Films made by or primarily set in the southern European republic (Wikipedia entry)
Published on 24 August 2019 26 August 2019 by Ewan MLeave a comment
I only started watching 'giallo' films a few years ago, that peculiar hyper-stylised Italian sub-genre of horror, and among those first three was Dario Argento's Profondo rosso (1975). I've watched only a few from the genre since then, like Femina ridens (1969) and All the Colors of the Dark (1972), but they've all offered fascinating little glimpses into an alternate world of filmmaking. Finally, I managed to catch up on Argento's most famous film, recently remade by Luca Guadagnino (though I haven't yet seen the remake, and may not ever bother).
One of the taglines for this film is "The most frightening film you'll ever see!" and I should point out right away that this isn't quite true: part of what Argento seems to be doing here rather undercuts the scariness. There's terror and horror and gore, but the use of colours and sound, the heightened acting (a nice way of saying it's pretty ropey), the whole Grand Guignol nature of the enterprise, somewhat mitigates against the scares. Still, what colours! What sound! The score by Goblin is just fantastic, ultra-70s electronica, and combined with the deeply saturated colours, it makes the film that much more immersive. From the very opening scenes, the tone starts out at hysterical turned up to 11, and then… it just cranks it up ever more. The witches' coven/German dance school conceit suggests deeper tensions within society that remain allegorical (I believe these are made more concrete in the remake), and while I may remain unconvinced by the acting, it's some kind of a film.
Director Dario Argento; Writers Argento and Daria Nicolodi (based on the essay "Suspiria de Profundis" by Thomas De Quincey); Cinematographer Luciano Tovoli; Starring Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Alida Valli; Length 98 minutes.
Seen at home (Mubi streaming), London, Sunday 9 December 2018.
Categories Classification: 18, Country: Italy, Rating: EXCELLENT•Tags 1977, alida valli, dario argento, film reviews, films seen at home, giallo, horror film, italy, jessica harper, luciano tovoli, stefania casini, west germany, written by a woman
Criterion Sunday 249: La battaglia di Algeri (The Battle of Algiers, 1966)
Over 50 years on and there's still an enormous amount of clarity and power in this film set against the backdrop of the last few years of the French occupation of Algeria, during the Algerian War, effectively a battle for independence. Pontecorvo's style emphasises its indebtedness to documentary, by using handheld cameras and a grainy high-contrast black-and-white image that suggests newsreel footage at times. But its thematic achievement is in treating both sides with some semblance of equality, even if it's clear that the moral force is on the side of the Algerians. While the FLN agitators are not dismissed as mere terrorists, there's also clearly conflict about their methods and targets, and they are hardly romanticised as freedom fighters. Meanwhile, the film does not in any way exonerate the French in this conflict either, who are ultimately the aggressors, as the colonialist power. The French commander, a tall man in shades, strikes a heroic figure, but despite his successes against the Nazis, his tactics are questioned here, and he remains morally compromised as a player in the drama. The central character arc is for Brahim Haggiag's Ali, who ascends from petty thief to a figure of central importance within the FLN resistance as a result of prison radicalisation. The film's narrative takes his story, starting with the end and looping back in time to bring the story full circle, all the while moving the action forward propulsively. As such, the film never slows down for much of its two hours, a very watchable film about a complex struggle that never feels like it's taking an easy way out.
CRITERION EXTRAS:
The first disc includes a documentary called Pontecorvo: The Dictatorship of Truth (1992), a fairly brief TV piece which has Edward Said reflecting on the relatively few films of Pontecorvo, and why he should have largely disappeared from the cinephile conversation by the 1990s. There's an interview with Pontecorvo himself, who suggests some reasons (a fear of failure seems to be chief among them), and there's some good context on the making of all three of the features mentioned, particularly The Battle of Algiers.
There are interviews with five directors who speak about the film's importance to their own craft, picking out elements of the style and its production, not that you'd necessarily expect it from people like Steven Soderbergh or Mira Nair.
There are also loads of other films and contextualising documents, which I'll add here as I watch them.
Director Gillo Pontecorvo; Writers Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas; Cinematographer Marcello Gatti; Starring Brahim Haggiag براهيم حجاج, Jean Martin; Length 120 minutes.
Seen at National Library, Wellington, Thursday 20 May 1999 (also earlier on VHS at home, Wellington, January 1998, and most recently on Blu-ray at home, London, Sunday 19 May 2019).
Categories Classification: 15, Country: Algeria, Country: Italy, Criterion Sunday, Rating: EXCELLENT, Theme: African Cinema, Theme: Arab Cinema•Tags 1001 films, 1966, algeria, black-and-white, brahim haggiag, criterion collection, drama, film reviews, films seen at home, gillo pontecorvo, historical drama, italy, jean martin, marcello gatti, revolutionaries, sight & sound 2012
Criterion Sunday 246: I vitelloni (1953)
Published on 16 June 2019 15 August 2019 by Ewan MLeave a comment
I gather that the title sort of loosely means "the idle men", but I like to think of it as "the lads", because that's what this film is about, a group of five young men in a small seaside town, who have hopes and aspirations and find them somewhat waylaid in the whirl of life. The film is largely focused on the ladies' man Fausto (Franco Fabrizi), who despite his early marriage and child finds plenty of time to flirt with other women, though the other four variously come into focus throughout the piece. It's beautifully shot, with a fantastic sense of framing, as these five men are first seen hanging out with one another, before the framing starts to fracture and they each move into their separate worlds. There are some lovely set-pieces, and a strong sense of a world that's been left behind, and a nostalgic pull to a certain vision of provincial Italian life (even though this is a film contemporary to when it was made). Perhaps that's the black-and-white, perhaps it's just innate in the thematics of the story. But escape from the dreary monotony is an ever-present pull in what is to my mind one of Fellini's finest films.
Director Federico Fellini; Writers Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano; Cinematographers Carlo Carlini, Otello Martelli and Luciano Trasatti; Starring Alberto Sordi, Franco Fabrizi, Franco Interlenghi, Leopoldo Trieste; Length 83 minutes.
Seen at National Library, Wellington, Wednesday 16 June 1999 (and most recently on DVD at home, London, Sunday 21 April 2019).
Categories Classification: PG, Country: Italy, Criterion Sunday, Rating: GOOD•Tags alberto sordi, black-and-white, carlo carlini, comedy, criterion collection, drama, federico fellini, film reviews, films seen at home, franco fabrizi, franco interlenghi, friendship, italy, leopoldo trieste, luciano trasatti, otello martelli, small town
Criterion Sunday 244: Elena et les hommes (Elena and Her Men, 1956)
Published on 2 June 2019 15 August 2019 by Ewan MLeave a comment
There's a lot of flustered rushing about in this film that feels familiar from Jean Renoir's work (like The Rules of the Game most famously, of course). It's all bright and colourful, and so very very French in its way. Ingrid Bergman as a Polish princess with her many suitors is a delight, too. I'm not sure it's Renoir's wittiest film, but everyone comes across as a bit of a fool, even (and especially) the grandest of military and political men, when compared to the effortless charm of Bergman's Elena, and that feels like the point of the film really. And it's a good point to make once again, of course.
Director Jean Renoir; Writers Jean Serge and Renoir; Cinematographer Claude Renoir; Starring Ingrid Bergman, Jean Marais, Mel Ferrer; Length 104 minutes.
Seen at Paramount, Wellington, Sunday 11 June 2000 (and most recently on DVD at home, London, Monday 11 March 2019).
Categories Classification: U, Country: France, Criterion Sunday, Rating: GOOD•Tags 1956, 19th century, criterion collection, drama, film reviews, films seen at home, france, ingrid bergman, italy, jean marais, jean renoir, mel ferrer, paris, period film, relationship drama, rosenbaum 1000
Criterion Sunday 243: French Cancan (1955)
Published on 26 May 2019 15 August 2019 by Ewan MLeave a comment
I think I like Renoir's late-period French films over his earlier, more celebrated ones (I feel the same, incidentally, about both Bresson and Buñuel), not least because I think the way he uses the colour and the staging is so precise and memorable. Of course there's an artifice, as there always is with Renoir's films, especially in this run of 50s films set in the theatrical demi-monde starting with The Golden Coach. However, it's the artifice of cinema at its grandest and this is a film that celebrates the spectacle of putting on a show and the dramas that takes place behind the scenes with the greatest of them — whether Lola Montès or Showgirls, burlesque and cabaret seem often to be particularly fruitful locations for films about social mores, shifting attitudes, and for the expression of pure cinema artistry itself.
Of course it helps that Renoir was being reunited with Jean Gabin and indeed with France itself for the first time after a long (and apparently not particularly welcome) exile in the United States, so there's a self-conscious embrace of Frenchness, ironic perhaps given the film's English title (in late-19th century Paris, it is explained, there was rather a penchant for the exoticism of foreign words, hence Gabin's impresario Danglard reinventing a traditional French cabaret dance by using an English-language name). There's also a rather frank subtext of sexual libertinism — a conversation early on with her friend about having to prepare adequately for her audition leads her to sleeping with her boyfriend. Indeed, lead dancer Nini's affairs with three different men seems to highlight her class aspirations, as she moves from humble washerwoman (in love with a baker) to the world of arts, via a dalliance with minor royalty. When Danglard rejects Nini's advances at the end, by protesting that he cannot be caged in love, it feels like the most French moment in this very French film.
Director Jean Renoir; Writers Renoir and André-Paul Antoine; Cinematographer Michel Kelber; Starring Jean Gabin, Françoise Arnoul, Maria Félix; Length 104 minutes.
Categories Classification: PG, Country: France, Criterion Sunday, Rating: EXCELLENT•Tags 1955, costume drama, criterion collection, drama, film reviews, films seen at home, france, francoise arnoul, italy, jean gabin, jean renoir, maria felix, michel kelber, musical film, paris, period film
Criterion Sunday 242: Le Carrosse d'or (The Golden Coach, 1952)
I think the tendency of post-war European cinema around this time, especially in Italy, was towards neo-realism, shooting on the streets, giving that documentary sense of gritty immediacy, and so Renoir shooting a very theatrical film on the soundstages of Cinecittà in Italy, with a very stylised use of saturated colour and glorious, ornate sets and costumes, with Italian and American actors speaking in English in a story set in Latin America (Peru, apparently) feels like a very studied riposte to all that. In fact, it feels like a more deeply-felt commentary on the nature of acting and performance to make this kind of film at this time, a film that dwells on spectacle as something which almost seems corrupting: the obscenity of the golden coach at the film's centre makes the government lose their minds, and becomes a tool of bargaining between men and, ultimately, the church — in a penultimate speech by the Bishop which is interrupted by Renoir cutting between all the assembled faces, expressing wry delight or shocked disdain. There's a subtle comment on the nature of imperialism, too, as this Latin American colony becomes enthralled to the Italian Anna Magnani and her troupe of actors, threatening to depose the viceroy and create a new life fighting for the rights and sovereignty of the native peoples (though this at least feels a little in passing). I think Renoir's later films are some of his finest work, operating at a different register from much of contemporary cinema, and all the better for it.
[NB Criterion lists the year as 1953, although this film appears to have been released in Italy in December 1952.]
Director Jean Renoir; Writers Renoir, Jack Kirkland, Renzo Avanzo, Giulio Macchi and Ginette Doynel (based on the play Le Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement by Prosper Mérimée); Cinematographer Claude Renoir; Starring Anna Magnani, Odoardo Spadaro, Duncan Lamont; Length 103 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Sunday 3 March 2019.
Categories Classification: U, Country: France, Country: Italy, Criterion Sunday, Rating: EXCELLENT•Tags 1001 films, 1952, anna magnani, claude renoir, comedy, costume drama, criterion collection, drama, duncan lamont, film reviews, films seen at home, france, italy, jean renoir, odoardo spadaro, period film, peru, rosenbaum 1000, theatre
Criterion Sunday 241: "Stage and Spectacle: Three Films by Jean Renoir"
Like the Bergman "trilogy" earlier in the collection, this trio of films by Jean Renoir isn't formally constituted as a trilogy, but are three films he made upon his post-war return to filmmaking in Europe, which are united by a certain theatricality to their presentation. All of The Golden Coach (1952), French Cancan (1955) and Elena and Her Men (1956) have an almost camp style, with period settings, flamboyant staging and bright Technicolor cinematography. The key extra for the box set is Jean Renoir parle de son art (1961), an hour-long chat between Jacques Rivette and Jean Renoir in an outdoor cafe split across all three of the discs (as it was apparently made in three parts for television). It is pleasant enough, though it never really touches on Renoir's own films precisely. It's more of a chat about the philosophy and technicality of making films, as Renoir espouses some ideals that Rivette then teases out further. There's also the second part of David Thompson's 1993 BBC documentary on the filmmaker, which deals with his post-Hollywood output (the first part was on The Rules of the Game disc).
Categories Criterion Sunday•Tags criterion collection, france, italy, jean renoir
Criterion Sunday 236: Mamma Roma (1962)
Published on 14 April 2019 15 August 2019 by Ewan MLeave a comment
Pasolini's second film is this slice of the kind of subject matter that Fellini was more used to serving up, which is to say a richly melodramatic story of the former sex worker of the film's title and her relationship with her son Ettore. Of course, stylistically, Pasolini's take is hardly comparable to Fellini, aside from the garrulous camera-hogging of Anna Magnani in the central role recalling Giulietta Masina. This is far more focused on the fragile ground on which Magnani's character tries to rebuild her life, as her honest profession as a vegetable seller in the market is undercut by not just forays into vice in order to try and provide for her son's future (a little play-acting with a pimp and a sex worker to blackmail a restaurant owner into getting him a job) but also the return of her former pimp Carmine. Fragile too is Ettore's self-identity within his social circle — he's a young man trying to prove himself by courting one slightly older local woman — while meanwhile given a hard time by his male friends, all of which combined with a revelation of his mother's former career, seems to push him over the edge. Pasolini's attention then is on wider society — including, of course, the church — and the part it plays in destroying a family. Magnani remains at the heart of the film, though, and there are some particularly striking tracking shots showing her walking around the darkened streets lit by ethereal street lights, as people hove into view out of the darkness to engage her in conversation before peeling off again. She may be trying to constantly move forward, but she never seems to be given the chance to get anywhere.
Director/Writer Pier Paolo Pasolini; Cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli; Starring Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofalo, Franco Citti; Length 106 minutes.
Seen at home (DVD), London, Monday 21 January 2019.
Categories Classification: 15, Country: Italy, Criterion Sunday, Rating: GOOD•Tags 1962, anna magnani, black-and-white, criterion collection, drama, ettore garofalo, film reviews, films seen at home, franco citti, italy, pier paolo pasolini, rome, sex work, tonino delli colli
Criterion Sunday 235: Il gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963)
Published on 7 April 2019 15 August 2019 by Ewan MLeave a comment
There's something about Visconti's The Leopard that makes it feel like a relic from a previous era of filmmaking, or perhaps its ultimate summation in many ways. Of course, it's set in the past (the 19th century), and tells a story of an aristocratic family headed by Burt Lancaster's paterfamilias, confronting a new era of Italy's reunification under Garibaldi. However, it has that period detail and a certain patina of widescreen cinematography and big, lush melodramatic action that suggests the prestige Hollywood pictures of the 1950s. The confrontation between the aristocracy and the middle-classes — the resigned sense of a world that's changing beyond one's control (which plays out primarily across Lancaster's face) — is very much the kind of grand theme that feels of its time, rather less common in modern cinema (though entitled aristocrats will also be a staple of the costume drama). The way the film works best comes down in large part to Lancaster's stillness while everything whirls around him — literally so in the last third, which is set amongst a grand ball. Those who are attentive to acting, as to sumptuous set design, will find a lot to like here, and there's something about the grandeur of the entire undertaking that feels like it will only become more suggestive and richer the more times one watches it, so perhaps by the time I reach Lancaster's age, I will unreservedly love this. For me now, the film feels like an exemplar (a glorious, expressive one admittedly) of a certain decadent form, just as Lancaster (and his nephew played by Alain Delon) represent that decadence in practice.
Director Luchino Visconti; Writers Pasquale Festa Campanile, Enrico Medioli, Massimo Franciosa, Visconti and Suso Cecchi d'Amico (based on the novel by Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa); Cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno; Starring Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon; Length 185 minutes.
Seen at Filmhouse, Edinburgh, Friday 6 June 2003 (and most recently on Blu-ray at home, London, Sunday 6 January 2019).
Categories Classification: PG, Country: Italy, Criterion Sunday, Rating: GOOD•Tags 1001 films, 1963, 19th century, alain delon, burt lancaster, claudia cardinale, criterion collection, drama, epic film, film reviews, films seen at home, giuseppe rotunno, italy, luchino visconti, period film, rosenbaum 1000, sight & sound 2012
Criterion Sunday 228: Salvatore Giuliano (1962)
Published on 17 February 2019 15 August 2019 by Ewan MLeave a comment
There's a lot of gorgeous style to this film, all high-contrast black-and-white starkness, an almost documentary-like sense of its Sicilian landscapes, not to mention the evocative faces of its protagonists. It's a period story made in the 60s about a post-war gangster and rebel laid low by the forces of the law and the mafia, but it feels like it's made contemporaneously, and the director has a solid control of his actors. I found the narrative difficult to get hold of, as it jumps back and forth in time fairly liberally, while the titular figure is rarely actually seen except when dead. I wanted to like this a lot more than I did, but perhaps it just needs the right frame of mind and the right screening to fall into place.
Director Francesco Rosi; Writers Rosi, Suso Cecchi d'Amico, Enzo Provenzale and Franco Solinas; Cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo; Starring Salvo Randone, Frank Wolff; Length 123 minutes.
Seen at a friend's home (DVD), London, Sunday 16 September 2018.
Categories Classification: 12(A), Country: Italy, Criterion Sunday, Rating: GOOD•Tags 1940s, 1950s, 1962, black-and-white, criterion collection, drama, film reviews, films seen at home, francesco rosi, frank wolff, gianni di venanzo, italy, salvo randone, written by a woman