settima

Italy

Werckmeister harmóniák (Béla Tarr, 2000)

Sep

26

Shamu The Whale Day

Werckmeister harmóniák (2000)

A man in a dark hat and coat approaches the whale. The huge creature lays in an enormous open wooden crate in the middle of a town square. DPs: Patrick de Ranter, Miklós Gurbán, Erwin Lanzensberger, Gábor Medvigy, Emil Novák & Rob Tregenza.

“All I ask is that you step with me into the boundlessness, where constancy, quietude and peace, infinite emptiness reign.”

– János Valuska

The Medium (Gian Carlo Menotti, 1951)

Sep

18

The Medium (1951)

Madame Flora (Marie Powers) by herself at a small table in a shady bar. DP: Enzo Serafin.

Ostia [A Violent Life] (Sergio Citti, 1970)

Sep

11

supper

Ostia (1970)

A group of vulgar looking people eating outdoors at a very long table in front of an old crumbing wall at a very long table. The scene is a re-enactment of Da Vinci's Il Cenacolo / Last Supper. DP: Mario Mancini.

Ostia [A Violent Life] (Sergio Citti, 1970)

Sep

10

National Pet Memorial Day

Ostia (1970)

Bandiera and Rabbino and their beloved Rosina, thoughtfully covered with a woollen blanket. DP: Mario Mancini.

Bandiera and Rabbino, two young bumpkins, find that Rosina, their beloved ewe, has been butchered by their father. Years later, the two share their lives with a beautiful blonde who they found believing to be dead.

Il grande silenzio [The Great Silence] (Sergio Corbucci, 1968)

Aug

26

horse

Il grande silenzio (1968)

A man in a heavy fur coat (Bruno Corazzari) is eating at a small table when Silenzio (Jean-Louis Trintignant) enters the small establishment. Outside the landscape is covered in snow. DP: Silvano Ippoliti.

– What do you want?

– We just want that horse of yours.

– You want my horse, there's an awful lot of ya. What are you gonna do with just one horse, anyhow?

– Eat it. We're gonna feed off that beast for at least a week.

L'œil du malin [The Eye of Evil / The Third Lover] (Claude Chabrol, 1962)

Aug

8

L'œil du malin (1962)

A table covered with a neatly ironed table cloth and on it, several stacks of flat and soup plates, plus silverware and nesting aluminium pans. DP: Jean Rabier.

Dillinger è morto (1969)

Glauco (Michel Piccoli) finishing his copious dinner with half a watermelon. In his right hand the copy of the July 25, 1934 Chicago Daily Tribune with the headline CLEAR UP DILLINGER MYSTERY. DP: Mario Vulpiani.

Dillinger è morto (1969)

July 31: watermelon on #NationalWatermelonDay

Dillinger è morto [Dillinger Is Dead] (Marco Ferreri, 1969)

Pow!

Industrial designer Glauco (Michel Piccoli) arrives home after a long long, tedious day. His wife Ginette (Anita Pallenberg) – in bed high on painkillers – cooked dinner but the dish is bland and long cold, and the maid (Annie Girardot) is already sleeping. Glauco decides to cook himself a gourmet meal. Looking for ingredients he finds a 1934 newspaper reporting the dead of Chicago gangster John Dillinger with inside of it a rusty 1930s revolver. Fascinated, he meticulously restores the handgun while preparing his meal.

Dillinger è morto is a story of food and alienation. Piccoli's Glauco, bored of his successful career, bored of his beautiful wife, bored of his beautiful house, finds sudden vigour in the act of preparing food and restoring an item that shouldn't be where it is and with that, essentially recreates John Dillinger's escape from Crown Point.

John Dillinger posing with a Tommy gun and the hand-carved wooden gun that he used to escape inescapable Crown Point jail on March 3, 1934. Crudely carved into the dupe's barrel are the words COLT 38. John Dillinger

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #MarcoFerreri #MichelPiccoli #AnitaPallenberg #AnnieGirardot #TeoUsuelli #MarioVulpiani #Italy #drama #crime #satire #food #1960s ★★★★☆

#todo

Serpico (Sidney Lumet, 1973)

Jul

30

National Whistleblower Day

Serpico (1973)

The cover of the Austrian film magazine “Neues Filmprogramm”. A red-filtered lobby card of Frank Serpico (Al Pacino) and his partner (F. Murray Abraham, uncredited) during police proceedings. DP: Arthur J. Ornitz.

In the late 1960s, Frank Serpico worked as a plainclothes cop for the #NYPD. He spoke out when he uncovered systematic, widespread #corruption within the force, but his findings were ignored. In 1970, Serpico cowrote a page 1 article for the New York Times about the problem, which led to the instalment of the Commission to Investigate Alleged Police Corruption aka the Knapp Commission.

“The reality is that we do not wash our own laundry; it just gets dirtier.”

– Frank Serpico

La ragazza con la pistola [The Girl with a Pistol] (Mario Monicelli, 1968)

Jul

28

La ragazza con la pistola (1968)

Assunta Patanè (Monica Vitti) seated between two dinner tables on a long, padded bench. She's clutching her purse and appears to be waiting for something. On the table to her right a sugar bowl and a branded ashtray. DP: Carlo Di Palma.

“Ah, well, if you love somebody, shoot!”

– Dr. Tom Osborne

L'homme qui ment [The Man Who Lies] (Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1968)

Jul

25

soup

L'homme qui ment (1968)

The titular man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) at a dinner table, observed by Sylvia (Sylvia Turbová) and Maria (Sylvie Bréal). The room is white and sparsely furnished. DP: Igor Luther.