Jean Douchet in Tehran

Jean Douchet (center) with Kiomars Vejdani (right) and Parviz Nouri in Tehran. Early 1960s.

Statues of Madrid

Some dame at Parque del Buen Retiro

Poetics of Space: Berlin vs. IBM

Shots from The Third Generation [Die Dritte Generation] (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979)
City: West Berlin
Background building: Gedächtniskirche at Breitscheidplatz
The film on TV: The Devil, Probably [Le diable probablement] (Robert Bresson, 1977)

Architecture of Decay

Berlin by Dusk

 

London by Resnais

London. Photo by Alain Resnais

Stairs#15

Downhill (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)

Erich Engel - Nanette (1940)

Sinfonía erótica (Jesús Franco.1980)

virgin among the living dead

 commissar accuses

 rainbow thief

London After Midnight

heaven can wait

L'étrange Madame X (Grémillon 1951)

night of the demon

the wise quacking duck

November Stairs

Foreign Killers, Native Killers

Bird on a Wire (Tony Palmer, 1974) - Cinematography by Les Young

August Stairs

In descending order
Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931)
The Perfume of the Lady in Black (Francesco Barilli, 1974)
Capriccio all'Italiana (Mauro Bolognini, Mario Monicelli, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Steno, Pino Zac, Franco Rossi, 1968)
Célestine... bonne à tout faire (Jesús Franco, 1974)

The Pre-Truffaut Jean-Pierre Léaud

It is widely known and accepted that it was François Truffaut who discovered Jean-Pierre Léaud and gave him the role of the rebel kid in Les quatre cents coups [The 400 Blows]. However, this is far from being true, because just a year before Truffaut's groundbreaking and Cocteau-backed premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Léaud has appeared in the French swashbuckler film La Tour prends garde! (Georges Lampin, 1958), starring Cocteau's lover, Jean Marais.

In this small but unforgettable role, Léaud's jaunty features, his involvement in adult's world and his hunger for an early maturity is well-manifested. Naturally this 14 year-old kid caught monsieur Truffaut's attention and the rest is history.

Poetics of Space: Roeg's (In)Significance

Insignificance (Nicolas Roeg, 1985)

May Stairs

The Third Man

After a long interval, we will ascend and descend cinematic stairs again and will hide in the dark corners of the staircases which generate our dreams and nightmares. Another round of celebrating the most vital vertical element of the movies and their spaces. 

Previous posts include: Insane stairs, Sirk stairs, Stairways to hell, Stairs and mirrors, Reincarnation of stairs, High society stairs, Metaphysical stairs, Dialectical stairs, Capra stairs, Stairways to heaven, Poetics of space: stairs.

John Ford in 12 Frames

فورد در دوازده نما: صف طويل خاكستري

The Long Gray Line

کارگردان: جان فورد؛ فیلم‌نامه: ادوارد هوپ؛ فیلم‌بردار: چارلز لاتون جونیور (و چارلز لنگ)؛ طراحان صحنه: رابرت پیترسون، فرانک تاتل. 1955، تکنی‌کالر، سینمااسکوپ ( نسبت 2.55 به 1)، 138 دقیقه، استودیوی کلمبیا. متوسط طول هر نما: 13 ثانیه. بازيگران: تايرون پاور (مارتين ماهر)، مورين اوهارا (مري اودانل)، دانالد كريسپ (پدر مارتين)، وارد باند (هرمان كوهلر).

***

صفِ طویلِ خاکستری اولين فيلم اسكوپ جان فورد و داستان نيم قرن از زندگي مارتين ماهر، مهاجر ايرلندي، در پادگان آموزشي «وست پوينت» است و ماجراي زندگي او را از ورودش به «وست پوينت» ، به ‌عنوان ظرف‌شور، تا دوران افسري، ازدواج، مربي‌گري و در نهايت جنگ جهاني دوم نشان مي‌دهد. اين فيلم كه يكي از تلخ‌ترين آثار فورد خوانده شده شايد تنها فيلم نظاميِ غير وسترنِ او باشد كه تضاد بين زندگي سربازان با فرصت‌طلبي سياست‌مداران را با صراحت كم‌سابقه و زباني گزنده روايت مي‌كند. در آن، تمام اجزاء واضح و حتي بديهي به نظر مي‌رسند (ارتش، خانواده و مسئوليت فردي) اما در واقع يكي از معدود فيلم‌هاي فورد است كه ريشه‌ها را زير سؤال مي‌برد؛ مرثيه‌اي است بر «روياي آمريكاييِ» يك ايرلنديِ كاتوليك؛ مرثيه‌اي است كه فورد براي خودش و ديگراني مثل خودش سروده است.

Cobwebs

Image 1 (from the top) from Les aventures de baron de Munchhausen (Georges Méliès, 1911). Image 2 from The Great Gabbo (James Cruze, 1929). Image 3 from The Diabolical Dr. Z (Jesús Franco, 1966) and image 4 of Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula (Franco, 1998).

It Happened in Tehran#1

Third Tehran International Film Festival, 1974

From right to left: Rouben Mamoulian, Manouchehr Anvar, Kamran Shirdel, Gillo Pontecorvo, Gabriel Figueroa, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Miklós Jancsó. (two on the far left, unidentified)

Life of the Lifless: Gueule d'amour

TWO SEQUENCES FROM Gueule d'amour

Today’s “Image(s)” is from two sequences of Gueule d'amour, known in English as The Lady Killer. This story of a tragic love (a central theme for many poetic realist films of the 1930s) articulates Grémillon’s visual thinking, his style and his very peculiar way of representing the reality on screen. Two segments discussed here are from the short opening sequence, and a key sequence toward the end of the film which carry many similar spatial elements of the first.

The opening sequence: a text appears on the image and reveals the time of the story (1936) and the place (Orange). The music played on the credits, a string section flowing over a staccato-like orchestration of reeds, stops as the actual film begins. Still the duration of the shots and their juxtaposition follows the rhythmic pattern of the early score. The sense of unity within fragmented reality of the world arises from what has established during the credit and the very particular mood it has delivered.