Another Netflix streaming find, Boccaccio’70, a 60’s Italian omnibus film featuring 4 stories from 4 Italian directors, Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Viscounti, and Mario Monicelli. This is a beautiful film, made by great film Artists and Artisans, shot in and around Rome in 1961. so everything looks super cool. Technicolor images that burst off the screen, incredible music by 3 Titans of Italian film music, Piero Piccone, Armando Trovaioli, and Nino Rota. Starring among others Anita Ekberg in Fellini’s Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman spinoff
and Sophis Loren at possibly her most beautiful! Maybe the sexiest woman of all time! You have to see her in this film. I saw this film many years ago at the Bleecker Street Theater, and now thanks to Netflix and my home theater I see it again projected on a large screen, I am speechless at how great it is to be able to watch films projected at home. In this case I never thought I’d see this film projected ever again. It’s not like revival houses are running it every year. But it is worth seeing. And I get to practice my Italian, a double bonus. Check it out 4 stories of Love, Eros, from 4 maestros, created in Roma at the peak of the Italian Film Renascence. Stupendo!
A while back I posted a trailer for this film Determinism, Now the filmmaker Sanlit Majumdar has written in to inform me that he posted his film on Youtube. And he’s in negotiation to make another film. Good Luck amigo.
Here’s a fascinating comparison of two takes from Keaton’s Opus Steamboat Bill Jr,. You can see how well rehearsed the actors were. All those years learning elaborate physical routines on Vaudeville circuits paid off. Check out the salesman that pops in from time to time. Kino is releasing Blurays from new HD transfers of Keaton’s films, I ordered the shorts collection and as soon as I get it I will post about it.
I was out walking on Vine Street the other day, on my way back from lunch when what do I see but Orson Welles Star! On the famous Hollywood walk of Fame!
Then I notice that his Star is right next to Fritz Lang’s! Two Giants of Cinema right next to each other!
I just ran across this on Youtube the other day. Orson Welles last interview, on the Merv Griffin show. I guess Orson was friendly with Merv, he was always on his show. I had heard that Orson was at a fancy banquet, left went home and stopped at Pink’s hot dog stand on La Brea. Then he went home with two chili dogs, ate them and expired. A little research reveals the source of this myth, supposedly Welles held the record for hot dog consumption at Pink’s – 18 of them!
But here he is on TVÂ about two hours before he passed. Check it out, see the great man in his last moments on planet Earth.
Another rare discovery on Netflix streaming, the 1974 Grand Prize Winner of the Cannes Film Festival, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Arabian Nights or Il fiore delle mille e una notte. I saw this film on it’s initial release back in 1975 in NYC and this is the first time I’ve watched it since then, I started watching it around midnight last night and couldn’t turn it off, I was so caught up in it’s mystic spell of storytelling, just like the caliph who can’t bring himself to kill Scherezade because he wants to hear how her story turns out.
It took a lot of courage for Pasolini to travel to these exotic locals (Yemen, Ethiopia, etc.) for one he was homosexual and in some of these places at that time that was punishable by death. He got the creme de la creme of Italian film artisans to work on the film, costumes-Danilo Donati, Set Design- Dante Ferretti, Editing- Nino Baragli, Music Ennio Morricone, Camera-Giuseppe Ruzzolini.
Pasolini and his intrepid crew penetrated hermetic societies, filming in locations that had never been seen by Western audiences, these places are like something out of a dream, it imbues the film with a sense of poetry and magic, bringing the intertwined tales of the Arabian Nights to life in a primal, savage, beautiful way. It is interesting to compare it with Korda’s Thief Of Bagdad,they both spring from the same source and have similar scenes, the prince transformed to an animal, discovering a princess in her garden, taking on a beggar’s clothing, but Arabian Nights tells the tales in a more authentic way, truer to the original. Pasolini was fascinated with the early roots of the novel, picaresque tales of travelers, collections of anecdotes that gave rise to the novels form. The Decameron and The Canterbury Tales come to mind, storytelling at it’s most basic interpreted by a 20th Century poet. A beautiful work of Art by a great artist. Check it out.
Robert Wiene’s Expressionistic masterpieceThe Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari will screen Sunday October 30 at Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeies. Robert Clark will accompany the film live on the massive organ. I have been wanting to hear that instrument since it was built and here is the perfect chance. Frank Gehery’s design was nicknamed the Box Of French Fries and you can see why.
Fritz Lang was supposed to direct this film but it didn’t work out. Robert Wiene did an excellent job.
Fritz was busy directing Die Spinnen. Conrad Veidt starred as Cesare the somnambulist. He later played Nazis in Hollywood films like Casablanca where he was Major Strasser.
It’s very cool that a film that influenced film design so strongly , cited by many as a major influence on Film Noir with it’s painted shadows and highlights, should screen at a Temple of Artistic Design, the Disney Concert Hall.
The only drag about this whole thing is that the tickets are too expensive. Halloween is a children’s holiday and what kids can afford tickets to this. They really should have free recitals of organ music for children and underprivileged people here. Music is a gift to all humanity not just rich patrons. Exposing youngsters to sound like this can only improve the quality of life for all denizens of our globe. Let’s hope it can happen.
Here is another Netflix find,The Libertine. An Italian sex film from 1968, directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile (writer of such classics as Rocco and His Brothers and The Leopard) starring the lovely Cathrine Spaak and Jean-Louis Trintignant, it features a wonderful jazzy score by Armando Trovaioli. The sets are super groovy 60’s Italian style modernity. Frank Wolf appears as a dentist and Phillippe LeRoy as a tennis instructor, both of these actors were in a lot of Italian films from that period. Wolf’s most noteworthy role is in Once Upon A Time in the West as the doomed patriarch. LeRoy is featured in Fernando DiLeo’s Milano Calibro 9 as a killer out for revenge. Check it out for some super cool 60’s fun.
Continuing my Netfliix streaming discovery theme today I present for your delectation two Westerns by the Ultra Violent, Ex cartoonist Sergio Corbucci. The Mercenary starring Django himself, Franco Nero, Tony Musante, in a semi Tomas Milian role as a Mexican revolutionary and Jack Palance as the evil fop, Curley.
Featuring a score by Morricone and his frequent collaborator Bruno Niccolai, and some of the best most operatic whistling by Alessandro Alessandroni, a must see for fans of the genre.
Also my favorite Corbucci western { That’s right I prefer it to Il Grande Silencio) Navajo Joe.
Spoiler Alert! This is the end of the movie! Don’t watch it!
Burt Reynolds at his best, another incredible score and for me one of the greatest endings ever! See it now! I warn you it is violent but hey that’s part of the other Sergio’s charm.
Dear Fans Of Film Forno I have decided to post interesting films I come across while rummaging around the Netflix streaming archive. Here’s an easy way to see films that were very hard to see for a long time and to start off my list I choose the films of Jean Rollin.
Unfortunately M. Rollin died last year, he had languished in relative obscurity for a while but was on the verge of a re-discovery when he passed. His semi- erotic fantasy/vampire films are worth checking out. even if it’s only to see what one can do with a castle, a beach, nude girls and very little money.
These films are unique and charming, the violence is underplayed and the erotic, fantastic aspects of these tales takes the fore.I recently watched Shiver Of The Vampire which feels like it may have inspired The Rocky Horror Picture Show. They share a lot of similar elements. Last night I watched Rollin’s first vampire movie,The Rape Of The Vampire, shot in glorious B&W, it was interesting, but I must confess I prefer Shiver with it’s garage band psychedelic score.
Netflix also has Lips Of Blood by Rollin, I haven’t checked it out yet but I will. So here’s your chance to view the work of a semi-obscure independent filmmaker, an obsessed visionary that returned to the very same beach to shoot the climax for almost all his films. Check them out.
See The skinny hippie vampire chick emerge from a Grandfather’s Clock at Midnite!
Fassbinders epic SciFi filmWorld On A Wire will screen at LACMA , Saturday August 20th at 7:30 pm. The recently restored 3 1/2 hour movie screened for the first time at the Museum of Modern Art last year, now it’s here in LA, being shown at the endangered LACMA film series. It looks like classic Fassbinder, check out the trailer. All the info can be found here.
