French things ...

A few titbits from the weekend papers: Catherine Deneuve, 69, has railed against the tyranny of high stiletto heels - she has always favoured flatter heels, as in this shot on location with Bunuel and Jean Sorel for BELLE DE JOUR in 1967. Back in the '60s apparantly high heels were worn by "women of ill-repute" and were agony to wear (I can well believe that...), As she says "'A simple, well-made shoe with the perfect arch is such a pleasure. It makes us walk differently; we feel free, emancipated, as if we can deal with life's challenges."

Also 69 and still looking marvellous with that silver hair, my teen favourite Francoise Hardy (left) has a new album out: "L'Amour Fou" - but WHY is it costing £21.00 on Amazon, when the new David Bowie is a mere £8.00 ? This will surely deter casual buyers .... I can download her new album for £4.00 though ! More on Francoise at Hardy label..

And a flashback to 1972, where an issue of "Films & Filming" I have just been browsing through, had a report from the Venice Film Festival by esteemed critic Ken Wlashchin - here is his perfect review of Marguerite Duras'  NATHALIE GRANGER, which I reviewed here a while back, Moreau label:

"NATHALIE GRANGER was a hypnotic, fascinating, bizarre and even sometimes boring in a compelling way but at all times showing the remarkable intelligence of a film-maker with her own personal vision. The story is virtually nil. Two women sitting at home, rather bored, one worried about her problem child Nathalie. Nothing much happens except for a visit from a washing machine salesman. It is a kind of Dantesque vision of woman's private Inferno. The actresses, Jeanne Moreau and Lucia Bose, are totally subdued, their usually powerful screen personalities dampened in this claustrophobic environment. Strangely the film is lit by passages of quirky humour,  what could be interpreted as the humour of desperation. The visit of the ineffective salesman who talks for ten minutes before discovering the women already have the machine he is selling is a bravura passage of grey rather than black humour. Whereas Sartre found that hell was other people, Miss Duras appears to imply that hell, for a woman, is her home".

Memo to self: I really must sit down and discover Chantel Akerman's JEANNE DIELMAN from 1975 with sublime Delphine Seyrig, before too long - it reads like it should be by Duras but it isn't ...

That "Films & Filming" issue also has an amusing feature by Mike Sarne on Fellini's TOBY DAMMIT (see my review at Terence Stamp label), the only film he owned - in that pre-video world he has to "haul out the projector and lace up the only film he owns" ... as he then describes the film shot by shot. Tres amusing. 

The magazine also has a photospread on Douglas Trumbull's SILENT RUNNING, which I missed at the time but recorded from a late night showing the other day. - It will be interesting to compare with the Blu-ray of 2001 shortly, Trumbull of course did special effects on both ...John Carpenter's DARK STAR is also winging its way to me, one of my new Blu-ray titles, how we loved that in 1974 with the spaced out astronauts, the beach ball alien and that talking bomb... more sci-fi soon then.