Vacation time: Holiday for Lovers / Bon Voyage!

HOLIDAY FOR LOVERS. Like Disney’s BON VOYAGE (below) this 1959 20^th Century Fox family comedy  (which I remember seeing as a child) starts out fun but soon gets tedious and one ends up begging for it to stop as it seems far too over-long and we lose patience with most of the characters. Jane Wyman coasts in both films, as the understanding wife and mother, but gets nothing much to do. Here, father is Clifton Webb, a consulting psychologist in Boston, whose older daughter Meg (Jill St John) a promising sculptor if you please, goes to Sao Paulo in Brazil to study with famous architect, Paul Henreid. She seems to be getting involved so parents and other daughter Carol Lynley are soon South America bound – cue endless airplane interiors, and lots of location shooting as our cast stand in front of lots of back projections of Sao Paulo, as it is obvious they never left the back-lot. Jill indeed seems smitten with the suave Henreid, but it turns out to be his boorish, beatnik son (Nico Minardos) she is romantically involved with, while Carol inexplicably falls for army fellow Gary Crosby. After trekking around Sao Paulo endlessly, the family head off to Rio and we see some of the carnival (maybe the same one used for the film BLACK ORPHEUS, also that year), and if that wasn’t enough local colour (all that’s missing is Carmen Miranda!), then it is off to Lima in Peru for a bull-fight. Then everything stops for a flamenco number or two from Jose Greco and the misunderstandings get sorted out, as we wind up in Trinidad – don’t ask! Directed by Fox reliable Henry Levin; at least Clifton gets to do a few South American dance steps. Fascinating though to luxuriate in air travel as it was over 50 years ago, and Sao Paulo certainly looks great, if not as teeming as it is these days. We like Clifton Webb a lot here at The Projector - see label, and Jane was certainly engrossing in that Sirk classic ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. she was third choice here after Gene Tierney and then Joan Fontaine both had to drop out due to health reasons (or maybe they realised they really had nothing much to do here) - it would have been nice though to have seen Gene's LAURA re-teamed with her Waldo Lydecker! while Joan could raise those eyebrows and be more acerbic than bland Jane. 

BON VOYAGE!, 1962. Comic adventure awaits the Williard family from Terre Haute, Indiana, when Harry packs up the wife and kids and sets sail on a long-awaited “dream” vacation to romantic France. However, their trip includes some unforeseen adventures: his wife Katie is pursued by a Hungarian admirer, his daughter Amy meets a brash young playboy, and Harry himself gets hopelessly lost on a tour of the Paris sewer system (he is a plumbing contractor)! Join the Williards for a hilarious, whirlwind trip they’ll never forget!

So says the blurb, but this is Disney corn which at 132 minutes is way overlong, with terrible pacing from Disney hack James Neilson, but it looks like they really went to France on a transatlantic liner which takes up most of the first half of the film. Fred McMurray and Jane Wyman coast on autopilot, Deborah Walley (wasn’t she a GIDGET?) is a pallid daughter, while Disney kids Tommy Kirk and Kevin Corcoran reprise their usual roles. Its all an over-long travelogue around Paris – Francoise Prevost has a good moment as the coded  working girl who tries to pick up Fred, and then his son; Ivan Desny pursues Jane, Michael Callan gets to dance a bit and finally Jessie Royce Landis has some fun as his overbearing snooty society mother (above), while British Richard Wattis also pops up, as it all finishes up on the Riviera. 

Caipirinha time ...

The World Cup marathon is about to start, with the opening ceremony in a few hours. Those Brazilians sure know how to party and put on a show, so expect to be dazzled, even if you are into interested in the footie.

I first had a caipirinha over a decade ago, when it was a rare hip new drink in clubland. Now I am ready to make my own, as have got a bottle of that sugar cane spirit, cachaça , and the necessary limes and golden castor sugar. Cut a lime in segments, and bash in a strong glass to release all the juice and mix with the sugar, then top up with a measure of cachaça and ice. To simplify things I have just got an ice crusher and a cocktail muddler, a little tool ideal for bashing the fruit - otherwise one may have to use the end of a rolling pin!

My pal Jorge in Sao Paulo sends me this recipe for a peach caipirinha and says be sure to use a ripe peach in this tart, refreshing spin on the classic drink. 

Half a very ripe peach / 

3/4 ounce of freshly squeezed juice from 1 to 2 limes /

1 teaspoon sugar / 

2 1/4 ounces cachaca

1/2 a lime cut in 4 wedges. 

Slice peace in quarters and place in cocktail shaker. Add lime, juice and sugar, and muddle well. Add cachaca and lime wedges, fill shaker with ice and shake until very cold, about 15 seconds. Pour into a rocks glass. Well, its a change from Peach Bellini ! 

As a change from the football how about some movies set in Rio and Brasil - lets start with BLACK ORPHEUS which I loved last year, and my old favourite: Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac in THAT MAN FROM RIO, very 1964 - or Jean Dujardin zippy spoof OSS 117 LOST IN RIO.

Alternatively, one could fly down to Rio with Fred and Ginger, or Gary and Ingrid in NOTORIOUS ! 

Sunday musings: cities, exhibitions, playlists ...

Reading the Sunday papers it looks like Brazil and South America generally is this year's hot destination. Not only the World Cup coming up but the next Olympics in 2016 in Rio ... soon those magical names like Leblon, Bahia, Belem, Recife, Salvador, will be as common to us as Rio, Ipanema, Sao Paulo and the others .... 

 
South America fascinated me as a schoolboy as I liked geography - 
I have a vivid memory of being in class and fascinated by those cities like Valparaiso and Montevideo, and countries like Uruguay where Punta Del Este is a hot destination now, then there is Lima with its catherdrals and colonial history. Valparaiso (below) looks marvellously colourful with those new apartment blocks in every shade, while the old colonial buildings of Salvador, above, look stunning too.  I think I will have to sit back and re-run Belmondo running around Brazil in THAT MAN FROM RIO (1964) or 1959's BLACK ORPHEUS with a caipirinha or three ... if I can't get to Brazil right now, as our rains and floods continue, I can at least get a bottle of cachaca and some limes and sugar ...

Meanwhile, back in cold, wet London at least some interesting exhibitions are opening:

I have had this French poster since 1974

The new David Hockney exhibition: HOCKNEY' PRINTMAKER at the Dulwich Gallery is attracting rave notices, covering as it does the artist's remarkable printmaking career. ~The cheeky chappy from Bradford who lit up the Sixties is now a grumpy old man, quite deaf and still smoking at 76 - as per report below, and that recent interview with him back in LA. (Hockney label). Covered in this latest exhibition of 150 works are his prints from those early Cavafy drawings, Picasso etchings, that Seventies Paris period (with that favourite of mine "Two Vases in the Lourve" above), and portraits of his friends like Celia Birtwell, posed in a vintage blouse. Examples of Hockney's more recent print experiments, with photocopiers and inkjet printers, also feature. One to see then. At the Dulwich Gallery until May.

Hockney, Printmaker features over 150 works, from etchings executed at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s, to experiments with printed computer drawings some fifty years later, via portraits, pools, poetry, Xeroxes and investigations into multi-point perspective. Written by Richard Lloyd, head of prints at Christies, with contributions from Hockney's friends and associates, it explores the many achievements of Britain's greatest living practitioner of the graphic arts. - See more at: http://www.accdistribution.com/uk/store/pv/9781857598933/hockney/richard-lloyd#sthash.bvwhG4R2.dpuf

Hockney, Printmaker features over 150 works, from etchings executed at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s, to experiments with printed computer drawings some fifty years later, via portraits, pools, poetry, Xeroxes and investigations into multi-point perspective. Written by Richard Lloyd, head of prints at Christies, with contributions from Hockney's friends and associates, it explores the many achievements of Britain's greatest living practitioner of the graphic arts. - See more at: http://www.accdistribution.com/uk/store/pv/9781857598933/hockney/richard-lloyd#sthash.bvwhG4R2.dpuf

Hockney, Printmaker features over 150 works, from etchings executed at the Royal College of Art in the 1960s, to experiments with printed computer drawings some fifty years later, via portraits, pools, poetry, Xeroxes and investigations into multi-point perspective. Written by Richard Lloyd, head of prints at Christies, with contributions from Hockney's friends and associates, it explores the many achievements of Britain's greatest living practitioner of the graphic arts. - See more at: http://www.accdistribution.com/uk/store/pv/9781857598933/hockney/richard-lloyd#sthash.bvwhG4R2.dpuf

Another Sixties Enfant Terrible is also being honoured at the National Portrait Gallery: David Bailey and the STARDUST exhibition of his photos. I remember Bailey's 1965 BOX OF PIN-UPS with those loose limited edition prints of his very individual portraits (all that black and white) of the biggest celebrities of the day, including Terence Stamp, The Kray Twins, Mick Jagger in that fur-lined anorak, Michael Caine, Jean Shripton, Julie Christie, Nureyev and all the others ... whatever happened to mine? it would fetch a fortune now.  
Bailey has continued throughout the decades, along with Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy who documented the Swinging Sixties. This new exhibition has some old favourites as well as new surprises as Bailey covers his many trips to remote places, like the Ethiopian famine in 1984, and Aboriginal Australia, as well as more recent forays to Hackney and Harlem shooting in clubs and theatres. At 75 David Bailey is still going strong too. As he says "It takes a lot of looking before you see the extraordindary". BAILEY'S STARDUST is at the National Portrait Gallery to June 1. I shall be going along before too long.

More photos: Photographer Cornel Lucas was a pioneer of film portraiture, shooting both British and American stars. He specialised in carefully composed and lit images, and in 1998 he became the first stills photographer to be awarded a Bafta. Photo Noir: The art Of Cornel Lucas is a new exhibition of his work at the National Theatre Lyttelton exhibition space which runs from 17 February to 29 March.
We have covered Lucas's output here before, see his RIP at label. He died  aged 92 in 2012, his first wife was that glamorous siren Belinda Lee, but they divorced in 1959, two years before she was killed in a car crash, aged 25 ... Like Bob Willoughby and Eve Arnold  and Jack Cardiff he is one of the great photographers - lots on those at labels.

Finally, playlists! It also seems the humble playlist is having a moment. Back in the '80s we made mixtapes on cassettees, for friends or those we fancied. Playlists - liked, shared, and tweeted, have now it seems become a prime promotional tool. It is a great way to discover new music, by checking the playlists of people whose taste you trust. Now of course, there are millions of songs to choose from, as music gets more and more accessible online. 
Back in the CD heyday I liked those BACK TO MINE two-disk compilations where artists like The Pet Shop Boys or Groove Armada isssued their favourite tracks. Where else could you hear Dusty Springfiend next to Etienne Daho or Italian disco ("Passion" by The Flirts). "The Sunday Times" ran a big feature featuring Playlists including by Rod Stewart (his favourite soul tracks - I have them all), and those of various journalists and celebs. 

Here's my today playlist - tomorrow's would be completely different  ...
David Bowie - Win
Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy
Marvin Gaye - Distant Lover
Joan Armading - Mameo Beach
Nina Simone - Seeline Woman
Donny Hathaway - A Song For You
Miles Davies - In A Silent Way
Neil Young - Old Man
Joni Mitchell - Car On A Hill
Aretha Franklin - Ain't No Way
A Man Called Adam - Barefoot In The Head
Madonna - Nothing Really Matters
Billie Holiday - Fine and Mellow
Etta James - I'd Rather Go Blind
Billie Ray Martin - Deadline For My Memories
Muddy Waters - Mannish Boy
Howling Wolf - Sitting On Top of the World
Cream - Spoonful
Nile Rogers/Daft Punk - Get Lucky.

1959 - it gets better ...

1959 is the year that just keeps on giving. I had long considered it - and 1962 - as about the best movie years ever, both with at least 25 essential movies. (1960 isn't too bad either, as per my posts on it, and that whole era 1957 to 1963, which happily co-incided with my teenage years movie-going covering that essential era. (I was first taken to the cinema aged 8 in 1954, and went with my family in '55 and '56 and started my own cinemagoing aged 11 in 1957, so was 13 in 1959 ... (kids could safely go to the movies on their own then in small-town Ireland).

So, 1959 - I have listed before all those major American movies, there were some British too, but that New Wave that hit France and Italy and that new American cinema also went as far as Russia and Brazil ...

I recently discovered those 2 '59 Russian classics BALLAD OF A SOLDIER and THE LETTER THAT WAS NOT SENT as per post below - to add to that Italian discovery: Bolognini's LA NOTTE BRAVA, and Clement's restored PLEIN SOLEIL, fabulous on Blu-ray. Now it is Brazil's ORFEU NEGRO - BLACK ORPHEUS.

I had known about this movie of course but never seen it till now. We are about to be hit with a hurricane here in England, so this is the ideal movie for a wet, windy afternoon - as our clocks are about to go back an hour. 

ORFEU NEGRO is directed by Marcel Camus, shot in 1959 Rio at Carnival - music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Louis Bonfa, and with lyrics by  Vinicius de Moraes- names we know from the Bossa Nova explosion of the Sixties (and Lelouch's film UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME). I have several Jobim albums, he worked with so many greats including Sinatra - and of course we adore that "Girl from Ipanema" ... the films begins with that classic song "Felicidate".....

Rio looks great here, as Camus re-tells the Orpheus and Eurydice myth ... with so many great characters: Serafina, Eurydice's friend, and the bitchy Mira who Orpheus keeps trying to escape from. He (Breno Mello) is a happy bus conductor who plays guitar (and he looks great in that little gold outfit) and his fans are those two delightful kids who follow him around. 

Rio and that favella looks marvellous here, with the little goat, the doves, the animals and all those happy people .... but there is that dark strain too as Death follows Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) and stalks her through the carnival .... can our lovers be together at the end, maybe only in death ? Sugar Loaf mountain looks great in the distance with that statute of Christ the Redeemer on top, as our young kids dance on .... ORFEO NEGRO was of course a huge hit on the arthouse circuit like that year's JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY  (jazz label), and will continue to cheer us.

1959 in a nutshell, more at 1959 label: BEN HUR, SOLOMON & SHEBA, SOME LIKE IT HOT, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, ON THE BEACH, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, THE NUN'S STORY. NORTH BY NORTHWEST, RIO BRAVO, IMITATION OF LIFE, A SUMMER PLACE, PILLOW TALK, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, GIDGET, ROOM AT THE TOP, BLIND DATE, EXPRESSO BONGO, I'M ALRIGHT JACK, LOOK BACK IN ANGER, THE 400 BLOWS, LES DRAGUERS, LA LOI, BALLAD OF A SOLDIER, THE LETTER THAT WAS NOT SENT, PLEIN SOLEIL, LA NOTTE BRAVA, PICKPOCKET, LES COUSINS, HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, BLACK ORPHEUS, and programmers like JET STORM, SOS PACIFIC, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, THE JOURNEY, westerns like THESE THOUSAND HILLS, WARLOCK. LAST TRAIN FROM GUNHILL, THE HANGING TREE, YELLOWSTONE KELLY; adventures like THEY CAME TO CORDURA, NORTHWEST FRONTIER, TIGER BAY, THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE, THE WIND CANNOT READ, LIBEL and those peplums like HERCULES UNCHAINED. A great time to be movie-going entering one's teens! 
And too in 1959 Antonioni was filming L'AVVENTURA on that island, one of those key movies, like PSYCHO, which ushered in the 60s ....

The French hit Rio in 1964 with De Broca's delightful THAT MAN FROM RIO (L'HOMME DE RIO) with Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac dancing on the beach and having all kinds of adventures - its one of my favourites, as per Belmondo, Dorleac labels ... and the 2009 0SS 117: LOST IN RIO is a screaa, as per my review: 2000s label.

The Artist ? OSS 117 ?

0SS 117 LOST IN RIO

I loved the idea of THE ARTIST, then I saw it .... Yes its amusing and has some charming moments, but I cannot understand how it is 2011's Best Picture or Dujardin Best Actor - Berenice Bejo was just as good - but that's the power of Harvey Weinstein ....

The plot of the film has a silent movie star meeting an extra at a premiere. Meeting again the next day on a set they are both smitten as they amusingly do take after take, but he's married. As her star rises, his begins to fall since he won't move from silents to sound films. However their lives remain intertwined.... I just was not blown away by all this, Valentin the silent star is hardly an 'Artist' if he stubbornly refuses to change from silent to sound films - he is not a great visionary but just churning out what looks adventure serials, so it is hardly a hommage to the silent films of the 1920s. We get elements from SINGING IN THE RAIN and A STAR IS BORN and even SUNSET BOULEVARD and a great CITIZEN KANE hommage ... it all looks beautiful though, and yes I adore Uggie, and Dujardin captures the swagger of that Douglas Fairbanks-type matinee idol perfectly.

The first half is a marvellous pastiche of Hollywood in the 20s and that black and white photography looks great. But there seems no real story arc as we move from 1927 and into 1932, when sound was really established so Valentin seems downright stupid (not to mention clueless and arrogant) by then not to see that sound is here to stay, and his character seems pigheadly stubborn as he does not even seem to realise how much Peppy loves him. So I found the second half as clichéd as the silent films it pays tribute to.

Bejo as Peppy Miller is entracing, and the song and dance sequences delightful, but apart from that .. and what on earth was Malcolm McDowell doing in just 2 shots as Peppy arrives for an audition? Presumably he was meant to have more to do?

On the strength of word of mouth about THE ARTIST I went ahead and ordered Michel Hazanavicius's two earlier films with Jean Dujardin, those OSS 177 spoofs: 2006's CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES and 2009's LOST IN RIO - hopefully that will be as good as that Belmondo favourite of mine THAT MAN FROM RIO, De Broca's 1964 charmer. Reviews to follow ....

I have now seen the OSS 117 films - how come they passed us by before? Were they hits in London at the time? The LOST IN RIO one is simply perfect - as amusing as THAT MAN FROM RIO as Dujardin arrives in 1967 Rio on the trail of some Nazis - his clueless, self-regarding agent is ideal, but no Bejo here alas.

Beachside frolics in RIO

He does however make a new friend at the beach after he is fed some LSD and gets into an orgy ...

Later they go to Brasilia and the locations are ideally used, with that climax at the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer overlooking Rio - Hitch would have loved it with the baddie danging from the statue ... and a nod to NORTH BY NORTHWEST too.

CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES

Lots of Dujardin's preening by the pool as the local beauties gasp, and he insults the Israelis, the Chinese, the Germans and his female sidekick whom he imagines is his secretary! Agent OSS 117 seems to have a secret gay side too, despite his homophobic comments, but then he insults everybody. This is delirious if low-brow fun and the Brazilian locations are marvellous too, I must share it with some friends shortly. There is surely also a nod to the original THE PINK PANTHER at the start set at Gstaad in Switzerland with that perfect 60s pastiche with lounge music and split screens.

The CAIRO NEST OF SPIES is also a perfect spoof, set in 1955 Cairo a decade after its 1945 prologue in black and white. Dujardin fits in to every period - just like 1920s Hollywood in THE ARTIST. In the CAIRO one he and Berenice Bejo are another perfect team, and it reminded me of that 1965 spy caper WHERE THE SPIES ARE where unsuspecting David Niven has to assist spies in Beirut and has to meet his secret agent contact at the airport - she turns out to be Francoise Dorleac (again, as in THAT MAN FROM RIO) (Francoise Dorleac label). We will now be looking forward to the next Dujardin epic here .... particularly after seeing those internet clips ...

More French flicks ....

L’HOMME DE RIO – Back when I was 19 in 1965 I saw THAT MAN FROM RIO as a supporting feature. I have no idea now what the main movie was but I never forgot the deliciously zany French film dubbed into English, where Jean-Paul Belmondo was That Man (a soldier on leave) on the trail of his kidnapped girlfriend Francoise Dorleac and of course some stolen treasure, as the action heads from Paris to the Amazon jungles, it is surely an Indiana Jones before its time. This Philippe De Broca confection was a real movie – fun, exciting, romantic, brash, it is simply one of the best adventure capers ever made (and a perfect 60s movie), so I cannot understand how I have had to wait until now see it again (as it never shows here in the UK) and the version I now have is in French with sub-titles! There is also a great soundtrack with lots of Brazilian sounds – the bossa nova was really taking off in the mid-60s. This was filmed at just the right time just as all things South American were taking off.

The Tom Cruises and Gerard Butlers of the current filmworld should study this and see what a real caper movie is like and without those phoney-looking CGI stunts as the charismatic Belmondo goes on that rollercoaster ride from Rio to the jungles and the bright empty spaces of the new Brasilia! Belmondo is at his peak here, as is Dorleac as the capricious girlfriend who has a lovely sequence dancing on the beach - she's a carioca! There is also of course the obligatory cute streetwise kid (with an idyllic beach shack) who helps our hero evade the goons with guns, and some terrific airplane stunts ... and Adolfo Celi is splendidly over-ripe as usual. So from now on whenever I am depressed I shall play this and be flying down to Rio! No wonder there are raves on its comments page on IMDB. L'HOMME DE RIO is now officially 'A Movie I Love' and Belmondo is my new hero!


My friend Daryl has commented: How strange release patterns are: in the US, THAT MAN FROM RIO was a big deal indeed, winning the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Foreign Film and running in the first-run art houses for almost a year!

LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE – 1958 movie about the artist Modigliani, directed by Jacques Becker and dedicated to Max Ophuls. It follows the last year of Modigliani (or Modi as everyone refers to him) and is the usual story of the artist starving in a garret, set here in 1919 [in the Montparnasse area of Paris]. One does not have much patience with him though as Modi is hellbent on drinking himself to death and treats everyone – not least the women in his life – badly. Lilli Palmer is the rich Beatrice who does not mind too much, in fact she quite likes being slapped around, while young Anouk Aimee is Jeanne, the well to do girl who gives up everything for Modi, her father even locks her in her room to keep her away from him. Modi is Gerard Philipe, that pre-Delon/Belmondo heartthrob who died young in 1959.



I have only come lately to the cult of Philipe, having sought out his 1954 KNAVE OF HEARTS (MONSEIUR RIPOIS) for Joan Greenwood’s performance, and then getting Ophuls’ LA RONDE and the terrific FANFAN LA TULIPE. This builds to a chilling climax though as the ailing artist is reduced to selling his sketches to indifferent café diners, while being observed by Morel (Lino Ventura) a collector who knows that the works of a dead Modigliani will be worth more than those of a living artist. We watch fascinated as Modi finally collapses, stalked by Morel, who after the artist has died at the hospital rushes to the garret and begins buying the paintings from the unsuspecting Jeanne. We see glimpses of the paintings and that distinctive Modigliani style, it reminded me I used to have some reproductions pinned to my wall when I was a teenager. An interesting curiosity then - it is all very French, and just before that New Wave took off....



THE SLEEPING CAR MURDER - Costa-Gavras's 1965 French flick, a routine thriller, but expertly done, COMPARTIMENT TUEURS (it's original title) follows the police investigation of a murder in the sleeping car of the train. Then the other occupants are killed off one by one as weary police chief Yves Montand (with a head cold) essays all those cops who followed in tv series and movies as he tracks down the suspects. It is pretty much a family affair for the Montands as Simone Signoret has a showy role and her daughter Catherine Allegret is also on board. She gets involved with Jacques Perrin and others include Charles Denner, Michel Piccoli and Jean-Louis Trintignant. A very French affair then, but just as effective dubbed, in gleaming black and white. I have now also got Costa-Gavras's 'Z' to have another look at, I have not seen it since its release back in 1970, it was one of those prime thrillers of its era, 40 years ago, and no doubt still is very effective.

Also to be seen now, goodness knows when, are two Claude Chabrol box sets, 14 films in all!, along with his LA CEREMONIE. We saw a lot of Chabrols back in the late '60s and into the '70s, when he was doing that brilliant series of thrillers with his then wife, the marvellous Stephane Audran, particularly LE BOUCHER and LA FEMME INFIDELE and the brilliant THE BEAST MUST DIE etc. I liked that comic thriller in bright Greek sunlight LE ROUTE DE CORINTH (with Seberg and Ronet), Romy Schneider and Steiger in INNOCENTS WITH DIRTY HANDS (a valentine to Romy really), and that good Canadian one with Donald Sutherland BLOOD RELATIVES, so I really must find time to go back and see all those ones I missed like those with Isabelle Huppert (VIOLETTE NOZIERE, MADAME BOVARY). Chabrol was nothing if not prolific, good though to see how highly regarded he is now. The same applies to Louis Malle and Jacques Demy.

Next: I need to go back and re-visit those Malles like LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD, ZAZIE DANS LE METRO, VIVA MARIA and my favourite back then, LE FEU FOLLET where the very under-rated Maurice Ronet gives that staggering performance. The later Demy films did not make it to London, so one shall have to seek them out, but I have covered those early ones I like so much on here, Demy label. There are also some late Truffauts to see: THE LAST METRO and VIVEMENT DIMANCHE (FINALLY SUNDAY) with the adorable Fanny Ardant, and that amusing Hitchock pastiche THE BRIDE WORE BLACK with Moreau (my favourite Truffaut though has to be THE HISTORY OF ADELE H, with Isabelle Adjani, a movie that overwhelmed me at the time, 1976).
I also want to see (and re-see) those Francois Ozon's I missed: the camp extravaganza 8 WOMEN, the grim TIME TO LEAVE, Charlotte Rampling in UNDER THE SAND, etc. And I have just discovered a Jean-Pierre Melville set of 6 (more on that later). Back though to Chabrol....



It is an absolute pleasure seeing LA FEMME INFIDELE again, that perfect late '60s setting, as the loving jealous husband Michel Bouquet begins to suspect the wife he loves so much is having an affair during her frequent trips to Paris. He soon discovers the truth and calls on the lover, Maurice Ronet (once again). It is a brilliant scene as the men talk, the lover feeling awkward and guilty, the husband not know what to do - but a casual remark of the lover suddenly leads to blind anger ... he thinks he has covered his tracks, and the ideal domestic life with their son resumes - but of course, being Chabrol, those police and detectives keep calling and finding out more details. It is all impeccably done with those lovely circular camera movements as we circle the husband and wife as they both realise the trap they are in. She finds the evidence and cooly destroys it as she is now back in love with her husband. Stephane Audran is of course so divinely cool and poised and attractive here. Classic French cinema then. And there are those Delon and Varda boxsets to explore...her CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 was one of my discoveries of last year.