Posts Tagged ‘1960s’
Cross-o-gram!
Rape of the Vampire is French exploitation auteur Jean Rollin’s first feature-length film, for which he received financing after a producer saw Rollin’s short film of the same name. Rollin shot a second part, slapped it together with the original short and the result is what is reputedly the first French vampire film. Because of the strike and student protests in May 1968, French distributors froze new releases, which meant that Rape of the Vampire became the most successful French movie of that year. I’m sure Rollin would agree with Homer Simpson, that the two most beautiful words in the English language are “de” and “fault”. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Bernard Letrou, Catherine Deville, Exploitation, Jean Rollin, Marquis Polho, Solange Pradel, Ursule Pauly, Vampire
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Esther, Anna, Johan: Objects in space
Two women, Esther (Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (Gunnel Lindblom), travel by train to a hotel in an unnamed foreign city along with Anna’s young son, Johan (Jörgen Lindström). Esther is dying and is left in the hotel room while Anna goes out to have sex with a waiter and Johan explores the hotel.
Like the two preceding films in Bergman’s “trilogy of faith” — Through a Glass Darkly and Winter Light — The Silence is a series of failed communications, and continues the exploration of the search for meaning in a world where God is silent. So silent is he in this film that he is barely mentioned. A church is mentioned in passing as a cool place where Anna had sex with the waiter; the church in The Silence is a wholly corporeal place, devoid of grace, offering only bodily comfort. And like in Winter Light, the spectre of war hangs over The Silence: outside the train on their way to the city, they see lines and lines of tanks outside the window. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Drama, Gunnel Lindblom, Ingmar Bergman, Ingrid Thulin, Jörgen Lindström, The Silence, Trilogy of Faith
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Thomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) and Märta (Ingrid Thulin).
A widowed priest, Thomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), has lost his faith in God. After a sermon, a fisherman, Jonas (Max von Sydow), comes to see him, troubled by his own lack of faith and anxious about the state of the world — he saw a news story saying the Chinese are brought up to hate us, and that they’ll soon have the bomb. Thomas speaks to Jonas and thinks he was able to help, but Jonas shoots himself soon after their conversation. Meanwhile, the local schoolteacher, Märta (Ingrid Thulin), is in love with Thomas, who either is unable to love her back or is at least unable to admit to himself that he loves her. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Drama, Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingmar Bergman, Ingrid Thulin, Max von Sydow, Trilogy of Faith, Winter Light
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Karin (Harriet Andersson) finds God.
A second-rate author, David (Gunnar Björnstrand), his son and daughter, Minus (Lars Passgård) and Karin (Harriet Andersson), and the daughter’s husband, Martin (Max von Sydow), are staying on an island. Karin is a latent schizophrenic who has just gotten back from hospital, while David has just returned from Switzerland, where he fled to write when Karin fell ill. On the island, Karin’s condition worsens; she wakes in the night and goes up to the attic, where she hears voices talking from behind the frayed wallpaper. They tell her to read her father’s diary, where she learns that her condition is incurable and that her father is disgusted to find himself studying her as a subject for his writing. Meanwhile, Minus tries and fails to connect with his father, and Martin grows ever more desperate at his inability to help Karin. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Drama, Gunnar Björnstrand, Harriet Andersson, Ingmar Bergman, Lars Passgård, Max von Sydow, Through a Glass Darkly, Trilogy of Faith
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“At the same time, the chasm between what you are to others and what you are to yourself — the feeling of vertigo and the constant desire to finally be exposed, to be seen through, cut down, perhaps even annihilated.”
A projector lamp. Film running through spools. A penis. A nail driven through a hand. A spider. Footage from a silent film. Bodies in the morgue. A boy watches Bibi Anderson’s and Liv Ullman’s faces on a screen. No, that isn’t an excerpt from a Coleman Francis film’s narration, but a list of some of the images which open Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. [...]
Tags: 1960s, Bibi Andersson, Drama, Hyper-Real, Identity, Ingmar Bergman, Liv Ullman, Margareta Krook, Persona, Surreal, Sven Nykvist
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(Roger Vadim, 1968).
Jane Fonda sleeps her way across an alien planet looking for Duran Duran and falls in with some loopy revolutionaries. The visuals are over-the-top, the effects are cheesy, Fonda is sexy, and the writing is naïve in that endearing 60s-science-fiction way. A fun way to spend 90 minutes.
Tags: 1960s, Comedy, Jane Fonda, Roger Vadim, Science Fiction
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(Ray Greene, 2001).
A documentary about US exploitation films from the 50s and 60s. Has the usual fringe-film-doc dilemma, in that it, quite naturally, focuses heavily on the exploiteers who were willing to be interviewed. This of course means that it can study its subjects – Roger Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Harry Novak, &c – in quite some depth, but it also means that it ignores a lot of key figures and films. Which is only to be expected; no one documentary can encompass all exploitation cinema. The film also has a tendency to go on the defensive about the artistic significance of some films, which hurts its credibility. [...]
Tags: 1950s, 1960s, Documentary, Exploitation, Harry Novak, Roger Corman, Samuel Arkoff
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