20 Italian classics .....

Its my delayed Lists week - we start with some Italian favourites, then French, British, Costume films, American dramas and 20 Trash favourites ..... let's do one a day. (I am limiting myself to 2 maximum from each director).

• BICYCLE THIEVES / GARDEN OF THE FINZI CONTINI (1970) – De Sica
• TOO BAD SHE’S BAD – Blasetti, 1954 (the first pairing of Sophia and Marcello, with Vittorio having fun too)
• I VITELLONI (1953) / AMARCORD 1974) – Fellini - two Fellini classics (it may be heresy but I never liked LA DOLCE VITA or EIGHT AND A HALF that much ...)
• JOURNEY TO ITALY – Rossellini. A key Italian movie from 1953 that paved the way for the likes of Antonioni and the others .... Bergman and Sanders were hardly ever better.
  
• PANE, AMORE, E …. (SCANDAL IN SORRENTO) – Risi, 1955 Delicious Italian frolic with Sophia and Vittorio having fun in Sorrento. 
• LA NOTTE BRAVA (1959) / FROM A ROMAN BALCONY  (1960) –Bolognini - Doomed glamorous youth (Terzieff, Brialy, Sorel, Milian) in Bolognini's key works .... (perhaps MUBI will put them on for Martin .... just sayin'.)

LA NOTTE BRAVA

• L’AVVENTURA / L’ECLISSE – Antonioni & Vitti  (its all at the labels...)
• IL MARE (THE SEA) – Patrone Griffi (never seen this since 1964, when I was 18, and it was at the old Academy in Oxford Street, London). Rare indeed ....
• THE LEOPARD / SANDRA – Visconti (Luchino's opulence and that great black and white melodrama from 1965, with Cardinale and Sorel at their sumptuous beautiful peaks). 
  
• THE CONFORMIST (1970) – Bertolucci (it still amazes now). 
• OEDIPE RE / TEOREMA – Pasolini. His late 60s classics with Silvana Mangano mesmerising as ever. 
• THE LONG NIGHT OF ’43 – Vancini (this 1960 rare classic has Ferzetti and Belinda Lee in a terrific dramatic role - she is the equal of Loren or Mangano here). 
• SEVEN BEAUTIES – Wertmuller - this 1975 stunner still packs a powerful punch, particularly those scenes with Giancarlo Giannini and Shirley Stoler in the concentration camp ...)
• PADRE PADRONE - Taviani  Brothers. 1970s arthouse favourite - I liked it so much I returned with friends so they could share it too. More on these at labels.

Scorsese's documentary MY VOYAGE TO ITALY, as per my post in 2011, is essential and covers these key films and directors in detail with lots of clips, the movies he grew up watching.

New year re-views 2: L'Avventura

After another marvellous view of Antonioni's classic, here is an early post of mine from two years ago, on L'AVVENTURA:

The late English film critic and writer Alexander Walker [whom I used to see around town regularly] was very perceptive in his movie reviews and his biographies on the likes of Vivien Leigh, Elizabeth Taylor, Rex Harrison, Garbo and the silent era. His Thursday reviews were essential reading.

Here are his comments from a recommendation on a screening of L'AVVENTURA:

"Not all great movies, as Pauline Kael tartly observed, are received "in an atmosphere of incense burning". Michelangelo Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA was greeted at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival with a storm of cat-calling and booing. Yet within the year it had become the most fashionable film in European arthouses, and one that set the tone of other bleakly visionary film-makers. It begins with an almost glossy magazine depiction of the affluent Rome middle-class on a yachting holiday in the Lipari islands. Tensions are perceptible, but enigmatically conveyed. Then, as they prepare to leave an island, one woman (Lea Massari) is found to be missing. A search is mounted. With marvellous sleight-of-hand, Antonioni misdirects our attention: gradually we realise that instead of being looked for by her friends, she is being forgotten as two of them fall in love. The film changes key subtly, yet again to suggest how the emotions of a social class have become deadened and selfish. Monica Vitti made her name with this puzzle picture. The last sequence in a Taormina luxury hotel became notorious for her apparantly endless walk through the midnight corridors to discover her treacherous lover (Gabriele Ferzetti). It tried the patience of the black-tie crowd beyond endurance; yet The Walk soon became the trademark of other heroines, in other movies, who exemplified the sick soul of sixties Europe."

L'AVVENTURA was though the most problematic of the Antonioni films for me, I much preferred L'ECLISSE but now I have seen L'AVVENTURA a few more times and suddenly I think its wonderful in all its stark beauty. Our arty film channel Film4 ran it again last week, and despite having the Criterion dvd, I recorded it and found myself returning to it several times. It is pure cinema and I can now lose myself in it repeatedly. The first section on the island is brilliant - the photographs here show what a difficult shoot it must have been on the island in that magic year 1959. Monica Vitti is mesmerising and its a very multi-faceted performance: her anguish on the island searching for Anna, then trying to evade Sandro and finally giving in to her feelings and being deliriously in love and then that climax at the hotel in Taormina in that cold dawn ... a gold plated classic then and as I said in other posts on it, it and PSYCHO usher in that new modern world of 1960, both in their way about a woman who disappears and the people looking for her. 

Monica

Some super black and white shots of our goddess Monica Vitti, by Elisabetta Catalano. I have finally got my hands on that 2011 issue of Italian "Vanity Fair" with 12 pages on Monica, with some terrific photos and comments and features on her, on her then 80th birthday.  There is also now that new Blu-ray of L'AVVENTURA .... Those Antonioni films find new admirers all the time. 
My first appreciation on Monica back in 2010 is at Monica 1 label, got over 2800 views then. She is still a major European star even if she has been silent for some years .....

The landscape and architecture of that face ... and that distinctive voice and sense of fun.
I came across a piece on her by Alan Stanbrook from 1990:
"There are two Monica Vittis: the husky, effervescent comedienne, which is how she sees herself, and the grave, statuesque beauty gazing into a haunted future which is how director Michelangelo Antonioni saw her. They worked together five times, between L'AVVENTURA in 1959 and THE OBERWALD MYSTERY in 1980. A presence more than an actress, Vitti was moulded into a Bernhardt (and the face of European cinema) when she wanted to be a Betty Hutton or Kay Kendall. Humour has surfaced throughout her career, from CHATEAU EN SUEDE to MODESTY BLAISE.. The first film she directed SECRET SCANDAL (unavailable here) is also a comedy. A thick Roman accent denied her an international career, but, with Antonioni, she had more than that: like Jeanne Moreau, hers became the face of our troubled times."  

THE Italian double bill ?

A friend and I were discussing fantasy double bills, here is my Italian choice ... two of our timeless favourites, discussed many times here, as per labels. Rossellini's 1953 classic VOYAGE TO ITALY (below) with Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA. The Rossellini really paved the way for those Antonioni classics. 

Alternatively, for great Fifties Italian cinema: Fellini's 1953 small town drama I VITELLONI twinned with Bolognini's 1959 saga of petty hoodlums and prostitutes, as scripted by Pasolini, but glamorised and how by Bolognini ... LA NOTTE BRAVA. (We are doing a post on Bolognini next ...).

Below: Jean-Claude Brialy and Tomas Milian in a rather steamy scene (for 1959) from LA NOTTE BRAVA. 

For Italian glamour and decadence, one could not beat Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST with a Visconti: THE LEOPARD or his final masterpiece L'INNOCENTE from 1976.

I would also have to make a dramatic double bill of Wertmuller's 1975 opus SEVEN BEAUTIES, with maybe Vancini's THE LONG NIGHT OF '43 ...  and what about Visconti's SANDRA from 1975, with maybe Antonioni's LE AMICHE ....  endless possibilities. More on all these at Italian labels. French double-bills soon, perhaps. 

Star, 80

The latest addition to the 80s club - Alain Delon - 80 yesterday, joining Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot and the rest. We have used this photo of Alain before - from Clement's 1963 LES FELINS. It may be time to see PLEIN SOLEIL again .... lots more Alain at label. 

I might have to invest in the new Blu-ray of L'ECLISSE for those perfect black and white images and Antonioni landscapes ... Methinks 80 is the new 70 ...

Antonioni exhibition in Amsterdam

The Eye Museum in Amsterdam is today opening what sounds like a fascinating exhibition on Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni: 

As their introduction states: From 12 September 2015 to 17 January 2016, EYE is presenting Michelangelo Antonioni – Il maestro del cinema moderno, an exhibition about one of the foremost innovators in film from the last century. The exhibition shows how Antonioni renewed the grammar of film by thinking in terms of the image and less in terms of narrative.

Antonioni was one of the first film authors who tried to capture the state of mind of characters searching for meaning by framing them in a particular way in a striking mise-en-scène. “Each square centimetre of the image is essential,” asserted Antonioni. The exhibition contains film fragments, photos by press photographers from Magnum, set photos, letters from Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau and Umberto Eco, and paintings by Antonioni. Antonioni’s films will be screened in the auditoriums and accompanied by special programmes.

With his famous trilogy L’avventura (1960), La notte (1961) and L’eclisse (1962) – all featuring his muse Monica Vitti – Antonioni became one of the leading directors of the last century. A stylistic perfectionist, he renewed the grammar of film. He conveyed estrangement and faltering communication between lovers with sophisticated mise-en-scène and wonderfully framed, desolate shots of industrial and desert landscapes. Narrative, dialogue and action were of lesser importance to him.

L’avventura (1960) ranks as a turning point in the history of film and the start of modern cinema. The director succeeded in translating the sense of malaise among the affluent middle class into oppressive images. It was deemed outrageous that, during a boat trip right at the start of L’avventura, the celebrated actress Lea Massari was made to disappear from the story. The film received fierce criticism at its premiere in Cannes, where leading actress Monica Vitti left the screening in tears. Nonetheless — after a campaign of support from fellow directors who immediately recognized the importance of the film – the film still won the jury prize.

As per the labels, there is a lot on Antonioni and Vitti and the films here .... 

 More at the link:

https://www.eyefilm.nl/en/news/exhibition-michelangelo-antonioni-opens-12-september

Tasty revew of L'ECLISSE

A delicious review of Antonioni's L'ECLISSE (now back on big screens at the BFI) from the London "Evening Standard" by Charlotte O'Sullivan (no relation), one of the new generation of film reviewers: 

"God, this is so much better than the angsty L'AVVENTURA, Antonioni's "masterpiece". There's no denying that his 1962 satire involves Monica Vitti staring into space for much of the time - was there ever such a girl for mooching? Nevertheless, her various encounters - she trails after her potty mother, flirts with a fretful stock market whizz (Alain Delon), irks a racist neighbour - seem plugged into the real world.

Meanwhile, Rome looks monumental, in a wonderfully unstuffy way. Antonioni's black-and-white images suggest there's great beauty in the world but plenty of humdrum uginess too. Perhaps because the director has rooted the story in characters, rather than concepts, every inch of the landscape makes you look twice." 

Monica Vitti in Town

As reported on those vintage magazines (sounds better than old magazines) it was nice to get my hands on this issue of TOWN, which I had when I was 16, a British fashion/style magazine for the man about town, from October 1962 with that exciting new star Monica Vitti on the cover - Antonioni's L'ECLISSE had opened and was the must-see movie then. I have written a lot about this film and Antonioni and Vitti before, see the labels.

There is a good feature in this issue by Italian specialist John Francis Lane ("Films and Filming"'s Italian correspondent) interviewing Monica here. 
She is the new Italian sensation after Lollo, Loren and Cardinale ..... and she wants to do comedy but Antonioni only sees her in serious drama, as in L'AVVENTURA, LA NOTTE and now L'ECLISSE, and he is preparing THE RED DESERT for her, another serious role. Monica, then 28, does not identify with these women and wants to be a clown, and funny like Kay Kendall. 

The intellectuals at that time saw Antonioni and Vitti as the height of chic in that fascinating era of early Sixites international cinema. Alienation was the topic of the day and Antonioni specialised in it. Monica giggles and says nobody could be less alienated than she. Monica wants to act in a comedy - for her, life is a continuous joke. 

Like Fellini, Antonioni moulds his characters on to the personality of the actor. Much of Monica has gone into those characters: Claudia in L'AVVENTURA, Valentina in LA NOTTE and now Vittoria in L'ECLISSE - what has emerged is the personality of an actress who is the anti-star, who has nothing in common with Loren and Cardinale and even less with Bardot and Monroe. The girl of the new decade will recognise herself in Claudia, Valentina and Vittoria. 

Fifty plus years later, Monica now in her 80s (as are Loren and Lollobrigida) is it seems in seclusion with Alzheimers, and has not been seen in public for a decade or more. One trusts she is being looked after and happy. She has been married to Italian actor Roberto Russo since her Antonioni period. 
Antonioni died in 2007 - the same day as Ingmar Bergman, as per our reports on that - Antonioni label. The films go on being watched and discovered. 

We love Monica too of course as MODESTY BLAISE and in all those comedies she made, after Antonioni, as per Monica label.

Photo of the day ...

Lea Massari, Michelangelo Antonioni and Monica Vitti on the set of L'AVENTURA, filmed in late 1959, one of the sensations of 1960. Plenty more on Antonioni and Monica at labels ...
I am on a break now, more big reviews when I am back.

Antonioni & Blow-Up

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007) who died aged 94, on practically the same day as Ingmar Bergman, has long been one of my favourite directors, ever since I first saw his early '60s Italian studies of alienation and fascinating portraits of characters in relation to those landscapes ... His first film in colour IL DESERTO ROSSO in 1964 was a dazzler too, not least for his then muse Monica Vitti with that brown hair, a contrast to her usual blonde. The factories belching fumes around the industrial wasteland of Ravenna was also mesmerising - as was that green park (Maryon, in Woolwich) in that quiet part of London where a murder may have happened ... was a park or trees ever so green (they were painted so, of course, as related in that BBC HOLLYWOOD UK documentary in 1993 (TV, London labels). Left: that first book of 4 Antonioni scripts, essential stuff - I had the hardback edition initially, whatever happened to that? 

I was 21 at the time and seeing David Hemmings up there on the screen was like almost seeing myself - we dressed alike, and I had in fact been talking to his then girlfriend actress Jane Merrow that 1996 summer, when she was doing a play in London, and he was making the film, while Monica Vitti with working with Losey and Bogarde and Stamp on the MODESTY BLAISE pop art classic. This recent coffee table book on the film has some terrific images and essays ....
 

There are several posts here on BLOW-UP and Antonioni and Vitti - including posters, books - see labels - I just want to look now at how Antonioni saw the Swinging City, as we join Thomas the photographer as he drives around in his car, with that two way radio - cool ! One gets a sense of the city changing and developing as he drives through the centre down to the park - past that red painted street in Stockwell - and that antique shop he wants to buy - as, as he put it, the area is already changing "with queers and poodles" already moved there. I later lived next to that street in Chelsea, off the Kings Road, where that restaurant still is now. The film, usually listed as a 1966 release, did not open in London until early 1967, when it also went to the Cannes film festival, so it will always be a 1967 film for me.

I have always been fascinated by this park scene

At the time the film was much discussed, one simply had to see it - and we loved those dialogue exchanges, with the antique shop girl who wants to get away from antiques to Nepal, as he says "Nepal is all antiques" or the famous quote when he meets model Verushka at that stoned party - "I thought you were in Paris" and she says "I am in Paris" - 

and of course another Antonioni dawn serquence with that imaginary tennis game ... The plot is a tease: he bends over the body in the park - presumably its really there, then its gone when he returns that morning. The stoned party and those girls keen to be photographed, as well as those models kept posing, and of course the kids in the club fighting over the Yardbirds' broken guitar - which is just a piece of rubbish outside. I love the spare Herbie Hancock soundtrack too, and have had it on vinyl, cd and now on ipod.

 
In the club: Keith Relf and "Stroll On" ....

BLOW-UP is still a fascinating stylish influential movie - there are lots of posters and graphics from it still around. It may have been a bad experience for Sarah Miles but it certainly made Hemmings the icon of the age - to it seems the fury of Terence Stamp who insisted he had been promised the role and it was all about him .... whatever. We will still be looking at it for ages yet ... Its a terrific performance by Hemmings capturing all the jaded ennui of the typical Antonioni male. 
We like THE PASSENGER a lot too, as per the many posts on that - see label - including that review I did in 1975 for "Films Illustrated" magazine. It was good too to catch up with Antonioni's earlier films, now on dvd - reviews at Antonioni label. 
In some ways THE PASSENGER is the 70s for me, as BLOW-UP is the '60s - along with those Kubrick, Scorsese, Visconti, Losey titles.