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Posted: |
Dec 25, 2019 - 2:29 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Agnes Varda's most famous film may well be 1962's CLEO FROM 5 TO 7. The film looks at two hours in the life of "Florence 'Cléo' Victoire" (Corinne Marchand), a singer and hypochondriac, who becomes increasingly worried that she might have cancer while awaiting test results from her doctor. To pass the time while waiting for the news, Cléo meets her friend “Dorothée” (Dorothée Blanck), who poses as a nude model in a sculpture studio. Together they watch a silent comedy short (starring Jean-Luc Godard, Anna Karina, Jean-Claude Brialy, Eddie Constantine and Sami Frey).
Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina in CLEO FROM 5 TO 7
Philips Records released an EP of four songs from the film, written by Michel Legrand and sung by Corinne Marchand. It is currently available from Disques CinéMusique as a download. Legrand also appears in the film as "Bob, the Pianist."
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Posted: |
Dec 25, 2019 - 4:32 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Jean-Luc Godard’s LE PETIT SOLDAT is set during the Algerian War, where young Frenchman (Michel Subor) is an army deserter, a shutterbug, a reluctant rightist assassin, and a closet poet hoping for a death out of Cocteau. The comely anti-colonialist, “Veronica Dreyer” (Anna Karina), is Russian by birth yet shares her last name with the director of Day of Wrath, and knows that the ideals the French once had against the Germans are no more in Algeria, the war’s already lost.
Anna Karina in LE PETIT SOLDAT
The film was actually completed in 1960, and was Godard's second film after BREATHLESS (1960). It was shelved for three years by the French censors, and then took until 1967 to arrive in the States. Maurice Leroux’s score has not had a release.
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Posted: |
Dec 25, 2019 - 7:07 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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In eighteenth-century France, “Suzanne Simonin” (Anna Karina), is forced against her will to take vows as a nun. Three mothers superior (Micheline Presle, Francine Bergé, and Liselotte Pulver) treat her in radically different ways, ranging from maternal concern, to sadistic persecution, to lesbian desire. Suzanne's virtue brings disaster to everyone in LA RELIGIEUSE (THE NUN), a faithful adaptation of a bitter attack on religious abuses by the Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot.
Anna Karina and Liselotte Pulver in LA RELIGIEUSE
Jacques Rivette directed this 1966 drama, which did not get a U.S. release until 1971. Jean-Claude Eloy’s score has not had a release.
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Posted: |
Dec 25, 2019 - 9:28 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Anna Karina’s first English-language theatrical film was THE MAGUS. In the film, “Nicholas Urfe” (Michael Caine), an over-educated, angry Oxford-educated Englishman, has just escaped from a messy relationship with a beautiful, loving flight attendant, “Anne” (Anna Karina). Coming to the Greek island of Phraxos to teach English to Greek boys, Urfe meets “Maurice Conchis” (Anthony Quinn), an enigmatic, mysterious Greek millionaire who may or may not be a former Nazi collaborator, a Greek partisan, a clinical psychiatrist, a movie producer -- or God himself. While in Conchis' company, Urfe meets “Lily” (Candice Bergen), a stunningly beautiful, deeply troubled girl who Conchis claims is his long-dead girlfriend from his youth.
Michael Caine and Anna Karina in THE MAGUS
THE MAGUS was a critical and commercial disaster. Novelist John Fowles laid most of the blame at the feet of director Guy Green (despite Fowles having penned the screenplay). Fowles had insisted on writing the screenplay, having been so disappointed with John Korn and Stanley Mann’s adaptation of his novel THE COLLECTOR (1965). Fowles vowed never to write another screenplay after this. John Dankworth’s score for the 1968 film has not had a release.
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Posted: |
Dec 25, 2019 - 10:52 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Russian author Vladimir Nabokov’s first nine novels were written in the Russian language. The first of these novels, “Laughter in the Dark,” was also his first to be printed in English (it was originally titled “Kamera Obscura” when published in Russia in the 1930s). In later years, Nabokov wrote in English. His most famous novel, “Lolita,” was filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, and the film, even given the censorship of the times, was a critical and box office success.
Seeking to take advantage of the new screen freedoms of the late 1960s, director Tony Richardson [TOM JONES (1963), THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1968)] decided to film LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, a story about a married middle-aged art critic who has an affair with a 16-year-old theater usherette, which develops into a troublesome mutually parasitic relationship. Richardson and screenwriter Edward Bond changed the time period of the film from the novel’s Germany of the 1920s to contemporary London.
Cast in the film were Richard Burton and Danish actress Anna Karina, the ex-wife of Jean-Luc Godard and star of many of his films. LAUGHTER IN THE DARK was shot in Spain and England. After Burton had filmed only a few scenes, Richardson became fed up with Burton’s constant tardiness on set, and replaced him with Nicol Williamson. Raymond Leppard scored the film, but none of his music has ever been released.
Nicol Williamson and Anna Karina in LAUGHTER IN THE DARK
When Lopert Pictures released LAUGHTER IN THE DARK in the U.S. in May 1969, the distributor cut the sexually-charged 104-minute film by 3 minutes. Nevertheless, the MPAA still gave the film an [X] rating. And most of the U.S. critics felt that the film fell well below the standard set by LOLITA. The principal complaint of this negative majority, which included Newsday’s Joseph Gelmis, was Richardson’s treatment of the central character: “Unlike the hero of LOLITA, the victim of LAUGHTER IN THE DARK is a pathetic, stupid, pitiful creature [and] we watch with increasing impatience and revulsion as the fool is tortured by a couple of human vultures.” Cue’s William Wolf called it a “sadistic little film” and found that it “soon becomes thoroughly incredible [because] the game is too transparent, the victim too gullible.”
But Variety’s “Kent” defended the picture as “an intelligent psychological exploration of evil,” arguing that “unless one is able to accept the inevitability of the characters’ actions, the tendency is to either laugh with nervous anxiety or with a kind of forced superiority.” Newsweek’s Joseph Morgenstern enthused that “Love is blind and gets a lot blinder before LAUGHTER IN THE DARK runs its hilariously funny course.” Although he agreed that the film’s creators had “scooped every last shaving of sadism” from Nabokov’s novel, Morgenstern allowed that “we do laugh, often and legitimately, for this stylish black tragi-farce keeps its own eye on Nabokov’s main target, the amorous hero’s preposterous powers of self-deception.” Nevertheless, the critical majority agreed with New York’s Judith Crist that “There is neither style nor grace nor irony in the film; it is a peek-freak show, inviting us to watch the squirms of the stupid, the frolic of the fornicators and the viciousness of the perverted.”
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Posted: |
Dec 25, 2019 - 11:10 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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JUSTINE is set in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1938, where “Darley” (Michael York), a young British schoolmaster and poet, makes friends through “Pursewarden” (Dirk Bogarde), the British Consular Officer, with “Justine” (Anouk Aimée), the beautiful and mysterious wife of a Coptic banker. Darley also befriends “Melissa” (Anna Karina), a tubercular Greek belly dancer and the mistress of wealthy Jewish furrier “Cohen” (Jack Albertson), an intimate of Justine.
Director Joseph Strick worked for several weeks on JUSTINE on location in Tunis. His plan was to film as much of it as possible on location. He had quarrels with the management of Twentieth Century Fox and was disliked by some of his actors and actresses. Anna Karina claimed that he had actually fallen asleep while directing her. When he was replaced by George Cukor, a big decision was taken to re-create the Alexandria of the 1930s in the Hollywood studios and to do the rest of the movie there. A few bits and pieces of Strick's location work were retained, but most of his work was re-shot by Cukor, who accepted the extant cast. The film ended up being enormously costly, and was a box-office flop.
During shooting, Cukor told an interviewer that JUSTINE would very likely be nearly three hours long, but when it finally emerged in cinemas, it was under two hours. Cukor never went into detail about what had been cut, but was always very reserved when discussing the film.
Jerry Goldsmith re-recorded his score for a Monument Records LP release. The original score and album version were issued on CD by Varese Sarabande in 2003.
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