settima

1960s

Нощта срещу тринадесети [Noshtta sreshtu 13-i / On the Eve of the 13th] (Anton Marinovich, 1961)

Mar

13

Нощта срещу 13-ти (1961)

Three men packed in a car. It's night and it's raining. DP: Trendafil Zahariev.

L'immortelle (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1963)

Mar

12

National Hitchcock Day

L'immortelle (1963)

A woman in silhouette (Françoise Brion) enters a building. The setup is perfectly symmetrical except a beam of light passing through the opened doors that highlight's the woman's presence, adding a sense of wrong to the scene. DP: Maurice Barry.

A favourite non-Hitchcock mystery for National Hitchcock Day (USA).

“You're a foreigner and you're lost.”

Le Songe Des Chevaux Sauvages [Dream of the Wild Horses] (Denys Colomb de Daunant, 1960)

Mar

10

ithrah69's birthday

Le Songe Des Chevaux Sauvages (1960)

Camargue horses galloping through a haze of water and dreams. DPs: Denys Colomb de Daunant & André Costey.

A film ithrah69 may like for their birthday.

 

Filmmaker and photographer Colomb de Daunant's spiritual sequel to Crin blanc : le cheval sauvage [White Mane] (1953) and Glamador (1958) follows the same wild Camargue horses in their dreams.

 

The accompanying music is performed on a Cristal Baschet, a glass instrument key to several avant-garde films. I refer to John Coulthart's writeup about Le Songe, which links through to an article about the Cristal Baschet.

Invasión [Invasion] (Hugo Santiago, 1969)

Mar

9

Bobby Fischer – 1943

Invasión (1969)

Don Porfirio (Juan Carlos Paz) in front of a map of Aquileia. DP: Ricardo Aronovich.

Strategy for Bobby Fischer's birthday (1943).

 

People meticulously plan, move, and countermove in response to an invasion.

Fata/Morgana [Left-Handed Fate / Panik 75] (Vicente Aranda, 1966)

Mar

9

Fata/Morgana (1966)

Gim (Teresa Gimpera) modelling in a photo studio. The photographer, another woman in silhouette, has an identical hairstyle and outfit. DP: Aurelio G. Larraya.

Nattlek [Night Games] (Mai Zetterling, 1966)

Mar

8

International Women's Day

Nattlek (1966)

Jan (Jörgen Lindström) and his mother (Ingrid Thulin) share a bed while she reads him a bedtime story. DP: Rune Ericson.

A mother for International Women's Day.

 

When returning home to the castle he grew up in, Jan attempts to free himself from the suffocating clutches of his neurotic mother.

 

This film was the final straw for Shirley Temple; she resigned from the board of the San Francisco Film Festival calling Zetterling's film “pornography for profit”.

Io la conoscevo bene [I Knew Her Well] (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1965)

Mar

5

Crispus Attucks – 1770

Io la conoscevo bene (1965)

Adriana (Stefania Sandrelli) seen through her apartment window. Rome is reflected in her face. DP: Armando Nannuzzi.

A wasteful act: Crispus Attucks, (arguably) the first American victim in the American Revolution, dies on March 5th, 1770.

“She's always happy. She desires nothing, envies no one, is curious about nothing. You can't surprise her. She doesn't notice the humiliations, though they happen to her every day. It all rolls off her back like some waterproof material. Zero ambition. No moral code. Not even a whore's love of money.”

– The Writer

An ambitious but aimless girl – she wants to be loved, and to be a model, a proto-Edie – mills about her day.

 

Sublimely shot, we see Adriana through glass panes, in reflections, in an off-focal plane, in other people's words.

The City of the Dead (John Llewellyn Moxey, 1960)

Mar

3

The City of the Dead (1960)

Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson), exploring. DP: Desmond Dickinson.

– Burn witch, burn witch, burn!

– Dig that crazy beat, man.

憂國 [Yūkoku / Patriotism or the Rite of Love and Death] (Yukio Mishima, 1966)

Feb

26

1936

憂國 (1966)

Reiko (Yoshiko Tsuruoka) walking through her lover's blood, her kimono drenched. DP: Kimio Watanabe.

Covers February 26–28, 1936.

”'I know how you feel,' Reiko says quietly. 'And I will follow you wherever you go.'”

– intertitles

Unsere Afrikareise [Our Trip to Africa] (Peter Kubelka, 1966)

Feb

22

National Wildlife Day

Unsere Afrikareise (1966)

A frame (source) shows a freshly killed zebra on its side. The film stock's perforations and sound track are visible. DP: Peter Kubelka.

Wild animals for this year's first National Wildlife Day (USA). A second one is on September 4.

“For me, Afrikareise is, in its own genre, the most intense sound film that exists. Sound and images are in synch like in nature (even if it isn’t about the natural sound of something). The sound becomes the acoustic portrait of the visual action.”

– Peter Kubelka, via

Commissioned to film a rich Austrian couple's hunting trip, Kubelka sat on the material for several years before editing it in something more than the sum of its parts.