Il Cinema Ritrovato Chief Gian Luca Farinelli Talks Collaboration With Venice and Cannes (Exclusive)
Italy’s Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival – which has long seen thousands of heritage film lovers and distributors flock to the city of Bologna in summer – officially kicked off Tuesday with a freshly restored version of Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Cronaca di un amore” (pictured). It’s an emblematic opener in various ways. The now freshly restored pic stars late great Italian actor Lucia Bosé who died last March, having contracted coronavirus. Antonioni’s 1950 drama is also among titles in the Venice Film Festival’s Venice Classics section, which has migrated to Bologna this year due to the impact of Covid-19 constraints on Lido screening space.
Variety spoke to Il Cinema Ritrovato chief Gian Luca Farinelli, who also heads the Bologna Film Archives and its globally renown film restoration lab, about this year’s collaboration with Venice and Cannes. Excerpts from the conversation.
How did it happen that you and Venice chief...
Variety spoke to Il Cinema Ritrovato chief Gian Luca Farinelli, who also heads the Bologna Film Archives and its globally renown film restoration lab, about this year’s collaboration with Venice and Cannes. Excerpts from the conversation.
How did it happen that you and Venice chief...
- 8/26/2020
- by Nick Vivarelli
- Variety Film + TV
Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This January will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.
To sign up for a free two-week trial here.
Thursday, February 1st
The Great Escape*
Based on the true story of an elaborately coordinated attempt to break out of a Nazi Pow camp, John Sturges’s The Great Escape is one of the most rousing adventure films of all time, anchored by Steve McQueen’s rebellious turn as “Cooler King” Captain Virgil Hilts. Featuring a powerful ensemble that includes Richard Attenborough, James Garner, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn, the film pulses with the humor of the prisoners’ camaraderie and the relentless suspense of their plan. Never released on DVD or Blu-ray, this 1993 Criterion laserdisc edition includes a long-unavailable commentary featuring Sturges,...
To sign up for a free two-week trial here.
Thursday, February 1st
The Great Escape*
Based on the true story of an elaborately coordinated attempt to break out of a Nazi Pow camp, John Sturges’s The Great Escape is one of the most rousing adventure films of all time, anchored by Steve McQueen’s rebellious turn as “Cooler King” Captain Virgil Hilts. Featuring a powerful ensemble that includes Richard Attenborough, James Garner, Charles Bronson, and James Coburn, the film pulses with the humor of the prisoners’ camaraderie and the relentless suspense of their plan. Never released on DVD or Blu-ray, this 1993 Criterion laserdisc edition includes a long-unavailable commentary featuring Sturges,...
- 1/31/2018
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Criterion Release of the Week Eclipse Series 45: Claude Autant-Lara Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France (Le mariage de... $37.61 $59.95 10 new from $33.11 2 used from $40.69 Buy Now Amazon.com Free shipping Last updated on March 6, 2018 4:11 pm New Blu-ray & DVD Releases of the Week Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (2-Disc Special Edition) [Blu-ray + DVD] $18.99 $34.95 17 new from $17.50 4 used from $21.46 Buy Now Amazon.com Free shipping Cloverfield [Blu-ray] $24.99 $31.99 11 new from $20.94 7 used from $15.36 Buy Now Amazon.com Free shipping 10 Cloverfield Lane [Blu-ray] $24.99 3 new from $20.95 4 used from $17.98 Buy Now Amazon.com Free shipping Dance Macabre [Blu-ray] $20.59 $29.99 13 new from $20.57 4 used from $20.56 Buy Now Amazon.com Free shipping In Search of Fellini $14.99 5 new from $8.99 1 used from $7.99 Buy Now Amazon.com Free shipping The Killing of a Sacred Deer [Blu-ray] $17.21 $24.99 24 new from $11.80 14 used from $7.99 Buy Now Amazon.com Free shipping My Entire High School Sinking Into The Sea (Bluray/DVD Combo) [Blu-ray] $18.49 $26.99 18 new from $16.90 7 used from $9.99 Buy Now Amazon.com Free shipping Dario Argento's Opera [Blu-ray] $15.39 11 new from $15.37 4 used from $15.36 Buy Now Amazon.
- 1/23/2018
- by Ryan Gallagher
- CriterionCast
Criterion’s Eclipse Series, an ever-expanding line of esoteric dvd releases, ensures that lesser known titles of important filmmakers remain available to the movie-loving public. They’ve just added another worthy edition to the mix with four films by French film director Claude Autant-Lara: Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France. In keeping with the wallet-friendly nature of the series, the set contains no extras but features fine transfers, simple but elegant packaging and astute liner notes.
Claude Autant-Lara: Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France
DVD
Eclipse
1942-46/ 1:33 / 103 Min., 92 min., 109 min., 98 min. / Street Date January 23, 2018
Starring Odette Joyeux, Marguerite Moreno, Jacques Tati
Cinematography by Philippe Agostini,
Written by Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost
Music by Maurice Yvain, René Cloërec
Edited by Madeleine Gug
Produced by Pierre Guerlais
Directed by Claude Autant-Lara
In the late fifties, François Truffaut launched a diatribe against a select number of French directors with the phrase...
Claude Autant-Lara: Four Romantic Escapes from Occupied France
DVD
Eclipse
1942-46/ 1:33 / 103 Min., 92 min., 109 min., 98 min. / Street Date January 23, 2018
Starring Odette Joyeux, Marguerite Moreno, Jacques Tati
Cinematography by Philippe Agostini,
Written by Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost
Music by Maurice Yvain, René Cloërec
Edited by Madeleine Gug
Produced by Pierre Guerlais
Directed by Claude Autant-Lara
In the late fifties, François Truffaut launched a diatribe against a select number of French directors with the phrase...
- 1/23/2018
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
A brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal are all joining the Criterion Collection in 2018. “The Breakfast Club” is getting the Criterion treatment next January, as are a new edition of “Young Mr. Lincoln,” “I, Daniel Blake,” “Westfront 1918,” “Kameradschaft,” and four films by Claude Autant-Lara.
More information — and, as always, cover art — below.
Read More:Criterion Collection Announces December Titles, Including ‘Election’ and ‘Monterey Pop’
“The Breakfast Club”
“What happens when you put five strangers in Saturday detention? Badass posturing, gleeful misbehavior, and a potent dose of angst. With this exuberant film, writer-director John Hughes established himself as the bard of American youth, vividly and empathetically capturing how teenagers hang out, act up, and goof off. ‘The Breakfast Club’ brings together an assortment of adolescent archetypes — the uptight prom queen (Molly Ringwald), the stoic jock (Emilio Estevez), the foul-mouthed rebel (Judd Nelson), the virginal bookworm (Anthony Michael Hall...
More information — and, as always, cover art — below.
Read More:Criterion Collection Announces December Titles, Including ‘Election’ and ‘Monterey Pop’
“The Breakfast Club”
“What happens when you put five strangers in Saturday detention? Badass posturing, gleeful misbehavior, and a potent dose of angst. With this exuberant film, writer-director John Hughes established himself as the bard of American youth, vividly and empathetically capturing how teenagers hang out, act up, and goof off. ‘The Breakfast Club’ brings together an assortment of adolescent archetypes — the uptight prom queen (Molly Ringwald), the stoic jock (Emilio Estevez), the foul-mouthed rebel (Judd Nelson), the virginal bookworm (Anthony Michael Hall...
- 10/16/2017
- by Michael Nordine
- Indiewire
Elsa Martinelli, the Italian bombshell actress known for her classic looks and jet-set lifestyle, working between Hollywood, Paris and Rome, died Saturday in Rome. She was 82.
Martinelli was originally discovered as a model in 1953 by designer Roberto Capucci. She began taking on small roles, beginning in 1954 with Claude Autant-Lara’s The Red and the Black.
But her most famous role came just two years later after Kirk Douglas (or his wife, according to an alternate version of the story) claimed to have spotted her on a Life magazine cover. Douglas recruited her to play a Sioux chief’s daughter...
Martinelli was originally discovered as a model in 1953 by designer Roberto Capucci. She began taking on small roles, beginning in 1954 with Claude Autant-Lara’s The Red and the Black.
But her most famous role came just two years later after Kirk Douglas (or his wife, according to an alternate version of the story) claimed to have spotted her on a Life magazine cover. Douglas recruited her to play a Sioux chief’s daughter...
- 7/10/2017
- by Ariston Anderson
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Italian actress Elsa Martinelli, known to U.S. audiences her breakout role in 1955’s The Indian Fighter opposite Kirk Douglas, died Saturday in Rome at the age of 82, according to Italian media.
Born in Tuscany, Martinelli began her career as a model — appearing in the pages of Vogue and on the cover of Life. She then began taking on smaller roles in films, becoming one of the first models to make the crossover into film and paving the way for stars like Cameron Diaz, Sofia Vergara, and Charlize Theron.
A role in 1954’s Le Rouge et le Noir — the French...
Born in Tuscany, Martinelli began her career as a model — appearing in the pages of Vogue and on the cover of Life. She then began taking on smaller roles in films, becoming one of the first models to make the crossover into film and paving the way for stars like Cameron Diaz, Sofia Vergara, and Charlize Theron.
A role in 1954’s Le Rouge et le Noir — the French...
- 7/8/2017
- by Dave Quinn
- PEOPLE.com
With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.
Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
In a career fixated on the machinations of filmmaking presented through both a carnal and political eye, Brian De Palma’s fascinations converged idyllically with Blow Out. In his ode to the conceit of Blow Up — Michelangelo Antonioni’s deeply influential English-language debut, released 15 years prior — as well as the aural intrigue of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, De Palma constructs a conspiracy...
Blow Out (Brian De Palma)
In a career fixated on the machinations of filmmaking presented through both a carnal and political eye, Brian De Palma’s fascinations converged idyllically with Blow Out. In his ode to the conceit of Blow Up — Michelangelo Antonioni’s deeply influential English-language debut, released 15 years prior — as well as the aural intrigue of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, De Palma constructs a conspiracy...
- 5/5/2017
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Shohei Imamura’s brutalist depiction of female resilience in his masterwork of 1963, The Insect Woman, echoes the beloved French filmmaker Marcel L’Herbier‘s monumental silent avant-garde narrative L’inhumaine, which translates to The Inhuman Woman, in both name and loosely, in theme. Centering its Frankensteinian tale of high class love, loss and reanimation around a hardened woman of the world whose apathy toward men of all classes guides her way through parties and performances, L’Herbier’s brilliant collaboration with fellow art deco artists like the painter Fernand Léger, the architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, and soon-to-be-filmmakers themselves, designers Alberto Cavalcanti and Claude Autant-Lara, is nothing short of a cinematic masterpiece of modern invention.
Making use of a beautiful and thrilling combination of highly stylized studio sets and on location shoots on the outskirts of Paris, L’inhumaine trains its often matted eye on the famed singer Claire (real life opera star Georgette Leblanc,...
Making use of a beautiful and thrilling combination of highly stylized studio sets and on location shoots on the outskirts of Paris, L’inhumaine trains its often matted eye on the famed singer Claire (real life opera star Georgette Leblanc,...
- 2/23/2016
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Here's something for hardcore cineastes: an incredible restoration of Marcel L'Herbier's avant-garde silent feature, which looks unlike any other movie of its time. The weird story is about a Swedish engineer who wins the hand of famous singer by demonstrating a machine that can revive the dead. The film's designs are by score of famous architects and art notables of the Paris art scene circa 1924. L'Inhumaine Blu-ray Flicker Alley 1924 / Color tints / 1:33 Silent Aperture / min. / Street Date March 1, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Georgette Leblanc, Jacque Catelain, Léonid Walter de Malte, Philippe Hériat, Fred Kellerman, Robert Mallet-Stevens. Cinematography Roche, Georges Specht Art Direction, design, costumes, Claude Autant-Lara, Alberto Cavalcanti, Fernand Léger, Paul Poiret, Original Music Darius Milhaud (originally), Aidje Tafial / Alloy Orchestra Written by Pierre MacOrlan, Marcel L'Herbier, Georgette Leblanc Produced and Directed by Marcel L'Herbier
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Followers of art, architecture, literature and French art movies of the early 1920s...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Followers of art, architecture, literature and French art movies of the early 1920s...
- 2/21/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
'L'Inhumaine': Marcel L'Herbier silent classic stars Jaque Catelain and Georgette Leblanc. Marcel L'Herbier silent 'L'Inhumaine': 'Intense sensory integration of sight' For me, the real jewel in the crown of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's “A Day of Silents,” held on Dec. 5, '15, at the Castro Theatre, was Marcel L'Herbier's The Inhuman Woman / L'Inhumaine (1924). The screening of this mix of desire and seduction with science fiction turned out to be an intense sensory integration of sight and sound. First, the sight. I had not seen any other films directed by L'Herbier (e.g., L'Argent, La Comédie du bonheur), so L'Inhumaine, with its spectacular visuals, came as a big surprise to me. For instance, the film features a stand-out scene of a car racing down a wooded highway from the driver's point of view, while in a party sequence I really liked the effect of the serving staff wearing sardonic face masks,...
- 12/21/2015
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress and pioneering female film producer. Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress was pioneering woman producer, politically minded 'femme engagée' Danièle Delorme, who died on Oct. 17, '15, at the age of 89 in Paris, is best remembered as the first actress to incarnate Colette's teenage courtesan-to-be Gigi and for playing Jean Rochefort's about-to-be-cuckolded wife in the international box office hit Pardon Mon Affaire. Yet few are aware that Delorme was featured in nearly 60 films – three of which, including Gigi, directed by France's sole major woman filmmaker of the '40s and '50s – in addition to more than 20 stage plays and a dozen television productions in a show business career spanning seven decades. Even fewer realize that Delorme was also a pioneering woman film producer, working in that capacity for more than half a century. Or that she was what in French is called a femme engagée...
- 12/5/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Danielle Darrieux turns 97: Darrieux has probably enjoyed the longest film star career in history (photo: Danielle Darrieux in ‘La Ronde’) Screen legend Danielle Darrieux is turning 97 today, May 1, 2014. In all likelihood, the Bordeaux-born (1917) Darrieux has enjoyed the longest "movie star" career ever: eight decades, from Wilhelm Thiele’s Le Bal (1931) to Denys Granier-Deferre’s The Wedding Cake / Pièce montée (2010). (Mickey Rooney has had a longer film career — nearly nine decades — but mostly as a supporting player in minor roles.) Absurdly, despite a prestigious career consisting of more than 100 movie roles, Danielle Darrieux — delightful in Club de femmes, superb in The Earrings of Madame De…, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking in 8 Women — has never won an Honorary Oscar. But then again, very few women have. At least, the French Academy did award her an Honorary César back in 1985; additionally, in 2002 Darrieux and her fellow 8 Women / 8 femmes co-stars shared Best Actress honors...
- 5/1/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
The bloodless Cahiers du cinéma wars induced a vague but hugely influential criterion for what was to be considered good and bad in film. Elaborate sets, one of French cinema’s major traits that, in certain genres, could compete with Hollywood, were deemed stifling and were rejected in favor of urban spaces and real locations.
The infamy that Cahiers du cinéma’s critical bombardment brought to certain filmmakers, at least among a small circle of cinephiles, took years to reverse. While Cahiers du cinéma happened to be more generous to American cinema, fewer French directors were allowed to enter their cannon. If, for instance, one Robert Bresson did, otherwise many Jean Delannoys did not. While the art of some great filmmakers was acknowledged and they were given the throne, many others, who were less stylistically consistent, fell into oblivion.
Today, more than half a century after the Cahiers wars, and regardless of their accomplishments,...
The infamy that Cahiers du cinéma’s critical bombardment brought to certain filmmakers, at least among a small circle of cinephiles, took years to reverse. While Cahiers du cinéma happened to be more generous to American cinema, fewer French directors were allowed to enter their cannon. If, for instance, one Robert Bresson did, otherwise many Jean Delannoys did not. While the art of some great filmmakers was acknowledged and they were given the throne, many others, who were less stylistically consistent, fell into oblivion.
Today, more than half a century after the Cahiers wars, and regardless of their accomplishments,...
- 12/30/2013
- by Ehsan Khoshbakht
- MUBI
Above: 1968 Hans Hillmann poster for Shadows (John Cassavetes, USA, 1959).
There is an exhibition of the great German graphic designer Hans Hillmann currently running at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. Devoted entirely to Hillmann’s film posters from 1952 to 1974, the show, called The Title is Continued in the Picture, runs through the 1st of September and I’m sorry that I didn’t know about it sooner. But for those of us who can’t make it to the Ruhr in the next three weeks, the website Kunst + Film has posted a wonderful, almost-as-good-as-being-there video of the show.
The revelation of the video for me is the size of that Seven Samurai poster. Where most of Hillmann’s film posters are 33" x 23" (slightly smaller than a Us one-sheet), and the Cassavetes above is only 16.5" x 23", that glorious Seven Samurai is 93" x 132", or 11 feet wide.
While many of Hillmann’s witty,...
There is an exhibition of the great German graphic designer Hans Hillmann currently running at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. Devoted entirely to Hillmann’s film posters from 1952 to 1974, the show, called The Title is Continued in the Picture, runs through the 1st of September and I’m sorry that I didn’t know about it sooner. But for those of us who can’t make it to the Ruhr in the next three weeks, the website Kunst + Film has posted a wonderful, almost-as-good-as-being-there video of the show.
The revelation of the video for me is the size of that Seven Samurai poster. Where most of Hillmann’s film posters are 33" x 23" (slightly smaller than a Us one-sheet), and the Cassavetes above is only 16.5" x 23", that glorious Seven Samurai is 93" x 132", or 11 feet wide.
While many of Hillmann’s witty,...
- 8/10/2013
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
Although L'auberge rouge, directed by Claude Autant-Lara in 1951, is a well-loved classic in France, it's little enough known in the English-speaking world to rate discussion here. Besides, it's one of the best comedies I've seen this year.
The star is Fernandel, that long-faced clown. He has a philtrum you could ride a toboggan down. From certain angles, he resembles a melting wad of taffy in a tonsure. His simian features contort in ways unknown to the most experimental physiognomists: that unwieldy length of Neanderthal face looks incapable of the most standard expressions, but in fact it has more of them stashed away than the entire casts of lesser movies. When it splits open in a fearful chimp grin, great stretches of loose face-meat are abruptly hoiked skywards.
The movie serves as an excellent introduction to Fernandel's charms: playing a monk, he finds his buffoonery slightly constrained, which adds focus to it.
The star is Fernandel, that long-faced clown. He has a philtrum you could ride a toboggan down. From certain angles, he resembles a melting wad of taffy in a tonsure. His simian features contort in ways unknown to the most experimental physiognomists: that unwieldy length of Neanderthal face looks incapable of the most standard expressions, but in fact it has more of them stashed away than the entire casts of lesser movies. When it splits open in a fearful chimp grin, great stretches of loose face-meat are abruptly hoiked skywards.
The movie serves as an excellent introduction to Fernandel's charms: playing a monk, he finds his buffoonery slightly constrained, which adds focus to it.
- 6/6/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
On May 24th, New York’s Film Forum will continue their ongoing resuscitation of the French Old Wave with a revival of a 1956 film that has been all but forgotten outside France: a film whose French title translates as The Crossing of Paris, which was originally released in the Us as Four Bags Full, but which is being re-released now with its more alliterative and far more charming UK subtitle A Pig Across Paris.
Set during the Occupation, this black-sausage comedy may not be quite as cute and animal-friendly as Clément Hurel’s brilliant poster suggests. A hilarious, nail-biting companion of sorts to Wages of Fear, which had been released three years earlier, A Pig Across Paris follows two men (Jean Gabin and comic star Bourvil) who must transport not nitroglycerine across South American mountains, but four black-market suitcases of pork across nighttime Paris, under the nose of the Nazis.
Set during the Occupation, this black-sausage comedy may not be quite as cute and animal-friendly as Clément Hurel’s brilliant poster suggests. A hilarious, nail-biting companion of sorts to Wages of Fear, which had been released three years earlier, A Pig Across Paris follows two men (Jean Gabin and comic star Bourvil) who must transport not nitroglycerine across South American mountains, but four black-market suitcases of pork across nighttime Paris, under the nose of the Nazis.
- 5/11/2013
- by Adrian Curry
- MUBI
Images Of Black Women Film Festival | London Palestine Film Festival | Marcel L'Herbier: Fabricating Dreams
Images Of Black Women Film Festival, London
This festival has a clear mission: to promote women of African descent, in front of and behind the camera. The result is a spread of films from around the globe that you're unlikely to see anywhere else. Family drama Elza is the first female-directed feature from Guadeloupe; Pariah charts the coming out of a Brooklyn lesbian; and Black is a polished Senegalese action-thriller. There are docs on Nigerian women who protest against oil companies by threatening to strip naked, plus various art and children's events.
Various venues, Sat to 11 May
London Palestine Film Festival
History inevitably weighs heavily on Palestinian culture, but this festival regularly finds fresh perspectives on what feels like an age-old issue, both from the past and the present. Director David Koff revisits his once-controversial...
Images Of Black Women Film Festival, London
This festival has a clear mission: to promote women of African descent, in front of and behind the camera. The result is a spread of films from around the globe that you're unlikely to see anywhere else. Family drama Elza is the first female-directed feature from Guadeloupe; Pariah charts the coming out of a Brooklyn lesbian; and Black is a polished Senegalese action-thriller. There are docs on Nigerian women who protest against oil companies by threatening to strip naked, plus various art and children's events.
Various venues, Sat to 11 May
London Palestine Film Festival
History inevitably weighs heavily on Palestinian culture, but this festival regularly finds fresh perspectives on what feels like an age-old issue, both from the past and the present. Director David Koff revisits his once-controversial...
- 5/4/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Specialized distributor Rialto Pictures has acquired all U.S. rights to five first-run films from French giant Studiocanal. The five films, all U.S. premieres, will go out under Rialto’s new label “Rialto Premieres.” First release for Rialto Premieres will be director Clément Michel’s hit romantic comedy The Stroller Strategy, starring Raphaël Personnaz and Charlotte Le Bon. Also starring, French heartthrob Personnaz (The Princess of Montpensier, Anna Karenina) as a Parisian who accidentally becomes the guardian of an infant – then pretends to be his real father in order to win back Le Bon, the girlfriend who dumped him a year before. This will be Michel’s directorial debut, and the it is set to open at New York’s Angelika Film Center on June 14. Other first-run Studiocanal films in the new deal with Rialto include Hotel Normandy, starring Eric Elmosnino (Gainsbourg) and Helena Noguerra, and Demi-Soeur, directed by and starring Josiane Balasko. Since its founding, New York-based Rialto’s close partnership with Studiocanal has included major reissues of such jewels of the French company’s classic library as Grand Illusion, The Third Man, and Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria. For the past year, Rialto has been the U.S. theatrical distributor of Studiocanal’s catalogue of over 2,000 titles. Described by the Los Angeles Times as “the gold standard of reissue distributors," New York-based Rialto Pictures was founded in 1997 by Bruce Goldstein. Adrienne Halpern joined him as co-president a year later, with Eric Di Bernardo joining the company as National Sales Director in 2002. Rialto’s vast library of classics includes films by Godard, Fellini, Renoir, Kurosawa, Buñuel, Costa-Gavras, Pontecorvo, Carol Reed, Michael Powell, Jules Dassin, Jean-Pierre Melville, and many others. 2012 marked Rialto’s fifteenth anniversary, a milestone celebrated with a retrospective at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The company’s re-releases this year include Godard’s rarely-seen Le Petit Soldat; Jean-Pierre Melville’s final film, Un Flic, starring Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve; Joseph Losey’s The Servant, written by Harold Pinter; and Claude Autant-Lara’s A Pig Across Paris (La Traversée de Paris), starring Jean Gabin. Also beginning in June, Rialto will tour “The Hitchcock 9” -- Alfred Hitchcock’s nine surviving silent films, all newly restored by the British Film Institute -- in collaboration with the BFI and Park Circus Films. The “Hitchcock 9” tour will kick off in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
- 5/3/2013
- by Emma Griffiths
- Sydney's Buzz
Concluding a three-part series on cinema's most flamboyant production designers.
Marcel L'Herbier arguably confused great design with great filmmaking, but he did deliver consistently on the former. And some of the time, influenced by and in rivalry with Abel Gance, he produced the latter.
Years before the moderne/streamline/art deco style conquered Hollywood, L'Herbier was featuring minimalist art nouveau decor and Bauhaus architecture in his French productions. In L'inhumaine (The Inhuman Woman, 1924) he has the services of Alberto Cavalcanti as production designer.
Cavalcanti's career took not only design, but experimental sound editing (Night Mail, 1936), and the production, writing and direction of both documentaries and dramas (Dead of Night, Went the Day Well?) in France, Britain and his native Brazil. And everything he did was touched with genius.
In L'inhumaine, his work is supplemented by the art of Fernand Leger (cubist-tubist-mechanist) and the costumes of future director Claude Autant-Lara.
Marcel L'Herbier arguably confused great design with great filmmaking, but he did deliver consistently on the former. And some of the time, influenced by and in rivalry with Abel Gance, he produced the latter.
Years before the moderne/streamline/art deco style conquered Hollywood, L'Herbier was featuring minimalist art nouveau decor and Bauhaus architecture in his French productions. In L'inhumaine (The Inhuman Woman, 1924) he has the services of Alberto Cavalcanti as production designer.
Cavalcanti's career took not only design, but experimental sound editing (Night Mail, 1936), and the production, writing and direction of both documentaries and dramas (Dead of Night, Went the Day Well?) in France, Britain and his native Brazil. And everything he did was touched with genius.
In L'inhumaine, his work is supplemented by the art of Fernand Leger (cubist-tubist-mechanist) and the costumes of future director Claude Autant-Lara.
- 3/14/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
On the other side of my content filled posts for Sound on Sight, I manage a semi-popular Tumblr blog called Obscure and Offbeat Cinema. There is virtually no written content and the vast majority of what I present are screenshots taken from films that I’m watching or planning to watch. Though a popular film will sneak in now and then, the focus remains on films that are off the beaten path. With over 3000 images posted in 2012, I thought it would be interesting to single out my favourite shots seen for the first time this year and share them with you. This link is quite obviously unique to my own cinematic experience of 2012, as well as my own personal quirks and aesthetic obsessions, so you might not agree with all of the choices. I also warn, this list may not be Safe for Work and in the case of objectionable...
- 12/29/2012
- by Justine
- SoundOnSight
Above: Remorques (Jean Gremillon, 1941). Artist: Henry Monnici.
When I heard that Film Forum was putting on a show called “The French Old Wave” I was hoping that it was going to be a revisionist look at the films that Truffaut and his compadres in the nouvelle vague famously dismissed as “Le cinéma de papa” or the “le cinéma de qualité.” In his epoch-making 1954 essay “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français”, the essay which gave rise to the phrase “la politique des auteurs” and thus the Auteur Theory, Truffaut asserted that the worst of Jean Renoir’s movies would always be more interesting than the best of the movies of Jean Delannoy.
While Delannoy has two films in the series (L’eternel retour from 1943 and La symphonie pastorale from 1946), Renoir has six, so the series is less of a revisionist look at the films that the New Wave lambasted, and more...
When I heard that Film Forum was putting on a show called “The French Old Wave” I was hoping that it was going to be a revisionist look at the films that Truffaut and his compadres in the nouvelle vague famously dismissed as “Le cinéma de papa” or the “le cinéma de qualité.” In his epoch-making 1954 essay “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français”, the essay which gave rise to the phrase “la politique des auteurs” and thus the Auteur Theory, Truffaut asserted that the worst of Jean Renoir’s movies would always be more interesting than the best of the movies of Jean Delannoy.
While Delannoy has two films in the series (L’eternel retour from 1943 and La symphonie pastorale from 1946), Renoir has six, so the series is less of a revisionist look at the films that the New Wave lambasted, and more...
- 8/20/2012
- MUBI
I recently watched a short documentary by Andrea Marks called Freedom on the Fence. Made in 2009, and only 40 minutes long, it is a nice introduction to the world of Polish movie posters which concisely explains the particular set of circumstances that gave rise to the incredible flowering of creativity that was the Polish poster of the 1950s and 60s. An audio interview with Henryk Tomaszewski, the father of the modern Polish poster, explains how the systematic destruction of Warsaw by the retreating Nazis in 1945, which left 80% of the city in ruins, gave rise to a landscape of rubble and fences which basically created an open-air art gallery for posters.
At the same time, at the end of the war, there was a six year backlog of American and other foreign cinema that was waiting to be seen in Poland. Tomaszewski remembers being told by the woman in charge of film...
At the same time, at the end of the war, there was a six year backlog of American and other foreign cinema that was waiting to be seen in Poland. Tomaszewski remembers being told by the woman in charge of film...
- 7/5/2012
- MUBI
French actor Mathieu Amalric ("The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Quantum of Solace") is set to direct a film adaptation of Stendhal's classic 1830 novel "The Red and the Black" for Les Films du Poisson reports Variety.
The story follows an ambitious young teacher whose passionate affair with a wealthy married woman leads to his downfall. Claude Autant-Lara previously adapted the book in 1954.
Amalric is presently writing the script for the as-yet-untitled project which Yael Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez will produce this likely international co-production.
The story follows an ambitious young teacher whose passionate affair with a wealthy married woman leads to his downfall. Claude Autant-Lara previously adapted the book in 1954.
Amalric is presently writing the script for the as-yet-untitled project which Yael Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez will produce this likely international co-production.
- 5/24/2012
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Mathieu Amalric is set to take the helm of the big screen adaptation of The Red and the Black written by Stendhal. Variety reports that Amalric is reteaming with Les Films du Poisson's Yael Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez for the film which tells of an ambitious young teacher whose liaison with a married, wealthy woman, ends up leading to his downfall. This is the second time The Red and the Black has been made into a movie; the last was 1954's Claude Autant-Lara pic Rouge et noir, starring Gérard Philipe, Daniellle Darrieux, Antonella Lauldi and Jean Mercure. Amalric is busy on the script at this point. The actor and director has an abundance of acting credits since 1985 including more recently David Cronenberg's upcoming Cosmopolis starring Robert Pattinson, and prior to that James Bond pic Quantum of Solace...
- 5/24/2012
- Upcoming-Movies.com
Mathieu Amalric is set to take the helm of the big screen adaptation of The Red and the Black written by Stendhal. Variety reports that Amalric is reteaming with Les Films du Poisson's Yael Fogiel and Laetitia Gonzalez for the film which tells of an ambitious young teacher whose liaison with a married, wealthy woman, ends up leading to his downfall. This is the second time The Red and the Black has been made into a movie; the last was 1954's Claude Autant-Lara pic Rouge et noir, starring Gérard Philipe, Daniellle Darrieux, Antonella Lauldi and Jean Mercure. Amalric is busy on the script at this point. The actor and director has an abundance of acting credits since 1985 including more recently David Cronenberg's upcoming Cosmopolis starring Robert Pattinson, and prior to that James Bond pic Quantum of Solace...
- 5/24/2012
- Upcoming-Movies.com
A Prophet star Tahar Rahim joins the latest resistance movie
For French film-makers, the German occupation of their country between 1940 and 1944 has been, for nearly 70 years now, fertile if painful territory, offering an ocean of stories, a multiplicity of perspectives. The latest entry in the field of the occupation movie is Free Men, which examines the hitherto overlooked story of Muslims from France's north African colonial possessions, involved in the Paris black market and the selling of forged documents, who came to transcend the enmity between Muslims and Jews in order to better aid the latter. It stars Tahar Rahim (A Prophet), as an illiterate Algerian immigrant, blackmailed by the Germans into surveilling his local mosque, who ends up shooting Nazis and collaborators in the streets – all in a war that isn't really his (and yet … as one politically clued-up Muslim co-conspirator advises him: "Today this, tomorrow Algeria"). The film...
For French film-makers, the German occupation of their country between 1940 and 1944 has been, for nearly 70 years now, fertile if painful territory, offering an ocean of stories, a multiplicity of perspectives. The latest entry in the field of the occupation movie is Free Men, which examines the hitherto overlooked story of Muslims from France's north African colonial possessions, involved in the Paris black market and the selling of forged documents, who came to transcend the enmity between Muslims and Jews in order to better aid the latter. It stars Tahar Rahim (A Prophet), as an illiterate Algerian immigrant, blackmailed by the Germans into surveilling his local mosque, who ends up shooting Nazis and collaborators in the streets – all in a war that isn't really his (and yet … as one politically clued-up Muslim co-conspirator advises him: "Today this, tomorrow Algeria"). The film...
- 5/18/2012
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
There are multiple Fausts. Ever-multiplying, in fact, as if to outbreed all other fictional characters. The good doctor is unusual: Marlowe and Goethe's plays are both classics, and then there's Mann's novel; at least fifteen operas... In movies, Murnau rules supreme, but I like William Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster just as much. René Clair's La beauté du diable is one of his best films, with Michel Simon and Gérard Philipe trading places as tempter and tempted, both utterly charming in their quite distinct ways. Sokurov just made another, well liked here at the Notebook. But for sheer visual rapture, Claude Autant-Lara's 1955 version Marguerite de la nuit takes the Technicolor cake and runs cackling all the way to perdition.
Based on a novel by author/songwriter Pierre Mac Orlan, who also provided source books for Le quai des brumes for Carné and La bandera for Duvivier,...
Based on a novel by author/songwriter Pierre Mac Orlan, who also provided source books for Le quai des brumes for Carné and La bandera for Duvivier,...
- 2/23/2012
- MUBI
From today through February 1, we're partnering with the My French Film Festival to show you ten recently released French features (first and second films) and ten French shorts. Presented by Unifrance, the festival invites you to award points to the films you like at the main site — and these points count, as six prizes will be awarded (three for features, three for shorts): the Internet Users Prize, Social Networks Prize and International Press Prize.
Outside of both competitions, we've also got a few extra presentations. The online festival was a hit around the world last year and you won't want to miss this second edition.
A few quick notes on the films, starting with the features:
Rebecca Zlotowski's Belle épine (Dear Prudence), winner of the prestigious Prix Louis Delluc for Best First Film, is "closer to a sobering character study than a classical youth film," finds Chris Cabin in Slant.
Outside of both competitions, we've also got a few extra presentations. The online festival was a hit around the world last year and you won't want to miss this second edition.
A few quick notes on the films, starting with the features:
Rebecca Zlotowski's Belle épine (Dear Prudence), winner of the prestigious Prix Louis Delluc for Best First Film, is "closer to a sobering character study than a classical youth film," finds Chris Cabin in Slant.
- 1/11/2012
- MUBI
A few weeks ago I featured a couple of posters by the French illustrator Roger Jacquier, also known as Rojac. Since then I’ve tried to find out as much about him as possible, but have gleaned little more than that he was born in 1913, designed his first posters in 1932 (when he was just 19), worked steadily throughout the 30s, 40s and 50s, and died in 1997. Beyond that, and the fact that he always signed his posters with “rojac” and the last two digits of the year, I know nothing and if anyone can enlighten me further I’m all ears. I did, however, manage to find a number of Rojac’s posters online, almost all of which confirmed my first impression of him as one of the great movie poster illustrators. If he’s not as well known as some of his peers, it may be because a lot of...
- 4/29/2011
- MUBI
In homage to Jacques Tati, French animator Sylvain Chomet has crafted an exquisite, gently comic and elegiac film
Seven years ago, French animator Sylvain Chomet made a pleasing intervention into the world of bland, airbrushed, computer-animated American movies with his delightful Belleville Rendezvous (aka Les Triplettes de Belleville). A crucial element in his wildly inventive film was the Tour de France, and Chomet wanted to include a clip featuring the cycling postman from his great hero Jacques Tati's Jour de fête. He wrote to the director's daughter, Sophie Tatischeff, seeking permission, and she was so impressed she not only gave him the go-ahead but also drew his attention to an unfilmed screenplay her father had written in the late 1950s. Filed in the archives as "Film Tati No 4", it was dedicated to her. Tati had abandoned what has now become The Illusionist as being too serious and personal, embarking instead on the extravagant Playtime,...
Seven years ago, French animator Sylvain Chomet made a pleasing intervention into the world of bland, airbrushed, computer-animated American movies with his delightful Belleville Rendezvous (aka Les Triplettes de Belleville). A crucial element in his wildly inventive film was the Tour de France, and Chomet wanted to include a clip featuring the cycling postman from his great hero Jacques Tati's Jour de fête. He wrote to the director's daughter, Sophie Tatischeff, seeking permission, and she was so impressed she not only gave him the go-ahead but also drew his attention to an unfilmed screenplay her father had written in the late 1950s. Filed in the archives as "Film Tati No 4", it was dedicated to her. Tati had abandoned what has now become The Illusionist as being too serious and personal, embarking instead on the extravagant Playtime,...
- 8/21/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
'Dostoevskian' French actor with an aura of tormented youth
With his emaciated but hypnotically handsome face and lithe body, the French actor Laurent Terzieff, who has died of respiratory infection aged 75, graced the stage and films for more than half a century. There was always an aura of tormented youth about Terzieff which he carried into the classic roles of his maturity such as Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV (1989) and Shakespeare's Richard II (1991). His perfect diction and rhythmic precision made his rendering of Jean Cocteau's narration of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex in Bob Wilson's production at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1996 particularly exciting.
Terzieff's special talents were used by many of the great theatre producers of the day: Jean-Louis Barrault, Peter Brook, Roger Planchon, Maurice Garrel, Roger Blin and André Barsacq. He also directed dozens of plays, many at the Théâtre du Lucernaire in Montparnasse. Paradoxically, given his tormented persona as an actor,...
With his emaciated but hypnotically handsome face and lithe body, the French actor Laurent Terzieff, who has died of respiratory infection aged 75, graced the stage and films for more than half a century. There was always an aura of tormented youth about Terzieff which he carried into the classic roles of his maturity such as Luigi Pirandello's Henry IV (1989) and Shakespeare's Richard II (1991). His perfect diction and rhythmic precision made his rendering of Jean Cocteau's narration of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex in Bob Wilson's production at the Théâtre du Châtelet in 1996 particularly exciting.
Terzieff's special talents were used by many of the great theatre producers of the day: Jean-Louis Barrault, Peter Brook, Roger Planchon, Maurice Garrel, Roger Blin and André Barsacq. He also directed dozens of plays, many at the Théâtre du Lucernaire in Montparnasse. Paradoxically, given his tormented persona as an actor,...
- 7/21/2010
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
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