Category Archives: film

Introducing Moviedrome

Alex Cox was responsible for a substantial part of my 1980s and 1990s film education with his show Moviedrome on BBC television.

That, I wrote a year ago, when I found  the Laura Gemser interview from the Alex Cox documentary “A Hard Look”

Last week, I find the very first introduction of the very first broadcast of the cult television programme on cult films.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8IGJjukTzc]

Moviedrome (first broadcast, May 8th, 1988)

The first film was The Wicker Man. To my knowledge, the transcripts of the introductions by Cox were not published. I do suggest that any serious film student would “read” them from start to finish. I wish I could.

Update:

Maybe there is a way to find the missing texts. Cox has just published an autobiography so it seems.

Has anyone read this?


X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker (2008) [Amazon.com]
[FR] [DE] [UK]

RIP Forrest J. Ackerman (1916 – 2008)

Famous Monsters Of Filmland by modern_fred

Famous Monsters of Filmland

Forrest J Ackerman (November 24, 1916 – December 4, 2008) was an American collector of science fiction books and movie memorabilia and a science fiction fan. Ackerman was influential to the wider cultural acceptance of science fiction as a literary, art and film genre. To a general audience, Ackerman is best remembered as the editor-writer of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland, as the producer of Vampirella, and as literary agent.

Vampirella magazine (France, 01/1970), published by Publicness
image sourced here.

Most of us have a passing interest in horror. In his Ways of Hearing book presentation, David Toop revealed that he discovered the Price, Corman and Poe-connection (the connection between 19th century literary horror to 20th century cinematic horror) via Famous Monsters of Filmland.

Baldassare Castiglione @530

The Book of the Courtier (1528) – Baldassare Castiglione

Baldassare Castiglione (1478 – 1529) was an Italian diplomat and author, best-known for his book on etiquette, The Book of the Courtier, which came to play a role in the 20th century aesthetics of cool* by having defined the concept of sprezzatura, “a certain nonchalance, so as to conceal all art and make whatever one does or says appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it”. To this day, the Book of the Courtier remains the definitive account of Renaissance court life.

La Cortegiana by Aretino

The Works of Aretino by Samuel Putnam, illustrations by Franz von Bayros

Pietro Aretino‘s (1492 – 1556) La cortigiana is a parody of The Book of the Courtier. Like in so many of Aretino’s books, it gives center stage to a woman rather than a man (courtier is the male form of cortigiana, cortigiana entered French as courtesan and was later appropriated by the English language).

From a Jahsonic point of view La cortigiana deserves just as much attention as The Book of the Courtier.

Le notti peccaminose di Pietro l'Aretino

Le notti peccaminose di Pietro l’Aretino

La cortigiana focuses on the romantic and erotic aspects of Renaissance life, a sensibility explored in the 1970s in the Italian film genre decamerotico, a subgenre of the commedia erotica all’italiana. Notable in this respect is Pasolini’s Trilogy of Life (The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales and Arabian Nights); but more so with regards to Aretino the Italian film Le notti peccaminose di Pietro l’Aretino[1], starring Adriana Asti and Elena Veronese.

While researching La cortegiana, I came across this sublime photo [2] of a female with an hourglass shaped body.

Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude (2000) – Dick Pountain, David Robins [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

*”The aesthetics of cool were most successfully documented” in Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude. –Sholem Stein

Candace Bushnell @50

Candace Bushnell (born December 1 1958) is an American author and columnist based in New York City. She is best known for writing a sex column that was turned into a book, Sex and the City, which became the basis of the TV series, Sex and the City.

Set in New York City, the show’s focus is on four female characters, stereotypcally defined as Carrie the shopaholic, Miranda the cynic workaholic, Charlotte the hopeless romantic and Samantha the sexaholic. John Big, the male lead is the emotionally unavailable male afraid of commitment.

The show tackled socially relevant issues, often specifically dealing with well-to-do professional women in society in the late 1990s, and how changing roles and definitions for women affected the characters.

Well-to-do professional women constitute the trope of strong and independent women, connected to third-wave feminism. If one considers strong and independent women in history one arrives at Lilith, Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, courtesans and George Sand. To encompass it all are women’s rights throughout history and in the 20th century: feminism. In the late 20th century there are Riot Grrrls and Girl Power.

On The Simpsons, Sex and the City was parodied as “Nookie in New York” with Marge’s sister saying “It’s a show about four straight women who act like gay men”.

Jean Eustache @70

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXu-8tXKWjU]

Le Jardin des délices de Jérôme Bosch

Jean Eustache (November 30, 1938 – November 3, 1981) was a French filmmaker best known for his 1973 film The Mother and the Whore and his various short subjects such as Le Jardin des délices de Jérôme Bosch[1]. Jean Eustache directed just two feature films he would make before committing suicide in 1981.

The Mother and the Whore[2] is one the last typical Nouvelle Vague films and an extended essay on male angst, the war of the sexes and the Madonna-whore complex. Clocking in at over 3½ hours, this film has a style seemingly borrowed from cinéma vérité and it tries to capture real life in post-May 1968 France. A typical scene is one where Marie comes home, puts a record on the turntable and listens to it in real time.

Introducing Peter Woditsch

Woman bitten by a snake

Woman Bitten by a Snake[2],

Peter Woditsch (1953, Germany) is a German-born filmmaker best known for his documentary film on the erotic furniture of Catherine the Great, and for his work on Musées secrets, secret museums, for the art television channel Arte.

Peter Woditsch was born in Stuttgart, Germany, but works and lives in Brussels. He studied philosophy in Paris and Brussels, film and animation in various places in Europe.

His debut feature Hey Stranger stars Hanna Schygulla.

His documentary film Musées secrets is an investigation of secret museums, first published in 2008 on the art television channel Arte.

Woditsch visits the Louvre, Orsay, British Library, the legendary Vatican collection and private collectors such as Gerard Nordmann.

Beata Ludovica Albertoni

Beata Ludovica Albertoni[1]

In this documentary are the sculptures Beata Ludovica Albertoni[1], a marble by Italian sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Woman Bitten by a Snake[2], a marble by French sculptor Auguste Clésinger, both works show the intimate connection between sex and death.

Jacques Mesrine: in the vortex of related events

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

If there is one current film I would like to recommend, it’s Public Enemy Number One (Part 1)[1], a biopic of French criminal Jacques Mesrine with sympathies for the European radical political urban guerrilleros RAF and Red Brigades, who eventually died in the late seventies for craving his 15 minutes of fame somewhat too eagerly. The film was produced by Thomas Langmann.

If you want to know who Mesrine was, watch this YouTumentary[2] set to “Comptines d’un autre été here as The Pian (Life is a song)” from the Yann Tiersen score of Amelie Poulain. Or better still, this documentary footage[3].

Public Enemy Number One (Part 1) is based on Jacques Mesrine‘s 1977 autobiographical book “L’Instinct de mort” and stars Vincent Cassel (L’Appartement, Irréversible) as Mesrine and costars Gérard Depardieu, Mathieu Amalric and Cécile de France (Haute Tension). A sequel “L’Ennemi public n°1” (“Public Enemy Number One (Part 2)”) was released in French theaters last November.

Mesrine by André Génovès by you.

This is all well-known. Lesser-known and very intriguingly I discovered the film Mesrine, directed by a certain French producer and/or writer of whom not much more than his IMDb filmography. The filmography in case is impressive and noted by a bleak, grim and dark worldview. In fact wholly antithetical to the Amélie score featured above. The man is André Génovès.

André Génovès was born 1941 and is a French film producer noted for working with Claude Chabrol and being involved with Barocco, The Butcher (film), The Unfaithful Wife, A Real Young Girl, This Man Must Die, Mesrine (film), and Les Innocents aux mains sales.

Keystone Kops by you.

In a perverse way, this film reminds me of police comedy films about bungling police officers who almost lose their job due to the excessive intelligence and dexterity of the criminals.

In 1980 the police comedy film Inspecteur la Bavure[4] with Coluche and Gérard Depardieu has Depardieu’s character, Morzini, directly inspired by Jacques Mesrine.

Bungling police officers are part of the making fun authority figures trope, as seen in Keystone Kops, Inspector Clouseau, Police Academy, Taxi (franchise) and Carry On Constable.

Catherine Deneuve  and Gérard Lebovici

Coming back to Mesrine, in the vortex of related events, after Jacques Mesrine’s death, his daughter Sabrina was adopted by Gérard Lebovici, French film producer, editor and patron to Guy Debord. Lebovici was also the manager of Jean-Pierre Cassel, yes the father of Vincent Cassel.

The tale is not finished. This whole history, its thematics and fiction, its personae and actual actors are further interwoven.

“On March 7 1984 Gérard Lebovici was found shot dead in the front seat of his car in the basement of the Avenue Foch carpark in Paris. There was swift confirmation that he had died on 5 March from four bullets fired from behind into the back of the neck. The assassins have never been caught.”

“Whatever happened to Sabrina?” is what Sholem Stein wants to know.

RIP French film producer Christian Fechner

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxCSQY4zskg]

La Fille sur le pont

best knife-throwing-act scene ever, testimony to a strange kind of eroticism.

French film producer Christian Fechner died today. He was 64. He produced a great number of films but is best-remembered for L’Aile ou la Cuisse, Camille Claudel, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, Élisa, and La Fille sur le pont.

That last film, with its English title Girl on a Bridge was directed by Patrice Leconte and was featured on this blog two years ago[1]. The film is superb, it is now World Cinema Classic #72.

Indescribable, unspeakable, ineffable and inexplicable

The Aigiulle Blaitiere. c. 1856 by John Ruskin by you.

The Aigiulle Blaitiere. c. 1856 by John Ruskin

A painting by Thomas Hill dated 1870 by you.

A painting by Thomas Hill dated 1870

Reading the opening chapter of Ivins‘s Prints and Visual Communication[1] on the indescribability of things (and the need for photographic representations) reminded me of the garland and the Greek Anthology.

Googling for “indescribability” brings up this interview regarding the sublime, indescribability and mountain literature and mountain art.

The trope of unrepresentability is probably the commonest of all in mountain literature and art: the throwing up of the hands, the confession of the inadequacy of representation to catch the phenomena of the mountain world. I remember reading the journal of an Edinburgh bishop from the 1760s who’d gone on a mini-Caledonian tour. He writes: “I looked north and saw rank on rank of unspeakably beautiful…” He crosses out “unspeakably”—he’s obviously unhappy with it—and writes instead “mountains so beautiful I could not describe them.” Then he crosses that out, and we get four synonyms for “indescribable,” the first three crossed out. What’s exciting about Ruskin is that instead of acquiescing to indescribability, he tries to enact it, to let his art or prose take the forms of their subjects. In his drawing of the Glacier du Bois, near Chamonix, for example, the whole image is vortical; everything is being tugged by some centripetal force which has no apparent center but which is clearly at work. It’s hard to say what that force is, but it has something to do with time, a kind of deep time that is at work in that viewing moment. The glacier looks like a river in flood, in spate; the sun looks to have been absorbed by it, and there’s an inexplicably detached tree bole and root in the foreground. Even his curving signature seems to be vulnerable to the vortex. –Brian Dillon interviewing Macfarlane [2]

My love for subjects starting with un-, in-, a- and variants is great and started with with the notion of unfilmability. Notable related concepts to indescribability include unspeakable, ineffable and inexplicable.

They connote to absence, lacking, contrary, opposite, negation and reversal, concepts and tropes very apt to denote their positive counterparts.

For what is there to say on effability if one does not investigate its negative: ineffability?

The whole of this subject touches on representation in the arts and of course, medium specificity.

Older links to this subjects are general aesthetics and the sublime.

To end with a quote which I cannot reproduce verbatim:

“Sex begins where words stop”. —Georges Bataille.

I’ve explored the previous notion here[3].