William Klein (1926 – 2022) was an American-French photographer and film director.
He is known for such photos as Broadway and 103rd Street, New York, 1954–1955 and films such as Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966), Mr. Freedom (1969) and The Model Couple (1977).
Klein was unassuming, unpretentious and had a healthy dose of humor. Here at Jahsonic we have lots of sympathy for mr. Klein. He strikes us as a nobrow artist, a category we hold in high esteem.
Jean-Luc Godard was a French-Swiss film director.
Godard rose to prominence as a pioneer of the ‘Nouvelle Vague’ in European cinema. He is best known for his jump cuts in À bout de souffle (1960).
Of the same period and in the same style are other films that defied audience expectations: Vivre sa vie (1962), Bande à part (1964), and Pierrot le Fou (1965).
Also of interest are his lesser known political films during his communist period. There is for example his use of stills such as the Freudo/Marx pinup in Le gai savoir (1969).
We at Jahsonic have little sympathy for the humorless pretentiousness of mr. Godard. He is, however symptomatic of the ‘épater les bourgeois’ tradition of Baudelaire, Brecht and Beckett. It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. We have nothing against going against the grain, but if you do it, do it good, like Debord, who gave the jacket of his mémoires sandpaper covers to damage the books in their vicinity maximally.
Wolfgang Petersen is a German film director known for films such as Das Boot (1981) and Troy (2004).
I want to remember him for The NeverEnding Story (1984), a fantasy film based on the German novel of the same name by Michael Ende.
The book describes the fantasy world of Fantasia slowly being devoured by a malevolent force called “The Nothing“.
Anne Heche was an American actress known for many films and television dramas.
I remember her for Wild Side (1995).
Bob Rafelson was an American film director. I remember him for Head (1968) and Five Easy Pieces (1970).
Five Easy Pieces is famous for its chicken salad scene.
Head is known for being a hippie film in the style of The Trip (1967), Medium Cool (1969) and Putney Swope (1969).
Lenny Von Dohlen was an American actor.
I remember him for Electric Dreams (1984), which can be read as a prequel to Her.
James Caan was an American actor known for such films as The Godfather (1972) and Dogville (2003).
Peter Brook was an English theater and film director known for such dramatizations as Marat/Sade (1964) for the theater in 1965 and as a film in 1967.
Jean-Louis Trintignant was a French actor who worked with all European art house directors between the 1950s and the 2000s. He is known for his economic acting.
Here he is in My Night at Maud’s (1969):
BDSM-wise (let’s, shall we?) two films come to mind.
Continue readingHenri Garcin was a Belgian actor, born as Anton Albers in Antwerp to Dutch parents. In his twenties, he left for Paris to try his luck as an actor.
He found a place on the stage in several high-brow theatrical plays and went on to become a character actor in cinema, appearing in more than hundred French films.
In my universe he is of importance for playing in several Alex Van Warmerdam films: Abel, (1986), The Northerners, (1992) and The Dress, (1996), Grimm (2003) and Schneider vs. Bax (2015).
He also had parts in two films by fellow cult director Jos Stelling.
The first time that I saw Garcin was in 1986 in Cinema Cartoons in Antwerpen, when we went to see Warmerdam’s debut feature Abel.
In the clip above you can see the famous Christmas breakfast scene of that film, one of the best scenes of Dutch cinema by one of its most interesting filmmakers.
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