To celebrate Luc Besson’s action thriller classic Nikita, for the first time in stunning 4K, in this definitive and strictly limited edition 3-disc SteelBook available from 23rd September, we are giving away a copy to a lucky winner!
Studiocanal and Gaumont announce a superb brand-new restoration, supervised by Luc Besson himself, of the must-see classic thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud (Innocent Blood), Jeanne Moreau (BAFTA-winner for Viva Maria!) and Jean Reno (star of Besson’s Leon), the beautifully designed collectable 4K SteelBook also includes a Blu-ray, as well as a whole disc of new bonus material and interviews.
Written and directed by Besson (The Fifth Element), and produced by Gaumont, the film was a smash hit that spawned an American remake, a TV series, not to mention numerous imitations, and turned Parillaud (who won the César Award for...
Studiocanal and Gaumont announce a superb brand-new restoration, supervised by Luc Besson himself, of the must-see classic thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud (Innocent Blood), Jeanne Moreau (BAFTA-winner for Viva Maria!) and Jean Reno (star of Besson’s Leon), the beautifully designed collectable 4K SteelBook also includes a Blu-ray, as well as a whole disc of new bonus material and interviews.
Written and directed by Besson (The Fifth Element), and produced by Gaumont, the film was a smash hit that spawned an American remake, a TV series, not to mention numerous imitations, and turned Parillaud (who won the César Award for...
- 9/8/2024
- by Competitions
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s whirlwind career of 40-plus movies made within just over a dozen years kicked off with Love Is Colder Than Death. It ended, all too soon, with a sendoff that may as well have been called Death Is Hotter Than Love. Even if it hadn’t wound up being Fassbinder’s final cinematic will and testament, Querelle, an uber-horny but otherwise unorthodox adaptation of Jean Genet’s 1947 novel Querelle of Brest, would still feel like a film precariously perched between rowdy, profane life and that liminal, insatiable zone that always follows la petite mort.
But because the timeline spanning the film’s completion to its release was bisected by Fassbinder’s death from a drug overdose, it’s nearly impossible to avoid overlaying the gorgeously wrecked glamour of his entire career onto the film, draping the virtue of his carnal vices over a package that’s already prodigiously overstuffed.
But because the timeline spanning the film’s completion to its release was bisected by Fassbinder’s death from a drug overdose, it’s nearly impossible to avoid overlaying the gorgeously wrecked glamour of his entire career onto the film, draping the virtue of his carnal vices over a package that’s already prodigiously overstuffed.
- 6/23/2024
- by Eric Henderson
- Slant Magazine
Roberta Torre with Anne-Katrin Titze on Gitt Magrini, Michelangelo Antonioni’s costume designer for Red Desert and with Bice Brichetto for L'Eclisse: “With Massimo Cantini Parrini we have thought a lot about this before making the film. So he went to all the beautiful costumes for Monica Vitti to see what remains today.”
A little over an hour and a half into Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, Monica Vitti’s Giuliana visits Richard Harris’s Corrado Zeller at his hotel. “Mi fanno male i capelli” she says, her hair hurts, as do her eyes, her throat and her mouth. Roberta Torre’s Mi Fanno Male I Capelli with a score by Wong Kar Wai’s longtime composer Shigeru Umebayashi takes the sentence as a starting point to investigate time and the mind, memory and the fluidity of identity.
Edoardo (Filippo Timi) with Monica (Alba Rohrwacher) in dress inspired by Monica...
A little over an hour and a half into Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert, Monica Vitti’s Giuliana visits Richard Harris’s Corrado Zeller at his hotel. “Mi fanno male i capelli” she says, her hair hurts, as do her eyes, her throat and her mouth. Roberta Torre’s Mi Fanno Male I Capelli with a score by Wong Kar Wai’s longtime composer Shigeru Umebayashi takes the sentence as a starting point to investigate time and the mind, memory and the fluidity of identity.
Edoardo (Filippo Timi) with Monica (Alba Rohrwacher) in dress inspired by Monica...
- 5/31/2024
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Three-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep will be awarded an honorary Palme d’Or at the opening ceremony of the 74th edition of the Cannes Film Festival (May 14-25).
Streep will follow in the footsteps of previous recipients, including Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jane Fonda, Agnès Varda, Forest Whittaker and Jodie Foster.
The opening ceremony will mark Streep’s first appearance at the festival in over 35 years. She last attended Cannes in 1989, when she won the best actress prize for her role as a mother accused of infanticide in Fred Schepisi’s Evil Angels.
“I am immeasurably...
Streep will follow in the footsteps of previous recipients, including Jeanne Moreau, Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jane Fonda, Agnès Varda, Forest Whittaker and Jodie Foster.
The opening ceremony will mark Streep’s first appearance at the festival in over 35 years. She last attended Cannes in 1989, when she won the best actress prize for her role as a mother accused of infanticide in Fred Schepisi’s Evil Angels.
“I am immeasurably...
- 5/3/2024
- ScreenDaily
Meryl Streep is set to receive an honorary Palme d’Or at the opening ceremony of the Cannes Film Festival on May 14, organizers said Thursday.
The Hollywood star — who earned the best actress award at Cannes in 1989 for her performance in Fred Schepsi’s Evil Angels — will help kick off the 77th edition at the Grand Theatre Lumiere.
“I am immeasurably honored to receive the news of this prestigious award. To win a prize at Cannes, for the international community of artists, has always represented the highest achievement in the art of filmmaking. To stand in the shadow of those who have previously been honored is humbling and thrilling in equal part. I so look forward to coming to France to thank everyone in person this May!” Streep said in a statement.
She will return to the French festival after a celebrated career in Hollywood over five decades. “We all...
The Hollywood star — who earned the best actress award at Cannes in 1989 for her performance in Fred Schepsi’s Evil Angels — will help kick off the 77th edition at the Grand Theatre Lumiere.
“I am immeasurably honored to receive the news of this prestigious award. To win a prize at Cannes, for the international community of artists, has always represented the highest achievement in the art of filmmaking. To stand in the shadow of those who have previously been honored is humbling and thrilling in equal part. I so look forward to coming to France to thank everyone in person this May!” Streep said in a statement.
She will return to the French festival after a celebrated career in Hollywood over five decades. “We all...
- 5/2/2024
- by Etan Vlessing
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Meryl Streep will receive the honorary Palme d’Or on the opening night of the 77th edition of Cannes Film Festival, Variety has learned.
Luring the Oscar winner is yet another feat for this Cannes edition, which will bring together a flurry Hollywood legends. Notably, George Lucas will receive the honorary Palme d’Or during the closing ceremony; Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” and Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” are playing in competition; and George Miller‘s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and Kevin Costner’s Western epic “Horizon, an American Saga” are playing out of competition. Streep will be also in good company at the festival with “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig serving as jury president. The pair worked together on “Little Women.”
The honorary tribute will mark Streep’s long-awaited return to Cannes after decades. It appears that her last trip to the festival dates back to Fred Schepisi...
Luring the Oscar winner is yet another feat for this Cannes edition, which will bring together a flurry Hollywood legends. Notably, George Lucas will receive the honorary Palme d’Or during the closing ceremony; Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” and Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” are playing in competition; and George Miller‘s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and Kevin Costner’s Western epic “Horizon, an American Saga” are playing out of competition. Streep will be also in good company at the festival with “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig serving as jury president. The pair worked together on “Little Women.”
The honorary tribute will mark Streep’s long-awaited return to Cannes after decades. It appears that her last trip to the festival dates back to Fred Schepisi...
- 5/2/2024
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
From director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) comes the must-see thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud, Jeanne Moreau and Jean Reno, La Femme Nikita is “slick, stylish and tremendously entertaining” (The New York Times)! Rescued from death row by a top-secret agency, Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is slowly transformed from a cop-killing junkie into a cold-blooded bombshell with a license to kill. But when she begins the deadliest mission of her career, only to fall for a man who knows nothing of her true identity, Nikita discovers that in the dark and ruthless ... Read more...
- 3/29/2024
- by Thomas Miller
- Seat42F
Synopsis
From director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) comes the must-see thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated, and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud, Jeanne Moreau, and Jean Reno, La Femme Nikita is “slick, stylish, and tremendously entertaining” (The New York Times)! Rescued from death row by a top-secret agency, Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is slowly transformed from a cop-killing junkie into a cold-blooded bombshell with a license to kill. But when she begins the deadliest mission of her career, only to fall for a man who knows nothing of her true identity, Nikita discovers that in the dark and ruthless world of espionage, the greatest casualty of all…is true love.
Disc Details And Bonus Materials
4K Ultra HD Disc
• Restored from the original camera negative and presented in 4K resolution with Dolby Vision
• French & English 5.1 + French 2-Channel Surround
This 4K Uhd release does not include a...
From director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) comes the must-see thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated, and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud, Jeanne Moreau, and Jean Reno, La Femme Nikita is “slick, stylish, and tremendously entertaining” (The New York Times)! Rescued from death row by a top-secret agency, Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is slowly transformed from a cop-killing junkie into a cold-blooded bombshell with a license to kill. But when she begins the deadliest mission of her career, only to fall for a man who knows nothing of her true identity, Nikita discovers that in the dark and ruthless world of espionage, the greatest casualty of all…is true love.
Disc Details And Bonus Materials
4K Ultra HD Disc
• Restored from the original camera negative and presented in 4K resolution with Dolby Vision
• French & English 5.1 + French 2-Channel Surround
This 4K Uhd release does not include a...
- 3/28/2024
- by ComicMix Staff
- Comicmix.com
4K just got a whole lot sharper, as Sony will release Luc Besson’s 1990 action-thriller La Femme Nikita on the format in June, joining other Besson films like 1994’s The Professional and 1997’s The Fifth Element on the format. This release — which comes in a slick steel book — is restored from the original camera negative, with a 4K image that boasts 2160p Ultra High Definition.
Here is Sony’s official writeup for the movie: “From director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) comes the must-see thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud, Jeanne Moreau and Jean Reno, La Femme Nikita is “slick, stylish and tremendously entertaining” (The New York Times)! Rescued from death row by a top-secret agency, Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is slowly transformed from a cop-killing junkie into a cold-blooded bombshell with a license to kill. But when she begins the deadliest mission of her career,...
Here is Sony’s official writeup for the movie: “From director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) comes the must-see thriller about a vicious street punk turned sexy, sophisticated and lethally dangerous assassin. Starring Anne Parillaud, Jeanne Moreau and Jean Reno, La Femme Nikita is “slick, stylish and tremendously entertaining” (The New York Times)! Rescued from death row by a top-secret agency, Nikita (Anne Parillaud) is slowly transformed from a cop-killing junkie into a cold-blooded bombshell with a license to kill. But when she begins the deadliest mission of her career,...
- 3/26/2024
- by Mathew Plale
- JoBlo.com
Somebody — or something — is speaking from inside a timber crate. “It’s so dark in here… a night so deep and opaque” read the subtitles; the voice is speaking in Fon, the local language of the West African country that was once called Dahomey and is now Benin. As the slats are nailed down, the voice is increasingly muffled; we are outside, but we are inside too, watching the light disappear.
This is the transport that will take a carved statue of Behanzin, king of Dahomey when the French army invaded in 1890, from the Musee Branly in Paris to Porto-Novo, capital of Benin. Around 7,000 works were looted from Benin in the years following the French conquest; in 2020, the French government ratified an earlier promise by President Macron to return 26 of them. Behanzin’s image, with its metal belt and bracelets and one arm raised in a warrior’s challenge, was on its way home.
This is the transport that will take a carved statue of Behanzin, king of Dahomey when the French army invaded in 1890, from the Musee Branly in Paris to Porto-Novo, capital of Benin. Around 7,000 works were looted from Benin in the years following the French conquest; in 2020, the French government ratified an earlier promise by President Macron to return 26 of them. Behanzin’s image, with its metal belt and bracelets and one arm raised in a warrior’s challenge, was on its way home.
- 2/18/2024
- by Stephanie Bunbury
- Deadline Film + TV
If Hollywood truly suffers from a leadership malaise, as some charge, would the return of Monroe Stahr resuscitate the system? Filmmakers respect his judgment, stars his panache and investors his discipline, so Stahr’s return may ignite a new Irving Thalberg-like era.
Whoops — he’s not available.
The manic and manipulative hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon ruled MGM in its ‘30s heyday, but Stahr’s fictional reign was short-lived. So was Fitzgerald’s brilliant but never completed 1939 novel, which modeled Stahr after Thalberg.
Having achieved literary stardom with The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s decision to write a Hollywood novel, while simultaneously working as a script doctor, plunged the novelist into alcoholic paralysis. He never managed to finish his book and even his screenplays were unrealized.
The Last Tycoon briefly flickered back to life as a movie thanks to the great Elia Kazan, who cast Robert De Niro,...
Whoops — he’s not available.
The manic and manipulative hero of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon ruled MGM in its ‘30s heyday, but Stahr’s fictional reign was short-lived. So was Fitzgerald’s brilliant but never completed 1939 novel, which modeled Stahr after Thalberg.
Having achieved literary stardom with The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s decision to write a Hollywood novel, while simultaneously working as a script doctor, plunged the novelist into alcoholic paralysis. He never managed to finish his book and even his screenplays were unrealized.
The Last Tycoon briefly flickered back to life as a movie thanks to the great Elia Kazan, who cast Robert De Niro,...
- 1/4/2024
- by Peter Bart
- Deadline Film + TV
What’s the single best thing about the Venice Film Festival?
The relaxed atmosphere of the festival where you can easily combine meetings and watching film. Maybe it has also to do with the end of the summer…or with the wonderful light…and you can go for a swim!
The impact of the Hollywood strikes on Venice will be…
Regrettably fewer Hollywood-stars on the red carpet but maybe more attention for the films themselves and stars from Europe and other continents.
Best place in Venice to avoid the crowds (and the industry) is…
Considering that I’m a born Venetian and dealing with crowds is one of the biggest challenges of the city, I would prefer to keep this secret for myself. But I would suggest: Take a bicycle and explore the Lido.
The one thing I would change about the Venice Film Festival is…
It’s not really...
The relaxed atmosphere of the festival where you can easily combine meetings and watching film. Maybe it has also to do with the end of the summer…or with the wonderful light…and you can go for a swim!
The impact of the Hollywood strikes on Venice will be…
Regrettably fewer Hollywood-stars on the red carpet but maybe more attention for the films themselves and stars from Europe and other continents.
Best place in Venice to avoid the crowds (and the industry) is…
Considering that I’m a born Venetian and dealing with crowds is one of the biggest challenges of the city, I would prefer to keep this secret for myself. But I would suggest: Take a bicycle and explore the Lido.
The one thing I would change about the Venice Film Festival is…
It’s not really...
- 8/31/2023
- by Scott Roxborough
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
After of two decades of filmmaking, from “Married Life” to “Love Is Strange,” Ira Sachs has made his tenth feature with the alluring “Passages.” The unrestrained, brazenly sexy love triangle starring an all-start cast of Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, and Adèle Exarchopoulos hit big at both Sundance and Berlin.
Last January, Sachs enjoyed holding court at a Sundance steakhouse as distributors made offers. Although the MPA Ratings Board slapped an Nc-17 on “Passages,” winning suitor Mubi will release the French-produced film unrated on August 4 before making Sachs’ film available online to its 12 million subscribers.
The filmmaker Zoomed with me from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Anne Thompson: Twelve million. That’s a significant number!
Ira Sachs: They understand that there’s a large audience who is interested in personal filmmaking that has been neglected by Hollywood. There’s no interest in...
Last January, Sachs enjoyed holding court at a Sundance steakhouse as distributors made offers. Although the MPA Ratings Board slapped an Nc-17 on “Passages,” winning suitor Mubi will release the French-produced film unrated on August 4 before making Sachs’ film available online to its 12 million subscribers.
The filmmaker Zoomed with me from the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.
The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Anne Thompson: Twelve million. That’s a significant number!
Ira Sachs: They understand that there’s a large audience who is interested in personal filmmaking that has been neglected by Hollywood. There’s no interest in...
- 8/2/2023
- by Anne Thompson
- Indiewire
It’s February morning in Berlin. “I’m a little out of consciousness,” Christian Petzold explains, a tad frazzled but keen to talk––and Petzold likes to talk. His latest film Afire had premiered the night before and the party had slipped into the wee hours. “There’s Thomas, he was at the party till 6 a.m.,” Petzold explains as his leading man shuffles by, fresh from a round of junkets and looking just a little shellshocked.
That look is one that viewers will soon be familiar with when Afire is released this week. Taking place in a secluded house by the Baltic Sea, it shows Petzold at his most sultry and melodramatic. The drama stars Thomas Schubert as Leon, a writer struggling to follow up on the success of his first novel. He travels with a friend for a summer getaway but becomes infatuated with a woman who shares the house with them.
That look is one that viewers will soon be familiar with when Afire is released this week. Taking place in a secluded house by the Baltic Sea, it shows Petzold at his most sultry and melodramatic. The drama stars Thomas Schubert as Leon, a writer struggling to follow up on the success of his first novel. He travels with a friend for a summer getaway but becomes infatuated with a woman who shares the house with them.
- 7/11/2023
- by Rory O'Connor
- The Film Stage
Yes, there’s a reference made to Britney Spears in Sam Levinson’s new HBO series, The Idol, and Lily-Rose Depp does play a Britney-like character who’s looking to rise from her funk, but as the Euphoria creator said at the Cannes press conference today, “We’re not trying to tell a story about any particular pop star.”
Levinson added, “It’s a lot of pressure — to have to constantly be on, and to be what everyone wishes you to be. It’s a lonely life… We can all pretend that everyone is looking out for someone’s best interest, but I think fame really corrupts; it’s really easy to surround yourself with myth-makers who continue to prop us up.”
Levinson said that when he first saw all the news about the controversy on The Idol set, he knew he had the biggest hit of the summer. A...
Levinson added, “It’s a lot of pressure — to have to constantly be on, and to be what everyone wishes you to be. It’s a lonely life… We can all pretend that everyone is looking out for someone’s best interest, but I think fame really corrupts; it’s really easy to surround yourself with myth-makers who continue to prop us up.”
Levinson said that when he first saw all the news about the controversy on The Idol set, he knew he had the biggest hit of the summer. A...
- 5/23/2023
- by Anthony D'Alessandro
- Deadline Film + TV
There’s a tender empathy emanating from every frame of Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest feature Other People’s Children. The French director’s latest work stars Virginie Efira in her finest performance to date, playing a woman who forms a special bond with her boyfriend’s daughter as she juggles professional and personal responsibilities. It’s a film of equal charm and quiet heartbreak with Zlotowski expertly weaving in each subplot to form a complete picture of universal quandaries of love in different forms.
When Zlotowski was in town for the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema premiere, I had the opportunity to speak with her about the difficult of capturing everyday feelings, finding magical moments throughout the film, the movies that influenced her, Frederick Wiseman’s cameo, and more. As the film begins its U.S. release, check out the conversation below.
The Film Stage: I love how focused this film is on character,...
When Zlotowski was in town for the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema premiere, I had the opportunity to speak with her about the difficult of capturing everyday feelings, finding magical moments throughout the film, the movies that influenced her, Frederick Wiseman’s cameo, and more. As the film begins its U.S. release, check out the conversation below.
The Film Stage: I love how focused this film is on character,...
- 4/20/2023
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Museum of the Moving Image
Tokyo Story plays on 35mm this Friday and Sunday.
Film Forum
Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity plays in a 4K restoration; Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 and The Conformist continue their runs; a Jeanne Moreau retrospective highlights her three, rarely screened directing efforts as well as her onscreen work; Panahi’s The White Balloon plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
Films by Luis Buñuel screen through the weekend in Essential Cinema.
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Tod Browning’s dark world brings the likes of Freaks and Dracula, while the newly restored Drylongso continues screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
Before Sunrise screens, while Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Barb Wire, and Poison Ivy have late showings.
Roxy Cinema
Synecdoche, New York and Paul Williams...
Museum of the Moving Image
Tokyo Story plays on 35mm this Friday and Sunday.
Film Forum
Bob Fosse’s Sweet Charity plays in a 4K restoration; Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 and The Conformist continue their runs; a Jeanne Moreau retrospective highlights her three, rarely screened directing efforts as well as her onscreen work; Panahi’s The White Balloon plays on 35mm this Sunday.
Anthology Film Archives
Films by Luis Buñuel screen through the weekend in Essential Cinema.
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Tod Browning’s dark world brings the likes of Freaks and Dracula, while the newly restored Drylongso continues screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
Before Sunrise screens, while Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Barb Wire, and Poison Ivy have late showings.
Roxy Cinema
Synecdoche, New York and Paul Williams...
- 3/24/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Tod Browning’s dark world brings the likes of Freaks and Dracula, while the newly restored Drylongso starts screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
The Dardenne brothers are subject of a career-spanning retrospective, with L’Enfant, The Kid with a Bike, and Lorna’s Silence showing on 35mm; Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Times Square, and Poison Ivy have late screenings.
Film Forum
Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 begins a run; a Jeanne Moreau retrospective highlights her three, rarely screened directing efforts; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River continues showing in a 4K restoration, while The Conformist returns; Selena plays this Sunday.
Roxy Cinema
Dressed to Kill, Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders, Minnie and Moskowitz, Belly, and Synecdoche, New York have 35mm showings.
Museum of the Moving Image
With First Look underway,...
Film at Lincoln Center
A retrospective of Tod Browning’s dark world brings the likes of Freaks and Dracula, while the newly restored Drylongso starts screening. (Read our interview with director Cauleen Smith here.)
IFC Center
The Dardenne brothers are subject of a career-spanning retrospective, with L’Enfant, The Kid with a Bike, and Lorna’s Silence showing on 35mm; Fight Club, Akira, Jaws, Times Square, and Poison Ivy have late screenings.
Film Forum
Ken Loach’s The Spirit of ’45 begins a run; a Jeanne Moreau retrospective highlights her three, rarely screened directing efforts; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River continues showing in a 4K restoration, while The Conformist returns; Selena plays this Sunday.
Roxy Cinema
Dressed to Kill, Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders, Minnie and Moskowitz, Belly, and Synecdoche, New York have 35mm showings.
Museum of the Moving Image
With First Look underway,...
- 3/17/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Titles comprise ’Lillian Gish’, ‘Lumiere’ and ’L’Adolescente’.
Three films directed by iconic French actress Jeanne Moreau have been sold to King Records for Japan by Paris-based Carlotta Films.
The titles, packaged under the banner Jeanne Moreau, Filmmaker, comprise Lumière, L’Adolescente and documentary Lillian Gish. The trio is also set to be screened in April’s Hong Kong International Film Festival.
The features’ restoration was initiated and supported by Fond Jeanne Moreau, and spotlights the lesser-known filmmaking talents of the late star of Jules And Jim, Seven Days… Seven Nights, Elevator To The Gallows and La Notte.
Lillian Gish is a...
Three films directed by iconic French actress Jeanne Moreau have been sold to King Records for Japan by Paris-based Carlotta Films.
The titles, packaged under the banner Jeanne Moreau, Filmmaker, comprise Lumière, L’Adolescente and documentary Lillian Gish. The trio is also set to be screened in April’s Hong Kong International Film Festival.
The features’ restoration was initiated and supported by Fond Jeanne Moreau, and spotlights the lesser-known filmmaking talents of the late star of Jules And Jim, Seven Days… Seven Nights, Elevator To The Gallows and La Notte.
Lillian Gish is a...
- 3/14/2023
- by Jean Noh
- ScreenDaily
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Roxy Cinema
Dressed to Kill and Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders have 35mm showings; Mary Bronstein’s Yeast, starring a young Greta Gerwig, screens on Friday.
Film Forum
A Jeanne Moreau retrospective brings films by Antonioni, Fassbinder, Truffaut, Welles and more; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River and Una Vita Difficile continue showing in a 4K restorations while The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T plays this Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on snubs brings films by David Lynch, Todd Haynes, the Safdies, and Rebecca Hall.
Film at Lincoln Center
Claire Denis’ masterful first feature Chocolat has been restored in 4K and continues its run.
IFC Center
Fight Club, Cruel Intentions, and Jaws have screenings, while Body of Evidence plays on 35mm.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: Dressed to Kill, La Notte, Safe & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
Roxy Cinema
Dressed to Kill and Chabrol’s The Champagne Murders have 35mm showings; Mary Bronstein’s Yeast, starring a young Greta Gerwig, screens on Friday.
Film Forum
A Jeanne Moreau retrospective brings films by Antonioni, Fassbinder, Truffaut, Welles and more; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River and Una Vita Difficile continue showing in a 4K restorations while The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T plays this Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on snubs brings films by David Lynch, Todd Haynes, the Safdies, and Rebecca Hall.
Film at Lincoln Center
Claire Denis’ masterful first feature Chocolat has been restored in 4K and continues its run.
IFC Center
Fight Club, Cruel Intentions, and Jaws have screenings, while Body of Evidence plays on 35mm.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: Dressed to Kill, La Notte, Safe & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
- 3/10/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Film Forum
A Jeanne Moreau retrospective brings films by Antonioni, Malle, Becker and more; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River and Una Vita Difficile continue showing in a 4K restorations while King Kong plays this Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on snubs brings films by the Coens, Wes Anderson, Spike Lee, David Lynch, and Todd Haynes.
Film at Lincoln Center
Claire Denis’ masterful first feature Chocolat has been restored in 4K and begins a run.
Roxy Cinema
Minnie and Moskowitz has 35mm showings Saturday and Sunday, the latter day also bringing Polanski’s Frantic; “City Dudes” returns on Saturday.
Anthology Film Archives
Barbarella, Wr: Mysteries of the Organism, and more play in Wilhelm Reich series; Brakhage screens in Essential Cinema.
IFC Center
Fight Club, Cruel Intentions, and Akira have screenings, while Showgirls plays on 35mm.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: Jeanne Moreau,...
Film Forum
A Jeanne Moreau retrospective brings films by Antonioni, Malle, Becker and more; Lou Ye’s Suzhou River and Una Vita Difficile continue showing in a 4K restorations while King Kong plays this Sunday.
Museum of the Moving Image
A series on snubs brings films by the Coens, Wes Anderson, Spike Lee, David Lynch, and Todd Haynes.
Film at Lincoln Center
Claire Denis’ masterful first feature Chocolat has been restored in 4K and begins a run.
Roxy Cinema
Minnie and Moskowitz has 35mm showings Saturday and Sunday, the latter day also bringing Polanski’s Frantic; “City Dudes” returns on Saturday.
Anthology Film Archives
Barbarella, Wr: Mysteries of the Organism, and more play in Wilhelm Reich series; Brakhage screens in Essential Cinema.
IFC Center
Fight Club, Cruel Intentions, and Akira have screenings, while Showgirls plays on 35mm.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: Jeanne Moreau,...
- 3/3/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Rousing action films get your blood pumping and lift your spirits. In some respects, they're even more thrilling when women play the action hero. Though ladies have been kicking butt in movies for decades now, it's still just as exciting when a new woman fights her way to the big screen and into our hearts. If you're a fan of action films -– and hopefully if you're a fan of women –- you've probably seen many of this century's most popular female-led action epics. There are the "Kill Bill" films, of course, Ripley's badassery in "Aliens," and more recent fare like "Atomic Blonde" and "Mad Max: Fury Road."
These are all incredible films that certainly deserve their place in the action pantheon, but others deserve our attention, too. For one thing, there actually were a few female-led action films made before the year 2000, something you might not be aware of...
These are all incredible films that certainly deserve their place in the action pantheon, but others deserve our attention, too. For one thing, there actually were a few female-led action films made before the year 2000, something you might not be aware of...
- 2/26/2023
- by Kira Deshler
- Slash Film
It may feel like throuples are a distinctly modern romantic arrangement – but this couldn’t be further from the case.
In fact, consensual non-monogamy, such as a ménage à trois, goes back centuries. It can even be found in the bible.
Recently, David Haye has been the subject of speculation surrounding his private life, with fans claiming that the ex-boxer is in a three-way relationship with model Sian Osborne and The Saturdays singer Una Healy.
On Valentine’s Day, Haye appeared to confirm the rumours, with Healy also sharing a coy message on Instagram alluding to the relationship.
When it comes to depictions of polyamorous relationships in film and TV, good examples have traditionally been few and far between.
But that’s not to say there haven’t been any – from pre-code classics to modern indie dramas, there are plenty of films and TV series which place the spotlight on...
In fact, consensual non-monogamy, such as a ménage à trois, goes back centuries. It can even be found in the bible.
Recently, David Haye has been the subject of speculation surrounding his private life, with fans claiming that the ex-boxer is in a three-way relationship with model Sian Osborne and The Saturdays singer Una Healy.
On Valentine’s Day, Haye appeared to confirm the rumours, with Healy also sharing a coy message on Instagram alluding to the relationship.
When it comes to depictions of polyamorous relationships in film and TV, good examples have traditionally been few and far between.
But that’s not to say there haven’t been any – from pre-code classics to modern indie dramas, there are plenty of films and TV series which place the spotlight on...
- 2/15/2023
- by Louis Chilton
- The Independent - Film
Claudia Squitieri with her mother Claudia Cardinale on Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo: “it’s one of her most adventurous experiences.” Photo: courtesy of Claudia Squitieri
In the second instalment with Claudia Squitieri we discuss more of the films her mother, Claudia Cardinale, starred in. Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Mick Jagger, Jason Robards, Thomas Mauch, My Best Fiend, and filming Fitzcarraldo; encountering Fernando Trueba (The Artist And Model) in Deauville and reconnecting with Jean Rochefort; Manoel de Oliveira and an “atmosphere of mysticality” during the making of Gebo and the Shadow with Jeanne Moreau and Michael Lonsdale, shot by Renato Berta; Blake Edwards and The Pink Panther, the problem with sequels and playing Roberto Benigni’s mother in Son Of The Pink Panther all came up in our conversation.
Claudia Squitieri from Paris on Roberto Benigni with Claudia Cardinale: “He was going “Claudia!!!!” Jumping around every time he saw my mother.
In the second instalment with Claudia Squitieri we discuss more of the films her mother, Claudia Cardinale, starred in. Werner Herzog, Klaus Kinski, Mick Jagger, Jason Robards, Thomas Mauch, My Best Fiend, and filming Fitzcarraldo; encountering Fernando Trueba (The Artist And Model) in Deauville and reconnecting with Jean Rochefort; Manoel de Oliveira and an “atmosphere of mysticality” during the making of Gebo and the Shadow with Jeanne Moreau and Michael Lonsdale, shot by Renato Berta; Blake Edwards and The Pink Panther, the problem with sequels and playing Roberto Benigni’s mother in Son Of The Pink Panther all came up in our conversation.
Claudia Squitieri from Paris on Roberto Benigni with Claudia Cardinale: “He was going “Claudia!!!!” Jumping around every time he saw my mother.
- 2/11/2023
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
François Truffaut’s ode to Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich is an ice-cold femme revenge tale. Jeanne Moreau exacts retribution from five men who made her a widow on her wedding day. Truffaut winds it as tightly as a mousetrap, leaving Ms. Moreau’s psychology a mystery — feminists can debate whether the film is misogynistic. Raoul Coutard’s color cinematography is deceptively warm and inviting; the film’s biggest boost comes from Bernard Herrmann’s powerful music score.
The Bride Wore Black
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1968 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date February 14, 2023 / La mariée était en noir / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Brialy, Charles Denner, Claude Rich, Michael Lonsdale, Daniel Boulanger, Alexandra Stewart, Sylvine Delannoy, Luce Fabiole, Michèle Montfort.
Cinematography: Raoul Coutard
Production Designer: Pierre Guffroy
Film Editor: Claudine Bouché
Original Music: Bernard Herrmann
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard from the novel by William Irish...
The Bride Wore Black
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1968 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 107 min. / Street Date February 14, 2023 / La mariée était en noir / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Jeanne Moreau, Michel Bouquet, Jean-Claude Brialy, Charles Denner, Claude Rich, Michael Lonsdale, Daniel Boulanger, Alexandra Stewart, Sylvine Delannoy, Luce Fabiole, Michèle Montfort.
Cinematography: Raoul Coutard
Production Designer: Pierre Guffroy
Film Editor: Claudine Bouché
Original Music: Bernard Herrmann
Written by François Truffaut, Jean-Louis Richard from the novel by William Irish...
- 2/4/2023
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The Films of Theo Angelopoulos: Landscapes of TimeFourteen films will be showing from October 13 to December 18, 2022 at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood with free tickets and free parking thanks to an anonymous donor to the Hammer Museum. Sponsored by UCLA’s Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture, UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies and the Consulate General of Greece in Los Angeles, the kickoff film, ‘Landscapes in the Mist’ played to a full house.
How did all these people know Theodoros Angelopoulos? I thought he was my own private guilty pleasure, my own discovery from the days when I would spend the last day of every film festival where I was working to see a film I wanted to see, knowing I would never be able to convince my company to buy it. It was at the Thessaloniki Film Festival 1991 when I first saw an Angelopoulis film, The Suspended Step of the Stork starring Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau. I had never seen such a film with the story only revealing its impact at the end. I had seen slow films of Antonioni (not knowing his screenwriter was the same who wrote Angelopoulos’s films), but this film was so unlike any film I had ever seen before. I barely understood what was happening until the end when story revealed the inner core of its truth. At that moment, I knew that the film had changed my life and my perceptions. This was the first in Angelopoulos’ Trilogy of Borders.
‘Suspended Step of the Stork’
As of this writing, two films have screened thus far: Landscape in the Mist (European Film Award for Best Film), the last of his Trilogy of Silence. It was followed the next week by Eternity and a Day (Palme d’Or at the 51st edition of the Cannes Film Festival), the last of his Trilogy of Borders. Having seen these two, so many questions arose for me that I knew I needed to find out more about Angelopoulos himself.
Why these trilogies? Does he always work in threes, making trilogies and why?
Why were both Eternity and a Day and Landscape in the Mist about a little boy Alexander who has no parents, and most particularly no father? Is Alexander in all his films?
What’s with the troupe of actors which keeps showing up in Landscape in the Mist and is central to The Traveling Players his Trilogy of History?
Why are there always three yellow jacketed bicycle riders in the two films I have so far seen?
Why is there always a wedding — sometimes happy, sometimes not so?
Critic Andrew Horton calls Angelopoulos’ films, “Cinema of Contemplation” which does give the context within which one derives the full impact of his stories, more through contemplation than through following a plot line which nevertheless exists. Angelopoulos believed cinema was creating a new form of universal communication. He also saw his own life as a continuation of Greek history from the beginning of time, a theme he reiterates in his films. To absorb such a large picture, one must be in a contemplative state of mind. The films provide a framework for meditation. And his end shot is more than once a line of yellow jacketed repair workers climbing telephone poles that extend beyond the horizon or riding bicycles to beyond the frame of what we see. I must see the rest of the films to know what these repairmen are doing to extend travel and communication beyond borders.
Angelopoulos views the world through the eyes of a child named Alexander who in Landscape in the Mist is about five and is traveling across Greece to Germany with his ten year old sister Voula to find the father they have never known. They recognize they are part of a story with no end. The only adult words describing their odyssey are in the bedtime story Voula tells Alexander; in the introduction to a staged play that the friend they find on the road, named Orestes, describes to them; and in the first words spoken by a singing actor as the traveling theater troupe is about to start performing the play. But, as in the bedtime story and in Orestes’ description, the play, seemingly interrupted by other events, never finishes. The story starts, “in the beginning is darkness, then comes light, then the sea and sky, then the plants and trees.” When his sister feels fear for what lies ahead, Alexander comforts her with his promise to continue telling the story that never finishes. Through the mist, they find the tree, so vaguely described by Orestes as he shows them blank frames of a 35mm piece of film he picks up and so materially there in front of them when they cross the last border to Germany. They hug its trunk in relief and renewed trust in the will of some higher order that they have arrived safely.
Landscape in the Mist is the last of the Trilogy of Silence, haunting, incisive, intimate, and deeply moving odysseys that navigate through consciousness, myth, and memory. Landscape in the Mist represents the “silence of God”. The other two parts are the “silence of history” in Voyage to Cythera (1984) and the “silence of love” in The Beekeeper [1986).
In Eternity and a Day, the child in himself, Alexander (Bruno Ganz), has become a great writer and poet who is now facing his final days of a fatal illness. Putting his affairs in order and bidding farewell to family and friends before admitting himself into the hospital where he will await death, he asks “How long is tomorrow?” and is told, it is “eternity and a day.” He finds himself paired on his last day with a child, an Albanian illegal of Greek origin who fears the future with no adult to guide him into an unknown land across the sea. The poet himself lacks to words to finish his own work let alone help the child with his fears and his own journey, but his redemption comes from a literal exchange of words through the child which allows him to transcend his life and his emotional distance.
The three words Alexander receives from the Albanian boy are korfulamu, a delicate word for the heart of a flower, a literal ‘word of comfort’ for his physical suffering. The second is xenitis, the feeling of being a stranger everywhere, including with his own beautiful wife Anna (Isabelle Renauld). and daughter. The third is argathini, meaning ‘very late at night’, a metaphor for the ‘twilight’ of his existence.
The story that never finishes is the human odyssey of migrations and crossing borders, both in lands and in our minds as we face unknown futures in landscapes we do not recognize as our own. Angelopoulos’ reality unfolds through the prism of his memories. And he counts himself lucky to have lived consciously within the context of history. His memories are a continuation of the long history of Greece. He was born in 1935 the year before King George II of Greece returned to Rome with his Prime Minister Metaxas who, with the agreement of the king, suspended the parliament and established the quasi-fascist Metaxas regime. He lived through World War II, the subsequent Civil War, and the military dictatorship of 1967–1974.
He sees his films not as psychological studies of characters but as characters’ personal lives within a historical context, of “finding one’s own history within the history of a place.” He considers his political films quite different from those of Costa Gavras’ whose he calls bourgeois.
Starting with The Iliad, The Odyssey, and later the concluding Aeneid, continuing with the classic tretralogies, cycles of three plays by the great playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, Angelopoulis likewise writes in trilogies, three tragedies intended to be seen in one sitting, but way too long for most of us modern westerners. The trilogies of Angelopoulos would have greater impact if we could see them sequentially, even if not in one sitting. But the programmers did not see it that way and so we must see each film (which stands on its own) interspersed in what seems to be a random order. Even so, the themes intertwine seamlessly creating a textile of modern Greek myth, thought and insight.
Angelopoulos created Days of ’36 in 1972. It is the first film of what would become his self-described Trilogy of History that also includes The Traveling Players (1975) and Alexander the Great (1980) with an epilogue of The Hunters (1977). (The Greek plays also had epilogues.) That he made the first two films in Greece during the dictatorship required an “imposed silence” and indeed, that is the prevalent element in Days of ’36, the story of the country’s ruling leisure class suppressing the fight of leftist labor. The film begins with the assassination of a labor organizer and ends with a mafiosa-type last word of the ruling class which needs stability at any cost.
In The Traveling Players, Senses of Cinema writes:
It is interesting to note that Angelopoulos uses members of an otherwise anonymous cast of marginalized traveling players as conveyers of contemporary Greek history …: Agamemnon (Stratos Pachis) traces his immigration from Asia Minor to Greece (a reminder of the country’s historically borderless, ethnically diverse population that can be traced back to the Ottoman Empire), Electra (Eva Kotamanidou) chronicles the start of the Civil War after the defeat of the Germans in 1944, and Pylades (Kiriakos Katrivanos) provides a personal account of the torture of political prisoners. In essence, by using the testament of people who are literally transient and homeless (and without identity), Angelopoulos creates a powerful analogy for all Greek people as displaced exiles within their own country.
Again, from Senses of Cinema:
Angelopoulos returned to the theme of the nation’s historically organic, cross-cultural migration in The Travelling Players to examine the the refugee’s resigned sentiment, “We’ve crossed the border and we’re still here. How many borders must we cross to reach home?”, carries through to the makeshift, outdoor cinema in Angelopoulos’ next film, Ulysses’ Gaze, as A arrives for an unauthorized screening of his film. Like the adrift Spyros in The Beekeeper, A’s devastating emotional odyssey through his ancestral homeland is also a personal journey to reconnect with his cultural past, striving to recapture the purity of human vision that has been tainted by romantic loss, artistic controversy, familial estrangement, ideological disillusionment, and the ravages of war.
Regarding the written words of the scripts, Angelopoulos consistently worked with the Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, who also frequently collaborated with such celebrated directors as Federico Fellini, Michaelangelo Antonioni (he wrote all of his movies’ scripts) and Francesco Rossi. Guerra consulted on The Dust of Time, cowrote The Weeping Meadow, Eternity and a Day, Ulysses’ Gaze, and wrote The Suspended Step of the Stork, Landscape in the Mist, The Beekeeper and Voyage to Cythera.
Angelopoulos also collaborated regularly with the cinematographer Giorgos Arvanitis and the composer Eleni Karaindrou, both of whom are essential to his works’ impact.
One of the recurring themes of his work is immigration, the flight from homeland and the return, as well as the history of 20th century Greece. Angelopoulos was considered by British film critics Derek Malcolm and David Thomson to be one of the world’s greatest directors.
Angelopoulos died late 24 January 2012, several hours after being involved in an crash while shooting the last film of his latest trilogy on modern Greece, The Other Sea in Athens. On that evening, the filmmaker had been with his crew in the area of Drapetsona, near Piraeus when he was hit by a motorcycle ridden by an off-duty police officer. The crash occurred when Angelopoulos, 76, attempted to cross a busy road. The first two films were The Weeping Meadow (2004)) and The Dust of Time (2008).
As his legacy lives on, it reminds those of us who contemplate time and space that our Western Civilization began when Greece’s voice was raised to express our most primal emotions in its tragedies. Angelopouos’ work, along with the oldest epic cycle and the Greek tragedies, all deal with the aftermath of world shaking wars which are the results of revenge and murder, sex and power wielded by those more powerful than even the king despots of the age, but by the gods themselves (whoever she is).
How did all these people know Theodoros Angelopoulos? I thought he was my own private guilty pleasure, my own discovery from the days when I would spend the last day of every film festival where I was working to see a film I wanted to see, knowing I would never be able to convince my company to buy it. It was at the Thessaloniki Film Festival 1991 when I first saw an Angelopoulis film, The Suspended Step of the Stork starring Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau. I had never seen such a film with the story only revealing its impact at the end. I had seen slow films of Antonioni (not knowing his screenwriter was the same who wrote Angelopoulos’s films), but this film was so unlike any film I had ever seen before. I barely understood what was happening until the end when story revealed the inner core of its truth. At that moment, I knew that the film had changed my life and my perceptions. This was the first in Angelopoulos’ Trilogy of Borders.
‘Suspended Step of the Stork’
As of this writing, two films have screened thus far: Landscape in the Mist (European Film Award for Best Film), the last of his Trilogy of Silence. It was followed the next week by Eternity and a Day (Palme d’Or at the 51st edition of the Cannes Film Festival), the last of his Trilogy of Borders. Having seen these two, so many questions arose for me that I knew I needed to find out more about Angelopoulos himself.
Why these trilogies? Does he always work in threes, making trilogies and why?
Why were both Eternity and a Day and Landscape in the Mist about a little boy Alexander who has no parents, and most particularly no father? Is Alexander in all his films?
What’s with the troupe of actors which keeps showing up in Landscape in the Mist and is central to The Traveling Players his Trilogy of History?
Why are there always three yellow jacketed bicycle riders in the two films I have so far seen?
Why is there always a wedding — sometimes happy, sometimes not so?
Critic Andrew Horton calls Angelopoulos’ films, “Cinema of Contemplation” which does give the context within which one derives the full impact of his stories, more through contemplation than through following a plot line which nevertheless exists. Angelopoulos believed cinema was creating a new form of universal communication. He also saw his own life as a continuation of Greek history from the beginning of time, a theme he reiterates in his films. To absorb such a large picture, one must be in a contemplative state of mind. The films provide a framework for meditation. And his end shot is more than once a line of yellow jacketed repair workers climbing telephone poles that extend beyond the horizon or riding bicycles to beyond the frame of what we see. I must see the rest of the films to know what these repairmen are doing to extend travel and communication beyond borders.
Angelopoulos views the world through the eyes of a child named Alexander who in Landscape in the Mist is about five and is traveling across Greece to Germany with his ten year old sister Voula to find the father they have never known. They recognize they are part of a story with no end. The only adult words describing their odyssey are in the bedtime story Voula tells Alexander; in the introduction to a staged play that the friend they find on the road, named Orestes, describes to them; and in the first words spoken by a singing actor as the traveling theater troupe is about to start performing the play. But, as in the bedtime story and in Orestes’ description, the play, seemingly interrupted by other events, never finishes. The story starts, “in the beginning is darkness, then comes light, then the sea and sky, then the plants and trees.” When his sister feels fear for what lies ahead, Alexander comforts her with his promise to continue telling the story that never finishes. Through the mist, they find the tree, so vaguely described by Orestes as he shows them blank frames of a 35mm piece of film he picks up and so materially there in front of them when they cross the last border to Germany. They hug its trunk in relief and renewed trust in the will of some higher order that they have arrived safely.
Landscape in the Mist is the last of the Trilogy of Silence, haunting, incisive, intimate, and deeply moving odysseys that navigate through consciousness, myth, and memory. Landscape in the Mist represents the “silence of God”. The other two parts are the “silence of history” in Voyage to Cythera (1984) and the “silence of love” in The Beekeeper [1986).
In Eternity and a Day, the child in himself, Alexander (Bruno Ganz), has become a great writer and poet who is now facing his final days of a fatal illness. Putting his affairs in order and bidding farewell to family and friends before admitting himself into the hospital where he will await death, he asks “How long is tomorrow?” and is told, it is “eternity and a day.” He finds himself paired on his last day with a child, an Albanian illegal of Greek origin who fears the future with no adult to guide him into an unknown land across the sea. The poet himself lacks to words to finish his own work let alone help the child with his fears and his own journey, but his redemption comes from a literal exchange of words through the child which allows him to transcend his life and his emotional distance.
The three words Alexander receives from the Albanian boy are korfulamu, a delicate word for the heart of a flower, a literal ‘word of comfort’ for his physical suffering. The second is xenitis, the feeling of being a stranger everywhere, including with his own beautiful wife Anna (Isabelle Renauld). and daughter. The third is argathini, meaning ‘very late at night’, a metaphor for the ‘twilight’ of his existence.
The story that never finishes is the human odyssey of migrations and crossing borders, both in lands and in our minds as we face unknown futures in landscapes we do not recognize as our own. Angelopoulos’ reality unfolds through the prism of his memories. And he counts himself lucky to have lived consciously within the context of history. His memories are a continuation of the long history of Greece. He was born in 1935 the year before King George II of Greece returned to Rome with his Prime Minister Metaxas who, with the agreement of the king, suspended the parliament and established the quasi-fascist Metaxas regime. He lived through World War II, the subsequent Civil War, and the military dictatorship of 1967–1974.
He sees his films not as psychological studies of characters but as characters’ personal lives within a historical context, of “finding one’s own history within the history of a place.” He considers his political films quite different from those of Costa Gavras’ whose he calls bourgeois.
Starting with The Iliad, The Odyssey, and later the concluding Aeneid, continuing with the classic tretralogies, cycles of three plays by the great playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, Angelopoulis likewise writes in trilogies, three tragedies intended to be seen in one sitting, but way too long for most of us modern westerners. The trilogies of Angelopoulos would have greater impact if we could see them sequentially, even if not in one sitting. But the programmers did not see it that way and so we must see each film (which stands on its own) interspersed in what seems to be a random order. Even so, the themes intertwine seamlessly creating a textile of modern Greek myth, thought and insight.
Angelopoulos created Days of ’36 in 1972. It is the first film of what would become his self-described Trilogy of History that also includes The Traveling Players (1975) and Alexander the Great (1980) with an epilogue of The Hunters (1977). (The Greek plays also had epilogues.) That he made the first two films in Greece during the dictatorship required an “imposed silence” and indeed, that is the prevalent element in Days of ’36, the story of the country’s ruling leisure class suppressing the fight of leftist labor. The film begins with the assassination of a labor organizer and ends with a mafiosa-type last word of the ruling class which needs stability at any cost.
In The Traveling Players, Senses of Cinema writes:
It is interesting to note that Angelopoulos uses members of an otherwise anonymous cast of marginalized traveling players as conveyers of contemporary Greek history …: Agamemnon (Stratos Pachis) traces his immigration from Asia Minor to Greece (a reminder of the country’s historically borderless, ethnically diverse population that can be traced back to the Ottoman Empire), Electra (Eva Kotamanidou) chronicles the start of the Civil War after the defeat of the Germans in 1944, and Pylades (Kiriakos Katrivanos) provides a personal account of the torture of political prisoners. In essence, by using the testament of people who are literally transient and homeless (and without identity), Angelopoulos creates a powerful analogy for all Greek people as displaced exiles within their own country.
Again, from Senses of Cinema:
Angelopoulos returned to the theme of the nation’s historically organic, cross-cultural migration in The Travelling Players to examine the the refugee’s resigned sentiment, “We’ve crossed the border and we’re still here. How many borders must we cross to reach home?”, carries through to the makeshift, outdoor cinema in Angelopoulos’ next film, Ulysses’ Gaze, as A arrives for an unauthorized screening of his film. Like the adrift Spyros in The Beekeeper, A’s devastating emotional odyssey through his ancestral homeland is also a personal journey to reconnect with his cultural past, striving to recapture the purity of human vision that has been tainted by romantic loss, artistic controversy, familial estrangement, ideological disillusionment, and the ravages of war.
Regarding the written words of the scripts, Angelopoulos consistently worked with the Italian screenwriter Tonino Guerra, who also frequently collaborated with such celebrated directors as Federico Fellini, Michaelangelo Antonioni (he wrote all of his movies’ scripts) and Francesco Rossi. Guerra consulted on The Dust of Time, cowrote The Weeping Meadow, Eternity and a Day, Ulysses’ Gaze, and wrote The Suspended Step of the Stork, Landscape in the Mist, The Beekeeper and Voyage to Cythera.
Angelopoulos also collaborated regularly with the cinematographer Giorgos Arvanitis and the composer Eleni Karaindrou, both of whom are essential to his works’ impact.
One of the recurring themes of his work is immigration, the flight from homeland and the return, as well as the history of 20th century Greece. Angelopoulos was considered by British film critics Derek Malcolm and David Thomson to be one of the world’s greatest directors.
Angelopoulos died late 24 January 2012, several hours after being involved in an crash while shooting the last film of his latest trilogy on modern Greece, The Other Sea in Athens. On that evening, the filmmaker had been with his crew in the area of Drapetsona, near Piraeus when he was hit by a motorcycle ridden by an off-duty police officer. The crash occurred when Angelopoulos, 76, attempted to cross a busy road. The first two films were The Weeping Meadow (2004)) and The Dust of Time (2008).
As his legacy lives on, it reminds those of us who contemplate time and space that our Western Civilization began when Greece’s voice was raised to express our most primal emotions in its tragedies. Angelopouos’ work, along with the oldest epic cycle and the Greek tragedies, all deal with the aftermath of world shaking wars which are the results of revenge and murder, sex and power wielded by those more powerful than even the king despots of the age, but by the gods themselves (whoever she is).
- 12/18/2022
- by Sydney
- Sydney's Buzz
To mark the release of the restored 60th anniversary edition of The Trial, out now, we’ve been given a 4K Ultra HD copy to give away to one winner.
Based on the novel by Franz Kafka, The Trial is a masterclass in tension building and avant-garde filmmaking featuring outstanding performances from a stellar cast – Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider.
One morning, Josef K. (Perkins) is arrested but has no idea what crime he is accused of. Completely stunned, K. slowly finds himself trapped in a dehumanised nightmare and realizes he is the victim of a grotesque plot. He is accused by everyone, friends and enemies, until, worn down, he ends up doubting his own innocence.
Welles brilliantly captured the oppressive and nightmarish qualities of Kafka’s fictional world. Using the cracked labyrinthine corridors of Paris’ ruined Gare D’Orsay as his set, with icy black...
Based on the novel by Franz Kafka, The Trial is a masterclass in tension building and avant-garde filmmaking featuring outstanding performances from a stellar cast – Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau and Romy Schneider.
One morning, Josef K. (Perkins) is arrested but has no idea what crime he is accused of. Completely stunned, K. slowly finds himself trapped in a dehumanised nightmare and realizes he is the victim of a grotesque plot. He is accused by everyone, friends and enemies, until, worn down, he ends up doubting his own innocence.
Welles brilliantly captured the oppressive and nightmarish qualities of Kafka’s fictional world. Using the cracked labyrinthine corridors of Paris’ ruined Gare D’Orsay as his set, with icy black...
- 11/23/2022
- by Competitions
- HeyUGuys.co.uk
Hungry for those wet Parisian streets, the city lights, and cadavres en lambeaux in the pale moonlight? Enter three highly atmospheric, star-studded Crime Noirs, one of which is a stealth classic of Gallic Pulp. Stars Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, and Annie Girardot bring the tales of à sang froid malice and mayhem to life. The films featured are Gilles Grangier’s Speaking of Murder (Le rouge est mis) and Édouard Molinaro’s Back to the Wall (Le dos au mur) and Witness in the City (Un Témoin dans la ville). Beware of French husbands when cucklolded — they show no pity. Bonne chance, victimes!
French Noir Collection
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1957-59 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / 265 minutes / Street Date November 29, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95
Starring: Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, Annie Girardot, Paul Frankeur,...
French Noir Collection
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1957-59 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / 265 minutes / Street Date November 29, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95
Starring: Jean Gabin, Jeanne Moreau, Lino Ventura, Marcel Bozzuffi, Gérard Oury, Sandra Milo, Annie Girardot, Paul Frankeur,...
- 11/19/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Unless you’re savvy with torrenting, Orson Welles’ trippy and disturbing 1962 film “The Trial” has been hard to find. Various restorations from 35mm negatives have popped up over the years, but Welles fans have long been resigned to inferior-quality rips on DVD, VHS, or the internet. That’s no longer so, as Rialto Pictures is releasing a long-overdue 4K restoration of the Franz Kafka adaptation starring Anthony Perkins as a man being persecuted for an unspecified crime. The 60th-anniversary 4K restoration opens at Film Forum December 9 before expanding nationally, and IndieWire has the exclusive trailer below.
“The Trial” also stars Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and Elsa Martinelli as the women who become entangled with Josef K. (Perkins) and his trial. The film, which has occasionally played repertory houses in low-quality formats, was restored by Studiocanal and La Cinematheque Francaise. The image and sound restorations were carried out in 4K at...
“The Trial” also stars Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and Elsa Martinelli as the women who become entangled with Josef K. (Perkins) and his trial. The film, which has occasionally played repertory houses in low-quality formats, was restored by Studiocanal and La Cinematheque Francaise. The image and sound restorations were carried out in 4K at...
- 11/17/2022
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
Bertrand Blier’s edgy romp about a pair of ne’er-do-well petty-crooks will go too far for many viewers — they’re antisocially chauvinistic in some really outrageous ways. Are they jolly adventurers or just terminally obnoxious? The twisted social comedy really needs its talented cast: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, and a very young Isabelle Huppert. The new presentation includes a commentary by Richard Peña.
Going Places
Blu-ray
Cohen Film Collection / Kino Lorber
1974 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 118 min. / Les valseuses / Street Date October 11, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, Jacques Chailleux, Isabelle Huppert, Thierry Lhermitte.
Cinematography: Bruno Nuytten
Production Designers: Jean-Jacques Caziot, Françoise Hardy
Film Editor: Kénout Peltier
Original Music:
Written by Bertrand Blier and Philippe Dumarçay from the novel by Bertrand Blier <smaStéphane Grappellill>
Produced by Paul Claudon
Directed by Bertrand Blier
The freedom of the screen that came with...
Going Places
Blu-ray
Cohen Film Collection / Kino Lorber
1974 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 118 min. / Les valseuses / Street Date October 11, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Gérard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Fossey, Jacques Chailleux, Isabelle Huppert, Thierry Lhermitte.
Cinematography: Bruno Nuytten
Production Designers: Jean-Jacques Caziot, Françoise Hardy
Film Editor: Kénout Peltier
Original Music:
Written by Bertrand Blier and Philippe Dumarçay from the novel by Bertrand Blier <smaStéphane Grappellill>
Produced by Paul Claudon
Directed by Bertrand Blier
The freedom of the screen that came with...
- 11/12/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Cohen Film Collection Restoring More Merchant Ivory Classics, Including Duo’s First Film (Exclusive)
Cohen Film Collection is continuing its restorations of classic Merchant Ivory productions, among them 1963’s “The Householder,” the first film collaboration between Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.
The classics label of Cohen Media Group, Cohen Film Collection is lining up the restorations of four titles that also include the 1977 episodic romantic drama “Roseland,” with Teresa Wright and Christopher Walken, and two films directed by Merchant, “In Custody” (1994), featuring Shashi Kapoor, and “The Proprietor” (1996), starring Jeanne Moreau.
Tim Lanza, Cohen Film Collection vice president and archivist, says he chose “In Custody” – Merchant’s feature directorial debut — and “The Proprietor” in particular “because James Ivory was keen to have a rerelease of some of the films that were directed by Ismael Merchant himself.”
“The Householder” and “In Custody” are also among Merchant Ivory’s India-set films, which Lanza is likewise excited to reintroduce to audiences.
Cohen Film Collection acquired a number of...
The classics label of Cohen Media Group, Cohen Film Collection is lining up the restorations of four titles that also include the 1977 episodic romantic drama “Roseland,” with Teresa Wright and Christopher Walken, and two films directed by Merchant, “In Custody” (1994), featuring Shashi Kapoor, and “The Proprietor” (1996), starring Jeanne Moreau.
Tim Lanza, Cohen Film Collection vice president and archivist, says he chose “In Custody” – Merchant’s feature directorial debut — and “The Proprietor” in particular “because James Ivory was keen to have a rerelease of some of the films that were directed by Ismael Merchant himself.”
“The Householder” and “In Custody” are also among Merchant Ivory’s India-set films, which Lanza is likewise excited to reintroduce to audiences.
Cohen Film Collection acquired a number of...
- 10/20/2022
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
Tim Burton will receive the festival’s 14th Lumiere Award.
The 2022 Lumiere Festival (October 15-32) kicked off over the weekend for a week-long celebration of heritage films and modern masters.
Today (Oct 18) marks the start of the festival’s International Classic Film market reserved for industry professionals, the only such market in the world dedicated to classic cinema and film rights.
Highlights of this year’s event include a spotlight on Spain, a conversation with Manuel Alduy, director of cinema and digital fiction at France Télévisions, a DVD publishers fair and a focus on sustainability in the industry.
Now in...
The 2022 Lumiere Festival (October 15-32) kicked off over the weekend for a week-long celebration of heritage films and modern masters.
Today (Oct 18) marks the start of the festival’s International Classic Film market reserved for industry professionals, the only such market in the world dedicated to classic cinema and film rights.
Highlights of this year’s event include a spotlight on Spain, a conversation with Manuel Alduy, director of cinema and digital fiction at France Télévisions, a DVD publishers fair and a focus on sustainability in the industry.
Now in...
- 10/18/2022
- by Rebecca Leffler
- ScreenDaily
The Lumière Festival’s International Classic Film Market (Mifc) in Lyon, France, is celebrating its 10th edition this year with a wide-ranging program focusing on bolstering classic film distribution, the prospects of new commercial territories, film education and a focus on Spain’s heritage film sector.
The Mifc, which runs Oct. 18-21, kicks off with a keynote by Gian Luca Farinelli, director of Italy’s Cineteca di Bologna film archive. Market organizers praise Farinelli for “allowing classic films to be found, restored, reviewed and, most often, put back on the market firstly through the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival, exhibition and distribution activities within the foundation, while maintaining strong links with cinemathques from around the world.”
Farinelli’s work, the Mifc notes, “contributes to ensuring that the history of cinema is always active, alive and accessible.” Many who work in the classic film sector would second that opinion.
The Classic Film Market,...
The Mifc, which runs Oct. 18-21, kicks off with a keynote by Gian Luca Farinelli, director of Italy’s Cineteca di Bologna film archive. Market organizers praise Farinelli for “allowing classic films to be found, restored, reviewed and, most often, put back on the market firstly through the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival, exhibition and distribution activities within the foundation, while maintaining strong links with cinemathques from around the world.”
Farinelli’s work, the Mifc notes, “contributes to ensuring that the history of cinema is always active, alive and accessible.” Many who work in the classic film sector would second that opinion.
The Classic Film Market,...
- 10/16/2022
- by Ed Meza
- Variety Film + TV
Richard Fleischer’s Biblical epic is a class act all the way, and one of producer Dino De Laurentiis’s greatest accomplishments. Anthony Quinn’s guilty, perplexed bandit survives and subsists but never understands the importance of the man crucified in his place; the view of early Christianity is respectful and free of pious clichés. It’s an excellent image of the ancient world, with gladiator scenes that are possibly the best ever. Fleisher does exceedingly well with the enormous sets and a well-chosen international cast: Ernest Borgnine, Valentina Cortese, Vittorio Gassman, Katy Jurado, Arthur Kennedy, Silvana Mangano, Jack Palance.
Barabbas
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint] 132
1961 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 137 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from [Imprint] / au 39.95
Starring: Anthony Quinn, Silvana Mangano, Arthur Kennedy, Katy Jurado, Harry Andrews, Vittorio Gassman, Norman Wooland, Valentina Cortese, Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine, Arnoldo Foa’, Michael Gwynn, Laurence Payne, Douglas Fowley, Robert Hall, Joe Robinson, Friedrich von Ledebur,...
Barabbas
Blu-ray
Viavision [Imprint] 132
1961 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 137 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from [Imprint] / au 39.95
Starring: Anthony Quinn, Silvana Mangano, Arthur Kennedy, Katy Jurado, Harry Andrews, Vittorio Gassman, Norman Wooland, Valentina Cortese, Jack Palance, Ernest Borgnine, Arnoldo Foa’, Michael Gwynn, Laurence Payne, Douglas Fowley, Robert Hall, Joe Robinson, Friedrich von Ledebur,...
- 10/4/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
“A lot of this really happened,” teases the opening card of David O. Russell’s unruly ensemble comedy “Amsterdam,” a loony early-’30s social satire that goes cartwheeling through a little-remembered episode in American history when fascists tried to overthrow the U.S. government. Russell clearly sees parallels between this alarming chapter of the nation’s past and our present, as national divisions threaten to overwhelm American democracy, but the writer-director has complicated the plot — the movie’s plot, that is, not the greater conspiracy on which it turns — to such a degree that audiences are bound to be bewildered. Instead of wondering which parts are true and which ones invented, they’re likely to find themselves asking, “What the hell is happening?” for the better part of 134 minutes.
A certain amount of confusion is neither unusual nor unwelcome in comedic capers and whodunits, where the fun so often stems from...
A certain amount of confusion is neither unusual nor unwelcome in comedic capers and whodunits, where the fun so often stems from...
- 9/28/2022
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Jean-Louis Trintignant, the thoughtful French actor who headlined such art house classics as A Man and a Woman, My Night at Maud’s, The Conformist, Three Colors: Red and Amour, has died. He was 91.
Trintignant died Friday at his home in the Gard region of southern France, his wife, Marianne, and agent told the Agence France-Presse.
Trintignant received a number of accolades throughout his 60-plus-year career, including the best actor prize from Cannes in 1969 for Costa-Gavras’ political thriller Z and a Cesar Award in 2013 for Michael Haneke’s Amour, which also won the Oscar for best foreign-language film.
With more than 130 screen and 50-plus stage credits to his name, Trintignant was a highly prolific and respected talent who could perform anything from Shakespeare to commercial French comedies, from art house favorites by Bertolucci, Kieślowski and Truffaut to popular romances and sci-fi flicks — as...
Trintignant died Friday at his home in the Gard region of southern France, his wife, Marianne, and agent told the Agence France-Presse.
Trintignant received a number of accolades throughout his 60-plus-year career, including the best actor prize from Cannes in 1969 for Costa-Gavras’ political thriller Z and a Cesar Award in 2013 for Michael Haneke’s Amour, which also won the Oscar for best foreign-language film.
With more than 130 screen and 50-plus stage credits to his name, Trintignant was a highly prolific and respected talent who could perform anything from Shakespeare to commercial French comedies, from art house favorites by Bertolucci, Kieślowski and Truffaut to popular romances and sci-fi flicks — as...
- 6/17/2022
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Vladimir and Rosa.“Cinema contains everything. It joins writing, painting, music. It is the most complete art.”—Juliet Berto, Ciné-Bulles, 19861Juliet Berto burst onto the Parisian film scene in the rich late 60s period of experimentation and radicalization, just as the New Wave diverged into competing streams of political and humanist directors. Her biography (what scant details are publicly available) is mythical, and tragically short: Annie Jamet, born and living in southern France, attends a Grenoble film screening where Jean-Luc Godard is present; the director, captivated by 19-year-old Annie, offers her a role in his film 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her. Annie moved to Paris, and by the end 1967, Juliet Berto (as she is credited onscreen) had appeared in three Godard films, a relationship that would deepen over the course of the radical 60s. Berto then worked with Jacques Rivette during the 70s as a key collaborator and...
- 6/1/2022
- MUBI
Tom Cruise conquers Cannes with fighter jets, a standing ovation, and a surprise honorary Palme d’Or
Never try to outguess the Cannes Film Festival. The yearly gathering of cinema’s elite has bestowed its top prize, the Palme d’Or, to many groundbreaking international auteurs over the years, like Luis Buñuel, Federico Fellini, and Akira Kurosawa. Recent winners include Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Hirokazu Kore-eda, and Ruben Östlund. Geniuses all, but hardly the bunch that packs ‘em in at the local AMC.
But on Wednesday, Festival Director Thierry Frémaux led the exalted festival right into the Danger Zone. It presented A-list crowdpleaser Tom Cruise with an honorary Palme d’Or at the out-of-competition screening of “Top Gun: Maverick.” The award was said to be unexpected.
The first honorary Palme d’Or was given to Ingmar Bergman in 1997, awarded to correct the fact that the Swedish filmmaker had never won one for a competition title. Five years later Woody Allen won the second honorary Palme, and they’ve...
But on Wednesday, Festival Director Thierry Frémaux led the exalted festival right into the Danger Zone. It presented A-list crowdpleaser Tom Cruise with an honorary Palme d’Or at the out-of-competition screening of “Top Gun: Maverick.” The award was said to be unexpected.
The first honorary Palme d’Or was given to Ingmar Bergman in 1997, awarded to correct the fact that the Swedish filmmaker had never won one for a competition title. Five years later Woody Allen won the second honorary Palme, and they’ve...
- 5/19/2022
- by Jordan Hoffman
- Gold Derby
Expatriate blacklistee Joseph Losey is the perfect director for this excellent, strange tale, a big award winner in France. The terrible Occupation-era victimization of the Jewish citizens of Paris is told tangentially from the viewpoint of a jackal-like opportunist who buys art and valuables cheaply from Jews desperate for cash. But Klein has a little ‘doppelgänger’ problem straight out of Franz Kafka . . . and finds himself in an existential nightmare that’s strangely . . . appropriate. This original, superior thriller arrives in a new special edition.
Mr. Klein
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1123
1976 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 123 min. / Monsieur Klein / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 10, 2022 / 39.95
Starring: Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau, Francine Bergé, Michael Lonsdale, Juliet Berto, Suzanne Flon, Massimo Girotti, Jean Champion, Francine Racette, Louis Seigner.
Cinematography: Gerry Fisher
Production Designer: Alexandre Trauner
Film Editors: Marie Castro-Vasquez, Henri Lanoë, Michèle Neny
Original Music: Egisto Macchi, Pierre Porte
Written by Franco Solinas, collaborator...
Mr. Klein
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1123
1976 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 123 min. / Monsieur Klein / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 10, 2022 / 39.95
Starring: Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau, Francine Bergé, Michael Lonsdale, Juliet Berto, Suzanne Flon, Massimo Girotti, Jean Champion, Francine Racette, Louis Seigner.
Cinematography: Gerry Fisher
Production Designer: Alexandre Trauner
Film Editors: Marie Castro-Vasquez, Henri Lanoë, Michèle Neny
Original Music: Egisto Macchi, Pierre Porte
Written by Franco Solinas, collaborator...
- 5/10/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
More than three decades after he first attended the Cannes Film Festival, Forest Whitaker will receive the honorary Palme d’Or at the event’s 75th opening ceremony this month.
Academy Award winner Whitaker follows Jodie Foster in receiving the award, which is given out as a tribute to those figures whose artistic careers are matched by humanitarian commitments. Jeanne Moreau, Bernardo Bertolucci and Manoel de Oliveira are among the previous recipients.
“Thirty-four years ago, attending Cannes for the first time changed my life, and assured me that I’d made the right decision to devote myself to finding connectivity in humanity through film,” he said. “It’s always a privilege to return to this beautiful festival to both screen my own work, and to be inspired by many of the world’s greatest artists – and I feel incredibly honored to be celebrated as part of the Festival’s momentous 75th anniversary.
Academy Award winner Whitaker follows Jodie Foster in receiving the award, which is given out as a tribute to those figures whose artistic careers are matched by humanitarian commitments. Jeanne Moreau, Bernardo Bertolucci and Manoel de Oliveira are among the previous recipients.
“Thirty-four years ago, attending Cannes for the first time changed my life, and assured me that I’d made the right decision to devote myself to finding connectivity in humanity through film,” he said. “It’s always a privilege to return to this beautiful festival to both screen my own work, and to be inspired by many of the world’s greatest artists – and I feel incredibly honored to be celebrated as part of the Festival’s momentous 75th anniversary.
- 5/5/2022
- by Jesse Whittock
- Deadline Film + TV
'An artist of intense charisma and a luminous presence,” Cannes director Thierry Frémaux on honorary Palme d’Or recipient Forest Whitaker Photo: Wpdi Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker will receive Cannes Film Festival’s honorary Palme d’Or at this year’s 75th edition.
He follows in an illustrious line of honorary Palme recipients such as Jodie Foster last year and previously Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau, Agnès Varda and Bernardo Bertolucci among many. The award will be bestowed at the opening ceremony on 17 May.
The tenets of the award stipulate that it should pay tribute to “a sparkling artistic journey, a rare personality as well as a discreet but strong humanitarian commitment to key topical issues”.
Whitaker responded to the news by saying that he first attended the festival 34 years ago. “It changed my life, and assured me that I’d made the right decision to devote myself to finding connectivity in humanity through film.
He follows in an illustrious line of honorary Palme recipients such as Jodie Foster last year and previously Alain Delon, Jeanne Moreau, Agnès Varda and Bernardo Bertolucci among many. The award will be bestowed at the opening ceremony on 17 May.
The tenets of the award stipulate that it should pay tribute to “a sparkling artistic journey, a rare personality as well as a discreet but strong humanitarian commitment to key topical issues”.
Whitaker responded to the news by saying that he first attended the festival 34 years ago. “It changed my life, and assured me that I’d made the right decision to devote myself to finding connectivity in humanity through film.
- 5/5/2022
- by Richard Mowe
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Forest Whitaker will receive the honorary Palme d’or at the opening ceremony of the 75th Cannes Film Festival, following the footsteps of Jodie Foster.
Previous Cannes Palme d’Or honorees include Jeanne Moreau, Bernardo Bertolucci, Manoel de Oliveira, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Agnès Varda, or Alain Delon. The award pays tribute to a “sparkling artistic journey, a rare personality as well as a discreet but strong humanitarian commitment to key topical issues,” said the festival.
As part of the tribute, Christophe Castagne and Thomas Sametin’s movie “For the Sake of Peace,” which Whitaker produced, will play in the Special Screening section on May 18.
“34 years ago, attending Cannes for the first time changed my life, and assured me that I’d made the right decision to devote myself to finding connectivity in humanity through film,” said Whitaker. “It’s always a privilege to return to this beautiful festival to both screen my own work,...
Previous Cannes Palme d’Or honorees include Jeanne Moreau, Bernardo Bertolucci, Manoel de Oliveira, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Agnès Varda, or Alain Delon. The award pays tribute to a “sparkling artistic journey, a rare personality as well as a discreet but strong humanitarian commitment to key topical issues,” said the festival.
As part of the tribute, Christophe Castagne and Thomas Sametin’s movie “For the Sake of Peace,” which Whitaker produced, will play in the Special Screening section on May 18.
“34 years ago, attending Cannes for the first time changed my life, and assured me that I’d made the right decision to devote myself to finding connectivity in humanity through film,” said Whitaker. “It’s always a privilege to return to this beautiful festival to both screen my own work,...
- 5/5/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
To cite Monica Vitti as an icon, following her death in Rome this week at 90, is somehow unsatisfying. She could never be summed up as something so inert — she was far too vividly alive. If her sensuality has been called “chilly,” it nonetheless animated every frame she stood in or fast-tapped through in high heels. If the landscapes her greatest creative partner Michelangelo Antonioni directed her across were at times sprawling or forbidding, she always held the eye, whether with a look or a highly kinetic outburst.
To a young film buff crammed into a swaybacked seat at a Manhattan arthouse, beholding her for the first time was to risk a schoolboy crush. She’s been called “Impossibly lovely” on this site, and that’s true enough — impossible, and yet there she is onscreen. The sturdy lips forming a blossom of a mouth, the eyes that seem focused just a...
To a young film buff crammed into a swaybacked seat at a Manhattan arthouse, beholding her for the first time was to risk a schoolboy crush. She’s been called “Impossibly lovely” on this site, and that’s true enough — impossible, and yet there she is onscreen. The sturdy lips forming a blossom of a mouth, the eyes that seem focused just a...
- 2/3/2022
- by Fred Schruers
- Indiewire
Italian actress Monica Vitti, best known internationally for starring in Michelangelo Antonioni’s breakthrough cinematic trilogy “L’Avventura,” “La Notte” and “L’Eclisse,” as well as in the director’s “Red Desert,” has died. She was 90.
The news of her death was tweeted by former Rome mayor and film critic Walter Veltroni on Wednesday.
Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.
— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022
(Roberto Russo, her companion in these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no more. I do so with great grief, affection, and nostalgia)
Vitti, known for her enigmatic, distant beauty — the All Movie Guide termed her the “high priestess of frosty sensuality” — had been retired for more than a decade due to Alzheimer’s.
Vitti and Antonioni had certainly enjoyed a fruitful collaboration, but in...
The news of her death was tweeted by former Rome mayor and film critic Walter Veltroni on Wednesday.
Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.
— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022
(Roberto Russo, her companion in these years, asks me to communicate that Monica Vitti is no more. I do so with great grief, affection, and nostalgia)
Vitti, known for her enigmatic, distant beauty — the All Movie Guide termed her the “high priestess of frosty sensuality” — had been retired for more than a decade due to Alzheimer’s.
Vitti and Antonioni had certainly enjoyed a fruitful collaboration, but in...
- 2/2/2022
- by Carmel Dagan and Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
Monica Vitti, the Italian screen icon known for a string of 1960s classics, died Wednesday at 90, according to reports in Italy.
The news was conveyed by writer, director and politician Walter Veltroni on behalf of Vitti’s husband, Roberto Russo:
Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.
— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022
The feted actress, best known for movies including L’Avventura (1960), Red Desert (1964), L’Eclisse (1962) and La Notte (1961), had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for two decades.
Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli on November 3, 1931, in Rome, Vitti acted in amateur productions as a teenager then trained at Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts.
The actress shot to global fame following spectacular collaborations with legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vitti starred in L’Avventura as a detached and...
The news was conveyed by writer, director and politician Walter Veltroni on behalf of Vitti’s husband, Roberto Russo:
Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.
— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022
The feted actress, best known for movies including L’Avventura (1960), Red Desert (1964), L’Eclisse (1962) and La Notte (1961), had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for two decades.
Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli on November 3, 1931, in Rome, Vitti acted in amateur productions as a teenager then trained at Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts.
The actress shot to global fame following spectacular collaborations with legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vitti starred in L’Avventura as a detached and...
- 2/2/2022
- by Andreas Wiseman
- Deadline Film + TV
Oscar voters take their duties seriously and seem to have a few key criteria in voting: Is this work emotionally honest, does it pop off the screen, and is it something that will be admired 50 years from now?
Penelope Cruz in “Parallel Mothers” checks all those boxes. There are no guarantees with Oscars, but if there’s justice in the world, she will be nominated Feb. 8. She grabs the screen and invites comparisons to the best work of Bette Davis, Anna Magnani and Barbara Stanwyck, but is very much an original.
Cruz plays photographer Janis, who becomes a single mother. As she withholds the truth about her baby, she is trying to uncover the truth of mass killings that have been covered up since the Francisco Franco regime.
She rehearsed with writer-director Pedro Almodovar for four months. Still, filming was difficult. “I couldn’t release any emotions in the early section,...
Penelope Cruz in “Parallel Mothers” checks all those boxes. There are no guarantees with Oscars, but if there’s justice in the world, she will be nominated Feb. 8. She grabs the screen and invites comparisons to the best work of Bette Davis, Anna Magnani and Barbara Stanwyck, but is very much an original.
Cruz plays photographer Janis, who becomes a single mother. As she withholds the truth about her baby, she is trying to uncover the truth of mass killings that have been covered up since the Francisco Franco regime.
She rehearsed with writer-director Pedro Almodovar for four months. Still, filming was difficult. “I couldn’t release any emotions in the early section,...
- 1/27/2022
- by Tim Gray
- Variety Film + TV
"As fresh, playful, and enigmatic as ever." BFI has released a brand new trailer for the 60th anniversary re-release of François Truffaut's iconic classic Jules et Jim. The film originally opened in France on January 23rd, 1962 - exactly 60 years ago this week. It's getting a full theatrical re-release in the UK in February. No US plan has been set yet. François Truffaut's hugely popular New Wave classic sees Jeanne Moreau at her most ebullient as Catherine, a Parisian beauty caught up in a complex ménage à trois with the two friends of the title – one Austrian, the other French – just before the First World War. "A romantic rollercoaster of a movie, it’s fast, funny, stylish and affecting all at once." From BFI: "This re-release of Jules et Jim is part of a major Truffaut retrospective which also includes a re-release of The 400 Blows, a two-month season at BFI Southbank,...
- 1/26/2022
- by Alex Billington
- firstshowing.net
Piers Handling had spent most of his career at the Toronto International Film Festival, but nothing could prepare him for the shock of 9/11. As the news of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon made their way up north, the festival’s CEO and director was forced to contend with immediate questions about whether or not the show could go on. Those decisions reverberated across the city of Toronto and throughout the film community.
On the 20th anniversary of that tragic time, Handling — who left TIFF in 2018 and is currently writing a book about the history of film festivals — spoke to IndieWire about the tumultuous experience and what lessons could be extrapolated from it for the pandemic era.
The morning news cycle on 9/11 was chaotic. At what point did you realize the severity of the situation?
The reality didn’t really set in until right after the towers fell.
On the 20th anniversary of that tragic time, Handling — who left TIFF in 2018 and is currently writing a book about the history of film festivals — spoke to IndieWire about the tumultuous experience and what lessons could be extrapolated from it for the pandemic era.
The morning news cycle on 9/11 was chaotic. At what point did you realize the severity of the situation?
The reality didn’t really set in until right after the towers fell.
- 9/11/2021
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Jean-Paul Belmondo, the French cinema star best known for his performance in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless” in 1959, has died, his lawyer confirmed to the news agency Afp on Monday. He was 88.
A cause of death has not been made public.
Belmondo skyrocketed to international fame after appearing in Godard’s 1959 New Wave French classic “Breathless,” and became one of the country’s biggest stars throughout the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
Born in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, the young Belmondo started out as an amateur boxer and, in fact, had an undefeated record. But after spending years pursuing a career as a fighter, he later recalled, “I stopped when the face I saw in the mirror began to change.”
His spent his later teen years at a private drama school and started to perform comedy sketches in the French provinces. After studying for three years at the Conservatoire of Dramatic Arts,...
A cause of death has not been made public.
Belmondo skyrocketed to international fame after appearing in Godard’s 1959 New Wave French classic “Breathless,” and became one of the country’s biggest stars throughout the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s.
Born in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, the young Belmondo started out as an amateur boxer and, in fact, had an undefeated record. But after spending years pursuing a career as a fighter, he later recalled, “I stopped when the face I saw in the mirror began to change.”
His spent his later teen years at a private drama school and started to perform comedy sketches in the French provinces. After studying for three years at the Conservatoire of Dramatic Arts,...
- 9/6/2021
- by Rosemary Rossi
- The Wrap
Jean-Paul Belmondo, whose bad-boy presence in Jean-Luc Godard’s new wave masterpiece “Breathless” established him as the French idol of his generation, has died, Variety has confirmed. He was 88.
For more than a decade following the release of “Breathless,” Belmondo reigned as one of France’s top box office stars. The actor was likened alternately to James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando for his brooding, charismatic persona, and he proved able to work in virtually any genre. After “Breathless,” the cult that formed around him was dubbed le belmondisme by the French media. Unlike Dean, who was a rebel without a cause, Belmondo’s antihero persona was more existential, detached and irredeemable. With such magnetism, an American career could have been his for the asking, but he largely resisted studio-made productions and later in life openly criticized Hollywood for overly dominating film screens in France.
Though most closely associated with Godard,...
For more than a decade following the release of “Breathless,” Belmondo reigned as one of France’s top box office stars. The actor was likened alternately to James Dean, Humphrey Bogart and Marlon Brando for his brooding, charismatic persona, and he proved able to work in virtually any genre. After “Breathless,” the cult that formed around him was dubbed le belmondisme by the French media. Unlike Dean, who was a rebel without a cause, Belmondo’s antihero persona was more existential, detached and irredeemable. With such magnetism, an American career could have been his for the asking, but he largely resisted studio-made productions and later in life openly criticized Hollywood for overly dominating film screens in France.
Though most closely associated with Godard,...
- 9/6/2021
- by Richard Natale
- Variety Film + TV
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