Category Archives: film

Cultissime!

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd6D8PU95qU]

Buffet Froid (1979) – Bertrand Blier

Context of clip: Depardieu has stabbed Carmet, Depardieu denies, “no I could’nt have done it, I just arrived”. Carmet does not seem to mind dying. Depardieu asks: “how does it feel”. Carmet answers: “Like a sink draining”. At the end Carmet offers Depardieu to take his knife back and says: “You’d better because your fingerprints are on them.” Depardieu thanks him. Spoiler warning: Carmet lives.

Buffet froid is a 1979 French film, written and directed by Bertrand Blier, and starring Gérard Depardieu, Carole Bouquet, Bernard Blier and Jean Carmet.The plot of this film is extremely complex and elusive, for the simple reason that we are left at odds as to the motivation of the characters to perform acts that are systematically the opposite of what is expected of them. Thus, the police inspector allows murders, commits murders himself and pretends not being occupied with his profession when off duty.

The film owes much of its ideological framework to surrealism, re-enforced by an ambience of mystery et theatricality, very similar to the work of Luis Buñuel, who was known to punctuate his work with numerous « gratuitous » murders. We are also reminded of the absurd theatre of Alfred Jarry and Eugène Ionesco.

The location of the metro station of the RER of La Défense, then ending its construction phase and not yet receiving its 170 000 daily employees as is the case today, highly contributes to the atmosphere of the opening sequence of the film: a dehumanized urban space, cold and anxiety-ridden, filmed by night, the only encounters to be expected those of marginalized human beings. All “urban” scenes were filmed in Créteil, in areas under construction at the time.

Bertrand Blier reunites a sublime trio, with his fetish actor Gérard Depardieu), a un-police officer (Bernard Blier) and an assassin strangler of women played by Jean Carmet, all at the peak of their careers.

Digression: Happy birthday Roky Erickson.

One of the best films ever

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToBWndME8ds]

Les Valseuses (Going Places) (1974) Bertrand Blier.

The road trip of two drifters (Depardieu and Dewaere), who take from life as if it were a supermarket. They are joined by Miou-Miou who is on her own search for seemingly unattainable sexual pleasure. The film illustrates the frenetics of the sexual revolution and morality after May 1968.

Introducing The World of Kane

The World of Kane (founded in 2005) is a pop culture blog I happened upon this morning while researching Robert Bonfils:

Anna Karina sings “Roller Girl“

The World of Kane seems to be especially keen on French pop culture, his Serge Gainsbourg category testifies. His site is retro-futuristic. In his own words Will Kane says he”feels a nostalgia for an age yet to come,” best illustrated by his post on French designer Pierre Paulin (1927- ). Pierre Paulin is similar to Olivier Mourgue.

As a present to World of Kane:

Serge Gainsbourg-France Gall :: Dents de Lait/Dents de Loup

From the French tv show of 1967 directed by Maurice Dumay & Pierre Koralnik

Scherzo infernal

Scherzo infernal (1984) – Walerian Borowczyk

Scherzo infernal (1984) is a short animated French film by Walerian Borowczyk narrated by Yves Robert and produced by Anatole Dauman‘s Argos Films. Beware when watching the current Youtube version of this film, the descriptive text has gotten mixed up with the descriptive text of Michel Follin‘s Ligeti documentary. In reality, the score of this short was composed by Bernard Parmegiani.

Fantasmagorie

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEAObel8yIE]

Fantasmagorie (1908) – Émile Cohl

Émile Cohl (January 4, 1857 – January 20, 1938), born Émile Eugène Jean Louis Courtet, was a French caricaturist of the largely-forgotten Incoherent Movement, cartoonist, and animator, called “The Father of the Animated Cartoon” and “The Oldest Parisian”.

Émile Cohl began drawing cartoon strips and created a film in 1908 called Fantasmagorie. The film largely consisted of a stick figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects, such as a wine bottle that transforms into a flower. There were also sections of live action where the animator’s hands would enter the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look.

Cohl made Fantasmagorie from February to May or June 1908. This is considered the first fully animated film ever made. It was made up of 700 drawings, each of which was double-exposed, leading to a running time of almost two minutes. Despite the short running time, the piece was packed with material devised in a “stream of consciousness” style. It borrowed from J. Stuart Blackton in using a “chalk-line effect”, having the main character drawn by the artist’s hand on camera, and the main characters of a clown and a gentleman (this taken from Blackton’s “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces”). The film, in all of its wild transformations, is a direct tribute to the by-then forgotten Incoherent movement. The title is a reference to the “fantasmograph“, a mid-nineteenth century variant of the magic lantern that projected ghostly images that floated across the walls.

“Fantasmagorie” was released on August 17, 1908.

Fascinating.

One more.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-Wsv3FgLBE]

The Automatic Cleaning Company 

Wet Dream Film Festivals

Poster for first the Wet Dream Film Festival (1970) in Amsterdam

At the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, Amsterdam was somewhat of a countercultural capital. It was where Suck, The First European Sex Paper was published. Around this time two Wet Dream Film Festivals were organized. The first took place in the autumn of 1970, It had an international jury consisting of Germaine Greer, Jay Landesman, Richard Neville, Michael Zwerin, Didi Wadidi and Al Goldstein. The first prize went to Bodil Jensen in A Summer Day. The “Blast from the Past” award went to Jean Genet‘s film: Un chant d’amour. The Walt Disney Memorial Award went to Christie Eriksson‘s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Other prizes were awarded for Peter Flemming, Walter Burns and Falcon Stewart. The Second Wet Dream Film Festival was held in 1971 between October 20 and October 25, again organized by Jim Haynes. Festival jury included Germaine Greer, Al Goldstein, William Holtrop, Didi Wadidi, Anna Beke and Michael Zwerin plus new-comers Mama Cass, Roland Topor, Heathcote Williams, William Burroughs, Carlos Clarens, Tomi Ungerer, Betty Dodson, Marie-France and Miss Angel. Jens Frosen (“Quiet Days in Clichy”) documented the event. Lou Sher, president of Sherpix, who picked up “Adultery For Fun and Profit” at the first festival, put up $1,000 for the first prize this year plus a promise of U.S. theatrical distribution. Organizer Haynes told Variety: “What most people don’t understand about last year’s Wet Dream Festival is that we are not concerned with pornographic aspects primarily, but with the libertarian concept. It is an attack on paternalism because it asks why people can’t see any image they want.”

This post is dedicated to the work of Earl Kemp.

Téléchat

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUZHJSxRoII]

Téléchat

In 1983 Roland Topor creates with Henri Xhonneux the popular French TV series Téléchat, a parody of news broadcasts featuring puppets of a cat and an ostrich. Henri Xhonneux (1945 – March 1995) was a filmmaker. He used the pseudonym Joseph W. Rental. He is best known for his animation film Marquis and and the surreal television series Téléchat. I’ve mentioned Marquis here.

Femina Ridens

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIIHV3f0B2M]

The Frightened Woman

Femina Ridens (Frightened Woman, 1969) is an Italian film by director Piero Schivazappa, displaying a huge vagina dentata from Niki de Saint Phalle’s “Hon” in his set design by (start at 1’10”). The film was distributed by Radley Metzger‘s Audubon Films. The male character, Dotto (Philippe Leroy), invites a young female employee Mary (Dagmar Lassander) to his modish house for a weekend of S&M. The tables slowly turn to the point where Mary becomes the willing master (similar to the dynamic power shift in Losey’s The Servant, 1963). The film is reviewed in Psychopathia Sexualis in Italian Sinema (1968 – 1972).