A film so dark, violent and bloody as Inland Empire does not readily translate as abounding in whimsy. Notwithstanding that concealment, the movie does carry a peculiar payload of delight.
On bringing her wild drive to a close at an L.A. mansion where she was based while making a movie, some scenes of which were going to be shot in cost-effective Poland, Nikki Grace, played by Laura Dern, lowers herself into a sofa in the salon at high tea time, looks across the table at a far less bashed up mustering of herself and then looks around to find Laura Elena Harring, a.k.a., Rita, from Mulholland Drive. They smile and each blows a kiss to the other, the latter’s kiss having the inflection of Betty’s, “Taunk you, Daahlink.”
That latter bit of Slavonic fizz is about all the Poland you get in the glamorous, witty and subtle precincts of the realm of Rebekah Del Rio, Empress of the heart-stopping range of “Crying.” There is, of course, Betty’s Canada, readily emitting an uncool quotient as unsettling as Poland’s. (When Betty first meets Rita and blurts out that she’s just in from Deep River, Ontario, her new friend closes her eyes and reels slightly against a picture on the wall, not entirely because she’s just been through a near-death shake-up.) But Betty was a product of introspection indoors during long winters, and conjuring arcane, atypically slanted dreams to ward off a frozen nightmare, and as such she could go some distance with Rita toward a cogently hot “somewhere.” She eventually heeds the Cowboy’s advice to “wake up” to safe and easy rewards, leaving Rita confined to a solitary vigil on behalf of real excitement. (more…)
p Adolph Zukor, Jesse L.Lasky d Josef Von Sternberg w Josef Von Sternberg, Herman J.Mankiewicz, John F.Goodrich, Lajos Biro ph Bert Glennon ed William Shea m Gaylord Carter (video reissue) art Hans Dreier
Emil Jannings (Grand Duke Sergius Alexander/General Dolgorucki), William Powell (Leo Andreiev), Evelyn Brent (Natascha Dobrova), Jack Raymond (assistant director), Nicholas Soussanin (adjutant), Fritz Feld (revolutionary), Michael Visaroff (Serge),
A year after the release of avant garde classic The Life and Death of a Hollywood Extra, Josef Von Sternberg directed another film for whom the title would not have been inappropriate. The final command of the title could be interpreted one of two ways, and could even equate to a euphemism. Did it refer to the words of his last command, or rather to the last position of command he held? I tend to veer towards the latter, and that’s what is so typically Von Sternbergian about the whole enterprise. The great Josef was cinema’s great master of artifice, as showcased in his exquisite series of films with Marlene Dietrich, but people forget that The Blue Angel was a turning point, the changeover of the guard, with its two stars pivotal to Von Sternberg’s career.
Command details the fortunes of a Russian general, also a cousin of Tsar Nicholas II, who is left in command on the eastern front despite awful conditions, supplies and lack of men. Finally he disobeys imperial orders and takes a stand (“I would take any risk to prevent a needless sacrifice” he declares to seductress Brent), but fate takes the matter out of his hands when the Revolution sees the overthrow of the Tsar and his country’s withdrawal from the First World War. All of a sudden, his general’s train quarters are overrun by revolutionaries and he barely escapes being hung, before being degraded over and over by the men he once commanded. He is helped to safety by the sacrifice of a woman (Brent) who had previously hated him and, dazed and confused, he crosses the Atlantic, where “the backwash of a tortured nation had carried still another extra to Hollywood.” (more…)
[#48 in Best of the 21st Century?, a series counting down the most acclaimed films of the previous decade.]
_________
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
_________
“I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her.”
_________
“Poor Mole stood alone in the road, his heart torn asunder and a big sob gathering, gathering, gathering, somewhere low down inside him, to leap up to the surface presently, he knew, in passionate escape. … Meanwhile, the wafts from his old home pleaded, whispered, conjured, and finally claimed him imperiously. He dared not tarry longer within their magic circle. With a wrench that tore his very heartstrings, he set his face down the road and followed submissively in the track of the Rat, while faint, thin little smells, still dogging his retreating nose, reproached him…”
. . . . .
Summer Hours, The Decline and Fall of the French Bourgeoisie, Three Generations. Olivier Assayas’ absorbing and poignant film is first an observation of life’s fleeting moments (one might say it’s more observant than the characters who experience these moments, without really appreciating them). It is also a wailing elegy to a France crumbling away in the globalized world, letting its culture and its people dribble from its borders like sand from a smashed hourglass. And finally the movie is a portrait of one family, three generations (old, middle-aged, young) and three siblings in that middle group (brother, sister, brother), who slowly and willingly lose their country home, and with it their fragile communal identity. These two triumvirates, the generations and siblings, are each anchored in the center – chronological in the case of the age group (those in the middle of their life dominate the running time of the film), geographic in the case of the brothers and sisters (the deceased matriarch’s eldest son lives in France and tries to hold the family together, while his sister flees west to New York, and his little brother flees east to China). Alas, as is so often the case, the center does not hold. (more…)
p/d D.W.Griffith w D.W.Griffith, Tod Browning ph Billy Bitzer, Karl Brown ed James E.Smith, Rose Smith, D.W.Griffith m Carl Davis (restored version…orig.Joseph Carl Breil) art Frank Wortman, Walter L.Hall
Lillian Gish (Rocking Mother), Mae Marsh (The Dear One), Robert Harron (The Boy), Miriam Cooper (The Friendless One), Howard Gaye (Jesus), Lillian Langdon (Mary), Olga Grey (Mary Magdalene), Bessie Love (Bride of Cana), Margery Wilson (Brown Eyes), Frank Bennett (Charles IX of France), Josephine Crowell (Catherine dei Medici), Maxfield Stanley (Anjou), Constance Talmadge (Marguerite de Valois/the Mountain Girl), Alfred Paget (Belshazzar), Carl Stockdale (Nebodinus), George Siegmann (Cyrus the Great of Persia), Sam de Grasse, Vera Lewis, Monte Blue, Tod Browning, Erich Von Stroheim, Eugène Pallette, Seena Owen, Tully Marshall, Elmo Lincoln, Mildred Harris, Nigel de Brulier, Douglas Fairbanks, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Pauline Starke,
D.W.Griffith’s response to the criticism for the apparent racism and brutality of The Birth of a Nation was this epic story of intolerance through the ages, a pacifist tract of startlingly original complexity that was always going to be a bum-number and poison at the box-office in its time. It may be Griffith was feeling himself to be invincible, that he could make anything he wanted following the staggering critical and public approval for his Civil War epic. If so, he was naïve in the extreme. Yet for all that Intolerance remains the greatest film of its decade and one of the all-time great silent masterpieces. Released at the same time as the Thomas Ince produced Civilization (which had its similarities), there’s no doubt which is superior. Whether it was atonement for his sins, exhibit A for the defence against those decrying The Birth of a Nation’s racism, a homage of thanks to Pastrone’s Cabiria, or just long-cherished ambition, it’s Griffith’s greatest film.
Four stories of human intolerance are inter-cut. One set in Babylonian times prior to the overthrow of Belshazzar by Cyrus of Persia in 539 B.C.. The second set in the times of Jesus, leading up to his crucifixion. The third set in the days leading up to the St Bartholomew’s Eve massacre in Paris of 1572. The fourth set in the twentieth century, showing the hardship suffered by a young woman after her husband is wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to die. (more…)
Complex Metropolitan Opera set for Dimitri Shostakovich’s “The Nose” seen on March 11th
by Sam Juliano
As promised, Jason Giampietro has furnished the you tube clip of the Oscar party for those interested. The link was also offered in Dee Dee’s Oscar interview wrap:
The ‘almost silents’ countdown is winding to its absolute conclusion with the top ten set to begin in a few days. Voters are welcome to submit ballots, and in response to David Schleicher’s fair query, anyone can settle on 10 or 15 choices, and points will be allocated accordingly. Ongoing countdowns at Dave Hicks’s and Jeffrey Goodman’s sites are also moving ahead in full gear. The Oscar posts have come to an end, and thanks are in order to Dee Dee for a job well-done!
I attended two ‘events’ this week in Manhattan. On Thursday night I witnessed one of the Metropolitan Opera season’s greatest and most complex stagings in Dimitri Shostakovich’s comedic opera The Nose, an almost phantasmagoric blending of silouettes, shapes, and stage trappings that stretched the boundaries for creativity and made the atonal, discordant score a stunning aural experience. I had hoped to have an essay up tonight, but the posting of the links below left me with little time. Hence I am aiming for Thursday, as Tuesday and Wednesday will have gleefully-anticipated essays by Joel Bocko and Jim Clark showcased.
On Friday night it was an utterly charming staging of The Bard’s comedy Measure For Measure, with some delightful performances and an effective use of minimalist staging. Again I am aiming for Friday on a full review.
On the film scene I saw two films in theatres:
Un Prophete (Audiard) ***** (Saturday afternoon; Montclair)
Mother (Joon-Ho) ** (Saturday night; IFC Film Center)
Jacques Audiard’s electrifying prison drama is everything that I could possibly have expected and much more. It’s a riveting denunciation of prison squalor and corruption, and it showcases a compelling metamorphosis of an French Arab through the ranks. The non-professional lead is superlative as is a well-known actor who plays the mob leader Luciani. Alexander Desplat’s score and Audiard’s brilliant attention to detail and psychological nuances further the excellence in a film that for me was easily better than The White Ribbon.
And then there’s the critically-praised Korean film Mother, which was a convoluted, wildly inconsistent abstract film that was emotionally distancing and disjointed, and lacked any sense of cohesion or flow, or even physical beauty. It’s metaphorical underpinnings seemed heavy-handed, and the entire affair was a major train wreck of a movie.
There are some excellent reviews and miscelaneous posts around the blogosphere:
p Abel Gance, Charles Pathé d/w Abel Gance ph Léonce-Henry Burel (and others) ed Abel Gance, Marguerite Beauge m Arthur Honegger (Robert Israel) art unknown
Severin-Mars (Sisif), Gabriel de Gravone (Elie), Pierre Magnier (Jacques de Hersan), Georges Terof (Machefer), Ivy Close (Norma),
Such was the cinema described by Abel Gance, as spoken by Kenneth Branagh in Brownlow and Gill’s superlative documentary Cinema Europe. That this was the title of their episode about French silent cinema speaks wonders about Gance’s impact on his nation’s cinema. Though the Lumières, Méliès, Feuillade and Bernard made lasting contributions, it was Gance who was their supreme silent cine-poet and one true maverick. And it is La Roue, arguably even more than Napoleon, for which he is most fêted in his homeland. “There is cinema before and after La Roue as there is painting before and after Picasso”, said Jean Cocteau at the time. Time has only endorsed that statement.
Sisif the train driver rescues a small girl, Norma, from a train crash in which her parents are killed and decides to adopt the little girl as his own. Fifteen years later, he finds that his girl is in love with his own son, Elie, but also finds himself growing dangerously obsessed with her. When a rich man offers to marry the girl, he decides to take drastic action and crash the train taking her away, thus killing both he and his beloved, only to be prevented by his co-driver. (more…)
Good-Morning… fellow bloggers and Wonders in the Dark readers, this morning I am so happy that the Co-Founder and proprietor of Wonders in the Dark Sam Juliano, took the time out of his very busy schedule to sit down and discuss with me over a cup of coffee and croissant(s) his favorite films and the Oscars@ again this year.
[Editor Note: I have interspersed [some] of last year questions that I asked Sam Juliano, with this year questions…]
Dee Dee:
Welcome… Sam Juliano, what a pleasure it is for me to meet you, again (I reach to shake Sam Juliano, hand) please sit down. Sam Juliano: Good-Morning… DeeDee…
Dee Dee:
Let me begin by asking you the first question that I asked you last year and that is…
Can you once again please tell me (and your readers,) a little about your blog “Wonders in the Dark” after a year has passed…
…In other words, have Wonders in the Dark format changed…since I asked you this question last year?
…also I noticed that your writing staff have changed…Therefore, can you please tell me a little about your “new” writing staff too?
[Editor’s Note:You can omit me, but of course…because I’ am not on your writing staff.
In addition, it sounds like a “loaded” question now, that my name is listed on your staff blog roll… (I can imagine what your readers are thinking…hint, hint…She is fishing for compliments~Oh! no…never!)]
Sam Juliano:
LOL Dee Dee! As you know, the WitD staff has expanded to include several writers who have made significant contributions to the site.
The most prolific of these of course is Joel Bocko a.k.a. “Movie Man,” who is one of the movie blogosphere’s most extraordinarily gifted writers and commenters (he’s either at the top or close to it), and his ‘Best of the 21st Century’ series, which is featured on Tuesdays, is rightly quite popular.
Bob Clark, from over there at The Aspect Ratio is another who has penned some high-quality reviews for the site, as well as ‘Best Of’ lists, and newcomers Jim Clark and Marc Bauer have also written some superlative pieces.
“Jim” (no relation to Bob) was recruited by that incomparable man from Sydney, Tony d’Ambra, from over there at Filmsnoir.net…
…who after two years, continues to exert a tremendous influence on the decision-making and policies of the site, while navigating the updating of teh site graphics. d’Ambra, is one of my closest friends and allies, and his sometimes onery approach is sorely needed to keep us bleeding-heart liberals in line.
Jamie Uhrer, a talented young man from the Chicago area, has also made some excellent contributions to the site and is a regular poster.
Needless to say my dear friend, you are in a class by yourself, with all your enthusiasm and new ideas, the spectacular navigation of the Oscar series, the utilization of you tube clips, pollings and invaluable links, as well as one great comment after another. Your spirit is the heart and soul of this site.
So we can safely say that Wonders in the Dark has evolved into a melting pot of writers, interviewers and designers, of varying specialties and ages, who all have helped to give the site a multi-faceted approach and appearance.
I am always striving to inject opera, classical music and theatre into the equations, as they are truly my first love, with film pushing very close. With Allan Fish’s countdowns as the central feature (his capsule reviews are second to none)
I am optimistic moving towards our two-year anniversary, and I thank you fair lady for the central role you have played here right along.
DeeDee:
If you recall last year I asked Sam Juliano, to list his favorite films…Which I have reposted below and they are:
Au Hasard Balthazar (Bresson)
City Lights (Chaplin)
The Last Picture Show (Bogdonovich)
Sansho the Bailiff (Mizoguchi)
Tokyo Story (Ozu)
Vertigo (Hitchcock)
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
West Side Story (Wise/Robins)
The Fountain (Aronofsky)
Far From Heaven (Haynes)
Cries and Whispers (Bergman)
The General (Keaton)
Cinema Paradiso (Tornatore)
The Grapes of Wrath (Ford)
Citizen Kane (Welles)
Marketa Lazarova (Vlacil)
Empire of the Sun (Spielberg)
A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
Jean de Florette (Berri)
It’s A Wonderful Life (Capra)
Wuthering Heights (Wyler)
Psycho (Hitchcock)
Le Journal d’Un Cure de Campagne (Bresson)
Wild Strawberries (Bergman)
Kes (Loach)
The Third Man (Reed)
Double Indemnity (Wilder)
Ben-Hur (Wyler)
Persona (Berman)
Viridiana (Bunuel)
Sunrise (Murnau)
Goodbye Mr. Chips (Wood)
Red (Kieslowski)
Santantango (Tarr)
I Never Sang For My Father (Cates)
Les Miserables (Bernard)
The Ascent (Shepitko)
Un Partie de Campagne (Renoir)
The Red Balloon (Lamorisee)
La Roue (Gance)
Greed (Von Stroheim)
Day of Wrath (Dreyer)
Schindler’s List (Spielberg)
Mon Oncle Antoine (Jutra)
Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir)
Henry V (Branagh)
Richard III (Olivier)
Ikiru (Kurosawa)
The Burmese Harp (Ichikawa)
Twenty-Four Eyes (Kinoskita)
DeeDee:
Sam Juliano, is/are there any additional films that you would like to add to this list?
Sam Juliano:
Dee Dee: Lets add The Wind (Sjostrom), The Crowd (Vidor), L’Argent (l’Herbier) Blue (Kieslowski), Night and the City (Dassin) Late Spring (Ozu), Tokyo Twilight (Ozu), Pickpocket (Bresson), A Man Escaped (Bresson) Fanny and Alexander (Bergman) and The House is Black (Farrokhzad) to the list.
DeeDee:
Sam Juliano, now, that you have listed your favorite films…I would like to know do you want to add any additional films to your list of least favorite films?
We know that last year you listed Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation as your least favorite film, but are there any other films that you care to add to your list this year?
Sam Juliano:
You know Dee Dee, I can never satisfactorily explain why I never cared much for Chinatown, The African Queen, Into the Wild, Up in the Air, and some others, and while I don’t hate them, let’s just say I’ve never gone along with the critical majority.
But we’ve been on both sides of the fence so we understand the feeling.
DeeDee:
Whom do you consider your favorite director(s)? In addition, why is this person/people your favorite director(s)?
Sam Juliano:
My favorite directors of all-time in no particular order are Bresson, Bergman, Ozu, Dreyer, Chaplin, Murnau, Keaton, Bunuel, S. Ray, Mizoguchi, Gance, Renoir, Fellini, De Sica, Vlacil, Foreman, Wajda, Kinoshita, Kobayashi, Preston Sturges, Lubitsch, Wilder, Capra, Tarkovsky, Powell & Pressburger, Lean, Sirk, N. Ray, Sembene, Scorsese, Spielberg, Allen, Von Trier, Haynes, Lynch, Curtiz, Wyler, Antonioni, Pasolini, Dassin,
…and a number of others.
I favor humanism, the classic clowns, and existential cinema as well as musical films and silents most of all, and my choices I do believe reflect this.
DeeDee:
Sam Juliano, with the Oscar@ award show over I would like to know what films do you feel was overlooked during this Oscar@ season that you feel should have received more attention.
In other words,
What film do you feel should have been acknowledged by the Academy of Arts and Sciences, but was “overlooked” this year?
Sam Juliano:
Well Dee Dee, that would have to be Jane Campion’s ravishing period romance about the last years of the poet John Keat’s life, when he courted Fanny Brawne, titled Bright Star. Sam’s Favorite Film Bright Star
It was my own #1 film of the year, but it received no attention from the Academy, even if critics gave the film much-deserved excellent notices.
DeeDee: [Last Year Question: Sam Juliano, I received an invitation I ‘am quite sure like all the readers that post here on Wonders in the Dark, inviting us to your Oscar @ party and what I would like to know is this can you, please fill those of us who are not in the know ….
We generally get about 35 to 40 people in attendance and run an Oscar “pool” with the winner determined simply by seeing who had the most right of the 23 categories.
Lucille (Sam Juliano’s wife) and I always provide a rather elaborate spread of food and drink (last night we served homemade eggplant rollatini, chicken parmigiana, rigatoni and tomato sauce, meatballs, escarole and beans, and a wide array of cold cuts and salads.
Beer and soda was also served as well as snack foods.
The show is watched on our downstairs plasma television (52 inches) and also on the first floor in the living room. Those in attendance usually move up and down.]
DeeDee
This year question: Sam Juliano, What happened at the Oscar party this year? We (All the readers here at Wonders in the Dark…know what food was served to your guest, …(Thanks, Dennis,) but you can expand on my question if you like…
Sam Juliano:
Dee Dee, we had a great time, and our friend Jason Giampietro again used his video camera to record some of the party on you tube. Wonders in the Dark readers, here goes a snippet from Sam and Lucille Juliano’s Oscar@ party 2010
DeeDee:
Sam Juliano, from over there at Wonders in the Dark I want to thank you, for stopping by and sharing some of your time with me and the readers here at Wonders in the Dark in order to discuss your interests in films, and the Oscars@ again this morning.
Sam Juliano:
Thank You, Dee Dee again for all you have done. It is always a great pleasure to speak to you directly!
[Editor Note:I was going to present Sam Juliano, with a complimentary gift “unopened” this morning for being such a gracious guest…, which was The Bad Girls of Film Noir box set, but Sam Juliano, “opened” his gift earlier this month.
Last year I was going to present Sam Juliano, with (TCM host) Robert Osbourne’s Oscar book, but Sam Juliano said, “He already own a copy of Osbourne’s book.”]
Sam Juliano:
Your generosity is legendary Dee Dee, and this latest gift is deeply appreciated!
DeeDee:
Sam Juliano, you very welcome…and once again thank-you, for taking the time to response to my questions again this year.
Now, I’am placing Allan and the Wonders in the Dark readers in the…spotlight by asking you to share your favorite director(s) and film(s) with Sam Juliano, Allan and the readers here at Wonders in the Dark and why this/these particular director/directors is/are your favorite director(s).
Thank-you!
================================================
p King Vidor d King Vidor w King Vidor, John A.Weaver, Harry Behn ph Henry Sharp ed Hugh Wynn m Carl Davis art Cedric Gibbons, Arnold Gillespie
Eleanor Boardman (Mary Simm), James Murray (John Simm), Bert Roach (Bert), Daniel G.Tomlinson (Jim), Dell Henderson (Dick), Lucy Beaumont (mother), Freddie Burke Frederick (Junior), Alice Mildred Puter (daughter),
One of the last classic silent films of the American cinema, King Vidor’s unquestioned masterpiece is probably the finest insight of its day into the daily rigour of modern urban living, a film whose visual and technical advances were revolutionary to the point of since becoming clichés, but which still stands fresh to this day.
We begin in 1900 on Independence Day, where John Simm is born to happy parents, but twelve years later his father is killed in an accident and his son is told to be brave, as his father would have wished. We next see him in 1921, slaving with thousands of others behind an office desk and living only for the five o’clock bell to get home and study. However, one night he is persuaded by his friend, Bert, to go out with two women friends. Paired off with Mary, John falls in love with her and, following a night at Coney Island, he proposes and they marry. At first things are idyllic, with a honeymoon at Niagara Falls and two children, but when their daughter is killed after being run over by a lorry, John cracks up and things begin to enter a downward spiral.
p Lillian Gish, Victor Sjöstrom d Victor Sjöstrom w Frances Marion, John Colton novel Dorothy Scarborough ph John Arnold ed Conrad A.Nervig m Carl Davis art Cedric Gibbons, Edward Withers cos André-Ani
Lillian Gish (Letty Mason), Lars Hanson (Lige Hightower), Montagu Love (Wirt Roddy), Dorothy Cummings (Cora), Edward Earle (Beverly), William Orlamond (Sourdough),
“This is the story of a woman who came into the domain of the winds” the opening captions read and, if ever a film could be described as tempestuous, it’s this one. One of the last great silents of the American screen, along with The Wedding March, The Crowd and Docks of New York it represented the final zenith of that soon to be outmoded art form. The coming of talkies seemed predestined to arrive in time for the post 1929 depression, and the cinema would once more push art aside in favour of entertainment.
Letty Mason is travelling from her Virginia home to her cousin’s small ranch at the desert post of Sweet Water (did this influence Leone’s like-named ranch in Once Upon a Time in the West, where Claudia Cardinale is travelling by train in the opening sequence?). Arriving, she immediately causes her cousin’s stern wife to grow jealous, the latter accusing her of trying to lure her cousin from his wife. Letty is proposed to by two local hicks, Lige and Sourdough, though she rather prefers the attentions of scoundrel Wirt Roddy (anagram of ‘dirty word’). But when she shows up to marry him, he tells her of his previous marriage and she is forced to marry Lige. However, in refusing to allow him to consummate their marriage, Lige is driven to desperate measures to raise money to send her off back where she came from. Roddy, meanwhile, has designs of his own. (more…)
p Jean Sapene d Marcel l’Herbier w Marcel l’Herbier, Arthur Bernède novel Emile Zola ph Jules Kruger, Louis Berte, Jean Letort ed Marcel l’Herbier art Lazare Meerson, André Barsacq cos Jacques Manuel
Brigitte Helm (Baroness Sandorf), Marie Glory (Line Hamelin), Yvette Guilbert (La Méchain), Pierre Alcover (Nicolas Saccard), Alfred Abel (Alphonse Gunderman), Henry Victor (Jacques Hamelin), Pierre Juvenet (Baron Defrance), Antonin Artaud (Mazaud), Jules Berry (Huret), Raymond Rouleau (Jantron), Armand Bour (Daigremont),
Such did Marie Glory describe the special ingredient to Marcel l’Herbier’s legendary late silent, and there is indeed a distinct feel of the left over euphoria from Charles Lindbergh’s famous Trans-Atlantic crossing. What is perhaps most ironic is that not only does his film take an unwieldy novel and update it to the present, he also presents a film that would prove all the more potent a year later, when the Wall Street Crash banished forever the world l’Herbier preserved in cinematic aspic.
The film concerns the business rivalry of Alphonse Gunderman and Nicolas Saccard. The latter tries to finance his plans by means of a publicity stunt to send share prices rocketing, in which he persuades pilot Jacques Hamelin to fly to Guyana to help their oil interests, much to the pain of Hamelin’s wife, Line, who Saccard has sexual designs on and, when Hamelin’s plane is reported crashed into the ocean in flames, he makes his move on her, to the chagrin of his mistress Baroness Sandorf. (more…)
Wonders in the Dark is a blog dedicated to the arts, especially film, theatre and music. An open forum is highly encouraged, as the site proctors are usually ready and able to engage with ongoing conversation.
Wonders in the Dark is a blog dedicated to the arts, especially film, theatre and music. An open forum is highly encouraged, as the site proctors are usually ready and able to engage with ongoing conversation.
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