Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...
- 2/6/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Curtis Bernhardt followed the route of his fellow directors Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak: Germany, France, America, but unlike them he never went back to film in Germany at the end of his career. I looked at his Marlene Dietrich vehicle here. Now let's consider one from his French period.
Carrefour (Crossroads) is an amnesia thriller. Je t'aime amnesia thrillers. They're particularly interesting since the kind of movie amnesia where you forget who you are appears not to exist in real life: if you lost your identity, you would have lost so many other brain functions it's doubtful you would be abe to talk about it. The device remains popular not just because it's so useful for crazy plots, but because questions of identity fascinate us.
(Speaking of crazy plots: French novelist Sebastien Japrisot, whose name itself was an anagram, wrote one of the best, the twice-filmed A Trap For Cinderella.
Carrefour (Crossroads) is an amnesia thriller. Je t'aime amnesia thrillers. They're particularly interesting since the kind of movie amnesia where you forget who you are appears not to exist in real life: if you lost your identity, you would have lost so many other brain functions it's doubtful you would be abe to talk about it. The device remains popular not just because it's so useful for crazy plots, but because questions of identity fascinate us.
(Speaking of crazy plots: French novelist Sebastien Japrisot, whose name itself was an anagram, wrote one of the best, the twice-filmed A Trap For Cinderella.
- 8/5/2014
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Anna Magnani in (what looks like) Luchino Visconti's Bellissima At the end of Giuseppe Tornatore's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar winner Cinema Paradiso, small-town projectionist Philippe Noiret has died and the Nuovo Cinema Paradiso has become a pile of rubble. The bratty Italian boy Salvatore Cascio has grown into the classy Frenchman Jacques Perrin (like Noiret, dubbed in Italian), a filmmaker who sits to watch a mysterious reel of film the deceased projectionist had left him. It turns out the reel contains clips from films censored by the prudish local parish priest, whose family values found kisses, embraces, and bare breasts and legs a danger to society. Now, who's doing all that kissing, embracing, and breast/leg-displaying in that film reel? (Please scroll down for the Cinema Paradiso clip.) Here are the ones I recognize: Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman in Giuseppe De Santis' Bitter Rice (1949); Mangano...
- 2/14/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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