settima

1940s

La Belle et la Bête [Beauty and the Beast] (Jean Cocteau + René Clément, 1946)

Nov

28

Giving Tuesday

La Belle et la Bête (1946)

The most beautiful flower, a rose, in La Bête's enchanted garden. DP: Henri Alekan.

Just before leaving home for a business trip, a father asks his three daughters what he can bring them as a return gift. The eldest two ask for silly, extravagant things. A monkey! A parrot! The youngest simply wishes the most beautiful flower which the father finds in an enchanted garden, guarded by a terrible beast. And will pay for with his life unless he gives his youngest away to the beast, to die in his place.

– Can such miracles really happen? – You and I are living proof.

#Cocteau and Clément's La Belle et la Bête is of course based on Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve's fairy-tale, which on its turn was based on the classic myth of Cupid and Psyche.

Hellzapoppin' (H.C. Potter, 1941)

Oct

24

National Crazy Day

Hellzapoppin' (1941)

Olsen and Johnson break all the walls. DP: Elwood Bredell.

“Any resemblance between HELLZAPOPPIN’ and a motion picture is purely coincidental”

– tagline

La Belle et la Bête [Beauty and the Beast] (Jean Cocteau + René Clément, 1946)

Aug

15

a cornucopia of wonder

La Belle et la Bête (1946)

La Belle (Josette Day) at a fancy table stacked with good foods and nice wines. She's cleaning her fingernails with the silverware while a chagrined Bête (Jean Marais) looks on. As magical as the story are the production and set design by Christian Bérard, Lucien Carré, and René Moulaert. They breathed a soul into almost everything, including the candelabras. DP: Henri Alekan.

– Does he crawl on four legs? What does he eat and drink?

– I've given him water to drink on occasion. He would never eat me.

Salón México (Emilio Fernández, 1949)

Aug

13

$120 cerveza

Salón México (1949)

Mercedes (Marga López) sitting at a small round table at the salón. A waiter just came over to take her order. In the other room, meticulously dressed couples dance to live music. DP: Gabriel Figueroa.

Canon City (Crane Wilbur, 1948)

Aug

1

Colorado Day

Canon City (1948)

Counting the inmates. DP: John Alton.

They've been planning this for months, Canon City's Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility's toughest inmates. It's going to happen on December 30, and all men are ready to go.

“Nice guys.”

Fascinating about Canon City is the usage of some of the actual locations, ánd people, involved in the 1947 #prison break.

 

Also striking, unfortunately, is the unevenness of the affair. John Alton's cinematography, while wonderful, wanders between noir and stuck camera shutter. And that voice-over… well, lets not mention that at all.

Canon City (Crane Wilbur, 1948)

Jul

31

grub

Canon City (1948)

A close-up of two prisoners' hands. One is handling grub with a spoon from a stainless steel soup bowl. DP: John Alton.

Black Narcissus (Michael Powell + Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Jul

29

National Lipstick Day

Black Narcissus (1947)

In one of the film's most haunting scenes, Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr) transforms herself using lipstick while a distraught Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) looks on. DP: Jack Cardiff.

High up in the Himalayas, Christian nuns attempt to found a school and hospital in a Raja's former palace. The palace, decorated with ancient erotic murals and run by the attractive Englishman Mr Dean, becomes an increasingly impossible to resist source of secular lust for the chaste Sisters.

“Do you think it's a good thing to let her feel important?”

– Sister Clodagh

With Jack Cardiff's sweeping cinematography and #Technicolor splendour, Black Narcissus establishes a stark contrast between the Sisters dour piety, the luminance of the Himalayan landscape, and the spellbinding pull of worldly desire. The bewitching #lipstick scene, set in a dimly lit space, works as well as it does precisely because of the scene's photography. That red smear, like blood pulsating from a fresh wound, becomes a deeply unsettling, vulgar gesture.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)

Jun

30

campfire grub

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Curtin (Tim Holt), Dobbs (Bogart), and Howard (Walter Huston) eating campfire grub. DP: Ted D. McCord.

“Say, mister. Will you stake a fellow American to a meal?”

– Dobbs

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)

Jun

29

National Handshake Day

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Fred (Humphrey Bogart) and Curtin (Tim Holt) shake hands witnessed by gruff prospector Howard (Walter Huston). DP: Ted D. McCord.

Cheated out of their wages, broke Americans #Bogart and Holt are approached by a former prospector. There's #gold in the #SierraMadre mountains, he tells them.

“I know what gold does to men's souls.”

– Howard

Seemingly character driven, Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is an adventure moved by a relentless #landscape, the urge to drift, and #greed.

La main du diable [The Devil's Hand / Carnival of Sinners] (Maurice Tourneur, 1943)

Jun

27

dinner (late)

La main du diable (1943)

A disgruntled man in a hotel restaurant. DP: Armand Thirard.

– Why so grumpy? – I'm starved! Dinner is always late!