settima

romance

Le mépris [Contempt] (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963)

May

5

Europe Day

Le mépris (1963)

Michel Piccoli, director Fritz Lang, Jack Palance, and director Jean-Luc Godard behind the scenes. The clapperboard held by Godard is for the movie that Lang's working on in Le Mépris, an adaption of Homer's Odyssey. DP: Raoul Coutard.

A director from the EU for Europe Day

“Producers are something I can easily do without”

– Fritz Lang

A film in a film, the latter directed by Fritz Lang, directed by Godard.

दुविधा [Duvidha / The Dilemma] (Mani Kaul, 1973)

May

3

National Paranormal Day

दुविधा (1973)

Lachhi, the bride (Raisa Padamsee). DP: Navroze Contractor.

A supernatural theme for National Paranormal Day (USA). May 3 (coincidentally?) is also the day Charles Fort passed on to a different realm.

 

A ghost falls in love with a bride whose husband, a merchant, is away from home. He takes on the man's form, and lives with her.

重慶森林 [Chung Hing sam lam / Chungking Express] (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994)

Apr

28

8:59

重慶森林 (1994)

A flipclock. It's April 28, a Friday, and 8:59 pm. DPs: Christopher Doyle & Wai Keung Lau.

“We broke up on April's fools day, so I took it as a joke. I'm willing to humor her for a month.”

– He Zhiwu, Cop 223

重慶森林 [Chung Hing sam lam / Chungking Express] (Wong Kar-Wai, 1994)

Apr

28

freebie: April

重慶森林 (1994)

Eating pineapple, expiration date May 1. DPs: Christopher Doyle & Wai Keung Lau.

A film set in April.

“We split up on April Fool's Day. So I decided to let the joke run for a month. Every day I buy a can of pineapple with a sell-by date of May 1. May loves pineapple, and May 1 is my birthday. If May hasn't changed her mind by the time I've bought thirty cans, then our love will also expire.”

– He Zhiwu, Cop 223

Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)

Apr

24

Notorious (1946)

Devlin (Cary Grant) and Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman). DP: Ted Tetzlaff.

And January 9.

“Dry your eyes, baby; it's out of character.”

– Devlin

The Angelic Conversation (Derek Jarman, 1985)

Apr

23

William Shakespeare — 1564

The Angelic Conversation (1985)

Two men in tender embrace. DPs: Derek Jarman & James Mackay.

A Shakespearean play or quote for the Bard's (assumed) birthday (1564).

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said Thy edge should blunter be than appetite, Which but to-day by feeding is allay’d, To-morrow sharpen’d in his former might:

So, love, be thou; although to-day thou fill Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness, To-morrow see again, and do not kill The spirit of love with a perpetual dulness.

Let this sad interim like the ocean be Which parts the shore, where two contracted new Come daily to the banks, that, when they see Return of love, more blest may be the view;

Or call it winter, which, being full of care, Makes summer’s welcome thrice more wish’d, more rare.

– William Shakespeare, sonnet 56 (Fair Youth)

Accompanied by Coil's brooding lust and Judi Dench's solemn recital of 14 of Shakespeare's sonnets, men cross dreamlike landscapes and dark desires.

Daïnah la métisse [Dainah the Mixed] (Jean Grémillon, 1932)

Apr

15

Titanic

Daïnah la métisse (1932)

Mechanic Michaux (Charles Vanel) and Daïnah (Laurence Clavius) on the Art Deco liner. DPs: Louis Page & Georges Périnal.

A cruise ship in remembrance of the sinking of the Titanic on April 14–15, 1912.

 

Mestiza Daïnah, who accompanies her illusionist husband on the luxury cruise ship he works on, loves to flirt and tease the other sex, including the ship's engineer Michaux. When she disappears, suspicion falls not only on Michaux, but also on her Black husband.

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

Mar

20

natural phenomena

L'eclisse (1962)

Vitti's blond hair shifts in front of Delon's dark coupe, quietly mimicking the eclipse. DP: Gianni Di Venanzo.

A natural phenomenon for this year's March equinox, three supermoons, and the March 25 solar eclipse.

“There was a silence different from all other silences, an ashen light, and then darkness – total stillness. I thought that during an eclipse even our feelings stop. Out of this came part of the idea for L'eclisse.”

During several moments in the film, the main characters' mannerisms foreshadow the looming solar eclipse.

Un soir, un train [One Night, a Train] (André Delvaux, 1968)

Mar

18

André Delvaux

Un soir, un train (1968)

Anouk Aimée and Yves Montand in character on a leaf-strewn floor, his head resting on her chest, with director André Delvaux and others surrounding them. DP: Ghislain Cloquet.

A favourite film, director, or producer for Luc Besson's birthday (1959).

 

Having only seen three of Delvaux's films, I feel I can safely say his work is hypnotic, but not in the common sense. We see a world through both Delvaux's and his protagonists eyes, and experience their duality as one. This displacement is a recurring theme in Delvaux's work, the work of a man raised in one world and speaking the language of another, both worlds bearing the same name, Belgium.

 

This slow tear is also the theme is his best known film, De man die zijn haar kort liet knippen [The Man Who Had His Hair Cut Short] (1965), in which a schoolteacher loses himself after a pupil graduates. When we think we are firmly seated in Delvaux's universe, we fall back, like that moment just before sleep sets in. And again, in his tragically under-seen Belle from 1973. Now it's a poet who finds a woman living in a ramshackle hut in Belgium's peatland, her language an unknown. With only one main speaker, the duality forms in the poet's words, in his attempts to give her root.

 

And so do we, the viewers. We hang on to that root, Delvaux's, only to sink back into our own loss of words.

花樣年華 [Fa yeung nin wah / In the Mood for Love] (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)

Mar

17

Irish-American Heritage Month

花樣年華 (2000)

A close-up of a pea-green phone with Mrs. Chan's (Maggie Cheung) hands resting on the receiver. Her dress is a bright green, with an abstract graphic in white. DPs: Christopher Doyle, Pun Leung Kwan & Ping Bin Lee.

Green for Irish-American Heritage Month (USA).

“He remembers those vanished years. As though looking through a dusty window pane, the past is something he could see, but not touch. And everything he sees is blurred and indistinct.”

– caption