Quote:
Schmid’s satire on 19th-century class relations is also a thinly veiled commentary on the failure of the 1968 political revolution. Once a year, an aristocratic Austrian family holds a traditional feast at which masters and servants trade places. A troupe of actors (including cult cabaret artist Ingrid Caven) are hired to entertain the guests, performing fragments from the “cultural scrap heap”: GONE WITH THE WIND, Madame Bovary, Tennessee Williams, Swan Lake. The decadent proceedings take on a dangerous edge when the actors incite the servants to revolt against their masters-but is the Revolution also part of the act?

Tonight or Never (1972).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 21 min
Size: 	2.36 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1920x1080 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	4 000 kb/s
BPP: 	0.080
Audio
#1:  	2.0ch AAC LC @ 152 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/A7788CE9B7BE0BB/Tonight_or_Never_(1972).mkv

Language(s):German, Italian
Subtitles:English, German, French, Italian

The post Daniel Schmid – Heute nacht oder nie AKA Tonight or Never (1972) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Allmovie synopsis:
“Radical chic” was a phenomenon of the upper classes in the late ’60s and early ’70s: liberal, socially concerned and very wealthy people would emulate the attitudes, mannerisms and style of the radicalized and revolutionary poor. They would even go so far as to socialize with revolutionaries and provide them with funding for their activities. In this drama, a similar group of bored rich people gets more involved with the radical element than they had planned, and things get out of hand.

apprentis 2.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 27mn
Size:	417 MiB
DXVA:	Compatible
Minimum settings:	Not met
Video
Codec:	x264
Resolution:	512x384
Aspect ratio:	4:3
Frame rate:	25.000 fps
Bit rate:	600 Kbps
Audio
2.0ch AAC

https://nitro.download/view/16CE2DFF14102EF/apprentis_2.mkv

Language(s):French, English
Subtitles:French (hardcoded, for English parts)

The post Edgardo Cozarinsky – Les Apprentis sorciers AKA The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1977) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

This heady exercise in excess mixes the operatic passion of La Traviata, stylish decadence of Stroheim and Sternberg, and the macabre glee of Grand Guignol. Ingrid Caven plays Dietrich-like chanteuse stricken with CamilIe-like wasting disease. The disease seems to be arrested when a plump, wealthy young man (Peter Kern) develops a grand passion for her, but mortality raises its grinning skull again when she falls helplessly in love with another man. Jay Cocks in Time wrote, “La Paloma is a wonderful mad shotgun wedding of high camp movie mythology, bad taste, obsessive, romanticism, and impudent satire… Whatever it is, it certainly is some kind of fantastic movie.”

Daniel Schmid. La Paloma (1974).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1h 45mn
Size: 	1.76 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1280x720
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	25.000 fps
Bit rate: 	2 265 Kbps
BPP: 	0.098
Audio
#1:  	German 2.0ch AAC LC @ 127 Kbps

https://nitro.download/view/A794AFFC8BB48C5/Daniel_Schmid._La_Paloma_(1974).mkv

Language(s):German
Subtitles:German

The post Daniel Schmid – La Paloma (1974) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
When you play with clichés, you have to be very careful that they don’t backfire; the little things have a way of maiming almost everything around them.

Daniel Schmid’s “La Paloma” — which was shown last night and to be repeated tonight at the New York Film Festival — is intentionally crammed with cultural chestnuts, and also makes a heavy pass at the plots of “Camille” and “La Traviata.” Kitsch and camp collide in this storm of pity and terror and wonder, which seethes with boundless love, burning glances, and unfathomable revenge. Nestling within this Swiss movie are some humorous intentions gone astray; it’s also what they call dreamlike, although the dreams I’ve been watching lately have been funnier.

A glum nightclub singer—Ingrid Caven, who’s tricked out like a caricature of Dietrich — is ailing with some nameless rot. She permits a wealthy young admirer (Peter Kern) to cosset her, cure her, and finally marry her. It’s repeated that she doesn’t love him, but she cherishes his passion for her. Then she falls for his best friend and wants to decamp with him; her husband selfishly refuses to finance the expedition. Therefore, she dies slowly and even more tidily than Ali McGraw in “Lovy Story.”

Her deathbed wish forces her husband to exhume and dismember her three years later; the corpse chuckles as he moans while converting it into cutlets. By then, since I was into the swing of the movie, I expected poisonous fumes to rise from the coffin and wipe out the suffering spouse—and was rather embarrassed when they didn’t.

Some obligatory decadence trickles through the nightclub scenes—but mercifully, the movie is set in 1952, so there aren’t any Nazis around. The soundtrack endows the actors with theme-tunes; occasionally, they even flower into song, and the incidental music ranges from an opera by Erich Korngold to “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.” Just after the couple are married, there’s a soaring duet on a mountaintop. Suddenly, a transparent apparition floats over their heads: the thing grins jovially while its draperies flap in a breeze that doesn’t even ruffle their coiffures.

You can’t really discuss “La Paloma” in terms of acting; the performers stalk rigidly about, exchanging long, brooding stares or significant smirks, and the result is a failed parody of the grand manner. (It was probably meant to be some sort of pantomime.) They also speak their lines very, very slowly — as though one another’s reflexes were impaired.

The ultimate astonishment is the appearance of Bulle Ogier as the husband’s mother. Looking younger than her offspring, she doesn’t seem to be on good terms with her cane. If only Elaine May had directed “La Paloma” — the brisk deadpan delivery that she can draw out of actors might have been marvelous for this material.

1.56GB | 1h 44mn | 696×522 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/7969665593DB3C3/Daniel_Schmid_-_(1974)_La_Paloma.mkv

Language:German, English
Subtitles:English

The post Daniel Schmid – La Paloma (1974) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
As great as it is merciless, a film that inevitably precipitates violent disagreements, Fox and His Friends (the rhyming German title of which roughly translates as Fists of Freedom or, better, Might Makes Right) is the male mirror of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant: a portrait of class exploitation and emotional sadomasochism amongst a group of homosexuals. Fassbinder plays Fox, a carnival entertainer who wins a lottery and thereby becomes an alluring object of desire for an antiques dealer who is on the verge of bankruptcy. The posh businessman takes the naïve carnie as his lover and introduces him to the world of Munich’s upper-crust gays, with tragic results.

2.16GB | 2h 04m | 790×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/5C1861B45598779/Rainer_Werner_Fassbinder_-_(1975)_Fox_and_His_Friends.mkv

Language(s):German
Subtitles:English

The post Rainer Werner Fassbinder – Fox and His Friends aka Faustrecht der Freiheit (1975) first appeared on Cinema of the World.