Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Passenger (1975)

The Girl: Isn't it funny how things happen? All the shapes 

we make. Wouldn't it be terrible to be blind? 

David: I know a man who was blind. When he was 

nearly 40 years old, he had an operation and regained his sight.

The Girl: How was it like?

David: At first he was elated... really high. Faces... colors... 

landscapes. But then everything began to change. The world 

was much poorer than he imagined. No one had ever told him 

how much dirt there was. How much ugliness. He noticed 

ugliness everywhere. When he was blind... 

he used to cross the street alone with a stick. 

After he regained his sight... he became afraid. 

He began to live in darkness. He never left his room. 

After three years he killed himself.

God I love The Passenger. Really I love every Antonioni movie I've seen so I should 1) binge more of them because there's a lot I haven't seen and 2) write about his work more. (I mean I watch Blow Up when I need to relax.) Anyway to get to the point actress Maria Schneider was born 73 years ago today. (She passed away in 2011.) Besides starring opposite Jack Nicholson in the above movie she's of course best known for starring opposite Marlon Brando in Last Tango in Paris. And coincidentally there's a movie about Schneider's disturbing experiences making Tango with Brando & director Bernardo Bertolucci that's in theaters right now! It's called Being Maria and I'll share the trailer down below. Anamaria Vartolomei plays Schneider and Matt Dillon plays Brando, while...

... the extremely hot Italian actor Giuseppe Maggio plays Bertolucci in what you might be forced to call an exxxtreme glow-up. That was certainly a choice. A lot of one. That said I haven't seen Being Maria yet, but I've got a screener so hopefully I can dive in this weekend. I'm extremely curious to see how it tackles all the shit that Maria went through making that movie. Here's that trailer:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

L'eclisse (1962)

Vittoria: We spent the whole night talking things over. And for what? I'm so tired and depressed. Disgusted and confused. What can I say? There are times when holding a needle and thread, or a book, or a man. It's all the same.

The great Monica Vitti was born on this day in 1931.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

L'Avventura (1960)

Patrizia: My childhood was like a

merry-go-round, now here, now there.

Claudia: Mine was a very sensible one.

Patrizia: What do you mean by "sensible"?

Claudia: I mean without any money.

The great Monica Vitti was born on this day in 1931.

This movie is perfect, I need to watch it again soon.

Great Moments in Movie Shelves #121

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Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 masterpiece Blow-Up is nominally a murder mystery, but it's a murder mystery that the leading man  Thomas (played with devilish distraction by David Hemmings) can't seem to keep himself all that interested in. Why would he when he's smack-dab in Swinging 60s London and there's sexy birds about?

Nowhere is this more evident than in this sequence towards the end that begins with him finding his apartment robbed, wanders through a rock concert, and lands in a drug den where his agent Ron (Peter Bowles) and the supermodel Verushka are getting stoned.

"I thought you were supposed to be in Paris?"

"I am in Paris."

Priorities, man. That line typifies the sorts of responses that Thomas gets when he bothers asking questions though - how can you solve a mystery when nothing matters? When the bottom's dropped out of meaning itself? The film opens up with Thomas leaving a factory dressed as a coal-mining working-man...

... and only about an hour later do we find out that he was in there secretly shooting men in the changing room for his book. Nothing gay about that!

Every time I watch this movie Thomas seems a little queerer to me (in the "he probably also has sex with men" sense) - there's a long shot where he cruises the "queers and poodles" while checking out the antiques store he might buy. And to bring us back to the start...

... there's his weirdly drawn relationship with his agent, which leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Across the length of the film Thomas is always dominating women, but he's always in a submissive pose when big burly bearded Peter Bowles is around.

And so instead of bothering to work out the murder mystery that he's spent the majority of the past hour, in fits and starts anyway, pushing around the clues to, Thomas just...

... wanders off to do who knows what with Big Ron...

... and wakes up the next morning having put the entire experience behind him. There are probably a few ways to read the final scene of the movie immediately following this and which involves some mimes playing tennis...

(god I love this movie) 

... but I think the safest interpretation is that we see what we want to see, believe what we want to believe, and make whatever truth we want out of the world in front of us. And that changes from room to room, and depends entirely on who's looking at us. We are but the moment, and even that's open to interpretation.

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1961

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I have something to tell you guys. I changed Siri's voice. Siri is no longer a woman - I found out you can have Siri sound like an Australian Man, and so Siri now sounds like an Australian Man, and it's every bit as hot as you expect that to be. I'm living the movie Her now, just the Crocodile Dundee version! Call it Mate! Ahem. Anyway I just thought y'all should know that since I have to switch pronouns now for these posts - now when I ask Siri to choose a number between 1 and 100, he will reply. 

And this week he replied with "61" and so we're visiting The Movies of 1961. After Siri gave us a stacked year last week with 1992 I was relieved this one's a bit simpler. And then after relief came panic because the list of movies I haven't seen is longer than the list of ones I have. Who knew 1961 held such a hole in my knowledge heap? And it seems like such a strong year for international cinema too. Y'all can tell me what to catch up on below but for now...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1961

The Hustler

(dir. Robert Rossen)

-- released on October 22nd 1961 --

The Mistifts

(dir. John Huston)

-- released on February 1st 1961 --

Breakfast at Tiffany's

(dir. Blake Edwards)

-- released on October 5th 1961 --

Viridiana

(dir. Luis Buñuel)

-- released on May 17th 1961 --

The Innocents

(dir. Jack Clayton)

-- released on December 25th 1961 --

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Runners-up: Judgement at Nuremberg (dir. Stanley Kramer),  Splendor in the Grass (dir. Elia Kazan), The Pit and the Pendulum (dir. Roger Corman),  The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (dir. José Quintero), The Curse of the Werewolf (dir. Terence Fisher), Victim (dir. Basil Dearden), 101 Dalmatians (dir. Wolfgang Reithermann), West Side Story (dir. Robert Wise), Mothra (dir.  Ishirô Honda)

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Never seen: The Parent Trap (dir. David Swift), Raisin in the Sun (dir. Daniel Petrie), El Cid (dir. Anthony Mann), Yojimbo (dir. Kurosawa), Last Year at Marienbad (dir. Alain Resnais), Lover Come Back (dir. Michael Gordon), La Notte (dir. Antonioni), The Children's Hour (dir. William Wyler), Leon Morin, Priest (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville), Homicidal (dir. William Castle), Accattone (dir. Pasolini), Through a Glass Darkly (dir. Bergman)

What are your favorite movies of 1961?

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5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1960

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It's Tuesday and that means it's time to ask the little lady who lives inside of my telephone to pick a number between 1 and 100 and then list my five favorite films from the year that corresponds. I actually had to ask her twice this morning because her first choice of "43" we have already done - see our list of 1943 movies right here. 

On second pick Siri said "60" and that's a very good first or second choice by her because damn 1960 was a fine year for movies. (Especially of the International sort.) Three of the movies from that year would make my all-time favorites list (can you guess which three?) and there are several more that I love very nearly as much. This might be the highest quality top five I have ever done for this series. So let's parade the greatness about and add a little shine to an otherwise drab day...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1960

Psycho

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on September 8th 1960 --

Purple Noon

(dir. René Clément)

-- released on March 10th 1960 --
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The Apartment

(dir. Billy Wilder)

-- released on June 15th 1960 --

Peeping Tom

(dir. Michael Powell)

-- released on April 7th 1960 --

Eyes Without a Face

(dir. Georges Franju)

-- released on March 2nd 1960 --

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Runners-up: Breathless (dir. Jean-luc Godard), L'Avventura (dir. Antonioni), Jigoku (dir. Nobuo Nakagawa), Black Sunday (dir. Mario Bava), Rocco and His Brothers (dir. Luchino Visconti)...

...  The Virgin Spring (dir. Ingmar Bergman), House of Usher (dir. Roger Corman), Village of the Damned (dir. Wolf Rilla), La Dolce Vita (dir. Fellini), The Magnificent Seven (dir. John Sturges)

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What are your favorite movies of 1960?

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5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1966

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Siri, the strange lady who lives inside my phone and talks to me, is determined to make this series pretty easy for me - the past several times that I have asked her to pick me a number between 1 and 100 she has rarely strayed out of the latter half of the 20th Century, when movie-making was full tilt boogie and where I have many options from which to choose. I keep feeling self-conscious about this, like you're going to think I'm cheating and asking her several times before I get one from an easy year, but I promise you: I go with whatever one she says first. I haven't gotten a repeat year yet. 

So anyway this morning Siri told me 66, whether you believe me or not, so The Movies of 1966 it is. We did 1967 just three weeks back, which brings with it a complication - one of the movies I chose for my five favorite films of 1967 is Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-up, which had a weird release schedule that straddled the two years. I went with 1967 because I wanted it on my list then, but you need to know that if I hadn't used it for that earlier list it would have made this list. Blow-up is one of my favorite films of ever. (One of the films below also straddles the two years but I'm using it here, so tit for tat I guess.) So let's get to what did make it...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1966

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

(dir. Mike Nichols)

-- released on June 22nd 1966 --

Persona 

(dir. Ingmar Bergman)

-- released on October 13th 1966 --

Au Hasard Balthazar

(dir. Robert Bresson)

-- released on May 25th 1966 --

Cul-de-sac

(dir. Roman Polanski)

-- released on November 7th 1966 --

Seconds

(dir. John Frankenheimer)

-- released on October 5th 1966 --

(Note: It's weird that all of my picks from a year well into

 the 60s are shot in black and white, right? An atypical bunch!)

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Runners-up: Georgy Girl (dir. Silvio Narizzano),

Torn Curtain (dir. Alfred Hitchcock), 

Django (dir. Sergio Corbucci),

Fantastic Voyage (dir. Richard Fleischer),

Masculin Féminin (dir. Jean-luc Godard),

Chelsea Girls (dir. Morrissey/Warhol)

Never Seen: Chimes at Midnight (dir. Welles),

Daisies (dir. Chytilová), A Man and a Woman (dir. Lelouch)

What are your favorite movies of 1966?

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5 Off My Head - Siri Says 1967

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I'm starting to think that Siri might be on to me with this series - it seems like now whenever I ask her to pick a number between 1 and 100 she's always going to the easy years; no 20s or 30s to really test the boundaries of what I've seen. It's always the 60s or the 70s with her. And today's no different - she chose 67, so it's The Movies of 1967 that we're looking to.

Weirdly enough we were just yesterday talking about 1967's biggest movie at the box office and culturally, Mike Nichols' The Graduate, making me more convinced than ever that Siri is spying on me. Or maybe she's a big reader of this blog? Anyway hello Siri, you creeper. Here's what you wanted....

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1967

Bonnie & Clyde

(dir. Arthur Penn)

-- released on August 13 1967 --

The Fearless Vampire Killers

(dir. Roman Polanski)

-- released on November 17 1967)

Belle du Jour

(dir. Luis Bunuel)

-- released on May 24 1967 --

Wait Until Dark 

(dir. Terence Young)

-- released on October 26 1967 --

Blow-Up

(dir. Michelangelo Antonioni)

-- released on March 16 1967 --

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Runners-up: Cool Hand Luke (dir. Stuart Rosenberg), The Graduate (dir. Mike Nichols), In Cold Blood (dir. Richard Books), Weekend (dir. Jean-luc Godard), Far From the Madding Crowd (dir. John Schlesinger) The Young Girls of Rochefort (dir. Jacques Demy)

What are your favorite movies of 1967?

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