ON VIEW
Buñuel, a Surrealist Filmmaker
Directed by Javier Espada
Spain, 2021, 83 mins, color, Spanish version with English subtitles
Javier Espada was born in Calanda, a few streets away from the house where Luis Buñuel – Don Luis – was born, and he has always lived with his absent presence, with his hoarse voice filling many spaces that needed certain answers, with his omnipresent cinema opening paths and questions not infrequently without arrival and without resolution…
With the many elements that characterized Espada’s investigation into Buñuel’s work, this documentary captures and honors the life and work of the Spanish director through his own medium, the cinema. Espada imbues this documentary with an imprint that is uniquely identifiable without renouncing the particular humour and refinement of Buñuel.
Source and Film card: Il Cinema Ritrovato
Screening: Thursday, March 7 - UMD campus (ASY 2203) and discussion with the director Javier Espada.
Belle De Jour
Directed by Luis Buñuel
France-Italy, 1967, 100 mins, color, French version with English subtitles
Catherine Deneuve’s porcelain perfection hides a cracked interior in one of the actress’s most iconic roles: Séverine, a Paris housewife who begins secretly spending her afternoon hours working in a bordello. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Buñuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters’ and its viewers’), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions. Fantasy and reality commingle in this burst of cinematic transgression, which was one of Buñuel’s biggest hits.
Source: Criterion collection
Film card: Il Cinema Ritrovato
Screening: Thursday, March 7 - UMD campus (ASY 2203)
Crazy to Marry
Directed by James Cruse
USA, 1921, 40 mins, b&w, mute, Russian intertitles with English subtitles
Crazy to Marry (1921) was the seventh feature film to star comedian Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, who since 1920 had successfully pioneered a transition from toplining shorts to features sooner than his peers Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and his protégé Buster Keaton. Directed by James Cruze (The Covered Wagon), Crazy to Marry ran afoul of Arbuckle’s infamous 1921 rape and murder trial that, despite his ultimate acquittal, destroyed his career, and the film was pulled from distribution and virtually forgotten. Though incomplete, a single print appears to have survived in Soviet Russia, which the Royal Belgian Film Archive recently restored digitally. Arbuckle plays Dr. Hobart Hupp, who has devised an experimental operation to cure criminals of their bad behavior; convict Dago Red (Bull Montana) is his volunteer guinea pig. Dr. Hobart needs to rush off to get married later that same day; however, his fiancée loves another. After he meets cute with Annabelle Landis (Lila Lee), he abandons his previous wedding plans and the new couple become engaged, over the protests of her parents. With Dago's aid, Dr. Hobart and Annabelle elope to an island, where more surprises await.
Source and Film card: Il Cinema Ritrovato
Screening: Friday, March 8 - AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center with live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin.
Sensation Seekers
Directed by Lois Weber
USA, 1927, 70 mins, b&w, mute, English intertitles
Billie Dove stars as Long Island socialite Luena "Egypt" Hagen, so called because she is the "most pagan of her set." A fun-loving flapper with a taste for smoking, drinking and dancing all night, Egypt is surprised to find herself attracted to the upright young Rev. Norman Lodge (Raymond Bloomer). Will she tempt the minister into loosening up, or will he impress upon her the need for rectitude? Lois Weber (SHOES, THE DUMB GIRL OF PORTICI) energetically directs this Jazz Age parable, featuring a number of spectacular set pieces, from speakeasies to ballrooms to boating parties.
Source and Film card: Il Cinema Ritrovato
Screening: Friday, March 8 - AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center with live musical accompaniment by Donald Sosin.
Una Voce Umana
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
(English title: A Human Voice - episode of L'Amore)
Italy, 1948, 35 mins, b&w, Italian version with English subtitles
Based on La Voix Humaine by Jean Cocteau (1930). Rossellini said about this short film: “What I did with [Una voce umana] had never been tried before! […] More than any other story, Una voce umana gave me the opportunity to use the camera as a microscope, especially since the phenomenon it would be studying was called Anna Magnani. […] This idea, which was pushed to the extreme in Una voce umana, was useful for all the films I made subsequently because at certain points in the filming, I felt the need to set the screenplay aside in order to follow the character’s innermost thoughts, those which perhaps even I was not really aware of. This “microscopic aspect” of the cinema is also a part of neorealism: a moral approach which then becomes an aesthetic one.”
Source and Film card: Il Cinema Ritrovato
Screening: Saturday, March 9 - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. with an introduction to film restoration by Céline Stéphanie Pozzi (L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bologna, Italy).
L'Onorevole Angelina
Directed by Luigi Zampa
(English title: Angelina)
Italy, 1947, 92 mins, b&w, Italian version with English subtitles
An anecdote about protest movements in the periphery of Rome is used by Zampa as a point of departure for this movie that features Anna Magnani as a protagonist in the role of Angelina, and as one of the screenwriters. A group of exasperated mothers living in a slum decide to take a series of drastic actions, some of them violent, in order to assert their rights […] Zampa makes use of a style based around crowded frames, which could be described as polyphonic, in which each character is clearly defined and contributes to the overall effect through his or her own movements and lines. The teeming shots, which reflect the overcrowded living conditions of the period, have a documentary-like quality that is undoubtedly neorealist and encourage a process of identification. However, the internal rhythms in these spaces remain those of dialect comedy, with the protagonist in the spotlight, her comic foils (Nando Bruno and Ave Ninchi) occasionally singled out, and sudden eruptions of reality through the presence of non-professionals.
Source and Film card: Il Cinema Ritrovato
Screening: Saturday, March 9 - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Roma Città Aperta
Directed by Roberto Rossellini
(English title: Rome Open City)
Italy, 1945, 103 mins, b&w, Italian version with English subtitles
A harrowing drama about the Nazi occupation of Rome and the brave few who struggled against it. Told with melodramatic flair and starring some well-known actors—Aldo Fabrizi as a priest helping the partisan cause and Anna Magnani in her breakthrough role as the fiancée of a resistance member—Rome Open City is a shockingly authentic experience, conceived and directed amid the ruin of World War II, with immediacy in every frame. Along with Paisà (1946), the movie consecrated Rossellini as the “inventor” of Neorealism. The film incorporates documentary footage shot during the war, and set the style for postwar Italian films in its use of natural settings and its realistic portrayal of life in Italy during the German occupation. It starred Anna Magnani in her first film role of substance. The film is internationally recognized as one of the most outstanding films of the postwar period.
Source: Britannica; Janus Film
Film card: Il Cinema Ritrovato
Screening: Sunday, March 10 - National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.