settima

communism

Le camion [The Lorry] (Marguerite Duras, 1977)

Aug

16

indigo

Le camion (1977)

His Saviem, possibly an SM170. DP: Bruno Nuytten.

Indigo: a building or structure*

Him: It’s a film? Her: It would have been a film.

A truck, both the narrative structure and his (Depardieu's character) material representation. She – the director – and he – the lead actor – do a read-though while discussing her script. A communist truck driver picks up a female hitchhiker. They discuss the landscape, the cosmos, pointlessness, communism of course. All the while, the indigo truck plods on.

 

Le tombeau d'Alexandre [The Last Bolshevik] (Chris Marker, 1993)

Feb

25

Warsaw Pact

Le tombeau d'Alexandre (1993)

Still from a Medvedkin film. Silhouettes in light of Lenin and Stalin facing each other are projected above a crowd of people. DP of Le tombeau d'Alexandre: Chris Marker.

Ninotchka (1939)

Ninotchka and Leon (Garbo and Douglas) cracking up. DP: William H. Daniels.

Ninotchka (1939)

July 1: a joke for #InternationalJokeDay

Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939)

Garbo laughs!

The great Garbo was known for her beauty, her coolness, her tragedy, for a lot but her laughter. So typecast she became that the tagline for Ninotchka (1939) – Garbo laughs! – is a #joke in itself.

Penned by the great Billy Wilder, the Ernst Lubitsch directed comedy unexpectedly temporarily revived #Garbo's career, who by the time 1938 came around had become box office poison. And the joke? Well…

A man comes into a restaurant. He sits down at the table and he says, “Waiter, bring me a cup of coffee without cream.” Five minutes later, the waiter comes back and says, “I'm sorry, sir, we have no cream. Can it be without milk?”

Ninotchka (1939)

#Bales2023FilmChallenge #ErnstLubitsch #BillyWilder #GretaGarbo #MelvynDouglas #WernerRHeymann #WilliamHDaniels #comedy #communism #romance #USA #1930s

#todo