Me and My Gal (Raoul Walsh, 1932)

Written for Sight & Sound, December 2023. – EK

If Raoul Walsh's action films are imbued with poetry, his comedies are charged with anarchy. A prime example of the latter is Me and My Gal, a pre-Code delight in which a New York cop (Spencer Tracy) fights both to bring order to the waterfront and win over a blonde (Joan Bennett). It's a madcap, riotous affair with a contempt for the rich - a proletarian air runs through its deep focus cinematography (easily lost on the eye, if not viewed on 35mm). Walsh turns vulgar jokes into unassuming art and mocks the world. It is as much about the joy of cinema as it is about the artistry of it.

Demetrius and the Gladiators (Delmer Daves, 1954)

A very Scope film

Note on Demetrius and the Gladiators, in the occasion of the new restoration of the film premiered at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2024. It was restored in 4K by The Walt Disney Studios and The Film Foundation in collaboration with Academy Film Archive at Cineric and Audio Mechanics laboratories from the 35mm original negative, a 35mm interpositive and a 35mm internegative. – EK

The trials and tribunals of Demetrius (Victor Mature), from a freed slave to the protector of the robe of Jesus, to gladiatorship and the illicit relationship with Claudius’s wife, Messalina (Susan Hayward). Straying away in a life of debauchery, Demetrius is reawakened to Christian values thanks to Peter the Fisherman while there is a good dose of lust, blood and tiger-fighting in between. This Bible pulp (“I never thought of Jesus being so tall”) culminates in the assassination of Caligula and a return to reason after Claudius becomes the new Caesar. Sequel to the first CinemaScope film The Robe (1953), this is the 1950s “muscular Christianity” that the late Terence Davies, who saw this film when he was nine, described as “dazzling and profane” and belonging to a time when God was in every cinema, “like a drug." Muscular indeed as Mature fights three tigers at once and profane as the film’s campy theology takes him to sermon a lascivious Hayward lying down in her designer dress.

How to Make Use of Leisure Time: Painting – A Film NOT by Abbas Kiarostami

How to Make Use of Leisure Time: Painting (1977), a short educational documentary widely credited to and distributed as a film by Abbas Kiarostami, has nothing to do with him. He is not the director of this film.

Currently, MK2, which holds the international rights to the Kiarostami catalogue owned by Kanoon, rents this film as a Kiarostami work. Who first misattributed it, and why—whether intentionally or by mistake—is unclear. But here’s my guess:

Lewis Milestone Retrospective at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2025

Milestone (left) on the set of Rain with Joan Crawford

Lewis Milestone: Of Wars and Men

A milestone of visual flair and virtuosity in American cinema, the career of Lewis Milestone – a Russian Jewish émigré – bridged silent cinema and the 70mm spectacles of the 1960s. Renowned for having one of the most distinctive and eclectic styles of his generation, his popular and dazzlingly original work ranged from the anti-war magnum opus All Quiet on the Western Front to the popular-front musical Hallelujah, I’m a Bum!. As dense, dark, and daunting as his films could get, they were often laced with wit, camaraderie, and bravery amid mass atrocities. Yet, he barely survived the Hollywood blacklist, which forced him to drift into mediocre assignments. This programme, covering his silent films up until the blacklist, features new restorations and archive prints, aiming to recover the artistry of a man who fought many battles of humanity in the 20th century with a sense of wisdom and poetry that can still shake us.