Pour le weekend

Our French favourites: Deneuve, Dorleac, Adjani & Huppert, Aimee, Audran, Hardy, Laforet .... plenty on them at labels! 

Girls & guitars, 2 . . .

Three of our favourite girls - since the 1960s - and their guitars. They go on, decade after decade ...

Marie Laforet  (our favourite from PLEIN SOLEIL/PURPLE NOON) in ST TROPEZ BLUES, 1961

Francoise Hardy  (my teenage crush) 

Joni Mitchell - evergreen.     More on all them at labels. 

I remember watching Joni waiting to go on at The Royal Festival Hall in 1970, the hippie princess with her guitar, standing at the side of the stage, not thinking I would be talking to her 2 years later in Kings Road, Chelsea .... as detailed previously. 

1963: A castle in Sweden ...

Here's a rarity: CHATEAU EN SUEDE a French film by Roger Vadim from 1963 that never got aired here. I was in London from 1964 and it never showed up here at all, despite that cast ..... and its from a play by Francoise Sagan (BONJOUR TRISTESSE, GOODBYE AGAIN, A CERTAIN SMILE etc). I have now got an Italian only dvd, so while I miss on a lot of talkiness, its fun watching it from this remove.

We start with police cars arriving in modern Stockholm and then the cops visit the castle - English title is A CASTLE IN SWEDEN or, as IMDB call it: NUTTY, NAUGHTY CHATEAU - but it isn't that risque. 
Everyone seems to wear period clothes at the castle as the bored occupants toy with each other: the owner Curt Jurgens is married to husky Monica Vitti, whose incestuous dandy brother is also to hand- a typical role for Jean-Claude Brialy. Jean-Louis Trintignant is the student who visits and soon he and Monica are exchanging long lingering glances, to the chagrin of Brialy. There is also Suzanne Flon as Curt's sister, and Sylvie as the old grand-mother, and also - though I don't know what she is doing here - is French pop girl Francoise Hardy. 

Now,we like Francoise a lot (see label) but she is hardly acting here. Monica gets to do a bit of comedy after those Antonioni roles. It is set in winter so the castle is surrounded by snow, It is obviously a play though as people sit around and talk a lot. 

Its all rather fitfully amusing, and fills a blank in one's viewing, its at least fun seeing these 60s stars in their early prime here. 

Showpeople: Girls with guitars ...

Girls with guitars ...

Bardot

Francoise Hardy

Marie Laforet

Joni Mitchell - still playing after all those years.

Joan Armatrading

and stars and their disks:  Romy and Alain, 1959 - and Rock, sometime in the fifties.

 

Coming soon: Rock (another, like Dirk, who knew/met everyone) and his pals at play.

Pussycat ! - a summer re-run.

WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT? from 1965, is a key '60s movie for me,which I just found myself defending over at IMDB, where someone considered it one of the worst movies ever made. As I said: I can quite well accept its one of the worst films ever made but thats part of the attraction, if you were 19 in 1965 (as I was) and saw it at the cinema with your friends and we all laughed ourselves silly and liked the cast, it remains a cherished memory, and the height of mid-60s chic. glamour  and zaniness. 

My pals Stan and Michael and I adored it back in the '60s and returned to it several times in that pre-video world. Stan and I used to quote lines from it to each other ("Miss Lefebvre [Capucine's real name...] your face is like the pale autumn moon" "What did you say?" etc; of course Sellers and Cap were also hilarious in the original PINK PANTHER). O'Toole, Sellers and Woody + the delirious quartet of Romy, Capucine, Paula and Ursula AND Fellini's Edra Gale ! (Ursula dropping in by parachute and saying "Whats that thing?" when she sees Edra in the Viking get-up, and as she says to Peter O'Toole "Come back to bed immediately...". Whats not to like ? - even my French favourite chanteuse Francoise Hardy pops up at the end after that madness at the country hotel and they all going off on go-karts! 

Left: lovely shot of Romy & Peter - he certainly worked with them all: the 2 Hepburns, Loren, the PUSSYCAT gals ...

I just can't believe its 47 years ago ... I had the funky Burt Bacharach soundtrack album as well...and I just love the look of it, as helmed by Clive Donner. For me it and MODESTY BLAISE are the mid-60s stylish comic peaks. 

Even now the memory of Woody chasing Romy around, O'Toole and Capucine trapped in the elevator, Cap pretending to be the cleaner when Romy walks in, the language class repeating everything O'Toole and Romy say, Paula's suicide attempts, those fantastic costumes they wear .... and then they all running around the hotel etc.

French things ...

A few titbits from the weekend papers: Catherine Deneuve, 69, has railed against the tyranny of high stiletto heels - she has always favoured flatter heels, as in this shot on location with Bunuel and Jean Sorel for BELLE DE JOUR in 1967. Back in the '60s apparantly high heels were worn by "women of ill-repute" and were agony to wear (I can well believe that...), As she says "'A simple, well-made shoe with the perfect arch is such a pleasure. It makes us walk differently; we feel free, emancipated, as if we can deal with life's challenges."

Also 69 and still looking marvellous with that silver hair, my teen favourite Francoise Hardy (left) has a new album out: "L'Amour Fou" - but WHY is it costing £21.00 on Amazon, when the new David Bowie is a mere £8.00 ? This will surely deter casual buyers .... I can download her new album for £4.00 though ! More on Francoise at Hardy label..

And a flashback to 1972, where an issue of "Films & Filming" I have just been browsing through, had a report from the Venice Film Festival by esteemed critic Ken Wlashchin - here is his perfect review of Marguerite Duras'  NATHALIE GRANGER, which I reviewed here a while back, Moreau label:

"NATHALIE GRANGER was a hypnotic, fascinating, bizarre and even sometimes boring in a compelling way but at all times showing the remarkable intelligence of a film-maker with her own personal vision. The story is virtually nil. Two women sitting at home, rather bored, one worried about her problem child Nathalie. Nothing much happens except for a visit from a washing machine salesman. It is a kind of Dantesque vision of woman's private Inferno. The actresses, Jeanne Moreau and Lucia Bose, are totally subdued, their usually powerful screen personalities dampened in this claustrophobic environment. Strangely the film is lit by passages of quirky humour,  what could be interpreted as the humour of desperation. The visit of the ineffective salesman who talks for ten minutes before discovering the women already have the machine he is selling is a bravura passage of grey rather than black humour. Whereas Sartre found that hell was other people, Miss Duras appears to imply that hell, for a woman, is her home".

Memo to self: I really must sit down and discover Chantel Akerman's JEANNE DIELMAN from 1975 with sublime Delphine Seyrig, before too long - it reads like it should be by Duras but it isn't ...

That "Films & Filming" issue also has an amusing feature by Mike Sarne on Fellini's TOBY DAMMIT (see my review at Terence Stamp label), the only film he owned - in that pre-video world he has to "haul out the projector and lace up the only film he owns" ... as he then describes the film shot by shot. Tres amusing. 

The magazine also has a photospread on Douglas Trumbull's SILENT RUNNING, which I missed at the time but recorded from a late night showing the other day. - It will be interesting to compare with the Blu-ray of 2001 shortly, Trumbull of course did special effects on both ...John Carpenter's DARK STAR is also winging its way to me, one of my new Blu-ray titles, how we loved that in 1974 with the spaced out astronauts, the beach ball alien and that talking bomb... more sci-fi soon then.

A Louis Malle double feature

Two of Louis Malle's early features, from that good box set [Vol 1] which also includes LES AMANTS and ZAZIE DANS LE METRO. Malle (who died in 1995 aged 63) began filming in the mid '50s with underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau, their first documentary being the well-received LE MONDE DU SILENCE in '56.

LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD – (or ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS to give it it’s American title). Louis Malle’s 1958 thriller ASCENSEUR POUR L'ÉCHAFAUD is still a fascinating experience as the plot spirals off in different directions. We have Jeanne Moreau endlessly wandering around Paris by night and in the rain looking for her missing lover (Maurice Ronet) who was supposed to kill her wealthy industrialist husband and join her, but he get trapped in the lift/elevator when the power is turned off, after the murder which he fakes to look like suicide. Can he escape? Meanwhile, his car is stolen by a teenage delinquent and his girl, who speed off and get involved with a German couple. We wonder why we are spending so much time with them, but this too leads to murder as the stories converge …. The spare Miles Davis soundtrack is cool beyond belief and Paris in 1958 looks the place to be. For me Malle (like Demy) is the most interesting of the New Wave directors [he was just 25 when directing this] and it is still a fascinating movie with Moreau and Ronet in their early prime. Marvellous black and white photography too by Henri Decae.



LE FEU FOLLET (THE FIRE WITHIN). This made such a big impression on me when I saw it aged 18 in 1964 that I did not need to see it again until now. It is surely Malle's most outstanding work, adapted from the Drieu La Rochelle story, with an Erik Satie soundtrack (so appropriate) and those luminous images by Ghislain Cloquet and with an astounding performance by Maurice Ronet. This and Bogarde's role in THE SERVANT are surely the outstanding performances of 1963. Ronet captures every facet as Alain Leroy, a playboy drying out at a private clinic who really finds nothing to live for once he is "cured". His alcoholic playboy is also a terminally depressed and finds life hollow and meaningless. Even the visiting friend of his ex-wife, whom he sleeps with and who writes him a cheque, cannot rouse him. He likes the routine at the clinic as we observe him in his room - notice the picture of Marilyn Monroe (a supposed recent suicide) and other newspaper features on death clipped to the wall... and the date scrawled on the mirror - the next day's date.


He decides on a whim to return to his old haunts in Paris to see if any of his old friends can be of any help in giving him a reason to go on living. Paris again in the early 60s looks marvellous as we linger at the Cafe Flore and the Brasserie Lipp. But Alain seems a shadow of his former jolly self to the barman and hotel staff he used to know. His best friend has settled into domesticity with a wife and child and is writing a book, he meets Jeanne Moreau, and Alexandra Stewart and her high society friends, and he starts drinking again. There is also that group of homosexuals who notice Alain and comment on how he has changed as one comments that a friend of theirs had been in love with him. It sounds depressing but it isn't really, and is a mesmerising film about suicide as a rational way out for a hollow man who is all used up and cannot see any point in continuing.... it is inevitable when back at his room to see him pack up his belongings and his life.



Malle went on to lots more varied films from the jollity of VIVA MARIA and the dramatic LACOMBE LUCIEN to those American classics like ATLANTIC CITY - LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD is a young man's film exploring what cinema can do, but LE FEU FOLLET remains a personal favourite that simply endures. A key '60s film too, comparable to THE SERVANT or BLOW-UP or BELLE DE JOUR.

I love Paris in the springtime when it sizzles...

Having done London in the Movies (London label) our thoughts turn to Paris, particularly now that it is April, and influenced by GOODBYE AGAIN (below), here are some random Paris moments, by day and night. Rome, soon ....

There is Tony Perkins driving around Paris in 1961 in GOODBYE AGAIN; Jean Seberg driving in BONJOUR TRISTESSE in '58; Corrine Merchand in CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 (above), '61, waiting to hear her medical prognosis; Paul Newman, Joanne, Diahann Carroll again and Sidney in PARIS BLUES; Jeanne Moreau walking around Paris by night in LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD; Charles Aznavour and Jacques Charrier driving around trying to pick up girls (like Anouk Aimee and Belinda Lee) in LES DRAGUEURS; young Jean-Pierre Leaud in THE 400 BLOWS, both '59; Sophia Loren doing the twist (it is 1962) with Perkins again in FIVE MILES TO MIDNIGHT, GIGI learning about love..., that all star cast in IS PARIS BURNING? 1966; Alain Delon's Jef Costello holed up in his hotel room in Melville's LE SAMOURAI, 1967; Charlotte Rampling in PARIS BY NIGHT, Tom Hanks at the Louvre in THE DE VINCI CODE, and of course the MOULIN ROUGE and any number of movies by Truffaut (LE PEAU DEUCE), Malle (LE FEU FOLLET, ZAZIE DANS LE METRO), Demy, Varda, Chabrol et al - Gerard Philipe and Anouk Aimee in their artists' garret in LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE; Gina Lollobrigida and Anthony Quinn over at Notre Dame; Monica Vitti and Maurice Ronet dining at the Eiffel Tower in THE SCARLET LADY, '69; Romy Schneider, Capucine and O'Toole heading the madcap cast of WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT, '65 and of course Elizabeth looking stupendous in THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS, '54 ! Then we have Belmondo and Seberg in BREATHLESS, and (below) Brialy and Gerard Blain in Chabrol's LES COUSINS, '59, and of course Fred and Cyd in SILK STOCKINGS, and over there is that super apartment which LES GIRLS shared (Kay Kendall, Mitzi Gaynor and Taina Elg) mind you that might have been on the MGM backlot. For extensive looks at Paris in the early '60s the extras on Varda's CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 or Malle's ZAZIE are choice.

So yes there's hundreds of movies set in Paris... of course there is Hollwood Paris and the real gritty city of light, as diverse as AMELIE, GARE DU NORD, Tati's PLAYTIME, Godard's ALPHAVILLE, the cartoon GAY PURR-EE, thrillers like LA HAINE, RIFIFI, LE FLIC and Polanski's FRANTIC and THE TENANT, QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY, VICTOR/VICTORIA and of course Garbo in the mythical Paris of NINOTCHKA, and all those French noirs with Gabin, Delon, Moreau, Schneider, Signoret etc, oh and some movie with Gene Kelly...



No one though did Paris in the Movies like Audrey Hepburn - so many of her movies are set in or have visits to Paree: FUNNY FACE, her cookery school in SABRINA and she returns all elegant from her year in Paris, HOW TO STEAL A MILLION where she and O'Toole tootle around in that little car, BLOODLINE, LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON with Gary Cooper, in France at any rate in TWO FOR THE ROAD with Albie, PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES and of course CHARADE with her fabulous Givenchy outfits for hiding on the Metro or visiting the flea-market, or dining on a bateau mouche down the Seine with Cary Grant ...
I must now play that Malcolm McLaren CD PARIS with the likes of Juliette Greco, Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Hardy vocalising, and some terrific Parisian rhythms. [I have been to Paris about 20 times over the years, its convenient from London now by Eurostar, and one of my best friends was married and living there for over a decade...]
PS: Chabrol's LES COUSINS from 1959, and his LES GODELUREAX from 1961 are new discoveries - more at Chabrol label.