Film Blanc

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The “machine that kills bad people” turns out to be Cocteau’s death camera, freeze-frame and all, to Roberto Rossellini it’s “a comedy, my friends.” The distance between neorealism and surrealism is a short one, the seaside village displays wartime scars but not before it is erected as a cutout diorama by the big hand in the sky (cf. Lubitsch’s The Doll). The wizened wanderer who’s run over on the road is later seen at the religious procession, grinning at the fireworks; the shabby photographer (Gennaro Pisano) welcomes him into his shop and is rewarded with the power to petrify anyone to death with the click of a shutter. (The first to go is the bully, buried with his arm frozen in fascist salute.) Read More »

Billy Bigelow has been dead for fifteen years, and now outside the pearly gates, he long waived his right to go back to Earth for a day. But he has heard that there is a problem with his family, namely his wife Julie Bigelow née Jordan and the child he never met, that problem with which he would now like to head back to Earth to assist in rectifying. Before he is allowed back to Earth, he has to get the OK from the gatekeeper, to who he tells his story… Immediately attracted to each other, he and Julie met when he worked as a carousel barker. Both stated to the other that they did not believe in love or marriage, but they did get married. Because the shrewish carousel owner, Mrs. Mullin, was attracted to Billy herself, and since she believed he was only of use as a barker if he was single to attract the young women to the carousel, she fired him. With no other job skills and unwilling to take just any job, Billy did not provide for Julie but rather lived off Julie’s Aunt Nettie. But Billy figured he could be the breadwinner through his association with a criminal lowlife named Jigger Craigin, which led to his death. In going back to Earth, Billy not only hopes to help his child, but “tell” Julie of his true feeling for her.Read More »

A Los Angeles Rams quarterback, accidentally taken away from his body by an overanxious angel before he was meant to die, returns to life in the body of a recently murdered millionaire.Read More »

Vincente Minnelli’s debut film, featuring a host of black talent of the time (Eddie Anderson, Lena Horne, Rex Ingram, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and others). Marred slightly by the cut of the “Ain’t It the Truth” number (originally performed by Lena Horne in a bubble bath and reprised by Louis Armstrong later in the film), but the spirited performances of “Taking a Chance on Love” and “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe” more than make up for this.Read More »

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Maj. Pete Sandidge is a very able pilot who seems to have a streak of luck as far as flying goes. World War II is raging and Pete has come out of it pretty so far. He even has a beautiful girlfriend Dorinda Durston, herself a qualified pilot who ferries aircraft to different bases. When Pete is killed however, he finds himself in heaven and learns that every pilot has a guardian angel. He returns to Earth where, unseen by anyone, he coaches a pilot-in-training Ted Randall. Ted is a pretty good kid and is coming along nicely but when he’s shipped to New Guinea he runs into Dorinda who has remained faithful to her lost love. As Ted pursues her, Pete will have to decide what he wants to do about it.Read More »

imdb user comment:
In 1957 Gustaf Gründgens staged a new production of Goethe’s Faust in which he once again played Mephisto, a part he had played since 1932. The brilliant production was a huge success and ran for a couple of years. In 1959 Peter Gorski captured the performance on film in his directorial film debut. Basically it is a registration of the production, but Gorksi did manage to accentuate the details of the acting by using enough medium and close-up shots which give a view on the acting you normally would not able to see in a theater.Read More »

Synopsis:
‘In 1900, strong-willed widow Lucy Muir goes to live in Gull Cottage by the British seaside, even though it appears to be haunted. Sure enough, that very night she meets the ghost of crusty former owner Captain Gregg…and refuses to be scared off. Indeed, they become friends and allies, after Lucy gets used to the idea of a man’s ghost haunting her bedroom. But when a charming live man comes courting, Lucy and the captain must deal with their feelings for each other.’
– Rod Crawford (IMDb)Read More »

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader wrote:
This rarely shown early film by Roberto Rossellini (1948), one of his few comedies, anticipates with remarkable prescience the conceits of Godard and others about photography in the 60s. A professional small-town photographer finds that he has the power to kill his subjects by taking their picture, turning them into statues of themselves. Rossellini left this project before it was finished, and it was edited and released a few years later without his approval–but it still comes across as a remarkably suggestive fable.Read More »

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This movie is a declaration of love to cinema that is used as a metaphor for the universe itself. We are the films and God is projecting them, including this one with Rachel and Leopoldo, who in a former life literally co-invented cinema as an assistant of Thomas A. Edison named William K.L. Dickson.Read More »