This post is part of the Vive la France! Blogathon, hosted by Lady Eve’s Reel Life and Silver Screen Modes. See the other posts here. Jacques Demy’s Les Demoiselles de Rochefort or The Young Girls of Rochefort is the essence of euphoria. A carnival of colour and sound, it looks at the world through a […]
FilmStruck – A Fond Farewell
There are disappointments in the life of a cinephile that cause her to sigh and shrug. Say the implosion of MoviePass and a film-a-day deal that always seemed too good to last. And then there are injustices so great they make her rail against the heavens like Howard Beale in Network: FilmStruck is shutting down […]
La Belle Josephine: ‘Siren of the Tropics’ (1927), ‘Zouzou’ (1934) and ‘Princess Tam Tam’ (1935)
What I remember best about The Triplets of Belleville, Sylvain Chomet’s eccentric, inscrutable animated comedy is its opening: a flashback showing the titular triplets performing on stage in the 1930s. There’s Charles Trenet and Django Reinhardt jamming in the orchestra pit, Fred Astaire inexplicably being devoured by his own shoes and, for reasons best known […]
Jeu d’esprit: ‘The Story of a Cheat’ (1936)
Imagine an act in which the magician pulls a rabbit from a hat, followed by a grand piano, the Eiffel Tower and an undiscovered Van Gogh. This is Sacha Guitry’s picaresque The Story of a Cheat. Guitry plays the eponymous Cheat (we never learn his name) who, well into disreputable middle age, settles down to […]
A Shortlist of Films I Wish Were in the Criterion Collection
The biannual Barnes and Noble Criterion Collection sale is now on. Or as I like to think of it, Christmas in July. Founded in 1984 the Criterion Collection, as the back of each of its DVDs and Blu-rays will tell you, is “a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films.” It’s a bespoke label […]
Phantasmagoria: ‘Spirits of the Dead’ (1968)
If you’re obsessed with films and potter about Twitter, you might have seen director Edgar Wright’s list of his 1000 favourite movies, an inventory both admirable in scope and staggering in content. I’ve seen only about 40 percent of the films on the list (predictably, most of them made before 1970) and since I adore […]
René Clair’s Cloud Cuckoo Land: ‘Le Million’ (1931)
Watching Le Million is like getting pulled into the world’s most enthusiastic chorus line: you don’t know all the steps, but you’re having much too much fun to stop. It’s midnight in Paris and there’s a large party going on in a garret—but why? Flashback to earlier in the day, when penniless painter Michel (René […]