.
He is talking to his lawyer.
The best I can get you is the minimum sentence.
Are you kidding? I haven't confessed yet.
Cosimo knows the law.
Better than his attorney.
Cosimo explains that Article 403 is no good. Go to 117 on page 128.
His attorney has to look it up. Cosimo knows it all by memory.
Counselor suggests 521.
That's no good any more. We gotta claim 124 or 606.
Counselor asks about the 1400.
What is the 1400?
That is the model you tried to steal.
Steal? I don't even have a driver's license.
The prisoner next to him is yelling.
Cosimo confronts him.
Can't you yell quietly?
He just told me my grandmother has been asleep for five days.
Well, keep it down or you'll wake her up!
Cosimo needs to get out of jail right now. He met a man in there who told him about this job, see. He needs to get out so that he can do this job so that he can be set for life.
Then he can by his girl Norma a fur coat.
His girl Norma is standing next to Counselor. On the other side of the visitor's fence.
She says she would rather have him ask her to marry him than to have the fur coat.
He says he is in now for a short sentence. Why exchange that for life?
He fires his lawyer.
I'll call you when I need to draw up my will.
He talks to Norma.
That is when he asks her to call Cappanelle and look for a substitute.
Finally, Cappanelle finds someone.
Peppe.
Peppe has a clean record.
He takes the rap.
He takes the money.
He tells the judge it was he who tried to steal the car. That he got away. That when he saw they had arrested an innocent man, his conscience got the best of him, so he came down to confess.
The judge gladly obliges him. And puts him in jail.
But he does not release Cosimo.
Smart judge.
While in jail together, Cosimo tells Peppe about this new job, see.
Then Peppe gets out.
Then Peppe orchestrates the job.
While Cosimo gets left out. Still stuck in jail.
That did not work out.
No worries, Cosimo. Peppe will assemble one of the most incompetent gangs of ragamuffins ever to bungle a burglary.
The Bungling Burglars. The Burgling Bunglers.
The rest of the film follows their foolishness one mistake after another as they take a bad situation and make it worse.
What is better than a great heist film?
A great comedy heist film.
Some critics classify this one as not only one of the great Italian comedies but also one of the great Italian films overall.
If you like Woody Allen's Small Time Crooks or Alexander Mackendrick's The Ladykillers, then you may enjoy Big Deal on Madonna Street.
It showcased Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale before they were famous.
Now which wall were we supposed to bore a hole through?
Saturday, June 17, 2017
168 - Identification of a Woman, 1982, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
168 - Identification of a Woman, 1982, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
It is 1982.
Michelangelo Antonioni is older.
This means we get to see the work of a great artist whose technical mastery has gotten better with age.
Images composed by one of the finest craftsman to have worked in the form. With many a frame a work of art. And many a frame a work of architecture. Beginning with the opening frame. Where the wall is the floor. And continuing throughout the film. With all those doorframes. And windowframes. And mirror frames. And archways. And staircases. Seagulls in the in the mirror in the half-pie window in the background. Old brick. New steel. Dashes and splashes of color in the clothing. The camera in brilliantly placed locations. Moving deftly from one composition to the other. At all angles. In all directions.
It also means we are now subjected to bad grandpa jokes.
And hideous hairstyles.
And silly foregrounding of the latest in telephone technology.
And terrible synthesizer music. No offense to John Foxx of Ultravox, but this score is not fit for an elevator. And sure enough, this is the only feature film for which he ever composed.
Antonioni is so good at what he does that he can do it in his sleep.
Unfortunately, he did.
He made this movie while sleeping.
And the viewer wishes he could get a hold of the director by the lapels and shake him vigorously while shouting, "Wake up, man!"
Because there is more to making a movie than technical mastery of production design and camera framing.
You might also want to have something to say.
And a story in which to say it.
When Antonioni released l'Avventura in 1960, ennui was all the rage. Hey, look at me--I'm bored! See how sophisticated that makes me? I can have sex without love, adventure without caring, a world without God, life without meaning. I can dare to make my way precipitously close to the abyss!
But twenty-something years later?
Undergraduate posturing does not look so good on a middle-aged man.
Most people grow up.
And make choices. And commit to things. Things like relationships and families, vocations and causes, faith and community, sports and hobbies. Having friends. Going out to eat. Being a productive member of society.
Niccolo has none of the above. He lives the life of the restless wanderer. In his fifties.
If only he had his mother's basement to move into.
He tells us that he is a movie director, but we never see him do any work.
He just sits around looking for an idea and for a woman to play in it. Hmmm . . . What to do? What to do?
This man is so indecisive he does not even measure out his life with coffee spoons.
He does have a lot of meaningless sex. And you wonder if perhaps the director had the actresses remove their clothes mercifully to divert our eyes away from their haircuts.
(On a technical note, Antonioni uses shirts and jackets to frame the body in masterful ways. He is ever the framer.)
This is a good movie for burgeoning filmmakers to watch with the sound--and subtitles!--turned off in order to focus on composition.
But do not look for a story.
It is lost in the fog.
168 - Identification of a Woman, 1982, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
It is 1982.
Michelangelo Antonioni is older.
This means we get to see the work of a great artist whose technical mastery has gotten better with age.
Images composed by one of the finest craftsman to have worked in the form. With many a frame a work of art. And many a frame a work of architecture. Beginning with the opening frame. Where the wall is the floor. And continuing throughout the film. With all those doorframes. And windowframes. And mirror frames. And archways. And staircases. Seagulls in the in the mirror in the half-pie window in the background. Old brick. New steel. Dashes and splashes of color in the clothing. The camera in brilliantly placed locations. Moving deftly from one composition to the other. At all angles. In all directions.
It also means we are now subjected to bad grandpa jokes.
And hideous hairstyles.
And silly foregrounding of the latest in telephone technology.
And terrible synthesizer music. No offense to John Foxx of Ultravox, but this score is not fit for an elevator. And sure enough, this is the only feature film for which he ever composed.
Antonioni is so good at what he does that he can do it in his sleep.
Unfortunately, he did.
He made this movie while sleeping.
And the viewer wishes he could get a hold of the director by the lapels and shake him vigorously while shouting, "Wake up, man!"
Because there is more to making a movie than technical mastery of production design and camera framing.
You might also want to have something to say.
And a story in which to say it.
When Antonioni released l'Avventura in 1960, ennui was all the rage. Hey, look at me--I'm bored! See how sophisticated that makes me? I can have sex without love, adventure without caring, a world without God, life without meaning. I can dare to make my way precipitously close to the abyss!
But twenty-something years later?
Undergraduate posturing does not look so good on a middle-aged man.
Most people grow up.
And make choices. And commit to things. Things like relationships and families, vocations and causes, faith and community, sports and hobbies. Having friends. Going out to eat. Being a productive member of society.
Niccolo has none of the above. He lives the life of the restless wanderer. In his fifties.
If only he had his mother's basement to move into.
He tells us that he is a movie director, but we never see him do any work.
He just sits around looking for an idea and for a woman to play in it. Hmmm . . . What to do? What to do?
This man is so indecisive he does not even measure out his life with coffee spoons.
He does have a lot of meaningless sex. And you wonder if perhaps the director had the actresses remove their clothes mercifully to divert our eyes away from their haircuts.
(On a technical note, Antonioni uses shirts and jackets to frame the body in masterful ways. He is ever the framer.)
This is a good movie for burgeoning filmmakers to watch with the sound--and subtitles!--turned off in order to focus on composition.
But do not look for a story.
It is lost in the fog.
Friday, June 16, 2017
167 - Red Desert, 1964, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Friday, June 16, 2017
167 - Red Desert, 1964, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Never mind taking two pills and calling me in the morning.
Love something.
That is the doctors' prescription for Giuliana.
Love something.
Well, we--through the eyes of Corrado Zeller--do not yet know that the prescription is for Giuliana.
She says it is for another woman. She met this woman, see. At the hospital. When she was staying there. After the car accident. A kind of acquaintance. A fellow patient. A friend. You know.
Her husband Ugo wonders what went wrong with her. Normally she is a decent driver. But for some reason she has just lost it.
Or maybe he does not understand her.
She is, after all, quite sensitive.
Regardless, she cannot come out and tell Corrado--her husband's industrial colleague--that the prescription was for her, so she tells him it was for a fellow female patient.
Love something.
A man. A husband. A son. A dog. Anything. Love it.
She is willing to follow doctors' orders.
So she looks around for something to love.
She does have her son in tow.
And she does love him.
It is just that, well, somehow maybe that is not enough. She remains always dutiful to him. But detached.
She needs to love something.
How about Corrado?
He seems interested in listening to her.
Maybe she could love him.
At least she may get points for trying.
Giuliana begins the film in an olive knee-length overcoat with light-brown pumps and a black clutch. Her son wears a saddle-colored overcoat with dark knee-high boots.
And they stand against a backdrop of industrial color.
The last time we saw textures this rich and numerous, we may have been watching the Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky.
This film is a visual feast.
It seems to be an all-out meditation on texture. And design. And architecture. And composition. And perspective. And color.
And the action follows the interior life of Giuliana.
We would not be surprised to find it reviewed in Architectural Digest. Or Modern Psychology.
The interior spaces of the buildings correspond to the interior spaces in her heart and mind.
Will she be okay?
Will society be okay?
Or, as Antonioni himself observed, is it more about adapting? People struggle during the changes in epochs, but some learn to adapt.
And find beauty in industry. In the machinery.
Beauty in the smokestack. Beauty in the smoke.
This was the last of four films in a row that Michelangelo Antonioni made with Monica Vitti. They would move apart. And then make one more film together years later.
It was also his first color film. And he invested a lot into it. And it shows.
It stars a young Richard Harris. If you know him mostly for his mature work, he may not look familiar to you. Although he was well established by this point.
This was the last of this group of films for Antonioni. Films that meditated on this kind of restlessness of modern man. He would continue to explore certain themes but would move on to a different kind of work, for which he would be known by a different and broader audience. Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970), and The Passenger (1975).
We will not see these films on this go-around, but we do have one more Antonioni film to go.
Stay tuned. . . .
167 - Red Desert, 1964, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Never mind taking two pills and calling me in the morning.
Love something.
That is the doctors' prescription for Giuliana.
Love something.
Well, we--through the eyes of Corrado Zeller--do not yet know that the prescription is for Giuliana.
She says it is for another woman. She met this woman, see. At the hospital. When she was staying there. After the car accident. A kind of acquaintance. A fellow patient. A friend. You know.
Her husband Ugo wonders what went wrong with her. Normally she is a decent driver. But for some reason she has just lost it.
Or maybe he does not understand her.
She is, after all, quite sensitive.
Regardless, she cannot come out and tell Corrado--her husband's industrial colleague--that the prescription was for her, so she tells him it was for a fellow female patient.
Love something.
A man. A husband. A son. A dog. Anything. Love it.
She is willing to follow doctors' orders.
So she looks around for something to love.
She does have her son in tow.
And she does love him.
It is just that, well, somehow maybe that is not enough. She remains always dutiful to him. But detached.
She needs to love something.
How about Corrado?
He seems interested in listening to her.
Maybe she could love him.
At least she may get points for trying.
Giuliana begins the film in an olive knee-length overcoat with light-brown pumps and a black clutch. Her son wears a saddle-colored overcoat with dark knee-high boots.
And they stand against a backdrop of industrial color.
The last time we saw textures this rich and numerous, we may have been watching the Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky.
This film is a visual feast.
It seems to be an all-out meditation on texture. And design. And architecture. And composition. And perspective. And color.
And the action follows the interior life of Giuliana.
We would not be surprised to find it reviewed in Architectural Digest. Or Modern Psychology.
The interior spaces of the buildings correspond to the interior spaces in her heart and mind.
Will she be okay?
Will society be okay?
Or, as Antonioni himself observed, is it more about adapting? People struggle during the changes in epochs, but some learn to adapt.
And find beauty in industry. In the machinery.
Beauty in the smokestack. Beauty in the smoke.
This was the last of four films in a row that Michelangelo Antonioni made with Monica Vitti. They would move apart. And then make one more film together years later.
It was also his first color film. And he invested a lot into it. And it shows.
It stars a young Richard Harris. If you know him mostly for his mature work, he may not look familiar to you. Although he was well established by this point.
This was the last of this group of films for Antonioni. Films that meditated on this kind of restlessness of modern man. He would continue to explore certain themes but would move on to a different kind of work, for which he would be known by a different and broader audience. Blow-Up (1966), Zabriskie Point (1970), and The Passenger (1975).
We will not see these films on this go-around, but we do have one more Antonioni film to go.
Stay tuned. . . .
Thursday, June 15, 2017
166 - La Notte, 1961, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Thursday, June 15, 2017
166 - La Notte, 1961, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Giovanni and Lidia have fallen into the sandtrap.
The hazard.
"I don't love you anymore."
"I love you."
She reads him a love letter.
It expresses articulately and with youthful exuberance the love of a man for a woman.
Who wrote that?
You did.
He realizes that he does not recognize or remember it.
He realizes that she keeps it with her, folded up, after all these years.
The Pontanos have just spent the day and night together.
And apart.
They visited their colleague, his mentor, Tommaso, in the hospital.
While there, Giovanni got pulled into the next room by a wild and raving woman.
And let her.
It is never explained why their friend, the intellectual dying of natural causes and in acute pain, rooms next to a woman meant for the psych ward--whose room is indeed completely bare but for the bed--but Antonioni needed it to work for his movie.
The wife comforts the colleague while the husband makes out with the crazy lady next door.
We are not asked to see him as a philanderer or as someone typically given to indulgence but as a partner in a troubled marriage.
Who responds passively to the patient's aggressiveness because he has no reason not to. Because he has no reasons for anything.
In fact he confesses the incident to Lidia afterwards in the car on the way to the book signing. And she claims to stay emotionally disengaged because she no longer cares. Which is of course itself an emotional defense.
They belong to the wandering class. The generation Antonioni is probing. Anchorless. Chartless. Compassless. Starless. Sailing without direction. Without light. Without a destination. Bobbing aimlessly on the open sea.
The Night refers not only to this night--the events of the movie--but also to the darkness that has come over their lives.
He has published a book and it is successful. They go to the book signing and a crowd awaits him.
But she leaves. And wanders the streets. From the city to their old neighborhood. Urban to suburban. The Antonioni witness. The Antonioni pedestrian.
She watches a gang fight. Like her own private viewing of Bernardo versus Riff. The Sharks versus the Jets in a performance that is not performance. But real. And one of the members begins to chase her.
She watches young men launching model rockets in a field of grain. One onlooker asks another if he would go to the moon. The other says No. It is eight years before man would step foot on the moon. And a year-and-a-half before Kennedy's 1962 speech at Rice Stadium. It is even a few months before Kennedy's May 25 speech before a Joint Session of Congress. The idea is in the air.
She goes to their old street. She remembers the past.
When he finishes the book signing he comes to get her. He does not feel what she feels for their old haunts. Their memories.
He mentions a party at the Gherardinis. She asks not to go. She wants to be together. Just the two of them. But then she relents. They might as well go. They need something to do.
And the party is the night of the title.
A night of absentminded stimulation. A halfhearted attack on boredom. A momentary suspension of ennui.
A night that Giovanni spends with Gherardini's twenty-two-year-old daughter Valentina.
Talking. Playing a made-up game. And kissing her.
Valentina says she will not break up a marriage. Lidia says she no longer cares.
Lidia cares.
And so the marriage slices off the fairway and into the bunker.
Where they sit in the sand and go over his youthful love letter.
"I don't love you anymore," she says to him.
"I love you," he responds.
And somehow we believe him.
Maybe he has a pitching wedge. Maybe he can get up and down. On the green. Pin high. And save par.
The film ends ambiguously. The couple ends ambivalently.
But because it ends in the moment of embrace, it is like fast-forwarding a couple of frames and then pausing again on the couple from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Instead of being always frozen in the moment just before the kiss, this couple is now always frozen in the moment of the kiss. So where the Keatsian couple remains forever in that space right before climax, the Antonionian couple remains forever in that space of release. So as long as we stay in this moment, with the Italian word "FIN" moving onto the screen, this couple will be fine.
Just do not move the story forward any more.
But stay fixed in the contained universe of the feature film. With its beginning, its middle, and its end.
If we do so, then the contained universe of La Notte is the one night. Always and only.
And we will forever end in the moment of hope.
Perhaps we know better. But that knowledge remains outside this universe.
166 - La Notte, 1961, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Giovanni and Lidia have fallen into the sandtrap.
The hazard.
"I don't love you anymore."
"I love you."
She reads him a love letter.
It expresses articulately and with youthful exuberance the love of a man for a woman.
Who wrote that?
You did.
He realizes that he does not recognize or remember it.
He realizes that she keeps it with her, folded up, after all these years.
The Pontanos have just spent the day and night together.
And apart.
They visited their colleague, his mentor, Tommaso, in the hospital.
While there, Giovanni got pulled into the next room by a wild and raving woman.
And let her.
It is never explained why their friend, the intellectual dying of natural causes and in acute pain, rooms next to a woman meant for the psych ward--whose room is indeed completely bare but for the bed--but Antonioni needed it to work for his movie.
The wife comforts the colleague while the husband makes out with the crazy lady next door.
We are not asked to see him as a philanderer or as someone typically given to indulgence but as a partner in a troubled marriage.
Who responds passively to the patient's aggressiveness because he has no reason not to. Because he has no reasons for anything.
In fact he confesses the incident to Lidia afterwards in the car on the way to the book signing. And she claims to stay emotionally disengaged because she no longer cares. Which is of course itself an emotional defense.
They belong to the wandering class. The generation Antonioni is probing. Anchorless. Chartless. Compassless. Starless. Sailing without direction. Without light. Without a destination. Bobbing aimlessly on the open sea.
The Night refers not only to this night--the events of the movie--but also to the darkness that has come over their lives.
He has published a book and it is successful. They go to the book signing and a crowd awaits him.
But she leaves. And wanders the streets. From the city to their old neighborhood. Urban to suburban. The Antonioni witness. The Antonioni pedestrian.
She watches a gang fight. Like her own private viewing of Bernardo versus Riff. The Sharks versus the Jets in a performance that is not performance. But real. And one of the members begins to chase her.
She watches young men launching model rockets in a field of grain. One onlooker asks another if he would go to the moon. The other says No. It is eight years before man would step foot on the moon. And a year-and-a-half before Kennedy's 1962 speech at Rice Stadium. It is even a few months before Kennedy's May 25 speech before a Joint Session of Congress. The idea is in the air.
She goes to their old street. She remembers the past.
When he finishes the book signing he comes to get her. He does not feel what she feels for their old haunts. Their memories.
He mentions a party at the Gherardinis. She asks not to go. She wants to be together. Just the two of them. But then she relents. They might as well go. They need something to do.
And the party is the night of the title.
A night of absentminded stimulation. A halfhearted attack on boredom. A momentary suspension of ennui.
A night that Giovanni spends with Gherardini's twenty-two-year-old daughter Valentina.
Talking. Playing a made-up game. And kissing her.
Valentina says she will not break up a marriage. Lidia says she no longer cares.
Lidia cares.
And so the marriage slices off the fairway and into the bunker.
Where they sit in the sand and go over his youthful love letter.
"I don't love you anymore," she says to him.
"I love you," he responds.
And somehow we believe him.
Maybe he has a pitching wedge. Maybe he can get up and down. On the green. Pin high. And save par.
The film ends ambiguously. The couple ends ambivalently.
But because it ends in the moment of embrace, it is like fast-forwarding a couple of frames and then pausing again on the couple from John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Instead of being always frozen in the moment just before the kiss, this couple is now always frozen in the moment of the kiss. So where the Keatsian couple remains forever in that space right before climax, the Antonionian couple remains forever in that space of release. So as long as we stay in this moment, with the Italian word "FIN" moving onto the screen, this couple will be fine.
Just do not move the story forward any more.
But stay fixed in the contained universe of the feature film. With its beginning, its middle, and its end.
If we do so, then the contained universe of La Notte is the one night. Always and only.
And we will forever end in the moment of hope.
Perhaps we know better. But that knowledge remains outside this universe.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
165 - L'Avventura, 1960, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
165 - L'Avventura, 1960, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Where is Anna?
That is the obvious question, but it is not the real one.
The real question is, Where is everyone else?
Anna is merely missing.
The rest of them are lost.
Gertrude Stein called her generation "the Lost Generation," referring to the 1920s American ex-patriot artists on the left bank of the Seine. Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Eliot. Pound.
But Antonioni seems to be making the case for his generation of the 1960s in Europe. And they are lost in a different way.
At least the ex-pats were intellectually engaged. They wondered what was happening. And wrote about it. And gave great art and literature to the world.
In that sense perhaps Antonioni himself is the progeny of that generation. He is intellectually engaged. He wonders what is happening. He has given great art to the world.
But his characters are not and have not.
Sandro, the protagonist of l'Avventura, is no writer or bullfighter or big-game hunter or deep-sea fisherman. He is no Hemingway man being tested for grace under pressure.
He is a rich playboy who fills the boredom of his life with women and without thought. And when his lover goes missing, he reverts to her friend. And when he gets her friend, he reverts to a prostitute. And none of it means anything to him.
Unless it finally does in the end.
Sandro confides his regret that he gave up his artistic dreams to be a mid-rate architect.
And the final moment in the film suggests that the characters recognize the emptiness of their lives. And feel. And suffer. And long for something more.
Maybe.
Unless their final emotions are the natural, shallow reactions to their current situation. Only to be repeated again in an endless cycle.
It is possible he will never learn.
This is a serious film. Beautifully staged. Beautifully framed. Beautifully photographed.
And it came along at a time when cinema mattered to people.
And it could have an impact on society.
And be discussed by intelligent and cultured people.
Members of the audience at the Cannes Film Festival booed it. Yet it won the Jury Prize.
Not long after it started to be ranked with Citizen Kane and Battleship Potemkin.
It is the kind of film that can seem like a different film each time it is watched. It is carefully crafted and nuanced.
After this viewing I believe Anna left the island very much alive. That when she gave Claudia her blouse, she was giving Claudia her man, and that she knew that she would leave. When she tries to have one more conversation with Sandro on the rocks, she realizes that he will never understand her and never change.
So she takes that little boat that we see in that one shot--the kind of clue that David Lynch would later use throughout his work--and does in fact make her way . . . somewhere.
But it could have turned out another way as well. That is my theory today.
Antonioni intently worked on developing the idea of the "open film," a film whose narrative is open to audience interpretation.
By our time, this notion has gone too far in the other direction, where hacks leave the responsibility to the viewer because they themselves are incapable of making strong artistic choices.
But when Antonioni introduced his films, it opened up new ideas for filmmakers and audiences alike.
And it elevated film as an art form, suggesting that like painting and music and literature, film could also enter into more subjective and abstract territories.
Antonioni is proving to be a good director for us to discover.
Anna may be missing, but Antonioni's mastery of the craft is not.
Let us join him on this adventure.
165 - L'Avventura, 1960, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Where is Anna?
That is the obvious question, but it is not the real one.
The real question is, Where is everyone else?
Anna is merely missing.
The rest of them are lost.
Gertrude Stein called her generation "the Lost Generation," referring to the 1920s American ex-patriot artists on the left bank of the Seine. Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Eliot. Pound.
But Antonioni seems to be making the case for his generation of the 1960s in Europe. And they are lost in a different way.
At least the ex-pats were intellectually engaged. They wondered what was happening. And wrote about it. And gave great art and literature to the world.
In that sense perhaps Antonioni himself is the progeny of that generation. He is intellectually engaged. He wonders what is happening. He has given great art to the world.
But his characters are not and have not.
Sandro, the protagonist of l'Avventura, is no writer or bullfighter or big-game hunter or deep-sea fisherman. He is no Hemingway man being tested for grace under pressure.
He is a rich playboy who fills the boredom of his life with women and without thought. And when his lover goes missing, he reverts to her friend. And when he gets her friend, he reverts to a prostitute. And none of it means anything to him.
Unless it finally does in the end.
Sandro confides his regret that he gave up his artistic dreams to be a mid-rate architect.
And the final moment in the film suggests that the characters recognize the emptiness of their lives. And feel. And suffer. And long for something more.
Maybe.
Unless their final emotions are the natural, shallow reactions to their current situation. Only to be repeated again in an endless cycle.
It is possible he will never learn.
This is a serious film. Beautifully staged. Beautifully framed. Beautifully photographed.
And it came along at a time when cinema mattered to people.
And it could have an impact on society.
And be discussed by intelligent and cultured people.
Members of the audience at the Cannes Film Festival booed it. Yet it won the Jury Prize.
Not long after it started to be ranked with Citizen Kane and Battleship Potemkin.
It is the kind of film that can seem like a different film each time it is watched. It is carefully crafted and nuanced.
After this viewing I believe Anna left the island very much alive. That when she gave Claudia her blouse, she was giving Claudia her man, and that she knew that she would leave. When she tries to have one more conversation with Sandro on the rocks, she realizes that he will never understand her and never change.
So she takes that little boat that we see in that one shot--the kind of clue that David Lynch would later use throughout his work--and does in fact make her way . . . somewhere.
But it could have turned out another way as well. That is my theory today.
Antonioni intently worked on developing the idea of the "open film," a film whose narrative is open to audience interpretation.
By our time, this notion has gone too far in the other direction, where hacks leave the responsibility to the viewer because they themselves are incapable of making strong artistic choices.
But when Antonioni introduced his films, it opened up new ideas for filmmakers and audiences alike.
And it elevated film as an art form, suggesting that like painting and music and literature, film could also enter into more subjective and abstract territories.
Antonioni is proving to be a good director for us to discover.
Anna may be missing, but Antonioni's mastery of the craft is not.
Let us join him on this adventure.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
164 - Le Amiche, 1955, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Tuesday, June 13, 2017
164 - Le Amiche, 1955, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Love is in the air.
Well, not love, actually, but a dull loneliness that will settle for whatever affection is available at the moment.
That is in the air.
In the air in which these women live. These modern women who live in a world of art and shopping and contemplating relationships.
And existential ennui.
Soren Kierkegaard published Either/Or in 1843. But it was a little over hundred years later that middle class boredom became a commodity in the West.
George Cukor made The Women in 1939.
Sex and the City first came on the air in 1998.
In between those two events Michelangelo Antonioni debuted with The Girlfriends, And gave the world an Italian film style other than neorealism, the cinema of possibilities.
And after spending time with Roberto Rosellini and Federico Fellini and Vittorio de Sica, we can see immediately that there is something different about Antonioni. Something modern and layered.
Clelia is a fashion designer from Turin. She left for Rome and became successful. Now she has returned to open a branch of her Ferrari Salon in her hometown.
But times have changed since she left, and she needs a new circle of friends with whom to run around.
If only the girl in the next hotel room over had not tried to commit suicide.
Rosetta Savone is depressed about something. Lorenzo cannot figure out why. After all, they had a good time last night. They left the club around 3:00. He dropped her off at the hotel. Everything was great.
Could his wife Nene have anything to do with it?
The morning after Rosetta takes her overdose of sleeping pills, Clelia is pulled into the room by the police to answer questions. Rosetta's friend Momina arrives for their day date and discovers what happened. Clelia and Momina join forces, and Clelia becomes a part of Momina's retinue of friends.
They go shopping. They go out to eat. They talk about men. They talk about trends.
Clelia is trying to get the slow-poke contractors to finish building her salon while also planning her next fashion show.
Momina is married, but we never see her husband. He lives somewhere else, and Momina likes it that way. She dates various men, including the architect designing Clelia's new salon.
Meanwhile, Clelia sort-of hooks up with the architect's assistant.
They go to the beach.
As the men and women interact with one another, it begins to feel somewhat like a midsummer night's dream, with people pairing off with different people in superficially random ways.
But the love triangle among Nene, Lorenzo, and Rosetta is not a dream. It is real and has real consequences for Nene and Rosetta.
Lorenzo is a painter who has just had an unsuccessful art show. In fact, even some of the purchased paintings have been returned. Nene is a maker of ceramics who has just been invited to show in America. Her star is on the rise while his is in decline.
Momina presses the issue when she encourages Rosetta to go for Lorenzo openly despite Nene's feelings.
Among her other pieces of advice, Momina offers this nugget: "Handsome princes today snort cocaine and dance the mambo." If you do not go for it now you will live a life of regret.
Rosetta goes for it.
But she gets her regret anyway.
And does not live a life.
She had been searching for more all along. On the train with Clelia she had asked, "Why go on living--so I can decide what dress to wear?"
If only love really had been in the air.
Or rather, in her heart.
Or maybe modern man needs to rediscover what love is.
Meanwhile, we have discovered an exciting new film director. Let us see what other Antonioni movies await us.
164 - Le Amiche, 1955, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.
Love is in the air.
Well, not love, actually, but a dull loneliness that will settle for whatever affection is available at the moment.
That is in the air.
In the air in which these women live. These modern women who live in a world of art and shopping and contemplating relationships.
And existential ennui.
Soren Kierkegaard published Either/Or in 1843. But it was a little over hundred years later that middle class boredom became a commodity in the West.
George Cukor made The Women in 1939.
Sex and the City first came on the air in 1998.
In between those two events Michelangelo Antonioni debuted with The Girlfriends, And gave the world an Italian film style other than neorealism, the cinema of possibilities.
And after spending time with Roberto Rosellini and Federico Fellini and Vittorio de Sica, we can see immediately that there is something different about Antonioni. Something modern and layered.
Clelia is a fashion designer from Turin. She left for Rome and became successful. Now she has returned to open a branch of her Ferrari Salon in her hometown.
But times have changed since she left, and she needs a new circle of friends with whom to run around.
If only the girl in the next hotel room over had not tried to commit suicide.
Rosetta Savone is depressed about something. Lorenzo cannot figure out why. After all, they had a good time last night. They left the club around 3:00. He dropped her off at the hotel. Everything was great.
Could his wife Nene have anything to do with it?
The morning after Rosetta takes her overdose of sleeping pills, Clelia is pulled into the room by the police to answer questions. Rosetta's friend Momina arrives for their day date and discovers what happened. Clelia and Momina join forces, and Clelia becomes a part of Momina's retinue of friends.
They go shopping. They go out to eat. They talk about men. They talk about trends.
Clelia is trying to get the slow-poke contractors to finish building her salon while also planning her next fashion show.
Momina is married, but we never see her husband. He lives somewhere else, and Momina likes it that way. She dates various men, including the architect designing Clelia's new salon.
Meanwhile, Clelia sort-of hooks up with the architect's assistant.
They go to the beach.
As the men and women interact with one another, it begins to feel somewhat like a midsummer night's dream, with people pairing off with different people in superficially random ways.
But the love triangle among Nene, Lorenzo, and Rosetta is not a dream. It is real and has real consequences for Nene and Rosetta.
Lorenzo is a painter who has just had an unsuccessful art show. In fact, even some of the purchased paintings have been returned. Nene is a maker of ceramics who has just been invited to show in America. Her star is on the rise while his is in decline.
Momina presses the issue when she encourages Rosetta to go for Lorenzo openly despite Nene's feelings.
Among her other pieces of advice, Momina offers this nugget: "Handsome princes today snort cocaine and dance the mambo." If you do not go for it now you will live a life of regret.
Rosetta goes for it.
But she gets her regret anyway.
And does not live a life.
She had been searching for more all along. On the train with Clelia she had asked, "Why go on living--so I can decide what dress to wear?"
If only love really had been in the air.
Or rather, in her heart.
Or maybe modern man needs to rediscover what love is.
Meanwhile, we have discovered an exciting new film director. Let us see what other Antonioni movies await us.
Monday, June 12, 2017
163 - The Leopard, 1963, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.
Monday, June 12, 2017
163 - The Leopard, 1963, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.
The Leopard is a historical epic masterpiece and the kind of film made for Visconti to direct.
Its setting is grand, its pacing steady, its acting nuanced.
It is the story of a great man who has come to the end of his life and who watches as his way of life begins to fade away.
It is set in Sicily in 1860, with a backdrop of war.
Prince Don Fabrizio Salina confers with his priest, supports his nephew, attends his Summer palace, indulges the local mayor, consents to his nephew's engagement with the mayor's daughter, declines an offer to join the Senate, and accepts an offer to dance with his nephew's fiancee as he slowly comes to accept the inevitable passage of time.
The Leopard stars the American Burt Lancaster, the French Alain Delon, and the Italian Claudia Cardinale, all at the peak of their powers.
It is lush and rich and beautiful, and it is played with sincerity, and without irony.
It is worth watching the three-plus hour film and then watching it again with the Peter Cowie commentary turned on.
This film is an example of one kind of great filmmaking.
163 - The Leopard, 1963, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.
The Leopard is a historical epic masterpiece and the kind of film made for Visconti to direct.
Its setting is grand, its pacing steady, its acting nuanced.
It is the story of a great man who has come to the end of his life and who watches as his way of life begins to fade away.
It is set in Sicily in 1860, with a backdrop of war.
Prince Don Fabrizio Salina confers with his priest, supports his nephew, attends his Summer palace, indulges the local mayor, consents to his nephew's engagement with the mayor's daughter, declines an offer to join the Senate, and accepts an offer to dance with his nephew's fiancee as he slowly comes to accept the inevitable passage of time.
The Leopard stars the American Burt Lancaster, the French Alain Delon, and the Italian Claudia Cardinale, all at the peak of their powers.
It is lush and rich and beautiful, and it is played with sincerity, and without irony.
It is worth watching the three-plus hour film and then watching it again with the Peter Cowie commentary turned on.
This film is an example of one kind of great filmmaking.
Sunday, June 11, 2017
162 - La Notti Bianche, 1957, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.
Sunday, June 11, 2017
162 - La Notti Bianche, 1957, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.
Welcome to the White Nights.
No, this is not the 1985 Taylor Hackford dance movie starring Mikhael Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines.
This is the 1957 Visconti romantic drama starring Maria Schell (whom you may know as Vond-Ah, the skeptical scientist on Krypton in Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie) opposite not one but two international superstar leading men.
How can you possibly upstage Marcello Mastroianni, the world's great leading man?
Stand him up next to Prince Charming himself, Jean Marais from Jean Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast. We have seen him in that movie, as well as Cocteau's 1950 Orpheus and Jean Renoir's 1956 Elena and Her Men.
The plot is simple. Mastoianni as Mario runs into Maria Schell as Natalia. On the streets above the canals of Venice.
She tells him of her love of Jean Marais as L'Inquillino, who won her heart and has disappeared. She is waiting for his return.
As Mario waits with her, he falls in love with her as well.
How will the triangle turn out?
162 - La Notti Bianche, 1957, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.
Welcome to the White Nights.
No, this is not the 1985 Taylor Hackford dance movie starring Mikhael Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines.
This is the 1957 Visconti romantic drama starring Maria Schell (whom you may know as Vond-Ah, the skeptical scientist on Krypton in Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie) opposite not one but two international superstar leading men.
How can you possibly upstage Marcello Mastroianni, the world's great leading man?
Stand him up next to Prince Charming himself, Jean Marais from Jean Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast. We have seen him in that movie, as well as Cocteau's 1950 Orpheus and Jean Renoir's 1956 Elena and Her Men.
The plot is simple. Mastoianni as Mario runs into Maria Schell as Natalia. On the streets above the canals of Venice.
She tells him of her love of Jean Marais as L'Inquillino, who won her heart and has disappeared. She is waiting for his return.
As Mario waits with her, he falls in love with her as well.
How will the triangle turn out?
Saturday, June 10, 2017
161 - Senso, 1954, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.
Saturday, June 10, 2017
161 - Senso, 1954, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.
Do not let a foreign soldier escort you past the curfew.
It might not turn out very well.
We have not seen colors like this sense Jean Renoir's later films.
The Countess Livia Serpieri, played by Alida Valli of The Third Man, is at the opera.
She is at the La Fenise opera house with her husband, the Count Serpieri.
They are participating in Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore.
Austrian soldiers are watching the opera from the seats below, while the Italian aristocracy is watching from the high wall of box seats above.
It is the 1860s, and Austria is occupying Venice. Prussia has joined Venice and the rest of Italy in resisting Austria.
As the opera plays, the Italian nationalists begin to shout and throw down confetti in the colors of their flag. They demand that the Austrians leave.
An Austrian soldier, Franz Mahler--played by American actor Farley Granger from Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and Strangers on a Train--insults an Italian nationalist, Roberto Ussoni, and the two set up a duel for the next day.
Ussoni is Livia's cousin, and she admires him more than anyone else in the world. He is a good and brave man.
She is now terrified that he has exposed himself by speaking openly and that he may die tomorrow in the duel.
She meets with Mahler to appeal to him not to duel with her cousin.
And as Verdi's opera ends, our opera begins.
Mahler will offer to escort Livia through the streets past the curfew, and despite her protests, she complies.
And her acquiescence will begin a chain of events that will lead to the destruction of many people.
If only she had not walked with him.
At least he was charming.
Visconti's movies are grand. They are filled with lavish set pieces, expensive fabrics, magnificent clothing, rich colors, and expansive music.
Sources tell us that at the time it was released, Senso was the most expensive movie ever made in Italy. It benefits from this distinction. As far as our eyes and ears can tell, the money was not wasted but ended up fully realized on the screen and in the speakers.
With Senso we get a romantic melodrama of operatic proportions.
And in the end, all hearts are broken.
Including ours.
161 - Senso, 1954, Italy. Dir. Luchino Visconti.
Do not let a foreign soldier escort you past the curfew.
It might not turn out very well.
We have not seen colors like this sense Jean Renoir's later films.
The Countess Livia Serpieri, played by Alida Valli of The Third Man, is at the opera.
She is at the La Fenise opera house with her husband, the Count Serpieri.
They are participating in Giuseppe Verdi's opera Il Trovatore.
Austrian soldiers are watching the opera from the seats below, while the Italian aristocracy is watching from the high wall of box seats above.
It is the 1860s, and Austria is occupying Venice. Prussia has joined Venice and the rest of Italy in resisting Austria.
As the opera plays, the Italian nationalists begin to shout and throw down confetti in the colors of their flag. They demand that the Austrians leave.
An Austrian soldier, Franz Mahler--played by American actor Farley Granger from Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night and Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and Strangers on a Train--insults an Italian nationalist, Roberto Ussoni, and the two set up a duel for the next day.
Ussoni is Livia's cousin, and she admires him more than anyone else in the world. He is a good and brave man.
She is now terrified that he has exposed himself by speaking openly and that he may die tomorrow in the duel.
She meets with Mahler to appeal to him not to duel with her cousin.
And as Verdi's opera ends, our opera begins.
Mahler will offer to escort Livia through the streets past the curfew, and despite her protests, she complies.
And her acquiescence will begin a chain of events that will lead to the destruction of many people.
If only she had not walked with him.
At least he was charming.
Visconti's movies are grand. They are filled with lavish set pieces, expensive fabrics, magnificent clothing, rich colors, and expansive music.
Sources tell us that at the time it was released, Senso was the most expensive movie ever made in Italy. It benefits from this distinction. As far as our eyes and ears can tell, the money was not wasted but ended up fully realized on the screen and in the speakers.
With Senso we get a romantic melodrama of operatic proportions.
And in the end, all hearts are broken.
Including ours.
Friday, June 9, 2017
160 - Umberto D., 1952, Italy. Dir. Vittorio de Sica.
Friday, June 9, 2017
160 - Umberto D., 1952, Italy. Dir. Vittorio de Sica.
This is a film about friendship.
Friendship between the elderly Umberto D. Ferrari and the young maid Maria.
Friendship between Umberto D. and his dog Flike.
Umberto D. dresses nicely. He wears a tailored suit and hat, and he walks the streets with physical and internal grace.
He is a retired civil servant. He was a government worker for thirty-five years. He now lives on a pension.
Maria possesses a positive personality. She has large, open eyes and an open heart. She helps Umberto D. and confides in him.
She tells him she is pregnant. The father is a soldier. A tall soldier from Naples. Or a short soldier from Florence. She does not know which one. Umberto D. is sympathetic to her. Understanding.
They live in an apartment building owned by Antonia Belloni. Miss Belloni lives there too. She hosts salons in her apartment, where her fiance joins them and they sing.
Flike is faithful to Umberto D. Umberto D. is faithful to Flike.
The two walk the streets together. They struggle together.
The film was filmed by Italian neo-realist director Vittorio de Sica. He is most known for his film Bicycle Thieves.
This film has a similar theme. A focus on the poor. With a particular political point of view.
de Sica is not well enough known in America. He acted and directed in many movies for around fifty years. And he had acted for more than twenty years before directing Bicycle Thieves.
We have seen him as an actor. Playing the Baron Fabrizio Donati in Max Ophuls' The Earrings of Madame de . . .
The story of Umberto D. is told simply and economically.
You may be moved by the financial message.
You will be moved by the friendship.
160 - Umberto D., 1952, Italy. Dir. Vittorio de Sica.
This is a film about friendship.
Friendship between the elderly Umberto D. Ferrari and the young maid Maria.
Friendship between Umberto D. and his dog Flike.
Umberto D. dresses nicely. He wears a tailored suit and hat, and he walks the streets with physical and internal grace.
He is a retired civil servant. He was a government worker for thirty-five years. He now lives on a pension.
Maria possesses a positive personality. She has large, open eyes and an open heart. She helps Umberto D. and confides in him.
She tells him she is pregnant. The father is a soldier. A tall soldier from Naples. Or a short soldier from Florence. She does not know which one. Umberto D. is sympathetic to her. Understanding.
They live in an apartment building owned by Antonia Belloni. Miss Belloni lives there too. She hosts salons in her apartment, where her fiance joins them and they sing.
Flike is faithful to Umberto D. Umberto D. is faithful to Flike.
The two walk the streets together. They struggle together.
The film was filmed by Italian neo-realist director Vittorio de Sica. He is most known for his film Bicycle Thieves.
This film has a similar theme. A focus on the poor. With a particular political point of view.
de Sica is not well enough known in America. He acted and directed in many movies for around fifty years. And he had acted for more than twenty years before directing Bicycle Thieves.
We have seen him as an actor. Playing the Baron Fabrizio Donati in Max Ophuls' The Earrings of Madame de . . .
The story of Umberto D. is told simply and economically.
You may be moved by the financial message.
You will be moved by the friendship.
Thursday, June 8, 2017
159 - And the Ship Sails On, 1983, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Thursday, June 8, 2017
159 - And the Ship Sails On, 1983, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Edmea is taking a cruise.
In an urn.
She is the world's greatest opera singer.
Too bad she is dead.
The good news is that the ship is filled with family and friends who love her.
Or loved her, as it were.
The film begins as if it were an old sepia silent. With people milling about preparing to launch.
And with the sound of film stock running through the teeth of projector sprockets.
There are few dialogue cards, as there is little dialogue.
When the cards do appear, they flash by in a bright red color.
Then the sepia gives way to full color, and we board the ship and sail the seas.
Along the way we meet people from many walks of life.
And a rhinoceros.
Because every good cruise ship should have its own rhinoceros.
This film feels a bit like a Wes Anderson movie.
With specific tracking shots and an emphasis on offbeat acting and production design.
In some ways it is not like a Fellini picture. In other ways it absolutely is.
Come aboard the ship.
And go for a ride.
159 - And the Ship Sails On, 1983, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Edmea is taking a cruise.
In an urn.
She is the world's greatest opera singer.
Too bad she is dead.
The good news is that the ship is filled with family and friends who love her.
Or loved her, as it were.
The film begins as if it were an old sepia silent. With people milling about preparing to launch.
And with the sound of film stock running through the teeth of projector sprockets.
There are few dialogue cards, as there is little dialogue.
When the cards do appear, they flash by in a bright red color.
Then the sepia gives way to full color, and we board the ship and sail the seas.
Along the way we meet people from many walks of life.
And a rhinoceros.
Because every good cruise ship should have its own rhinoceros.
This film feels a bit like a Wes Anderson movie.
With specific tracking shots and an emphasis on offbeat acting and production design.
In some ways it is not like a Fellini picture. In other ways it absolutely is.
Come aboard the ship.
And go for a ride.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
158 - Juliet of the Spirits, 1965, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
158 - Juliet of the Spirits, 1965, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
This film is dazzling.
Three things: Production design. Production design. Production design.
Fellini makes a feature film in color. Brilliant, beautiful color.
And he is still firing on all cylinders.
When we watched Contempt (1963) a few weeks ago, we saw the French director Jean-Luc Godard place his story in Italy, at the great Cinecitta Studios. He showed Cinecitta closed. Broken down. In decay.
Godard believed that cinema was dead and he wanted to prove it.
Yet here we have a two-and-a-half hour epic fantasy filmed two years later not on location but almost entirely on sound stages. At the great Cinecitta Studios. Cinecitta was alive and well. And still is today. And pumping out films.
Godard lied.
In Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's wife Giuletta Masina is back. She plays the wife of an unfaithful husband, who wants to leave him but cannot.
Much of the film takes place in her dream world or in the fantasy world of the spirits that she consults for assistance.
Fellini reminds us that cinema is about images. That the word movies is short for moving pictures. And he gives us picture after picture after picture. Once again--
Every frame a Fellini.
158 - Juliet of the Spirits, 1965, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
This film is dazzling.
Three things: Production design. Production design. Production design.
Fellini makes a feature film in color. Brilliant, beautiful color.
And he is still firing on all cylinders.
When we watched Contempt (1963) a few weeks ago, we saw the French director Jean-Luc Godard place his story in Italy, at the great Cinecitta Studios. He showed Cinecitta closed. Broken down. In decay.
Godard believed that cinema was dead and he wanted to prove it.
Yet here we have a two-and-a-half hour epic fantasy filmed two years later not on location but almost entirely on sound stages. At the great Cinecitta Studios. Cinecitta was alive and well. And still is today. And pumping out films.
Godard lied.
In Juliet of the Spirits, Fellini's wife Giuletta Masina is back. She plays the wife of an unfaithful husband, who wants to leave him but cannot.
Much of the film takes place in her dream world or in the fantasy world of the spirits that she consults for assistance.
Fellini reminds us that cinema is about images. That the word movies is short for moving pictures. And he gives us picture after picture after picture. Once again--
Every frame a Fellini.
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
157 - 8 1/2, 1963, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
157 - 8 1/2, 1963, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
This traffic is a nightmare.
From which Guido cannot wake up.
Everyone is just sitting there.
And behaving rather strangely.
Guido is born from his car. Coming out headfirst through the sunroof.
He floats. Above the traffic. Floats up into the sun. Like Icarus.
Pulled down by an agent and press agent, pulling on his rope. Yanking his chain. Pulling him down into the surf.
Guido is a film director. And he is having trouble with his next film.
The doctor prescribes 300 ml of holy water. Three doses taken in 15-minute intervals.
Carini the film critic advises him on his script.
He goes to a spa.
The camera pans grandly across a display of complex choreography. The people at the spa all hitting their marks on cue.
The score soars.
The Ride of the Valkyries.
The Barber of Seville.
Claudia comes smiling. Claudia Cardinale comes running. Offers water. Perhaps she is the solution. The Ideal Woman.
Carla comes calling. His mistress from Rome, Sandra Milo, comes by train. Why did I invite her? He puts her up in an off-the-beaten-path hotel to keep her out of sight.
Luisa comes to visit. His separated wife, Anouk Aimee, comes to see him. They go dancing. Maybe things will work out.
Rosella comes with Luisa. Luisa's friend, Rosella Falk, listens to Guido's confession. He wants to make an honest film but has nothing honest to say.
The crew comes to the hotel. Let us get this movie started!
They will film at the beach. At a steel tower structure. Designed to resemble a rocket launch pad.
Guido has memories of his childhood. His grandmother's villa. The prostitute on the beach. His Catholic upbringing.
He has fantasies about the women. All these women complicating his life. If only he could use a whip. Like a lion tamer. A matador.
The Producer shows him screen tests. Make a choice! Guido makes no choices.
Luisa leaves. Claudia appears. Guido shows his movie set to her. She puts him in his place.
Will Guido ever make his movie?
Will he have something honest to say?
Fellini called 8-1/2 "a liberating film."
With it and La Dolce Vita before it we have a world cinema master firing on all cylinders.
He is fully free of the burden of his neo-realism roots. Free to focus on images and sounds. Dreams, fantasies, hallucinations, memories.
And explore the creative struggle.
What does it mean to be an artist? What does it mean to be an artist trying to create in a commercial medium? With the voices of others pulling you in all directions?
The clowns enter playing music.
The artist needs friends.
The artist needs love.
157 - 8 1/2, 1963, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
This traffic is a nightmare.
From which Guido cannot wake up.
Everyone is just sitting there.
And behaving rather strangely.
Guido is born from his car. Coming out headfirst through the sunroof.
He floats. Above the traffic. Floats up into the sun. Like Icarus.
Pulled down by an agent and press agent, pulling on his rope. Yanking his chain. Pulling him down into the surf.
Guido is a film director. And he is having trouble with his next film.
The doctor prescribes 300 ml of holy water. Three doses taken in 15-minute intervals.
Carini the film critic advises him on his script.
He goes to a spa.
The camera pans grandly across a display of complex choreography. The people at the spa all hitting their marks on cue.
The score soars.
The Ride of the Valkyries.
The Barber of Seville.
Claudia comes smiling. Claudia Cardinale comes running. Offers water. Perhaps she is the solution. The Ideal Woman.
Carla comes calling. His mistress from Rome, Sandra Milo, comes by train. Why did I invite her? He puts her up in an off-the-beaten-path hotel to keep her out of sight.
Luisa comes to visit. His separated wife, Anouk Aimee, comes to see him. They go dancing. Maybe things will work out.
Rosella comes with Luisa. Luisa's friend, Rosella Falk, listens to Guido's confession. He wants to make an honest film but has nothing honest to say.
The crew comes to the hotel. Let us get this movie started!
They will film at the beach. At a steel tower structure. Designed to resemble a rocket launch pad.
Guido has memories of his childhood. His grandmother's villa. The prostitute on the beach. His Catholic upbringing.
He has fantasies about the women. All these women complicating his life. If only he could use a whip. Like a lion tamer. A matador.
The Producer shows him screen tests. Make a choice! Guido makes no choices.
Luisa leaves. Claudia appears. Guido shows his movie set to her. She puts him in his place.
Will Guido ever make his movie?
Will he have something honest to say?
Fellini called 8-1/2 "a liberating film."
With it and La Dolce Vita before it we have a world cinema master firing on all cylinders.
He is fully free of the burden of his neo-realism roots. Free to focus on images and sounds. Dreams, fantasies, hallucinations, memories.
And explore the creative struggle.
What does it mean to be an artist? What does it mean to be an artist trying to create in a commercial medium? With the voices of others pulling you in all directions?
The clowns enter playing music.
The artist needs friends.
The artist needs love.
Monday, June 5, 2017
156 - La Dolce Vita, 1960, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Monday, June 5, 2017
156 - La Dolce Vita, 1960, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Paparazzo is a member of the paparazzi.
Of course he is. They were named after him.
Paparazzo is a photographer who runs around with Marcello.
Marcello is a "journalist" who works for a celebrity gossip magazine.
We never actually see him doing any journalism. He simply shows up and watches the photographers photograph celebrities.
Then he hangs out with the celebrities they photograph.
He gets to live the sweet life with the celebrities he follows.
So he himself is sometimes the object of celebrity gossip.
Including the subject of photographs taken by his own friend Paparazzo.
It is a small price to pay for the opportunity to live the sweet life.
La Dolce Vita follows one week in Marcello's sweet life.
He flies in a helicopter following a helicopter carrying a statue of Jesus.
And he takes the time to fly lower to ask for the phone numbers of some women sunbathing on the roof of an apartment building.
And to take the rich socialite Maddalena from the club to the prostitute's flooded basement for their own use while she makes them coffee.
And to hook up with the Swedish-American movie star Sylvia, climbing the stairs in the dome of Saint Peter's, dancing at the baths of Caracalla, and wading in the Trevi Fountain.
He takes her away from her fiancé Robert.
His own fiancée Emma has tried to commit suicide over his philandering, and he has taken her to the hospital to get help.
Marcello, Paparazzo, and Emma drive his Vespa to the countryside where some children say they have seen the Virgin Mary. The crowds are gathered, and mayhem is happening.
He spends a night on the town with his father. They run into Fanny, one of his former flings.
He spends time with his friend and hero Steiner, at a church and at a salon in Steiner's home
He goes to a beach party with his friends, including Nico, later of The Velvet Underground.
Marcello continues to party with rich and famous people. Things happen that surprise and shock him. His life seems empty.
The sweet life is sour.
La Dolce Vita is a masterpiece. With every frame a Fellini.
The film is steadily paced and takes its time. Over the course of three hours, we follow all seven days in Marcello's week.
Each day's story works as a short film unto itself.
Each moment is beautifully staged and beautifully framed.
The actors are fantastic in their roles.
Watching it, you feel that something special is going on. Something magical. You are in the hands of a master at the top of his game.
The music is vital. Both the score and the songs.
The performances at the clubs are their own entertainment.
Many of the set pieces and individual images have become classics.
To see Jesus coming in the clouds--as a statue carried by a helicopter over the ruins of ancient pagan Rome, over the construction of new highrise urban apartments, over the Vatican itself.
To see the stars wading in the Trevi fountain.
And the look of those great cars.
This is a movie to see over and over again.
156 - La Dolce Vita, 1960, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Paparazzo is a member of the paparazzi.
Of course he is. They were named after him.
Paparazzo is a photographer who runs around with Marcello.
Marcello is a "journalist" who works for a celebrity gossip magazine.
We never actually see him doing any journalism. He simply shows up and watches the photographers photograph celebrities.
Then he hangs out with the celebrities they photograph.
He gets to live the sweet life with the celebrities he follows.
So he himself is sometimes the object of celebrity gossip.
Including the subject of photographs taken by his own friend Paparazzo.
It is a small price to pay for the opportunity to live the sweet life.
La Dolce Vita follows one week in Marcello's sweet life.
He flies in a helicopter following a helicopter carrying a statue of Jesus.
And he takes the time to fly lower to ask for the phone numbers of some women sunbathing on the roof of an apartment building.
And to take the rich socialite Maddalena from the club to the prostitute's flooded basement for their own use while she makes them coffee.
And to hook up with the Swedish-American movie star Sylvia, climbing the stairs in the dome of Saint Peter's, dancing at the baths of Caracalla, and wading in the Trevi Fountain.
He takes her away from her fiancé Robert.
His own fiancée Emma has tried to commit suicide over his philandering, and he has taken her to the hospital to get help.
Marcello, Paparazzo, and Emma drive his Vespa to the countryside where some children say they have seen the Virgin Mary. The crowds are gathered, and mayhem is happening.
He spends a night on the town with his father. They run into Fanny, one of his former flings.
He spends time with his friend and hero Steiner, at a church and at a salon in Steiner's home
He goes to a beach party with his friends, including Nico, later of The Velvet Underground.
Marcello continues to party with rich and famous people. Things happen that surprise and shock him. His life seems empty.
The sweet life is sour.
La Dolce Vita is a masterpiece. With every frame a Fellini.
The film is steadily paced and takes its time. Over the course of three hours, we follow all seven days in Marcello's week.
Each day's story works as a short film unto itself.
Each moment is beautifully staged and beautifully framed.
The actors are fantastic in their roles.
Watching it, you feel that something special is going on. Something magical. You are in the hands of a master at the top of his game.
The music is vital. Both the score and the songs.
The performances at the clubs are their own entertainment.
Many of the set pieces and individual images have become classics.
To see Jesus coming in the clouds--as a statue carried by a helicopter over the ruins of ancient pagan Rome, over the construction of new highrise urban apartments, over the Vatican itself.
To see the stars wading in the Trevi fountain.
And the look of those great cars.
This is a movie to see over and over again.
Sunday, June 4, 2017
155 - Il Bidone, 1955, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Sunday, June 4, 2017
155 - Il Bidone, 1955, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Picasso is not a painter.
Picasso is a priest.
Picasso is not a priest.
Picasso is a conman.
Iris is Picasso's wife.
Iris believes Picasso is a painter.
Iris no longer believes Picasso is a painter.
Roberto is a conmen.
Augusto is a priest.
Augusto has a daughter.
How can a priest have a daughter?
Augusto is not a priest.
Augusto is a conman.
Augusto takes his daughter to the movies.
The police take Augusto to jail.
The conman pretends to be a painter.
The conmen pretend to be priests.
The conmen find buried treasure.
Buried treasure on the farmers' land.
The conmen claim it belongs to the church.
The conmen charge the farmers.
The farmers pay the conmen.
Augusto gets out of jail.
The conmen con a family.
The family has a daughter.
The daughter is paralyzed.
Augusto has a conscience.
Augusto says let us return the money.
Augusto does not have a conscience.
Augusto does not return the money.
Augusto tries to keep the money.
Augusto cons the conmen.
The conmen discover Augusto.
The conmen do not wish to be conned.
Augusto lies in the snow.
155 - Il Bidone, 1955, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Picasso is not a painter.
Picasso is a priest.
Picasso is not a priest.
Picasso is a conman.
Iris is Picasso's wife.
Iris believes Picasso is a painter.
Iris no longer believes Picasso is a painter.
Roberto is a conmen.
Augusto is a priest.
Augusto has a daughter.
How can a priest have a daughter?
Augusto is not a priest.
Augusto is a conman.
Augusto takes his daughter to the movies.
The police take Augusto to jail.
The conman pretends to be a painter.
The conmen pretend to be priests.
The conmen find buried treasure.
Buried treasure on the farmers' land.
The conmen claim it belongs to the church.
The conmen charge the farmers.
The farmers pay the conmen.
Augusto gets out of jail.
The conmen con a family.
The family has a daughter.
The daughter is paralyzed.
Augusto has a conscience.
Augusto says let us return the money.
Augusto does not have a conscience.
Augusto does not return the money.
Augusto tries to keep the money.
Augusto cons the conmen.
The conmen discover Augusto.
The conmen do not wish to be conned.
Augusto lies in the snow.
Saturday, June 3, 2017
154 - La Strada, 1954, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Saturday, June 3, 2017
154 - La Strada, 1954, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Gelsomina lives by the sea.
She lives with her mother and she lives with her sisters down by the heart of the sea.
She has no father. Her father is dead. And her sisters come to tell her that her oldest sister has just died.
So Zampano comes to call.
Zampano is a big man who performs in street performances by breaking a chain with his bare chest.
He drives a truck wagon on a motorcycle.
He had married Gelsomina's older sister, and now that she is dead he has come to retrieve Gelsomina.
He pays her mother. Her mother cries but sends her. Gelsomina cries but goes with him.
She watches him perform his act. While hiding inside the truck wagon. He walks around telling the crowds of his mighty feats. He will break the chain with his chest. He breaks the chain with his chest. He passes the hat. He gets a little money.
Gelsomina grows to embrace her new way of life. She plays the snare drum. She plays the trumpet. She clowns. Makes faces. Makes faces with her large and expressive eyes.
And she grows to love Zampano.
And Zampano, perhaps, loves her too. He just does not know how to show it. He bosses her. Scolds her. Is cruel to her.
So one day she discovers his competition. A man walking a high wire tight rope. Named in the film The Fool.
She enjoys his act. Zampano grows jealous. Things get out of hand.
Fellini has created in La Strada one of the world's most beloved films.
His real wife, Giuletta Masina, plays Gelsomina, a character who wears her heart on her face.
The great Mexican actor Anthony Quinn plays Zampano.
The American Richard Basehart plays The Fool.
All three people are simple people. Emotional people. Who live in the world of the street performer.
Watching Fellini is like watching the circus. And a magic show. And a carnival. And listening to a fairy tale. And reading the autobiography of a fictional character. And humming a tune.
He has his own language that is unique to him.
He tells stories in ways that nobody else does.
154 - La Strada, 1954, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Gelsomina lives by the sea.
She lives with her mother and she lives with her sisters down by the heart of the sea.
She has no father. Her father is dead. And her sisters come to tell her that her oldest sister has just died.
So Zampano comes to call.
Zampano is a big man who performs in street performances by breaking a chain with his bare chest.
He drives a truck wagon on a motorcycle.
He had married Gelsomina's older sister, and now that she is dead he has come to retrieve Gelsomina.
He pays her mother. Her mother cries but sends her. Gelsomina cries but goes with him.
She watches him perform his act. While hiding inside the truck wagon. He walks around telling the crowds of his mighty feats. He will break the chain with his chest. He breaks the chain with his chest. He passes the hat. He gets a little money.
Gelsomina grows to embrace her new way of life. She plays the snare drum. She plays the trumpet. She clowns. Makes faces. Makes faces with her large and expressive eyes.
And she grows to love Zampano.
And Zampano, perhaps, loves her too. He just does not know how to show it. He bosses her. Scolds her. Is cruel to her.
So one day she discovers his competition. A man walking a high wire tight rope. Named in the film The Fool.
She enjoys his act. Zampano grows jealous. Things get out of hand.
Fellini has created in La Strada one of the world's most beloved films.
His real wife, Giuletta Masina, plays Gelsomina, a character who wears her heart on her face.
The great Mexican actor Anthony Quinn plays Zampano.
The American Richard Basehart plays The Fool.
All three people are simple people. Emotional people. Who live in the world of the street performer.
Watching Fellini is like watching the circus. And a magic show. And a carnival. And listening to a fairy tale. And reading the autobiography of a fictional character. And humming a tune.
He has his own language that is unique to him.
He tells stories in ways that nobody else does.
Friday, June 2, 2017
153 - I Vitelloni, 1953, Italy/France. Dir. Federico Fellini.
Friday, June 2, 2017
153 - I Vitelloni, 1953, Italy/France. Dir. Federico Fellini.
What does I Vitelloni mean?
The word I in Italian is the definite article. It means the. So we have The Vitelloni.
The i at the end of a word makes it plural. The singular here ends in an e.
So The Vitelloni are a group of Vitellone.
What is a vitellone? A bullock.
What is a bullock? Never mind.
No, that's bollocks. Bollocks are testicles. A bullock is a castrated steer.
So a bullock has lost its bollocks.
OK, enough fooling around. A bullock is a young bull. The name of this movie is The Studs.
Five young men have grown up in a small Italian seacoast town. They are now 30. And they are still trying to grow up.
Although they are not trying very hard.
As long as their families support them, they have other things to do.
Fausto is the player. He marries Sandra in a shotgun wedding. And continues to chase women as she carries their baby.
Moraldo is Fausto's brother-in-law. Sandra's brother. He is the moral one. He wants to get away.
Alberto depends on his sister Olga for money. He is sensitive.
Leopoldo is a writer. He longs for his big break.
Riccardo wants to act and sing.
The movie is a series of scenes in the lives of these men. The beauty pageant that gets rained on. The shotgun wedding. The men taunting road workers. Fausto's leaving his wife at the cinema to chase a lady. Fausto's job at the store for devotional items. Carnival. Post-Carnival. Alberto's sister Olga's running away. Fausto's hitting on his boss's wife. Fausto's firing. The stealing of statue and their efforts to sell it. Leopoldo's meeting with the great actor Sergio and his hopes of his performing his play. Fausto's one-night stand that causes Sandra to run away with the baby. Fausto's search for Sandra. His father Francesco's beating of him with a belt. Fausto and Sandra's reconciliation. Moraldo's leaving by train.
There is something mesmerizing about watching a Fellini film, and his chronicling of life.
Fellini loves life. His characters live life. His movies feel alive.
We have spent weeks watching French films, and now as we are entering into Italian cinema we can feel the differences.
The French films feature the streets of Paris. The Italian films showcase the open square.
Cars are important to French film, as they are in America. In Italian films the people may walk.
The French films focus on the river. The Italian films take place by the sea.
The French films often have loners. The Italian films are grounded in family. Large families.
The French films can be introverted and cerebral. The Italian films can be extroverted and emotional.
Look at map. France is surrounded by land. Except for the south. The Riviera. It has rivers that run through it, which are important to the growth of its cities.
Yet Italy is a great peninsula. Surrounded everywhere by the Mediterranean. Like Florida to us. Only more so. When watching these movies you can smell the salt in the air. You can feel the sand in your toes.
And when we see the architecture of Paris, despite how old it is compared to America, next to Italy it feels young.
The buildings are smashed together. The streets are like narrow channels, pipelines running between the buildings.
But in Italy everything is open. With wide spaces between buildings. Buildings that were built long before French buildings. And people walk everywhere in these open spaces.
There is another difference.
French films feel more secular. Yes, they are Catholic just as the Italian ones. This is the land of Notre Dame.
But religion permeates the very fabric of Italian cinema.
We saw it in Rossellini, and we are seeing it with Fellini. Regardless of the positions of the filmmakers themselves, they are showing religion as being interwoven in their culture.
Fausto the player gets a job at a store that sells Christian items for devotion. Crosses. Candles. Statues. Robes. His boss makes a good living. They have steady and regular customers. The people take it seriously.
When Fausto and Moraldo steal a statue and try to sell it, it is not hard for them to find convents and monasteries for their attempt. They are common.
Consider that there is not a book of Parisians in the Bible.
But there is a book of Romans.
Paul went to Rome. And he wrote his epistolary masterpiece to the church there. And the book of Romans triggered the great revivals of history. From Augustine to Luther to the Wesleys.
And Rome had all that history before then.
The Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire. The Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican.
What was going on in France back then?
Compared to America, France feels old. Compared to Italy, France feels young.
Not that the people in these Italian films feel old-fashioned. They are very contemporary.
They just live their contemporary lives in a landscape that has an ancient history.
And we can feel it.
But family is very important here.
Everything revolves around the family.
153 - I Vitelloni, 1953, Italy/France. Dir. Federico Fellini.
What does I Vitelloni mean?
The word I in Italian is the definite article. It means the. So we have The Vitelloni.
The i at the end of a word makes it plural. The singular here ends in an e.
So The Vitelloni are a group of Vitellone.
What is a vitellone? A bullock.
What is a bullock? Never mind.
No, that's bollocks. Bollocks are testicles. A bullock is a castrated steer.
So a bullock has lost its bollocks.
OK, enough fooling around. A bullock is a young bull. The name of this movie is The Studs.
Five young men have grown up in a small Italian seacoast town. They are now 30. And they are still trying to grow up.
Although they are not trying very hard.
As long as their families support them, they have other things to do.
Fausto is the player. He marries Sandra in a shotgun wedding. And continues to chase women as she carries their baby.
Moraldo is Fausto's brother-in-law. Sandra's brother. He is the moral one. He wants to get away.
Alberto depends on his sister Olga for money. He is sensitive.
Leopoldo is a writer. He longs for his big break.
Riccardo wants to act and sing.
The movie is a series of scenes in the lives of these men. The beauty pageant that gets rained on. The shotgun wedding. The men taunting road workers. Fausto's leaving his wife at the cinema to chase a lady. Fausto's job at the store for devotional items. Carnival. Post-Carnival. Alberto's sister Olga's running away. Fausto's hitting on his boss's wife. Fausto's firing. The stealing of statue and their efforts to sell it. Leopoldo's meeting with the great actor Sergio and his hopes of his performing his play. Fausto's one-night stand that causes Sandra to run away with the baby. Fausto's search for Sandra. His father Francesco's beating of him with a belt. Fausto and Sandra's reconciliation. Moraldo's leaving by train.
There is something mesmerizing about watching a Fellini film, and his chronicling of life.
Fellini loves life. His characters live life. His movies feel alive.
We have spent weeks watching French films, and now as we are entering into Italian cinema we can feel the differences.
The French films feature the streets of Paris. The Italian films showcase the open square.
Cars are important to French film, as they are in America. In Italian films the people may walk.
The French films focus on the river. The Italian films take place by the sea.
The French films often have loners. The Italian films are grounded in family. Large families.
The French films can be introverted and cerebral. The Italian films can be extroverted and emotional.
Look at map. France is surrounded by land. Except for the south. The Riviera. It has rivers that run through it, which are important to the growth of its cities.
Yet Italy is a great peninsula. Surrounded everywhere by the Mediterranean. Like Florida to us. Only more so. When watching these movies you can smell the salt in the air. You can feel the sand in your toes.
And when we see the architecture of Paris, despite how old it is compared to America, next to Italy it feels young.
The buildings are smashed together. The streets are like narrow channels, pipelines running between the buildings.
But in Italy everything is open. With wide spaces between buildings. Buildings that were built long before French buildings. And people walk everywhere in these open spaces.
There is another difference.
French films feel more secular. Yes, they are Catholic just as the Italian ones. This is the land of Notre Dame.
But religion permeates the very fabric of Italian cinema.
We saw it in Rossellini, and we are seeing it with Fellini. Regardless of the positions of the filmmakers themselves, they are showing religion as being interwoven in their culture.
Fausto the player gets a job at a store that sells Christian items for devotion. Crosses. Candles. Statues. Robes. His boss makes a good living. They have steady and regular customers. The people take it seriously.
When Fausto and Moraldo steal a statue and try to sell it, it is not hard for them to find convents and monasteries for their attempt. They are common.
Consider that there is not a book of Parisians in the Bible.
But there is a book of Romans.
Paul went to Rome. And he wrote his epistolary masterpiece to the church there. And the book of Romans triggered the great revivals of history. From Augustine to Luther to the Wesleys.
And Rome had all that history before then.
The Roman Empire. The Holy Roman Empire. The Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican.
What was going on in France back then?
Compared to America, France feels old. Compared to Italy, France feels young.
Not that the people in these Italian films feel old-fashioned. They are very contemporary.
They just live their contemporary lives in a landscape that has an ancient history.
And we can feel it.
But family is very important here.
Everything revolves around the family.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
152 - Variety Lights, 1951, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
152 - Variety Lights, 1951, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada.
Her name is Lily.
Or Liliana Antonelli, to be exact. But you may call her Lily.
Checco does.
Lily wants to act. On the stage.
Checco is the head--or shall we say, the self-styled smalltime Svengali--of a travelling troupe. A variety show.
They do a little of this and a little of that.
And make a little of money.
Just enough to sneak onto the train and hide so as not to pay the fare.
Liliana goes to the show. The variety show.
She watches. She dreams. She applauds.
One day she will be up there.
Live theater. Singing. Dancing. Acting. Doing tricks. Entertaining the public. Her name in lights.
LIGHTS!
Liliana boards the train.
She sees the troupe on the train.
She gets excited.
She introduces herself to Checco Del Monte.
She shows him pictures.
Lots of pictures.
This is me dancing. Here I am on stage. Look at my outfit. Here, make sure to see this one. See what I can do.
Checco is bored. But he believes he knows how to help her career.
Just not in the way Liliana wants.
She declines.
When the troupe gets off the train they do not have enough money to hire a carriage to take them into the next town.
But Liliana does. She has the last of her money. She spends it to hire the carriage. To take the troupe into town.
They are grateful. She gets to perform.
The audience is sparse. The people are bored. It is an off-night.
Like most of the nights for this troupe.
Until something accidental happens. A happy accident. For Lily anyway.
Someone steps on her skirt and tears it. Now her legs are showing. Suddenly, the audience is interested.
Backstage she gets in trouble. But she protests it was not her fault.
Yet none of the acts are getting any response. And the audience is calling for more of her.
The local promoter wants her on stage. She goes back out. She makes up a dance.
The audience loves her.
The people love Lily.
And you know the rest of the story. As you watch you will think about All About Eve (1950). The stages are in the sawdust of backwater towns rather than the streets of Broadway, but the stakes are just as high.
When someone is willing to do anything to get what he wants, the stakes are high.
Liliana's star will rise. Checco will hitch his wagon to it. Checco's former mistress Melina will move to the background. Checco and Liliana will try to make a go of it.
But Liliana did not come to save of the troupe. She has loftier ambitions than playing in barns.
She wants it all.
And other men can give her more than Checco can.
Fellini had been writing screenplays for a decade.
He had written more than twenty. For several directors. Most famously for Roberto Rossellini.
And with this film he became a director.
He cast his wife and future international star, Giuletta Masina, as Checco's mistress Melina Amour.
And his co-director Alberto Lattuada cast his wife Carla Del Poggio as the star, Liliana Antonelli.
Lattuada brought the drama.
Fellini brought the comic playfulness.
And worked in some of the themes for which he would become legendary.
Vaudeville. A troupe of actors. The vagabond lives of entertainers. The elusive nature of desire.
Human longing. Seen through the eyes of clowning. The three-ring circus of dreams.
A comic look at tragic truths.
A compassionate look at fools.
With a little song and a little dance to wash it down.
Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo! Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo! Doo-doo-doo! Doo-doo-doo-doo!
152 - Variety Lights, 1951, Italy. Dir. Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada.
Her name is Lily.
Or Liliana Antonelli, to be exact. But you may call her Lily.
Checco does.
Lily wants to act. On the stage.
Checco is the head--or shall we say, the self-styled smalltime Svengali--of a travelling troupe. A variety show.
They do a little of this and a little of that.
And make a little of money.
Just enough to sneak onto the train and hide so as not to pay the fare.
Liliana goes to the show. The variety show.
She watches. She dreams. She applauds.
One day she will be up there.
Live theater. Singing. Dancing. Acting. Doing tricks. Entertaining the public. Her name in lights.
LIGHTS!
Liliana boards the train.
She sees the troupe on the train.
She gets excited.
She introduces herself to Checco Del Monte.
She shows him pictures.
Lots of pictures.
This is me dancing. Here I am on stage. Look at my outfit. Here, make sure to see this one. See what I can do.
Checco is bored. But he believes he knows how to help her career.
Just not in the way Liliana wants.
She declines.
When the troupe gets off the train they do not have enough money to hire a carriage to take them into the next town.
But Liliana does. She has the last of her money. She spends it to hire the carriage. To take the troupe into town.
They are grateful. She gets to perform.
The audience is sparse. The people are bored. It is an off-night.
Like most of the nights for this troupe.
Until something accidental happens. A happy accident. For Lily anyway.
Someone steps on her skirt and tears it. Now her legs are showing. Suddenly, the audience is interested.
Backstage she gets in trouble. But she protests it was not her fault.
Yet none of the acts are getting any response. And the audience is calling for more of her.
The local promoter wants her on stage. She goes back out. She makes up a dance.
The audience loves her.
The people love Lily.
And you know the rest of the story. As you watch you will think about All About Eve (1950). The stages are in the sawdust of backwater towns rather than the streets of Broadway, but the stakes are just as high.
When someone is willing to do anything to get what he wants, the stakes are high.
Liliana's star will rise. Checco will hitch his wagon to it. Checco's former mistress Melina will move to the background. Checco and Liliana will try to make a go of it.
But Liliana did not come to save of the troupe. She has loftier ambitions than playing in barns.
She wants it all.
And other men can give her more than Checco can.
Fellini had been writing screenplays for a decade.
He had written more than twenty. For several directors. Most famously for Roberto Rossellini.
And with this film he became a director.
He cast his wife and future international star, Giuletta Masina, as Checco's mistress Melina Amour.
And his co-director Alberto Lattuada cast his wife Carla Del Poggio as the star, Liliana Antonelli.
Lattuada brought the drama.
Fellini brought the comic playfulness.
And worked in some of the themes for which he would become legendary.
Vaudeville. A troupe of actors. The vagabond lives of entertainers. The elusive nature of desire.
Human longing. Seen through the eyes of clowning. The three-ring circus of dreams.
A comic look at tragic truths.
A compassionate look at fools.
With a little song and a little dance to wash it down.
Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo! Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo! Doo-doo-doo! Doo-doo-doo-doo!
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