1970s

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The year is 1972. Master Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti is struck down by a stroke, rendering him, one would think, unable to continue making films—and this just two years after hitting a late-career high point with Death in Venice. But like many artists kept alive by their muse, Visconti heroically persevered, managing to complete two more films before finally succumbing to a heart attack in 1976. Adaptability being a key ingredient to any sort of artistic longevity, Visconti took his ailments not as hindrance, but as a challenge toward the realization of a new project. Taken by a story written by past collaborator Enrico Medioli and intrigued by the cinematic restrictions afforded such an intimate character study, Visconti—now very limited in his physical movements and activity—saw both personal and logistical promise in this tale of aging, nostalgia, and generational divide, which was entitled Conversation Piece after an illustrated novel of family portraits of the same name by Mario Praz.Read More »

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A living chronicle of the residents of Béguinage neighbourhood – so named because it is situated on the site of former Béguinage. Designed as an encyclopaedic inventory, the film comprises around thirty chapters, each imbricated with the other, like so many pieces of a puzzle, or resembling a termite mound with many intersecting galleries. It takes place within the space and interstices of a day, starting at dawn and ending at night. (Boris Lehman)Read More »

Synopsis:
As a result of a serious professional blunder, Inspector Leonetti finds himself transferred to a minor police department. There, he is assigned to a difficult case involving a certain Roger Martin, who has disappeared with his small daughter. Martin is in fact a key witness in a murder case and is required to give evidence against a well-known gangster. To help him in his hunt for Martin, Leonetti is teamed up with Jeanne, a young policewoman with next to no experience. By frequently changing his address Martin hopes not only to evade Leonetti and Jeanne, but also the band of gangsters who are determined to prevent him from testifying…
— James TraversRead More »

Moments from the uncompromisingly bleak existence of a secretary, her intellectually disabled sister, aloof and uneasy teacher boyfriend, bizarre neighbor and irritating workmate.Read More »

When his partners order him to eliminate their beautiful abductee, a kidnapper begins to lose his resolve.

Letterboxd review
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★★★★½ Watched by dirtylaundri 16 Mar 2019

Wonderful to watch this directly after THE WICKED GO TO HELL, as both films form a perfect circle: The last shot of the earlier film showed a beachscape into which two men had just vanished; the first shot of the later film starts with almost exactly the same shot – an undistinguished greyish beachscape, that only slowly is revealed to be populated by a number of cars and swarming people.Read More »

A young girl whose father is an ex-convict and whose mother is a junkie finds it difficult to conform and tries to find comfort in a quirky combination of Elvis and the punk scene.Read More »

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“I had one of my graduate students drive the car, and I filmed 16mm black and white negative driving through these four consecutive tunnels on the Pasadena freeway. I wound up doing about 1400 paper prints from the individual frames in the negative. I mounted a piece of glass in my garage, with a square of tape marked out on it. I sat down behind the glass with a white T-shirt on and started shooting the stills. My wife Sarah shot the first part, and as the shots got shorter and shorter, I shot it myself using a bulb hooked up to the camera that I operated with my foot. I originally meant to shut it off and fade it out to end it, but while I was shooting, I decided instead to reverse the procedure, slowing the shots back down. I called Sarah back to shoot the last part. I always had the idea of sound, but I could never figure out what the heck kind of sound to have in this film.” (Gary Beydler, 2008)Read More »

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A bizarre but heavy-handed giallo spoof whose overall effect is extremely uneven, it features a plethora of eccentric characters: inept detective, diminutive hero, a cross-eyed psycho and a dwarf (actually a man in drag!) for servants – plus a mad combo of relatives including a matriarch suffering from dementia, her cowboy of a second husband, her sex-crazed retard son who has to be frequently restrained via electro-shock therapy, another son who’s also a ‘little man’ (played by Bob Tonelli, one of the film’s own financiers!), etc. Both the hero and the detective overstate their masculinity – the former swaggers incessantly, while the latter is frequently caught with his pants down; the lovely and lively heroine is played by Francesca Marciano (an IMDb reviewer)Read More »

Account of a film director’s brief affair with a young neighbour, and his involvement in the social and political ramifications of a tenancy dispute in an apartment block. Filmmaker Bernard (Michel Piccoli), who is suffering a creative block, enters into an affair with the much-younger Anne (Christine Pascal).Read More »