Michelangelo Antonioni 1912—2007

It would be more appropriate to have an image of Mr. Antonioni adorn this brief remembrance rather than the shot of Vanessa Redgrave above. But the director kept a low profile despite the enormous critical and financial success of Blowup in 1966. And Vanessa shown here, naked above the waist, those long arms protecting her from our gaze, was an inescapable presence, a pop icon of the period. There was a running joke in our house, as we’d get the newspaper to find out what was showing at one of our local theaters: “Probably Blowup!” my mother would say, because the film had played there for months. That’s a considerable feat for what was generally referred to as an “art movie” in the midst of our bucolic suburban idyll, where John Wayne and Cat Ballou ruled the roost.

    With its fleeting nudity and subversive narrative, Blowup was hot stuff, “adults only” material condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, an organization my mother adhered to diligently. What can I tell you? The woman had problems.

    Blowup is Antonioni’s masterpiece. There isn’t a bum frame in the entire film. Of his other work, there are highs and lows…but the appeal is in the eye of the beholder. I have great affection for Red Desert (1964) and Il Grido (1957), but need to revisit La Notte (1961), which has nearly faded from memory. The one element stressed in these and other films is space, a surrounding expanse that can swallow us whole. Isolation, contamination and corruption as an aura rather than tangible negatives…did Antonioni believe the environment was consuming him?

Ingmar Bergman 1918—2007

Ingmar Bergman directing Wild Strawberries

I’m not sure if Ingmar Bergman holds as much sway among cinephiles as he once did—I’d imagine most people born after the 1970s would have had too little exposure to his work. But he was a leading auteur when that word was just being used by American critics, back when The Seventh Seal (1957) could be found on any ‘best of’ list.

    I came to Bergman via a week-long retrospective on PBS-TV in the early 70s. A teenager, I was too callow and inexperienced to fully appreciate the mature subject matter and characterizations within the films, but still found a lot of it compelling, The Silence (1963) especially.

    In college Wild Strawberries (1957) was shown repeatedly, analyzed frame by frame to help us understand the psychology of imagery. Today I find it hard to watch this one in particular, simply because of that academic drill. Analysis has robbed it of its beauty for me, which is a shame because it is a wonderful achievement both cinematically and emotionally.

    Throughout the years I’ve found myself jaded and not as attracted to Bergman as I once was. But make no mistake, there is much to be mined, from the adult themes to his innate grasp of the human condition; the captivating cinematography of Sven Nykvist; and those wonderful casts of actors. He made me fall in love with Bibi Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom, Harriet Andersson and Ingrid Thulin, and I still marvel at their performances in that raft of films that were once in constant demand in theaters: Sawdust and Tinsel (1953), Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Magician (1958), The Devil’s Eye (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1961), Winter Light (1962), The Silence, Persona (1966). There isn’t one filmmaker working today who could come anywhere near that output of sheer quality.

Soggy Bottom breakdown

Click image to enlarge

Gifted in satire and excellent with actors, writer/director Theodore J. Flicker made his fortune as co-creator of TV’s Barney Miller while earning the applause of a niche audience for the subversive political comedy, The President’s Analyst (1967). However, he had far more interaction in film and theatre than is commonly known—though a lot of it may inspire some eyeball-rolling among skeptics: screenwriter of the Elvis vehicle Spinout (1966), director and co-writer (with Buck Henry) of The Troublemaker (1964), and director of the children’s fantasy Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang (1978) and the sex spoof Up in the Cellar (1970), which paired a post-Jeannie/pre-J.R. Larry Hagman with a slightly soiled Joan Collins.

    Among those obscure projects is Soggy Bottom, U.S.A. (1980), which was also released—sparingly, one would imagine—as The Soggy Bottom Gang from Soggy Bottom, U.S.A.. Set in a Louisiana backwater during Prohibition, it stars Ben Johnson as Isum Gorch (the same last name of his character in The Wild Bunch), the town sheriff training his flatulent pooch for the annual ‘dog coon hunt.’ A pre-Miami Vice Don Johnson is his nephew, Dub Taylor his brother (Cottonmouth Gorch), and Lois Nettleton his long suffering girlfriend. Filling out this inspired cast are Ann Wedgeworth as a high falutin’ country star, Lane Smith her oily manager, Anthony Zerbe as a fumbling fed, the woefully undervalued P.J. Soles (Riff Randell in Rock 'n' Roll High School) excellent as Don’s Daisy Mae sweetie, Jack Elam doing a Cajun scalawag ala Jerry Lewis, and Hank Worden (callow Mose Harper from The Searchers) as village idiot ‘Old Geezer.’

    Reciting names in this manner doesn’t make for a proper review—oops, I forgot: it was produced by legendary screen Tarzan Elmo Lincoln—but there’s little else in Soggy Bottom U.S.A. that stays in the mind long after the end credits have rolled. Woefully short on satire other than of itself, it was made in the wake of the rural Americana trend that kicked off with Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and vaporized soon after Smokey and the Bandit (1977). Flicker’s multiple scenarios may have looked good on paper but unfold in a half-baked smorgasbord: the farting canine, the wacky hunt, Don’s harebrained inventions, a raucous moonshine debacle, Jack’s crime spree, and three romantic subplots too many. The cast is game, however (it’s Dub Taylor’s finest hour), maneuvering the random shifts from realism to screwball to slapstick expertly.

They Live By Night

Kathryn Bigelow

“Appearing in 1987, Near Dark was director Kathryn Bigelow’s breakthrough film, an atmospheric genre hybrid with a visceral punkish sensibility shot on the dirt plains outside Coolidge, Arizona and earning Bigelow a retrospective season at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.” Richard Armstrong takes a look at the new DVD for Flickhead.

New Chabrol coming

Poster in Paris Metro

Claude Chabrol’s La Fille coupée en deux is scheduled to open in France on August 8. (No English title has been selected yet, but the French loosely translates as ‘The Girl Cut in Two.’) He co-wrote the screenplay with Cécile Maistre, who’d been assistant director on most of Chabrol’s pictures since Madame Bovary (1991). Other familiar names working again with the director are Eduardo Serra (cinematographer), Monique Fardoulis (editor), and son Matthieu Chabrol (music). Ludivine Sagnier (Swimming Pool) stars in her first film for the director, along with Chabrol veterans Benoît Magimel (La Demoiselle d'honneur, La Fleur du mal), François Berléand (L’Ivresse du pouvoir), and Mathilda May (Le Cri du hibou). No word yet on a North American release.

Click images to enlarge:

Benoît Magimel and Ludivine Sagnier

Mathilda May

Ludivine Sagnier and François Berléand

François Berléand

Big Daddy Roth query

Any Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth aficionados out there? A friend sent in these pix of a wooden sculpture they recently purchased. It looks to be nearly fifty years old, varnished, 11 1/2" high, about 7" wide, 5 1/2" deep with a 9” vertical crack near the tail, and Ed’s initials carved underneath next to “59,” the presumed date of the piece.

If you know what this was made for, how many were carved, where it was sold, or anything about it at all, please send an e-mail to flickhead@comcast.net

20th Century Foxes No.7: Anne-Marie Deschott

Le Fantôme de la liberté

All Day Long

All Day Long

Directed by Andrew Semans. Written, produced and edited by Drew DeNicola and Mr. Semans. Cinematography by Mark Schwartzbard. Sound design by John Bosch. With Eilis Cahill and Henry Glovinsky. 22 minutes. Released in 2007.

The new film by Andrew Semans, All Day Long eavesdrops on a boy and girl skipping class from high school. It’s an afternoon of insecurity and juvenile role play peppered with naïve declarations of love. Within the twenty-two minutes of this fleeting idyll, the pair encapsulate the awkwardness of adolescence and remind us of the dividing line between youth and maturity, the decay of innocence from disenchantment.

    It’s Mr. Semans’s third film, following I Know Where I’m Going (2000; no relation to the Michael Powell film) and I’d Rather Be Dead Than Live in This World (2005). His scripts involve emotionally and intellectually inarticulate couples expressing themselves through physical action. In I’d Rather Be Dead…, a nameless man and woman meet off of the internet and immediately move in together, severing ties with the outside world to survive on stale crackers and sex. I Know Where I’m Going, presently unavailable for screening, is described by the director as “a romantic drama about yearning and heartbreak hidden in the mundane.”

    Comparisons could be made with some of the ideas found in the works of John Cassavetes, Hal Hartley and Eric Rohmer, but only superficially. Those filmmakers operate from vantage points of idealism, where characters are capable of verbal communication, seduction and deception. With Mr. Semans, humanity is tongue-tied by want and desire. Articulation comes through in movement and gesture, small but hasty acts often motivated by doubt and fear. It all lacks the intensity and artistic posturing of Cassavetes, Hartley and Rohmer—but so does everyday life.

    Suitably understated, All Day Long follows the girl (Eilis Cahill) on her rendezvous with the boy (Henry Glovinsky). At first relieved to be free and on their own, the mood gradually shifts from rebellious glee to tedium and self-doubt. As they fumble around one another, cinematographer Mark Schwartzbard captures a quiet desolation percolating within New Jersey’s bucolic back streets, woods and deserted shopping centers, a perfect backdrop for these two wholly natural performances.

    Cahill and Glovinsky feel their way through innocuous teen chat, the ‘What do you want to do?’…‘I don’t know; what do you want to do?’ conundrum, employing body language and eye contact to full advantage. The characters’ detour into cheap thrills—beer, cigarettes, fireworks, bottle smashing—effectively underlines the aimlessness of youth marking time. For Semans, it’s an accomplished merger of tight, controlled technique with dialogue and situations brimming with truth and poignancy.

Watch the trailer

Visit the website

She who gets slapped

Baby's been a baad gurrl: E disciplines Jenny Maxwell in Blue Hawaii (click to enlarge)

“Men behave badly towards women in older films and it makes me miserable!” Irene Dobson’s Spanking Babs Stanwyck is now on Flickhead!

Eight and a half-wit

Flickhead, age 5

Gadzooks! I’ve been tagged! Robert over at Eternal Sunshine of the Logical Mind has included me in a new “meme” in which we reveal eight *facts* about ourselves. (Getting a little personal, aren’t we?) I’m not sure what all this narcissistic blather will accomplish, but I’m game. Since personal habits and quirks get dull fast, I’ve added a few milestones and anecdotes while avoiding candid confessions posted previously on this blog, such as when I slept with Sharon Stone.

Rules
1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and that they should read your blog.


Eight facts about me

His Lordship—“Mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” according to Lady Caroline Lamb

1. I have a connection to Lord Byron. My mother’s family are Clairmonts, descendants of Claire Clairmont, the mother of Byron’s illegitimate daughter Allegra. Does this not entitle me to my own castle? A dowry? A tea party, perhaps? Claire was a character in the films Gothic (1986) and Haunted Summer (1988). A familial footnote: my great-great grandfather John Clairmont (a.k.a. Old Turkey Skin) was an inventor who owned the original patent on what would eventually become the Otis Elevator. After a lifetime of building and losing fortunes, he spent his last years buying and selling luxury automobiles for the Chicago Outfit.

2. I once sent part of western New York into a tizzy. It was either 1976 or 1977 when the prosecuting attorney in the Charles Manson trial and Helter Skelter author Vincent Bugliosi was scheduled to lecture at my alma mater, Niagara University. This was less than ten years after the Tate-LaBianca murders, and I’d heard in the local pub that astrologist Jeane Dixon predicted the Manson family would visit the campus and taunt the student body. One night, armed with a case of beer and my Royal manual typewriter, I wrote an article for the University newspaper: “Manson Family to Swoop Down on Niagara U.” Inspired by Hunter Thompson (my then-idol), it ‘detailed’ the impending invasion of shaven-head, machete-wielding crazies ready to cut up the suburban swells, complete with ‘interviews’ with locals (all fabricated) and ‘documented evidence’ of Ms. Dixon’s prediction (ha!). Inebriated, I slipped it under the office door of the University paper at around two in the morning, figuring the thing would go directly into the trash after giving the editor a good laugh. Three or four days later I was getting breakfast and that week’s edition of the paper, only to find my ‘article’ on page one with the title in bold headline type. The aftermath was intense: hundreds of students were evacuated by their parents, state police patrolled the campus, and the ‘story’ made the local papers and the ten o’clock news, complete with response by a shaken Ms. Dixon. (She never made the prediction in the first place.) I was called to the carpet by the head of the English Department (“Mr. Young, how could you write such insane lies?!?”), but flipped the discussion around Gonzo-style and demanded that whoever OK’d the piece be expelled—“Get that third-rate pig-licking hack out of here immediately, if not sooner!” (Yes, I was wearing sunglasses, Hawaiian shirt and smoked my cigarette with a holder.) After all was said and done, Mr. Bugliosi visited, lectured, signed my copy of Helter Skelter, and the Manson Family was nowhere to be seen.

3. I procrastinate with my art. As a writer and musician, I’m terribly slow. I’m sure I could capitalize on my qualities, but deadlines are for work, and once my art turns to work it’ll no longer be art.

Image swiped from the excellent
Thunderball Obsessional

4. I’ve seen the James Bond movie Thunderball more than 150 times. I actually lost count after I’d seen it more than twenty-five by the time it showed up on ABC’s Sunday Night Movie in 1974, but now, three decades later, 150 seems a good, perhaps conservative, estimate. It blew me away when it premiered in 1965: I was seven-years-old, easily amused, enamored by the brassy, colorful imagery and willfully manipulated by the publicity and exploitation. Before the ABC-TV premiere, before DVD, VHS and online downloading, we went to the movies often and a lot of films played for months on end. You could probably find Thunderball showing somewhere ten years after its release in venues charging anywhere from two dollars to fifty cent bargain matinees—if we tallied admissions instead of box office grosses, I’m sure the numbers would dwarf those for Star Wars. Thunderball was first re-released in 1968, paired with From Russia, with Love, and again in 1970, on a double bill with You Only Live Twice, programs I saw over and over. Today I certainly recognize its flaws, but Thunderball’s evolved into blissful, slack-jawed, cotton-brained nostalgic trip for me.

5. I have a foot fetish. Specifically women’s, preferably dark n’ dainty. Halle Berry’s got a nice pair, superb arch, delicate heel, perfect skin tone, just right. Yum! Yum! She’s delightfully barefoot in The Flintstones, elevating that awful film to a position of imaginary greatness. This particular fixation provides an upper hand when appreciating Buñuelian and Sternbergian nuance, titillating subtleties often lost on academics and mundanes alike.

Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid

6. I don’t watch episodic television, except… I’ve kept up with the daytime soap General Hospital for nearly two decades.

7. For two years I worked out in the Amy Fisher/Joey Buttafuoco gym without realizing it. Having skipped the story as it was unfolding in the papers, I never knew the dark and grimy sweat box I went to four days a week was that notorious couple’s hangout. I didn’t mingle with the clientele, for they were a beefy, intimidating bunch. After reading Amy Fisher: My Story on a rainy afternoon, the reality hit. Soon after, I found the door locked, the interior cleaned out, and my remaining six months’ membership gone with the wind. The building was sold and refurbished into a children’s exercise and daycare center.

8. I’m introverted, shy and terrible at small talk.…not the best person to invite to a party.



I’ll pass the baton over to the following folks (please don’t hate me too much):

Joseph at Harlequin Knights

Tuwa at Tuwa's Shanty and The Roots Canal

Kimberly at Cinebeats

Lloyd at Mar de Cortes Baja

Musing at Musings of a Middle-Aged Woman

Filmbo at Filmbo’s Chick Magnet

DJ Colleen Crumbcake at Sugartown

Ivan at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

20th Century Foxes No.6: Anne Heywood

As March in the controversial film of D.H. Lawrence’s The Fox (1967), Anne Heywood expertly conveyed that character’s aching sense of loss, purposelessness and wanting—it’s one of my all-time favorite screen performances, even if it strayed from the author’s intentions. (The lean but effective screenplay was written by Lewis John Carlino of Seconds fame.) She began in beauty contests, which led to a middling career in the movies. But The Fox, released somewhere between the fall of the Production Code and the birth of the MPAA ratings system, allowed her to explore a multifaceted and complicated persona without their rigid guidelines, down to the mainstream cinema’s first (mildly) graphic female masturbation scene.