Cuando aún estudiaba, fui de Erasmus a Inglaterra y en la escuela donde estaba nos plantearon un proyecto muy interesante. Había que elegir un diseñador, analizar su trayectoria, su estilo y crear una propuesta de colección totalmente coherente con lo que él había hecho hasta la fecha. Yo elegí Ungaro.

Ya ha sido criticado todo lo criticable y extenderme aquí en este tema ahora sería ya prácticamente anacrónico (sí, así de rápido va esto); además, creo que ya he dejado clara mi postura al respecto alguna que otra vez. El hecho es que hoy leí que Neiman Marcus y Net-a-Porter se han negado a vender su próxima colección y justo después leí las declaraciones del propio Emanuel Ungaro sobre la maltrecha colaboración:  “La colaboración con Lindsay Lohan ha sido un completo desastre… Estoy furioso pero no hay nada que pueda hacer al respecto… …Esto les pasa a muchos diseñadores. Éramos los creadores y los patrones, responsables de la creación y el destino de nuestras casas. Pero cuando dejamos nuestras casas, dejamos nuestras almas.”

Tras digerir la tremenda frustración que destilan estas palabras me he dado cuenta de que se me había olvidado qué me había llevado a elegir a Ungaro para aquel proyecto. Suerte que encontré esta fantástica imagen por ahí y lo recordé todo de pronto.

+++++

When I was still studying I spent some time as an exchange student in England and in the school where I was we were told to do a very interesting project. We had to choose a designer, analize his history, his style and create a ficticious collection that should be totally consistent with what he had done till then. I chose Ungaro.

Everthing that could have been criticized has already been criticized and spending time on this now would be almost anachronistic already (yes, these things go that fast); anyway, I think I’ve already make my stance clear about this sometime. The thing is today I read Neiman Marcus and Net-a-Porter have refused to sell his next collection and right after that I read Emanuel Ungaro’s own comments about the battered collaboration: “Lindsay Lohan’s collaboration was a disaster … I am furious but I can’t do anything about it… …That happens to a lot of designers. We were the creators and patrons, responsible for the creation and destiny of our houses. But when we gave up our houses, we gave up our souls.”

After digesting the terrible frustration this words exude I have just realized that I had totally forgotten why I had chosen Ungaro for that project. I’m so lucky I found this amazing picture somewhere, and then, suddenly remembered everything again.

What’s hot in America online? Here’s ten hot trending topics today as French actress Anouk Aimee’s French beauty is remembered by America.

1. Pumpkin carving pattern stencils are on everyone’s minds for halloween.

2. The latest pics and gossip on celebrity, Shauna Sand is rating hot.

3. Mcdonalds Monopoly board game: has begun online, instore and via twitter and face book. Eat takeaways  and win. Riveting stuff in recession.

4. Swine flu vaccine dangers can make you feel like you have the swine flu, if you get a vaccine.

5. Mark Sanchez on twitter, and Marc Anthony Dolphins owner sings the national anthem before  the game. He does remember the words.

6. Marge Simpson in Playboy pics

7. Anouk Aimee was hot for the House of Ungaro–before Linsday Lohan.

8. Mike Tyson on Oprah calls his baby daughter, Exodus Tyson, “my angel.” Exodus tragically died, but Tyson is a changed man since.

9. Teachers for America brush  up on their Christopher  Colombus facts.

10. Jamie Lynn Blashke’s gibberish blog about nothing is fun. The man has quirky eclectic taste in articles of interest that America loves.

10 Things Amusing America, is posted by Horiwood.Com and Google Hot Trends-10.12.09

Anouk Aimee

Françoise Hardy

Lichtenstein’s Muses:

Janine Jansen

Audrey Hepburn

Marcello looks but cannot hear in "La Dolce Vita".

(Federico Fellini, 1960)

September 23, 2009

by Joel Crary

I have now seen “La Dolce Vita” twice. Upon first viewing, I was confused. I knew I’d seen a film of which every frame appeared a work of art, but I wasn’t sure if it held together. I found it somewhat long, meandering and disconnected. I turned to Roger Ebert and discovered that his 1961 review of the film was probably the first he’d ever written. Years later, he prefaced the three-star review with these words: “I now consider “La Dolce Vita” one of the greatest films I’ve seen, but obviously that was not my first impression.”

One of the nice things about studying film at university was knowing that a discussion on what I was absorbing would be forthcoming. I have to try harder now. I have to seek out information to make sure that the pieces of a confusing film make sense, all the while hoping that how a film affected me on a basic level won’t be entirely discounted or that someone else’s opinion will not bleed too obviously into my own. The moments a film initially raises questions are invaluable, but not gospel. A frame in a film is all too fleeting.

“La Dolce Vita”, which translates to “The Sweet Life”, is a film in eight parts. Each part sees dawn arriving after a night of carousal. At its center is a man named Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni), a tabloid journalist with an army of paparazzi photographers constantly on the trail of the next big thing to exploit it for profit. Marcello wears an expression of tired and bemused disbelief as though it were stitched to his DNA.

Marcello is an aspiring novelist who has tossed himself into the soulless, repetitive profession of tearing down beauty left and right. The people in his circle are socialites and wannabes who skitter like ants and snap pictures in the presence of the rich and famous. In the first part, we are introduced to Maddalena (Anouk Aimée), a woman who sleeps with men to ensure her invitations at parties. Perfect for Marcello in their mutual aim for recognition, the two sleep together in the flooded basement of a prostitute’s hovel. As dawn arrives, Marcello returns home to find his live-in girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) in the midst of a suicide attempt.

With each part arrive new objects of fascination for Marcello, revealing more and more about the influence his career has on his treatment of the people around him. He is captivated by an American actress named Sylvia (Anita Ekberg), a simple-minded and beautifully statuesque blonde filming a role in Rome. He sees in her every woman, but cannot hold her attention with emotional pleas she cannot understand. Steiner (Alain Cuny) represents Marcello’s ideal level of success. Though he is man who seems to have accomplished great things, he seems haunted by how safe and calculated his life has become. Marcello’s father (Annibale Ninchi) turns up in Rome. Largely absent during his son’s childhood, he appears to be the picture of virility, glad for a night that he has long since experienced as a young man. And after accepting an invitation from a former colleague, Marcello attends a party thrown by Italian aristocracy only to distill from them an eccentric insanity brought on by exclusion.

It is after this episode that things begin to crumble for Marcello. The people in his life are facades. He works in a primarily visual medium, where the photograph is the only indication of truth. He is emotionally masochistic, clinging to his girlfriend’s love in spite of his affairs, which she attributes the cause of her mental breakdown and bi-polar behaviour. In a shocking act of brutality, Steiner murders his children and takes his own life; the one figure that showed promise for Marcello’s future snuffed out, he submits wholly to the depravity reveled in by his associates.

If Christ were a man today, perhaps he would be hounded by photographers upon exiting a restaurant. Perhaps what we have come to regard as holy is no longer found in words, but in images. Steiner describes his children as uniquely observant of the beauty of both what is seen and heard. He has recordings of the natural world that play as a novelty to party guests. This is a man who believes that the only way to live is in a detachment from life. Marcello’s desire to become him is a death wish that he chooses to numb himself to in order to avoid.

The film is rich with symbolism. In its opening shots, Marcello pursues a helicopter that is transporting a statue of Christ to Vatican City. He pauses to talk to some bathing beauties, who can’t make out his words over the noise of the spinning blades. The end of the film mirrors this scene. A child calls to Marcello, who is meeting another dawn as a drunken mess. He does not remember this child, who earlier in the film had talked to him about his writing. She types her fingers in the air, but Marcello cannot understand. Driven away from the life he wanted but could never try hard enough to pursue, he turns his back on the child’s smiling face.

Fellini is in love with staging processions, and several are included here: Sylvia leads a crowd to dance, children lead a crowd of people to see a vision of the Madonna, a lone trumpeter leads a group of balloons magically from the floor of a cabaret hall. Marcello covers party-goers in feathers as they leave another night of debauchery behind. So much of life is following a lead. We must comes to terms with the ways we are let down by those in front.

One of my favourite shots in “La Dolce Vita” shows Marcello sitting in the dark, watching his father, who has his back turned to the camera. He is gazing out the window, his hair tousled from a futile effort to make love to a young dancer. He is remembering the Rome he used to know on his travels before boredom began aging him at an incredible rate. He cannot tell Marcello where to go when all he wants is to go home.

Reviewing a film like this turns into a Sophie’s choice of which threads to cover and which to leave dangling for others to explore. Upon first viewing, I found it overwhelming, but once used to its structure I was able to focus more clearly on its intricacies and found them extremely rewarding. “La Dolce Vita” looks great, but it requires a viewer who will not make the same mistakes that Marcello makes. Sometimes it is all too easy to fall into images without considering their ramifications. If we insist on looking, we must be willing to know what we are looking at.

This is one of my most favorite movies of all time directed by Claude Lelouch in 1966. I was not so much interested with the story but how the story was told particularly with its cinematography and lush photography  but really, who doesn’t love the sultry extremities of Anouk Aimee and the beautiful music score by Francis Lai?

This should be loved tenderly.

]]> http://quixotando.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/as-musas-de-george-cukor-parte-1/ Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:57:16 +0000 Georgina Spiggott http://quixotando.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/as-musas-de-george-cukor-parte-1/

Porque não faz o mínimo sentido ter feito uma seleção das atrizes de Allen e não do mais notório “diretor de mulheres”, o homem pela qual todas as divas clamavam: Mr Cukor.

Adrienne Ames (Girls About Town)

Agnes Fraser (The Women)

Aileen Pringle (The Women)

Alice Adair (What Price Hollywood?)

Alice Marble (Pat and Mike)

Amanda Blake (A Star Is Born)

Amanda Randolph (Heller in Pink Tights)

Angela Lansbury (Gaslight)

Anita Louise (Our Betters)

Ann Doran (Holiday)

Ann Dvorak (A Life of Her Own)

Ann E. Todd (Zaza)

Ann Harding (The Animal Kingdom)

Ann Morriss (The Women)

Ann Robinson (A Life of Her Own)

Ann Rutherford (Gone with the Wind)

Anna Karina (Justine)

Anna Magnani (Wild Is the Wind)

Anna Massey (The Corn Is Green)

Anna Q. Nilsson (Adam's Rib)

Anouk Aimée (Justine)

Audrey Christie (Keeper of the Flame)

Audrey Hepburn (My Fair Lady)

Ava Gardner (Bhowani Junction / The Blue Bird)

Barbara Darrow (A Life of Her Own)

Barbara Everest (Gaslight)

Barbara Jo Allen (The Women)

Barbara Pepper (The Women / My Fair Lady)

Barbara Leonard (One Hour with You)

Barrie Chase (Les Girls)

Beatrice Blinn (Holiday)

Beatrice Cole (The Women)

Beryl Wallace (The Women)

Bess Flowers (One Hour with You / Holiday / A Life of Her Own / A Star Is Born / Song Without End)

Betsy Blair (A Double Life)

Betty Blythe (The Women / Lust for Life / My Fair Lady)

High Life Editorial Vogue Russia | Henry Clarke, 1965 - Model: Anouk Aimee

image via: trendland

La Dolce Vita | Federico Fellini, 1960

Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita is to my knowledge the most important film Rome – even Italy – has ever produced. Undoubtedly a work of artistic depth and influence it also found relative success commercially, questioning the usual expectations that those in the industry held for so-called “art” films. The movie signalled a rebirth for Fellini as a director, just as the Italian film industry was itself experiencing new worlds of popularity. Fellini’s growth as an artist had taken place in the very heart of the Neorealist movement, so as such every film he’d been involved with so far boasted Neorealist roots. Even with his earlier title Le Notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) there are certain and obvious Neorealistic traits on show. La Dolce Vita is more concerned with imagery, dreams and surrealism as opposed to grounded realism or any forced political angling. Thus, many believe that the film symbolises Fellini’s split from Neorealism and entrance into a new and exciting world of filmmaking. La Dolce Vita was also a crowning moment for 36-year-old Marcello Mastroianni, who plays the film’s protagonist. His character Marcello Rubini is a talented journalist living in the fast lane, one who is obsessed with the decadence of sixties Rome and so spends his time hanging out with the local Paparazzi as opposed to shaping a career for himself. To the beat of Nino Rota’s exquisite drum we follow Marcello around a Rome of crumbling values and cultural confusion, as he searches for life’s meanings in the faces and bodies of the women he meets. He finds solace in a good friend named Steiner who shows Marcello that one must be detached from life and its ills in order to succeed. However Steiner is soon found dead in his apartment after committing suicide and murdering his children, a quite bold and conclusive statement that illustrates the emptiness of this life and its loss of values.

Federico Fellini has always seen life as a sideshow of sorts, and with La Dolce Vita he allows this to influence our own perspectives. Marcello’s ’sweet life’ is all façade and masquerade. It is a parade, a spectacle, a life revolving around public relations, sordid love affairs, drunken games and meaningless intellectual discussion. Rome is of course used to great effect here as the centrepiece for this life of disparity; a metaphor for Western culture and its ideologies to be viewed from both sides of the fence. Visually La Dolce Vita is a language all on its own, for there is such intricate and constant symbolism at work beneath every single bit of wonderful imagery. It is difficult to take everything in all at once. The film opens with one of the most talked about shots in all of cinema; a statue of Christ, suspended from a helicopter and flying over the city. Such an image should bring forth deep religious meaning but instead just helps aid the feeling of cultural confusion and the deterioration of Christianity in this new age. To me the most important aspect of La Dolce Vita is its women; the women that Marcello courts and his failure to connect to each of them. The iconic blonde figure of Anita Ekberg as Sylvia represents vanity and vitality, a character to which Marcello is drawn instantly. He convinces himself to follow her lead and slink into the Trevi Fountain in that particularly famous scene, but at once the water ceases to cascade which ruins the moment and signifies his own spiritual impotence. Emma and Maddalena stand for love and sex respectively, but of course Marcello confesses his desire to the wrong one after becoming suffocated by the other. Finally there is Paola who represents the innocence of youth, and whom Marcello cannot hear across the water towards the end of the film, blinded by the life he has chosen. La Dolce Vita is an engaging and deeply symbolic study of the high life through one man’s eyes. A film that only an auteur like Fellini could have crafted, it remains just as important today as it was back then.

Our Rating:

In one of the most widely seen and acclaimed European movies of the 1960s, Federico Fellini featured Marcello Mastrioanni as gossip columnist Marcello Rubini. Having left his dreary provincial existence behind, Marcello wanders through an ultra-modern, ultra-sophisticated, ultra-decadent Rome. He yearns to write seriously, but his inconsequential newspaper pieces bring in more money, and he’s too lazy to argue with this setup. He attaches himself to a bored socialite (Anouk Aimée), whose search for thrills brings them in contact with a bisexual prostitute. The next day, Marcello juggles a personal tragedy (the attempted suicide of his mistress (Yvonne Furneaux) with the demands of his profession (an interview with none-too-deep film star Anita Ekberg). Throughout his adventures, Marcello’s dreams, fantasies, and nightmares are mirrored by the hedonism around him. With a shrug, he concludes that, while his lifestyle is shallow and ultimately pointless, there’s nothing he can do to change it and so he might as well enjoy it. Fellini’s hallucinatory, circus-like depictions of modern life first earned the adjective “Felliniesque” in this celebrated movie, which also traded on the idea of Rome as a hotbed of sex and decadence. A huge worldwide success, La Dolce Vita won several awards, including a New York Film Critics CIrcle award for Best Foreign Film and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

A grande esperança negra dos 60's depois de King e Malcom X

Gosto de boxe de graça. Deve ter sido resultado das insônias da juventude, época em que a Globo transmitia periodicamente lutas depois do jornal da noite. Não vi Ali lutar, mas lembro dele em matérias da revista Manchete: “Mohamed Ali, ex Cassius Clay”, como sempre reportavam. A época era boa para a fotografia, e para o fotojornalismo em particular – ou então eu prestava mais atenção. Fotos abertas da família real do Irã (com a chata da Farah Diba), de Soraya, a rainha repudiada pelo Xá, fotoreportagens sobre o Vietnã, Watergate, o holocausto (Bloch era um sionista assumido e a Golda Meir vivia aparecendo na revista com aquele rosto estranho que parecia o Ziembiski travestido), as atrizes da moda, aqui e acolá um monte de páginas sobre a transamazônica e as realizações de Médici, Geisel (lembro da filha anódina: Amália Lucy). Voltando a Ali, procurava uma imagem dele outro dia e topei com uma dica sobre o arquivo da revista Life. Costumo passar de vez em quando na Magnum, ou em revistas como a  Vanity Fair para ver fotos, mas nunca tinha pensado em fuçar na Life.  Tanto no site   como na página de hospedagem do Google   dá pra ficar horas navegando.  Lá achei também essa foto ’gente’ da Sophia Loren.

E também, para homenagear as conversas ramdômicas com Franci e Sora (velocidade, filmete do Lelouch, pabadabadá, pabadabadá Samba Saravá, aquela coisa linda da Anouk), uma da Annouk Aimee.

Title: La Dolce vita
Year: 1960
Director: Federico Fellini
Writers: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano & Tullio Pinelli, with Brunello Rondi
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée, Yvonne Furneaux
Music: Nino Rota
Distinctions: Oscar for best costume design (black-and-white); currently #239 on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: jackass + 3 hours = movie!
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), May 2008
Subjective Rating: 3/10
Objective Rating: 4/10 (gets points for cinematography, special effects/design, acting and music)

The sort of movie that gets heavily analyzed because the audience has Nothing Else To Do for 3 hours. No story. No dramatic tension of any kind. The characters are well developed, but I don’t have any reason to give a crap about any of them; they’re not remotely sympathetic, and they’re not doing anything. Given my (modern-day, American) taste, I think I’ve been remarkably tollerant of Fellini so far, but this one takes the self-indulgence way too far.

Title: 8½
Year: 1963
Director: Federico Fellini
Writers: Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Federico Fellini & Brunello Rondi
Starring: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo
Music: Nino Rota
Distinctions: Oscars for best foreign language film and costume design (black-and-white); currently #150 on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: an adulterous director doesn’t make a movie
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), yesterday
Subjective Rating: 6/10
Objective Rating: 7/10 (points off for concept, story, characters)

It’s an okay movie, and I can see why certain people like it. The lead character (who is a director in pre-production of a movie remarkably similar to 8½) sums it up pretty well: “I really have nothing to say, but I want to say it all the same.” I guess it’s kind of cute that the movie contains its own criticisms (and there’s a lot of that — it’s like the movie is an essay on itself). But what really strikes me about that quotation is that he sees the problem as having “nothing to say,” rather than having no story to tell. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve got this crazy notion that fiction is supposed to tell stories…

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth at 24 frames per second.”

-Jean- Luc Godard.

Marco Sparks and August Bravo consider themselves to be armchair cinemaphiles, probably just like yourself, but they’re just more arrogant (and sometimes, more knowledgeable) about it than you. But like every good poor man’s film critic, they regard the Criterion Collection with the highest of regard because, well, how can you not? Some of the world’s finest cinema in just about every genre is collected there, meant for the true lovers of film. And for the idiots. And any and all between. But sometimes, just sometimes, you come across a film that’s excellent and you have to ask yourself, “Why isn’t this in the Criterion Collection?” Join us as we do a little bit of that ourselves.

August Bravo: Blow-Up, 1966, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

The best kind of movie is the one with no real ending. This movie is exactly that. Blow-Up (or Blowup) follows a fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings. After taking pictures one night he wants to take those and publish it into an art book. Whilst living his daily life in swinging London he comes across a beautiful park with a beautiful couple in it. He photographs them. The film makes it almost seem he’s done something like this before. Photograph couples unknowingly, I mean. After getting the sufficient photos, he leaves and notices himself being stalked by none other than the woman from the pictures he was taking in the park. Her reaction to him taking pictures is what spirals the movie into something entirely different. It’s a very quiet and slow film. You almost wait for the exact moment where everything catapults into something action packed, but it doesn’t. Not to me, anyway. What movies this movie is the two girls that want to get their pictures taken earlier in the film. Why put these girls in the movie? That’s something I think about endlessly with films. Why did the writer put this in the script? What importance did these two innocent, young girls have? Also something you need to find out for yourself. The cover may give it away, but it may not. I was reminded of this film a couple of years back while watching a movie called Cache, or “Hidden” in French, directed by Michael Haneke (of Funny Games fame). I got the same unusual feeling I got at the end of that movie as I did with this one. Yes, I realize thsi movie is a bit pretentious, once again to me, anyway, but very well deserving of criterion status. Although, it is no Fool’s Gold.

Marco Sparks: I like how you threw in Fool’s Gold there, FTW. But, damn straight Blow-Up should be a criterion classic. They’ve done a wonderful job with Antonioni’s L’Avventura and L’Eclisse and they should definitely expand to his other films like this or even Red Desert or Zabriskie Point (by now it has to be worthy of crazy cult status, right?) or even La Notte, the middle film in the unofficial trilogy that L’Avventura and L’Eclisse bookend. Also, Cache. An excellent mention there, Mr. Bravo. A great film. The kind of movie that would probably leave Hitchcock unsettled.

But for my first selection: Blissfully Yours, 2002, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

This oddly lovely Thai romance film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (but you can call him “Joe,” like his friends and critics do, since there’s a Thai tradition of adopting nicknames rather than hearing people butcher their long names) is a bit of a weird pick for this, I know. But that is why I picked it. No description of the plot will do it justice since it’s literally about the love affair of a man and a woman, and the slightly older woman who’s jealous of them (and there’s lots of sex), but more so than plot, this is a mood piece. A tonal work if ever there was one. One thing I like about the Criterion collection is not just that they’ve expanded a lot of people’s knowledge and ideas about film to include foreign disciplines, but they’ve also shown you that film as art doesn’t always have to have a ridiculously complex plot, nor be a life or death matter. How one judges life and death is different from person to person, the same with the art we love and appreciate. With that in mind, I would definitely include this film by Joe, or perhaps his first film, Mysterious Object At Noon, a half documentary, half neature narrative exploration of the exquisit corpse party game.

August: La Dolce Vita, 1960, directed by Federico Fellini.

What Fellini movie shouldn’t be made into a Criterion classic? Well, a few, but this isn’t one of them. I prefer 8 1/2, but as most, or maybe just some of you know, that’s already in the collection. The title literally translates into “The Sweet Life,” this movie offers you insight on the life of the famous. Anita Ekberg gives a dashing performance as Sylvia. And Marcello Mastroianni is always riveting. Spawning probably  one of the most famous phrases, “paparazzi,” named after Marcello’s friend Paparazzo, a photographer of stars. This movie shows the life of a reporter, who’s just trying to find a meaning for life. After many flings with a great many women he’s still left confused. The endingis one of the best I’ve ever seen. With almost no structure, the film is probably meant to confuse the shit out of everyone, an initial reaction that Fellini probably not only expected but counted on. As probably one of the most imaginative directors there were, I’m sure he had many reasons to make this the way he did. And I wouldn’t change a thing.

Marco: Well said. The previous releases of this film were quite nice, but they do deserve that extra little Criterion stamp of approval. It’s so weird to see so much of our contemporary society still so familiar with the world of 1960’s Italy, and yet there it is. And as for the ending, which is brilliant, this film reminds me a great deal of Seinfeld in that sometimes in nothing we can find everything. Fellini was certain man who had issues with woman, and his career was all about that, being in love and in war with those issues and those women. I can’t help but think of “Asa Nisi Masa,” the words that make the pictures move.

For my next pick: The Passenger, 1975, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni.

When I tell you that I’m an Antonioni fan, you’ll understand that I’m serious. It’s no joke, it’s the real deal. I could talk for hours about this film and I could talk your ears off, but what I’ll say here instead is that I’ve done a lot of reading on the filmography of this director, and this period in his life was especially interesting. Around this time, Antonioni was trying to capture a certain feeling, to make a certain idea of his come to life. You can see it in the scripts that he wrote right before this, the films that never came to life and eventually evolved into this project, also called Professione: Reporter, starring Jack Nicholsonson and Maria Schneider. Antonioni was desperate to tell the story of a man so lost that he hoped to find himself and who would just keep going until he got there. Or somewhere. The title here takes on a different meaning altogether due to one cast members’ refusal to any driving in the film, thus switching roles in an interesting way.

August: Trainspotting, 1996, directed by Danny Boyle.

Don’t we all just need one more fucking hit? I do. So does Ewan MacGregor. I don’t know what first brought me to watch this movie. Maybe you, Peanut? Regardless, this is one of my favorite films. It starts off with some junkies, literally willing to inject/do anything to get get high. Sounds like a lot of people I know. Renton (played by MacGregor), or Rents, as everyone likes to call him is the focus of the film. After trying to quit, he goes through a tumultuous journey where he gets back on and off the heroin wagon. But heroin isn’t what this movie is all about. It’s about life. It’s about trying to be somebody, kind of. One can’t go on their entire life being a junkie, which is why Rents quits in the first place.

The fact actually made it’s way into the halls of Criterion on laserdisc, but I only mention that because what the fuck is a laserdisc and who the fuck cares? It’s got some positive reinforcement as it shows Rents actually succeeding in life. But it just comes to a crashing stop, ultimately showing you that you can quit a drug, but you can’t quit your friends. A lot of this movie is about growing up, especially towards the end. That sounds reasonable that the growing up takes place in the second half of the movie, yes, but this isn’t your ordinary drug film. Or any film. Probably one of my favorite soundtracks ever as well. The score leaves a lasting effect on how you perceive this movie and it’s characters.

Marco: for my last pick today, I give you Visitor Q, 2001, directed by Takashi Miike.

There’s a lot of cinema from Asia that I would suggest here, including Oldboy, which is soon to be remade here in America, Last Life In The Universe, Miike’s own Audition, Battle Royale, and probably even Lust, Caution. And that’s not even to mention the other fine foreign movies that didn’t make the list here just because of space such as Amores Perros and A Clockwork Orange.

But I picked Visitor Q for a lot of reasons. Firstly, when it’s all said and done, this is a good movie. But that gets lost in just how fucked up it is (it is Miike, after all). This is a film that starts incestuous sex and ends with a man and a young woman being breastfed by their wife/mother. In between those two points you get a lot of violence, sex, drug use, and necrophilia. But it all ties together (not so much nicely, but semi-completely) in a message about maternal nurturing and what it takes to heal a broken down family. But let me put it this way, if it’s content was toned down and this was released forty years ago in either Italy or France, it’d already be a known classic just hanging off the lips of scholars, not just cinematic perverts like you and me. But still, you ponder, too risque for the Criterion collection? Well, they did put out a version of Salò, didn’t they? And after you’ve released an art film with people eating shit in it, well… you can release a lot of different kinds of art after that, I’d imagine.

Okay, that’s enough from us for today. We decided to break this down into two posts, foreign and domestic, so tomorrow or perhaps the next day we’ll bring this a little closer to home. Until then…

STAY TUNED!

Nel 1966 il regista francese Claude Lelouch diresse il film “Un uomo, una donna” (titolo originale: “Un homme et une femme”), di cui insieme a Pierre Uytterhoeven aveva anche anche scritto la sceneggiatura. Nonostante la modestia dei mezzi con cui venne realizzato e l’estrema brevità dei tempi di lavorazione (appena tre settimane), questa pellicola ottenne immediatamente un grandissimo successo a livello mondiale. Nel ‘66 infatti vinse la Palma d’Oro al Festival di Cannes e l’anno successivo l’Oscar come miglior film straniero.

La trama di questo film può senz’altro essere definita “strappalacrime”. L’edizione italiana di Wikidepia la riassume così: “Anne, giovane segretaria di edizione, ha di recente perso suo marito che lavorava come stuntman, in un incidente su un set cinematografico. Nell’accompagnare sua figlia al collegio da lei frequentato a Deauville, incontra Jean-Louis, pilota automobilistico, anch’egli rimasto vedovo a seguito del suicidio di sua moglie e anch’egli con un bambino al collegio. Quando Anne perde l’ultimo treno per tornare a casa, Jean-Louis si offre di accompagnarla e l’attrazione scatta immediatamente. La relazione matura nel corso dei successivi incontri a Deauville, malgrado i sensi di colpa di Anne che rimpiange ancora il compagno scomparso. In uno dei suoi viaggi in treno verso casa, Anne viene raggiunta in stazione da Jean-Louis che compie lo stesso percorso in auto, sfidando il treno in velocità. Nell’arrivare in stazione, Anne si stupisce nel vederlo e, sul loro abbraccio, il film si chiude lasciando lo spettatore ad interrogarsi se la storia d’amore avrà un seguito.”

Tra gli interpreti principali: Anouk Aimée (Anne Gauthier) e Jean-Louis Trintignant (Jean-Louis Duroc).

Se questo film ha saputo conquistare immediatamente la critica e il grande pubblico lo si deve anche alla sua colonna sonora, che venne composta da Francis Lai e che ebbe una popolarità straordinaria e autonoma, indipendente cioè dal fim per cui era stata scritta. Di essa faceva parte anche la canzone “Samba da Bênção“. A comporla non era stato Francis Lai: suoi autori erano il grande chitarrista brasiliano Baden Powell de Aquino (musica) e Vinicius de Moraes (testo). Nel film venne proposta in lingua francese; autore della traduzione fu Francis Lai. A cantarla è l’attore Pierre Barrouh, che interpreta il ruolo del marito di Anne. La sua melodia fa da sottofondo musicale a un lungo flashback in cui Anne rivede la storia d’amore vissuta con lui.

Chi questo film lo guarda oggi per la prima volta, soprattutto se è molto giovane, può non restare positivamente impressionato. Ma è bene che sappia che “Un uomo, una donna” a suo tempo ha portato una vera e propria ventata di novità, soprattutto a beneficio della pubblicità europea. Prima di questo film gli spot pubblicitari erano semplici commediole in cui venivano combinati slogan (più o meno) a effetto, ritornelli da banda di paese e inquadrature rigide e rudimentali. Dopo “Un uomo, una donna” le cose cambiano notevolmente. La pubblicità si trova a disporre di nuove tecniche che “rivoluzionano” il modo di scrivere la sceneggiatura di uno spot e di riprenderlo; questo le permette di essere molto più efficace che in passato nel mostrare il fascino dei prodotti che propone.

Il video propone il flashback il cui sottofondo musicale è fornito dalla canzone “Samba da Bênção”.