settima

@settima@zirk.us

Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)

Sep

6

Sun

Pickpocket (1959)

The newspaper of Sunday, September 6, announcing a derby. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.

“The pickings were poor and not worth the risk.”

– Michel

Homicidal (William Castle, 1961)

Sep

6

Homicidal (1961)

Man's hands hold a picture of Emily (Joan Marshall). DP: Burnett Guffey.

“We've been to Haunted Hills, and through Tinglers, and even Ghosts... but now we're going to meet a group of people who just happen to be… Homicidal.”

– William Castle, introduction

Nuits rouges [L'homme sans visage / Shadowman] (Georges Franju, 1974)

Sep

6

Nuits rouges (1974)

A faceless man in black wearing a red balaclava (Jacques Champreux) holds his right wrist, which is bleeding profusely. DP: Guido Bertoni.

Jaider, der einsame Jäger [Jaider, the Lonely Hunter] (Volker Vogeler, 1971)

Sep

5

Mother Teresa

Jaider, der einsame Jäger (1971)

Gottfried John as Jaider (via). DP: Gérard Vandenberg.

Mother Teresa's death day: someone assists the poor. A Heimatfilm in reverse and Italowestern in disguise.

“Denn auf den Bergen, ja da ist die Freiheit, denn auf den Bergen ist es doch so schön, dort wo auf grauenhafte Weise der Jennerwein zugrund mußt gehn.”

Jennerwein-Lied, 19th c.

Jaider, just returned home from the Franco-Prussian War and incapable to find work, turns to poaching to feed himself and his impoverished town. Soon he leads a gang of poachers, who in their turn are hunted by Bavarian soldiers and state-sanctioned hunters. Loosely based on legendary “Jaider” (“hunter”) and poacher Georg Jennerwein.

Le vampire de Düsseldorf [The Vampire of Dusseldorf] (Robert Hossein, 1965)

Sep

5

Le vampire de Düsseldorf (1965)

Robert Hossein as Peter Kuerten [sic]. DP: Alain Levent.

海底から来た女 [Kaitei kara kita onna / Woman from the Sea] (Koreyoshi Kurahara, 1959)

Sep

4

Kaitei kara kita onna (1959)

The mysterious sea woman (Hisako Tsukuba, who under the name Chako van Leeuwen went on to produce the Jawsploitation franchise Piranha) and a bewitched Toshio (Tamio Kawachi). Note how the boat's sail resembles a shark's dorsal fin. DP: Yoshihiro Yamazaki.

It's this month's Bales Challenges' dad's VaderJaws' birthday! Celebrating with Vader, or sharks, or churches, or Chvrches. Erm… let's stick to sharks.

 

A strange woman appears in the life of a young man. He falls in love with her, but the fishermen know. She's the wife of a shark killed years ago. And she's out for revenge.

 

Doing Hooptober parallel to Bales. Expect some contamination of the September/October posts.

Petit à petit [Little by Little] (Jean Rouch, 1970)

Sep

3

Skyscraper Day

Petit à petit (1970)

Damouré (Damouré Zika) measures a Parisian with craniology callipers. No skyscraper in this still, but there's scaffolding. DP: Jean Rouch.

A skyscraper for Skyscraper Day (USA)

 

In the sequel to Rouch's Jaguar (1967), Damouré wants a high rise for his Niger business with “as many floors as he has wives”. He decides to travel to Paris to learn about the construction of such building, and what made Paris to the Paris of today. While there, he gets distracted by the peculiarities of the French natives. Worried about Damouré's increasingly puzzling postcards, his company sends out Lam (Lam Ibrahim Dia) to bring him home.

Flic Story [Cop Story] (Jacques Deray, 1975)

Sep

3

1947

Flic Story (1975)

A close-up of a man's feet hastily walking along a corridor. Superimposed it reads 3 SEPTEMBRE 1974. DP: Jean-Jacques Tarbès.

Corridor of Mirrors (Terence Young, 1948)

Sep

3

Corridor of Mirrors (1948)

Mifanwy (Edana Romney) anachronistically smoking a cigarette. DP: André Thomas.

Taxi zum Klo (Frank Ripploh, 1980)

Sep

2

Christa McAuliffe 1948 – 1986

Taxi zum Klo (1980)

Frank (Frank Ripploh) teaching kids about the human body on an anatomy dummy. DP: Horst Schier.

A teacher for what would have been Christa McAuliffe's birthday.

“Ich mag Männer, bin 30 Jahre alt, von Beruf Lehrer.”

– Frank Ripploh

Frank Ripploh is a sexual ethics and biology teacher by day, and hedonistic gay man and aspiring pornographer by night. When Frank Ripploh, the man, publicly came out in 1978 in the tabloid Stern, he lost his teaching job and did become that filmmaker. Taxi zum Klo – litt. taxi to the john/loo – is his story. A frank pre-AIDS pre-Internet pre-victimhood depiction of male gay culture in West Germany. Maybe raw, possibly misogynist, definitely true to life.