settima

@settima@zirk.us

Du côté de la côte [Along the Coast] (Agnès Varda, 1958)

Aug

9

yellow

Du côté de la côte (1958)

Two people, one big one small, in identical canary yellow robes and straw sun hats on the beach (more here). DPs: Quinto Albicocco & Raymond Castel.

Yellow: in food or fashion*

“Tourists prefer the trendy colors, yellow and blue. Pacing fancies, hotels are painted yellow and blue. Blue wins. All women want to be fashionable. All women wear blue, except the English, those learning to swim, and the Germans, who are dedicated to green.”

– narrator

The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)

Aug

9

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) and husband Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) in the dizzying modernist finale. DP: Charles Lawton Jr..

“You need more than luck in Shanghai.”

– Elsa Bannister

Seksmisja [Sexmission] (Juliusz Machulski, 1984)

Aug

9

Seksmisja (1984)

Two poor captured extinct men enjoying breakfast and cigarettes. DP: Jerzy Łukaszewicz.

– Men are extinct.

– They were not mammoths!

8-8-88 Church of Satan Mansonite Rally (Boyd Rice, 1988)

Aug

8

1988

8-8-88 Church of Satan Mansonite Rally (1988)

The marquee of the San Francisco Strand Theater. Mentioned are two films: animation A Bitter Message of Hopeless Grief by Jonathan Reiss (1988), and excellent Mansonsploitation drama The Other Side of Madness aka The Helter Skelter Murders by Frank Howard (1971). Also billed (what a night!) are NON and Secret Chiefs 3.Still (via). DP: ?.

Provocateur Boyd Rice and friends perform a Satanic rite on August 8, 1988; exactly 20 years minus one year minus one day after the Tate-LaBianca murders.

“The entire world is rotten and corrupt… to us they're dead people who refuse to lay down, they're cadavers”

– Boyd Rice speaking to Geraldo Rivera (via)

Please note that the linked article is written by an dimwitted ignoramus completely oblivious of Boyd Rice's, and Anton LaVey's, prankster background.

墮落天使 [Do lok tin si / Fallen Angels] (Wong Kar-Wai, 1995)

Aug

7

yellow

Do lok tin si (1995)

The killer's agent (Michelle Reis) rides an escalator in a yellow and black underground station. She wears an all-black outfit and yellow nail polish (via). DP: Christopher Doyle.

Yellow: a building or structure*

“Just when I really needed a raincoat, he returned to my side. It would be so great if it could rain forever.”

– Punkie

Domenica d'agosto [Sunday in August] (Luciano Emmer, 1950)

Aug

7

1949

Domenica d'agosto (1950)

A little boy runs down a Roman street. Superimposed a calendar page: SUNDAY AUGUST 7 S. GAETANO THE SUN RISES AT 5:15 SUNSET AT 19:42 – CRESCENT MOON. “S. Gaetano” refers to Saint Cajetan, who's feast day is on August 7. DPs: Leonida Barboni, Ubaldo Marelli & Domenico Scala.

Ovoce stromů rajských jíme [We Eat the Fruit of the Trees of Paradise] (Věra Chytilová, 1970)

Aug

6

orange

Ovoce stromů rajských jíme (1970)

Eva (Jitka Novákova) devouring oranges under a black umbrella (via). DP: Jaroslav Kučera.

Orange: food or fashion*

“Tell me the truth!”

– choir

An allegorical, psychedelic retelling of Genesis 3 and the Fall of Man

 

La baie des anges [Bay of Angels] (Jacques Demy, 1963)

Aug

6

mercredi

La baie des anges (1963)

The bank where Jean Fournier (Claude Mann) works. A wall calendar, slightly tilted, reads Août 6 Mercredi. DP: Jean Rabier.

“Life has its tricks. Its oddities.”

– Jackie Demaistre

Эффект Кулешова [Kuleshov Effect] (Lev Kuleshov, 1918)

Aug

5

Kuleshov Effect (1918)

A closeup of a man, followed by a medium shot of a child in a coffin, then back to the man. Can you see how his expression changes? (via). DP: to be determined.

Celebrating Dia de Los Muertos [on November 1 and 2, of course]: a cemetery, coffin, or dead person*

“When we began to compare the typically American, typically European, and typically Russian films, we noticed that they were distinctly different from one another in their construction. We noticed that in a particular sequence of a Russian film there were, say, ten to fifteen splices, ten to fifteen different set-ups. In the European film there might be twenty to thirty such set-ups (one must not forget that this description pertains to the year 1916), while in the American film there would be from eighty, sometimes upward to a hundred, separate shots. The American films took first place in eliciting reactions from the audience; European films took second; and the Russian films, third. We became particularly intrigued by this, but in the beginning we did not understand it.”

– Lev Kuleshov, The Principles of Montage, from The Practice of Film Direction (pp. 183-195) (source)

Director Lev Kuleshov explains what happens when a scene is followed by a reaction shot. Depending on the preceding image, the viewer projects an emotion onto the performer's facial expression. In his most famous montage, made up of existing footage – because property is theft, we see matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine “react” to a bowl of soup, a little girl in a coffin, and a woman sprawled out on a divan.

 

地獄門 [Jigokumon / Gate of Hell] (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)

Aug

4

orange

Jigokumon (1953)

The shrine's torii as seen in the film. Vermilion contains mercury, which not only acts as a preservative but is also believed to ward off evil. DP: Kōhei Sugiyama.

Orange: a building or structure*

“Today is the first day of a life of sacrifice.”

– Moritoo Endō

Partially filmed near the 厳島神社 (Itsukushima Shrine) with its striking vermilion torii.

 

Shot on Eastmancolor, relatively cheap and globally available, and influenced by Hollywood colour melodramas of the time, in particularly Rudolph Maté's Mississippi Gambler (1953) (source), and in its turn greatly influenced the implementation of colour in global cinema to come.

 

Jigokumon won two Academy Awards in 1955, for Best Costume Design and Best Foreign Language Film.