Part of the never-realised #SuperStar-studded The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga, #Warhol's Afternoon documents a day in the life of doomed socialite Edie Sedgwick. Miss Sedgwick and her entourage (Ondine, Dorothy Dean, Arthur Loeb, and Donald Lyons) spend an afternoon at #Edie's place. The superstars, the bored and the beautiful, chat, drink and do drugs.

“Isn’t it wonderful that we can be just friends?”

Jōhatsu, literally “evaporation” is the Japanese term for people disappearing without a trace. Salesman Tadashi Oshima is one of them. Director Shōhei Imamura, together with Oshima's fiancé Yoshie Hayakawa and actor Shigeru Tsuyuguchi created an investigative documentary that looks into this man, his motives, his possible whereabouts, and the others that are gone.

 

人間蒸発 is a fascinating exploration of aspects of 1960s Japanese society that make jōhatsu distinct from similar phenomena elsewhere.

#Sisters Ester and Anna arrive with Anna's son Johan in the small Central European town of Timoka. The country verges on the brink of war. Unwell Ester is confined to her hotel room, Anna roams Timoka's establishments, Johan wanders the hotel corridors.

“You need to watch your step among all the ghosts and memories.”

– Ester

It's hard to watch #Bergman's Tystnaden without #StanleyKubrick's ghosts sidling in. Tystnaden however doesn't need consternation to cause dread. The interaction and lack thereof between the three leads and the few extras translate into something merely tangible and evermore frightful.

Warren Beatty plays Mickey, a #StandUpComedian who has it all, then gambles it all away. Well, that's the first 5 minutes of Arthur Penn's Mickey One. Beatty is out of his element, and the movie's still too indebted to the cheery 60s to carry that New American Cinema grit.

“I'm the king of the silent pictures. I'm hiding out till talkies blow over.”

– Mickey One

Having said that, there are several great small surreal moments that are carried by uncredited character actors alone. And then there's a sole spotlight, stealing it all away.

A scandal, that's what it was! In the late 1960s, Peter Fleischmann picked the picturesque Catholic village of #Landshut as the backdrop for Jagdszenen aus #Niederbayern, the film adaptation of Martin Sperr's #TheatrePlay with the same name.

 

A young man named Abram – played by Sperr – returns to his family village. Soon the townspeople's thorns move from the in their eyes other disgraceful villagers to the much-needed mechanic.

“Ich habe ihn halb tot geschlagen, ich schwör's. Ich kann nichts dafür, dass eine Drecksau draus geworden ist.”

Where did he return from? He was in prison. What for? For being a homosexual. He's a Drecksau (a filthy pig), his mother says. The village whore can't turn him around. A sow is slaughtered in real time in celebration of a successful #harvest and plans for the town's future are forged.

 

While created when West Germany's #Paragrafen175 was in place [1872–1994], illegality of same-sex relations], the homosexual aspect wasn't the main cause of the outrage. Some of the Landshutter villagers who played alongside the professional actors felt they were depicted as being backwards. This isn't a movie about hunting, sigted some. Lifting the veil of the prevalence of, a #Fernweh in a sense, that Germany (hush) was another.

 

Catholic Mass is a theatrical re-enactment of the life and suffering of the son of God. When rites outstay their meaning, when invocations turn routine, the worshippers lose sight.

The one that got bombed by Strangelove.

“You're talking about a different kind of war.”

– General Stark

Both Lumet's Fail Safe and #Kubrick's #ColdWar comedy came out in 1964, right after the #CubaCrisis. The world was awash with the realisation that the bomb, The Bomb, wasn't merely proverbial flexing. And when crisis happens, there are two options. One is to laugh, the other is to grasp. Sadly for Lumet, and the world, his Fail Safe was released while everyone was still too busy chuckling.

To support his family, small-town boy Domenico moves to Milan in the hope to find a job. Eventually he's employed, as a clerk in a drab office replacing a senior worker who died. While the days drag on, only interrupted by coffee shop small talk with fellow teenager Antonietta, the Christmas office #party draws nearer.

“My wife gave me a big kiss this morning. I only get kisses once a month, on payday.”

– Sartori

With the dark absurdity of coming out of fascism and having to run a real-world country with a naive ineptitude – represented by the too-large-borrowed-from-father-suits – and pretence childlike bureaucratic procedures, Olmi's Il posto is a wonderfully sharp observation of postwar Italy.

Never was or will I be a fan of Jacques #Tati, the loveable Luddite who wouldn't be as big as he became if it wasn't for the technological wonders of the 20th century. Having said that, his Playtime (1967) holds a special place in my heart.

 

Tati's alter ego Monsieur #Hulot roams a hyper-modern #Paris, actually an enormous soundstage dubbed Tativille. People, buildings and gadgets interact with and against each other, each and everyone as plotless as a prop. In unison, it becomes a perfectly orchestrated symphony of maddening modernism.

 

But Tati wouldn't be Tati if it wasn't for a glimpse of quiet nostalgia. A woman holding the glass-and-steel entrance door of yet another concrete office building. In the glass, a burst of warm light and colour and movement. And then it's gone, and we remember how that tower once was the thorn in the Luddite's eye, that “baroque and mercantile fancy of a builder of machines”.

 

I'm going to take Mr Ebert's words to heart for my long overdue revisit to #Tativille:

”'Playtime' is a peculiar, mysterious, magical film. Perhaps you should see it as a preparation for seeing it; the first time won't quite work.”

– Roger Ebert

During a #summer #vacation on #FireIsland, two young men come across Sandy, an attractive young woman with an injured #seagull. While nursing the bird back to life, the relationship between the three deepens. A second girl, the much younger Rhoda (the breathtaking Catherine Burns) is taken in by the trio.

“What are you going to do with the rest of your life? Sit on the shore and watch?”

– Sandy

Set almost entirely on a sunny #beach, Frank Perry's Last Summer may be one of the most claustrophobic films you'll ever watch.