Les Voyeurs #87 – Les films maudits

Diffusion le : jeudi 12 novembre 2009 à 18h sur Radio Grille Ouverte
vendredi 13 novembre 2009 à 18h sur Radio 16.
Rediffusion le samedi 14 novembre 2009 à 10h sur RGO.
En téléchargement pendant une semaine ici.
Et en écoute permanente là.

Actualité

Aux Arcades d’Alès :  A l’origine de Xavier Giannoli, Panique au Village Vincent Patar et Stéphane Aubier.
Sortie en DVD : Antichrist de Lars Von Trier, La haut de Pete Docter et Bob Peterson, Public Enemies de Michael Mann, Coffret Lautner/Audiard : Les Tontons flingueurs, Les Barbouzes, Ne nous fâchons pas
Ressortie : L’Étranger de Luchino Visconti, Les Ailes du Désir de Wim Wenders.
Projets : De Force de Franck Henry, nouvelle trilogie Jurassic Park.
Les essais de Kurt Russel pour jouer Han Solo dans Star Wars ici.

Dossier de la semaine : Les film maudits

Les films inachevés

L’Enfer d’Henri Georges Clouzot de Serge Bromberg et Ruxanda Medrea sortie mercredi 11 novembre
Une partie de Campagne de Jean Renoir
Napoléon de Stanley Kubrick
Don Quixotte d’Orson Welles
L’Homme qui tua Don Quichotte de Terry Gilliam
Lost in la Mancha de Keith Fulton et Louis Pepe

Les comédiens morts pendant les tournages

Les Rumeurs de malédiction

Superman : les comédiens ayant joué Superman ou Lois Lane sont victimes d’accidents, de suicide, de folie…
L’exorciste de William Friedkin : 9 morts pendant le tournage, un incendie inexpliqué…
Poltergeist : plusieurs morts après le tournage…
Rosemary’s baby de Roman Polanski
Le Conquérant de Dirk Powell : tournage sur un lieu d’essais atomique. 96 cancers, 46 morts dont John Wayne

La bande originale de la semaine :

Thème de Mon nom est Personne par Ennio Moriconne.
Extrait de la bande originale du film Mon nom est Personne (1973) de Tonino Valerii et Sergio Leone

Chronique : La Carte Postale Sétoise

Neo publishing le site

Musique :
Cursed par Kiki Bohemia

Extraits :
L’Enfer
L’Homme qui tua Don Quichotte
L’Imaginarium du docteur Parnassus
Le jeu de la mort
Superman

Présentation : Erik Antolin, Jérôme Bauzon, Cédric Cance
Carte Postale : Jan Jouvert
Réalisation : Jérémie Adrian

Burt Lancaster och Claudia Cardinale i “Il Gattopardo” av Luchino Visconti (1963).

Enligt The Cut kommer Dolce och Gabbanas nya vårkampanj för 2010 att porträtteras av ingen mindre än Madonna. I fredags fotograferades kampanjen av Steven Meisel i New York. Madonna träffade Stefano och Dominico Gabbana under nittiotalet, och duon designade även popstjärnans kläder till “The Girlie Show” turnén 1993. Vårens kollektion för 2010 är bland annat inspirerad av filmatiseringen av  Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusas bok “Il Gattopardo” (1958) och innehåller spetsar, crochetstickat och nät, och är en hyllning till designernas sicilienska arv, skrädderi och sensualism. Och vem passar att visualisera denna beskrivning bättre än Madonna Ciccone?

Om valet av kampanjansiktet säger Domenico Dolce och Stefano Gabbana på deras nättidning Swide Magazine:
“Att ha Madonna i vår kampanj är en dröm som går i uppfyllelse“.

According to The Cut, Madonna is the new campaign face for Dolce & Gabbana spring and summer collection for 2010. The campaign was shot by Steven Meisel in New York last Friday. The designers met Madonna in the early nineties, and also designed her collection during “The Girlie Show” tour in 1993. The S/S collection for 2010 will convey the image of the Sicilian iconic woman, and is inspired by their Sicilian heritage, Sartorial tailoring and sensualism. One of the inspirations behind the collection is also the novel “Il Gattopardo” by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1958), and the clothes are in materials like crochet, lace and net.

On Madonna appearing in their forthcoming campaign, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana said,
“To have Madonna in our campaign is a dream come true”.

Danny Boyle, regista del Il Milionario, film che ha vinto otto premi Oscar, si e’ dichiarato ’stanco’ delle continue richieste economiche dei suoi baby attori presi dalle baraccopoli di Mumbai. Lo scrive da Londra l’agenzia di stampa indiana Press Trust of India. Secondo l’agenzia, le famiglie di Rubina Ali e di Azharuddin Ismail continuano a chiedere soldi al regista e alla fondazione da lui realizzata a Mumbai, nonostante abbiano gia’ ricevuto soldi. In particolare, i familiari di Azharuddin, hanno chiesto a Boyle tramite la sua fondazione ‘Jhai Ho’, dal nome della canzone del film, soldi per un’auto, mentre quelli di Rubina hanno chiesto 48000 dollari oltre agli 80000 gia’ avuti per l’acquisto di una casa. Doyle, che si trovava in India per seguire i lavori della fondazione caritatevole e per organizzare nuovi progetti, secondo quanto riferisce l’agenzia indiana, avrebbe lasciato il paese a seguito delle continue richieste dei ragazzi. All’indomani del successo de Il Milionario (Slumdog Millionaire in lingua originale), i baby attori reclutati nelle baraccopoli, si lamentarono con la stampa di non essere stati pagati il giusti dalla produzione. Per questo motivo, Boyle, regista anche di Trainspotting, realizzo’ con la produzione del film, una fondazione caritatevole a Mumbai per aiutare questi ragazzi. I quali, hanno gia’ ricevuto soldi, ma non hanno mai smesso di chiederne altri, come oltre 35000 dollari per una assicurazione sanitaria per tutta la famiglia.

«Che cos’è Roma? A che penso quando sento la parola Roma? Penso ad un faccione rossastro che assomiglia a Sordi, Fabrizi, la Magnani. Penso ad un terreno bruno, melmoso; a un cielo ampio, fasciato, da fondale dell’opera, con colori viola, neri, argento; colori funerei. Ma tutto sommato è un volto confortante. Gli intellettuali, gli artisti, che vivono sempre in uno stato di frizione fra due dimensioni diverse – la realtà e la fantasia – trovano qui la spinta adatta e liberatoria della loro attività mentale: con il conforto di un cordone ombelicale che li tiene saldamente attaccati alla concretezza».
Uno di questi cordoni romani per Federico Fellini è la morte con cui i romani per il regista della “Dolce Vita” «sembrano intrattenere un rapporto confidenziale» come scrive nella sua autobiografia “Fare un film”. E a Roma, nell’ormai non più periferica San Lorenzo, esiste una città nella città, il cimitero comunale monumentale Campo Verano, detto più semplicemente il Verano. Monumentale per due ragioni: oggi agli occhi degli abitanti per le sue dimensioni, ma anche perchè è un museo a cielo aperto dove più che loculi di deve parlare di sepolcri. Qui, in occasione del Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma, l’Ama, l’agenzia per la raccolta dei rifiuti della capitale, organizza un ciclo di nove visite guidate gratuite dal titolo “Roma e le storie del Cinema”. Si comincia oggi con partenza alle ore 10-12-15 dal piazzale del Verano.

Dal ritratto di Fellini mancherà la Magnani, sepolta nella cappella di famiglia del cimitero di San Felice Circeo, ma Sordi e Fabrizi ci sono e non solo loro. Sul sito dell’Ama è possibile vedere la mappa delle visite ma cercando bene in rete si scopre che sono molti di più di quelli segnalati i personaggi legati al mondo del cinema che riposano nel grande cimitero. La passeggiata comincia dai tempi dei fratelli Lumiére con la visita al sepolcro del trasformista Leopoldo Fregoli, pioniere del cinema, figlio del maggiordomo dei conti Panciani, l’«uomo folla», come lo definì Jules Claretie. Fregoli fu amico dei Lumière e autore delle prime pellicole cinematografiche circolanti in Italia. Poi i futuristi Anton Giulio e Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, l’uno regista, critico cinematografico, gallerista di Balla, de Chirico, Sironi, Klimt e Schiele, l’altro fotografo delle dive del cinema, regista dei telefoni bianchi, e di quel “Totò le moko”, dove l’amore trasformava Totò nel bandito della casbah.
Ci sono i divi di un tempo, Salvator Amedeo Buffa alias Amedeo Nazzari, Alida Valli (vero nome Alida Maria Altenburger), i registi del neorealismo Rossellini e De Sica, il western-spaghetti di Sergio Corbucci, i poliziotteschi di Bruno Corbucci, c’è Luigi Zampa, il regista del “Vigile”, dove Sordi sfoggiava la sua divisa lucida quasi marziana da vigile urbano, e Nanni Loy. I grandi mattatori: Vittorio Gassmann, Alberto Sordi, Eduardo De Filippo, Peppino De Filippo, Marcello Mastroianni, Nino Saturnino Manfredi e Aldo Fabrizi. Ci sono sceneggiatori come Sergio Amidei (“La vita agra”) e il doppiatore Ferruccio Amendola. Ci sono Massimo Girotti, Alessandro Blasetti ed Elio (Eraclio) Petri, Checco Durante, e la sora Lella, Ciccio Ingrassia e Camillo Mastrocinque, Isa Miranda e Alberto Moravia, Rina Morelli e Paolo Panelli, Ettore Petrolini e Antonio Pietrangeli, Mario Riva e Paolo Stoppa, Luchino Visconti, una delle regine del melodramma, Milly Vitale.
Il Verano restituisce, magari con qualche errore, un elenco etererogeno di talenti e destini. Il cinema, un’arte così giovane e già con così tanti caduti sul campo, ha trovato un’altra Cinecittà.

Le Guépard est l’unique roman de Giuseppe Tomasi et publié après sa mort en 1958.

Giuseppe Tomasi est un personnage singulier de la haute aristocratie siciienne, puisqu’à la fois prince et duc, et un auteur tout autant étonnant car écrivain d’un seul roman. Passionné par la littérature française et anglaise, les seuls autres écrits qu’on lui connaît sont des études d’auteurs qu’ils ne pensaient pas pour autant comme publiables et qu’il diffusait  en tant que professeur d’université à ses élèves.

Votre commentaire sur le Guépard devra véritablement retracé sa genèse et son destin. En effet, depuis 1930, Giuseppe Tomasi réfléchissait à l’écriture d’une nouvelle et non d’un roman portant sur son arrière grand-père et le débarquement de Garibaldi en Sicile : l’ouvrage aurait dû s’appeler La Journée d’un Sicilien. Seulement, Giuseppe Tomasi se prend à écrire en un trait un livre bien plus long entre 1954 et 1956 qu’il finira par appeler le Guépard.

Votre dissertation ne devra pas manquer de spécifier que la réception du roman ne fût pas aussi heureuse que l’auteur aurait pu l’imaginer. Le roman fût refusé de publication jusqu’à la mort de son auteur. Mais à sa sortie, il fallût attendre plus d’un an et le prix Strega pour que l’ouvrage soit consacré. Il fût en effet longtemps perçu comme une oeuvre trop proche du roman historique et de ce fait absolument désuet.

Il est vrai que le Guépard dévoile la fascination de son auteur pour la langue, donnant naissance à une écriture lyrique. Votre commentaire devra de ce fait étudier l’écriture de Giuseppe Tomasi avec minutie car fort de son passé de critique, l’auteur ne laisse rien au hasard et les références à l’oeuvre de Stendhal qu’il avait longuement étudiée ne seront pas dénuées d’importance dans l’écriture de votre travail.

Pestilenz der Besessenheit

So unglaublich es scheint, es gibt sie tatsächlich: Gelungene Literaturverfilmungen. Oder eben zumindest eine. Luchino Visconti hat mit seiner Verfilmung von Thomas Manns Novelle „Der Tod in Venedig“ genau die Sensibilität und Bildersprache gefunden, welche die Vorlage verlangt. Bilder, die eins zu eins aus dem Kopf des Lesers stammen könnten, komponiert und mit perfekt ausgerichteten Kameraeinstellungen wie auf Zelluloid gemalt. Dirk Bogardes Darstellung des gebrechlichen Professors Aschenbach, der eine Besessenheit für den Knaben Tadzio auf einer Venedig-Reise entwickelt, ist gerade an der Grenze zum Theatralischen und der junge Björn Andrésen brilliert nicht nur mit seinem hypnotisierenden Spiel, sein androgynes Auftreten hat auch die gesamte japanische Manga- und Anime-Welt und ihr Figurendesign maßgeblich beeinflusst. Wer auf anspruchsvolle Filme mit bildgewaltiger Optik anspricht, kommt um Viscontis Verfilmung nicht herum. [16. Juni 2008]

9/10

Titel: Tod in Venedig (Death in Venice/Morte a Venezia)
Regie: Luchino Visconti
Genre: Drama/Literaturverfilmung
Länge: 130 Minuten
Produktion: Italien 1971

In the preceding post we have noticed how contemporary Italian literature and cinema seldom offer wide-fresco works – they perceive the single tree more than the entire forest (read a conversation on this topic.)

Someone affirms that the secret of the forest is instead hidden in Palermo. In Palermo? Why are Palermo and Sicily so special?

While we are searching for an answer in some recent Sicilian novels, we can make a guess. Sicily, like a warm-fleshed woman lying languidly on the sea, was disputed by Greeks and Phoenicians, Spartans and Athenians, Romans and Carthaginians, and later Normans Arabs popes and emperors. Such splendid (and tormented) history might have favoured a depth, a wider look in its people and writers that the Italian (or Tuscan) literature has experienced in its best moments.

Rob has said that writers such as Lampedusa and Sciascia would have known why the secret could be hidden in Palermo.

Ψ

So we’ll look for a glimpse of such wider look in a beautiful passage from Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) by the Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (1896 – 1957).

Tomasi di Lampedusa narrates how, soon after Italy’s unification, the honest Piedmont’s official Chevalley [Piedmont, at that time an advanced region, unified Italy in 1861] was sent to implore the Sicilian Prince of Lampedusa [the author's great-grandfather and protagonist of the novel, ] to represent Sicily in the new Italian Senate, “in order to remedy the state of material poverty, of blind and moral misery in which the Sicilian people find themselves, your own people!”

The Prince, smiling and inviting Chevalley to sit down with him on the couch for a while, answered with the same words he had used with some English who, before Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Palermo, were asking what all these Northern Italians, these Garibaldini, were doing in the South of Italy.

“They are coming to teach us good manners – said to them the Prince in English – but they won’t succeed, because we are gods.“

Then at the end (with poor Chevalley in total dismay because of the Prince’s denial) the aristocrat adds that in Sicily things have not changed and will never change for that ’sense of superiority that glitters in the eye of every Sicilian, that we ourselves call pride (fierezza,) but which is actually blindness.’

An enlightening, though gloomy, reflection.

Note. This ‘pride which is actually blindness’ can be said of all great civilizations on earth that were. If we are worth for what we were, we are much much worthier for what we are.

Past greatness can be a richness, and a consolation, but it is not enough.

Rocco e i suoi fratelli

Director: Luchino Visconti.

Guión: Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, Enrico Medioli (Relato: Giovanni Testori)

Intérpretes: Alain Delon, Renato Salvatori, Annie Girardot, Katina Paxinau, Claudia Cardinale.

Música: Nino Rota.

Italia. 1960. 170 minutos.

Inmigración

Filmada en 1960 –por tanto, una de las primeras grandes obras del realizador-, en Rocco e suoi fratelli Visconti nos propone lo mismo que a los hermanos que protagonizan la cinta: una migración, un viaje obligado por la coyuntura socioeconómica de una nación en la que aún se padecían los ecos de la pretérita guerra perdida, donde los jornaleros de las zonas rurales se veían obligados de abandonar su hogar y buscar fortuna en las grandes ciudades.

Milano

En este caso, la importancia capital de Milán -no sólo en lo temático, el transcurso de los acontecimientos, sino también en la trascendencia que la cámara de Visconti le otorga- aparece cargada de una dramaturgia febril y a su vez perfectamente yuxtapuesta con una sutil y genial fórmula de retrato sociológico. El director italiano explora las relaciones de oposición y los conflictos entre zonas subdesarrolladas y zonas industriales, entre las zonas rurales y las zonas urbanas. En la ciudad en construcción, las vidas la Sra. Parondi y sus hijos se ven abocadas, simple y llanamente, a diversas suertes de supervivencia. En ese sentido, reseña Visconti, el conflicto que se gesta entre Rocco y Simon nada tiene que ver con apuntes de raigambre bíblica sobre el bien y el mal, ni con el modo en que les afecta su compartida inclinación por el personaje de Nadia. Antes bien, procede del modo en que las pulsiones de la ciudad van incardinándose en las personalidades de uno y otro. Rocco no es la bondad personificada, sino la voz del discurso objetivo y sobrio de Visconti, la conciencia del daño que la oscuridad inflige en el alma.

Rocco, Nadia y Simon

No son pocos los momentos de de esta emocionante obra que se conservan en la retina. El realizador se mueve siempre en alternancia entre el empeño detallista en los retratos corales (la familia, los combates de boxeo, las secuencias en la lavandería, los bares) y la plasmación de la tragedia que se va fraguando, lenta pero segura, en las secuencias íntimas que protagonizan Rocco, Nadia y Simon, y que alcanzan diversos clímax que se caracterizan a la vez por su terrible contenido y por su impresionante belleza plástica.

Delon, Salvatori, Girardot… y Rota

También se guardan en la memoria cinéfila las impresionantes interpretaciones: Alain Delon en uno de los mejores papeles de toda su carrera, Renato Salvatori en la piel descarnada de Simone –un personaje repleto de contradicciones y matices, y clave en el discurso del filme-, la mamma (Katina Paxinou), y, por supuesto, Annie Girardot, asumiendo en su piel de Nadia el hado trágico de la historia. A título anecdótico, decir que Claudia Cardinale efectúa aquí una de sus primeras apariciones en la gran pantalla. Mención aparte merece la música original compuesta por Nino Rota, sencillamente insuperable, alentando y azotando con su improbable belleza las reglas escénicas de Visconti (diría que el autor de la partitura de The Godfather alcanza en esta obra idénticos niveles de excelencia que en las mejores partituras que compuso para Fellini –lo que ya es decir-).

La censura

El visionado de la versión íntegra del filme en formato DVD permite apreciar, por lo demás, las estrategias utilizadas por la censura: escarbando en los nuevos doblajes añadidos, podemos darnos cuenta de que no sólo se escatimaron al público secuencias de contenido o planteamiento sexual. La tijera también se cebó con saña sobre portentosos diálogos –principalmente aquél que protagonizan Rocco y Nadia en la terraza de un bar, al regreso del primero de su carrera militar- que tratan sobre la nostalgia por el hogar abandonado y la responsabilidad que en ello tuvo la implantación de una política económica abrasiva. Secuencias cortadas que, al fin y al cabo, contenían las claves de la película. No es menor que ése el daño que la censura infligió.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054248/

http://www.edualter.org/material/intcine/roccoe.htm

http://cine-xpresion.blogspot.com/2007/04/rocco-y-sus-hermanos.html

http://www.elcultural.es/version_papel/CINE/8371/Rocco_y_sus_hermanos/

http://www.aulas.ulpgc.es/cine/historial/No151_NEW-Rocco_y_sus_Hermanos.pdf

Todas las imágenes pertenecen a sus autores

Nothing is more poignant than a huge budget film maudit. I have a special place in my heart for films that, however great or flawed in execution, are at least trying to do something unusual, and are damned not for their failure at that, but for their failure to be a kind of movie they weren’t even trying to be, one much more ordinary, by viewers (typically including critics) who refuse even to acknowledge what is being attempted.

Heaven’s Gate is such a film, and one that proves my hypothesis that in mainstream filmmaking, if you don’t tell a story well, the better the movie is in other respects, the more it will be rejected. In other words, a crappy formulaic blockbuster’s deficiencies in story are accepted, presumably because the pleasures of spectacle redeem it, at least in the eyes of the paying public. And if it isn’t actually entertaining, that’s just business-as-usual. Whereas an artistically ambitious work with a deficient story is perceived as a sort of crime.

I projected Heaven’s Gate last night, first time I’ve seen it. And it’s true that, on a narrative level, it is flat and boring. It never actually develops in depth or complexity, even while it proceeds with exquisite slowness; a half hour’s worth of plot stretched out to 3 hours and 40 minutes.

Now, I am a screenwriting Professor, and plot is important to me. But movies can offer other pleasures than plot (after all Tarkovsky has even less plot than this, and I find his films pure pleasure) and there are things going on in Heaven’s Gate that seem to continue to elude the people who write about it, and I found the film occasionally dazzling.

Heaven’s Gate is clearly intended in the mode of Bertolucci or Visconti, concerning itself more with an evocation of its time and place, and even more than that simply with the human condition as a kind of swirling collective movement within which the individual struggles, with great difficulty, towards meaningful action. There is one amazing sequence after another, revealing virtually nothing about the characters as individuals but providing instead a panoramic sense of their community expressed through virtuoso camera choreography.

Like the work of those Italian masters, it is very specific in its historical setting (in this case, the Johnson County War in 1892 Wyoming), necessary given that the films’ subject is as much the idea of history as the specifics.

Unfortunately, Cimino may have studied Bertolucci and Visconti, and he has a team of craftsmen who can match his masters; but he simply lacks their understanding of how to integrate the large scale with the intimate. It’s the scenes with one or two characters in Heaven’s Gate that lie there, lifeless, creating empty space between the big scene setpieces which are concerned with large groups of people. It would have been better if Cimino had hired a screenwriter.

Beyond the script problem already noted, Cimino’s deficiency is apparent in the casting department. He needed actors with sufficient mythic gravity to anchor his archetypes, classic movie stars, so that we wouldn’t feel the lack of individualized character as an emptiness. He needed a Peckinpah cast (say William Holden and Robert Ryan), but of course the whole point of a Peckinpah cast (classic Peckinpah) is that its an elegy for its own immanent disappearance. And by 1980 those types were gone, at least if the characters were going to be under about 55 years old.

Instead he has Kris Kristofferson, who is blank and pretty and not convincingly soulful. (Yes, I know Peckinpah worked with Kristofferson three times, but take a look at how he used him for the sense of hollowness he projects, opposite the soulfulness of a James Coburn or a Warren Oates.) Christopher Walken who, while still far away from exploring the heights of ham that lie ahead, manages to place a neurotic veneer on a character with a neurotic core, resulting in a sort of black hole of neurosis, character who seems completely disconnected from his role in the plot. Only Isabelle Huppert, who is probably incapable of giving a bad performance (and she is at her most beautiful here) manages to strike some convincing notes,  though her character is basically Julie Christie’s Mrs. Miller from Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller. There is zero chemistry between her and either of the men she is supposedly in love with.

Another obvious point that seems to have escaped reviewers is that, while Cimino’s screenwriting credit betrays the movie’s lack of a real screenwriter, cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond is the actual co-auteur. Heaven’s Gate’s look not only evokes what Zsigmond did for Altman on McCabe & Mrs. Miller, both films are about their look as much as anything else. This is something American critics and audiences can’t abide. It equates with pretension, which I find a silly equation, since many movies have trite stories, and images can be rich with meaning and depth (and in these two films certainly are).

The film’s critical treatment is well summed up by Vincent Canby and Roger Ebert’s reviews, which are not only terribly negative, but carefully calibrated to do as much damage as possible. (Indeed the film’s initial reviews caused United Artists to yank it out of cinemas and cut it to half the length – cutting out the wrong half, since the film’s quality is in its pictorialism and not in its dramatics). I suspect this was as a corrective to their inflated reviews of Cimino’s preceding film The Deer Hunter (“the most emotionally shattering movie ever made” – Ebert), which, I hypothesize, was celebrated for the hope that its portrayal of heartland America coming to terms with the trauma of Vietnam portended the end of the 70’s, a decade Americans really wanted to end (ironically, given what followed).

(Note: I haven’t seen The Deer Hunter since December 1978 during its week-long academy-award qualifying run in Westwood. I remember how awed the sold-out audience seemed by the film’s sense of its own sociological importance.)

That Mr. Cimino, from the point of view of the film business itself, became, with Heaven’s Gate, the one to end the 70’s and take his own career down with the decade, is one of the strange ironies which are the currency of history.

Katie Jarvis in 'Fish Tank'

There’s a story that when Luchino Visconti was filming La Terra Trema, his 1948 neo-realist study of the lives of Sicilian fishermen, he tied fishing wire to the toes of his actors. This wasn’t, as you might imagine, anything to do with keeping them inside a boat or preventing them from wandering off. No, the wires were there so that the director and his crew could pull on them to give a prompt whenever it was time for an actor to speak.

Since then, hiring non-professional actors has become the trademark of directors searching for a certain kind of authenticity in their work, almost to the point of cliché. Everyone from Gus Van Sant to Shane Meadows is at it, the former casting his 2007 film Paranoid Park through an advert on My Space.  

The latest member of the club is British director Andrea Arnold. Her new film Fish Tank features Katie Jarvis in the role of Mia, a 15-year-old girl whose life is turned upside down when her mother’s new boyfriend moves into the family home. Initially Arnold had difficulty finding an actress for the role. After auditioning dozens of unsuccessful professionals, her casting director came across Jarvis in a railway station, shouting at her boyfriend. The director, sensing what she has called a certain “dynamism” in Jarvis, persuaded the 16-year-old, who had no previous acting experience, to try out for the part. 

Indeed, children and teenagers seem to be particularly good at just being themselves, a quality that has served film-makers well over the years. Larry Clark famously filmed kids doing all the things that kids shouldn’t do in his imaginatively-titled Kids (1995). His non-professional cast brought a rare sense of honesty and authenticity to the film, and made other attempts to portray teenage life seem false by comparison. There’s a similar realism to last year’s The Class (Entre Les Murs), again in large part because director Laurent Cantet cast real inner-city schoolchildren to act out a world that was already familiar to them. 

"I'm ready for my close-up." 'Au Hasard Balthazar'

But is there more to using non-professional actors than simply trying to achieve some kind of ‘objective’, documentary-style realism? Robert Bresson certainly thought so. Watch one of the influential French director’s films from the Fifties or Sixties and you’ll be struck most of all by the performances he drew from his non-professional casts. To put it simply, actors in Bresson films speak their lines, often with very little intonation or feeling. At first, this seems like bad acting or, worse, wilfully bad acting. But then, as you see more of the director’s work, you realise that there’s a very definite kind of method involved.

Bresson had his non-professionals, or ‘actor-models’ as he called them, do take after take until any kind of showy ‘performance’ was gone from their delivery of the lines. What he was trying to show, I think, is that there’s always a difference between what people say and what they think and that none of us, in reality, reacts to events in the way that a classically-trained actor might. So, if I hit my thumb with a hammer and no-one is watching me, I won’t necessarily swear or shout, and neither necessarily should a character in a film. We observe one another, Bresson tells us, but at the same time we’re all mysterious to one another.

In Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), he takes this method to its logical extreme by making the main character a donkey. As the animal is passed from person to person, we see a cross-section of human behaviour from its point of view. We can sometimes guess at people’s motivations, but their inner selves are always hidden from us, ungraspable and incomprehensible.    

Some slack-jawed yokels, yesterday. 'Flandres'

It’s a powerful approach, and one that has been taken up by a number of Bresson’s disciples in today’s cinema, from the Mexican Carlos Reygadas to the Frenchman Bruno Dumont. Dumont’s films in particular are dominated by the kind of gaping yokels you might find standing around as extras in a Bresson film, and are all the better for it.

In Flandres (2006), for example, the director tells the story of two French farmers who go to war in an unnamed Arab country. His non-professional actors spend a lot of their time trudging across farm and desert landscapes, staring at distant objects, having joyless animal-like sex and grunting monosyllabically to one another. It’s not the kind of behaviour that you would find in either a tightly-scripted Hollywood thriller or a ‘realist’, Ken Loach-style drama. On the other hand, it does give you a tangible sense of how much a part of the flat French farmscape the two main characters are, and how alien and dreamlike the desert is for them.

Dumont has said that one day he would like to work with Tom Cruise. Whilst I think that this was a joke, it is nevertheless an interesting proposition. How would a controlled, self-aware performer like Cruise cope with working alongside non-professionals? Could he lose his Hollywood sheen and simply ‘be’ in a small art movie? Or would the director have to tie a length of fishing wire to his big toe? Sadly we may never know.

Il Gattopardo (Luchino Visconti, 1963)

Visconti is perhaps the most painterly of directors. Long, slow takes of immense richness. His elaborate visual tableaux are the stars, his characters seem a little frozen. You don’t expect fireworks from them as they know better than to deviate from their roles in this buttoned-up world of nobility, suffused as it is with etiquette. In the extras to this DVD, Claudia Cardinale says she was instructed to “separate your eyes and mouth; your eyes must say the opposite to whatever words you speak”.

All of this does mean that his films are quite demanding and require you to be in a patient mood. Nothing is rushed and The Leopard’s running time of three hours is typical. They’re seldom shown in cinemas but they really are designed for the big screen, where you’re shut up in the dark and kept captive. I’ve never had the experience myself but I’m sure that on le grand ecran his sets would have one drooling (it’s likely that none of this applies to his early neo-realist films about peasants and fishermen, but again I ain’t seen ‘em).  

Tomasi di Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo (The Leopard), about the twilight of Sicilian aristocracy and the dawn of Italian unification, is known as a classic of Italian literature; I’m sorry to say I never got round to finishing the book. However, with his aristocratic background and the reflective, melancholy feel to his films Visconti must have seemed perfect for the adaptation, and it suits him.

For example- with my favourite actor mincing his way around my favourite city, Death In Venice is hard for me to dislike; but apart from its snail’s pace, the cod-philosophical debate scenes with Mark Burns make me chew my knuckles with embarrassment. The Leopard however makes for an excellent script, liberally sprinkled with glittering jewels of lines (“I know what love is. Fire and flames for one year, ashes for thirty”).

I tried to do some superficial wikipeding to get the story on Garibaldi and Italian unification, but it appears endlessly complicated. Knowing the history would probably make it easier to follow the film but you can pick up the gist. The story is really a changing of the guard; as the Prince recedes, the raffish bourgeois Don Calogero sees his stock rise. His daughter marries the Prince’s nephew and their generation will shape the new Italy.

With great whiskers and sideburns, Burt Lancaster plays the Prince of Salina, descendant of Roman emperors, with dignity, authority and a quiet sadness. It’s a very powerful performance. Feathers in his cap, Alain Delon is all smirking, supremely confident spivvery as his nephew Don Tancredi, the young man on the make. As his betrothed Angelina, Claudia Cardinale gives a lusty, earthy turn which stands out in the decorum of these drawing rooms. One memorable moment has her cause a scene at the dinner table, by roaring uncontrollably when Tancredi shares a ribald anecdote about some old nuns who were waiting to be ravished. Many supporting roles (the Prince’s uptight wife and priest, his hunting partner the village organist) also linger in the memory.

It’s a film that feels far more epic than is ordinary for a costume drama. Nino Rota delivers a swelling, over-the-top orchestral score and the long shots of the Prince and his organist out hunting on the hills, as well as those of his convoy on their way to Donnafugata, give the film a distinct spaghetti western feel. Sicily looks exotic.

Indoors of course it’s all deep focus, the camera discreetly swooping and soaring to take in these magnificent churches and houses. Even the soldier’s corpse found in the Prince’s gardens at the start of the film looks rather pretty, like a Géricault painting.

The titles do their best to build up the nobility; to a stirring score, the camera discloses a great stately home before a mountain range, viewing it from different angles in the tree-lined garden. We see the rows of trees, then the rows of crumbling romanesque busts in the driveway. By the time we’ve approached the house it glides carefully from window to window -we pick up voices- until finding an open window and gingerly crossing the threshold. We see the household praying, led by the priest’s latin. Prayers are disturbed by news of the soldier and Garibaldi’s sweep through the region- the Prince wanders off giving orders. What shall we do?, the weeping women ask the priest. They start praying again. A gently anticlimactic send-up.

When the Prince and Tancredi first meet in a room filled with sports paintings, the nephew is cheeky. He’s in with Garibaldi’s troops and excited by the revolution. They argue, his argument being that “everything has to change so that everything can remain the same”. It seems to hold water with the Prince, who repeats the phrase later. The bourgeois wish not to destroy us, he decides, but to take our place. He repeatedly makes excuses for Tancredi, telling the unconvinced that his behaviour and his politics are “of his time”.

The phrase ringing in his head, the Prince does not change his ways. He rides into the seedy alleyways of Palermo to see his mistress- understandable as the Princess clutches prayer beads in bed and crosses herself every time he touches her. Whilst cannons and cavalry reduce Palermo to rubble, he obstinately takes his family across the roadblocked island to their holiday home in Donnafugata (travel permits obtained in exchange for giving some revolutionary soldiers a tour of the beautiful frescoes in his house).

The village holds a plebiscite on Italian unity and finds itself undercut with delicacy. As the Prince arrives at the polling station, the wind blows dust into the faces of his party. Be grateful for this wind, he tells his priest, without it the air would be fetid. Over the ballot box stands a man with SI and NO voting cards- no pressure then. That evening is a farce; on the crier’s balcony all the candles blow out, and four times the brass band jump in before the result has actually been declared (a unanimous SI).

On a rabbit hunt, the church organist admits to the Prince that he voted NO. The Prince consoles him; they had to be given their election victory to prevent anarchy. However the organist provokes his rage when he opposes the love match between Tancredi and the daughter of the Prince’s “enemy”; Don Calogero is an “example of the new man” whose first thought is to get rich by stripping the church of its land and assets. ”It would constitue surrender… the end of your family”. Calogero can’t believe his luck when he receives the proposal.

The social climbing seems to suit Tancredi. When he and his pals return, they are no longer in the orange tunics of Garibaldi’s army, but the ostentatious buttons and tassles of the King’s army (“people will no longer suspect us of stealing their chickens”). He is received politely by the Prince’s household, when Angelica bursts into the house- wild-eyed, slightly feral and soaked by the rain. She and Tancredi start necking, and her hungry outstretched hands grope at his back. As usual the others don’t know where to look.

The Prince receives a visit from Chevalley, on behalf of the new Italian government. He’s a progressive enlightenment man whose worldview is much less fatalistic than that of most Sicilians he meets; the harsh climate can be improved, we can fix anything and everything. The household amuse themselves by shocking him with tales of the lawlessness and anticlericalism of Sicilians.

The government is looking for good men from all over the kingdom; the Prince is offered the post of Senator (which sounds like the House of Lords). He cordially declines, being “fatally compromised” by his ties to the old order. It’s also a question of character, suggests the reticent Prince. “I lack self-deception, which is vital to convincing others”. He recommends that they give the post to Don Calogero. We know about him, replies an exasperated Chevalley, but we wanted an honest man. Not for the Prince, however, the vanity fair of politics, the call has come too late. He wants to be alone with the ghosts of his ancestry.

The final third of the film is given over to a ball, in which Visconti reaches new heights of opulence. Plenty of deep-focus, the rooms packed with palms, ladies fanning themselves in ballooning gowns, chandeliers, gold-leaf furniture, bewigged servants and waltz music. Bogarde once remarked that the budget for the flowers on Visconti’s The Damned was double the entire budget for Losey’s King & Country and we can well believe it.

The ball features pompous, narcissistic generals, and Angelica’s society début; but the burn-out in Burt Lancaster is the most interesting thing on show. He looks ill, guzzling water and hiding himself away. He laments the inbred quality of the new generation of aristocratic women; “like monkeys, ready to swing from the chandeliers and display their behinds”. He is fixated upon a painting of a dying man, to a degree that disturbs Tancredi and Angelica somewhat.

The latter asks him for a dance and Tancredi is slightly jealous -looking on with a twisted smirk as they waltz, sweating noticeably as the Prince kisses her hand a little to ardently- but after the dance the Prince looks even more forlorn, moving slowly through the party as if dazed. Loneliness is indeed a crowded room. We see Angelica’s eyes still trained on him even as Tancredi kisses her on the mouth.

After interminable tracking shots of young couples gliding over the dancefloor, we finally see morning light creep through the french windows and the guests say their goodbyes. The Prince’s family are waiting in their carriage but he elects to walk home, through the stray cat-strewn slums of Palermo. The film winds up as he kneels and prays to a star.

The marriage ensures that his bloodline will survive, albeit cannibalised by the more rapacious genes of the greedy bourgeois family. The leopards, as the Prince puts it, must make way for the jackals. Snobbish? Certainly, that’s the whole point. A slow, sad, elegy of a film, but as visually rich as the eyes can bear. It’s got a lot of style and it’s got a lot of content. Next time it’s on at the cinema, keep the whole day free and sink yourself into it.

É tão emblemático que exista uma sensação de constante movimento em La Pointe Courte, o primeiro longa-metragem de Agnès Varda, de 1954. Já nas primeiras cenas, há o movimento da câmera que introduz a cidade passeando de forma curiosa pelos ambientes externos e internos. Ao longo do filme, também vemos o movimento contínuo de diversos personagens que, invariavelmente, estão caminhando pela paisagem da cidade mediterrânea. Agnès Varda, por sinal, valoriza muito a entrada dos personagens em quadro.

Esse deslocamento que o filme faz questão de aguçar não deixa de ser um fator simbólico. Diz muito da personalidade irrequieta da renovação do cinema francês que a cineasta belga antecipou. E o mais interessante de La Pointe Courte é que ele faz exatamente o movimento entre a referência do Neo-Realismo Italiano e o arrojo da Nouvelle Vague. Foi um percurso praticamente obrigatório para a geração que estourou nos anos 60, principalmente Truffaut e Godard. Da paternidade de Rossellini à ruptura de certas influências, como fez o próprio Godard – que chegou a travar vários debates com o cineasta italiano na década de 60.

La Pointe Courte lembra de cara um clássico de outro cineasta do Neo-Realismo:  A Terra Treme,  Luchino Visconti de 1948. Há um pequeno povoado que vive da pesca, há um filme feito com os próprios habitantes daquele mundo. Os “homens da esquina” de Zavattini e seus problemas do dia-a-dia. Mas Varda coloca um elemento estranho ali, um casal em crise que passa um dia de sol estourado andando e conversando.

É exatamente na forma como Varda constroi essa ficção dentro de um ambiente extremamente documental que o germe da Nouvelle Vague parece surgir. O diálogo do casal, pontuado por uma música dissonante, enquandramentos e travellings inventivos,  é elaborado de uma forma extremamente poética. Varda tem uma enorme preocupação com o ritmo arrastado das falas, das pausas e da construção das imagens.

Quem absorveu muito de La Pointe Courte foi o montador do filme, mr. Alain Resnais. É notável a influência do casal de Varda, que conversa e se desloca, no casal de Resnais em Hiroshima Mon Amour, assim como a referência dos travellings que desbravam ambientes em O Ano Passado Em Marienbad. A necessidade do movimento – partindo dos travellings pela cidade, dos pés dos personagens pelas ruas, da estética do Neo-Realismo para a invenção da Nouvelle Vague – diz muito do que foi aquele momento do cinema francês. E da própria carreira de Varda, uma das cineastas mais difíceis de ser imobilizada.

Seria o amor um sentimento explicável, com características simples e descritíveis, existente em sua plenitude somente em um mundo onde a realidade não predomina sobre a imaginação?

O que dizer então de suas gradações – o amar demais, por exemplo – uma entrega total a subdivisão de um fluxo consciente utópico, onde o real não existe mais? (embora cá entre nós seja praticamente impossível imaginar algo em que ambas as esferas: realidade e fantasia sejam tão disjuntas a esse ponto).

Em Noites Brancas, uma obra prima de Luccino Visconti indicada por meu amigo Foras, todos os estágios desse sentimento controverso são expostos, independente de seus potenciais destruidores ou compositores na determinação de nossa felicidade. Felicidade esta também instável, frágil, perturbada. Visconti não nos poupa nem um segundo durante os 107 minutos de projeção. O diálogo de sombras com o espectador, as alternâncias entre o preto e o branco, o cenário tristonho, as expressões impotentes dos personagens diante de algo tão grandioso…tudo fala através do filme, tudo compõe a reprodução dos fragmentos que remetem a tal sentimento quando analisados como um todo. É preciso cada gota da construção dos planos e dos artifícios cinematográficos para compor uma estória que ilustra algo tão difícil de se dizer em palavras.

Os personagens são pessoas simples. Mário é tão simples que no início do filme, Visconti simplesmente se recusa a lhe conferir imponência sobre o cenário repleto de sombras e solidão. Ele é filmado à distância e tragado por ela, sem qualquer relevância em relação a um cão à procura de alimento ou a um grupo de pobres a perambular pelas ruas, ou mesmo uma pequena ponte erguida sobre um riozinho que se estende paralelamente ao asfalto.

Tão simples quanto ele parece ser a adorável Natalia, cuja dilaceração psicológica avançada (porém ainda assim progressiva) perante a ação da emoção produzida pelo amor que sentia por um homem misterioso é tão evidente que ficamos imaginando os limites e prejuízos que podem advir de tal sentimento. A percepção de Mário não é de todo incorreta: insanidade parece ser uma possibilidade. Erra, porém, diante do poderoso “amor”, que mal sabe ele a princípio, já o possuía, cegava e corrompia todo seu ser.

E quando totalmente à mercê de tal adversário, Mario decide lutar em um round injusto, suas pequenas vitórias representam momentos belíssimos. O que dizer da cena da dança no bar, coroada com uma beleza incomparável, mas impregnada com as mesmas contradições discutidas anteriormente: as diversas pessoas que se interpõem entre os dois contrastada com a felicidade estampada nos olhares, que não deixam de se cruzar como se o fluxo de energia fosse constante, a linda melodia contagiante contraposta com o incômodo da moça em não saber dançar e os movimentos desajeitados de Mario e Natalia, refletindo em cada segundo nos passos, o sentimento.

Ou dos inúmeros planos em que cenas se entrecruzam em microambientes distintos, cuidadosamente mostrados por Visconti como porções que captam todos os elementos em conjunto? A conclusão, por mais que sombria, também é contraditória, de certo modo. E aqui, recomendo a quem não assistiu o filme a parar por aqui e ir correndo procurar esse magnífico exemplar de como a arte pode ser perfeita. Seria a personagem de Natalie cruel o suficiente para envolver Mario em um ciclo de autodestruição e frustração infinito ou portadora de um amor tão infinito que era capaz de resistir a todos os tipos de tentações e manter a força perante o amado, mesmo com a distância e a incerteza de sua volta?

E o personagem de Mastroianni, não menos controverso, com relação a linda moça morena que parece encantada com ele, mas sofre de sua fúria incontida por um amor não correspondido em relação a outra mulher? Só há espaço no coração para um grande amor? Seria o final tão questionado pela simpatia de tal protagonista uma punição exatamente pelo descaso com relação a outras relações que poderia ter desenvolvido?

4/4

Sílvio Tavares

–>Video Interview by TVoce : Yoshiyuki Tomino in Locarno

Yoshiyuki Tomino received the Leopard of Honour at the 62th Festival del film Locarno

Penso che l’animazione abbia tutto il diritto di chiamarsi cinema, oggi più che mai. Il successo dei miei robot sta nel fatto che ho cercato di renderli umani.

Per me è emozionante vedere qui il mio film, è una bella cosa. Non so bene neanche in cosa consista il successo del mio Gundam, penso che trasmetta certe idee che poi sono andate avanti

Yoshiyuki Tomino in Pardo d’onore al papa’ di Gundam, Voceditalia, Giampaolo Mannu, 11/8/2009

“Il maestri del cinema italiano come Luchino Visconti, Michelangelo Antonioni e Roberto Rossellini hanno avuto un peso nella realizzazione dei miei film d’animazione.”

Yoshiyuki Tomino in Gundam ispirato da Visconti, Antonioni e Rossellini, Voceditalia, Pamela Martinoli, 11/8/2009

That's a man. A Nazi man.

So, it’s true. I tend to like movies that are relentlessly bleak, downward spirals into catastrophe. And a movie about the eve of the Nazi regime seems to fit that bill perfectly! When I try to sell my friends on this film, I say stuff like “It’s a high-art soap opera about aristocrats and Nazis!” and/or “It’s the only Nazi movie I’ve seen that only references the Jews, obliquely, once.” Both of which are true. The story follows the fortunes of the Essenbecks, a wealthy family who owns the largest steel mill in Germany. There’s a lot of inter-family backstabbing, ruthless Nazi logic, cross-dressing, and sexual subversion of all sorts (including the end-all of perversity, mother/son rape (so you KNOW it’s artsy). Check the trailer here:

The voice-over and insistent signage of ‘The Damned’ makes it sound a little cheesier than it actually is. My favorite scene comes up about halfway through the movie. My Nazi history isn’t so sharp, but it seems like the military and the brown-shirts (a national police-keeping force?) are at odds about who really has the power in the state. In a mini-coup, the brown shirts go off-duty for a retreat in a quiet German town. They all get incredibly drunk, sing the national anthem with the usual Nazi movie ardour, and manhandle a few buxom barmaids. Then, once the girls are away, the boys start to play. All the young, hot brownshirts dress up in drag to do a kickline, and before long all the soldiers are so wasted they start hooking up with each other, and (as is the usual gay dynamic) the older soldiers each pick an attractive younger soldier (still in heels and make up) and they pair off for a night of gay sex in the bedroom. A clip here:

It says something interesting about the homosexual dynamic in the army, and you’re not exactly impressed with the behavior of the brownshirts. But then, during the barely-there daylight of a hungover morning, the ACTUAL Nazi military arrives with machine guns and massacres all the brown shirts in their sleep. A sort of Bacchanalian, sexual permissive free-for-all gets replaced by completely emotionless mass murder. Neither option is great, but one is clearly better than the other.

I will also mention in rapid fire: fabulous 1930’s costumes and jewelry, several gorgeous (but evil) male leads who get naked, and a (sort of) hilarious Nazi marriage.

Hands down the most interesting Nazi movie I’ve ever seen. And probably the best movie I’ve seen. Period. All summer.

SIDE NOTE: There’s a scene towards the beginning of the movie, where someone says “We’ve become so afraid of Communism in this country, that we are plunging headlong into a Fascist regime.” It reminds me a bit of the health-care protesters, who are so threatened by Obama that they happily form militant mobs. Just sayin…

]]> http://christianjafas.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/rocco-e-seus-irmaos/ Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:47:20 +0000 christianjafas http://christianjafas.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/rocco-e-seus-irmaos/

Em que ponto uma família perde o amor e entra no processo de autodestruição? O que leva um jovem à ruína? São as más companhias? Podemos escolher nosso próprio caminho?

Luchino Visconti aprendeu a arte do cinema com o mestre Jean Renoir, sendo seu assistente em vários filmes. Visconti é considerado o pai do neo-realismo. No auge de sua fama na Itália fez Rocco e seus irmãos e ganhou projeção internacional. O diretor que nasceu na aristocracia e na riqueza também viu de perto a miséria que as duas guerras trouxeram e, talvez por isso, seu tema preferido seja justamente a decadência.

Alain Delon como Rocco

Rocco e seus irmãos, filmado em 1960, apresenta um Alain Delon enigmático e com uma atuação irretocável. Visconti, que foi ator e diretor teatral antes de se apaixonar pelo cinema, conseguia tirar o máximo do elenco.

O filme tem quase três horas de uma trama densa e ao mesmo tempo suave e agradável. Os personagens são apresentados, vão tomando forma, encorpando até crescerem e tomarem conta da história. Visconti dá uma aula de como introduzir vários personagens e manter o ritmo da narrativa sem se perder na construção de cada um.

Depois de quase cinqüenta anos, Rocco e seus irmãos impressiona pela vitalidade, o filme poderia muito bem ter sido rodado em São Paulo, no Rio com uma família vinda do nordeste ou do interior.

Pais: Italia
Año:1963
Género: Drama
Duración:205 min.
Dirección: Luchino Visconti
Guion:Suso Cecchi d’Amico, Pasquale Festa Campanile, Massimo Franciosa, Enrico Medioli.
Música: Nino Rota
Producción: Goffredo Lombardo

Reparto:

Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, Claudia Cardinale, Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli, Romolo Valli, Pierre Clémenti, Leslie French, Mario Girotti, Serge Reggiani.

Descripción:
La vida de Don Fabrizio, Príncipe de Salina, y de toda su familia, se ve alterada tras la invasión de Sicilia por las tropas de Garibaldi. De modo que todos se refugian en la casa de campo que la familia tiene en Donnafugatta. Hasta el lugar se desplazan, además de la mujer del Príncipe y sus tres hijos, el joven Tancredi, el sobrino predilecto de Don Fabrizio.

Críticas:
1963: Cannes: Palma de Oro
“Obra maestra. (…) profunda reflexión acerca de la decadencia. (…) El magnífico Burt Lancaster ve cómo su mundo aristocrático se derrumba y su clase social desaparece en este tratado de cine tan elegante como moderno.” (Miguel Ángel Palomo: Diario El País)
—
“Nosotros fuimos los Gatopardos, los Leones. Quienes nos sustituyan serán chacales y hienas, pero todos, gatopardos, chacales y ovejas, continuaremos creyéndonos la sal de la tierra”.
—
La más bella muestra del talento y la pasión creativa de Visconti.
A partir de “Senso”, Luchino Visconti aborda y desnuda en sus films su contradictorio y complejo mundo interior. La destrucción del núcleo familiar; la decadencia de una clase social, -la suya-, y la degradación moral serán los ejes básicos de sus tres indiscutibles obras maestras: “Rocco y sus hermanos”; “El Gatopardo” y “Muerte en Venecia”.

Datos técnicos:
Parte I
Tamaño: 1,12   Gb
Duracion: 01:14:24
Vídeo codec: Xvid (doble pasada)
Resolución: 704 x 304  Bitrate: 1762 Kbps. Qf: 0.329
Audio codec:  0×2000 (AC3) CBR
Bitrate Castellano/Italiano: 48000Hz  192 kb/s total (2 chnls)
Subtítulos completos [Castellano - Italiano]
Compatible con reproductores de sobremesa

Parte II
Tamaño: 1,32   Gb
Duracion: 01:43:28
Vídeo codec: Xvid (doble pasada)
Resolución: 704 x 304  Bitrate: 1436 Kbps. Qf: 0.268
Audio codec:  0×2000 (AC3) CBR
Bitrate Castellano/Italiano: 48000Hz  192 kb/s total (2 chnls)
Subtítulos completos [Castellano - Italiano]
Compatible con reproductores de sobremesa

Capturas:

Película (I parte)

Película (II parte)

Subs.español-italiano

Extras Claudia Cardinale

Extras Luchino Visconti

]]> http://fluxodeimagens.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/morte-em-veneza/ Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:41:08 +0000 eduarda http://fluxodeimagens.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/morte-em-veneza/

Título Original: Morte a Venezia
Dica da Ana P.

Baseado em livro de Thomas Mann.Um super livro! No livro de Thomas Mann, o qual Morte em Veneza é baseado, o personagem Gustav von Aschenbach é um autor, enquanto que no filme ele é um compositor.

1962: Il Gattopardo di Luchino Visconti

“Solo Visconti, comunista e aristocratico, poteva con tanta sottigliezza dosare il grado di scetticismo e di poetica nostalgia del principe di fronte alle questioni sociali e politiche dell’epoca… E’ il film di Visconti più equilibrato, più misurato, più puro e più accurato” (Alberto Moravia, L’Espresso), “Frutto di uno sforzo produttivo eccezionale, Il Gattopardo… è di una assoluta qualità” (Filippo Sacchi, Il Corriere della Sera): così la critica si espresse all’uscita del film quasi cinquant’anni fa.

Definito da Lino Micciché  “un’opera di transizione: dal primo Visconti (quello dei film neorealistici) in cui il mondo oggettivo riesce a prevalere, al secondo Visconti, in cui le tematiche del decadentismo e del crepuscolo hanno il sopravvento sulle urgenze della Storia, dell’Ideologia e della Politica”, Il Gattopardo è un sontuoso e affascinante affresco a cui non mancano poesia e intimismo (più volte il regista affermò che questo suo lavoro aveva l’ambizione di unificare Verga e Proust). Pur mancando gli ultimi capitoli dell’omonimo romanzo (pubblicato nel 1958), è forse la più fedele trascrizione in immagini di un’opera letteraria: un’eccezione rara alla regola che vuole che chi ha amato un testo non ne ami altrettanto la riduzione filmica. Nessun rimpianto per un’epoca ormai al tramonto, nessuna illusione su un’epoca che sta nascendo: crisi personale e crisi del tempo mirabilmente fusi in un unicum che è ironia malinconia amarezza dolore cinismo pietà… Il grande regista rispetta così l’assunto di Tomasi di Lampedusa (da sottolineare però che Visconti accentua la visione soggettiva del protagonista: qui tutto “è dominato dallo sguardo con cui il principe Don Fabrizo vede e valuta tutto, più di quanto non accada nel romanzo” -irreer.it-).

Sorprendente l’attualità del ritratto del mondo siciliano e della politica italiana: vedere il film oggi evidenzia “un fardello” che ci portiamo dietro da tempo e che sembra sempre più ineliminabile. Luchino Visconti rivisita la storia nazionale cogliendo “tratti genetici forti e significativi del ritratto e del carattere degli italiani” (Brunetta ‘Cent’anni di cinema italiano’). Riscatto e speranze in un futuro migliore appaiono utopie più che mai illusorie e stupisce che il regista lanci questo messaggio proprio negli anni Sessanta, gli anni del boom e dell’improvvisa ricchezza (nonché gli anni che vedono nella nostra cinematografia il nascente trionfo dell’erotismo e della violenza). Del resto già Senso del 1954 aveva mostrato il declino morale, le contraddizioni e le pecche del nostro passato, condizionanti fortemente e decisamente il nostro presente.

Figurativamente bellissimo, con scene che fanno ormai parte della storia del cinema (il viaggio della famiglia principesca attraverso le campagne aride, gli andirivieni di Tancredi e Angelica nella parte abbandonata e sconosciuta dell’immensa villa, il celeberrimo ballo finale…) il film ha fatto incetta di premi (Palma d’oro a Cannes, nomination agli Oscar, 3 Nastri d’Argento, 1 David di Donatello…) e risulta ancora oggi uno dei più grandi sforzi produttivi della cinematografia italiana (15 mesi di riprese, costo finale ben superiore al già notevole investimento previsto).

Mirabile il cast (attori stranieri e italiani mirabilmente fusi): campeggia un indimenticabile e sorprendente Burt Lancaster in una performance che dire straordinaria è poco.

p.s.

1) Dal sito Italica-Rai leggiamo: “Con la mostra “La scena del Principe: Visconti e il Gattopardo”, a 25 anni dalla scomparsa di Luchino Visconti il Palazzo Chigi di Ariccia svela un segreto tenuto offuscato dalla riservatezza dell’aristocratica famiglia Chigi: tra queste pareti, il maestro avrebbe girato buona parte degli interni per il suo capolavoro. La Campagna Romana, quindi, e non il siciliano Palazzo di Donnafugata come si era a lungo creduto”

2) Nel doppio DVD, Goffredo Lombardo della Titanus parla dell’idea di realizzare un seguito del film basandosi su tutta la parte del racconto trascurata da Visconti: sembra che il malaugurato progetto sia svanito.

scheda

Note: Il Gattopardo fu realizzato nel 1962 con un sistema di ripresa chiamato Technirama, messo a punto dalla Tecnicolor negli anni ‘50. Tale sistema, che si avvaleva di ottiche anamorfiche, consentiva, grazie ad un’apposita cinepresa a trazione orizzontale, di raddoppiare l’area utilizzabile del fotogramma standard di 35mm. L’ immagine, sviluppata orizzontalmente, veniva poi trasferita con movimento coordinato e simultaneo, su un interpositivo trascinato da un apparato a trazione verticale, dal quale si ricavava un internegativo e da questo le copie positive.
La pellicola è stata restaurata nel 1991, a cura della Cineteca Nazionale, con la supervisione del maestro Giuseppe Rotunno.