1970 rarity: First Love

As IMDb puts it:

Based on Ivan Turgeyev's novella, FIRST LOVE is about two young lovers in czarist Russia. One is a 21-year-old woman, the other a young man of sixteen. Things take a tragic turn as the girl (Dominique Sanda as Sanaida) falls in love with the boy's father (Maximilian Schell). The film, Schell's first as director, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film in 1970's Academy Awards

Two icons of '70's international cinema -- Dominique Sanda and  John Moulder-Brown -- play wonderfully off each other in this lovingly rendered tale of youth, love and the loss of innocence. 
The photography by none other the great Sven Nykvist so of course it all looks terrific, shot in Hungary, with that right kind of period look.  Schell assembes an interesting polyglot cast, apart from the two young leads and himself, theres Italy's Valentina Cortese and English character actress Dandy Nichols, playing posher than usual here, plus Richard Warwick from IF... and BUMBO, as well as playwright John Osborne (Schell had performed in his A PATRIOT FOR ME in 1969. Like Lumet's THE SEA GULL (below) it too plays out at a languid pace as we experience those lazy days on the country estate, which, with the house, look marvellous to our eyes now.
Anjelica Huston in a magazine feature on her favourite books, has this to say about FIRST LOVE: "A hauntingly beautiful novella that Turgenev partly based on his own experience. In it, two men describe their first passions, inspiring the third, Vladimir, to quietly write his story down".

FIRST LOVE - I saw it at a sole London Film Festival screening back then - has not been available for years, so its good to see it back in circulation now. It too has that early 70s look, when international and youth culture movies were all the rage.
 Moulder-Brown was also effective that year in Skolimovski's DEEP END, a favourite here, and 1972's KING QUEEN KNAVE (Moulder-Brown label), as well as appearing in Visconti's LUDWIG in '72 as well as VAMPIRE CIRCUS!. He still looks great now, as per the extras on the DEEP END Blu-ray, but does not seem to do much, though IMDb lists 66 credits with him working until recently, like James Fox he was a child actor.

John Osborne, left; Dominique Sanda, centre; Richard Warwick, right.

Sanda, was for a period, the face of the new European cinema, with so many fascinating roles in such a short time: Bresson's A GENTLE CREATURE, FIRST LOVE, memorable as Anna Quadri in  Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST - that chilling murder in the woods, and that sensual tango - in 1970, as well as Micol in De Sica's THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINI'S, (see Sanda, De Sica labels) and in Bertolucci's 1900 in '76, as well as Demy's UN CHAMBRE EN VILLE (A ROOM IN TOWN) in 1982, and is still working now. She has been luckier than that other lauded discovery, the late Maria Schneider (RIP label).

Schell died last week, aged 83, as per RIP below.

The Garden of the Finzi-Contini's

It was certainly good to see Vittorio De Sica back with a popular and highly-regarded film in 1970 - when the likes of Pasolini and soon Fassbinder ruled the arthouse scene. THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINI'S from Giorgio Bassani's novel was a commercial success, and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. [His 1973 A BRIEF VACATION with Florinda Bolkan only ever surfaced on television in the UK and we never saw his last THE VOYAGE, in '74 with Burton and Loren, until only recently - I shall have to get around to reviewing that too].

In the late 1930s, in Ferrara, Italy, the Finzi-Contini are one of the leading families, wealthy, aristocratic, urbane; they are also Jewish. Their adult children, Micol and Alberto, gather a circle of friends for constant rounds of tennis and parties at their villa with its lovely grounds, keeping the rest of the world at bay. Into the circle steps Giorgio, a Jew from the middle class who falls in love with Micol. She seems to toy with him, and even makes love to one of his friends while she knows Giorgio is watching. While his love cannot seem to break through to her to draw her out of her garden idyll, the politic forces close in to end their idyll.

Helmut Berger & Fabio Testi

First the tennis club is off bounds to the Jewish community - so the gilded youth we see at the start have their long tennis afternoons at the gardens of the Finzi-Contini's, safe behind their high walls. Giorgio remains hopelessly in love with Micol but she sees him like a brother.  Her own brother Alberto (Helmut Berger) slowly succumbs to some malady ...

Berger & Sanda

Giorgio's brother gets away to study in France as Giorgio visits him at Grenoble with some family money. We see and share their father's concern at how events are moving, while the Finzi-Contini family seem to ignore what is happening outside their walled estate. They're different from the other Jews due to wealth and privilege. They hardly seem to know, or even care, that their rights are slowly being taken away. De Sica orchestrates events magisterially as the langurous mood at the start changes to darker colours and hues. It is only a 90 minute film but it takes it time setting up the mood and events. 

Dominique Sanda with her large, soft eyes is mesmerizing as the beautiful, enigmatic, but icy and rather malicious Micol - this role and FIRST LOVE, THE CONFORMIST, 1900 etc made her one of the great European stars of the 70s. Lino Capolicchio is her boyhood friend Giorgio whom she does not see in a romantic light - he almost forces himself on her at one stage .... Fabio Testi is Bruno Malnate that other friend who fares better with Micol, but is then sent to the Russian front ... and Paolo Stoppa plays Giorgio's worried father. The final scenes of the round ups of the Jews is effective, with De Sica's mastery evident as Micol comforts her aged grand-mother.  One wonders once again at these kind of stories why they did not escape in time or resist more forcefully ...

This is as affecting as that great 1966 Czech film Kadar's THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET - another one I must return to...along with Wertmuller's SEVEN BEAUTIES in '75 (one of the great '70s films), and that recent 1961 re-discovery THE LONG NIGHT OF '43 -and Bolognini's GRAN BOLLITO, reviews at Italian label, also about the rise of Fascism in Italy, and of course Visconti's '69 opus THE DAMNED. I have Bassani's novel - I shall now have to include it in my summer reading....

That concludes my summer arthouse revivals - now for some lurid Eurotrash .... and some more recent releases and more People We Like and Movies We Love ....

The Conformist, 1970

Before he scored an international succes de scandale with LAST TANGO IN PARIS Bernardo Bertolucci directed a pair of perfectly formed literary adaptations which knock spots off his later arty blockbusters: THE SPIDER'S STRATAGEM with Alida Valli, and THE CONFORIST,his 1970 art-house crossover from Moravia's novel. The late '60s saw the Italian masters at their peaks: Visconti with THE DAMNED and DEATH IN VENICE, Antonioni blowing up America in ZABRISKIE POINT, Fellini delving into the ancient Rome of SATYRICON and Pasolini scoring with TEOREMA and OEDIPE RE, then there was Bertolucci with this dazzling film.

Jean-Louis Trintigant gets the one of the roles of his career as a man haunted by an incident in his childhood and is so desperate to appear "normal" in Mussolini's Italy of the 1930s during the build-up to the second world war, that he becomes a fascist goon and agrees to go to Paris to engineer the assassination of his old college professor. With its grim humour, breathtaking compositions and bursts of violence, this was a favourite at the time and is still remarkable now. The art deco of the period is lovingly captured, and Vittorio Storaro's colour photography is exemplary. Trintignant belives he has killed the man who made a pass at him when he was a child - which explains his current predicament. Stefania Sandrelli is ideal as the silly girl he marries, and Dominique Sanda too has one of her best roles as the young bisexual wife of the professor. The murder in the woods, while he remains impassive in the car, is one of the most vivid and realistic ever depicted, the tango in the dancehall with the two girls is also stupendous film-making. Powerful stuff then.

I never cared for LAST TANGO though, and 1900 despite its great cast is rather an overblown mess, and I just was not interested in those later Bertolucci succceses like THE LAST EMPEROR or THE SHELTERING SKY, or the later films like STEALING BEAUTY or THE DREAMERS. LA LUNA was another overblown rather daring melodrama which we liked at the time, but its barely remembered now. THE CONFORMIST though is the one to seek out and cherish.