settima

biography

Rope (Alfred Hitchcock, 1948)

Jun

9

Rope (1948)

A man in a dark suit has his clenched hand on top of a stack of fancy gilded dinner plates. He's holding a piece of rope, just an ordinary household article. DPs: William V. Skall & Joseph A. Valentine.

“Mr. Cadell got a bad leg in the war for his courage. And you've got your sleeve in the celery, Mr. Phillip.”

– Mrs. Wilson

少年 [Shōnen / Boy] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1969)

May

6

少年 (1969)

The boy in his school uniform (Bin Amatsu) at a table in a traditional Japanese room with his meal untouched. A man eats next to the kid who glances at someone or something offscreen. The table is set for three. DPs: Seizō Sengen & Yasuhiro Yoshioka.

El chacal de Nahueltoro [Jackal of Nahueltoro] (Miguel Littin, 1969)

May

2

soup

El chacal de Nahueltoro (1969)

The man (Nelson Villagra) just handed a tin plate to kind Rosa (Shenda Román) for a refill while they talk about his life. DP: Héctor Ríos.

Full title: En cuanto a la infancia, andar, regeneración y muerte de Jorge del Carmen Valenzuela Torres, quien se hace llamar también José del Carmen Valenzuela Torres, Jorge Sandoval Espinoza, José Jorge Castillo Torres, alias el Campano, el Trucha, el Canaca, el Chacal de Nahueltoro.

Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut [A Man Escaped] (Robert Bresson, 1956)

May

2

Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (1956)

A hand with dirty nails writing on a scrap of paper with a pencil stump. It starts “Mai 2 Ma chère maman, Je suis à la pris[…]“. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.

“With nothing to do, no news and in terrible solitude, we were 100 unfortunates awaiting our fate. I had no illusions about my own. If I could only escape, run away…”

– Fontaine

Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut [A Man Escaped] (Robert Bresson, 1956)

Dec

29

slop

Un condamné à mort s'est échappé ou Le vent souffle où il veut (1956)

A man's hand holding a spoon at a perpendicular angle. DP: Léonce-Henri Burel.

“Time to empty our slop pails and run a little water over our faces, then back to our cells for the entire day.”

– Fontaine

少年 [Shōnen / Boy] (Nagisa Ōshima, 1969)

Dec

17

Freebie: National Insurance Awareness Day

少年 (1969)

The boy waiting next to a buzy road. DPs: Seizō Sengen & Yasuhiro Yoshioka.

A boy (Bin Amatsu), helps out his father and stepmother's insurance money scam by pretending to be injured in traffic.

L'enfant sauvage [The Wild Child] (François Truffaut, 1970)

Nov

14

Young Readers Day

L'enfant sauvage (1970)

Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron (Jean-Pierre Cargol), reads letters from a board under supervision of Dr. Jean Itard (Truffaut). DP: Néstor Almendros.

One of the most elaborately recorded “feral child” cases is that of the Wild Boy of Aveyron. In the year 1800, after few fruitless attempts to bound him to civilisation, a young boy left the forests of Saint-Sernin-sur-Rance and settled in. The child's primal appearance and lack of speech labeled him an idiot. However, in the era of Enlightenment, the question of nurture versus nature was a pressing one. Studies on Victor began.

“I'm glad that you came home. Do you understand? This is your home. You're no longer a wild boy, even if you're not yet a man.”

– Dr. Itard

Truffaut explores L'enfant sauvage right when the idea of the noble savage seemed to lock on with counterculture. With #Truffaut as Victor's tutor Itard in front of the camera, directly guiding amateur child actor (and “gipsy”) Cargol, the film not only reimagines Victor's fate, but reenacts Western presumed enlightenment over The Other.

Mahler (Ken Russell, 1974)

Nov

12

World Pneumonia Day

Mahler (1974)

Gustav (Robert Powell) and Alma (Georgina Hale), both in a three piece suit with top hats. She's in a shadows, wearing a tight, black veil that completely conceals her features. DP: Dick Bush.

A sickly #GustavMahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) dwell on their shared lives while travelling to Vienna by train. Storylines – circular like a journey, rondo like #Mahler's compositions – drift from the ordinary to the grotesque.

“I don't want to imitate nature. I want to capture its very essence. As if all the birds and the beasts die tomorrow and the world became a desert, when people heard my music – they would still know, feel, what nature was.”

– Gustav Mahler

This would be the composer's final tour. A train took him to a Vienna sanatorium where not much later he'd succumb to #pneumonia.

کلوزآپ ، نمای نزدیک [Klūzāp, nemā-ye nazdīk / Close-Up] (Abbas Kiarostami, 1990)

Nov

8

Klūzāp, nemā-ye nazdīk (1990)

Hossain Sabzian as himself. He sits behind a low table holding various refreshments, presented by his host. DP: Ali Reza Zarrindast.

U bent mijn moeder (Horst Königstein, 1984)

Sep

21

World Alzheimer's Day

U bent mijn moeder (1984)

Joop Admiraal in the role of his mother. During the monologue, the actor switches character and props.