Jean Renoir’s Le déjeuner sur l’herbe takes its title from Edouard Manet’s 1863 painting. It is an ironical allusion since Renoir, in the manner of his Impressionist father, Pierre-Auguste, has bathed his images in sunlit radiance. Manet’s scene is dark because deeply forested, in part to accommodate one of the picnickers, who is naked. However, […]
Daily Archives: August 20, 2008
First things first. If (like me) you know Max Ophüls’s Le plaisir from its U.S. version, you need to rearrange the order of the Maupassant stories in your head, and you need to imagine Jean Servais narrating in lieu of Peter Ustinov, who does so (irritatingly) in English. The long segment, about the Parisian brothel […]
Pietro Germi, who would win an Oscar for co-authoring the mean, misanthropic Divorce—Italian Style (1961), made two notable films during the previous decade, the powerful though somewhat specious The Path of Hope (1950) and The Railroad Man (Il ferroviere). Thus did Germi move from a brand of neorealismo to something in its shadow. As its […]
Dennis Grunes 