Vittorio De Sica, 1948.
Viewed at Cinematheque, July 2009, w/ LN.
A nice film, better then I remembered. It’s a bit thin; the plot is very simple – perhaps too simple. A story of poor people, like ‘La Terra Trema’, but not as sophisticated in it’s development. The acting and general production are all good, but not quite remarkable; in a sense, the ’solid, but not remarkable’ tenor carries remarakably consistently through all aspects of the film (the camera work, the writting, the production, the acting). It’s like a supurbe amateur film, without any pretension.
The film’s fame on the cinemaphile circuit is unjustified, but that is not the fault of the film. It is a good film. It is very clever in one way, in that the title tells you what is going to happen, but after that does happen, you discover in the end it,, or the title, meant something different then what you had expected. I would (and you would need to know more then I am willing to say here to properly understand this) not agree with the titling as “Bicycle Thieves”. I can’t translate from Italian, but it should be, without question, ‘The Bicycle Thief’.
Filed under: 1960's, Antonioni, Cinematheque, Delon, Alain, Italian, Vitti, Monica
Antonioni, 1962.
Saw this long ago. Hated it. Excruciating long shot of – I don’t remember what. A clock? It might have well have been nothing.
Now it’s got Monica Vitti and Alain Delon, so we’ve got something to look at for sure. But ui still went to see Blow Up this year (2009), in part because it’s in the film canon, and because of teh Mel Brooks spin off. Blow Up shows you that the fellow had a glimpse of that horrible,stifling plague on film we call narrative – who could imagine such a terrible restriction? Plot! Something to hold your attention! Sunstance, attached to style…
But as far as I recall L’Eclisse was a real auteur film, meaning in the unfortunate way, where the film becomes a sort of pragmatic neurotic expression of goodness knows what fetish the director has on that certain day, instead of being a cohesive tale for an audience. Myself, I’m not very keen on a diary, simpley because it is indescernable, being passed off as art. Um, so, I dont recommend this film.
Blow Up by Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966.
imdb 7.6 – undeserved.
Cinematheque, saw by myself. Thank goodness. I was in a foul mood getting out. Viewed summer 2009.
Antonioni’s first American film – shot in English – and in 1966 technicolour. Like Demy’s ‘Model Shop’, which is 1969. Demy’s film is better. However, Blow Up has a fantastic plot, perfect for cinema – which is almost buried in a second (or perhaps third, or fourth) rate tv-worthy melodrama of the tacky pass-times of a photographer. The famous plot of a photograph taken in the park of an unknown couple making out (one of whom is Vanessa Redgrave) is everything we could hope for. It’s visually low-key, and the the storyline (this part of the storyline) is carried by the images, not by dialogue. This is perfect for film. Also, there’s the wonderful dimension of having the scene where he’s taking the pictures (in the park), followed later by the scene where’s he’s in the studio blowing up the photos, realizing that there is more there then simply a couple having what may be an extra-martial affair. There’s a gun. You can hardly see it. So he revisits the ‘film’ (motion) sequence with his still-shots, teh same way we, the entertained viewer, revisit the film later in broken down sequences, like still-shots. It’s great. Like a more art-house rendition of ‘Rear Window’ – but with a possible murder, it’s just like rear Window, with that same classic narrative appeal.
So what went wrong? Why did I almost walk out? Why did I want so badly, for almost the entire film, want to walk out? OK, it was not as excruciating as the ending of “L’Elipse” (the other Antonioni film I have seen – and I’m done. I’ll never watch another). We can see the reason in a look at two stills from the film.
The first shot, B&W, shows the photographer inspecting his print to find teh mysterious circumstances. We are hooked.
The second shot, a promotional poster, gives us the spice! It’s fashion, and hot chicks. And yes, they were pretty hot. And unappealing. And our great photography treats them all like garbage – which is fine. What do I care if my investigator is a nice fellow? I don’t. But why do we have to spend 85% of the film watching this fellow run around town in his convertible Rolls, seducing worthless wannabe models in his tacky ‘boho’ photography studios, and generally showing that whatever skills he has as a photographer, he is certainly, when it comes to everyday life, a worthless individual. But Antonioni must like it. The great plot gets a scattered 15 minutes of screen time, but the ‘hero’ showing everyone how clever he is by being impolite and pretentious gets the rest. It’s like reading a national enquirer article about Conrad Black, or better, Pierre Trudeau. Take someone with a brilliantly interesting story, and spend all your time trying to demonstrate how lurid their salacious private life is. That’s Blow-Up. A potentially great film. An excerpt from a great film.
I remember years ago seeing a Mel Brooks film with a short spin-off portion, where Mel Brooks if framed but there’s photo they keep blowing up – bigger and bigger – 10′ tall – to prove that Mel Brooks was innocent, because he was actually in a glass elevator visible way in the background. Mel Brooks knew which part of Blow-Up was worth emulating (it was a credited comical rip-off, and it must have been good, I can remember it from when I was about 12).
Now let’s give some credit. The film has a magnetic, memorable quality. It belongs in the cannon. Sure, its’ 85% pulp, and the ending – provide us a great plot, and purposely throw it away? Is it really that ‘clever’ top just stop a film dead in what is clearly the middle of the plot? Is that what art is? Give me a break. And it makes one ill to think how the pretentious gliterary will love it. Wow. That’s me giving it some credit. But that one snippit of plot, about teh photograph, was magnetic. So it is a film with a good portion, if one can endure the whole.
Filed under: 1960's, Cardinale, Claudia, Cinematheque, Delon, Alain, Italian, Lancaster, Burt, Visconti
dir. Visconti
Burt Lancaster – the Prince, Fabrizio , Alain Delon as Tancredi), Camille Claudelle
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1963
Over 2 hours
Viewed at Cinematheque summer 2004. Had gone to view another film; on the wrong night. The Leopard was sold out, however someone had phoned in to cancell their pre-purchased tickets, and so the cinema gave them away (!) to first comers. I’ve seen it there since, a couple of times. It’s always just as good.
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utube – the entrance of the heroine
IMDB 8.0
but it is my favorite film, of all time, and all places.
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A masterpiece. Lancaster is the late middle aged aristcrat, father of the young, debonair Tancredi, and observer of the fall of his era to the red shirted Garibaldians swarming Sciliy – the rioginomoso. He makes a magnificent speech, saying that “we are the lions and the leopards, now of a past age�”. Lancaster knows his time is doomed and so votes with the inevitable regime, so as to, as he describes, at least slow the demise of his finer age, which is, in any case, inevitable. Thus we see and elegant bowing out by an elegant age.
Tancredi is also a very interesting study, who by his father’s own description would be useless at making money and in practical matters, but has everything in terms of magnetism, boldness and a certain new nobility about him. One could think of him as that famous young man from Stendhal’s novel Lucien Leuwen, in that he has “waged war ceaselessly on cigars and new boots” (a description by the boy’s father). Thus he should marry rich. He is, they say, the product of his age and family, and ‘one who is not only the product of his circumstance, but would be possible only under such circumstance’ – that being the last flowering of a declining nobility. There is your movie – an elegant, beautiful, historical tale of nobility in noble decline.
Five Stars.
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QUOTATIONS
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“Something had to change, for everything to stay as it was.”
Fabrisio (Lancaster) to his friend the poor artist, who voted no in the plebiscite (the plebiscite which reported 515 registered voters, 512 votes, 512 YES and zero for NO!). Fabrisio (the Prince) says that the interests of the monarchy are maintained by the Savoys, and that the plebiscite was necessary to avoid anarchy. A lesser of two evils.
Filed under: 1960's, Bologini, Cardinale, Claudia, Italian, Mastroianni, M
Il Bell ‘ Antonio
Beautiful Antonio
Starring Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale
Dir -
Mauro Bologini
The beginning is overplayed, and the Italian references to the importance of sexual strength on the part of the man is entirely tedious, but as the film improves this serves fairly well as a backdrop for the developing plot. Mastroianni is the ‘Bell ‘ Antonio’ – the beautiful Antonio, 30 or so, returning home, the stuff of legend, for his apparent female conquests in Rome, the Capitol. It is set, I believe, in Sicily. Yes, all the women fall for him, but there is a catch, which we see developed in his subsequent marriage to Camille Claudelle.
With Plot Giveaways:
If his story is to be believed, the hero is impotent but only with women he truly cares for, at least at first, and than with all women. Yet he loves women, and they fall over him at first sight. He was convinced, he says, that Camille would cure him of this, but he is wrong, and after a year, and no consummation, the marriage is dissolved by her father and she is remarried. Antonio is devastated, and his father, in a fit of attempting to prove (to himself,a dn to anyone who would hear about it) that the family line was not afflicted in the way of the son, visits a whore, and at age 60, has a heart attack in her arms and dies. The Lovely, timid and somewhat hunched young housekeeper, who has looked upon Antonio with genuine affection through the film, is found to be pregnant. The mother, seeing as only Antonio was around, fixates on him as the only possible father, to which the girl (and even Antonio) concurs, although it is quite clear that the dead father is the father of unborn child as well. So Antonio is to be come the father to his own sibling. It is a tragedy with a false resolution – but a resolution nevertheless. The public necessity of proving the verity of the son is shown in the expanding belly of the housekeeper, and so his sorrow is transferred back to a private personal problem – now shared by his soon-to-be wife. Externally, resolution needs only an apparent result, whereas internally, something more is needed. For after all there was some psychological trauma identified (described) by the protagonist, associated with his lack of comfort with physical love (when connected with spiritual love – the very definition, according to the film and the Pope, of marriage). So there could be real resolution for our hero, beyond the false public exoneration, but we will not see it. It is ripe than for a sequel. It’s as if the film has a hinted at psychological depth, that would add much needed weight to the crass and shallow beginning of the film. Caudelle is wonderfully, and Mastrionni is very convincing, as is the housegirl. The cast is very good. The plot is sound, once it gets past all the blustering. A movie, surprisingly, to make one think. Perhaps the director should read Stendhal’s proposed solution to impotence, to see the wider range of feeling (and action) that could be taken in the face of private and very real difficulties.
