Yesterday was the 75th birthday of another of our great favourites - French/Canadian actress Genevieve Bujold .... the 70s was really her decade, we love her in De Palma's OBSESSION (see review, and a previous longer appreciation on her, at Bujold label) and Crichton's tense medical thriller COMA, and she is the best thing in the hilariously awful EARTHQUAKE. and we also love her in Lelouch's 1978 ANOTHER MAN, ANOTHER CHANCE, as per recent re-view. I never really liked ANNE OF A THOUSAND DAYS though. She later made interesting films like CHOOSE ME and still works now mainly in independent cinema. Viva Genevieve.
Showing posts with label Genevieve Bujold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Genevieve Bujold. Show all posts
Sunday, 2 July 2017
Sunday, 27 November 2016
Un Autre Homme, Une Autre Chance, 1977
Time for another look at Claude Leouch's 1977 western: This is my original review in 2010:
ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER CHANCE - Not really French, this long unseen rarity is a pleasure to see it again now. It is of course a western reworking by Claude Lelouch of his 1966 mega-hit UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME - as this is another man and another woman in a different time and place. Its a handsome pleasant hazy re-creation of the old west (well apart from the rape and murder of vet James Caan's wife, Jennifer Warren...). It begins in revolutionary Paris as photographer Francis Huster and wife Genevieve Bujold decide to move to the new world and travel by ship to America, then they are on a covered wagon and attacked by redskins and finally decide to settle and open their photography business. Caan also arrives in town, having sold his ranch, and deposits his baby with the underwritten part of the school-teacher - a too-little seen Susan Tyrell. 
Then cue the influences of Lelouch's original: some years later they visit their children at the school, she misses her stagecoach drive home, the teacher asks him to give her a drive, they slowly open up to each other, he asks to meet her husband and then we get the flashback about how he was killed .... instead of motor cars and racing tracks there are stagecoaches and horse races - and the ending is perfect as he rides on horseback to join her and the children [having brought his wife's killers to justice] as the camera pulls back to leave them as figures in a landscape with a neat voiceover as it fades to a sepia photograph in a photo-album. It turns out it is the story about the grandmother of the man we see at the start ... If you loved the '66 original, you will get a lot of pleasure out of this too, particularly with Caan and Bujold at their most pleasing, both are very likeable here, and as charistmatic as Trintignant and Aimee in the 1966 film,. Lelouch though seems to be out of fashion now, unlike Demy, Malle, Truffaut or Chabrol... We love Bujold of course in films like De Palma's OBSESSION or the ace thriller COMA.
Thursday, 22 March 2012
Samba Saravah
My French kick continues with a return visit to that charmer UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME, the big French success of 1966 - Pauline Kael had criticised it as a "date movie" as it was popular in a dubbed version as A MAN AND A WOMAN, but I simply loved it and Anouk Aimee as well, even if she had that annoying habit of fiddling with her hair and pushing it back all the time.
It is one of my favorite French movies with its photography changing from black-and-white to colors and to very beautiful sepia-tones. It was also director Claude Lelouch's biggest hit ( he served up more of the same the next year as VIVRE POUR VIVRE, a triangle with Montand, Girardot and Candice Bergen as more beautiful people living jetset lives). Here we have racing driver Jean-Louis Trintignant, and script girl Anouk Aimee, both widowed who meet when their children are at the same school in Deauville, so cue those soft focus scenes on the beach, the old man with his dog, the boardwalks, out on the boat as they hands gingerly touch, all set to the score by Francis Lai - what a best-seller that was, I used to play it all the time.
A lot of it seems improvised, like the restaurant scene with the children. Its certainly a new look at those upwardly mobile "getaway people" with their fast cars and boats, as featured in the then new colour supplements. Anouk is adorable here but it is hardly "acting" - despite being nominated for Best Actress that year (but we all knew it would be Elizabeth Taylor who won, deservingly this time) - she just had to fit in with Lelouch's cinematography looking cool in cars and boats and realising she cannot forget her dead husband - the hunky Pierre Barouh, who was her husband at the time (her marriage to Albert Finney was later), which leads to that great sequence I can watch over and over: the samba number "Samba Saravah" cut to the music, as we see Aimee and Barough horse-riding in the Camargue, she shampooing his hair etc as he sing sof his love for the Samba and those Brazilian poets who inspire him. Its a great sequence and on YouTube. Then we are back in the car and he finds out she still loves her dead husband ....
Lelouch did it all again in a western setting in 1977's ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER CHANCE which works quite well for me, with James Caan and Genevieve Bujold, as per my review at Bujold label, where it was amusing seeing horses and stagecoaches racing instead of racing cars. Lelouch also did a follow-up 20 years later A MAN AND A WOMAN 20 YEARS LATER which I have not seen but Anouk still looked marvellous while Trintignant had aged. I think I may rather want to stick with the original ...
It is one of my favorite French movies with its photography changing from black-and-white to colors and to very beautiful sepia-tones. It was also director Claude Lelouch's biggest hit ( he served up more of the same the next year as VIVRE POUR VIVRE, a triangle with Montand, Girardot and Candice Bergen as more beautiful people living jetset lives). Here we have racing driver Jean-Louis Trintignant, and script girl Anouk Aimee, both widowed who meet when their children are at the same school in Deauville, so cue those soft focus scenes on the beach, the old man with his dog, the boardwalks, out on the boat as they hands gingerly touch, all set to the score by Francis Lai - what a best-seller that was, I used to play it all the time.
A lot of it seems improvised, like the restaurant scene with the children. Its certainly a new look at those upwardly mobile "getaway people" with their fast cars and boats, as featured in the then new colour supplements. Anouk is adorable here but it is hardly "acting" - despite being nominated for Best Actress that year (but we all knew it would be Elizabeth Taylor who won, deservingly this time) - she just had to fit in with Lelouch's cinematography looking cool in cars and boats and realising she cannot forget her dead husband - the hunky Pierre Barouh, who was her husband at the time (her marriage to Albert Finney was later), which leads to that great sequence I can watch over and over: the samba number "Samba Saravah" cut to the music, as we see Aimee and Barough horse-riding in the Camargue, she shampooing his hair etc as he sing sof his love for the Samba and those Brazilian poets who inspire him. Its a great sequence and on YouTube. Then we are back in the car and he finds out she still loves her dead husband ....
Lelouch did it all again in a western setting in 1977's ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER CHANCE which works quite well for me, with James Caan and Genevieve Bujold, as per my review at Bujold label, where it was amusing seeing horses and stagecoaches racing instead of racing cars. Lelouch also did a follow-up 20 years later A MAN AND A WOMAN 20 YEARS LATER which I have not seen but Anouk still looked marvellous while Trintignant had aged. I think I may rather want to stick with the original ...
Friday, 1 July 2011
Movies I love: Obsession
1976 and the key movie of the year is Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER, but for me there was also Brian De Palma's breakout movie OBSESSION (and Lumet's NETWORK too of course) - what an exciting year with the New Hollywood cementing their reputations. What also links the two movies of course is that they both have those final scores by the great Bernard Herrmann - I had both on sountrack albums (video had not yet arrived!) so one had to have those pounding scores.... OBSESSION was such a dazzling movie seeing it for the first time in the cinema.
The story is deceptively simple as New Orleans businessman Cliff Robertson loses his wife and daughter in a kidnapping that goes wrong. The style, the editing, the music, all contribute to the air of delirium and then our grieving hero is left with his memories, the memorial in the business park, and his business partner John Lithgow... Then years later there is that fateful trip to Florence as he retraces his steps with his wife, and that church where the Italian girl is restoring frescoes. He approaches, he sees her and his frozen ..... as the images and the music reach a crescendo. She is of course the reincarnation of his dead wife - he has to get to know her and unbelievably they fall in love. We see her ill mother and after she dies he
has to bring her, Sandra, back to New Orleans where she has promised to marry him. She begins to explore the house and another level is reached, as the kidnapping is replayed .... what is happening, how is it all going to end?
has to bring her, Sandra, back to New Orleans where she has promised to marry him. She begins to explore the house and another level is reached, as the kidnapping is replayed .... what is happening, how is it all going to end?
Hitchock of course is the obvious influence here, particularly VERTIGO, and one can see De Palma's relishing of the material and the twists and turns of the plot until the final satisfying conclusion. We watch in amazement as Sandra reveals her side of the story (just like Kim in VERTIGO) and the real villain of the piece emerges. There is also that flashing pair of scissors (just like DIAL M FOR MURDER). The photography by Vilmos Zsigmond complements the music perfectly, and both Roberton and Bujold are astounding, one simply falls in love with Genevive's Sandra Portinari.
In the pre-video '70s though VERTIGO was long unavailable, most Hitch fans only had a memory of it (as I had), and it actually ends on a downbeat note as Scottie loses his great love once again - but that does not happen here, in Paul Schrader's very adroit re-telling of the story.
In the cinema though the lights went up and the curtains closed over the final moments as the camera does that 360 degree sweep around our couple so one did not see the final frames. One has to see it to the very end to appreciate what is really happening as they begin to realise who they really are as puzzlement gives way to understanding and joy. It is totally affecting. For me it is De Palma's masterpiece (I hated DRESSED TO KILL but OBSESSION will always be a Movie I Love).
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Taxi Driver
It's back! A new re-issue of TAXI DRIVER for its 35th anniversary ... it would be good to see it properly again - it was probably one of the most viewed of the early video cassettes back in the 80s and 90s.
An essential 1976 movie - how we were gripped and enthralled by it, it is certainly a vividly expressionistic depiction of big city breakdown and one of the true masterpieces of American cinema. One had to read the extensive coverage on it in "Film Comment" as Scorsese, Paul Schrader and De Niro were the heroes of the hour. I had that album too with that pounding Herrmann score - and then those images: the taxi emerging from the steam, the reds and neon colours. Perfect, simply p
erfect. I also loved NEW YORK NEW YORK and in fact that is one to re-visit too now.
erfect. I also loved NEW YORK NEW YORK and in fact that is one to re-visit too now.
The other movie that excited me as much in 1976 was De Palma's brilliant OBSESSION where one fell totally in love with Genevieve Bujold, and it too had stunning images and another final Bernard Herrmann score. They were the top movies of the year for me, along with Visconti's last L'INNOCENTE (maybe the greatest costume period film ever) and Lester's ROBIN AND MARIAN. Some year ... (like 1975 was the year of Antonioni's THE PASSENGER and Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Italian peplums 1: spoofs and thrills
TWO NIGHTS WITH CLEOPATRA - Sort of an Italian CARRY ON CLEO? This Alberto Sordi comedy seems to be a spoof of the sword-and-sandal genre churned out in Italy during the ‘50s and early ‘60s. This one is only of note now because it features the 19 year old Sophia Loren in the dual role of Cleopatra and a slave girl who looks like her. Cleo needs to escape for a night or two and the slave girl Niscia has to impersonate her. Cleo though is in the habit of sleeping with her guards who are then killed the next morning – and Sordi is the latest guard. Alberto though is one of those annoying comedians (like Benny Hill or Frankie Howard or Norman Wisdom or Jerry Lewis – I dare say every country has their own) whom one either likes or dislikes. I am afraid it is the latter for me, but Sophia looks like she is going places here and has that swim in the pool … direction is credited to one Mario Mattoli. Very average but then Italian comedy does not always translate well abroad. It is of course a Ponti-De Laurentiis production.
NERO’S LOST WEEKEND or MY SON NERO – This 1956 one features Sordi again as Nero on holiday at his seaside villa. The cast though is the thing here: Vittorio D
e Sica as Seneca (one of his take the money and run jobs to finance his gambling no doubt), the pre-Vadim Brigitte Bardot lovely as ever as Poppea – AND Gloria Swanson as Nero’s fearsome mother Agrippina. She makes a fantastic entrance parting the curtains of her carriage as she is all in red with a red veil – quite a contrast to Norma Desmond. She enters into the spirit of all, so it is amusing nonsense. My copy is in Italian though – but with that cast one hardly needs English!. Steno is credited as director but Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci are also involved and it has the usual Titanus production values. Peter Ustinov’s Nero though was a lot funnier in QUO VADIS!
MESSALINA IMPERIAL VENUS – a 1960 routine Italian sword-and-sandal saga I had been meaning to see as it features a fascinating starlet Belinda Lee, who was one of the British Rank Organisation girls and who featured in British moves in the ‘50s before moving to Europe and the popular peplum movies of the era, before being killed in a car accident in 1961 while still in her 20s. Maybe she would have had a better career … Here she is the evil Messalina, wife of Claudius (a minor character here) as she plots to take control using lovers and having people assassinated. There are also some Christians of course, but Messalina the ex-vestal virgin gets her comeuppance eventually. It is a good German issue actually with German and English subtitles and interesting enough, though without a strong male lead. Directed by one Vittorio Cottafavi.
JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHERN – Another interesting biblical, released in 1962 but must have been filmed about 1960 (as star Belinda Lee died in 1961), directed by veteran Irvin Rapper (who lived to be 101!). It has decent production values, and a score by Mario Nascimbene, as it expands on the biblical story of Joseph sold into Egypt and his coat of many colours. Geoffrey Horne from BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (and BONJOUR TRISTESSE and THE TEMPEST, both ’58) is Joseph, biblical veteran Finlay Currie his father and one of the brothers is Terence Hill as Benjamin. Robert Morley has a whale of a time hamming it up as the merchant Potiphar and Belinda Lee, looking sensational in a black wig, is Potiphar’s deceitful wife who puts the make on Joseph. It is all quite watchable as Rapper (a long way from NOW VOYAGER) makes it seem effortless.
and: not a sword-and-sandal but certainly an oddity I finally caught up with:
THE TROJAN WOMEN – Funny how one resists certain movies. Despite my admiration for those leading actresses I just never wanted to see this Michael Cacoyannis 1971 version of the Euripedes Greek tragedy, and despite having the dvd for over a year, I was in no hurry to see it. But as it is a week of exploring female roles I gave it a go, and it certainly lived up (or down) to my expectations. Perhaps Greek tragedies are now unfilmable (though Cacoyannis’ ELECTRA was an exception). Here he is showcasing Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Genevieve Bujold and Irene Papas who all get their moments but they are Acting, Acting, Acting.
It just gets tiresome and is in fact rarther risible as they are dressed in rags, scrabbling around in the dust in a barren desert landscape (rather like out-takes from THE LIFE OF BRIAN) – but these are Trojan noblewomen and Troy has just been captured, it would not be reduced to rubble just yet, so one queries the look of the film. Redgrave produces a weird animal-like shriek as she is told her son has to die, and it is fascinating to see the leonine Hepburn, as the queen Hecuba, at this stage of her career after her late ‘60s successes and before her frailties set in. Papas scores best though as the caged Helen, proud and defiant in her nakedness. Brian Blessed and Patrick Magee are the only males of note. It is certainly an interesting oddity, but hardly one to re-see.
Next lot: Steve Reeves THE GIANT OF MARATHON, THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, Jeffrey Hunter GOLD FOR THE CAESARS, Anthony Quinn ATTILA, Kirk Douglas ULYSSES, Jeanne Crain NEFERTIRI PRINCESS OF THE NILE etc
NERO’S LOST WEEKEND or MY SON NERO – This 1956 one features Sordi again as Nero on holiday at his seaside villa. The cast though is the thing here: Vittorio D
e Sica as Seneca (one of his take the money and run jobs to finance his gambling no doubt), the pre-Vadim Brigitte Bardot lovely as ever as Poppea – AND Gloria Swanson as Nero’s fearsome mother Agrippina. She makes a fantastic entrance parting the curtains of her carriage as she is all in red with a red veil – quite a contrast to Norma Desmond. She enters into the spirit of all, so it is amusing nonsense. My copy is in Italian though – but with that cast one hardly needs English!. Steno is credited as director but Mario Bava and Lucio Fulci are also involved and it has the usual Titanus production values. Peter Ustinov’s Nero though was a lot funnier in QUO VADIS!
MESSALINA IMPERIAL VENUS – a 1960 routine Italian sword-and-sandal saga I had been meaning to see as it features a fascinating starlet Belinda Lee, who was one of the British Rank Organisation girls and who featured in British moves in the ‘50s before moving to Europe and the popular peplum movies of the era, before being killed in a car accident in 1961 while still in her 20s. Maybe she would have had a better career … Here she is the evil Messalina, wife of Claudius (a minor character here) as she plots to take control using lovers and having people assassinated. There are also some Christians of course, but Messalina the ex-vestal virgin gets her comeuppance eventually. It is a good German issue actually with German and English subtitles and interesting enough, though without a strong male lead. Directed by one Vittorio Cottafavi.
JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHERN – Another interesting biblical, released in 1962 but must have been filmed about 1960 (as star Belinda Lee died in 1961), directed by veteran Irvin Rapper (who lived to be 101!). It has decent production values, and a score by Mario Nascimbene, as it expands on the biblical story of Joseph sold into Egypt and his coat of many colours. Geoffrey Horne from BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (and BONJOUR TRISTESSE and THE TEMPEST, both ’58) is Joseph, biblical veteran Finlay Currie his father and one of the brothers is Terence Hill as Benjamin. Robert Morley has a whale of a time hamming it up as the merchant Potiphar and Belinda Lee, looking sensational in a black wig, is Potiphar’s deceitful wife who puts the make on Joseph. It is all quite watchable as Rapper (a long way from NOW VOYAGER) makes it seem effortless.and: not a sword-and-sandal but certainly an oddity I finally caught up with:
THE TROJAN WOMEN – Funny how one resists certain movies. Despite my admiration for those leading actresses I just never wanted to see this Michael Cacoyannis 1971 version of the Euripedes Greek tragedy, and despite having the dvd for over a year, I was in no hurry to see it. But as it is a week of exploring female roles I gave it a go, and it certainly lived up (or down) to my expectations. Perhaps Greek tragedies are now unfilmable (though Cacoyannis’ ELECTRA was an exception). Here he is showcasing Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave, Genevieve Bujold and Irene Papas who all get their moments but they are Acting, Acting, Acting.
It just gets tiresome and is in fact rarther risible as they are dressed in rags, scrabbling around in the dust in a barren desert landscape (rather like out-takes from THE LIFE OF BRIAN) – but these are Trojan noblewomen and Troy has just been captured, it would not be reduced to rubble just yet, so one queries the look of the film. Redgrave produces a weird animal-like shriek as she is told her son has to die, and it is fascinating to see the leonine Hepburn, as the queen Hecuba, at this stage of her career after her late ‘60s successes and before her frailties set in. Papas scores best though as the caged Helen, proud and defiant in her nakedness. Brian Blessed and Patrick Magee are the only males of note. It is certainly an interesting oddity, but hardly one to re-see.Next lot: Steve Reeves THE GIANT OF MARATHON, THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, Jeffrey Hunter GOLD FOR THE CAESARS, Anthony Quinn ATTILA, Kirk Douglas ULYSSES, Jeanne Crain NEFERTIRI PRINCESS OF THE NILE etc
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Some French films....
4 French flicks I recently enjoyed:
DEATHWATCH or LE MORT EN DIRECT - Bertrand Tavernier's 1979 futuristic film (released in 1980) set in a (then) run-down Glasgow and other Scottish locations, as a sort of sci-fi where watching people die on television is the new craze. Its "reality tv" about 20 years before it happened ... and is a weird mix of 70s Hollywood (represented by Harvey Keitel and Harry Dean Stanton) mi
xed in with icons of European cinema - Romy Schneider and Max Von Sydow. Schneider is fascinating as ever and delivers a powerhouse performance as the woman told she is going to die, who is followed by Keitel with a camera implanted in his eyes to record her every move for the tv company marketing the Death Watch show - sort of an early Big Brother. She goes on the run to avoid her death being a public spectacle, but is she really ill or being deceived? At over two hours it is probably a bit too long and there are longeurs but then Von Sydow enters making the last 15 minutes enthralling. Romy died two years later in '82 and is very natural and feisty here and even de-glamourised is still so beautiful. A fascinating experiment that doesn't quite come off...
LE PEAU DOUCE (THE SOFT SKIN) - Francois Truffaut's 1964 study of an adulterous affair and its repercussions is still a charming movie from that era of lustrous black and white photography. In the hands of another director, this could be a corny melodramatic story (rather like DAY FOR NIGHT's "MEET PAMELA"); in the hands of Truffault, this little gem becomes a credible, melancholic drama - but to modern audiences now the "hero" surely comes across as a smug, self-satisfield individual, cheating on his wife and constantly eyeing up other women. No wonder his wife Franca is dissatisfied. On a routine trip away he makes a play for the air stewardess who is at the same hotel, and this quickly leads to an affair. But would Nicole the attractive hostess - Francoise Dorleac at her vibrant attractive best - really notice this average, if well-known, middle-aged man? He takes her away on another trip but everything goes wrong as his time is monopolised by the provincial people he is lecturing to, and he gets landed with a bore who wants to travel back to Paris with him. Things comes to a head with his marriage and he images he will be setting up home with the hostess, but then his wife finds the photos of their weekend away and takes matters into her own hands. He does not seem too put out about Nicole leaving him, as he sits at his usual place in the restaurant as he arranges to resume his marriage... Its another nice movie of Paris in the early '60s (like CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 or LE FEU FOLLET). Jean Desailly is effective as our hero and Dorleac creates a very modern girl. One nice moment is when they put out the breakfast tray and the cat comes in on cue - which Truffaut had fun recreating in DAY FOR NIGHT.
ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER CHANCE - Not really French, this long unseen rarity turned up courtesy of TCM here in the UK as one of their United Artists titles they are currently screening. I saw it back in '77 so pleasant to catch it again now. It is of course a western reworking by Claude Lelouch of his 1966 mega-hit UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME - as this is another man and another woman in a different time and place. Its a handsome pleasant hazy re-creation of the old west (well apart from the rape and murder of vet James Caan's wife, Jennifer Warren...). It begins in revolutionary Paris as photographer Francis Huster and wife Genevieve Bujold decide to move to the new world and travel by ship to America, then they are on a covered wagon and attacked by redskins and finally decide to settle and open their photography business. Caan also arrives in town, having sold his ranch, and deposits his baby with the underwritten part of the school-teacher - a too-little seen Susan Tyrell. 
Then cue the influences of Lelouch's original: some years later they visit their children at the school, she misses her stagecoach drive home, the teacher asks him to give her a drive, they slowly open up to each other, he asks to meet her husband and then we get the flashback about how he was killed .... instead of motor cars and racing tracks there are stagecoaches and horse races - and the ending is perfect as he rides on horseback to join her and the children [having brought his wife's killers to justice] as the camera pulls back to leave them as figures in a landscape with a neat voiceover as it fades to a sepia photograph in a photo-album. If you loved the '66 original, you will get a lot of pleasure out of this too, particularly with Caan and Bujold at their most pleasing, both are very likeable here. Lelouch though seems to be out of fashion now, unlike Demy, Malle, Truffaut or Chabrol...
HEAVEN FELL THAT NIGHT [Les Bijoutiers Du Clair De Lune] - Back to the '50s for Vadim's second film with Bardot after their AND GOD CREATED WOMAN sensation in 1956. This is a sunburned film noir, beautifully photographed in colour and CinemaScope utilising some extraordinary landscapes in Spain. BB is the young convent girl returning home to stay with aunt Alida Valli and her lecherous husband who is soon killed by local stud Stephen Boyd, who has been seeing Valli. A powerful scene takes place during the Count's funeral where we see Valli stopping in the village streets and removing her veil which covers her face to stare in silence, at Boyd, as she conceals her passions beneath a steely exterior. BB is sensational as ever but does not come to dominate the film until she and Boyd are on the run though those incredible landscapes. Her scenes with the animals (a donkey and a piglet) are charming - highlighting her future interests. There is also though the brutality of bull-fighting, and a very erotic scene as the lovers finally get together. This one does for Spain what AND GOD CREATED WOMAN did for St Tropez. Bardot and Boyd are perfect here and both look their best, which did not apply 10 years later in that trash western (also made in Spain) SHALAKO in '68 when they were both past their peaks.... Valli too is terrific in a role with shades of her Wanton Countess in Visconti's SENSO. Like the British THE SPANISH GARDENER it captures Spain before all the tourists arrived... though this must have been much more sensational at the time with BB in various states of undress; one can see how she affected the 50s, like James Dean did, being a true archtype, as Mylene Demongeot and others copied her hair and fashions. Just what the '50s needed! The dvd also contains a bumper selection of trailers for all those other BB titles, some long unseen.
DEATHWATCH or LE MORT EN DIRECT - Bertrand Tavernier's 1979 futuristic film (released in 1980) set in a (then) run-down Glasgow and other Scottish locations, as a sort of sci-fi where watching people die on television is the new craze. Its "reality tv" about 20 years before it happened ... and is a weird mix of 70s Hollywood (represented by Harvey Keitel and Harry Dean Stanton) mi
xed in with icons of European cinema - Romy Schneider and Max Von Sydow. Schneider is fascinating as ever and delivers a powerhouse performance as the woman told she is going to die, who is followed by Keitel with a camera implanted in his eyes to record her every move for the tv company marketing the Death Watch show - sort of an early Big Brother. She goes on the run to avoid her death being a public spectacle, but is she really ill or being deceived? At over two hours it is probably a bit too long and there are longeurs but then Von Sydow enters making the last 15 minutes enthralling. Romy died two years later in '82 and is very natural and feisty here and even de-glamourised is still so beautiful. A fascinating experiment that doesn't quite come off...
LE PEAU DOUCE (THE SOFT SKIN) - Francois Truffaut's 1964 study of an adulterous affair and its repercussions is still a charming movie from that era of lustrous black and white photography. In the hands of another director, this could be a corny melodramatic story (rather like DAY FOR NIGHT's "MEET PAMELA"); in the hands of Truffault, this little gem becomes a credible, melancholic drama - but to modern audiences now the "hero" surely comes across as a smug, self-satisfield individual, cheating on his wife and constantly eyeing up other women. No wonder his wife Franca is dissatisfied. On a routine trip away he makes a play for the air stewardess who is at the same hotel, and this quickly leads to an affair. But would Nicole the attractive hostess - Francoise Dorleac at her vibrant attractive best - really notice this average, if well-known, middle-aged man? He takes her away on another trip but everything goes wrong as his time is monopolised by the provincial people he is lecturing to, and he gets landed with a bore who wants to travel back to Paris with him. Things comes to a head with his marriage and he images he will be setting up home with the hostess, but then his wife finds the photos of their weekend away and takes matters into her own hands. He does not seem too put out about Nicole leaving him, as he sits at his usual place in the restaurant as he arranges to resume his marriage... Its another nice movie of Paris in the early '60s (like CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 or LE FEU FOLLET). Jean Desailly is effective as our hero and Dorleac creates a very modern girl. One nice moment is when they put out the breakfast tray and the cat comes in on cue - which Truffaut had fun recreating in DAY FOR NIGHT.
ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER CHANCE - Not really French, this long unseen rarity turned up courtesy of TCM here in the UK as one of their United Artists titles they are currently screening. I saw it back in '77 so pleasant to catch it again now. It is of course a western reworking by Claude Lelouch of his 1966 mega-hit UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME - as this is another man and another woman in a different time and place. Its a handsome pleasant hazy re-creation of the old west (well apart from the rape and murder of vet James Caan's wife, Jennifer Warren...). It begins in revolutionary Paris as photographer Francis Huster and wife Genevieve Bujold decide to move to the new world and travel by ship to America, then they are on a covered wagon and attacked by redskins and finally decide to settle and open their photography business. Caan also arrives in town, having sold his ranch, and deposits his baby with the underwritten part of the school-teacher - a too-little seen Susan Tyrell. Then cue the influences of Lelouch's original: some years later they visit their children at the school, she misses her stagecoach drive home, the teacher asks him to give her a drive, they slowly open up to each other, he asks to meet her husband and then we get the flashback about how he was killed .... instead of motor cars and racing tracks there are stagecoaches and horse races - and the ending is perfect as he rides on horseback to join her and the children [having brought his wife's killers to justice] as the camera pulls back to leave them as figures in a landscape with a neat voiceover as it fades to a sepia photograph in a photo-album. If you loved the '66 original, you will get a lot of pleasure out of this too, particularly with Caan and Bujold at their most pleasing, both are very likeable here. Lelouch though seems to be out of fashion now, unlike Demy, Malle, Truffaut or Chabrol...
HEAVEN FELL THAT NIGHT [Les Bijoutiers Du Clair De Lune] - Back to the '50s for Vadim's second film with Bardot after their AND GOD CREATED WOMAN sensation in 1956. This is a sunburned film noir, beautifully photographed in colour and CinemaScope utilising some extraordinary landscapes in Spain. BB is the young convent girl returning home to stay with aunt Alida Valli and her lecherous husband who is soon killed by local stud Stephen Boyd, who has been seeing Valli. A powerful scene takes place during the Count's funeral where we see Valli stopping in the village streets and removing her veil which covers her face to stare in silence, at Boyd, as she conceals her passions beneath a steely exterior. BB is sensational as ever but does not come to dominate the film until she and Boyd are on the run though those incredible landscapes. Her scenes with the animals (a donkey and a piglet) are charming - highlighting her future interests. There is also though the brutality of bull-fighting, and a very erotic scene as the lovers finally get together. This one does for Spain what AND GOD CREATED WOMAN did for St Tropez. Bardot and Boyd are perfect here and both look their best, which did not apply 10 years later in that trash western (also made in Spain) SHALAKO in '68 when they were both past their peaks.... Valli too is terrific in a role with shades of her Wanton Countess in Visconti's SENSO. Like the British THE SPANISH GARDENER it captures Spain before all the tourists arrived... though this must have been much more sensational at the time with BB in various states of undress; one can see how she affected the 50s, like James Dean did, being a true archtype, as Mylene Demongeot and others copied her hair and fashions. Just what the '50s needed! The dvd also contains a bumper selection of trailers for all those other BB titles, some long unseen.Tuesday, 13 April 2010
People we like: Genevieve Bujold
Genevieve Bujold - there's a name to conjure with. Born in Canada in 1942, she has been one of the most individual actresses/stars since she began in the '60s with De Broca's KNAVE OF HEARTS opposite Alan Bates, and in Resnais' LE GUERRE EST FINIE with Yves Montand and Ingrid Thulin. Then of course that breakthrough role as Anne Boleyn in that dull pageant of a costume movie, ANNE OF THE THOUSAND DAYS, but she was excellent in it.
She was Heston's mistress in the entertaining EARTHQUAKE, but for me her best role is in DePalma's terrific Hitchcock pastiche OBSESSION, in 1976. To me its as important as TAXI DRIVER and it also has a late great Herrmann score. She is ideal as the girl Cliff Robertson meets in Florence who is the image of his dead wife, and whom he brings back to New Orleans, only to find....... Genevieve is terrific in the two roles and really makes it work, as does John Lithgow's fascinating villain.
Genevieve is also super in Crichton's COMA as the plucky doctor uncovering just why so many people go into comas at her hospital - Michael Douglas is her rather dull boyfriend and Richard Widmark runs the hospital, while Elizabeth Ashley guards the sinister facility where the bodies are kept in suspended animation. There is that very tense sequence where she evades the prowler sent to keep her quiet... There were also a pirate caper with Robert Shaw, movies with Clint Eastwood and Jack Lemmon, and of course Cronenburg's masterly DEAD RINGERS with two Jeremy Irons. She is also marvellous in those Alan Rudolph films CHOOSE ME, TROUBLE IN MIND and THE MODERNS, and there is a routine thriller FINAL ASSIGNMENT with Michael York which I have got but not seen yet.
I also liked her in that charming take on westerns by Claude Lelouch, ANOTHER MAN ANOTHER WOMAN, with James Caan in '78 - a sort of variation on his UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME success of the '60s, and of course she is also terrific in the little-seen THE TROJAN WOMEN in '71 as Cassandra with that powerhouse cast including Katharine Hepburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Irene Papas.
She seems to be somebody who did not let the industry rule or ruin her, but works on her terms [she exited a STAR TREK series after one day! after realising it was not what she wanted] and walks away from all the hoopla and red carpet nonsense, like Julie Christie, Sarah Miles and a few others. Viva Genevieve - I love her looks and quirky manner, nice to see she is keeping busy and trust she finds suitable roles as she ages.
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