They’re screening a rare early Michelangelo Antonioni film Friday night at LACMA. Le Amiche (The Girlfriends) was never released here in the US of A back when it was made in 1955. It’s screening in a new restored 35mm print in glorious Italian B&W so if you can make it, hightail it over to the Bing theater at 7:30 or 9:30. LAMA was threatening to close down their film series until Martin Scorsese and others stepped in so we need to support this venue. I’ve seen some excellent films there including Melville’s Leon Morin- Pretre and Pasolini’s The Gospel According To Saint Matthew. I was lucky enough to sit behind the legendary cinematographer Tonino Delle Colle at that one. So go already, support Films as Art, edify yourself with some popular entertainment.
Here’s a link to an article featuring some great photos taken on the sets of many Orson Welles films. It was originally published by the Director’s Guild and I found it on the wonderful Wellesnet.com, a terrific guide to all things Orsonian.
Here is the great Jean Renoir introducing a re-construction of his masterpiece Rules Of The Game. Now considered one of the best films ever made it was greeted with derision and outright hatred on it’s premiere. True visionary art is often attacked when first released, it’s new, different, people can’t see it. Check out Renoir, a God of Filmmaking, and his brilliant comments on this film, then watch Rules Of The Game.
Here’s a film that got made in France under Nazi occupation and was a veiled attack on fascism. Nevertheless it got it’s director, Henri-Georges Clouzot in hot water. Critics wanted him arrested for collaboration, banned from filmmaking, executed! He was judged by a panel of “experts” that never even saw his film. The affair Clouzot was a scandal and many notable French filmmakers came to Clouzot’s defense including Jean Renoir and Jean Pierre Melville. Clouzout was vindicated and directed many classic films after the war but I think Le Corbeau is his best film. Made under extremely difficult circumstances and by all accounts an unpleasant experience for all who worked on it, it emerges from the troubled waters of creation a masterpiece like Venus rising from the foam of a tempest tossed sea. If you look carefully at the Marquee in Inglorious Basterds you will see Le Corbeau is showing at the Parisian theater the heroine runs.
Here is an incredible scene from Alain Robbe-Grillet’s first and best film L’Immortelle. It features some of the most mysterious, mesmerizing belly dancing ever captured on celluloid. I wrote about this film after seeing it Here.
Please watch and enjoy!
UPDATE! I’ve been thinking about it and I believe this is a different version of the scene than what I saw in the theater. I distinctly remember Close Ups of the dancer. Very Strange!
Here’s some experimental footage shot by Henri-Georges Clouzout from his abandoned film Inferno. Romy Schnieder is beautiful and the visuals are stunning. A documentary about this lost film is being released right now, it’s playing in New York and will open soon in Los Angeles.
Prepare to be Mesmerized.
And here’s the trailer for the Documentary, in French.
The lovely Vonetta McGee has passed on to the next dimension. Luckily for us trapped here on Earth we can still enjoy her beauty projected on the Silver Screen. She got her break appearing in Sergio Corbucci’s Il Grande Silenzio, a top notch Spaghetti Western, and she is an amazing presence in that film.
A gorgeous Black woman in a Western! Corbucci had vision, it’s no wonder that he is one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite directors. Vonetta also appeared in The Eiger Sanction playing against another veteran of the Italian western, Clint Eastwood.
Alex Cox, a huge fan of Il Grande Silenzio and an expert on Spaghetti Westerns cast Vonetta in his cult hit Repo Man probably because she was in The Great Silence.
She is also in a film of gigantic cultural significance, Blacula.
Goodbye Vonetta, we will all miss you. Maybe Quentin will put together a retrospective of your films and screen them at the New Beverly or The CineFamily. I think that would be Super Cool.
Damn, I wish I could go see this film tonight but I’m working! Duke Mitchell’s lost film,Gone With The Pope,finally finished by Bob Murawski will unspool at the super cool New Beverly Cinema tonight July 13th at 7:30 pm. The story goes that Murawski tracked down Duke’s son and was given 10 boxes of film, some notes and a VHS copy. He began working on it in his spare time and now it’s ready. Hats off to Bob for dedication and perseverence and honoring the work of a deceased filmmaker. A Great Accomplishment! Duke Mitchell had an act in the 50’s with Sammy Petrillo, they were like Dean Martin,& Jerry Lewis clones, they made one film Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla before a lawsuit put an end to their act. So thanks to Murawski and his partner Sage Stallone for resuscitating this lost gem and their Grindhouse Releasing for getting it out.
Here are some scenes from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the likes of which we’ll never see again, Mastroianni, Ekberg, Fellini, Nino Rota’s music, B&W Scope. The shots of Ekberg in the fountain, her blonde hair cascading down her back like the water behind her, some of the greatest in Cinema! And the mysterious ending, dialog no one can hear, looks , gestures on an existential beach with all the sound added later, so atmospheric, so lovely and sad. Enjoy!
Here for your viewing pleasure is Nick Ray’s In A Lonley Place. Produced by Bogart’s Santana Production Company, the film took a while to get underway due to the studio not approving Gloria Grahame, Nick Ray’s wife at the time. When the film finally got underway Nick and Gloria were splitsville. A few years later Gloria married Nick’s son. Oedipus in tinseltown. The characters are all fucked up which is what makes the film good.
Are These The Hands Of A Killer?
The music sucks but what can you do, this film was made during a transitional period, in old Hollywood films there was music under dialog scenes commenting on everything in an obvious way, this film still has a lot of that. Although there is an appearance by the amazing Hadda Brooks, tinkling the ivories and vocalizing at a piano bar while Bogey and Grahame look on. Gloria Grahame is at her sexiest in this film, she’s incredible. Bogey is great too, weird but great. Louise Brooks said this film captured the real Humphrey Bogart more than any other. It’s interesting how the patented Bogey dialog doesn’t quite work here, you know like the lines from The Big Sleep with Betty Bacall , “You have a touch of class but you don’t like to be rated…” I think it’s because it was made during a transitional time, getting away from the conventions of Old Hollywood, Bogey getting older, vulnerable, screwed up. Mortality taking it’s toll. Watch it for yourself and decide.
Harry Bromley Davenport, an independent filmmaker and friend wrote in with an idea, a post about the Wilhelm scream. The infamous sound effect used in countless movies as sort of an in-joke among sound editors. Harry forwarded me a link to an article that claims to identify the famous but till now unidentified screamer. The article names Sheb Wooley as the Wilhelm screamer! A Western type cowboy actor and author of the big hit song Flying Purple Eater.
Here’s the very first use of the Wilhelm scream. From a movie called Charge At Feather River.
And here’s a compilation of many Wilhelm’s.
Was it Sheb Wooley? Who knows for sure, maybe it’s destined to be an eternal mystery like who really killed the Black Dahlia.
Well they couldn’t show Circle Of Iron Sunday night at the Cine Family, it was 2 in the morning! But they said they’d show it on Monday at 10:30 pm. So I went back to see the last of the Carradine tributes. It was excellent! Here’s my favorite scene with Carradine as King Of The Monkey Men!
And here’s another great scene featuring Tuco himself, Eli WALLACH
