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by Salim Garami

The longevity of Danielle Darrieux's life - reaching up until the golden age of 100 as she passed Tuesday on 17 October - parallels the longevity of Darrieux's storied career. To know her path is to essentially map out the development of French cinema in a cursory sense: Beginning as a child in the very dawn of the French sound era within the musical comedy Le Bal in 1931 until a star-making turn in Anatole Litvak's Mayerling, taking a detour at the cusp of her fame to Hollywood like many beautiful French stars would, returning to her homeland right through the Left Bank faction of the French New Wave working with the likes of Claude Chabrol and Jacques Demy, finding her way to the Broadway stage with Coco as Coco Chanel, and taking a moment to work with directors of the Cahiers du Cinema second generation and the...

Tired of stupid sword 'n' sandal costume pictures? Robert Rossen's all-star bio-epic of the charter founder of the Masons is a superior analysis of political ambition and the ruthless application of power. Yeah, he's wearing a blond wig, but Richard Burton captures the force of Alexander without camping up Asia Minor. Alexander the Great Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 136 min. / Ship Date March 15, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Richard Burton, Fredric March, Claire Bloom, Danielle Darrieux, Barry Jones, Harry Andrews, Stanley Baker, Niall MacGinnis, Peter Cushing. Cinematography Robert Krasker Art Direction Andrej Andrejew Film Editor Ralph Kemplen Original Music Mario Nascimbene Produced by Gordon Griffith, Robert Rossen Written and Directed by Robert Rossen

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Critical opinions aren't supposed to flip-flop with every screening of a film, but I have to admit that my appreciation of Robert Rossen's 1956 epic Alexander the Great...

Luis Buñuel movies on TCM tonight (photo: Catherine Deneuve in 'Belle de Jour') The city of Paris and iconoclastic writer-director Luis Buñuel are Turner Classic Movies' themes today and later this evening. TCM's focus on Luis Buñuel is particularly welcome, as he remains one of the most daring and most challenging filmmakers since the invention of film. Luis Buñuel is so remarkable, in fact, that you won't find any Hollywood hipster paying homage to him in his/her movies. Nor will you hear his name mentioned at the Academy Awards – no matter the Academy in question. And rest assured that most film critics working today have never even heard of him, let alone seen any of his movies. So, nowadays Luis Buñuel is un-hip, un-cool, and unfashionable. He's also unquestionably brilliant. These days everyone is worried about freedom of expression. The clash of civilizations. The West vs. The Other.

Above: 1960 re-release poster for Second Chance (Jean Delannoy, France, 1947).

A couple of weeks ago the invaluable New York movie poster store Posteritati unveiled their newest acquisitions: nearly 500 new posters including many superb, rare Czech designs and some stunning one-offs like this poster for a short film about Brian Eno. But one of the highlights for me was a small collection of posters by the German designer Isolde Monson-Baumgart, some of which I had never seen before.

I featured Baumgart’s sublime poster for The Earrings of Madame De... last year and have been looking for more work by her ever since. Baumgart, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 76, was one of the chief designers—under the late great Hans Hillmann—employed by the Neue Filmkunst, the arthouse distribution company founded by Walter Kirchner in 1953. Like many of her fellow designers who together revolutionized German film advertising in the 1960s,...

This Tuesday, Criterion will be issuing a new Blu-ray release of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (buy it here) and Amazon is getting ahead of the release by offering all previous Criterion releases of Wes Anderson's movies at a discounted price. Here's the list, click on any of the titles for purchasing information: Bottle Rocket ($19.49) my review Rushmore ($19.99) The Royal Tenenbaums ($18.99) The Darjeeling Limited ($20.99) my review Fantastic Mr. Fox ($20.99) amz asin="B00JAQJNN0" size="small"Oh, and The Grand Budapest Hotel will be arriving on DVD and Blu-ray on June 17 if you'd like to complete the entire collection just click here. As a matter of fact, click here to browse all of Wes Anderson's Blu-rays and pick and choose at your own leisure. Also on sale this week is the complete, five-film Die Hard collection (buy it here) for $31.49 and a couple other Criterion...

1. The term "gaslight." The Ingrid Bergman thriller "Gaslight" -- released 70 years ago this week, on May 4, 1944, wasn't the original use of the title. There was Patrick Hamilton's 1938 play "Gas Light," retitled "Angel Street" when it came to Broadway a couple years later. And there was a British film version in 1939, starring Anton Walbrook (later the cruel impresario in "The Red Shoes") and Diana Wynyard.

Still, the glossy 1944 MGM version remains the best-known telling of the tale, with the title an apparent reference to the flickering Victorian lamps that are part of Gregory's (Charles Boyer) scheme to make wife Paula (Bergman) think she's seeing things that aren't there, thus deliberately undermining her sanity in order to have her institutionalized so that he'll be free to ransack the ancestral home to find the missing family jewels.

This version of Hamilton's tale was so popular that it made the word "gaslight"into a verb,...

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,...

Sixty years ago this week, on September 16, 1953, The Earrings of Madame de... premiered in Paris, which is as good an excuse as any to celebrate the various ways in which Max Ophüls’ masterpiece has been promoted over the years.

Since it is one of the most gorgeous and luxurious films ever made—Ophüls’ camera never seems to stop gliding and waltzing through the most opulent of settings—it is interesting how simple two of the most striking posters for the film are. The 1961 German poster and the 1959 Polish poster, both notably designed by women, are both in black and white (as is the film, gloriously so, but it was still unusual for posters of the period to be monochrome) and both pare the film down to a woman and her jewelry. In fact, they not only focus on the eponymous socialite but they isolate her in details. The German poster,...

Seconds (The Criterion Collection)

The Earrings Of Madame De... (The Criterion Collection)

Scary Seconds And Jewel-laden Irony

By Raymond Benson

Among the new releases this month from The Criterion Collection, that Cadillac of Blu-Ray/DVD labels, are two oldies-but-goodies—and very different ones—that will impress both the average film lover and the hardcore art house enthusiast. For me, the most anticipated title was Seconds, the 1966 paranoia-science fiction-mystery-thriller directed by John Frankenheimer, and starring Rock Hudson in a cast-against-type role. There’s no question that the picture was ahead of its time. The circumstances sound familiar—it was a very intelligent, well-made, strikingly photographed genre movie that audiences found too strange or unpleasant, and it flopped... but later, because it really was good, it became a cult classic.

Seconds is a shocking film today; in 1966, it was radical. It was considered an “adults-only” movie, even though its release was prior...

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones, Saint Teresa of Avila reputedly opined, but she never met Louise, Madame de... (Danielle Darrieux). For the vain, tragic heroine of Max Ophuls' "The Earrings of Madame de..." (1953), the price of a direct line to the heavens comes in a foreign currency. Foreign to her, at least: in church to pray that her jeweler will accept the titular earrings (a wedding gift from her husband) in return for some much-needed cash, Madame de... hurries through her rote offering as though she read about it in an instruction manual. She's more adept at measuring other rates of exchange, assessing the value of furs and the cost of flirtations, feigning a woozy spell in the jeweler's office to make the deal stick. "After all, they're mine," she says of her baubles. "I can do with them as I please." Or so she thinks.

Before we get to the new releases, Amazon is offering deals on a selection of Warner Home Video Blu-ray Digibook packs which range from $11.49-$17.99 including The Shawshank Redemption, Poltergeist and an excellent choice in Mutiny on the Bounty starring Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, which, in my opinion, is vastly superior to the 1962 Marlon Brando version. Cabaret Camelot Driving Miss Daisy Elvis on Tour Guys and Dolls The Jazz Singer Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) Poltergeist The Shawshank Redemption A Star is Born (1976) With the deals out of the way, here are this week's new releases and new release dates.

To the Wonder After seeing To the Wonder at the Toronto Film Festival last year I called it "a cinematic tone poem", others will find some sort of narrative value in it and others will simply call it a lovely screen saver. It's a beautiful film as is every Terrence Malick film,...

Moviefone's Top DVD of the Week

"The Place Beyond the Pines"

What's It About? In "A Place Beyond the Pines" Derek Cianfrance ("Blue Valentine") weaves together three vignettes starring Ryan Gosling as a bleach blonde, motorcycle-riding bank robber, Eva Mendes as a tough single mother, and Bradley Cooper as a conflicted cop. The first part of the film follows Luke (Gosling) as he robs banks to support his unexpected child and to win back the mother Romina (Mendes). Halfway through "Pines" breaks off to tell the story of Avery (Cooper), a wounded cop who discovers corruption in his department.

Why We're In: While "Pines" breaks off suddenly in various directions, the film's audacious screenplay and structure are what make it so powerful and compelling. Cianfrance's drama is one of novelistic proportions and definitely worth its long running time.

Rt & Follow to win @FocusFeatures' Place Beyond The Pines Combo Pack! #BeyondThePines...

German filmmaker Max Ophüls directed such acclaimed titles as The Earrings of Madame de... and La Ronde, but his last film, Lola Montès, stands out from the rest.  For one, it's the only Technicolor movie he made, with vibrant colors popping on the screen. Secondly, the flashback technique he chose to use in this film irked his production company so that they altered the cut shown to audiences in 1956. In recent years, a cut much closer to Ophüls' original vision has been restored and released to the public. Finally, Lola Montes has all the best qualities of an Ophüls film -- in CinemaScope.

This fictionalization of the life of historic figure Montes, an Irish dancer/courtesan who enchanted such men as Franz Liszt and King Ludwig I, has a ringmaster (Peter Ustinov, speaking French!) as a sort of narrator, with Ms. Montes (Martine Carol) walking a tightrope and performing death-defying...

Blu-ray Release Date: Aug. 6, 2013

Price: Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Danielle Darrieux in The Earrings of Madame de...

The 1953 drama-romance film The Earrings of Madame de…, a profoundly emotional, cinematographically adventurous tale of deceptive opulence and tragic romance, remains the most cherished work from French master Max Ophuls (Lola Montes).

When an aristocratic woman known only as Madame de (Danielle Darrieux) sells a pair of earrings given to her by her husband (Charles Boyer, Gaslight) in order to pay a debt, she sets off a chain reaction of financial and carnal consequences that can end only in despair.

Ophuls’s adaptation of Louise de Vilmorin’s incisive 1951 novel employs the elegant and precise camera work for which the director is so justly renowned, to ravishing effect.

Criterion issued a splendid DVD version of the classic film (which is presented in French with English subtitles) back in 2008, which is still available. A majority...

Time Out has put its heart on its sleeve and shouted its Brief Encounter infatuation from the rooftops. Will you join them in their lovebombing of the 68-year-old classic? Or have your tastes in romantic movies moved on?

Sam played it again, now it's our turn to plug in the turntable and petition you once more for your top romance films of all time. The peg? Time Out's 100 Most Romantic Films of all Time poll, which has been announced today, and which names Brief Encounter as the title most likely to get your heart a-flutter.

But by our reckoning, the Time Out folk are cruising for a bruising; when we came to the same conclusion three years ago, the readers felt we'd done them wrong, and suggested Casablanca was Mr Right when it came to romantic movies.

Do you feel the same? Has your taste for gin joints endured over the past three years?...

I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 363 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies, the Up docs and Decalogue) and of those 363, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do,...

I've mentioned before how several years ago I created a list using Roger Ebert's Great Movies, Oscar Best Picture winners, IMDb's Top 250, etc. and began going through them doing my best to see as many of the films on these lists that I had not seen as I possibly could to up my film I.Q. Well, someone has gone through the exhaustive effort to take all of the films Roger Ebert wrote about in his three "Great Movies" books, all of which are compiled on his website and added them to a Letterbxd list and I've added that list below. I'm not positive every movie on his list is here, but by my count there are 362 different titles listed (more if you count the trilogies and Decalogue) and of those 362, I have personally seen 229 and have added an * next to those I've seen. Clearly I have some work to do,...

★★★★★ Leading American film critic Andrew Sarris once nominated 1953's Madame de... as his candidate for 'the greatest film of all time' - high praise indeed. Meanwhile, his principal critical detractor, Pauline Kael, called Ophüls' film "perfection", marking one of the few times the pair actually agreed on something. Most of the disquiet emanated from the auteur theory - which Sarris championed and Kael loathed - but both considered director Ophüls the most flawless of craftsman, with the exquisite design and frictionless elegance to make the heart sing and weep in equal measure, seen in such works as Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) and La Ronde (1950).

Read more »...

Geraldine Page in "Interiors"Years ago I took a weekend writing retreat to visit my great friend Nick (who you know and love as the man behind Nick's Flick Picks) and while discussing Julianne Moore in Safe and that weirdly specific mini Jodie Foster genre of Women Trapped in Small Spaces (planes, panic rooms... closets) we agreed that our mutual favorite kind of movie was not Dramas, Comedies, Musicals, or Horror but the rarely discussed Women Who Lie To Themselves™ subgenre -- we had to name it but it is so a genre!

You've seen multiple movies from this collection even if you didn't know it existed. In these awesome films, the female protagonist spends more time conversing with her own self delusion than with any actual co-star. The musical anthem of this celluloid sisterhood is Sally Bowles "Maybe This Time" from Cabaret (1972) and the patron saint is surely Eve...

Above: Remorques (Jean Gremillon, 1941). Artist: Henry Monnici.

When I heard that Film Forum was putting on a show called “The French Old Wave” I was hoping that it was going to be a revisionist look at the films that Truffaut and his compadres in the nouvelle vague famously dismissed as “Le cinéma de papa” or the “le cinéma de qualité.” In his epoch-making 1954 essay “Une certaine tendance du cinéma français”, the essay which gave rise to the phrase “la politique des auteurs” and thus the Auteur Theory, Truffaut asserted that the worst of Jean Renoir’s movies would always be more interesting than the best of the movies of Jean Delannoy.

While Delannoy has two films in the series (L’eternel retour from 1943 and La symphonie pastorale from 1946), Renoir has six, so the series is less of a revisionist look at the films that the New Wave lambasted, and more...

No surprise here: Wes Anderson has fabulous -- and fairly esoteric -- taste in movies. Check out the "Moonrise Kingdom" director's top 10 (well, top 12) picks from the Criterion Collection below, in a list that spans directors as diverse as Robert Bresson, Luis Bunuel and Max Ophuls. With the exception of Paul Schrader's "Mishima," all of Anderson's picks were made within the same 20-year period. Wes Anderson Top Ten Criterion Films: 1. "The Earrings of Madame de..." (dir. Max Ophuls, 1953) 2. "Au hasard Balthasar" (dir. Robert Bresson, 1966) 3. Three-way tie, all directed by Shohei Imamura: "Pigs and Battleships" (1961), "The Insect Woman," (1963), "Intentions of Murder" (1964) 4. "The Taking of Power by Louis Xiv" (dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1966) 5. "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (dir. Martin Ritt, 1965) 6. "The Friends of Eddie...

We at Mubi think that celebrating the films of 2011 should be a celebration of film viewing in 2011. Since all film and video is "old" one way or another, we present Out of a Past, a small (re-) collection of some of our favorite retrospective viewings from 2011.

This year I ordered my favorite new experiences with old movies by the date when I saw them, rather than by the year when they were made. (The diary format reveals a large midyear viewing gap due to my own film shoot.) I chose rather arbitrarily, leaning toward works I haven't already called attention to; and I let myself run the list up to six films instead of five.

February 8, in the French Institute/Alliance Française's Cinéma des femmes series: La dérive (Paula Delsol, 1964)

It seems that contemporary critics found Delsol's debut feature less than technically competent, but that opinion is baffling today: the film meanders artfully,...

An interesting poll from The Press Association today. According to a study of 1500 by the UK video rental firm Lovefilm, "The Godfather" is the #1 movie most people claim to have seen, but haven't. According to this poll, almost one out of every three people say they have seen "The Godfather" under false pretenses. The rest of the top five most lied about movies are "Casablanca," "Taxi Driver," "2001: A Space Odyssey," and "Reservoir Dogs." It should be noted this is a UK poll with UK voters; it's possible an American poll with American voters might come out differently.

Let's talk for a minute about lying about movies you've seen. We've all done it at least once in our life. I definitely have. The last time for me was a couple of years ago when I got into a conversation about Akira Kurosawa and I may or may not have pretended to have seen "Seven Samurai.

I wanted to mention that on top of movie watching this week I also finally join the ranks of most of you out there as I read J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" for the first time. My literary upbringing was not that impressive and to think of the endless number of classic books I have not read all while having a college degree in print and broadcast journalism is embarrassing. Oh well, you can only try to play catch up in some aspects of life...

As for movies, I also watched several titles I will be reviewing this coming week including the Studio Canal Collection Blu-ray editions of Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt (excellent film) and Akira Kurosawa's Ran as well as upcoming Warner Home Video Blu-ray releases of the original Clash of the Titans and The Neverending Story. That said, I also have a trio of...

My experience with Lola Montes director Max Ophuls was zero prior to my first screening of Criterion's new Blu-ray edition of his final directorial feature. As a result, while watching the special features and listening to the fascinating audio commentary included, I realized the work of Ophuls cannot be judged by watching one film. It's also my impression he's a director whose signature will be found on most all of his films, leading me to believe the more of his films I see, the more I will appreciate what I am watching. While I enjoyed Lola Montes, and noticed plenty of directorial control as well as an obvious auteur style, I still felt I was missing something.

In September of 2008, Criterion released The Earrings of Madame de..., La ronde and Le plaisir on DVD, three of Ophuls most recognized films with The Earrings of Madame de... probably being his most loved.

La Ronde

Director: Max Ophüls

Writer: Louis Ducreux

Cinematographer: Christian Matras

Starring: Anton Walbrook, Simone Simon, Simone Signoret

Studio/Run time: Films Sacha Gordine, 97 mins.

82/100

Le Plaisir

Director: Max Ophüls

Writer: Jacques Natanson

Cinematographer: Christian Matras

Starring: Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, Simone Simon

Studio/Run time: Ccfc, 97 mins.

80/100

Earrings of Madame de.

Director: Max Ophüls

Writers: Marcel Achard, Max Ophuls, Annette Wademant

Cinematographer: Christian Matras

Starring: Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux, Vittorio De Sica

Studio/Run time: Franco London Films, 105 mins.

84/100

In almost any scene of any of the films made by director Max Ophüls, be it in Berlin (before the ascent of the Nazi party), Paris, Hollywood, and then back in Paris, lie the director’s primary concerns: Men and women, lust, love, theatrical artifice and the illusion of desire. Though a favorite of Stanley Kubrick and perhaps the only peer to Orson Welles with regards to innovative camera shots,...