Last Seen Movie - The Latest Movie You Have Seen; ratings

[Cinemanolis]

Not many movies, but all at least interesting and some - Violent Summer, Girl with a Suitcase, Family Diary, The Desert of the Tartars - very, very good.

Ok you've intrigued me. I am currently downloading "Violent Summer". I remember "The Girl with the Suitcase". What a nice film. It was a huge success in Greece at the time and it is often showed on TV.

[ITALIANO]

Jacqueline Sassard has a good supporting role in the movie - that of Trintignant's young and suspicious girlfriend. At the time she was very popular in Italy as the teenage sensation of two romantic - and, for those times, rather daring - comedies, Guendalina and Nata di Marzo. In the 60s she tried to go international and then mysteriously left the movies - after she made Chabrol's successful Les Biches - when she was still relatively young.

She's certainly very pretty. But after you've seen Violent Summer, you'll only think of Eleonora Rossi Drago - everyone in Italy fell in love with her during this period, and I can understand why - while very Italian, she was completely different from more easily exportable types like Loren and Lollobrigida, less obvious, more reserved and for this reason more haunting. Those who liked her in this movie should at least try to see Antonioni's Le Amiche - it's a masterpiece, and she's amazing there, too.

As for Zurlini, well, like in any other art, even in cinema being fashionable is important. And, unlike the more famous Fellini, Visconti, Rossellini, etc, Zurlini, while reasonably successful during his life, has only recently been internationally re-discovered and appreciated. He's definitely one of the best Italian directors, and I hope that even America will recognize this one day. Too sensitive maybe to be very popular (and he died very young) - but his movies stay with you. Not many movies, but all at least interesting and some - Violent Summer, Girl with a Suitcase, Family Diary, The Desert of the Tartars - very, very good.

[Reza]

The real oddity: Accident is just about to run on TCM -- the first showing I've ever run across.

Accident was quite a ''regular'' on AMC at one time.

[Mister Tee]

I'd never heard of it, either, but I see it's available through Netflix. You certainly pique my interest.

I notice one of the actors in it is Jacqueline Sassard, a name from the past. She received tremendous advance hype for a 1967 Jospeh Losey film, Accident -- but then the film failed to make the big impression, and she disappeared from (my) view. Seems (from IMDB) she didn't make more films after that.

The real oddity: Accident is just about to run on TCM -- the first showing I've ever run across.

[dws1982]

I put a top ten together fairly recently and this is what I had:
1- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962 - Ford)
2- Mirror (1975 - Tarkovsky)
3- The Thin Red Line (1998 - Malick)
4- In a Lonely Place (1950 - Ray)
5- How Green Was My Valley (1941 - Ford)
6- Violent Summer (1959 - Zurlini)
7- Make Way For Tomorrow (1937 - McCarey)
8- Unforgiven (1992 - Eastwood)
9- Come and See (1985 - Klimov)
10- Voyage to Italy (1954- Rossellini)

And just for the sake of a few more:
11- Stars in My Crown (1950 - Tourneur)
12- Siberiade (1979 - Konchalovsky)
13- The Earrings of Madame de... (1953 - Ophuls)
14- To Kill a Mockingbird (1962 - Mulligan)
15- Stagecoach (1939 - Ford)
16- Fanny and Alexander (1982 - Bergman)
17- The Rules of the Game (1939 - Renoir)
18- The Lusty Men (1952 - Ray)
19- The Battle of Algiers (1966 - Pontecorvo)
20- A Lion in the House (2006 - Bognar and Reichert)
21- Nora Prentiss (1947 - Sherman)
22- Europa 51 (1952 - Rossellini)
23- The Big Sleep (1946 - Hawks)
24- Day of the Outlaw (1959 - De Toth)
25- The Godfather Part II (1974 - Coppola)

[Sabin]

Never heard of it. I'm quite intrigued.

Just wondering, Daniel, what's the rest of your top ten?

[dws1982]

I'm just glad I finally got someone else to see it, even if it was through the film dictator game at The Backstage (another message board). In the past couple of years, Violent Summer and A Lion in the House are the two movies I've been most passionate about getting people to see, and it really makes me glad to see someone see one of those movies and have a positive reaction to it.

I'd put Violent Summer in my top ten movies of all time. Just a beautiful, heartbreaking movie. Two sequences in particular are two of the best things I've ever seen: One is a nighttime scene set to the song "Temptation", and the other is that final sequence where the two leads have to confront the thigns they've been trying so hard to avoid.

The only other Zurlini film I've seen is Family Diary, which is also excellent. It's pretty hard to come by in the States (comes on TCM once every few years); not sure if it's easier to find elsewhere.

[ITALIANO]

Violent Summer (Valerio Zurlini) 9.5/10

I have not heard of this film until it was strongly recommended to me by dws1982 and I've only vaguely heard of the director. It's about a love affair between a draft-dodging son of a fascist and an older, recent widow of a respected navy officer. It at times feels like a Douglas Sirk film transplanted into an Italian World War II drama and that's a compliment. It features excellent performances between the two leads and contains some brilliantly directed scenes which made me wonder why director Valerio Zurlini isn't quite as well-known as other Italian directors Fellini, de Sica, Rossellini, etc.

Oh, finally after so many shocks someone says something I can completely agree with.

Violent Summer is one of the most beloved movies in Italy, and I've always been sorry that this gem wasn't more widely known abroad - except in France (and this not only because of Trintignant's presence - the French were the first to re-discover director Zurlini's work).

I hadn't thought of Douglas Sirk, but I suppose that it's an acceptable comparison. I tend to see it more as a character study than as a "big" melodrama, but it's admittedly very romantic too. And, like in Sirk's movies, it's not only about two human beings but also about the society - Fascist society, but not only - that watches and judges then.

It has the feelings of those endless Italian summers which seem to be a thing of the past. And the lovely, sad Eleonora Rossi Drago is simply unforgettable.

[anonymous1980]

Violent Summer (Valerio Zurlini) 9.5/10

I have not heard of this film until it was strongly recommended to me by dws1982 and I've only vaguely heard of the director. It's about a love affair between a draft-dodging son of a fascist and an older, recent widow of a respected navy officer. It at times feels like a Douglas Sirk film transplanted into an Italian World War II drama and that's a compliment. It features excellent performances between the two leads and contains some brilliantly directed scenes which made me wonder why director Valerio Zurlini isn't quite as well-known as other Italian directors Fellini, de Sica, Rossellini, etc.

[Hustler]

Sorry for interrupting here.
My last movie sucks!

The Next Three Days 4/10

[Sabin]

(ITALIANO @ Mar. 20 2011,3:32)

And I feel that Peter Firth was nominated at least partly for this reason. And - don't get me wrong now - especially today I think it's a good reason. The movie is bad, I know - but there is at least a frankness about sex in it which was typical of that decade and which may sound dated, cliched even (and I admit that Equus is one of the worst example of this frankness)... but which compared to today's more puritanical approach - especially in American movies - shouldn't be too easily dismissed.

Well, I'm glad that you acknowledge that it's one of the worst examples of sexual frankness. Yes, it features a mechanical quality to sex we rarely see, the mutual disrobing of prospective lovers who approach each other and lay down. But ye gods! The way the color shifts and changes emphasizing that something is wrong, despite the fact that the camera is elevated not to a God's Eye View but askance to more of an Owl-In-The-Corner-Of-The-Attic's Eye View. If the sex is frank, it's because this is a Sidney Lumet movie and he's incapable of shooting anything that isn't. There is an immediate charge to the scene, not erotic but vaguely mesmeric, but it immediately becomes laughable. Whatever points I'd grant Firth and the film for bravery I can't help but back-peddle because it's all so overwrought and bad.

[ITALIANO]

I can't of course speak for Italy, but I moved to NYC in 1977, and gay emergence was in full flower. As Magilla says, Outrageous went well beyond anything A Special Day even contemplated, and it drew large, ethusiastic audiences in the city (people applauded wildly at the show I attended). Discos had been around for several years by then, and were the trendiest places in town for the glitterati. That there was still huge resistance to gay rights from more hidebound areas of the US or the world was an issue, but it didn't make Mastroianni's character any less an object of sympathy for a typical art-house audience in 1977. Making a gay man the center of such a film was about as brave as, six months later, making anti-war folk the heroes of Coming Home. Neither may have been a majority position countrywide, but each was about the only position held by anyone in the intellectual elite.

In Italy it was different. Oh, homosexuality - either implied or explicit - wasn't a forbidden subject of course, and art movies even here used to deal with it. But A Special Day wasn't an "art movie", wasn't directed at intellectuals - it featured our most successful, most beloved pair of actors, and that's what makes this a completely different kind of movie, with a completely different kind of emotional impact (unlike Craig Russell, Mastroianni was a big star AND represented the prototypical Italian male). And even when it comes to the Oscars... yes, there were gay-themed movies back then, but let's face it, most of them weren't even considered by the Academy. A Special Day had a more popular appeal, which was, and in some ways still is, an important aspect.

[Mister Tee]

I've asked many times on this Board how Manhattan wasn't nominated for Best Picture. I get a sense of frustration that tells me that they themselves have never been given a satisfactory answer.

I don't think anyone could ever pinpoint it. There could have been some resentment over Woody's no-show in '77, or just the feeling he'd already won enough. Some (even then) were made uneasy by the underage romance. But the hardest fact may simply have been that there was a glut of best picture candidates that year -- in addition to the five that made it, plus Manhattan, Being There, 10 and The China Syndrome easily met the critical praise/commercial success threshold that often leads to a best picture nomination. Woody just got squeezed out. (The real shocker, especially given their later unbound affection for him, was the directors passing on Woody and choosing to instead nominate the commercially successful but mossbound La Cage)

[Mister Tee]

The fact that notoriously homophobic Pauline Kael hated the movie saying more or less the same things that Mister Tee says now means something I think.

Yeah -- it means you've ceased arguing the point, and have resorted to ad hominem. You should be better than that.

I can't of course speak for Italy, but I moved to NYC in 1977, and gay emergence was in full flower. As Magilla says, Outrageous went well beyond anything A Special Day even contemplated, and it drew large, ethusiastic audiences in the city (people applauded wildly at the show I attended). Discos had been around for several years by then, and were the trendiest places in town for the glitterati. That there was still huge resistance to gay rights from more hidebound areas of the US or the world was an issue, but it didn't make Mastroianni's character any less an object of sympathy for a typical art-house audience in 1977. Making a gay man the center of such a film was about as brave as, six months later, making anti-war folk the heroes of Coming Home. Neither may have been a majority position countrywide, but each was about the only position held by anyone in the intellectual elite.

Not that it'll change anyone's view (and I promise this'll be my last post on the subject, unless someone raises a new inquiry), but, the voting of the two prime critics' groups for best actor that year:

New York
John Gielgud (Providence) 37
Fernando Rey (That Obscure Object of Desire) 31
John Travolta (Saturday Night Fever) 25

National
Art Carney (The Late Show) 25
John Gielgud (Providence) 19
Fernando Rey (That Obscure Object of Desire)/John Travolta (Saturday Night Fever) 13 each

Julia Roberts made no such critics' award impact in 1990.

[Sabin]

(Greg @ Mar. 20 2011,3:25)

(Sabin @ Mar. 19 2011,5:39)

And while I do quite enjoy what Lumet does with Burton's confessional to the camera, far too often I don't feel that Burton is truly enrapt with the young man's passion but rather just in love with his gravely-voice.

Are you writing about the scene where Burton talks while shaving in front of the mirror?

No, I'm talking about the opening and closing scenes, where Burton is staring directly at the camera and speaking to us. Confessional-style.


/Mighty Aphrodite/ (Woody Allen) - 5.5/10

Just at random, I watched this one again. It's not a very good movie but it's full of very funny ideas, some of them are executed quite well. The Greek Choir detailing the epic qualities of a resoundingly minor tale is a fantastic story device that compensates for Allen's clunky storytelling. There really isn't much to this movie, outside of a genuinely adorable plot-twist within the film's unexpectedly graceful epilogue, one that belongs in an altogether more daring farce. Had Woody Allen perhaps not cast himself or recruited the talents of Marshall Brickman or Doug McGrath, he might have created something a little more farcical in maneuvering Sorvino about these other square characters. The movie ends as a crowd-pleaser but you can't fight the sensation that we're watching characters who haven't been given the dignity they deserve. This is one of Woody Allen's clunkiest 90's films, but one that is mildly redemptive because of how occasionally funny it is...

...and for Mira Sorvino's performance. This is not an Oscar-worthy piece of work, but she outshines her material. Woody Allen writes her dialogue that is to make him reactive in horror, but the best line-reading she does is her incessant use of "Yeah. Yeah." between every line. Every scene with her is an air-headed monologue, and I can see why the Academy gave it to her. She's pretty funny, whereas Joan Allen was dramatic in a film voters didn't want to see and Winslet was effortless in a way that might not come across as great acting. She's not my choice but the faults in her character aren't hers.