TCM has done it again, screened a somewhat obscure film I’ve never seen. The Little Girl Who Lives Down The Lane is a stylish thriller (sort of), a psychological fairy tale chess game, the board pieces consisting of a precocious blonde angel, sexy, innocent brilliant, deadly, an evil Prince, sadistic, pederast, coward, bully, with pretensions of refined debauchery, a teen aged limping magician, complete with top hat and cape, accomplice, lover, confidant, defender of his lady’s virtue, a large village policeman, slow, good natured, (later to write Jacques Brel is alive and living in Paris) and a racist Queen of a landlady, driving in her Bentley like the wicked witch.
Beautifully directed and photographed TLGWLDTL feels like a EuroHorror film, not quite a giallo ( no black gloved killers) but definitely closer to the Italian style of filmmaking than the American. Complete with a glimpse of a nude 13 year old Jodie Foster ( really her older sister Connie, body doubling her) that was cut out of the American release. Martin Sheen is excellent as the pervert neighbor who covets Jodie’s nubile body, but Jodie is amazing, a captivating, mesmerizing performance that dispels the incredulity this tale could easily raise. It’s worth watching sheerly for her genius. She has a magnetic, feral/angelic quality that makes it hard to take your eyes off her. The camera loves her would be one way to express it but it seems to me that some people can project their thoughts through the Cinema Eye (the camera lens) much more powerfully than others. Is that Acting? I think it’s more a psychic phenomena than a learned craft. The director,Nicolas Gessner, a Hungarian, does an excellent job. A true Euro director. He understands Film and manipulates it beautifully. One of the things I look for in a great filmmaker is a memorable image for the last shot of a film. True Cinema creators always have this, and this movie has a beaut.
The score is interesting, Chopin concerto played as source from a record, and wah wah guitar funk, so 70’s, another aspect that draws comparison with the Italian thrillers of that era. This film also serves as an example of how to make an excellent film with basically one location and only a few actors, it’s a great lesson in restrained resource filmmaking. It was based on a novel and the author(Laird Koenig) wrote the screenplay, so there was a lot of thought put into the story before the cameras rolled, you can tell. It won a Sci Fi award but I think Jodie should have gotten an Oscar for her work.
What an incredible experience! To see this amazing movie on a screen, a brand new 35 mm print in glorious, luminous Black and White! A religious experience! L’Immortelle is a superbly beautiful flm! I read an interview with Robbe -Grillet where he complained about the crew of this film. They were very professional, they didn’t want to do the unorthodox things he asked for, like jump cuts, dark scenes etc. He bad mouthed them pretty well. But the movie is so beautiful that he should forgive them. I watched Trans-Europe-Express right after and it didn’t look one quarter as good. I’ve read several of Robbe-Grillet’s novels, some I think are great, others I don’t like as much but when he is on, his stuff is among the most creatively inspirational of anything I’ve encountered. Maybe that’s part of his being such an innovator. He goes out on these creative limbs, exploring new ground in storytelling and it is so liberating! I feel such boundless inspiration because (as Robbe-Grillet so ably demonstrates) anything is possible.
L’Immortelle was shot in Turkey (Istanbul), the locations are like nothing I’ve ever seen, the film is like a puzzle, a recollection, a dream, a fantasy of oriental splendour, a Frenchman’s postcard view of Istanbul from inside a shuttered hotel room, an occurance on a dark road outside of town, a beautiful mysterious woman. In this film Robbe-Grillet captures the complex, overlapping reality he built the Noveau Roman (New Novel) on. Quite an achievement for his first film. There is a belly dancing scene that is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen on a silver screen. The Middle Eastern music is amazing as well, I hope a soundtrack is available. Robbe-Grillet said that he spent a lot of time on the sound and you can tell. A dense montage of sounds, backgrounds, insects, street sounds, atmospheres, truly a rich sonic palate that works beautifully. I hope this film will travel and be shown all across the world, it’s been very hard to see for a long time and it deserves to be screened. It’s a real piece of Cinema that I think should be seen in a theater if possible. Bravo to the French Cultural arm of the French Embassy for striking the new 35mm prints and making them available to theaters here in the USA, imagine a government that takes Art seriously. Incroyable!
Here is a clip of Jean Pierre Melville appearing in Jean Luc Godard’s 1st feature À Bout De Souffle (USA Breathless). Melville was a hero to the young directors of the New Wave. He also had a reputation for being somewhat of a tyrant. I heard an interview with the cameraman from Army Of Shadows, Pierre Lhomme. He said that only during the restoration of the film, 35 years after it was made, did he realize what a great film it was. Before that there were too many bad memories associated with the various sequences and seeing them would bring these on set recollections rushing back. It was only after all those years that he could be objective. Also the star of that film, Lino Ventura, had huge fights with Melville on the set of Le Deuxième souffle(1966) and vowed never to speak to him again. Nevertheless when Melville called him to be in Army Of Shadows Lino came and from what I hear the director and his star never spoke directly to one another through the entire film! “Tell the actor to do it again!”, “Tell Melville I’m ready.” etc. Astonishing when you see the incredible performance Lino gave. But here is Melville playing a famous novelist being interviewed at the airport by a throng of reporters. And because it is is a French film, he mainly talks about chicks.
They’re screening two rare Robbe-Grillet films at the Billy Wilder Theater on Friday Nov.7. L’IMMORTELLE and TRANS-EUROPE EXPRESS.
Scene From L’Imortelle ( The Immortal Woman)
These films are almost impossible to see so go if you can, I’ll be there. Here’s the details. I’ve been reading a lot of Robbe=Grillet’s novels recently, very inspirational stuff, creatively inspirational. The way he plays with plots making intricate patterns out of genre plot devices. “Generators” he called them, elements of genre storytelling that are now part of our collective unconscious from years of pulp magazine writings, grade B horror films, film noirs, etc. I’ve never seen these films so I can’t write about them. But they are showing Last Year At Marienbad on Sunday Nov. 9th, an influential structural film Robbe-Grillet wrote that was directed by Alain Resnais. I’ve seen that one. I went to see it at the Bleecker Street Cinema back in the late 70’s. There was a sign at the door to the theater, it read something like this.”Dear Patrons, The catalog lists the running time of this film as 107 minutes. We’ve timed the print we have at 93 minutes but we can’t tell what’s missing.” That should give you an idea as to what the film is like. It’s very cool, definitely worth seeing, there’s a famous long shot of a formal garden, people stand here and there in tuxedos and gowns and their shadows were painted in.
A Famous Image That Conveys Robbe-Grillet’s Prismatic Approach To Storytelling
Here is an incredible interview with Jean Renoir. He talks passionately about tapestries, image making, technical perfection, philosophy. What a great artist, genius, human being.
In honor of Halloween here’s a post about an Art/Horror Omnibus film, Spirits Of The Dead(Histoires extraordinaires). I first heard about this film in an interview with Federico Fellini. Fellini complained that when he signed his contract, the producers told him the other two directors would be Orson Welles and Ingmar Bergman and when he found out that it was going to be Roger Vadim and Louis Malle he was depressed. He wished he hadn’t signed the contract. After reading this I became prejudiced against the film, I watched Toby Dammit, Fellini’s chapter but I never saw the other two, until last night. They ran it on TCM. I was impressed the Malle episode Metzengerstein was excellent, Jane and Peter Fonda playing feuding cousins in Medieval times, that fall in love with dire consequences. If you liked Malle’s surreal Black Moon you’ll dig this one. And Vadim’s William Wilson starring Alain Delon was powerful as well. mainly due to Delon’s magnetic presence, although Bridgett Bardot added a wonderful sexiness. These 2 episodes were period pieces. Malle’s was shot at old ruined castles in the countryside and Jane Fonda’s costumes are incredible. She also is an amazing equestrian, a pleasure to watch on horseback. Toby Dammit is a surreal masterpiece, full of artifice, like the cockpit of the plane sequence and the traffic jam created in a studio reminiscent of the opening of 8 & 1/2.
Also the image of the devil as a little girl with a ball, borrowed from Bava’s Operazione paura (Kill Baby Kill) and borrowed again by later filmmakers, is great. My main criticism is Terrence Stamp sticks his tongue out too often. I’m glad I finally saw the other chapters, I was blinded by my respect for Fellini but the Halloween Spirits Of The Dead opened my eyes.
Although there are probably millions of words being written about Paul Newman this very second due to his recent passing I felt inspired by seeing his 1968 directorial debut last night on TCM, Rachel, Rachel. Starring his wife Joanne Woodward and a lot of other great actors, most noticeably Estelle Parsons and Frank Corsaro, I mention Corsaro not only because of his fine acting but also because this is his only film role! He achieved fame as a stage director and as head of The Actor’s Studio, a legendary character.
Newman and Estelle Parsons on the Set
The story goes that Newman and Woodward shopped around for a director and didn’t get any takers. Newman had studied directing at Yale and decided to go for it. He created a rare and wonderful film, the sum effect being so much greater than all it’s parts. By this I mean that as I watched the film, there were parts that I thought great, parts I thought OK, maybe the direction seemed a little naive but at the end I was overwhelmed with the sensation of having just watched a great film. Due in a large part to the performance of Joanne Woodward, It is literally unlike any other film acting I have seen. She is such a unique talent, so unaffected, so true, it’s hard to put into words the way she works in this film. Once again at the end of the film I was overcome at how great she was in it. Not any one scene but the whole cumulative effect of the film, it’s magical. This is the kind of film that I wish would get made here in America more often, real people, real parts, no explosions or car chases. Just great characters struggling with their existence here on planet Earth at a particular time in a particular place. The stuff Life is made of, in this case in Connecticut in 1968. And it’s not just acting that makes this film great, there are some wonderful images as well, a date at his family’s dairy farm that James Olson takes Joanne woodward on, he makes her drive the tractor, she forks some hay on him from the hayloft. Things youngsters would do and here she is a middle-aged woman on her first date. Also the end sequence of Joanne and a baby at the beach , so beautiful, so moving. And a flashback scene of Woodward as a young girl sneaking into the basement where her father worked as a mortician. Seeing her father prepare a young boy’s body for burial. The way he tends to the dead boy, incredible. Paul was ably abetted by the great editor Dede Allen, here at the peak of her creative powers and it shows. Joanne Woodward was angry that Paul did not get nominated for an Academy Award for this film, she threatened to boycott the ceremony (She was nominated) but Paul talked her into it. Let’s all praise Paul Newman, he could have just acted in films and raced cars and enjoyed his life but he was an Artist, he had to struggle and make films and I salute him for that.
p.s. Here’s an article about the shooting of Rachel, Rachel, reminisces by the towns people that were there. It sounds like they had a great time. Article
The Film Fund headed by Martin Scorscese recently funded the restoration of some Underground classics made by the maverick director Bob Downey, a prince. I’m fortunate to say Bob is an old friend and that we worked together on several features and a couple of short films. He’s a great guy, an original who loves film and has made some of the coolest hit films of the Swinging 60’s. He’s getting his due with the restoration and re-release of some wild titles, Chafed Elbows, No More Excuses, and the excellent political satire Babo ’73.
Talk about making something out of nothing, Bob went on a tour of the White House with his actor (Taylor Mead playing the Pres of the USA) and after the tour group left the Oval Office, he stayed behind and filmed Mead at the desk. For No More Excuses Bob dressed as a Confederate soldier, then ran onto the field at Yankee Stadium with a musket during a game. He had cameramen stashed around the stands filming. He told me they were going to take him to Bellvue but finally a cameraman showed up to back up Bob’s story, he first had to take the film to the lab so it wouldn’t get seized. Hey film programmers out there, get in touch with Andrew Lambert at Anthology Film Archives and get a restored print of one of these classics to screen at your Cinema! Here’s a link to an NPR broadcast interview with Bob about his films:Interview
They’re screening Stanley Kubrick’s mega opus 2001 at the Edison as part of the Jules Verne Fantasy Film Festival right here in downtown LA. Info here. I saw this film in a re-release in 1975 at the Bellvue Theater in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. It was projected in 6 track 70mm. I went to a matinee show with my girlfriend and when we got to the box office the ticket seller said “Wait a minute.” Then she came back and said “OK, the manager said we’ll run it.” We were the only people at that screening! Just the two of us in the gigantic theater with an enormous screen! It was incredible. I knew the editor of 2001. A guy named Ray Lovejoy. This was the first film he edited! He had been 1st Assistant editor on Dr. Strangelove and Lawrence Of Arabia. He told me that Kubrick basically lost his mind making this film. Before 2001 he was a fun guy, great to hang out with. But 2001 was such a gigantic, complicated project and Kubrick was such a perfectionist he lost himself in the overwhelming tide of technical details, personally overseeing every aspect of the film, even ( so I’ve been told) calling every first run theater the film was shown in to make sure it was presented properly! Yow! Oh well, hats off to Stanley Kubrick, Ray Lovejoy, Arthur C. Clark and everybody else who worked on this film and passed on through the Stargate or obelisk or whatever portal to the next dimension.
P.S. I met this guy at the Chelsea Hotel back in the 70’s
A great but flawed film, the likes of which we may never see again. Grazie Zia ( Thank You Auntie, USA) has many incredible elements, the acting, especially by the leads- Lou Castel as Alvise
Lou Castel as Alvise gets a check-up
and Lisa Gastoni as Aunt Lea.
Beautiful Lisa Gastoni, Fantasy Aunt!
The incredible music by maestros Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai.
The Vietnam War as viewed by an Italian proto-adolescent. Beautiful B&W cinematography by Aldo Scavarda and excellent direction by Salvatore Samperi. The story centers on Alvise, a young man with a mysterious medical condition that’s paralyzed his legs, forcing him to ride around in a motorized wheelchair. Alvise travels to his Aunt Lea’s country villa for a rest. He reads comic books obsessively especially Diabolik.
He is also obsessed with the Vietnam War, going on at the time this film was made. Alvise’s Aunt Lea obviously cares a great deal for her nephew even though her millionaire husband dislikes him quite a bit and with good reason, Alvise is just shy of being a sociopath. First we learn that he can walk. His mysterious paralyses is fake.
Treating his Legs with Magnetic Mud!
He then takes out a rifle with telescopic sight and aims at his Aunt and her husband.
Later during a small party a sexy young blond flirts with Alvise, singing to him, dancing up to him, embracing him. He responds by biting her like a mad dog!
Party Italian Style!
But for me the most amazing scene is where Alvise plays his war games. A radio report drones on reciting casualty figures in the Vietnam conflict. Alvise dutifully records these updates on a bulletin board that lists living and dead Viet Cong, Americans, lost arms, legs etc.
He has created a tabletop reproduction of a battle field, complete with American army base and vietnamese village.
He starts the conflagration, burning the village in a napalm storm.
He salutes a fallen American toy soldier, yelling at a Viet Cong that ” He’ll never drink Coca-Cola again!” This strange tableaux, accompanied by an anti-war Italian pop song is very moving.
Most of the Americans sent to Vietnam were barely out of their teens. They should have been reading comic books and chasing chicks rather than spraying napalm and Agent Orange, having their legs blown off and suffering acute psychological damage. The guy that re-stuccoed part of my house told me his story. He shipped over to Nam just out of high school. He thought it would be fun, adventure. As his plane was coming in for a landing at the American base he saw puffs of smoke down by the runway. The Viet Cong were mortaring the base. He thought ” Wait a minute, this doesn’t look good!” It went downhill from there, one trauma after another.
Another guy I knew back east had been captured. He spent 3 years in a wooden cage displayed as a weak American. When he got back he could barely speak to anyone. It took about 2 months before he said hello to me. My Laotian friend told me that he was shocked to see the Americans were sending “kids” over to fight trained soldiers. He couldn’t figure it out. This movie makes this point in a powerful way.
The story evolves and Alvise seduces his Aunt. Now this part of the film I didn’t enjoy as much. Simply because Alvise is such a jerk and his Aunt is a beautiful mature sexy woman. Charming, classy, first rate. I found it hard to believe that she would fall for this guy. But maybe she did out of love for him, not passion but the desire to let Alvise realize his fantasy with her. The film is in Italian with no subtitles so I may have missed some nuances.
It’s still great and worth watching. As I said at the begining of this piece, we may never see films like this made again. Why? It’s a very personal film, dealing with anti-war sentiments, incest, a charming/repellant hero, not a marketable crowd pleaser and Thank the Gods Of Film for it’s existence! We need more filmmakers willing to take a chance, try something out of the ordinary, break free of the stupid conventions of storyteilng where everyone knows whats going to happen next.
Take Me To A Screenwriting Class!
Stop going to these idiotic screenwriting seminars to learn cookie cutter film structure! Take a chance and make a bold visionary film or better still support these films by renting, buying, going to see them! The world needs artists more than ever to present other views than the media crap force fed to everyone. Get out there and make it happen!
p.s. the score for this film is pure genius. Morricone and his ex-partner Bruno Nicolai created a unique sound for this film. Those guys created so many different sonic palates, it’s incredible. Compare this score to Citta Violenta or Il Mercenario, they’re all very different. p.p.s I checked out Lou Castel on IMDB. This guy has had an incredible career! He’s in some of the greatest films of all time. Including some Fassbinder, Viscounti, Wenders,the excellent Irma Vep, etc. etc. and he’s still acting! Also Lisa Gastoni has had an illustrious career. She appeared in a film by the sublime Fernando Di Leo-(La Seduzione) and interestingly enough she appeared in a film called Amore amaro ( Bitter Love) with my pal Leonard Mann. When I interviewed Leonard he spoke fondly of this film but admitted he had never seen it! I found a copy on ebay and turned him on to it. He bought it( it was expensive) and now I need to borrow it so I can write about it. In Closing. Bravo! to Salvatore Samperi, Bravo Lou Castel! Brava Lisa Gastoni! Bravo Morricone, Niccolai! Bravo to all involved in making this film.
Here’s the party scene via YouTube:
And here’s the title sequence so you can hear some of the score.
Saturday September 6 the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood U.S.A. will screen two classics starring Jean Gabin. The Sicilian Clan at 7:30 pm and the ultra-rare Moontide at 9:30. The Sicilian Clan also features two other Titans of Cinema acting, Alain Delon and Lino Ventura. What a great opportunity to see these greats in 35mm! Here’s the trailer!
Moontide features sexy, smart Ida Lupino and the ever popular star of Hollywood epics, Bette Davis melodramas and Italian Space operas, Claude Raines. Go see them! You Must Obey!
Sunday they’re showing the unseen House On The Waterfront a gritty tale of a tugboat captain emeshed in an intrigue involving his daughter, a gangster, a diver and a corpse trapped in a sunken ship that’s about to be salvaged. Then the incredible grandaddy of French noir Touchez Pas Au Grisbi. A great movie ! I reviewed it at length here. Go see it! You Will Love It! Bravo Cinematheque! Here’s the schedule: Cinematheque
It’s all part of a celebration of Jean Gabin and a new book about him : World’s Coolest Movie Star: The Complete 95 Films (and Legend) of Jean Gabin, the author, Charles Zigman will be there as well.
