settima

Italy

L'eclisse [The Eclipse] (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962)

Jul

19

fruit

L'eclisse (1962)

Vitti as Vittoria in front of a fruit stand next to La Borsa, the Rome stock exchange located in the remnants of the Hadrianeum. The fruit in the middle is a Melone Mantovano, a type of cantaloupe. DP: Gianni Di Venanzo.

“I still can't figure out if it's an office, a market place, or a boxing ring. And maybe I don't even need to.”

– Vittoria

Le notti di Cabiria [Nights of Cabiria] (Federico Fellini, 1957)

Jul

18

National Caviar Day

Le notti di Cabiria (1957)

Cabiria (Giulietta Masina) about to experience an unforgettable meal of lobster and caviar. She's holding the lobster up by its antennae with a mix of bewilderment and amusement on her face. Her frumpy outfit looks completely out of place in Lazzari's (Amedeo Nazzari) fancy apartment. DP: Aldo Tonti.

Maria “Cabiria“ Ceccarelli (Giulietta Masina), a prostitute looking for happiness, meets famous movie star Alberto Lazzari (handsomely moustachioed Amedeo Nazzari). In his plush mansion, he treats her to an opulent – if not bewildering to Cabiria – meal of lobster and caviar.

“And what's this? I saw it in a movie once.”

– Cabiria

Co-written by #Pasolini, #Fellini's Le notti di Cabiria is a love letter to hope, life, #Rome, and of course his Giulietta.

Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

Jul

16

petit déjeuner

Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)

In one of the very few daytime scenes, Natacha (Anna Karina) and Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) share breakfast at a small table while awkwardly sitting on the armrests of two upholstered chairs. A large television is set up directly behind the table. DP: Raoul Coutard.

“Yes, I'm afraid of death… but for a humble secret agent that's a fact of life, like whisky. And I've drunk that all my life.”

– Lemmy Caution

Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)

Jul

16

AI Appreciation Day

Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965)

Natacha von Braun (Anna Karina) and Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine). Lights reflected in the windowpane that shields the two characters suggest “the existence of an obscure reality” (after Baudrillard). DP: Raoul Coutard..

Science fiction, of course, doesn't have to be driven by grandes effects, by superstar names and monumental backdrops. It can be cool, dry, colourless even. The hero, in trenchcoat and fedora, traverses a lightless city. There are few others at this time of night. The familiar landmarks of the City of Light become the voice of 𝛼-60, an artificial intelligence that presides over Alphaville.

𝛼-60: “Do you know what illuminates the night?”

Lemmy Caution: “Poetry.”

– 𝛼-60 playing the imitation game with Lemmy Caution

Based on a poem by Paul Éluard, #Godard's Alphaville bears similarities with Jean #Cocteau's Orphée (1950), transported to a mirror world of sorts. It also foreshadows not only our time, but also M. Hulot's, whose #Tativille could be the simulacra of 𝛼-60's simulated, dehumanised world.

La piscine [The Swimming Pool] (Jacques Deray, 1969)

Jul

13

“Chinese food”

La piscine (1969)

The two couples (Delon and Schneider, and Ronet and Birkin) awkwardly sharing dinner. There's wine in red glasses and the food, plated on rustic French dinnerware, is handled with chopsticks. DP: Jean-Jacques Tarbès.

“Change your dreams, not the world.”

– Harry

Lo straniero [The Stranger] (Luchino Visconti, 1967)

Jul

3

soup

Lo straniero (1967)

Arthur Meursault (Mastroianni) eating from a cracked bowl. DP: Giuseppe Rotunno.

Muerte de un ciclista [Death of a Cyclist / Age of Infidelity] (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1955)

Jun

28

National Insurance Awareness Day

Muerte de un ciclista (1955)

Juan (Alberto Closas) looking out at María José (Lucia Bosè) and the car after the crash. The cyclist is never shown. The scene echoes Beckett's Waiting for Godot. DP: Alfredo Fraile.

A couple rushing home at night hit a cyclist. Despite knowing that the man's still alive, they opt to leave the site of the #crash and never mention it again. News reports about the death of the cyclist cause a rupture; because of the couple's #class differences – she a wealthy socialite, he a former falange soldier turned university professor – because they're lovers, and because no one can know about their whereabouts on the night of the accident.

“He's still alive.”

Striking about Bardem's Muerte de un ciclista is its outsiderness in the Spanish film landscape. By adopting the visual language of both Italian #Neorealismo and Hollywood #melodrama, Bardem elegantly circumvents #Franco​ist censorship.

Stromboli (Terra di Dio) [Stromboli] (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

Jun

27

tuna (fresh)

Stromboli (Terra di Dio) (1950)

Karen (Ingrid Bergman) looking miserable at a small kitchen table. A huge tuna covers most of its surface. DP: Otello Martelli.

Posted while deciding on my film dinner. Eventually I went with Tourneur's La Main du Diable (1943).

“I don't care about your barley. Or, your vines! Or, your new terra!”

– Karen

Stromboli (Terra di Dio) [Stromboli] (Roberto Rossellini, 1950)

Jun

27

Decide To Be Married Day

Stromboli (Terra di Dio) (1950)

Antonio (Mario Vitale) and Karen (Ingrid Bergman). DP: Otello Martelli.

Karen – “Karin” in the opening credits – is a displaced Lithuanian woman in an Italy-based refugee camp. She meets an Italian military man bivouacking on the other side of the barbed wire and decides to say yes when he proposes. When the newly-weds leave for home, she finds to her dismay that he's a poor Sicilian fisherman from #Stromboli; a magnificent active volcanic island home to a small Catholic parish. Again displaced, Karen is confronted with herself more than with the others that share her faith.

“Here we are, poor wretches, in this hell, Condemned to tyranny.”

– Antonio

Roberto #Rossellini's Stromboli (Terra di Dio) is a peculiar melodramatic Italian/American hybrid that seems to strongly dismiss the Italian aspect. The significance of Struògnuli – the Sicilian name for the volcano – and the people's faith connected to the volatile mountain and the surrounding sea is presented as primitive superstition. That the Sicilian dialogue – song, prayer, life – remains untranslated and the locals' broken English is used as comic relief adds insult to injury.

 

Otello Martelli's photography excels when he manages to tear himself away from Bergman's face. Only when we're confronted with the magnificence of Struògnuli, the gifts from the ocean, and the greatness of nature we'll be able to understand why the island is man's home.

Le trou [The Hole / The Night Watch] (Jacques Becker, 1960)

Jun

25

care package

Le trou (1960)

Butchering a care package – butter, sausage and other joys of life – for contraband. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.