People We Like: Alida Valli

The enigmatic Ms Valli [1921-2006] is one of those fascinating Italian actresses, and - as these things go - I have seen quite a few of her '50s films recently and she is always just about the best thing in them.

She was of course famously "discovered" by David Selznick for Hitchcock's THE PARADINE CASE, billed as "Valli" - generally considered a misfire and one of his lesser works but I only saw it for the first time a while ago and liked it a lot - she is perfect here as she lures Gregory Peck with her cool patrician beauty, but she had really made about 30 films before that in Italy, starting in the 1930s as per her IMDb resume.

Her other '40s classic is Carol Reed's THE THIRD MAN and again its a perfect combination of actress and role. It seems she was back in Europe for the '50s and remained very prolific [as those other Italian actresses like Mangano, Lollobrigida, Loren, Vitti and Cardinale were ascending]. Visconti's SENSO is her third masterpiece and she is riveting as the Wanton Countess betraying her worthless lover Farley Granger - she should have been a contender for Best Actress in that terrific year 1954. Its certainly one of Visconti's finest, with that lush operatic background and, like THE LEOPARD covering that fascinating period of Italian history.



She is mesmerising in Vadim's HEAVEN FELL THAT NIGHT - his sensational Bardot film in '58 after AND GOD CREATED WOMAN - I enjoyed this the other day, steamy unusual Spanish locations and BB and Stephen Boyd at their peak (unlike their roles in the 68 trash western SHALAKO a decade later...) - Valli is the aunt young BB is sent to stay with and both women fall for Boyd. I liked it a lot .... as per my review.

Valli is Irma in Antonioni's IL GRIDO in '57 - but its a rather under-written role, we never get to understand why she does not want to be with Steve Cochran any more as she rejects him sending him into a downward spiral with only one ending - good to finally see it, but its certainly a bleak view of the human condition, set as it is among the rundown towns along the muddy Po river.

She has a supporting role in Rene Clement's THE SEA WALL (or THIS ANGRY AGE) in 1958, one of those long-unseen De Laurentiis international productions (but I got a copy recently); this is set in Thailand as Jo Van Fleet battles to keep her plantation from the sea as her children Silvana Mangano and Tony Perkins have their own problems. Perkins and Valli pick each other up in an electric scene in a cinema! Its a fascinating period piece now.

She is perfect too in Franju's EYES WITHOUT A FACE, his stylish creepy horror film from 1959, as the doctor's assistant who helps with his experiments in luring girls to his remote mansion, so he can work on restoring his daughter's face .... its eerie with some beautiful images, as we find out that Valli too has had her face replaced.

Valli continued in smaller roles as she got older - and there seems to have been some scandal she was involved in. She is in Pasolini's OEDIPUS REX and Bertolucci featured her in 1900, THE SPIDER'S STRATEGM (where she is very severe) and LA LUNA - though I don't remember much about that. She also had a nothing role in the star-laden THE CASSANDRA CROSSING. Then there were Italian horror films like Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA ('77). One of her last roles as in that nice romantic drama A MONTH BY THE LAKE in 1995 with Vanessa Redgrave, Edward Fox and Uma Thurman. One I would like to have seen is ASPERN in '85, a version of "The Aspern Papers" where she is the aged countess, with Jean Sorel and Bulle Ogier.

Like Magnani, Valli is always a compulsive screen presence and was a very attractive woman, and its a perfect name the way it sounds as one says it - no wonder Selznick wanted to feature her, presumably as his next Ingrid Bergman type import.

Cinema obscura - some more European rarities...

That Michelangelo Antonioni has a lot to answer for... The early '60s saw European cinema awash with "imitiation Antonioni" all trying to recreate the mood of Antonioni's masterpieces. This one, IL MARE (THE SEA) made in 1962 even played at London's premiere art house, the now defunct Academy in Oxford Street, in '64. As directed by Guiseppe Patroni Griffi its a moody piece with long pauses about 3 people, or lost souls, in out-of-season wintry Capri: The Man (Umberto Orsini), The Woman (Francoise Prevost) and The Boy (Dino Mele). It hasn't been seen here since but I saw it at the time and still remember the unintentional hilarity of them stalking each other: The Man sleeps with The Woman, but seems to want The Boy. The Boy and The Woman become friends - she is taking masochistic pleasure in selling her house to a wealthy vulgarian as part of her divorce; The Man and The Boy seem to be flirting with each other - is there going to be a threesome or not? Griffi is very "school of Antonioni", [French actress Prevost also scored about then in a tense British thriller PAYROLL with Michael Craig and Billie Whitelaw]. I will be in Capri myself next month (as part of a trip to Sorrento and Amalfi), wonder if I will recognise any locations?

(Bisexuality and threesomes also raised their head in Griffi's next, A SMALL CIRCLE OF FRIENDS in '69, which was more art house soft porn, and featured actors like Jean-Louis Trintignant and Annie Girardot as well as the smouldering Brazilian Florinda Bolkan. Griffi also directed the art house hit TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE in 1971, with the incestous Charlotte Rampling, Fabio Testi and Olivier Tobias, which was very bloody and looked teriffic with those renaissance settings and costumes and lots of nudity ... One of his last credits was that bizarre Elizabeth Taylor film THE DRIVER'S SEAT, in 1974, which seemed an incoherent mess when I saw it last week, it was in fact so boring that I had to see most of it on fast-forward! Andy Warhol was among those involved (and a more mature Dino Mele from IL MARE) but why on earth did Taylor bother to appear in it? - even it is from a Muriel Spark book. She plays a disturbed woman [as is evident from her wardrobe] travelling around Europe looking for a man to murder her...)

Another Rene Clement treat! After re-discovering his 1954 KNAVE OF HEARTS (or MONSIEUR RIPOIS) with Gerard Philipe and Joan Greenwood recently, and his classic PLEIN SOLEIL (see separate post on here) and the '58 THE SEA WALL (or THIS ANGRY AGE), ditto posted here - here is his splendid 1964 thriller LES FELINS (THE FELINES), also called JOY HOUSE or THE LOVE CAGE (which would seem the better title). Henri Decae's crisp black and white Cinemascope images, a terrific score by Lalo Schifrin, Alain Delon's first English speaking film and Jane Fonda's first French, what's not to like? It exists in both French and English versions on the disk. Then there is that little seen superb actress Lola Albright ... she is a wealthy widow of a mobster who has a luxury mansion on the French riviera, Fonda is her cousin staying with her; Delon (not as engaging as his Tom Ripley - he is just a blank cypher here) is the guy on the run from some mobsters who is taken in by the two women, who find him in a refuge for the homeless. What are their motives? Who is the strange person behind two way mirrors who is hiding in the house? The goons sent by the mobster turn up again ... its nicely worked out and the jazzy score by Schifrin is a distinct bonus. I will now have to finally see Clement's all-star IS PARIS BURNING? which must be worth investigating, featuring as it does, in 1966, Welles, Belmondo, Delon, Caron, Perkins, Montand, Signoret, Kirk Douglas and Glenn Ford. Not quite one of the New Wave brigade, his films are certainly fascinating, I also need to see those early ones of his like FORBIDDEN GAMES and GERVAISE.

Below: Clement directing Delon and Fonda.

LA RONDE - Roger Vadim's 1964 remake of Ophuls' 1950 classic is worth a look too, seeing as it features the crop of new European players of the early 60s: Jane Fonda in her first with Vadim, Anna Karina, Catherine Spaak, Maurice Ronet, Jean Sorel, etc. They wear the period clothes but somehow just look too modern - perhaps the hairstyles and make up are too modern for the period? Its the usual round of assignations played out in the Belle Epoque period ... perhaps just an excuse to feature these players and have a bit of fun ? The cast is a who's who of the 60s French cinema, as was the Ophuls film was (with Signoret, Simone, Darrieux, et al) Francoise Dorleac is supposed to have a small part too, but I couldn't see her. Vadim's LA CUREE (THE GAME IS OVER) with Fonda and Peter McEnery seems to have vanished, but was a delirious delight at the time.



THE BEST WAY TO WALK - This 1976 film by Claude Miller was a hit on the London art house circuit at the time, I wonder if it stands the test of time? Claude Miller has made some interesting films in France since the 70s - I recall Depardieu in a Highsmith adaptation THIS SWEET SICKNESS, and GARDE DE VUE with Romy Schneider in one of her last roles. THE BEST WAY TO WALK (LA MILLEURE FACON DE MARCHER) is an intriguing tale of the conflict between two teachers at a summer camp, as one - Patrick Dewaere - is a bit of a bully and seizes on the gentler other - Patrick Bouchitey - whom he is always picking on - there is a simmering sexual undercurrent which comes to the fore when Dewaere catches Bouchitey in drag, dressed in his girlfriend's clothes, which confirms his feelings about him. Violence ensures and there is a nice coda set in Paris some years later, when Bouchitey now married to the girlfriend goes to view an apartment, and Dewaere turns out to be the agent showing it to them. Roles get reversed as Bouchitey now has the upper hand and Dewaere dependent on the sale. Its both engrossing and pleasent. Dewaere always seemed to be in the shadow of Depardieu, with whom he made several films, including the groundbreaking LES VALSEUSES in 1974 - very dated now with those flared jeans! - where they are the two tearaways on the run who will have sex with anyone - including each other, when no females are around. Jeanne Moreau and Miou Miou are also excellent here. Dewaere though committed suicide with a gun in 1982, that year that Romy Schneider, Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly also died.

L'Eclisse, revisited (for Martin Bradley)

L’ECLISSE in 1962, one of THE key movies of the early '60s arthouse scene, and seen as the final part of Michelangelo Antonioni's early '60s trilogy, sees Monica Vitti at her peak as Vittoria and the film is all about her and her reactions to the people and events around her. Her solitude in her apartment, her ending with one lover (Francisco Rabal), the Rome financial markets as her mother gambles on the stock exchange, how she follows a man who has lost huge amounts, her pleasure in the air flight among the clouds, and getting involved with the brash young stockbroker, Alain Delon, who has no problems at all, apart from the drunk driving his car into the river.

Individual sequences stand out like where she and neighbours play at being in Africa and that well-known final sequence as the camera turns up at the lovers’ meeting place but they do not as life goes on and we study inanimate things like street lights, are endlessly fascinating. There is a sense of dread, as this is the early 60s and the nuclear age. There is so much in these films that one can’t really gloss over them, but Monica is marvellous here and is really the epitome of early 60s chic. It’s a timeless look and the film is an enduring classic.

For a film heading for 50 years old it is a surprisingly 'modern' film. A characteristic Antonioni sequence is the flight from Rome to Verona in the aircraft - nothing happens in the conventional sense, the journey has no dramatic aim or climax, it just is, but it conveys the mercurial Vittoria's elation and also isolation. Then there is that brief affair with Piero and then, after arranging their next meeting, both characters slip out of the film, as neither turns up but the camera does. For a full seven minutes it records the world that carries on without them as the streets empty and darkens as day turns to dusk. This is an extraordinary sequence: Antonioni seems to be saying that people and events are transient, that only places last. Other lives which we know nothing about cross the screen and disappear leaving in the end just the city continuing to function automatically as street lights come on and darkness falls... its as powerful as the end of THE PASSENGER or indeed any of Antonioni's films!



As ever Antonioni’s use of space and landscape and how characters move and fit in it repays several viewings. Sound plays an important part too – the wind rattling the railings here is as evocative as the wind sighing among the leaves of the park in BLOW-UP.

The Leopard, 2010

A new digital restoration back in selected cinemas ! Nice new poster too.

Finally: The Sea Wall / This Angry Age - in Italian!

A fond childhood memory was the 1958 Rene Clement film THE SEA WALL, also known as THIS ANGRY AGE, which I saw when about 12 and it was very vivid and impressive, but it never appeared anywhere since and seemed to be a totally lost film, but a pal of mine from the IMDb site whom I meet every few months for drinks, chat and swopping rare movies, found a copy - but its in Italian!. Well all the leads speak English so maybe there is an English print out there somewhere - but its been totally fascinating to see it again now 50 odd years later !

It starts with the camera descending over the Thai locations, including temples and other exotic buildings, as the story, by Marguerite Duras, unfolds on the plantation of tough Jo Van Fleet (nice to see her looking herself for a change, and not aged as in EAST OF EDEN or WILD RIVER) who is trying to keep the ocean from encroaching on her land, but its a losing battle. Her teenage children - Silvana Mangano and Tony Perkins - have their own ideas about the future, as the mother tries every ruse to keep going, including trying to get Mangano interested in businessman Nehemiah Persoff, but then Richard Conte comes on the scene ... Perkins meanwhile moves to the city and picks up (or get picked up by) Alida Valli in a cinema! Its a terrific scene, and I like her snazzy automobile too. Back at the plantation things get worse ...

1958 was a good year for Perkins - (relaxing with Mangano, above) he went on to Sophia Loren and DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS next (and THE MATCHMAKER), and Silvana headed another De Laurentiis spectacular THE TEMPEST which I also liked a lot at the time and again it never surfaced again, but I got a copy last year and commented on it on here, and Rene Clement of course went on to make that complex classic PLEIN SOLEIL from the enduring Highsmith Ripley tale [there is a separate post on it here]. It would be nice if these De Laurentiis films were re-issued now - like Ponti with Loren he featured his wife Mangano in his international co-productions (like ULYSSES, MAMBO, TEMPEST, FIVE BRANDED WOMEN etc) which all have fascinating casts and production values, as per my comments on here.

Good though to get to see THE SEA WALL again after so long, even if its dubbed into Italian! I love the scenes with Perkins and Mangano dancing, and that cinema scene with Valli! Duras's novel (with its original self-explaining title "Barrage Contre le Pacific" was recently remade as a French film starring Isabelle Huppert, which I think I will have see now.

Marilyn

I was going to title this "Remembering Marilyn" but really she has never been away, despite the fact that it will be 50 years since her death in 2 years time in 2012. I dare say Fox will be marketing her once again with "50th Anniversary editions"! She will still be making money for them despite they not paying her that much in her lifetime...

The 4th of August 1962 [it was a Saturday night] saw 16 year old me seeing a revival of BUS STOP (for the first time) at our local cinema in Ireland ... the next day, Sunday afternoon, we were sitting in deckchairs in the garden talking about it, when a newsflash came over the radio .... the rest of the '60s saw us doing the whole Marilyn thing with the revival houses doing double features and all those early books .... by the '70s the likes of Norman Mailer and then Gloria Steinem (with the Barris pictures) were getting in on the act and those great photographs by the likes of Eve Arnold, Milton Green and that Last Sitting by Bert Stern were in wide circulation - any photobook (and there were plenty) on Marilyn sold! The pictures I liked most were the George Barris sets taken at her house (its now on the market again for over $3m.) and at Santa Monica beach where she looks amazingly fresh and re-invented for the '60s. SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE was going to be re-activated [she looks wonderful in the fragments that remain, and she certainly got Liz Taylor's CLEOPATRA off the world's magazine covers with her nude swim shots] but it may have turned out to be another damp squib like the very tedious (apart from her musical numbers like "My Heart Belongs To Daddy") LETS MAKE LOVE where her looks varied from scene to scene. I think Cukor was not really the right choice for her last two Fox films - it seems he did not have any empathy with her and considered her mad in subsequent interviews [tough dames like Crawford and Hepburn were the kind of women he liked associating with]. Her best later movies were of course all made away from Fox - she never looked better as photographed by Jack Cardiff for THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL and she steals the film from Olivier, and then of course the reams that have been written about the making of it and Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT and Huston's THE MISFITS but her Sugar Kane Kowalski and Roslyn Taber are still spellbinding creations. The rumours of conspiracies about her death will continue, but I think the Spoto book gets closest to it, being an accidental overdose. That Sinatra crowd were all well used to various uppers and downers (as is casually referred to in THE TENDER TRAP). Jack Cardiff captures her perfectly in his chapter about her in his memoir MAGIC HOUR, which makes most of the other MM books redundant.

My first introduction to Marilyn [apart from all those '50s magazine covers she was on] was seeing her in that red swimsuit in HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE which is still great fun, NIAGARA and GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES of course, her early bits like Miss Caswell in ALL ABOUT EVE. I also like the 1954 Marilyn: it seems she only did THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS in order to get THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH but she holds her own marvellously here with the other show biz veterans and her 3 numbers are riveting: "After you get what you want you don't want it", "Lazy" and of course "Tropical Heatwave" - another of Jack Cole's great musical sequences. She also has some nice wistful songs and teams well with Mitchum (particularly when he gives her that rub down in the blanket) in Otto's sort of western RIVER OF NO RETURN. Marilyn was also a great vocal artist, her Fox recordings bear up well and fit those movies perfectly.

But back to those timeless pictures taken at the beach by George Barris a few weeks before her death - they look like they were taken yesterday! I had a big poster of the one with her sipping champagne on my wall for years... she looks as fresh here as the sweet young girl photographed sitting on the highway back in 1940s California....she changed (and achieved) so much in 12 brief years, from 1950 to 1962; she may have become too unstable to last much longer - who can say now?, but at least she, the essence of the '50s, was there for the start of the '60s. Perhaps only Garbo was loved more by the camera... Like Dean its impossible to imagine her in her 80s or going the blowsy route like her onetime room-mate Shelley Winters.