News

Who would have thought that a ’90s ‘slacker’ independent filmmaker would make such a strong romantic statement? Well, it’s not all romance in the old sense. In what must be a project of love, Richard Linklater examines the ongoing love life of Jesse & Céline, in three movies spread across eighteen years. The conversations are as free- flowing as are the cameras roaming through European back streets. Thanks to the commitment of Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke, the in-depth relationship seems real.

The ‘Before’ Trilogy

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 856

1995, 2004, 2013 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 101, 80, 109 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date February 28, 2017 / 79.96

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy

Cinematography: Lee Daniel; Lee Daniel; Christos Voudouris

Film Editor: Sandra Adair (3)

Original Music: Fred Frith; none; Graham Reynolds

Written by Richard Linklater, Kim Krizan; Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, Kim Krizan; Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke, Kim Krizan.

Produced by Anne Walker-McBay...

All sing the praises of Frank Borzage, a gentle director fully committed to the idea of romance in an imperfect world. Sally Eilers and James Dunn make a go of marriage, despite their personal flaws and difficulties with communication. It’s hard to believe that films of this vintage portray behaviors as sensitive as this.

Bad Girl

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 90 min. / Street Date December 13, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring James Dunn, Sally Eilers, Minna Gombell, Sarah Padden, William Pawley, Billy Watson.

Cinematography Chester A. Lyons

Film Editor Margaret Clancey

Written by Viña Delmar, Brian Marlow, Edwin J. Burke

Directed by Frank Borzage

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Directors don’t come any more romantic than Frank Borzage. It is said that he was one of several Fox directors, including John Ford, who were heavily influenced by F.W. Murnau, whose Sunrise was a massive hit in...

On Nov. 27, 1941, noted Washington Times Herald writer Inga Arvad introduced a 24-year-old John F. Kennedy to readers as "a boy with a future." By the time those words hit the press, the future president and Arvad, a Danish former beauty queen then living apart from her second husband, were locked in a passionate love affair. Their secret romance is detailed in Barbara Leaming's new biography, Kick Kennedy, about Kennedy's sister Kathleen, who died in a plane crash at 28. Arvad, a beauty-queen-and-film-star-turned-journalist, was introduced to Kennedy by Kick, her friend and colleague at the Times Herald. Like many women before and after her,...

On Nov. 27, 1941, noted Washington Times Herald writer Inga Arvad introduced a 24-year-old John F. Kennedy to readers as "a boy with a future." By the time those words hit the press, the future president and Arvad, a Danish former beauty queen then living apart from her second husband, were locked in a passionate love affair. Their secret romance is detailed in Barbara Leaming's new biography, Kick Kennedy, about Kennedy's sister Kathleen, who died in a plane crash at 28. Arvad, a beauty-queen-and-film-star-turned-journalist, was introduced to Kennedy by Kick, her friend and colleague at the Times Herald. Like many women before and after her,...

For the first time in Venice, the recipient of the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement has been given “carte blanche” to select rare, forgotten or underestimated films for the Venice Classics section. This year's festival runs September 2-12, 2015. French cinema auteur (and dedicated film critic) Bertrand Tavernier will present four masterpieces he has personally chosen as Guest Director of the Venice Classics section: "White Paws" by Jean Grémillon (France, 1949, 92’, B&W), "The Vixen" by Alberto Lattuada (Italy, 1953, 93’, B&W), "Ray of Sunshine" by Pál Fejös (Germany/Austria, 1933, 87’, B&W) and "A Matter Of Life and Death" by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (UK, 1946, 104’, Color). Read More: Fellini Restoration Makes World Premiere in Venice Also, Italian film director Francesco Patierno will chair the Jury of film students which, for the third time, will award Best Restored Film and Best...

Akahige, Amarcord, Aleksandr Nevskij among Venice Classics titles; Bertrand Tavernier selects four films.

Akahige, Amarcord, Aleksandr Nevskij and A Matter of Life and Death are among 21 titles announced today to screen in Venice’s (September 2-12) Classics section, which will reveal further titles later this month.

Director Bertrand Tavernier, who is to receive the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement award, has selected and will present four films for the Classics strand: Pattes Blances (White Paws) by Jean Grémillion, La Lupa (The Vixen) by Alberto Lattuada, Sonnenstrahl (Ray of Sunshine) by Pál Fejös and A Matter of Life and Death by Michael Powell and Eric Pressburger.

The 21 restorations:

Akahige (Red Beard) by Akira Kurosawa (Japan, 1965, 185’, B&W), restoration by Tōhō Co., Ltd.

Aleksandr Nevskij (Alexander Nevsky) by Sergej Michajlovič Ėjzenštejn (Ussr, 1938, 108’, B&W), restoration by Mosfilm

Amarcord by Federico Fellini (Italy, 1973, 123’, Color) restoration by Cineteca di Bologna with the support of yoox.com and the...

Think silent films reached a high point with The Artist? The pre-sound era produced some of the most beautiful, arresting films ever made. From City Lights to Metropolis, Guardian and Observer critics pick the 10 best

• Top 10 teen movies

• Top 10 superhero movies

• Top 10 westerns

• Top 10 documentaries

• Top 10 movie adaptations

• Top 10 animated movies

• More Guardian and Observer critics' top 10s

10. City Lights

City Lights was arguably the biggest risk of Charlie Chaplin's career: The Jazz Singer, released at the end of 1927, had seen sound take cinema by storm, but Chaplin resisted the change-up, preferring to continue in the silent tradition. In retrospect, this isn't so much the precious behaviour of a purist but the smart reaction of an experienced comedian; Chaplin's films rarely used intertitles anyway, and though it is technically "silent", City Lights is very mindful of it own self-composed score and keenly judged sound effects.

At its heart,...

Bologna, Italy – Criterion Collection and BFI Video Publishing have secured prizes at Il Cinema Ritrovato’s annual DVD awards, alongside U.S. companies Flicker Alley and Oscilloscope, and also cinematheques and archives from Italy, Czech Republic, Germany and Belgium. The New York-based repertory-film home-video publishers, whose chiefs Peter Becker and Jonathan Turrell appeared at the festival to talk about the history of their company and then introduce a screening of Terrence Malick’s Badlands on Tuesday, received the Best Blu-ray prize for its release of Lonesome, the 1928 Universal-financed silent film by Hungarian-born Paul Fejos.

read more...

By Allen Gardner

Quadrophenia (Criterion) Franc Roddam’s 1979 film based on The Who’s classic rock opera tells the story of working class lad Jimmy (Phil Daniels) struggling to find his identity in a rapidly changing Britain, circa 1965. Jimmy is a “mod,” a youth movement dedicated to wearing snappy suits, driving Vespa motor scooters bedecked with side mirrors, popping amphetamines and obsessed with the new sound of bands like The Who and The Kinks. Their other pastime is engaging in bloody brawls with “rockers,” throwbacks to the 1950s, who listen to Elvis and Gene Vincent, wear leather biker gear, grease in their hair and drive massive motorcycles a la Marlon Brando in “The Wild One.” Often cited as a worthy successor to “Rebel Without a Cause” as the greatest angry youth picture ever made, it is that and more, including a first cousin to the “kitchen sink” dramas of scribes John Osborne,...

Over the years, we’ve been more than just a little interested in the work of The Criterion Collection. Their mission since 1984, has simply been “gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements.” Their focus has been on important films, both classic and contemporary. And they are so good at it that we have dedicated a regular feature to it, this thing known as Criterion Files. A column that I’m hijacking this week because I wanted to talk about a few things. Notably a slew of recent Blu-ray releases, perfect examples of the ongoing work that Criterion is doing to preserve, highlight, celebrate and archive some of the most significant accomplishments in film history. Today we take a look at some of these things that Criterion does very well, in the context of their recent Blu-ray release. All...

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV

Ratings (out of five): ****

Paul Fejos’ Lonesome is a kaleidoscopic document of the cadences of modern (circa 1928, anyway) living and loving. It’s a simple tale –an ordinary working stiff falls for a woman he meets at the beach – told via a series of florid, propulsive camera tricks and highly advanced montage.

The beginning of Lonesome has the familiar feeling of a city symphony – think People on Sunday or Man With A Movie Camera. Manhattan wakes up; boats shuttle through the harbor, crowds pound the pavement, and a title card offers the philosophical thesis of the film: “In the whirlpool of modern life, the most difficult thing is to live alone.”...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Aug. 28, 2012

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Romance is revealed at Coney Island in Paul Fejos' 1928 Lonesome.

The 1928 film Lonesome is the creation of a little-known, one-of-a-kind auteur, Paul Fejos (a filmmaker / explorer / anthropologist / doctor!), who bridged the gap between the silent and sound eras.

Fejos pulled out all the stops for the drama-romance-comedy collage-styled New York City “symphony” Lonesome, which is set in Coney Island during the Fourth of July weekend. For his film, Fejos employed such then-radical techniques as color tinting, superimposition effects, experimental editing, a roving camera and three dialogue scenes (added because of the craze for talkies).

With its release by Criterion, Lonesome is making its home entertainment debut. Also included in the package are two other Fejos films included in this release: 1929’s The Last Performance (featuring a new score by Donald Sosin) and a reconstruction of the previously incomplete sound version of 1929’s Broadway.

It's the mid-way point of the month, and Cannes or no Cannes, the Criterion Collection will do their traditional unveiling of their releases for three months down the line. After a banner July line-up, which included Jim Jarmusch, Whit Stillman and Aki Kaurismaki, could the beloved specialty top themselves for August? Well, perhaps not, but there's a few very pleasant surprises in the latest batch of announcements.

Perhaps the biggest news for cinephiles is the Criterion debut of the Dardenne Brothers, hot off their critically acclaimed new film "The Kid With The Bike." The Belgian filmakers haven't yet had a film included in the selection, but that'll change on August 14th, when both 1996's "La promesse" and 1999's "Rosetta" are released. The films will be available on both DVD & Blu-Ray, and contain new interviews, and a conversation between the filmmakers and critic Scott Foundas, as well as the usual trailers and booklets.

"Style in the Movies" is the central theme of this year's TCM Classic Film Festival, opening tonight in Los Angeles with the world premiere of the new restoration of Cabaret (1972) and running through the weekend. For the AP, Lynn Elber calls up Liza Minnelli, who'll be there with Joel Grey and, if he can make it, Michael York: "Minnelli, whose turn as cabaret singer Sally Bowles captured a best actress Academy Award and cemented her young stardom, said making Cabaret was a joyful 'secret,' filmed in Munich and far away from meddling Los Angeles studio bosses. Director Bob Fosse 'got away with murder. We all did,' Minnelli said… 'We'd take chances, and the studio would send notes like, "Too cloudy. It will break up on drive-in (screens)." Fosse would read that out loud, tear it up and throw it over his shoulder — in front of the whole cast and crew.

From Farran Nehme comes word of the passing of Barbara Kent at the age of 103. Farran's "seen only two pictures starring Barbara Kent," one being "the 1933 shoestring Oliver Twist, with Kent as Rose. The other is Flesh and the Devil, in which Kent had the unenviable task of the being the forsaken lover to Garbo's lascivious temptress. Still, it's the silent Flesh and the Devil that left a far stronger impression. Sound seemed to diminish this diminutive actress, as it did so many others. In pantomime, her tiny body made her even sweeter and more fragile, and it added poignance to her hurt over John Gilbert's betrayal…. The Siren always knew she would most likely live to see every silent-film artist depart the planet before she did. But the Siren still wishes she'd gotten the chance to tell Kent, or any of the other artists that Kevin Brownlow has spent a lifetime celebrating,...

One of the last stars of the silent movie era

It is in the nature of cinema that an actor who made her last film appearance more than seven decades ago, and who retreated from public view in the late 1940s, refusing photographs and interviews ever since, can still be appreciated on screen as young, as lovely and as fresh as ever. Barbara Kent, who has died aged 103, was one of the last surviving stars of the silent era. She appeared in the last great silent American film, Lonesome (1928), Paul Fejos's masterpiece of urban poetry. Kent played Mary, a switchboard operator, who meets Jim (Glenn Tryon), a factory worker, in Coney Island. They spend the day together, fall in love, and then lose each other in the crowd. The simple tale of "little people" is raised by the sincerity of the performances and by the director's expressive use of location,...

Barbara Kent, a minor leading lady during the transition from silent to sound films, died October 13 in Palm Desert, in Southern California. A resident of the local Marrakesh Country Club, Kent was either 103 or 104. No cause of death was given. Barbara Kent was never a star. Not even close. In fact, most of her 35 movies were probably forgotten the week after their release. Paradoxically, Kent has become one of the most important performers of the silent era. No, not because she was Harold Lloyd's leading lady in his first talkie, Welcome Danger (1929). Or because of her career highlight: romancing Glen Tryon in Paul Fejos' naturalistic drama Lonesome (1928), frequently compared to F. W. Murnau's Sunrise. Barbara Kent has taken an importance incommensurate to her actual movie career because she was the very last individual to have had notable adult leads in American silent films. Everybody else, from Lillian Gish to Joan Crawford,...

Conrad Veidt is Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" performer of the day. An international star since the 1920s, Veidt worked in Germany, the United Kingdom, and Hollywood — twice. [Conrad Veidt Movie Schedule.] In the late '20s, Veidt was the star of unusual Hollywood fare such as Paul Leni's The Man Who Laughs (1928), in the title role as a man with a grin-like scar where his mouth should be, and Paul Fejos' The Last Performance (1929), as a magician in love with pretty Mary Philbin — a Universal star who also happened to be Veidt's leading lady in The Man Who Laughs. With the arrival of talking pictures, Veidt returned to Germany, but with the ascent of the Nazis he fled first to England and later to the United States. In the Hollywood of the early '40s, Veidt became everybody's favorite Nazi in movies such as Nazi Agent, Escape, and Casablanca.

"It's easy to enjoy Raffaello Matarazzo's melodramas for the campy excess of their acting and story lines," blogs Dave Kehr, "but it's more productive to take them seriously, I think — to see how cleanly and elegantly Matarazzo presents this bezerko material, with a visual style that reminded Jacques Lourcelles of Lang, Dreyer and Mizoguchi, and how perfectly engineered his narratives are, with every outlandish episode incorporated into a serene, symmetrical structure. The new Matarazzo box set (my New York Times review is here) from Criterion's budget Eclipse line contains four of Matarazzo's seven films with the towering star couple Amedeo Nazzari and Yvonne Sanson (literally — Matarazzo's mise-en-scene somehow makes them seem larger, both physically and emotionally, than any of the other characters on the screen), all subtitled in English for the first time: Chains (1949) [image above], Tormento (1950), Nobody's Children (1952) and The White Angel (1955)."

"Though immensely popular, the films were dismissed by...

Pál Fejös, filmmaker and ethnographer. In Marie, légende hongroise (Marie, A Hungarian Legend, 1933), he gets to combine the two disciplines, at least somewhat, with a movie which not only takes its story idea from a Magyar folk tale, and attempts to illuminate folk customs and social attitudes in Eastern Europe, but has a soundtrack, largely composed of source music performed by characters in the film, based on traditional music.

Of more intense interest, however, is Fejös's own idiosyncratic style, his novel approach to the talking picture, the startling performance of his leading lady, and the surreal-circular narrative he creates.

First off, the style. Fejös, who had worked in Hollywood, nevertheless has a more fragmentary approach than we're used to seeing. His scenes typically exploit many angles, which are shuffled around and recycled obsessively: Fejös milks his inserts until they squeak. This can be very productive: a statuette of a gypsy...

The Hollywood Reporter has the list of this year's selections for the National Film Registry. Selected by the Library of Congress, these "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant will be preserved forever to ensure their availability for future generations of cineastes.

The roster this year runs the gamut, from early silents (like 1906's actuality "A Trip Down Market Street") to the avant-garde (like Larry's Jordan's 1969 collage film "Our Lady of the Sphere") to mainstream blockbusters (like disco hallmark "Saturday Night Fever"). Interestingly, there's quite a few contributions this year from major filmmakers who've recently passed away, from directors Irvin Kershner ("The Empire Strikes Back") and Blake Edwards ("The Pink Panther") to actor Leslie Nielsen ("Airplane!").

Here's the full list of the newly inducted members of the National Film Registry. All links will take you to their IMDb page (if you're interested in more detailed descriptions of all the films, you...