settima

1940s

Corridor of Mirrors (Terence Young, 1948)

Sep

3

Corridor of Mirrors (1948)

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

A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell + Emeric Pressburger, 1944)

Aug

27

A Canterbury Tale (1944)

Alison (Sheila Sim) looking out over the rolling hills of Kent with the Canterbury Cathedral somewhere out there. DP: Erwin Hillier.

“Well, there are more ways than one of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the old road, and as you walk, think of them and of the old England. They climbed Chillingbourne Hill, just as you. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, and the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers. The same birds are singing. When you lie flat on your back and rest, and watch the clouds sailing, as I often do, you're so close to those other people, that you can hear the thrumming of the hoofs of their horses, and the sound of the wheels on the road, and their laughter and talk, and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I turn the bend in the road, where they too saw the towers of Canterbury, I feel I've only to turn my head, to see them on the road behind me.”

– Thomas Colpeper, JP

Európa nem válaszol [Europe Doesn't Answer] (Géza von Radványi, 1941)

Aug

26

1939

Európa nem válaszol (1941)

DP: Rudolf Icsey.

 

颱風圏の女 [Taifuken no onna / The Woman in the Typhoon Area] (Hideo Ōba, 1948)

Aug

23

Taifuken no onna (1948)

Pirate moll Kuriko Sato (Setsuko Hara) (via). DP: Hiroyuki Nagaoka.

Celebrating International Talk like a Pirate Day*: a [favourite] pirate film.

 

* International Talk like a Pirate Day takes place on September 19.

The Beast with Five Fingers (Robert Florey, 1946)

Aug

15

The Beast with Five Fingers (1946)

Hilary Cummins (Peter Lorre). DP: Wesley Anderson.

“Eight bones has the carpus, five the metacarpus, fourteen the phlanges, all in all, all in all, twenty-seven all in all. Abracadabra.”

– Donald Arlington

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

The Red Shoes (Michael Powell + Emeric Pressburger, 1948)

Aug

3

red

The Red Shoes (1948)

A ballerina's lower body in focus. She wears a long tulle off-white dress, slightly sheer, with her white stockings showing through slightly. Part of her right lower arm is visible, the hand clutched, a turquoise bracelet on the wrist. What stands out most are her ruby red ballet shoes that appear to move away from her. The backdrop is a dull, washed out carpet. DP: Jack Cardiff.

Red: best use of red in food or fashion*

“She looked at the red shoes, for she thought there was no harm in looking. She put them on, for she thought there was no harm in that either. But then she went to the ball and began dancing. When she tried to turn to the right, the shoes turned to the left. When she wanted to dance up the ballroom, her shoes danced down. They danced down the stairs, into the street, and out through the gate of the town. Dance she did, and dance she must, straight into the dark woods.”

– Hans Christian Andersen, De røde Skoe (1845, tranl. Jean Hersholt, 1949), via

Another one of The Archers' #Technicolor extravaganzas. This time, not to wow the worn-down post-war black-and-white audience, but as an an active storytelling instrument.

 

Built around Hans Christian Andersen's haunting tale De røde Skoe (1845).

 

Night Has a Thousand Eyes (John Farrow, 1948)

Aug

3

Night Has a Thousand Eyes (1948)

Mentalist John Triton (Edward G. Robinson, middle) and two of his conspirators. DP: John F. Seitz.

A continuity error later on in the movie makes it August 4.

“I'd become a sort of a reverse zombie. I was living in a world already dead, and I alone knowing it.”

– John Triton

簪​ [Kanzashi / Ornamental Hairpin] (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)

Jul

24

relaxation

簪 (1941)

Men relaxing at a roten-buro, an outdoor onsen. DP: Suketarō Inokai.

Someone goes to a spa, beach, or retreat*

“There’s something almost poetic about finding a hairpin in the bath. It’s like the sole of my foot has been pierced by poetry.”

– Nanmura, via

Relaxing at an onsen, a soldier steps on the titular kanzashi. Now injured with too much time on his hands, he and his fellow nosy patrons go out looking for its owner.

 

The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946)

Jul

20

1940

spoiler warning: click to toggle image The Killers (1946)

The July 21 headline. DP: Elwood Bredell.

“Don't ask a dying man to lie his soul into Hell.”

– Lt. Sam Lubinsky