settima

1960s

La Chinoise, ou plutôt à la Chinoise: un film en train de se faire [La chinoise] (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

Mar

19

Howard University Protest

La chinoise (1967)

Yvonne (Juliet Berto) holed up behind piles of Mao's Little Red Book, wielding a machine gun. DP: Raoul Coutard.

Student activism to commemorate the March 19 1968 Howard University Protest

“One must confront vague ideas with clear images”

– slogan on a wall

Five Maoist students theorise, then practice a radical overthrow via terrorism.

 

Loosely based on Dostoyevsky's Бѣсы [The Possessed] (1871–72).

Un soir, un train [One Night, a Train] (André Delvaux, 1968)

Mar

18

André Delvaux

Un soir, un train (1968)

Anouk Aimée and Yves Montand in character on a leaf-strewn floor, his head resting on her chest, with director André Delvaux and others surrounding them. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.

A favourite film, director, or producer for Luc Besson's birthday (1959).

 

Having only seen three of Delvaux's films, I feel I can safely say his work is hypnotic, but not in the common sense. We see a world through both Delvaux's and his protagonists eyes, and experience their duality as one. This displacement is a recurring theme in Delvaux's work, the work of a man raised in one world and speaking the language of another, both worlds bearing the same name, Belgium.

 

This slow tear is also the theme is his best known film, De man die zijn haar kort liet knippen [The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short] (1965), in which a schoolteacher loses himself after a pupil graduates. When we think we are firmly seated in Delvaux's universe, we fall back, like that moment just before sleep sets in. And again, in his tragically under-seen Belle from 1973. Now it's a poet who finds a woman living in a ramshackle hut in Belgium's peatland, her language an unknown. With only one main speaker, the duality forms in the poet's words, in his attempts to give her root.

 

And so do we, the viewers. We hang on to that root, Delvaux's, only to sink back into our own loss of words.

Baron Prášil [The Fabulous Baron Munchausen] (Karel Zeman, 1962)

Mar

14

Under the Skin – 2013

Baron Prášil (1962)

A weird of quirky sci-fi film on the date Under the Skin (2013) was released in the UK.

“I cast my hat out into the universe, let it greet those who are on their way from Earth. From this day forward, the Moon is no longer a dream.”

– Cyrano de Bergerac

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.