Screen Screed: Thoughts on Movies From a Lifelong Eater of Cinema

      Divertimento (1992)--I saw it maybe twenty years ago--is Jacques Rivette's two hour re-edit of his four hour long La Belle Noiseuse ( The Beautiful Troublemaker ) from 1991.      According to IMDB (I haven't seen the movie in so long I don't remember) Divertimento is from the model's, Marianne's (Emanuelle Béart), point of view.      Edouard Frenhofer (Michel Piccoli) hasn't painted in ten years.  His friend, an art dealer, introduces him to a young couple, Marianne and Nicolas (David Bursztein, playing one of the most contemptible weak men I've ever seen).  Nicolas, a photographer, admires Frenhofer's work, foists his girlfriend on the genius to be the model for his abandoned masterpiece, La Belle Noiseuse , noiseuse a slang term, apparently, used in Quebec, where Marianne evidently has lived, meaning "troublemaker" or "pain in the ass."      Frenhofer says he got the inspiration for the painting by reading ...

      I've seen Muriel (1963) thrice.  As with many, the first viewing left me baffled but interested in the film's editing style.  The second time I saw it, the plot stood out for me, I began to grasp the story.  The third time, I watched with a friend who, seeing it for the first time, was baffled, although she enjoyed it.      The clothes, the objects, the look of Boulogne-sur-mer, a film shot on location in a city most viewers hadn't seen, with modern buildings amid the war's ruins.   Muriel glows with crisp imagery, rich color photography muted, not like a glossy Technicolor.  The images of the seaside city look immediate, the world of 1962 or 1963, the French-Algerian War just concluded, Godard's Le Petit Soldat , dealing with that war, finally released after being held back three years, censorship of subjects pertaining to France's terrible war in North Africa prevalent.      War and lies, war and memory. ...

     L'aigle à deux têtes ( The Two-Headed Eagle ) (1948) is not as famous a Jean Cocteau film as La belle et la bête ( The Beauty and the Beast ) (1946) or Orphée ( Orpheus ) (1950), although all three star Jean Marais in the lead roles.  Marais's features gave him an eldritch cast.  His eyes seem pulled upwards.  He resembles already, without makeup, an elf king or some elf warrior.  I've seen Marais, too, in Luchino Visconti's Le notti bianche ( The White Nights ) (1957); Marais plays a relatively ordinary role, though he can't help being dashing.      Marais would have been a major star in Hollywood,      BUT, Jean Gabin was (if I'm wrong, comment) in one Hollywood film, Moontide (1942).  Did he come across like Bogart, making Casablanca at the same time?  Actors fascinate me, especially those who play a variety of roles yet manage to be fresh and interesting.      Marais is like that. ...

      Candy , based on a novel by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, works well as a 1968 vision of reality upset and jumbled by the era's drug taking.      The movie is LSD, is grass, is Ecstasy.  Beautifully colored, shaded, filmed with whimsical set pieces and surprise guest appearances by major stars, the film follows a Blonde young woman, Candy, through a series of strange episodes each centered around a famous (fictional) person.      First we see a poetry reading by a poet superstar played by a frizzy-haired Richard Burton, his voice uttering absurd megalomaniacal words, commanding the attention of a roomful of college students, the women fainting and, no doubt, dampening their panties.  Candy watches, he sees her and from that moment on he can think only of fucking her.      He gives her a ride home in his limo, driver separated by glass as the Poet intones the word "need" over and over again, insisting on t...