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Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series spotlighting the scripts behind the year’s most talked-about movies continues with the Venice Film Festival-premiering Babygirl, A24’s erotic thriller from writer-director Halina Reijn that stars Nicole Kidman and Harris Dickinson. It hit theaters December 20.

In Venice, Kidman won the Best Actress prize for playing Romy, a high-powered CEO whose life is controlled by structure, tight scheduling and an all-too-keen awareness of how she’s perceived at the heights of a male-dominated field. The one thing she cannot control is her sexual urges that haven’t been fulfilled after 19 years of marriage to her husband Jacob (Antonio Banderas).

Romy, trapped in her suppressed desires, is quickly undone after she meets Samuel (Dickinson), an intern at her company who transgresses professional boundaries. This dynamic inadvertently fosters a dominant/submissive power play, providing Romy with an unexpected outlet to explore and indulge her kinks.

Through deliciously playful provocations,...

Illustrations by Stephanie Lane Gage.As the year draws to a close, we’d like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of our contributors. Here are some of their finest essays, interviews, festival coverage, and more from this year. We’re looking forward to much more in the new one. As always, thank you for reading.ESSAYSIllustration by Zoé Mahamès Peters.The current cinema:Sasha Frere-Jones on Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi’s GIFTPhilippa Snow on Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor ThingsAdam Nayman on Pascal Plante’s Red RoomsCassie da Costa on RaMell Ross’s Nickel BoysAmanda Chen on Trương Minh Quý’s Việt and NamSanoja Bhaumik on Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s The SettlersNathalie Olah on Andrea Arnold’s BirdRobert Rubsam on Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimeraGrace Byron on Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV GlowZach Schonfeld on M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and Michael Showalter’s The Idea of YouSam...

The Night Porter.Fascism is not only an event of yesterday.… It is with us still, here and elsewhere. As dreams do, my film brings back to the surface a repressed “history.”—Liliana CavaniThe aesthetics of fascism, and how they enable the perversion of cultural memory, are interrogated even as they are instrumentalized in The Night Porter (1974), a film that remains confounding and polarizing 50 years after its release. Its director, Liliana Cavani, knew that portraying the compulsive sexual charge between a young Holocaust survivor and her former Nazi tormentor was bound to turn stomachs. An Italian socialist, best known at the time for her four-hour television documentary, History of the Third Reich (1962–63), Cavani was well positioned to address the shifting modes of historical representation and the nuance-flattening power of the moving image, which can so readily be put in service of propaganda. During research for Women of the Resistance (1965), another television documentary,...

Venice has got its sexy back. Erotica of all varieties — gay, straight, kinky and theoretical — is on glorious display at this year’s Venice Film Festival, with plenty of sizzling action onscreen and little of it gratuitous.

Two of the, em, hottest festival titles this year — Halina Reijn’s Babygirl and the TV series Disclaimer from Alfonso Cuarón — open with orgasms. Babygirl also climaxes to a close, with star Nicole Kidman, playing a tech manager who discovers a taste for Bdsm, in a state of near or total undress throughout much of the movie.

Queer, an adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ autobiographical novel, and the latest from Challengers and Call Me by Your Name filmmaker Luca Guadagnino — a director apparently on a one-man mission to bring back sexy cinema — stars Daniel Craig as a drug-addicted American expat in Mexico, circa 1950, who begins to obsess over, and pursue, a younger, bi-curious navy sailor,...

E.L. James' original "Fifty Shades of Grey" trilogy is undoubtedly the most successful piece of fanfiction ever published. James turned the teen-friendly romance between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen in Stephenie Meyer's wildly popular "Twilight" franchise into an erotic reverie explored by the mysterious (and quite wealthy) entrepreneur Christian Grey and college journalist Kate Kavanaugh. It was a Bdsm gateway drug that opened up a healthy portal for kink-curious young adults. You didn't have to feel like a freak for wanting to do what conservative society deemed freaky.

Was it good literature? Does it matter? James' novels have sold hundreds of millions of copies and been translated into 52 different languages. They are adored by people who never knew they wanted to see Bella and Edward engage in consensual sadomasochism. I am happy they have these stories in their lives. What matters, at least when it comes to my bailiwick,...

"Six lives. Six incarnations." Altered Innocence has revealed the US trailer for a wild & crazy experimental French film called She Is Conann, a unique re-imagining of the classic Conan the Barbarian myth through a modern gender-swapped lens. Yes, you read that right! This premireed at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival last year in Directors' Fortnight, with stops at Fantastic Fest and Sitges. It'll be opening in February in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, and more, with director Bertrand Mandico and the star at opening weekend showings at Anthology Film Archives in NYC. Conan's life at different stages is shown with a different aesthetic and rhythm from the classic Sumerian era to the near future. The film is a barbaric fantasy sci-fi trip that boldly celebrates the influences of Fellini Satyricon, The Night Porter, The Hunger, and Fassbinder’s entire oeuvre to craft a moving portrait of a warrior...

Experimental French filmmaker Bertrand Mandico isn’t for everyone — i.e. an acquired taste whose visions push boundaries of cinematic expression — but he’s achieved something of a cult fandom over the last three decades. After last pairing with the director on 2022’s “After Blue” and 2017’s uninhibited Venice winner “The Wild Boys” — Cahiers du Cinéma’s top film of 2018 — the distributor Altered Innocence again teams with Mandico on another provocation. His 2023 Cannes premiere “She Is Conann,” nominated for the Queer Palm before going on to play at other festivals including Locarno, is an acid-trip transgressive riff on the Conan the Barbarian myth. IndieWire shares the trailer here.

Influences on the film include Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” the works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter,” and Fellini’s “Satyricon.” Throw Ken Russell in there for good measure, with profane images in “She Is Conann” reminiscent of “The Devils.

The Venice Film Festival kicked off its 80th edition Wednesday night on a somewhat muted note, with the dual Hollywood strike casting a pall over the glitz and glamour that typically exemplify the world’s oldest cinema fest. Instead of Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya starrer Challengers — which was scheduled to open Venice pre-strike, getting pulled amid the walkout — Venice was forced to go with a more locally focused feature, Edoardo De Angelis’ Italian World War II submarine drama, Comandante.

Italian actress Caterina Murino hosted the festival’s grand opening ceremony with a retrospective spanning eight decades of Venice cinema, featuring clips highlighting past Golden Lion winners. The audience burst into applause at the sight of the late William Friedkin, whose last film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, will premiere on the Lido this year.

Comandante tells the true story of Salvatore Todaro, a submarine captain under Italy’s fascist government who...

In an alternate universe, Zendaya would be breaking the Internet with her red carpet fashion as she promoted Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” the movie that was supposed to open the 80th annual Venice Film Festival.

But the SAG-AFTRA strike made it impossible for the tennis movie, starring one of the world’s buzziest movie stars, to come to the Lido.

So instead, Venice kicked off with World War II drama “Comandante” by young Italian auteur Edoardo De Angelis. The movie, mostly set on a submarine, landed a brief 90-second standing ovation as actor Pierfrancesco Favino — who plays naval officer Salvatore Todaro — took a bow.

Indeed, the lack of star power was strongly felt at Venice opening night. The size of the crowds that lined up outside the Sala Grande Theatre was modest, and the biggest cheers went to Damien Chazelle, who is presiding over the Venice jury. Jane Campion,...

Even without major stars or Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” to buoy it, the opening night of the Venice Film Festival’s 80th edition was high on nostalgia for cinema’s past and excitement for the eight days of movies ahead.

A black-tie crowd gathered in the Palazzo del Cinema’s Sala Grande on the Lido for the presentation of Edoardo De Angelis’ World War II Battle of the Atlantic epic “Comandante,” the opener that replaced Guadagnino’s “Challengers” after that film was moved by MGM/Amazon to April due to the strikes.

First, though, elegant minimalist and icon Charlotte Rampling presented the festival’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Liliana Cavani, the Italian director of psychosexual Holocaust drama “The Night Porter,” starring Rampling and from 1974. (Wong Kar Wai muse Tony Leung Chiu-wai will also receive a Lifetime Achievement anointment later in the fest.) Rampling played a concentration camp survivor who finds her ex,...

Updated with more details: The 80th Venice Film Festival officially kicked off Wednesday evening with the world premiere screening of Edoardo De Angelis’ Italian World War II submarine drama Comandante. Running in competition, the film took over the slot vacated by Luca Guadagnino’s tennis drama Challengers, which backed out of the spot amid the actors strike.

Before the Pierfrancesco Favino-starring movie unspooled to a warm welcome and a brief post-credit standing ovation, Italian actress Caterina Murino launched the festival’s opening ceremony featuring a retrospective covering the 80 years of the event. That included glimpses of previous Golden Lion and awards winners, with the audience erupting when the late William Friedkin appeared in the montage.

Friedkin, who died August 7, has his final work, the Showtime film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, screening later this week out of competition.

Biennalle president Roberto Cicutto then came on the stage to introduce Charlotte Rampling,...

“Women writers and directors are working as hard as men. It’s not right if we don’t give them chance to be seen.”

Legendary Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani called for greater recognition of female filmmakers at the opening ceremony for the 80th Venice Film Festival this evening (August 30).

Ninety-year-old Cavani received the honorary Golden Lion award recognising her career, which spans seven decades.

“I’m the first female person to receive this award,” said Cavani. “There are women writers and directors who are working as well as men. It’s not quite right if we don’t give them a chance to be seen.

In 2022, Jane Campion made history as the first female director to be nominated for Best Director twice. And then, for “The Power of Dog,” she followed through and won, becoming the third female director to take home the top prize.

The win was a triumphant and long overdue achievement for Campion, who has consistently been one of the best directors actively working since her 1989 feature debut “Sweetie.” The black comedy about a dysfunctional family marked the New Zealand-born director as a great talent immediately, entering the Cannes Film Festival and taking home an Independent Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film shortly afterwards. Just a year later, Campion released her first masterpiece: the Janet Frame biopic, “An Angel at My Table.”

From there, her 1993 feature “The Piano” netted Campion her first Best Director nomination, while efforts like “The Portrait of a Lady,” “Holy Smoke,” “In the Cut,” and “Bright Star” received acclaim.

While it’s still uncertain how many U.S. movie stars will be attending the upcoming Venice Film Festival, the fest has announced a series of masterclasses to be held by top directors including Wes Anderson, Edward Berger, Damien Chazelle and Nicolas Winding Refn.

Several of the Venice masterclasses are dedicated to helmers being lauded by the fest such as “The Night Porter” director Liliana Cavani, who is being celebrated with a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, and Anderson, who will receive the fest’s Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker Award.

Refn will pay tribute to late Italian horror master Ruggero Deodato, whose 1980 film “Cannibal Holocaust” is considered one of the goriest movies of all time.

Chazelle, who presides over year’s Venice competition jury, will hold his class with composer and regular collaborator Justin Hurwitz, with whom he has worked on “Whiplash,” “First Man” and “La La Land.” Multiple...

’The Night Porter’ director and ’In The Mood For Love’ actor to receive awards at this year’s festival.

The Venice Film Festival will present Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement to Liliana Cavani, the Italian director of The Night Porter and Ripley’s Game; and to Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai, whose credits include In The Mood For Love and Marvel film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.

Cavani’s Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy won the Lion of San Marco for best documentary at Venice in 1965. Her films Francis of Assisi (1966), Galileo (1968), The Year of the Cannibals,...

Liliana Cavani, one of the key directors of the New Italian Cinema movement and recognized internationally for The Night Porter, and Tony Leung Chiu-wai, the acclaimed Hong Kong actor known for his numerous collaborations with Wong Kar-wai, are set to receive Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Film Festival.

“I am very happy and grateful to the Biennale di Venezia for this wonderful surprise”, said Cavani, who first made a name for herself in Venice in 1965 with with Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy, followed by Francis of Assisi (1966), Galileo (1968), I cannibali (The Year of the Cannibals, 1970), Il gioco di Ripley (Ripley’s Game, 2002) and Clarisse (2012).

“I am overwhelmed and honoured with the news from the Biennale di Venezia. I hope to celebrate this award with all the filmmakers I have worked with. This award is a tribute to all of them as well,” said Leung Chiu-wai, who...

The Venice Film Festival has set filmmaker Liliana Cavani and actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai to receive this year’s Golden Lions for lifetime achievement. The 80th Venice fest runs from August 30-September 9 on the Lido.

Cavani, whose credits include 1974 classic The Night Porter, starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, and 1985’s The Berlin Affair, has had several films at the festival, beginning with 1965’s Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy, which won the Lion of San Marco for best documentary. It was followed by Francesco d’Assisi (1966), Galileo (1968), I cannibali (1970), Dove siete? Io sono qui (1993) — for which Anna Bonaiuto won the Coppa Volpi for best actress — Ripley’s Game with John Malkovich (2002) and Clarisse (2012).

As for Leung, whose credits include Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, Zhang Yimou’s Hero, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs and recent Marvel title Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,...

The Venice Film Festival will honor “The Night Porter” director Liliana Cavani and Tony Leung Chiu-wai, the Hong Kong star of “In the Mood for Love” and Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” with its 2023 Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement.

Cavani first attended Venice in 1965 with the historical doc “Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy,” which won the Lion of San Marco for best documentary. She was back the Lido in 1966 with her TV movie “Saint Francis of Assisi,” and, again, in 1968, with “Galileo,” followed by Patricia Highsmith adaptation “Ripley’s Game,” starring John Malkovich, in 2002 and “Clarisse,” a doc about an order of cloistered nuns in 2012.

“I am very happy and grateful to the Biennale di Venezia for this wonderful surprise,” Cavani, who is 90, said in a statement.

Venice artistic director Alberto Barbera praised Cavani as “One of the most emblematic protagonists of the New Italian Cinema of the 1960s,...

Charlotte Rampling self-identifies as a “prickly” person. “Like a hedgehog or porcupine, you don’t necessarily get too close,” she told IndieWire.

You’d know that from any number of her roles. The 77-year-old, English-born, Paris-living actress has worked in the European arthouse for more than half a century, turning out kinky roles in divisive, sensuous period pieces like Liliana Cavani’s S&m concentration camp psychodrama “The Night Porter” and Luchino Visconti’s depraved Weimar tableau “The Damned.” But she’s also brought hard-shelled wit to character studies like François Ozon’s “Under the Sand” and “Swimming Pool,” Andrew Haigh’s “45 Years,” and Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia.”

In that film, Rampling played one of her prickliest characters, a callous and ambivalent mother who prefers to blithely take a bath during her daughter’s (Kirsten Dunst) wedding reception rather than make small talk or give toasts with the guests downstairs.

The Great Italian Films of the 1970sThere was a certain type of great art film which was being made from 1968 through the 1970s which can never be approximated. Active and engaged filmmakers were consciously wakening out of the post-war amnesia and taking a perversely erotically charged political stand against the hypocrisy of the previous generation.

Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.

Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.

Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”

Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”

However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.

In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:

Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”

Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.

Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.

One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”

Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.

In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.

According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:

British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.

According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.

According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.

The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.

At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.

And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.

But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.

And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.

SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...

The actor and perennial Parisian on learning to kiss, dreaming of castles and the art of being detached

Born in Essex, Charlotte Rampling, 76, was spotted by a casting agent when she was 17 and went on to appear in Georgy Girl (1966) and The Night Porter (1974). Her more recent roles include Melancholia, Dune and 45 Years, which earned her an Oscar nomination in 2016. Juniper, her new film, is in cinemas from Friday. She is twice divorced and lost her partner to cancer in 2015. She lives in Paris and has two sons.

What is your greatest fear?

To die before I know certain things.

“These girls are here from Munich. A few of them are Austrian. Far from papa, far from their blood-sucking businessmen relatives. Look at them. Perfumed, powdered, rich. Today, half the world hates us because we’re eliminating them. But the day will come when they’ll thank us.”

The Gestapo’S Last Orgy (1977), The Sickest Entry in the Nazisploitation Genre will be available on Blu-ray from 88 Films November 2nd

Still banned in the UK as one of the infamous Video Nasties, in the tradition of The Night Porter, Salon Kitty and Salo only far more depraved comes perhaps the most notorious Nazisploitation epic of them all! Daniela Levy (aka Italian TV presenter and future Unicef Goodwill Ambassador Daniela Poggi) stars as a beautiful young death camp prisoner forced into a nightmare of brutality, torment and sexual degradation. But will a Commandant’s vilest urge trigger her ultimate vengeance? Marc Loud (aka...

Severin continues to impress with their incredible box set releases and their latest announcement was an instant pre-order for me: a collection of five remastered Christopher Lee movies and a rarely seen, Christopher Lee-hosted, anthology horror TV series:

(Los Angeles, CA) On May 25th, Severin Films is releasing a box set of buried gems from one of cinema’s most seminal figures - Sir Christopher Lee. He remains one of the most beloved horror/fantasy icons in US/UK pop culture history, but Christopher Lee delivered several of the most compelling, acclaimed and bizarre performances of his entire career in 1960s Europe. The Eurocrypt Of Christopher Lee brings together five of these Lee classics - the 1964 gothic shocker Crypt Of The Vampire; the 1964 cult hit Castle Of The Living Dead co-starring an unknown Donald Sutherland; 1962's celebrated Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace; 1967's lurid favorite The Torture Chamber Of Dr.

The shock that greeted the affair between Dirk Bogarde’s SS officer and Charlotte Rampling’s Holocaust survivor looks dated 46 years on, but the film is an intriguing period piece

Mixed feelings are the only ones possible about the rerelease of Liliana Cavani’s 1974 shocker The Night Porter, a ripe piece of upper-middlebrow arthouse scandal in its day. The extremes of critical responses – disgust or contrarian acclaim – have both dated, although it is undoubtedly well acted by Dirk Bogarde, who brings his habitual wintry aplomb.

Bogarde plays Max, a fastidious, elegant, mysterious man working as a night porter in a hotel in Vienna in the late 1950s. He is impeccably turned out and attentive to the guests, although the work is clearly a little beneath him. One evening a certain guest arrives: Lucia, played by Charlotte Rampling, the beautiful, shy young wife of a visiting American conductor, working on the...

There were bids to ban this film about a sexual liaison between an SS officer and a teenage concentration camp prisoner. As it returns four decades on, does director Liliana Cavani still feel their relationship was ‘beautiful’?

Movie romances traditionally have what’s called a “meet cute”, that clinching moment when a couple-to-be first bump into one another. It would be hard, though, to think of a meet less cute than the one in The Night Porter, Liliana Cavani’s erotic drama from 1974. When Max (Dirk Bogarde) encounters Lucia (Charlotte Rampling), they are in a concentration camp: he is an SS commandant and she is his teenage prisoner, crop-haired, ghostly and gaunt. A twisted relationship develops. She gives him sex and he brings her gifts, such as the head of a fellow prisoner in a box. It’s the little things that mean so much.

Twelve years after the end of the war,...

Flesh Out Photo: Courtesy of Berlin Film Festival/Vivo Film

Made In Italy notches up its first decade when it returns to London from March 4 to 9, opening with Ginevra Elkann’s If Only, starring Riccardo Scamarcio and Alba Rohrwacher, about three kids sent unexpectedly to live with their unconventional dad.

The line-up features new work, including Michelle Occhipinti's Flesh Out, which considers the gruelling process of gavage - fattening up for a wedding - in Mauritania, and Federico Bondi Dafne, which sees a Down syndrome woman holding her family together in the face of adversity.

There will also be a retrospective screenign of Liliana Cavani’s psychological thriller The Night Porter, starring Charlotte Rampling and Dirk Bogarde.

Elkann, Scamarcio, Occhippinti and Bondi will be among those attending and taking part in Q&As.

Details of venues and times are available from the official site.

The full list of films screening...

Ann Roth with Carlo Poggioli and Anne-Katrin Titze on the late great costume designer: “Piero Tosi was the god!” Photo: Virginia Cademartori

Oscar and BAFTA-winning costume designer Ann Roth and Carlo Poggioli who shared a BAFTA Best Costume Design nomination with Roth gave me some insight on their work and personal relationship when I met with them last week. Carlo also assisted Ann on The Talented Mr Ripley and The English Patient.

Ann Roth on Ralph Fiennes as Almásy and Kristin Scott Thomas as Katharine in The English Patient: “I don't think Ralph is a man's man, as they say. She on the other hand, women, everybody, loved her.”

Carlo Poggioli who started out with designers Gabriella Pescucci, Piero Tosi and Maurizio Millenotti (Ruppert Everett’s...

• Variety Rip Piero Tosi one of the great costume designers. His film credits include Death in Venice, La Traviata, La Cage Aux Folles and The Night Porter so he's the one responsible for Charlotte Rampling at her most sexually provocative

• BuzzFeed good piece on Brad Pitt's talent and why he shines in weirder sideline roles as opposed to leads... though we object to any notion that he isn't a leading man in Once Upon a Time... but this battle is already lost since critics keep calling him supporting even before the Oscar campaign does. (sigh)

more after the jump including The Hunt, a fun conversation on Hobbs & Shaw, Tarantino and Almodóvar...

Piero Tosi, a famed costume designer who worked on films such as “The Leopard” and “Death in Venice,” died Saturday in Rome, the Franco Zeffirelli Foundation announced on Facebook. He was 92.

Over the course of his 50 year career, Tosi established himself as one of Hollywood’s greatest costume designers, earning five Oscar nominations for costume design and an honorary Oscar in 2013. He also garnered international acclaim for a number of popular films including, “The Damned,” “Ludwig,” “Death in Venice” and “The Leopard,” in which his elaborate, period-piece designs took center stage. Other film credits include “La Cage Aux Folles,” “The Night Porter,” “Toby Dammit” and the Oscar foreign language film-winner “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.”

After growing up in Florence Italy, Tosi landed his first job as a costume assistant on a stage production of “Le chandelier,” before meeting the legendary stage and film director Luchino Visconti. Soon after, Tosi went...

I caught the American Cinematheque’s 4K restoration of Visconti’s ‘Death in Venice’ this past week, my second of the Visconti Retrospective that just wrapped.

The American Cinematheque’s moderator explained that Visconti used Mahler’s 5th and 3rd Symphonies because, in fact, Death in Venice was said to be about Gustave Mahler himself. I was surprised to hear this because when I read the book I thought it was more about Thomas Mann than Mahler, as it was about a famous pre-World War I author, Gustav von Aschenbach, making a trip to Venice in the hope of overcoming writer’s block.

And until the American Cinematheque’s screening, no one told me anything about it being about Mahler. Though I had seen the film when it came out in 1971, I thought it starred Burt Lancaster so I was surprised again to see that it starred Dirk Bogarde, who...

By Alex DeleonCharlotte Rampling in the Festival SpotlightThe first film seen at the festival in the homage to Charlotte Rampling retro was somewhat of a disappointment. I had seen this picture when it first came out in Japan and was favorably impressed at the time by its outrageous sense of the absurd, especially as made by a serious A level Japanese director like Nagisa Oshima (died 2013 at age 80). This time around the humor, at least for me, did not hold up and I was rather bored most of the way.

Today it is of little more than passing historical interest

There is, however, an interesting background to this very offbeat Franco-Japanese co-production from the year 1986 by which timeNagisa Ôshima was regarded as a first class Japanese iconoclast. Outside of Japan he was highly regarded in France where his mainstream hardcore porno films In the realm of the Senses (1976) and Empire of Passion...

Ghost Town AnthologyThe titles for the 69th Berlin International Film Festival are being announced in anticipation of the event running February 7-17, 2019. We will update the program as new films are revealed.COMPETITIONThe Ground Beneath My FeetThe Golden Glove (Faith Akin, Germany/France)By the Grace of GodThe Kindness of StrangersI Was at Home, but A Tale of Three SistersGhost Town Anthology (Denis Côté, Canada)Berlinale SPECIALGully Boy (Zoya Akhtar, India)BrechtWatergate (Charles Ferguson, USA)Panorama 201937 Seconds (Hikari (Mitsuyo Miyazaki), Japan)Dafne (Federico Bondi, Italy)The Day After I'm Gone (Nimrod Eldar, Israel)A Dog Called Money (Seamus Murphy, Ireland/UK)Waiting for the CarnivalChainedFlatland (Jenna Bass, South Africa/Germany/Luxembourg)Greta (Armando Praça, Brazil)Hellhole (Bas Devos, Belgium/Netherlands)Jessica Forever (Caroline Poggi, Jonathan Vinel, France)AcidMid90s (Jonah Hill, USA) Family MembersMonos (Alejandro Landes, Columbia/Argentina/Netherlands/Germany/Denmark/Sweden/Uruguay) O Beautiful Night (Xaver Böhm,...

One of international cinema’s undisputed greats in costume design, Piero Tosi’s work first faced the awards season spotlight 64 years ago with only his third film, Luchino Visconti’s masterwork “Senso,” which competed for the Golden Lion in Venice in 1954.

Nominated for five Oscars for costume design and recipient of an honorary Oscar in 2013, Tosi’s impact on the art of film is immeasurable. Visconti’s films such as “The Damned,” “Ludwig,” “Death in Venice” and the incomparable “The Leopard” garnered international acclaim as stunning period visual masterpieces and were all spectacular showcases for Tosi’s celebrated designs. Other triumphs included “La Cage Aux Folles,” “The Night Porter,” Federico Fellini’s “Toby Dammit” and Oscar foreign language film-winner “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow.”

Also noted as mentor and teacher for generations of costume designers, Tosi’s work in this field is on view in “Piero Tosi. Exercises on Beauty. The...

Charlotte Rampling (45 Years) will receive an Honorary Golden Bear at the 2019 Berlin International Film Festival. The festival will also present a homage to the feted British actress’s career: movies will include The Damned, The Night Porter, The Verdict, Swimming Pool and Stardust Memories. Rampling presided over the festival’s jury in in 2006 and in 2015 she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for 45 Years, for which she was also Oscar-nominated. “I’m very happy that this year’s Homage is dedicated to the sublime actress Charlotte Rampling,” said Berlinale Director Dieter Kosslick. “She is an icon of unconventional and exciting cinema.” The prolific Rampling, whose career spans six decades, has recently played in Red Sparrow, The Little Stranger and Michel Blanc’s Kiss & Tell. She will next be seen in Paul Verhoeven’s film Benedetta, scheduled for release in 2019.

The third International Film Festival and Awards Macao handed...

Rampling won a SIlver Bear at Berlinale in 2015.

Actress Charlotte Rampling is to be awarded the Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement at the 69th Berlin International Film Festival (Feb 7-17).

Berlin will also host a homage to her work, including The Night Porter (1974), directed by Liliana Cavani, François Ozon’s The Swimming Pool (2003) and Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980).

Other notable other performances in a career spanning more than 100 film and television roles include Luchino Visconti’s The Damned, the Oscar-nominated The Wings of the Dove, TV series London Spy and Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years, which won Rampling a...

Oscar-nominated actress Charlotte Rampling, whose career has spanned more than 100 film and television roles, will be honored with a special Golden Bear at the upcoming Berlin Film Festival.

The fest will also pay homage to Rampling by screening a selection of her work, including Sidney Lumet’s “The Verdict” (1982), Francois Ozon’s “Swimming Pool” (2003) and Andrea Pallaoro’s “Hannah” (2017). The honorary Golden Bear will be presented to the veteran performer Feb. 14 at a ceremony featuring a showing of Liliana Cavani’s “The Night Porter” (1974).

“I’m very happy that this year’s homage is dedicated to the sublime actress Charlotte Rampling,” said Dieter Kosslick, the director of the Berlinale. “She is an icon of unconventional and exciting cinema.”

Rampling won the Silver Bear in 2015 for her performance in “45 Years” opposite Tom Courtenay; she also received an Academy Award nomination for the role. She served as president of the Berlinale...

Italy’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia is ramping up production of restored Italian cinema gems with several high-profile titles set to screen at upcoming festivals including the Taviani Brothers’ “Good Morning Babilonia” which plays Thursday on Locarno’s Piazza Grande, presented by Paolo Taviani.

The fablelike “Babilonia,” which is about two immigrant stonemasons who work on the sets for D. W. Griffith’s ”Intolerance,” has been praised by Locarno artistic director Carlo Chatrian as “not just a homage to the great Italian tradition of art and craft workshops, but also an insightful interpretation of what cinema is about.”

The film’s restoration was supervised by its original cinematographer Beppe Lanci, as Csc chief Felice Laudadio points out.

Laudadio has been instrumental to the current push for more restorations being done by the Csc’s film archives. “The plan from now up to next May is for 12 films, which has never been done before,...

Non-FictionThe programme for the 2018 edition of the Venice Film Festival has been unveiled, and includes new films from Tsai Ming-liang, Frederick Wiseman, Sergei Loznitsa, Olivier Assayas, the Coen Brothers, and many more.COMPETITIONFirst Man (Damien Chazelle)The Mountain (Rick Alverson)Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas)The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard)The Ballad of Buster ScruggsVox Lux (Brady Corbet)Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)22 July (Paul Greengrass)Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino)Werk ohne autor (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent)The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)Peterloo (Mike Leigh)Capri-revolution (Mario Martone)What You Gonna Do When the World's On Fire? (Roberto Minervini)Sunset (László Nemes)Frères ennemis (David Oeloffen)Where Life is Born (Carlos Reygadas)At Eternity's Gate (Julian Schnabel)Acusada (Gonzalo Tobal)Killing (Shinya Tsukamoto)Out Of COMPETITIONFeaturesThe Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (Morgan Neville)L'amica geniale (Saverio Costanzo)Il diario di angela - noi...

The Venice Film Festival is celebrating its 75th year in 2018 with a star-studded lineup that includes world premieres from Damien Chazelle, Bradley Cooper, Luca Guadagnino, and Alfonso Cuarón. The festival takes place August 29 to September 8 and marks the official kickoff of the 2018 fall awards season.

As has been previously announced, Damien Chazelle will open the festival with the world premiere of “First Man.” The space race drama stars Chazelle’s “La La Land” Oscar nominee Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong and recounts the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. The world premiere will be Chazelle’s second Venice opener after “La La Land.” Also confirmed prior to the announcement lineup was Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born,” which marks the actor’s directorial debut.

Check out the full lineup for the 2018 Venice Film Festival below. This year’s competition jury is led by Guillermo del Toro, who won the...

During the last edition of the Beirut Art Film Festival, a young but already indispensable event for art and cinema lovers in the Lebanese capital, we chanced upon what is believed to be the biggest movie posters collection in the Arab world. While casually browsing a local magazine our eyes were caught by a photo portraying a smiling middle-aged man surrounded by huge stacks of old posters in what looked like a treasure trove for cinephiles. Thanks to the generosity and good offices of the Lebanese playwright Nadine Mokdessi, the day after we found ourselves before that very man in that very vault of film memorabilia. Abboudi Abou Jaoudé very kindly welcomed us in the charming cubicle where he has stored the proceeds from over 40 years of assiduous film collecting. Nestled in the back of the archives of the publishing house he runs, its cozy walls protect from deterioration and...

Exclusive: Oscar-nominee Charlotte Rampling is attached to join the cast of Elle and Basic Instinct director Paul Verhoeven’s upcoming steamy thriller Blessed Virgin, I can reveal. Rampling is being lined up for a key supporting role alongside Virginie Efira (Elle), Lambert Wilson (The Matrix Reloaded) and rising Belgian-Greek actress Daphne Patakia (Djam).

Pathé handles international sales and French distribution on the anticipated French-language drama, which reteams Elle duo Verhoeven and Belgian actress Efira. The latter stars as Benedetta Carlini, a novice nun capable of performing miracles, who joins an Italian convent in the late 17th century, as plague is ravaging the land. While at the convent she begins a love affair with another woman. Script comes from Verhoeven and his Elle co-writer David Birke.

The feature, which mixes religion and erotica, is an adaption of Judith C. Brown’s academic work Immodest Acts: The Life Of A Lesbian Nun...

It's not easy to watch the slow deterioration of a good person, especially a woman as intelligent and complex as Hannah (Charlotte Rampling). Her husband (André Wilms) has been carted off to prison in their native Belgium for reasons unknown. But Hannah carries on, trying to live life as she knows it. Then life starts to squeeze her out.

At least, that's the premise of this slow, deliberate film, directed and co-written by Andrea Pallaoro, following a striking 2013 debut with Medeas. He refuses to coddle audiences or fill in the...

“I got annoyed by Spike Lee. That’s all.”

Source: Wiki Commons

Charlotte Rampling

Charlotte Rampling was at the international Film Festival Rotterdam this week for the screening of Andrea Pallor’s Hannah.

In an interview with Screen International, she reflected on her work with Luchino Visconti and Woody Allen; spoke of her continuing pride in The Night Porter, expressed regret over her controversial remarks about the lack of black nominees in the 2016 Oscars, and explained why she didn’t want to discuss the #MeToo Movement.

Rampling again expressed her regret over “racist to whites” comments two years ago on an early morning radio show during the promotion campaign for 45 Years, for which she was nominated for an Oscar. “It was very early in the morning and everyone was asking questions about that. It was not a very sensible thing to say but I was very tired. My husband died two months before,” Rampling said on stage...

The longer I consider ‘Elle,’ the more I struggle with it. It’s a bit of a conundrum for me. At the heart of it is this great and daring performance by Isabelle Huppert, the one that finally garnered her an Oscar nomination that’s been long, long overdue; she doesn’t look it, but she’s 65 years old, and has looked like she’s been at her sexiest and sultriest at 42 for about 10 years now. Of course, she’s been playing roles like these far longer than that, which only makes me more befuddled as to why this was the one that enraptured the Academy. I guess it could’ve been it’s director, Paul Verhoeven, although that seems peculiar too, he’s never been an Academy favorite, and I’ve never cared for him either. This is his first French language film, but he’s actually Belgian and to his credit,...

With Christmas now only a week away, there’s a big day of genre-related home entertainment releases to look forward to in the meantime, just in case you were in need of some last-minute gift ideas (or if you were looking to spoil yourself, which is totally cool). Easily my most anticipated Blu-ray release for all of 2017, Synapse Films' stunning 4K restoration of Suspiria gets the royal treatment via an incredible three-disc limited edition Steelbook set this Tuesday, and Severin Films is also keeping busy with their HD upgrade of The Amicus Collection, which includes Asylum, And Now The Screaming Starts, and The Beast Must Die.

Other notable Blu-ray and DVD releases for December 19th include American Gothic, Leatherface, mother!, and the limited edition Steelbook for Donnie Darko.

American Gothic (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)

A new tale of terror from the director of The Legend of Hell House and The Incubus.

The actor reveals her favourite Parisian hangouts, her love of timeless, authentic places, and the book that’s teaching her to understand cats

Born in Sturmer, Essex, Charlotte Rampling was brought up in Gibraltar, France and Spain. After briefly working as a model she turned to acting, appearing in Georgy Girl (1966), The Damned (1969), The Night Porter (1974), Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories (1980) and several François Ozon films, including Swimming Pool (2003). In 2015 she won a number of awards for her role in Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years. Rampling has been nominated four times for France’s César awards, winning once. She was made an OBE in 2000, and received France’s Légion d’Honneur in 2002. Her TV work includes Dexter, Broadchurch and London Spy. Her new autobiography, Who I Am, is published by Icon and on 27 May she discusses her life and career at the Hay festival.

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45 Years In this exquisitely calibrated film by Andrew Haigh (Weekend), Charlotte Rampling (The Night Porter) and Tom Courtenay (Billy Liar) perform a subtly off-kilter pas de deux as Kate and Geoff, an English couple who, on the eve of an anniversary celebration, find their long marriage shaken by the arrival of a letter to Geoff that unceremoniously collapses his past into their shared present. Haigh carries the tradition of British realist cinema to artful new heights in 45 Years, weaving the momentous into the mundane as the pair go about their daily lives, while the evocatively flat, wintry Norfolk landscape frames their struggle to maintain an increasingly untenable status  [ Read More ]

The post The Criterion Collection Adds 45 Years, Being There, and Blow-Up, and Others For March 2017 #Criterion appeared first on Shockya.com.

Last month, The Criterion Collection finally announced their forthcoming release of Richard Linklater‘s The Before Trilogy and now with the announcement of their March titles, a few more highly-requested titles will be coming to the collection. Perhaps the most sought-after, Michelangelo Antonioni‘s English-language debut and counterculture landmark Blow-Up, will be arriving on the line-up.

Also coming is the previously teased 45 Years from Andrew Haigh, one of the finest films of last year (featuring an incredible, outside-the-box cover), as well as Hal Ashby‘s Being There, John Waters‘ Multiple Maniacs, which recently got a restored theatrical run, and Felipe Cazals‘ Canoa: A Shameful Memory.

Notable special features include a new documentaries on Blow-Up, Being There, and 45 Years, audio commentaries from Haigh and Waters, as well as a Guillermo del Toro introduction for Canoa, and a talk between the director and Alfonso Cuarón. Check out the full details for each release after the artwork.

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Charlotte Rampling’s Best Actress Oscar nomination for her turn in Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years marks the first time she has been recognized by the Academy, despite five decades of work on the big screen that includes memorable turns in films like The Damned, The Night Porter and The Verdict. In France, where the actress—who turned 70 earlier this month—spends most of her time, she’s known as “La Légende”, and it’s hard to argue with the AMPAS selection when you consider the stoic, subtle and affecting work she showcases in 45 Years.

Giving her first in-depth interview since her comments on French radio in January sparked a brouhaha around the #OscarsSoWhite protests, Rampling arrives quietly and perhaps a little timidly. Her comments “could have been misinterpreted,” she later told CBS’ Sunday Morning in a statement, adding, “I simply meant to say that in an ideal world, every performance...