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Welcome to 1968, and a burst of creative direction from one of the greatest film artists of the 20th century, Jack Cardiff. An attempt to make pop star Marianne Faithful into a cinematic sex symbol is an uphill struggle, even with Alain Delon playing opposite. Psychedelic effects are poured over a tale of desire that plays out in tony surroundings and out on the open road. Cardiff had a hand in the script, working for erotic effects. The American release recognized it as exploitation, and slapped on the more direct title ‘Naked Under Leather.’

The Girl on a Motorcycle

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1968 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 91 min. / Naked Under Leather / Street Date December 13, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Alain Delon, Marianne Faithfull, Roger Mutton, Marius Goring, Jacques Marin.

Cinematography: Jack Cardiff, René Guissart Jr.

Art Directors: Jean d’Eaubonne, Russell Hagg

Film Editor: Peter Musgrave

Leather Catsuit designer: John Sutcliffe

Original Music:...

Orson Welles in fine form! This lavishly produced costume drama, beautifully cast and directed, was filmed on location in gorgeous Italian palazzos, churches and villas. Welles is cast to type as the literally mesmerizing mountebank Cagliostro, who aids Madame du Barry in a scheme to seize the throne of France. Welles almost certainly ‘helped’ the credited director; the highly theatrical goings-on look exactly like Orson’s style. Super performances from Nancy Guild, Akim Tamiroff, Valentina Cortese, Margot Grahame and Charles Goldner turn Alexandre Dumas’ tale into swashbuckling mind-control excitement; the disc tops it off with a sensationally good restoration.

Black Magic

Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1949 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 105 min. / Street Date January 25, 2022 / Available from ClassicFlix / 19.99

Starring: Orson Welles, Nancy Guild, Akim Tamiroff, Charles Goldner, Stephen Bekassy, Valentina Cortese, Margot Grahame, Frank Latimore, Gregory Gaye, Berry Kroeger, Robert Atkins, Raymond Burr, Harriet White Medin, Silvana Mangano, Milly Vitale.

Cinematography: Ubaldo Arata, Anchise Brizzi

Art Directors: Jean d’Eaubonne,...

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is a series on Production Design.

Thursday marks 100 years since the birth of iconic French actress Simone Signoret. But how to celebrate? By my count, she was in three films nominated for Best Production Design. One of them, Is Paris Burning?, I covered way back in 2016. Another, Ship of Fools, also nabbed Signoret her second nomination for Best Actress. Unfortunately, it’s something of a bloated and maudlin mess.

That leaves us with La Ronde, a film made shortly before Signoret really burst into international stardom. She’s barely in it, playing a Viennese sex worker who bookends the meandering narrative. Even so, it’s her movie star quality that makes the whole thing work - that and the magic of Jean d’Eaubonne’s Oscar-nominated production design, of course. The film is Max Ophüls’s adaptation of an Arthur Schnitzler play, a circular jaunt that slips from paramour to paramour.

The bloodless Cahiers du cinéma wars induced a vague but hugely influential criterion for what was to be considered good and bad in film. Elaborate sets, one of French cinema’s major traits that, in certain genres, could compete with Hollywood, were deemed stifling and were rejected in favor of urban spaces and real locations.

The infamy that Cahiers du cinéma’s critical bombardment brought to certain filmmakers, at least among a small circle of cinephiles, took years to reverse. While Cahiers du cinéma happened to be more generous to American cinema, fewer French directors were allowed to enter their cannon. If, for instance, one Robert Bresson did, otherwise many Jean Delannoys did not. While the art of some great filmmakers was acknowledged and they were given the throne, many others, who were less stylistically consistent, fell into oblivion.

Today, more than half a century after the Cahiers wars, and regardless of their accomplishments,...