Vanity Fair Hollywood Issue 2012

Great to get this year's Hollywood issue of VANITY FAIR - once a magazine junkie, always a magazine junkie! This one is essential for European film fanatics: new interviews with those two 77 year olds - Sophia Loren in splendid seclusion at her home in Geneva as caught by Annie Leibovitz, and Brigitte Bardot at St Tropez - no new photos from there though. Good to get these 2 icons looking back on it all now ... and that biographer (or cuttings compiler) Charlotte Chandler writes about Antonioni and Fellini with some interesting photos too - she really did know everyone, being photographed here with her head on Antonioni's chest over lunch. This year's cover is by Mario Testino on the new girls in town (Rooney, Mia, Jessica etc). Esther Williams at 90 answers their monthly questionnaire; and the essential movie of the last 30 years? - not PULP FICTION nor E.T. nor TOY STORY - but DINER
!
Below: last year's cover headed by Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and James Franco - and bottom the 2001 roundup including Loren, Deneuve, Vanessa, Meryl, Cate and Kate, Gwynneth, Penelope, Nicole ... so much glamour and talent in one room, if there were all there at the same time !

Italian Vanity Fair celebrates Monica Vitti's 80th birthday

Belated birthday wishes to Monica Vitti - 80 years old on November 3 ! Nice to see that Italian "Vanity Fair" is celebrating her with a cover and feature, mentioning "the silence of a long illness" (which may be Alzheimers, which would explain why she has not been seen in public for some years, not even at Antonioni's funeral in 2007).

http://amagazine10.blog.fc2.com/blog-entry-356.html

Click images to enlarge, no English translation though ! and thanks to Kraechnor II for link to this terrific YouTube montage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6uR6eELMLA

Good to see renewed interest in one of the '60s great stars, as per all my posts on her here, the art-house goddess of the Antonioni films with the mesmerising face and voice, and all those delicious comedies she did later ..... others may hate it but I simply love MODESTY BLAISE. I wouldn't say she is one of the "largest" Italian stars though, as the blurb at the link puts it! One of Italy's biggest stars certainly, but not largest !

The Italian "Vanity Fair" may not be available here in the UK (unless in specialist shops in Soho) but I can at least print out and translate the relevant pages. Its a nice spread of 7 pages with lots of pictures - Monica always looks stunning, particularly in those '60s creations...

A gentleman of course does not dwell on a lady's age, but I see a lot of Italian films so all these Italian ladies seem ageless to me; hard to believe that Gina in her 80s, Monica now 80, Sophia 77 and Claudia a mere 73 ! Next Antonioni review: THE OBERWALD MYSTERY.

For a friend in Brazil ...

For a friend of mine in Brazil who mentioned that glamorous '50s actress Lisa Gastoni - here she is on the cover of a free booklet which was given away with "Top Spot" and "Picture Show" magazines back in 1959 - I was 13 and loved it, full of photos and drawings of stars of the day, I shall have to include some.
Plus some Films & Filming covers: Graham Faulkner in Zeffirelli's BROTHER SUN SISTER MOON (below) which I enjoyed a lot back in 1973 - its a perfect Zeffirelli movie combining emotion, sentiment, religion, beautiful people and opulent settings. Graham Faulkner is ideal as St Francis and Valentina Cortese as his mother and the other others are all very special. He certainly learned a lot from Visconti, plus the cover with Fellini's SATYRICON - how I spoil people!

R.I.P: Some more obits & 1982

JOHN HOWARD DAVIES (1939-2011) - Oliver in David Lean's 1948 classic, when he was 9. He grew up though to produce (and direct) some of Britain's finest comedy classics during the golden age of television. FAWLTY TOWERS and the early MONTY PYTHONS for the BBC, (he directed the first 4 episodes). He produced THE GOOD LIFE for it's entire run, THE WORLD OF BEACHCOMBER in the early days of BBC2. He became Head of Comedy at BBC lauching series like YES MINISTER, NOT THE 9 O'CLOCK NEWS, ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES. It is a great legacy.

RICHARD PEARSON (1918-2011) Richard Pearson was one of the most distinctive English actors, on stage, television and cinema since the 1940s. He was the kind of actor on which the British theatre has always relied: utterly dependable and totally distinctive. He could always be counted on to play doctors, accountants, politicians, policemen and churchmen: anyone, in short, who seemed to embody professional solidity. Pearson always managed to invest these characters with an inner life and a look of wounded dignity.

I would have seen him on the stage as William Cecil opposite Eileen Atkins' Elizabeth I in Bolt's VIVAT REGINA in the 70s, and in the 80s he co-starred with Maggie Smith and Margaret Tyzack in the hit LETTICE AND LOVAGE. He also played in LOVE AMONG THE RUINS in '75 for Cukor with Katharine Hepburn and Olivier. Other films include CHARLIE BUBBLES, THE YELLOW ROLLS ROYCE, SUNDAY BLOODY SUNDAY and Polanski's PIRATES. It was a long enduring career - he was in the original production of Pinter's THE BIRTHDAY PARTY in '58 - and he had a good innings at 93.

STAN BARSTOW (1928-2011). Barstow was one of those new "kitchen sink" novelists who burst on the scene in the late 50s and early 60s, along with John Braine (ROOM AT THE TOP), Keith Waterhouse (BILLY LIAR), Shelagh Delaney (A TASTE OF HONEY) and Alan Sillitoe (SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING). Barstow's best known book A KIND OF LOVING was an enormous, likeable hit, its transends its period in it's timeless tale of a young couple falling into lust and then having to get married when she is pregnant - AND having to move in with her disapproving mother. John Schlesinger made a marvellous move from it in 1962, with great performances by Alan Bates, June Ritchie and Thora Hird. The book has always been in print, and is just one in Barstow's long career.



1982
Re-reading "Sight and Sound"'s partwork "Chronicle of Cinema" which they gave away some years ago, it is fascinating reading the lists of who died in each year - 1982 would have been of particular interest for me - as it saw the departure of several of my favourites: Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly's fatal car crash and Romy Schneider's mysterious early death, as well as the suicides of Patrick Dewaere and Rainer Werner Fassbinder (or accidental overdose, like John Belushi), as well as the likes of stalwarts and vererans Celia Johnson, Kenneth More, Henry Fonda, Eleanor Powell, Jacques Tati, Isa Miranda [whom I have just discovered], Curt Jurgens, Alma Reville (Mrs Hitchcock), directors Charles Walters, Elio Petri, Valerio Zurlini, King Vidor - and that great comedian Arthur Askey!

Fantasies of the Art House Audience

It has been illuminating this dreary wet summer to return to those early books of the collected writings of critic Pauline Kael [1919-2001]. We did not get the "New Yorker" at the time here in the UK, but those early books like "I Lost It At The Movies" and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" were essential early cinema books to cherish.

Her 1961 essay "Fantasies of the Art House Audience" [it was also published in "Sight and Sound"] is interesting now in it's depiction of that new phenomenon: the art house audience and their expectations. Suddenly every city or large town had its local art house where those early Bergmans and Fellinis were watched and dissected. Movie-going was no longer "going to the pictures" but a more rewarding, cultural experience. As Pauline puts it: "in the past few years there has appeared a new kind of filmgoer - he isn't interested in movies but in cinema". She mentions that a doctor friend told her she needn't bother with THE PINK PANTHER as it was just slapstick, when she told him she had had a good time at it "he was irritated and informed her that a movie should be more than a waste of time, it should be an exercise in taste that will enrich your life"!

She details the reverence with which HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR was received: "here was the audience soaking it up - audiences of social workers, scientists, doctors, architects, professors - living and loving and suffering just like the stenographer watching Susan Hayward. Are the experiences involved really so different? (It may be relevant to note that the educated audience which generally ignores Miss Hayward turned out for I WANT TO LIVE in which the character of Barabara Graham was turned into a sort of modern Tess of the D'Urbervilles: not only innocent of crime but horribly sinned against and nobler than anyone else)".

It is this kind of phrase that makes Kael so cherishable. She also says of "High Culture Cinema" that there is "more energy, more originality, more excitement, more art in American kitsch like GUNGA DIN, EASY LIVING, the Rogers and Astaire films like SWINGTIME and TOP HAT, in STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, HIS GIRL FRIDAY, CITIZEN KANE, THE LADY EVE, THE CRIMSON PIRATE, TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, THE AFRICAN QUEEN, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS or more recently THE HUSTLER, LOLITA, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, HUD, CHARADE than in the presumed "High Culture" of HIROSHIMA, MARIENBAD, LA NOTTE, L'ECLISSE - as Nabokov remarked "Nothing is more exhilerating than Philistine vulgarity"!

Well I defer to no one in my admiration of Antonioni and the others, but she does have a point. I had to disagree with her over her demolitions of UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME and BLOW-UP, but she is on the ball discussing films like VICTIM or A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE, as well as her notorious reviews of THE SOUND OF MUSIC (MONEY) or the abomination that is THE SINGING NUN.

"Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" [I still have my penfriend Gary Kendall's copy which he lent me in 1969 on his arrival in London from Australia] also has her terrific piece on "Movies On TV", followed up in her "5001 Nights At The Movies". "Going Steady" is a great collection on late '60s movies, her championing of Stresiand in FUNNY GIRL and as well as her demolition of Julie Andrews in STAR! and Hepburn in THE LION IN WINTER. Throughout the '70s and '80s one had to have her latest writings - titles like "Deeper Into Movies", "When the Lights Go Out", "Reeling" and the later ones like "Movie Love". A great critic should stimulate and make one revise one's own opinions, sometimes one may violently disagree with some trenchant views, but that is the joy of reading and writing about movies. These are tomes for every movie shelf.

What the well-dressed coffee table is wearing this summer

Another summer, another round of books, magazines waiting to be read ... biography and fiction, the new BLOW-UP book, guides on Italy and Greece, the latest BFI programme.


And here are a few I prepared earlier:


Back to '77-'78: another table, another batch of books and a BFI programme (on Truffaut), books on Ireland and Greece, a Hockney book, and current issues of "Films Illustrated", "Film Comment" and "Films & Filming", and that Habitat ashtray! Never get a glass-top coffee table - you have to clean it every day as every speck of dust shows!

Those '60s magazines and that '60s look ...

I had this issue of Town magazine back in 1962 when I was 16 and living in Ireland - it seemed the most glamorous magazine ever, as Monica Vitti and L'ECLISSE was the hip new talking points. I also got the Marilyn Monroe cover issue [it was a few months after her death], and then those "Films and Filming" magazines (as per label). Suddenly there were a whole new raft of new magazines for the swinging new decade, as the tired old magazines of the '50s [like "Picture Show"] were phased out. My mother used to get magazines like "Illustrated" - but now, also in 1962, we had the first colour supplement in the "Sunday Times" newspaper. Their colour magazines were innovative and I looked forward to them each week - photospreads on Egypt and other foreign locations, the new stars and the new movies. It was a very exciting time. Soon all the papers had weekend colour supplements too - it was a big source of advertising revenue.



How we looked in the '60s

Looking at this new coffee table book on BLOW-UP (as per earlier post, below) it got me thinking about how we looked in the '60s and into the '70s. I loved my white jeans, so '60s - blue bell-bottom jeans was the '70s look. Back in that pre-internet age before digital cameras, ipods and ipads, cellphones, dvds and even video, one thing we did was photograph each other a lot, even though we had to pay for pictures to be developed sight unseen - no deleting of unsuitable ones then! Here's just a selection from my back pages - I was certainly working that Beatle/Rolling Stones look, but then we all did then! along with the bells, beads, caftans, hipster jeans. The '70s and '80s were a different story though as the disco age and the clubbing era took over ...

"Films and filming" redux

To tie in with new movie cult magazine LITTLE JOE [inspired of course by Joe Dallesandro] and their appraisal on British movie magazine Films and filming during it's heyday from 1954 to 1980, by Justin Bengry, here are a few more of those daring (then) magazine covers.

To give the magazine it's due this was the late '60s and early '70s when the barriers regarding nudity and daring themes were being stretched all the time, by the likes of Kubrick, Antonioni, Schlesinger, Losey, Visconti and Peckinpah down to more exploitative trash - but yes, as the article states "one could no longer read it on the bus or at the office", hence part of it's decline, and as more explicity gay magazines became available.



As per the labels, I have written about Films and Filming several times before, as I had been getting the magazine since 1962 (when I was 16), I put my own contact ad in when I was 17 in 1963 [in that pre-internet age] and made lots of new friends - one of whom I must write to now, as we are still in contact 48 years later (he is now resident in San Francisco).
I worked for the magazine in the '70s and knew the owner Philip Dosse and did some writing for the editor Robin Bean. Philip and Robin are gone now but they would be pleased to see their magazine is still fondly remembered and is an important cultural artefact.

And as for Little Joe - here is the London advertising for when FLESH opened back then, amid a flurry of police arrests ... it became a hot topic as the quality press campaigned for freedom of choice to see material like this, similar material which now would be available on television most nights.... how things change. (click image twice to enlarge)