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Guide [The Guide] (Vijay Anand, 1965)
Aug
20
fasting
A scruffy looking Raju (Dev Anand) wearing the orange shawl of a holy man. DP: Fali Mistry.
Ramadan [on the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, not mid-August]: someone atones or fasts*
“These people have faith in me, and I have faith in their faith.”
– Swami Ji
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Trois couleurs: Bleu [Three Colors: Blue] (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993)
Aug
15
cerulean
Julie (Juliette Binoche) in a blue wallpapered room, observes blue beads suspended in front of a window with a cerulean sky and ocean behind it. Throughout the story, her clothing changes from white, to black, to the darkest charcoal blue, to Prussian blue. DP: Slawomir Idziak.
Cerulean, or blue: in food or fashion*
“I'm just fine. I have everything here. I have the TV. You can see the whole world”
– the mother
How could I not pick at least one instalment of Kieślowski's Trois couleurs trilogy. Here's blue, the liberté of the tricolor. Blue occurs as the sky to fall through, the room without life, and the cloth that binds.
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Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955)
Aug
14
Bavaria
Celebrating Oktoberfest [in September/October] and the Bavarian royals [rip]: a royal character or family*
“The painter takes his time. He doesn't like her dress. He doesn't like her gloves. One day he asks her if she dares pose for him – all in pink. She dares! And the king, enraptured by her pose, offers her a palace!”
– circus master
Maria Dolores Porriz y Montez, Countess von Landsfeld, Lola Montès for short, now a circus attraction, once the mistress to Ludwig I, King of Bavaria. While her fellow circus performers play Lola's former lovers, the ringmaster tells her story.
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…und deine Liebe auch [And Your Love Too] (Frank Vogel, 1962)
Aug
13
1961
Eva (Kati Székely). Someone offscreen lits her cigarette. DP: Günter Ost.
Three people must decide what to do on August 13, 1961, the day the Berlin Wall goes up.
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The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles, 1947)
Aug
9
Elsa Bannister (Rita Hayworth) and husband Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane) in the dizzying modernist finale. DP: Charles Lawton Jr..
“You need more than luck in Shanghai.”
– Elsa Bannister
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Domenica d'agosto [Sunday in August] (Luciano Emmer, 1950)
Aug
7
1949
A little boy runs down a Roman street. Superimposed a calendar page: SUNDAY AUGUST 7 S. GAETANO THE SUN RISES AT 5:15 SUNSET AT 19:42 – CRESCENT MOON. “S. Gaetano” refers to Saint Cajetan, who's feast day is on August 7. DPs: Leonida Barboni, Ubaldo Marelli & Domenico Scala.
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La baie des anges [Bay of Angels] (Jacques Demy, 1963)
Aug
6
mercredi
The bank where Jean Fournier (Claude Mann) works. A wall calendar, slightly tilted, reads Août 6 Mercredi. DP: Jean Rabier.
“Life has its tricks. Its oddities.”
– Jackie Demaistre
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地獄門 [Jigokumon / Gate of Hell] (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
Aug
4
orange
The shrine's torii as seen in the film. Vermilion contains mercury, which not only acts as a preservative but is also believed to ward off evil. DP: Kōhei Sugiyama.
Orange: a building or structure*
“Today is the first day of a life of sacrifice.”
– Moritoo Endō
Shot on Eastmancolor, relatively cheap and globally available, and influenced by Hollywood colour melodramas of the time, in particularly Rudolph Maté's Mississippi Gambler (1953) (source), and in its turn greatly influenced the implementation of colour in global cinema to come.
Jigokumon won two Academy Awards in 1955, for Best Costume Design and Best Foreign Language Film.
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黒蜥蜴 [Kurotokage / Kuro tokage / Black Lizard] (Kinji Fukasaku, 1968)
Aug
4
The Black Lizard (Akihiro Miwa) in embrace with Detective Akechi (Isao Kimura). DP: Hiroshi Dōwaki.
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The Red Shoes (Michael Powell + Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
Aug
3
red
A ballerina's lower body in focus. She wears a long tulle off-white dress, slightly sheer, with her white stockings showing through slightly. Part of her right lower arm is visible, the hand clutched, a turquoise bracelet on the wrist. What stands out most are her ruby red ballet shoes that appear to move away from her. The backdrop is a dull, washed out carpet. DP: Jack Cardiff.
Red: best use of red in food or fashion*
“She looked at the red shoes, for she thought there was no harm in looking. She put them on, for she thought there was no harm in that either. But then she went to the ball and began dancing. When she tried to turn to the right, the shoes turned to the left. When she wanted to dance up the ballroom, her shoes danced down. They danced down the stairs, into the street, and out through the gate of the town. Dance she did, and dance she must, straight into the dark woods.”
– Hans Christian Andersen, De røde Skoe (1845, tranl. Jean Hersholt, 1949), via
Another one of The Archers' #Technicolor extravaganzas. This time, not to wow the worn-down post-war black-and-white audience, but as an an active storytelling instrument.
Built around Hans Christian Andersen's haunting tale De røde Skoe (1845).