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Above: Official poster by Yves Tinguely for the 12th New York Film Festival in 1974.The twelfth edition of the New York Film Festival, which took place 50 years ago this week, in September 1974, could have been convincingly called the New York European Film Festival. Out of the seventeen new feature films playing, all but two were European: seven French, three German, two Italian, two Swiss, and one British. Though festival director Richard Roud wrote in the program that “one of the most exciting developments in world cinema these past two years has been the re-emergence of the American film,” there was in fact only one American film in the main lineup (the world premiere of John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence) though there was also a program of four American shorts by Mirra Bank, Martha Coolidge, William Greaves, and an exciting upstart named Martin Scorsese. There was just one...

Vanity Street.Broke and homeless, a young woman hurls a brick through the window of a drugstore, hoping to go to jail because at least “they feed you there.” Instead of arresting her, a kindly cop gets her a job as a showgirl at the theater next door; soon she’s wearing furs and fending off passes from top-hatted stage-door Johnnies. So it goes in lightning-paced B movies such as Vanity Street (1932), directed by Poverty Row maestro Nick Grinde. The plot may be flimsy, but Max Ophuls could have been proud of the long, breezy tracking shot that glides past the windows of the drugstore, packed with a motley crowd of chorus girls, costumed actors, and burlesque comedians. This casually terrific sequence is representative of the treasures that were to be found in the retrospective honoring the 2024 centenary of Columbia Pictures at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Most of the films were short.

The Skeleton Dance.George Eastman Museum senior curator Peter Bagrov was buying time for a projector to be repaired before the Nitrate Picture Show’s opening-night screening of Intolerance (1916). He told the audience that a fellow archivist had once compared the event, held annually at the Museum’s Dryden Theatre, to a feast where the bourgeoisie dine on otherwise extinct animals. That archivist isn’t the festival’s only critic: I have heard others liken the wide-eyed worship of cinema’s mostly defunct physical materials to a necrophilia of sorts. After all, if nitrate prints are the last vestiges of an otherwise forgotten industry standard, the best indicator of what a film was supposed to look like, does their projection to enthused cinephiles over a long weekend in Rochester, New York, not constitute the defilement of some of film history’s most precious materials? Even if the prints do not go up in flames,...

Paranoia, at least the kind stemming from a lack of confidence, isn’t the dominant sensation permeating Oliver Stone’s frenzied and decidedly campy pledge of malignance JFK, the film that briefly made conspiracy theorizing not just socially acceptable, but practically a cornerstone of citizens’ civic duty. No, in practice, JFK is as sure of itself as a QAnon truther, setting into centripetal motion hundreds of specious theories and dancing around the logical gaps like Max Ophüls’s camera did the titular jewelry of The Earrings of Madame de… It’s the crown jewel of the small but potent batch of mainstream American films of the late Boomer era that seemingly rode the collective insanity of the cultural zeitgeist to financial reward and cultural cachet—two other obvious examples being Network, which explicitly “articulated the popular rage” that had more or less been building since the Kennedy assassination, and the...

Max Ophüls’s 1950 tale of dalliances in early-20th-century Viennese cafe society is a tantalising waltz of licentiousness and emptiness

Seamless, frictionless and pretty much flawless, Max Ophüls’s 1950 movie version of Arthur Schnitzler’s racy 1900 play is rereleased as part of a campaign to save London’s Curzon Mayfair cinema; it takes its audience on a dizzying swirl, like a waltz, or a champagne-induced headspin.

The film is an ensemble or portmanteau movie set in early-20th-century Vienna, composed of 10 scenes and 10 couples, connected in a daisy chain of sex. A bighearted streetwalker has sex (for nothing) with a soldier who then dates a shopgirl, who then gets a job as chambermaid and is seduced by her employer’s grownup son, who then has an affair with a married woman, and so on, up the social class – until a bleary count is confronted by the prostitute we saw at the beginning,...

by Cláudio Alves

Born Maximillian Oppenheimer in 1902's Germany, Max Ophüls chose the pseudonym to avoid embarrassing his father as he pursued an acting career in theater. He'd change paths along the way, finding purpose in directing actors rather than reveling among them. Moreover, the paternal humiliation was never to be beyond the scandalous nature of theater since the man who would one day make tracking shots his calling card was a virtuoso. As the roaring twenties gave in to a new decade, Ophüls' ability would help him transition from the stage to the screen, where he began as a dialogue director at UFA.

But of course, being Jewish under the Nazi regime was deadly, so the director fled from Germany to France, stopping by Switzerland and Italy...

Though this blog platform is usually reserved for writing about movies, Howard Rodman’s novel is totally filmic and he himself has served as President of the Writers Guild of American, so that is close enough. Moreover after spending a total of two years in Berlin in the past three years and going into my next six months here, this ode to Berlin is particularly pleasing to me. This novel is a fictional account of Fritz Lang’s last year in Berlin, in 1933. Not a very good year. He is estranged from his wife — long time collaborator on his best films, M, Metropolis, Doctor Mabuse… Though they still share living quarters, she is having an affair with an American. He is hurt within and is also suffering from a toothache adding to the interior pain in the life of this great German director, son of a Jewish mother who converted the Catholicism and raised him strictly as a Catholic. Taking place in Weimar Berlin, we see the fashion, the glitz, the clubs, the cars, the interior decoration, and as alluded to before, the interior life of Fritz as he watches his friends and colleagues leaving Germany for U.S. and France, and in the case of Bertolt Brecht, his wife Helen Weigel and their son, for Hungary. The kicker is midway in when Fritz Lcang invites his wife Thea to the UFA screening room where Harold Nebenthal and Edward Ulmer, just back from, and about to return to Hollywood, are together and discover that, because of new Jewish laws, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse’s theatrical release at the UFA Palast has been replaced by Wounded Germany This blog is quite expressionistic, beginning with my quoting off the flyleaf of the book cover here as Howard speaks best for himself. Berlin, the last day of February, 1933. The Reichstag lies in smoldering ruins. A new world is about to spring from its ashes. For German filmmakers, there is a choice. To stay, work with the new order, a government which truly believes in the power of film; or to leave, without looking back. Destiny Express is the story of Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou. Together, they made some of the greatest films of all time. M, Metropolis, Doctor Mabuse. Married more than a decade, Lang and von Harbou are the most intimate of friends, the closest of enemies. Now, as day after day is torn from the calendar, they watch, as if paralyzed, as one by one. Bert Brecht, Max Ophuls, Billy Wilder take the next train out. Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou in their Berlin apartment, in 1923 or 1924 (which is, when the script for Metropolis was prepared). The photograph is from a series about this famous couple. Public Domain. At once exhaustively researched and wildly imagined, Destiny Express follows Lang, von Harbou, a host of real and fictional others — American cafe Surrealist Sam Harrison, novelist-turned-minister-of-culture Joseph Goebbels, Mercedes-racing champ Otto Merz, film star Rudolf Klein-Rogge, a pair of not-so-secret police — as their paths converge, intertwine, separate across the grid of Berlin, from the artificial daylight of the UFA soundstage to the artificial night of Berlin’s most exclusive clubs. Both protagonists have separate personal agendas they are following and they try not to get into each other’s way. As we watch the action, the inner life we witness of Fritz Lang as he weighs his options, thinks about his wife — his love and yet his nemesis — thinks about leaving, wishes they could be together, plays the tough guy; and in the end goes his way as she goes hers; these are the keynotes of the novel. Howard Rodman writes with a flair for visuals and for being able to show us the interior of the minds of creatives as if they were the outward reality. He is also able to reveal inward thoughts which run on separate tracks at the same time. This talent is what gives the novel a special edge. Add the expressionistic elongation of shadows, the sounds of heels clicking on the pavements, as in: On Konigstrasse her heels struck the cobbles with a high, flinty click which came back to her in syncopation from the building frontage. the silent river running through Berlin, cars, clubs, cafes, UFA Studios, Prussian apartments, paintings by Otto Dix…a dynamic Berlin, known in a nostalgic way, comes to life Cars: At once the blacktop rejoined Konigstrasse, and Lang slid the Lancea adeptly into the stream of traffic… Howard reminded me he had not been in Berlin when he wrote this making it all the more extraordinary… Shadows: Midway between two lamps Thea cast shadows of equal length before and behind. The shadow in front of her elongated, became more vague, as she approached the next lamp. The echo seemed to come back fractionally later than she’d been anticipating, and she stopped, to see if there were another set of footsteps dogging her own, but there were not. Thoughts running parallel to each other: And finally, as Lang leaves Berlin on the train, “There were fewer tracks. The lines were branching out, each with its specific destination…Then there was just one set of tracks, the one the train was reeling out behnd it. The glow of the train’s rear lights, a dense crimson, did not penetrate to where the rails converged. by raising his eyes a bit, Lang could feel them coming together, as he left all behind. Howard A. Rodman Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, novelist, and educator. He was President of Writers Guild of America West 2015–2017; is professor and former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts; an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs; a member of the executive committee of the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; and a fellow of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. His films include Savage Grace, starring Julianne Moore, — official selection Cannes Film Festival in 2007 — and August with Josh Hartnett, Rip Torn, and David Bowie. Son of Howard Rodman and Dorothy Rodman. Stepson of Norma Connolly. Brother of Adam Rodman. Howard A. Rodman has been married to Mary Beth Heffernan since June 25, 2017. He was previously married to Anne Friedberg (24 June 1990–9 October 2009) ( her death) with whom he had one child. · President, Writers Guild of America West, 2015–2017. · Named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) by the Republic of France, 2013. · Inducted into FinalDraft’s Screenwriters Hall of Fame, 2018. Writer (6 credits) 2008 August (written by) 2007 Savage Grace (screenplay) 2000 Takedown (screenplay) 2000 Joe Gould’s Secret (screenplay) 1997 The Hunger (TV Series) (screenplay — 1 episode — which he also directed!), - The Swords (1997) … (screenplay) 1993–1995 Fallen Angels (TV Series) (teleplay — 3 episodes) - The Professional Man (1995) … (teleplay) - The Frightening Frammis (1993) … (teleplay) - The Quiet Room (1993) … (teleplay) As a writer, Howard has had plenty to live up to as his father’s bio, written by Howard himself attests: Howard Rodman, Sr. was an American writer and story editor of such critically acclaimed series such as Naked City (1958) and Route 66 (1960). A Brooklyn native, the son of immigrant parents, Rodman began his career in the 1950s writing for such noted anthology series as Studio One, Alcoa Theater, and Goodyear Theater. He contributed to Have Gun — Will Travel (1957) and was an associate producer on Peyton Place (1964). In the subsequent decades he won a trio of Writer’s Guild awards for his scripts for Naked City: Today the Man Who Kills Ants Is Coming (1962), Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre: The Game with Glass Pieces (1964), and for the NBC/Universal Television drama, The Neon Ceiling (1971). As a feature writer, he scripted the Paul Newman/Joanne Woodward racing film, Winning (1969), and co-wrote three iconic feature films for director Don Siegel: Madigan (1968), Coogan’s Bluff (1968), and Charley Varrick (1973). Rodman also wrote the teleplay adaptation of Martin Caidin’s novel, ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’, essentially creating the television version of the character as well as supplying the format for the subsequent series. Dissatisfied with the final product he removed his name and substituted his pseudonym Henri Simoun, a frequent practice. Rodman was once quoted as saying, “The script isn’t finished until the name comes off”. Rodman also created the David Janssen private eye series Harry O (1973). In 1976, he was presented with the Writers Guild’s Laurel Award for lifetime achievement in television. His final project was the made-for-tv movie Scandal Sheet (1985), starring Burt Lancaster. He died of complications following heart surgery in Los Angeles at age 65. He was survived by his second wife, actress Norma Connolly, and his children: Howard A. Rodman (a writer), Adam Rodman (a writer), Phillip Rodman, and Tiahna Skye. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Howard A. Rodman #Berlin #Movies #Book Review #Nazis #Cinema...

Fest focus on films by up-and-coming talent from Geman-speaking world.

Max Gleschinski’s Alaska won the top prize in the feature film competition at this year’s Filmfestival Max Ophüls, which was held in Saarbrücken on the German-French border from January 23-29.

Focusing on works by up-and-coming talent from Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg, the festival is considered the most important newcomer film festival in the German-speaking world.

Rostock-based Gleschinski’s second feature centres on a 40-something woman who slowly finds her way back into life after nursing her father for 20 years, and falls in love with another woman.

The...

Tár writer/director Todd Field discusses a few of his favorite movies with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

You Only Live Twice (1967) – Dana Gould’s trailer commentary

Tár (2022)

Man With A Movie Camera (1929)

Battleship Potemkin (1925)

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

The Big Parade (1925)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Crowd (1928)

Star Wars (1977)

The Servant (1963)

Parasite (2019) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Dennis Cozzalio’s review

The Three Musketeers (1973) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

Figures In A Landscape (1970)

M (1931)

M (1951)

I Am Cuba (1964)

The Cranes Are Flying (1957) – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Letter Never Sent (1960)

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965)

Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969)

The Towering Inferno (1974) – George Hickenlooper’s trailer commentary

The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)

The Sting (1973)

The World of Henry Orient (1964) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Thelma And Louise (1991)

Murmur Of The Heart (1971)

The Silent World (1956)

Opening Night (1977)

The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie (1976) – Larry Karaszewski’s...

Thorold Dickinson’s 1949 Pushkin adaptation is a glorious melodrama about an ambitious Russian military officer and a countess who sold her soul to the devil in exchange for the secrets of a card game

Ambition, sin and horror are the keynotes of Thorold Dickinson’s brilliant 1949 melodrama based on the story by Pushkin. The density of visual detail and incident on screen is superb and the swirling, delirious onrush of storytelling is addictive. This is surely one of the great gambling movies, and one that makes the theological connection explicit: Pascal recommended that you have nothing to lose by betting on God’s existence, but the worldly sinner gambles that the last judgement does not exist and that pleasure and gratification in this life are everything. Dickinson’s control of the screen is a joy, something to be compared to Max Ophüls: I wonder how he might have directed The Earrings of Madame De…...

Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen, who won the Cannes Grand Prize for Compartment No. 6 in 2021, will be guest of honor at the fifth Talent Village of France’s Les Arcs Film Festival, running December 10-17 in the French Alps.

The three-day meeting running within the festival’s industry program will support eight emerging European directors and consists of workshops and one-on-one meetings aimed at advancing their short and feature-length works.

Kuosmanen, whose credits also include the Cannes 2016 Un Certain Regard award winner The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki, will attend in the role of Talent Village Ambassador and will meet and mentor all the participants.

Other industry professionals acting as tutors will include Danish producer Katrin Pors of Copenhagen-based production company Snowglobe; Olivier Barbier, Head of Acquisitions at France’s mk2 films, Locarno Film Festival programmer and Festival Scope co-founder Mathilde Henrot and music supervisor Martin Caraux from...

Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen named as Talent Village ambassador.

Les Arcs Film Festival’s industry programme has selected eight emerging directors for its Talent Village initiative and has named Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen as its Talent Village ambassador.

The programme, consisting of workshops and meetings, is designed to help the directors move from short to feature-length projects, with a particular attention given to industry issues and international aspects of the projects.

Kuosmanen won the Grand Prix in Cannes in 2021 for Compartment N°6, a follow-up to his Un Certain Regard film The Happiest Day In The Life of Olli Mäki...

Though their “’80s Horror” lineup would constitute enough of a Halloween push, the Criterion Channel enter October all guns blazing. The month’s lineup also includes a 19-movie vampire series running from 1931’s Dracula (English and Spanish both) to 2014’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, the collection in-between including Herzog’s Nosferatu, Near Dark, and Let the Right One In. Last year’s “Universal Horror” collection returns, a 17-title Ishirō Honda retrospective has been set, and a few genre titles stand alone: Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte, The House of the Devil, and Island of Lost Souls.

Streaming premieres include restorations of Tsai Ming-liang’s Vive L’amour and Ed Lachman’s Lou Reed / John Cale concert film Songs for Drella; October’s Criterion editions are Samuel Fuller’s Forty Guns, Bill Duke’s Deep Cover, Haxan, and My Own Private Idaho. Meanwhile, Ari Aster has curated an “Adventures...

Lots of actors make a living starring in mostly bad movies, but few do it on such a scale and level of success as Adam Sandler. The frustrating thing is, we all know how talented he can be when he feels like it, at least compared to other bad movie regulars like, say, Gerard Butler. You always know what you're going to get with Butler, that steady level of grimacing B-movie badness, and he's never going to suddenly wrong-foot you with an Oscar-worthy performance before going back to stabbing people to death with pencils.

Sandler certainly has the talent, but he just can't be bothered to use it most of the time. Maybe he doesn't feel the need when his special brand of lowbrow humor has earned him a loyal fanbase all over the world. That was something Netflix was keen to get a slice of when they signed him...

The trailer has debuted for “America,” a drama directed by Ofir Raul Graizer (“The Cakemaker”), which will world premiere at Karlovy Vary Intl. Film Festival in the Crystal Globe Competition. Beta Cinema is handling world sales.

The film centers on Eli, an Israeli swimming coach living in the U.S. A phone call notifies him that his father, who he has not been in touch with, has died. Eli reluctantly travels to Tel Aviv for the first time in 10 years to deal with the estate. On his short trip, he decides to visit his childhood friend Yotam, who used to swim with Eli when they were young. However, Yotam has left swimming long ago. He is running a flower shop in Jaffa with his fiancée Iris, who, like Eli, is not in touch with her family. When Eli comes to visit the two, he will set in motion a series...

Moviegoing Memories is a series of short interviews with filmmakers about going to the movies. Terence Davies’ Benediction is Mubi Go's Film of the Week in the United Kingdom and Ireland for May 20, 2022. Notebook: How would you describe your movie in the least amount of words?Terence Davies: A journey toward redemption. Notebook: Where and what is your favorite movie theater? Why is it your favorite?Davies: It was called the Hippodrome in Liverpool, long since pulled down. It was Hengler’s Music Hall before that and in fact when I went there, the boxes were still there and there were gods. When it was a music hall, when Siegfried Sassoon was in Litherland, he went there several times to see some shows.Notebook: What is the most memorable movie screening of your life? Why is it memorable?Davies: My very first film at seven, I was taken to see Singin' in the Rain.

Denise Gough and Keira Knightley in Colette Photo: Bleeker Street Colette, 11.15pm, BBC2, Tuesday, March 15

Keira Knightley embodies the French writer as she undergoes a transformation through the course of Wash Westmoreland's film. At first a naive provincial, she becomes increasingly liberated as her books about saucy schoolgirl Claudine - sold under the name of her husband Willy (Dominic West) - begin to sell like hot cakes. Westmoreland allows the complexity to shine in the relationship between Colette and Willy, as Colette blossoms and begins to take control of her own story, while Denise Gough puts in a scene-stealing supporting performance as Missy, with whom Colette engages in a same-sex relationship. Read what Westmoreland had to say about the influence of Max Ophüls, La Belle Époque and on the relationships in Colette.

Donnie Brasco, 1.10am, Great Movies! (Freeview Channel 34), Wednesday, March 16

Made in the same year as The Devil's Advocate - proof that Al.

Deception director Arnaud Desplechin tells Anne-Katrin Titze about the Emmanuelle Devos Kings & Queen connection to Andrew Wylie that led to a phone call from Philip Roth.

Arnaud Desplechin’s adaptation with Julie Peyr of Philip Roth’s Deception (Tromperie), starring Denis Podalydès, Léa Seydoux (Bruno Dumont’s France), Emmanuelle Devos, and Anouk Grinberg, is a highlight of the 27th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York. Claire Denis’s Fire (Avec Amour Et Acharnement), starring Juliette Binoche (in a Free Talk with Constance Meyer’s Robust star Déborah Lukumuena), Grégoire Colin (Nora Martirosyan’s Should The Wind Drop), and Vincent Lindon is the Opening Night selection. Jim Jarmusch is the Guest of Honour of this year’s festival.

An in-person Q&a with Kent Jones and Arnaud Desplechin will follow a screening of Diane at the French Institute Alliance Française Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Our Love Affairs: Arnaud Desplechin...

Following the announcement of their new curated theatrical venture Mubi Go, next month’s U.S. streaming lineup at Mubi has now been unveiled. Highlights include Terrence Malick’s heartbreakingly raw romantic drama To the Wonder and its Javier Bardem-focused counterpart, Eugene Richards’ Thy Kingdom Come.

Also in the lineup is Julian Faraut’s terrifically entertaining documentary Witches of the Orient, the Werner Herzog double bill of Grizzly Man and Lo and Behold, John Carpenter’s Escape From New York, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Blue, Sandra Wollner’s controversial feature The Trouble With Being Born, Alexandre Rockwell’s latest film Sweet Thing, and much more.

See the full lineup below and get 30 days of Mubi free here.

November 1 | The First Lap New | Kim Dae-hwan | South Korean Cinema

November 2 | L’innocente | Luchino Visconti

November 3 | 80,000 Years Old | Christelle Lheureux

November 4 | Liebelei | Max Ophüls

November 5 | Maelström | Denis Villeneuve | A Cosmic Trajectory: Early Films by...

Cannes Classics

Mark Cousins‘ documentary “The Storms Of Jeremy Thomas,” following the legendary “The Last Emperor” and “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” producer’s annual drive to Cannes, will be the pre-opener at the Cannes Classics selection this year.

Restored titles this year include “Friendship’s Death” by Peter Wollen, starring Tilda Swinton; “F For Fake” by Orson Welles; “Mulholland Drive” by David Lynch (2001 U.S.); “I Know Where I’m Going!” by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; and “The Double Life Of Véronique by Krzysztof Kieślowski”.

The section will also celebrate the work of actor/director Bill Duke with a screening of “The Killing Floor” (1985); Japanese actor and filmmaker Kinuyo Tanaka’s “Tsuki Wa Noborinu”; Spanish actor and filmmaker Ana Marisca’s “El Camino” from 1964; French maven Marcel Camus’ “Orfeu Negro” and Italian master Roberto Rossellini’s “Francesco, Giullare Di Dio”.

Oscar Micheaux, the first African-American director in the history of U.

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the lineup for its 2021 Cannes Classics section. Made up of a selection of restored prints, the roster also includes new documentaries that explore the history of cinema. Among the offerings is Mark Cousins’ pre-opening doc, The Storms Of Jeremy Thomas, which covers a yearly drive with the British producer from London to Cannes. Cousins and Thomas will be in town for the presentation. (Scroll down for the full Cannes Classics list.)

Restored titles include David Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive; 1945’s I Know Where I’m Going! by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger; Krzysztof Kieślowski’s 1991 drama The Double Life Of Véronique; Orson Welles’ F For Fake from 1973; and Friendship’s Death by Peter Wollen which features Tilda Swinton’s first role.

Among the special events are a tribute to director and actor Bill Duke who will present his 1985 The Killing Floor which premiered at Critics...

Tilda Swinton to attend restored screening of Peter Wollen’s 1987 UK film Friendship’s Death.

Two documentaries from Mark Cousins and restored films from Kinuyo Tanaka, Oscar Micheaux, and Orson Welles will screen in Cannes Classics, announced on Wednesday (June 23).

Cousins’ The Story Of Film: A New Generation and The Storms Of Jeremy Thomas, a profile of the celebrated British producer, are among a documentary line-up that incudes Buñuel, Un Cineasta Surrealista from Javier Espada, and All About Yves Montand by Yves Jeuland.

The roster of restored narrative films includes David Lynch’s 2001 Mulholland Drive, Japanese actor-filmmaker Kinuyo Tanaka’s (pictured) The Moon Has Risen,...

Frunze Dovlatyan’s breezy, strange and intriguing 1966 drama gets a deserved rerelease

This intriguing and mysterious romantic drama from 1966 is directed by Armenian film-maker Frunze Dovlatyan; it was entered into competition at Cannes that year and is now rereleased. Hello, It’s Me! often has that kind of freewheeling breeziness that you might associate with the 60s; at other times, I found myself thinking of Max Ophüls’s Letter from an Unknown Woman.

The distinguished Armenian stage and screen actor Armen Dzhigarkhanyan plays a fictional young scientist called Artyom, based on the real-life figure of Artem Alikhanian, who during the second world war became one of the pioneers of Soviet nuclear physics.

Despite the proliferation of streaming services, it’s becoming increasingly clear that any cinephile only needs subscriptions to a few to survive. Among the top of our list are The Criterion Channel and Mubi and now they’ve each unveiled their stellar April line-ups.

Over at The Criterion Channel, highlights include spotlights on Ennio Morricone, the Marx Brothers, Isabel Sandoval, and Ramin Bahrani, plus Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, Frank Borzage’s Moonrise, the brand-new restoration of Joyce Chopra’s Smooth Talk, and one of last year’s best films, David Osit’s Mayor.

At Mubi (where we’re offering a 30-day trial), they’ll have the exclusive streaming premiere of two of the finest festival films from last year’s circuit, Cristi Puiu’s Malmkrog and Nobuhiko Obayashi’s Labyrinth of Cinema, plus Philippe Garrel’s latest The Salt of Tears, along with films from Terry Gilliam, George A. Romero,...

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is a series on Production Design.

Thursday marks 100 years since the birth of iconic French actress Simone Signoret. But how to celebrate? By my count, she was in three films nominated for Best Production Design. One of them, Is Paris Burning?, I covered way back in 2016. Another, Ship of Fools, also nabbed Signoret her second nomination for Best Actress. Unfortunately, it’s something of a bloated and maudlin mess.

That leaves us with La Ronde, a film made shortly before Signoret really burst into international stardom. She’s barely in it, playing a Viennese sex worker who bookends the meandering narrative. Even so, it’s her movie star quality that makes the whole thing work - that and the magic of Jean d’Eaubonne’s Oscar-nominated production design, of course. The film is Max Ophüls’s adaptation of an Arthur Schnitzler play, a circular jaunt that slips from paramour to paramour.

With just over 70 features, this year’s Sundance Film Festival was smaller than usual, but not any quieter. While Park City was dormant as most audiences viewed the lineup online, the movies drove plenty of buzz. Few titles entered the festival with distribution, and studios begged off the usual tendency to use the festival as a marketing launch pad. Instead, Sundance retained one crucial aspect of its DNA above all: The breakouts.

Ever since it came to prominence more than 30 years ago, Sundance has been a platform for discovering new talent, from distinctive filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Ryan Coogler to acting discoveries like Parker Posey and Tessa Thompson. This time around, there were no shortage of discoveries, in addition to established talents moving into exciting new career phases. Here are the highlights.

Christian Blauvelt, Jude Dry, David Ehrlich, Kate Erbland, and Tambay Obenson contributed to this article.

Jerrod Carmichael...

After unveiling the discs that will be arriving in April, including Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder, Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep, and more, Criterion has now announced what will be coming to their streaming channel next month.

Highlights include retrospectives dedicated to Guy Maddin, Ruby Dee, Lana Turner, and Gordon Parks, plus selections from Marlene Dietrich & Josef von Sternberg’s stellar box set. They will also present the exclusive streaming premieres of Bill Duke’s The Killing Floor, William Greaves’s Nationtime, Kevin Jerome Everson’s Park Lanes, and more.

Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, which recently arrived on the collection, will be landing on the channel as well, along with a special “Lovers on the Run” series including film noir (They Live by Night) to New Hollywood (Badlands) to the French New Wave (Pierrot le fou) to Blaxploitation (Thomasine & Bushrod) and beyond. Also...

Sovereign Film Distribution has acquired U.K. and Ireland rights to writer-director Cristi Puiu’s Berlin and Seville winner “Malmkrog” (Manor House).

Puiu won the best director award at the Encounters section of the 2020 Berlin Film Festival, in addition to best screenplay and the Golden Giraldillo Award for best film at the Seville European Film Festival.

An adaptation of Russian philosopher Vladimir Solovyov’s book “Three Conversations,” “Malmkrog” follows a politician, a countess, a general and his wife as they gather over the Christmas holidays in a manor house to discuss death, war, progress and morality. As the debate becomes more heated, cultural differences become increasingly apparent and the mood grows tense.

The film is billed as a unique mixture of “Downton Abbey” and Dostoyevsky, as it recalls the drawing room masterworks of Max Ophüls, and the stark cerebral work of Ingmar Bergman.

The cast includes Frederic Schulz-Richard, Agathe Bosch,...

Martin Ritt’s film about struggling jazz musicians in Paris circa 1961 comes with quite a pedigree, including Duke Ellington’s soundtrack, Louis Armstrong in a prominent role, and evocative black and white cinematography by the great Christian Matras (Jean Renoir’s La Grand Illusion and Max Ophüls’s The Earrings of Madame De…). Not to mention two superb American actors in their prime, Sidney Poitier and Paul Newman, each romantically entangled with two equally fine actresses, Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll. The screenplay initially paired Newman with Carroll but United Artists was having none of that.

The post Paris Blues appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

The crowning achievement of a once-in-a-lifetime career, Manoel de Oliveira’s Francisca has been restored in 4K by the Portuguese Cinematheque and will (virtually) hit U.S. shores this November 13 from Grasshopper Film. In advance of that release comes a new trailer that displays this film’s sumptuous beauty—its compositional integrity, its close attention to color and shape, its stirring soundtrack.

One need not intimately know Oliveira’s filmography to experience Francisca, which often plays like a lavish Visconti epic honed to its most essential dramatic and formal pieces—or as Dave Kehr said, “as if Jean-Marie Straub has collaborated with Max Ophüls.” If that’s even slightly to your liking, prepare to bliss out.

Find the trailer and poster (designed by Midnight Marauder) below:

The post Francisca Trailer: Manoel de Oliveira's Masterpiece is Restored in 4K first appeared on The Film Stage.

The Vincent Price Collection

Blu ray

1960,’61, ’63, ’64, ’68, ’71 / 79, 85, 87, 90, 86, 94 min. / 2.35 : 1, 1:85:1

Starring Vincent Price, Barbara Steele, Hazel Court

Cinematography by Floyd Crosby, Nicolas Roeg,

John Coquillon, Norman Warwick

Directed by Roger Corman, Michael Reeves, Robert Fuest

The Vincent Price Collection, the first in a series of Blu-ray sets celebrating the beloved actor’s glory days, arrived in 2013. They sold like hot cakes, quickly going out of print only to pop up on eBay with price tags that would make Bill Gates tremble. That initial release has just been reissued and is a near-duplicate of the original. All the films are here including The Fall of the House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Haunted Palace, Witchfinder General, and The Abominable Dr. Phibes. But there are changes—the Poe-related intros Price recorded for a PBS affiliate have been removed due to rights issues. And something new has been added; The Masque of the Red Death,...

One of the most anticipated films going into the festival, Pieces of a Woman delivers, although in a less harrowing register than many assumed. The film is directly based on an experience Kornél Mundruczó and Kata Wéber, the director and screenwriter, underwent, and there isn’t a moment that rings false. Constantly surprising and keeping the audience off-balance, perhaps its biggest rug-pull is its overall humanist outlook.

Vanessa Kirby leads the cast, although the drama is an ensemble piece and frequently diverges from her point-of-view. She plays Martha, a Bostonian in her early 30s expecting a baby with her husband Sean, a construction worker with a more volatile temperament. The two opt for a home birth, undertaken by a midwife who will come to their residence at short notice. She is played by Molly Parker, a still-underrated actress who makes an enormous impression in her few scenes. Shot in virtuosic...

For the last five months, Film Comment — the house organ of Film at Lincoln Center, a repository for erudite film coverage, and a thought leader in specialty film — has existed in limbo. It’s not dead; while the staff was put on hiatus in March, publisher Eugene Hernandez is working to determine next steps. It’s not in print; its last physical edition was March/April. It’s not quite digital: Content for the May/June issue is available at the Film Comment site and at Zinio, but any internet consumer knows that online publications can’t survive on bimonthly updates.

From the critical brickbats of Pauline Kael vs. Andrew Sarris to defining identities for seminal filmmakers like Max Ophüls, John Huston, and Martin Scorsese, Film Comment has been at the center of a vital global film conversation for 58 years. Embraced by cinephiles and academics, it also saw the art...

For the last five months, Film Comment — the house organ of Film at Lincoln Center, a repository for erudite film coverage, and a thought leader in specialty film — has existed in limbo. It’s not dead; while the staff was put on hiatus in March, publisher Eugene Hernandez is working to determine next steps. It’s not in print; its last physical edition was March/April. It’s not quite digital: Content for the May/June issue is available at the Film Comment site and at Zinio, but any internet consumer knows that online publications can’t survive on bimonthly updates.

From the critical brickbats of Pauline Kael vs. Andrew Sarris to defining identities for seminal filmmakers like Max Ophüls, John Huston, and Martin Scorsese, Film Comment has been at the center of a vital global film conversation for 58 years. Embraced by cinephiles and academics, it also saw the art...

The writer/director of The Love Witch talks about her favorite classic women’s pictures.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Love Witch (2016)

Baby Face (1933)

Stromboli (1950)

Europa ’51 (1951)

Fear (1951)

Duel In The Sun (1946)

The Scarlet Empress (1934)

Blonde Venus (1932)

Nora Prentiss (1947)

Woman On The Run (1950)

Wait Until Dark (1967)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Imitation of Life (1969)

Little Women (2019)

Emma (2020)

My Cousin Rachel (2017)

Sex and the City (2008)

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Mildred Pierce (1945)

The Reckless Moment (1949)

Sudden Fear (1952)

Torch Song (1953)

Captain Marvel (2019)

Other Notable Items

The Captain Trips virus in Stephen King’s novel The Stand (1978)

Marlene Dietrich

Mae West

Jennifer Jones

Joan Crawford

Joan Bennett

Gene Tierney

Barbara Stanwyck

The Hays Code

Cary Grant

Marilyn Monroe

Ingrid Bergman

Roberto Rossellini

The Academy Awards

Bette Davis

Jennifer Jones

Gregory Peck

Joseph Cotten

Travis Banton

Josef von Sternberg

Catherine the Great

The Criterion Collection

Kent Smith

Dan Duryea

Douglas Sirk

Jane Austen

Mildred Pierce TV miniseries...

If the saving of human lives somehow isn’t enough to incentivize people yet to stay home to reduce the spread of coronavirus, this might help: by not doing so you are potentially causing the July release of Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch to be delayed. Thus far, Searchlight is still banking on a July 24 theatrical debut of his star-studded, France-set ensemble feature and the promotion is continuing.

After learning production designer Adam Stockhausen created a whopping 125 sets for the film, cinematographer Robert Yeoman has now revealed the five French classics that Anderson had his cast and crew view to prepare for the shoot, which might help give a hint of the film’s tone.

Speaking with Indiewire, Yeoman says these films “gave us all the feeling of the French movies of the period, both thematically and stylistically.” Check them out below, including a snippet of Anderson discussing one of his all-time favorites.

The Mad Magician

Blu ray

Powerhouse Films/Indicator

1954 / 1.85:1 / 73 min.

Starring Vincent Price, Donald Randolph, Eva Gabor

Cinematography by Bert Glennon

Directed by John Brahm

For Vincent Price, revenge was a dish served cold and in 3-D. In 1954, just a year after his three-dimensional rampage in Andre DeToth‘s House of Wax, the actor returned in a virtual remake – the budget was lower and the black and white imagery couldn’t hold a candle to the rich WarnerColor but John Brahm’s The Mad Magician scares up some legitimate in-your-face fun.

Price plays Don Gallico, an undervalued inventor at Illusions, Inc., a full service shop for professional prestidigitators. It’s a dead end job in more ways than one and his newest creation could give him the break he’s waited for. His biggest obstacle is his own boss, a Dickensian villain named Ross Ormond (Donald Randolph) who’s managed...

This year’s committee includes Virginie Apiou, Paul Grandsard, Laurent Jacob and Johanna Nahon.

The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled its selection committee for its 72nd edition, which runs May 12-23.

The committee was selected by general delegate Thierry Frémaux, film department director Christian Jeune and artistic advisor of the film department Stéphanie Lamome ((a member of the selection committee for 10 years).

This year’s committee has nine members, up by one from last year. Seven of the members are the same; script doctor and producer Johanna Nahon and film journalist Caroline Veunac are the new members, with Marie Sauvion no longer a member.

A central figure in French cinema, Bertrand Tavernier has an encyclopedic knowledge of the craft of filmmaking akin to the likes of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. The sense of history he possesses is seen in both his narrative and documentary, the latter of which is perhaps best exemplified in his recent film My Journey Through French Cinema. Clocking in at 3.5 hours, that 2016 documentary has now received a follow-up expansion with an eight-part series and we’re pleased to debut the U.S. trailer.

Titled Journeys Through French Cinema, the director-writer-actor-producer explores the filmmakers that most influenced him, how the cinema of France changed when the country was German occupation, the unknown films and filmmakers he admires (with a focus on female directors), and much more. From better-known filmmakers such as Jacques Tati, Robert Bresson, and Jacques Demy to ones in need of (re)discovery such as Raymond Bernard, Maurice Turner,...

Quentin Tarantino and Star Trek. Though the filmmaker is a huge fan of the franchise, he’s not the first director you’d think of as being a natural pick to helm a movie set on board the Enterprise. But for the past couple of years, we’ve heard a lot about how the acclaimed auteur is looking to put his stamp on Trek and deliver an R-rated effort that he’s jokingly dubbed “Pulp Fiction in space.” Ultimately, though, it looks like the project might not make it to screens.

In a new interview with Consequence of Sound, Tarantino reaffirmed his long-held rule that he’s going to stop making movies after his tenth directorial production. With Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood marking his ninth, that would mean whatever he does next will be his final film ever. Given the weight of this, Tarantino admitted that he’s...

The Queen of Spades

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1949/ 1.33:1 / 95 min.

Starring Anton Walbrook, Edith Evans

Directed by Throld Dickinson

One of the pleasures of discovering 1949’s The Queen of Spades is also discovering its director, Thorold Dickinson. Born and educated in Bristol, he abandoned Oxford for London to concentrate on the fine art of film editing and soon found himself behind the camera.

Dickinson made waves with 1940’s Gaslight but Queen was something of a critical flashpoint for the diligent director – called in as a last minute replacement, the project would cement his reputation as an artist whose portentous visual style said as much about his characters as any screenplay. Not coincidentally, those qualities were shared by the film’s associate producer, Jack Clayton.

Based on Alexander Pushkin’s 1834 short story, the film is set in a snowbound St. Petersburg enclave in 1803, a gothic inversion of one of Ernst Lubitsch‘s fairy tale villages.

The Rome Film Festival has revealed a sneak peak of its 2019 edition, which will include a lifetime achievement award for Bill Murray, presented by director Wes Anderson.

Murray will take part in an “in conversation” session hosted by his regular collaborator Anderson. Also giving talks at the Italian festival will be Hirokazu Kore-eda, Olivier Assayas, Bertrand Tavernier, and writer Bret Easton Ellis.

The event, which runs October 17-27, also revealed Monday that its Official Selection will include Pavarotti by Ron Howard, who will be on hand to present the film. The lineup will feature around 40 films that will compete for the Bnl People’s Choice Award.

Also on the wider programm lineup will be a restored version of Fellini Satyricon on the 50th anniversary of its release, and a tribute to Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo, one century after his birth, with the restored version of Kapò. There will also be...

The Rome Film Festival will celebrate Bill Murray with its lifetime achievement award, which will be presented to him by Wes Anderson.

Anderson, who has directed Murray in some of his most iconic roles, most notably in “The Royal Tenenbaums,” and in several other films such as “The Darjeeling Limited,” “Moonrise Kingdom” and “Grand Budapest Hotel,” is also scheduled to take part in an onstage conversation in Rome with Murray about the actor’s career.

The fest’s artistic director Antonio Monda also announced Monday that Oscar-winning director Ron Howard will be coming to the Eternal City to launch his “Pavarotti” documentary, which will be screening in the official selection. Howard will hold an onstage conversation.

Other prominent film personalities booked for Rome’s Close Encounters onstage chats, which are becoming one of the fest’s trademarks under Monda’s guidance, are French filmmakers Olivier Assayas and Bertrand Tavernier and American writer Bret Easton Ellis.

To mark the release of La Ronde on 27th May, we’ve been given 1 copy to give away on Blu-ray.

Anton Walbrook guides us through the chain of amorous encounters as the enigmatic, omnipotent master of ceremonies. One fleeting moment links to the next, partners change and the dance goes on, turning with the elegance of a Viennese waltz, until the story is brought full circle in the final vignette.

With its breathtaking use of long takes and beautiful fluid camera moves Max Ophüls directs with stunning style and élan to create an astounding cinematic masterwork.

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only

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The Small Print

Open to UK residents only The competition will close 10th June 2019 at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative is available To coincide with Gdpr regulations, competition entry information will not...

Mubi's retrospective The Parallel Worlds of Olivier Assayas is showing May 3 – June 11, 2019 in the United States.Cold WaterWhen a filmmaker’s body of work is as prolific as it is varied, the paths to profile split two: the explanatory chronology that threads together A-to-b episodes of a life, and the thematic retrofit that groups one film with an unsuspecting other. But both are really about the same, hopeful thing: that the right arrangement of themes and biographic detail will yield some incandescent truth about their practice. With Olivier Assayas, the truths are dropped generously in correspondence—“Cinema has to be light,” he has told Kent Jones, and later, Film Comment1—always too articulate and discerning an interviewee to not betray his past as a writer and (reluctant) critic at Cahiers du cinéma, then helmed by Serge Daney and Toubiana. Assayas is, in fact, generous enough to have written a memoir,...

One of Max Ophüls’ best American movies is this razor-sharp ‘domestic film noir’ with excellent acting and a premise that was probably too sordid-real for 1949: cheap crooks blackmail an ordinary housewife trying to protect her family. Joan Bennett confronts the crisis head-on, facing down James Mason’s unusually sympathetic ‘collector.’

The Reckless Moment

Region free Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1949 / B&W / 1:37 full frame Academy / 82 min. / / Street Date April 22, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £17.00

Starring: James Mason, Joan Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, Henry O’Neill, Shepperd Strudwick, David Bair, Roy Roberts, William Schallert.

Cinematography: Burnett Guffey

Film Editor: Gene Havlick

Original Music: Hans Salter

Written by Henry Garson, Robert Soderberg; Mel Dinelli, Robert E. Kent, from a story by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Produced by Walter Wanger

Directed by Max Ophüls

Nobody forgets Joan Bennett’s film noir appearances — she has a dark, moody quality that even Dario Argento appreciated. In The Woman in the Window...

Robert Siodmak's Phantom Lady (1944) and The Killers (1946) are showing in March and April, 2019 on Mubi in many countries around the world.The KillersThere’s a long-told apocryphal story about German-born silent film star Emil Jannings. He was the first-ever winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1929. After his career had waned, he would return to his homeland and form close ties with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. His stardom was renewed within the Third Reich’s film industry. When Berlin was reduced to rubble and Allied troops advanced on Jannings’ home, the story goes that he held his golden statuette aloft and shouted some placating words to the soldiers: “Don’t shoot, I won an Oscar!” True or not, Jannings’ tale is a cruel sort of reversal of the reality faced by artists who were forced to escape Europe during the Nazis’ reign. Throughout the thirties,...

László Nemes‬ (looking at Martin Scorsese) on the stiff collar worn by Írisz in Sunset, costumes by Györgyi Szakács: "And it goes down with the film." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Sunset (Napszállta) is cinema at its astute and enchanting finest. Max Ophüls and Jean Renoir may come to mind and the scene in the shoe department of Romanze in Moll, Helmut Käutner's take on Guy De Maupassant. In a similar mode to the way László Nemes chained us to the back of the neck of Géza Röhrig's Saul Ausländer in his groundbreaking, Oscar-winning Son Of Saul (also shot by Mátyás Erdély), he attaches us firmly to his Sunset heroine Írisz Leiter (Juli Jakab), a young woman who returns, after years of apprenticeship in Trieste, to her native Budapest in hopes of working as a milliner at the famous Leiter department store her deceased parents used to own.

László...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSNadav Lapid's Synonyms.The 69th Berlinale has concluded. You can find the full awards here, and our favorite films plus a complete roundup of our coverage here.Recommended VIEWINGFirst up: Ryusuke Hamaguchi's dark romance Asako I & II gets its lively Us trailer via Grasshopper Film. Watch our interview with Hamaguchi we conducted after film's Cannes premiere.Following its rapturous Sundance and Berlinale reception, here's the trailer for Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir.Angela Schanelec just received the Silver Bear for Best Director at Berlin for her new feature, I Was at Home, But... Here's the first clip and our review of this beautiful, fragmentary film.Recommended READINGDavid Cronenberg's eXistenZ.The key to understanding David Cronenberg's filmography and its themes of identity, writes Christianne Benedict, is the idea that "sex is what life is.

Knightley plays a woman reclaiming her voice in Wash Westmoreland’s beautiful biopic of the French author

Keira Knightley delivers a playfully sly, subtly nuanced performance in director and co-writer Wash Westmoreland’s biographical drama about the titular French writer and performer. Focusing on Colette’s early power struggles with her egotistical husband (Dominic West) and her challenging of traditional gender boundaries, it’s an empowering and entertaining tale of a woman finding her own voice in a society in flux. Beautifully shot by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens, with production designs inspired by the French films of German director Max Ophüls, Colette convincingly conjures a late-19th/early-20th century milieu, to which it adds a thoroughly modern sensibility.

In late-1880s rural Burgundy, vagabond spirit and self-proclaimed “country girl” Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is courted by literary entrepreneur Henri Gauthier-Villars, marriage to whom opens the door to an exciting new world in Paris.