Co-written by Terence Rattigan and directed by Anthony Asquith, The Way to the Stars (Johnny in the Clouds in the U.S.) is an amiable, sentimental account of lives at an R.A.F. bomber base and a nearby hotel over the years 1940-44. One of several plot-lines is silly: Peter Penrose (John Mills, better than I have […]
Daily Archives: February 6, 2008
An achingly tender moment occurs in Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney. In Paris, Jeanne and Andreas rent a hotel room for the night. Will this be their first night of love? Across the way, through facing open windows, Jeanne espies a new bride down whose cheek a tear falls. The girl is […]
François Truffaut’s second feature, from David Goodis’s crime novel Down Here, opens with a shot of the interior of a piano as the piano is being played. We do not see the pianist. We see the normally invisible apparatus attached to the keys. And we hear the result. Tirez sur le pianiste nearly concludes with […]
Dennis Grunes 