Stark, turbulent, poetic, Il Cristo proibito asks, “Why must the innocent always pay for the others?” In so doing it not only delivers a powerful blow to tyranny and the madness of war but also radically reinforces the tenets of Christian myth. The author of the script, filmmaker and composer of the score, Italian journalist, […]
Monthly Archives: November 2008
“A woman is beautiful only when she is loved.” This silly aphorism, gospel to Job Skeffington and, when she has lost her looks to diptheria, conceded to by ex-wife Fanny, is something of a barrier to one’s acceptance of this film. If one can get over it, one can enjoy the film. The talents involved […]
Funny Girl is based on a Broadway musical whose producer was married to the daughter of its subject, the wonderful singer and comedienne Fanny Brice, famous for popularizing the song “My Man” and (on the radio) the character of Baby Snooks. Of Hungarian-Jewish descent, Brice was born Fania Borach in New York in 1891 and […]
Whatever else it may be about (for this is a film that exists on many levels), Milk, about Harvey Milk, is about the capacity in America for someone to set the course of one’s own myth. Milk, a gay Jewish New York businessman, was not young but he took Horace Greeley’s advice about going west, […]
Brilliantly written and directed by Eric Rohmer protégé Jean-Claude Brisseau, La vie comme ça revolves around Agnès Tessier, who takes an office job in a chemical factory. She and best friend Florence move into a place in a low-cost apartment building in an unsavory neighborhood. It is Florence’s father, who is smitten with Agnès, who […]
“Money passed through like a cyclone.” Marcel L’Herbier’s dazzling assault on capitalism updates Émile Zola’s 1890-91 novel Money, part of the Rougon-Macquart series, from the 1860s to the 1920s and, alas, remains current. The plot turns on the rivalry between Saccard and Gunderman, two financiers. They operate in a world that reeks of money—wealth without […]
Which is the best of director Ettore Scola’s nearly forty films? I believe it is Una giornata particolare. The confinement of the action to a single day seems to have liberated his humane and technical gifts. Scola won the David di Donatello Award as best director; he, along with co-writers Ruggero Maccari and Maurizio Costanzo, […]
