Two chocolate cakes in the Wellman-programme: In The Star Witness, two "Tristkinder" (Hofbauerkommando) get to eat and fight over one for dessert, in Wild Boys of the Road the wild boys manage to steal another one (identically looking; maybe it was the same prop) when hastily leaving a room. Both times I was reminded of the greatest of all cinematic chocolate cakes, which I had discovered in Bologna one year earlier: The one, which in Dwan's Rendezvous with Annie leads a man to joy & happiness first, and then almost to his doom. Is there a place in contemporary cinema for this kind of massive, possibly heart-attack-inducing, well defined, but at the same time very plain, matter-of-fact-like sweet? The cinematic and televisual cakes of today look like the movies they are parts of: rather weird in comparison, either way too ornamental, or, quite the opposite, formless, just stuff made out of dough.
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One shot in Il flore del deserto, an early, exoticist Italian adventure short: The heroine has been abducted by soldiers, is meant to marry a sultan (?), but decides to kill herself instead. She chooses suicide by snake. What follows is a quasi-documentary shot, a long take of the woman dancing with the snake, snuggling up against the snake, tossing the snake around her body. The scene builds up to kiss-, or even fellatio-like intensity. The bite itself is never seen, but still the woman dies. Maybe just because she came to close to her own desire.
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The shortes, and probably funniest film I saw at this year's Ritrovato: Sister Mary Jane's Top Note, a one minute slapstick farce: A man presents Mary Jane, she starts to sing, and immediately the whole world comes crumbling down. "The whole world" is just one stage-like set, with three walls and a handful of objects. The mayhem is all the more complete: There's no safe place to flee to, once the top note is sung.
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A melancholic faux Hitler roaming the streets of Vienna in The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler.
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A long tracking shot in the sewers of Paris in Freda's Il miserabili.
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Baseball playing youth in Japanese films form the 1930s.
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One shot in Il flore del deserto, an early, exoticist Italian adventure short: The heroine has been abducted by soldiers, is meant to marry a sultan (?), but decides to kill herself instead. She chooses suicide by snake. What follows is a quasi-documentary shot, a long take of the woman dancing with the snake, snuggling up against the snake, tossing the snake around her body. The scene builds up to kiss-, or even fellatio-like intensity. The bite itself is never seen, but still the woman dies. Maybe just because she came to close to her own desire.
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The shortes, and probably funniest film I saw at this year's Ritrovato: Sister Mary Jane's Top Note, a one minute slapstick farce: A man presents Mary Jane, she starts to sing, and immediately the whole world comes crumbling down. "The whole world" is just one stage-like set, with three walls and a handful of objects. The mayhem is all the more complete: There's no safe place to flee to, once the top note is sung.
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A melancholic faux Hitler roaming the streets of Vienna in The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler.
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A long tracking shot in the sewers of Paris in Freda's Il miserabili.
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Baseball playing youth in Japanese films form the 1930s.
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