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Io la conoscevo bene [I Knew Her Well] (Antonio Pietrangeli, 1965)
Apr
2
cocktails
A lone Roberto (Enrico Maria Salerno) at a lively cocktail party in Rome's hypermodern EUR district. DP: Armando Nannuzzi.
“Trouble is, she likes everything. 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
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Привързаният балон [Privarzaniyat balon / The Tied-Up Balloon] (Binka Zhelyazkova, 1967)
Mar
17
bread
A boy and young woman (Janet Miteva) riding a donkey. The boy eats a handful while the woman faces downwards. There are several donkeys with riders behind them. DP: Emil Vagenshtain.
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Mord und Totschlag [Degree of Murder] (Volker Schlöndorff, 1967)
Mar
4
juice
A pensive Marie (Anita Pallenberg) drinking something red from a bottle with a green straw. DP: Franz Rath..
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The World's Greatest Sinner (Timothy Carey, 1962)
Mar
1
eggs
Clarence “God” Hilliard (Timothy Carey) sitting at a round dinner table talking to his wife who's leaning against a counter holding a carton of eggs and crockery. DPs: Frank Grande, Robert Shelfow, Ray Dennis Steckler & Edgar G. Ulmer.
“Let's be different. Let's not hate anyone.”
– Clarence “God” Hilliard
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The Whole Shootin' Match (Eagle Pennell, 1978)
Feb
23
dinner with dad
Father and son at a small messy dinner table in a small kitchen. The dad, Frank (Sonny Carl Davis) is going on about something while the kid, T. Frank (David Weber), licks his finger. DP: Eagle Pennell.
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The Kentucky Fried Movie (John Landis, 1977)
Feb
9
popcorn
A white guy munches popcorn in a seemingly empty movie theatre while an usher, standing right behind him, lights a cigarette. DP: Stephen M. Katz.
“The popcorn you are eating has been pissed in. Film at eleven.”
– newscaster
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A cavallo della tigre [On the Tiger's Back / Jail Break] (Luigi Comencini, 1961)
Jan
6
Two men in a doorway with a stunned look on their faces and their mouths stuffed with food. DP: Aldo Scavarda.
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Angel, Angel, Down We Go [Cult of the Damned (Robert Thom, 1969)
Dec
22
A chubby, piggy pink-dressed debutante (Joan Calhoun) flanked by her uppity-class parents (Charles Aidman and Jennifer Jones) in a fancy restaurant. The kid gives her mother the side eye. Other eaters look on in shock. DP: John F. Warren.
“We say hip, hooray,
Hip, hip hooray,
For fat!”
– Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, The Fat Song
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Every Day's a Holiday (A. Edward Sutherland, 1937)
Nov
21
National Entrepreneurs Day
Lobbycard. Peaches O'Day (Mae West, dressed by Schiaparelli) hands her business card to yet another sucker. They're on the Brooklyn Bridge, which can be seen in the background. DP: Karl Struss.
In my book, entrepreneur is just a fancy talk for conman. A famous one, the one who may've tried to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, was George C. Parker. He'd peddle the famous landmark to any hapless rube, immigrant, or sucker who then would promptly erect a little tollbooth to make a fast buck from any hapless rube, immigrant, or sucker.
“Selling the Brooklyn Bridge again, huh?”
– Police captain Jim McCarey
Like Parker, Mae West's Peaches O'Day bamboozles it her way. And boy, does she have a bridge to sell you!
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Lonesome (Pál Fejős, 1928)
Nov
20
A Beautiful Day
Two hopelessly lonely hearts meet each other at Coney Island, spending the most wonderful day in each other's company. Pál Fejős' joyful Lonesome was made just when motion pictures became talkies, and new and more modern novelties were expected by the audience. Fejős delivers, with sound and musical inserts, and the occasional – almost shocking – burst of colour.
– Nice day, isn't it?
– Yes, isn't it!
– It's swell. It's perfect.
With light touches of Murnau's groundbreaking Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and Jean Vigo's more experimental À propos de Nice (1930), Lonesome depicts the exuberance of youth with an optimism soon to be lost to the vices of history.