What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

The Collector from 1967 [French with English subtitles]


You can't get much more "French cinema" than The Collector. Three young, good-looking people with money in their pockets spend their summer vacation at a villa on the French Riviera being all angsty, while having pseudo-intellectual discussions about the meaning of their existence instead of having fun. What a waste of youth, looks, money and the French Riviera.

Two friends, Patrick and Daniel, borrow a third friend's villa for their summer vacation only, upon arrival, to discover cute-at-heck Haydee is also staying there. Two American guys would be outwardly pumped; two British guys would be politely pleased; but our French guys are unhappy their planned solitude is being disturbed. As noted, it's a very French movie.

Patrick, who has an angsty French (sorry for the redundancy) girlfriend back in Paris, narrates, which allows us to hear his overwrought philosophy on, one, his desire for solitude, two, the cause of sexual tension in the villa with Haydee there (here's the real cause of the tension: the two guys want to sleep with her) and, three, all the reasons he doesn't want to sleep with Haydee (which is just one big lie, but he takes it very seriously).

Haydee, who fully understands the value of advertising, spends half the movie in a very tiny bikini. She also parties her nights away in town, ending most evenings in bed with a different guy. Meanwhile, less well-drawn Daniel just looks sadly pissed off all the time while spouting odd circular logic about why or why not he or Patrick should or should not sleep with Haydee.

The rest of the movie is watching everyone look bored while jockeying for position in some odd French game of philosophical and sexual intellectual advantage. Finally, Haydee and Daniel sleep together, but instead of it being fun, it's just a springboard for more long disaffected conversations about what their bed bouncing did or did not mean.

There's a small side story about Patrick using Haydee to help him get an investor for his art gallery (using, as in asking her to have sex with the potential investor). Since no one really says what they mean or says anything clearly or tells the truth, you don't really know for sure what happened (best guess, nothing happened).

Haydee, herself, seems indifferent to it all, which highlights she is either a melancholy enigma or a young pretty girl posing as a melancholy enigma to give the impression of being something more than just a young pretty girl (I'm going with the latter).

After about an hour and half of this, the movie ends with (spoiler alert, I guess) Patrick not sleeping with Haydee, which maybe means he was faithful to his girlfriend (not sure he or the girlfriend even care) or maybe means he intellectualized himself out of some fun vacation slap and tickle with coltish Haydee.

The Collector (Haydee is a "collector" of men - a French intellectual way of saying "slut," it seems) is the greatest advertisement for not overthinking things. You're young, good looking, on vacation and there's a pretty girl who'll sleep with you, to everyone, but a French intellectual (in a movie anyway), there are no dots left to connect: sleep with the girl and call it a good vacation.

The Collector's cinematography of the French Riviera is pretty in a very 1960s cultural-upheaval way. The villa the characters stay at is beautiful on the outside, but inside looks more like it had been used as a makeshift prison and then abandoned than an upscale vacation home - maybe it's a metaphor for something, but who cares. Despite all its French waste-of-time angst and over intellectualizing, there are worse movies, but you absolutely have to be in just the right mood to somewhat enjoy this one.


N.B. Since this is 2021, please understand that the above comments about the French are directed at the sleeve of French cinema that indulgences in these types of angsty, pseudo-intellectual and depressing movies and not at the French people in general. And, some of it is tongue-in-cheek.

 

[Harp]

^Sounds like the boys have read way too much Foucault, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Weil, Derrida
and forgotten their Rousseau and Voltaire.

Off topic: Le 2e regimente de parachutistes de la Legion Etrangere francaise is based on Corsica
and the beaches around Ajjacio are annually invaded by women who travel there to sleep with legionnaires.
Any American special forces who just happen to be in Ajjacio on "temporary exchange" are also gal grab bait.
No pious Sorbonne, University of Paris, left bank nerds. 'Nuff said. I know nothing about all this stuff.
Always thought nerdy French cinema should make a flick about the Legion's Ajjacio beach.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Ramen Heads, a documentary on Hulu about ramen chefs in Japan. Think Jiro Dreams of Sushi, but encompassing the larger ramen community, with several ramen superstars.

 

[MisterCairo]

Hallowe'en Cavalcade of Horror continues, with Nightmare on Elm Street. Robert Englund (whom I first knew from the tv show V) ruins dreams and purees a very young Johnny Depp into tomato juice.

 

[MisterCairo]

View attachment 374199
The Collector from 1967 [French with English subtitles]


You can't get much more "French cinema" than The Collector. Three young, good-looking people with money in their pockets spend their summer vacation at a villa on the French Riviera being all angsty, while having pseudo-intellectual discussions about the meaning of their existence instead of having fun. What a waste of youth, looks, money and the French Riviera.

Two friends, Patrick and Daniel, borrow a third friend's villa for their summer vacation only, upon arrival, to discover cute-at-heck Haydee is also staying there. Two American guys would be outwardly pumped; two British guys would be politely pleased; but our French guys are unhappy their planned solitude is being disturbed. As noted, it's a very French movie.

Patrick, who has an angsty French (sorry for the redundancy) girlfriend back in Paris, narrates, which allows us to hear his overwrought philosophy on, one, his desire for solitude, two, the cause of sexual tension in the villa with Haydee there (here's the real cause of the tension: the two guys want to sleep with her) and, three, all the reasons he doesn't want to sleep with Haydee (which is just one big lie, but he takes it very seriously).

Haydee, who fully understands the value of advertising, spends half the movie in a very tiny bikini. She also parties her nights away in town, ending most evenings in bed with a different guy. Meanwhile, less well-drawn Daniel just looks sadly pissed off all the time while spouting odd circular logic about why or why not he or Patrick should or should not sleep with Haydee.

The rest of the movie is watching everyone look bored while jockeying for position in some odd French game of philosophical and sexual intellectual advantage. Finally, Haydee and Daniel sleep together, but instead of it being fun, it's just a springboard for more long disaffected conversations about what their bed bouncing did or did not mean.

There's a small side story about Patrick using Haydee to help him get an investor for his art gallery (using, as in asking her to have sex with the potential investor). Since no one really says what they mean or says anything clearly or tells the truth, you don't really know for sure what happened (best guess, nothing happened).

Haydee, herself, seems indifferent to it all, which highlights she is either a melancholy enigma or a young pretty girl posing as a melancholy enigma to give the impression of being something more than just a young pretty girl (I'm going with the latter).

After about an hour and half of this, the movie ends with (spoiler alert, I guess) Patrick not sleeping with Haydee, which maybe means he was faithful to his girlfriend (not sure he or the girlfriend even care) or maybe means he intellectualized himself out of some fun vacation slap and tickle with coltish Haydee.

The Collector (Haydee is a "collector" of men - a French intellectual way of saying "slut," it seems) is the greatest advertisement for not overthinking things. You're young, good looking, on vacation and there's a pretty girl who'll sleep with you, to everyone, but a French intellectual (in a movie anyway), there are no dots left to connect: sleep with the girl and call it a good vacation.

The Collector's cinematography of the French Riviera is pretty in a very 1960s cultural-upheaval way. The villa the characters stay at is beautiful on the outside, but inside looks more like it had been used as a makeshift prison and then abandoned than an upscale vacation home - maybe it's a metaphor for something, but who cares. Despite all its French waste-of-time angst and over intellectualizing, there are worse movies, but you absolutely have to be in just the right mood to somewhat enjoy this one.


N.B. Since this is 2021, please understand that the above comments about the French are directed at the sleeve of French cinema that indulgences in these types of angsty, pseudo-intellectual and depressing movies and not at the French people in general. And, some of it is tongue-in-cheek.

Added to my "Had never heard of it till now, but will never watch it in any case" list.

 

[MisterCairo]

Hallowe'en Horror Fest continues. With the younger bairn, Ghostbusters (2016). On my own, Phantasm, the 1979 classic with The Tall Man and the flying metal skull-drilling globe.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Dangerous Beauty, a 1998 period drama based on true incidents, about a sixteenth-century courtesan in Venice who was as famous for her intellect and wit as her beauty and sexual skills. Starring Catherine McCormack, Rufus Sewell, Oliver Platt, Naomi Watts, and Jacqueline Bisset, and directed by Marshall Herskovitz (of thirtysomething fame, though his post-TV career hasn't been as significant as partner Ed Zwick's).

Not quite a good film, but it's reasonably diverting. It could make a good double feature with the thematically similar Memoirs of a Geisha.

 

[Harp]

Dangerous Beauty, a 1998 period drama based on true incidents, about a sixteenth-century courtesan in Venice who was as famous for her intellect and wit as her beauty and sexual skills. Starring Catherine McCormack, Rufus Sewell, Oliver Platt, Naomi Watts, and Jacqueline Bisset, and directed by Marshall Herskovitz (of thirtysomething fame, though his post-TV career hasn't been as significant as partner Ed Zwick's).

Not quite a good film, but it's reasonably diverting. It could make a good double feature with the thematically similar Memoirs of a Geisha.

This must be Veronica Franco. I recall she died fairly young but made her mark. I wish 18th Century British
philosopher Margaret Cavendish who penned The Convent of Pleasure with other far more secular philosophic
tracts would become film subject. Loved Geisha.

 

[Zombie_61]

Hallowe'en Horror Fest continues. With the younger bairn, Ghostbusters (2016)...

Let me preface this by saying I thought the best thing about the 1984 Ghostbusters movie was the converted ambulance, so, no, not a fan. That said, I tried to watch the 2016 remake when it came to television and got about 45 in before I decided I'd rather have a root canal without the benefit of anesthesia.

 

[MisterCairo]

Let me preface this by saying I thought the best thing about the 1984 Ghostbusters movie was the converted ambulance, so, no, not a fan. That said, I tried to watch the 2016 remake when it came to television and got about 45 in before I decided I'd rather have a root canal without the benefit of anesthesia.

Thanks for sharing!

 

[Trenchfriend]

1984??

Prefering Terminator, all the time!

 

[Zombie_61]

Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, I know my views run contrary to popular opinion; story of my life.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Yellow Rolls-Royce from 1964 with Rex Harrison, Ingrid Bergman, Omar Sharif, George C. Scott, Shirley MacLaine and Art Carney


The idea sounds great on paper: let's make a movie about an item, like a coat or a car, and show how it impacts the lives of its various owners over time. But instead, we see the difference between theory versus practice, as the two movies made on this premise - 1942's Tales of Manhattan and The Yellow Rolls-Royce - are both uneven efforts.

Both are also saved by their actors. Edward G. Robinson gives a powerful performance in Tales of New York and Rex Harrison and Ingrid Bergman, with others, hold a wobbly The Yellow Rolls-Royce up by dint of acting talent. The Yellow Rolls-Royce also gets a lift from accomplished writer Terence Rattigan's uncharacteristically uneven screenplay that still delivers moments of strong emotional impact amidst, well, a lot of schmaltz.

The car in question, a 1931 Rolls-Royce Phantom II - a cross between a military tank and a rolling luxury men's club, but painted yellow - starts life as a birthday gift from a middle-aged English Lord, Harrison, to his younger wife.

Ostensibly, they have the perfect marriage and life - true love, wealth, peerage and a winning race horse - but when Harrison, at the races with his wife, discovers her canoodling with a younger man in the Rolls' ample back seat, his world is shattered.

Driving back to the house after the "event -" effectively, Harrison is riding in the bed his wife cheated in - they both acknowledge divorce is out of the question owing to their position in society. So Harrison, with a British stiff-upper lip, carries on, but when his face cracks a few times, you feel his pain.

A few years later, in the schlockiest of the three vignettes, gangster George C. Scott buys the Rolls to drive his gum-smacking fiance, Shirley MacLaine, around Italy on vacation. With Scott's factotum, Art Carney as chauffeur - nicely playing the role, atypically for him, lowkey - the tour drags on until Scott has to go back to New York for a few weeks on business.

MacLaine then meets a young Italian photographer, falls in love - has a knee-knocking session in the back of the Rolls - and is torn between love and gangster money. But when Carney reminds her there is no breaking the engagement with mobster Scott, she sacrifices her Italian boyfriend's respect for her to save his life. It's a good moment in an otherwise weak Guys-and-Dolls segment.

Finally, the now less-than-pristine Yellow Rolls is bought in 1941 by wealthy American socialite Ingrid Bergman who blithely drives the car into Yugoslavia just ahead of the German invasion, imagining her American passport and connections make her invulnerable.

Along the way, she picks up Yugoslavian freedom fighter, Omar Sharif, who sees Bergman as a selfish, spoiled, rich American. Once in Yugoslavia, the Germans invade and Bergman - playing to the American stereotype of the time - drops the haughty airs, rolls up her sleeves and drives the Rolls herself to ferry resistance fighters around.

Sure, it's ridiculous, but still, watching Bergman at the wheel, barrelling down a mountain road with the resistance fighters hanging off both sides of the yellow Rolls as a German Stuka screams down and strafes them, you're rooting for her. And, yes, she and Sharif have "a moment" in the, by now, well-broken-in back seat of the car.

That's it and it's not great; although it's good in parts, but with a lot of cheesiness in between. There probably is a truly entertaining movie to be made about some physical item - a car, a coat or something - passing through several generations of owners, but it hasn't been made yet.

 

[Harp]

I thought it a good romp in the hayride overall, and anything with Ingrid Bergman is definitely worthwhile,
even Joan of Arc-eegads, but on a cold autumn almost winter night with the one you love it's a serviceable vehicle,
all puns intended.

 

[MisterCairo]

Drive, from 2011, Ryan Gosling, Albert (Einstein) Brooks, Bryan Cranston and Carey Mulligan.

Wife had not seen it in yonks, whereas I have it downloaded onto a laptop and so have watched it several times while away on temporary duty, but always a good watch.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) dir. Mark Robson, with William Holden, Grace Kelly, Fredric March, and Mickey Rooney; from the book by James Michener. Interesting look at the launching and landing of carrier based jets, with Holden as a re-activated WW2 pilot who wants out of flying into enemy flak and go home to his wife and kids. A visit from Kelly and the kids gives us a mini-travelogue of post-war Japan, and increases the internal stress of Holden facing death with each mission. If you have not seen it, watch it all the way through to the end.

 

[Touchofevil]

The Maltese Falcon, again. It is nice just having it on.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Gangster from 1947 with Barry Sullivan, Akim Tamiroff, Belita and Harry Morgan


Father: "A man's in trouble, we must help him."

Daughter: "No, let him pay for his sins."


If you go into The Gangster expecting a shoot-'em-up mob movie, you are going to be disappointed, but if you're in the mood for a mob parable with plenty of broken love stories woven in, this is your movie.

Barry Sullivan heads up a local boardwalk mob - mainly protection and numbers - but begins letting his control slip as he, in his damaged way, has fallen in love with actress/dancer wanna-be Belita (yup, like Cher, she's known by one name - nothing is new). He gives her everything - fancy apartment, jewels, furs, etc. - but is unable to trust anyone, so he acts cold and suspicious even toward her.

His always-nervous second, Akim Tamiroff, Greek-Chorus like, keeps warning Sullivan that another mob is trying to move in on him. Yet, Sullivan, with well, Greek hubris, believes he is untouchable, especially with the local politicians putatively in his pocket.

While the above narrative - a mob boss taking his eye off his business owing to a very, very blonde femme fatale - rolls on, a series of broken love stories plays out in Sullivan's typical-of-the-period 1940s local mob "headquarters," the boardwalk's ice-cream parlor. Candy shops, tobacco stores, barber shops and ice-cream parlors were some of the most interesting places in the 1930s and 1940s, especially their "back rooms."

In The Gangster's ice-cream parlor, a local accountant, John Ireland, who has embezzled money from his wife's father's business, spends most of the movie begging Sullivan and Tamiroff for a loan (to cover the embezzled funds before they are discovered), but these guys have been down this road with Ireland before, so it's no dice. Ireland's kind, but now, despairing wife knows her husband is a failure, but loves him anyway. It's a heartbreaking vignette of the old story of a good woman in love with a not-good man.

Bravado soda jerk, Henry Morgan, presents himself as a ladies man, but in truth, is desperately looking for love. He seems to find it with an older woman, yet, he is so wrapped up in his own image, he undermines his one chance at happiness by being unable to turn off his public persona even when alone with her. These are not young lovers, which leaves you feeling their last chance is slipping away.

Tamiroff, himself, is married to a hypochondriac he so loves, he indulges her endless doctor visits for mysterious illnesses. There is no cynicism or bitterness in his love, just kindness and affection.

Oddly but wonderfully playing the moral conscience of all this is eighteen-year-old ice-cream-parlor cashier Joan Lorring. Her youthful black-and-white morality is too rigid for real life's nuances and greyness, but serves to highlight all the compromise, lies, cheating and crooked dealing she sees everyday in the underworld-front ice-cream parlor. The exchange quoted at the top between her and her father, reveals a man who understands that life is rarely as ethically stark as his young daughter believes.

After unraveling all the above broken love stories, director Gordon Wiles pulls the plot back to Sullivan, his failing relationship with Belita and his crumbling mob empire. While the story of a mob boss neglecting his highly competitive business plays out pretty much as expected - the Greek Chorus, as usual, is right - there is one well-done final plot twist that will knock you back.

The Ice-cream Parlor would have been a better name for this odd mix of melodrama and film-noir gangster picture. Especially since the actual theme of The Gangster is how much real life, all driven by love, goes on amongst these seven or eight people loosely tied together by this one ice-cream parlor. But The Gangster, as a movie title, probably had much better box-office draw than The Ice-cream Parlor.


N.B. #1 Film noir needs on-location shooting to truly capture the grit, grime and verve of city streets. The Gangster loses noir points for its obvious sets, sometimes awkwardly framed against a background of stock footage of real street scenes. My kingdom for a location budget.

N.B. #2 Belita was a Sonja Henie type who found her way to Hollywood via ballet and, like Henie, ice-skating, but never became the major star that Henie did. However, at least in The Gangster, the value of her impressive legs was not lost on one Hollywood director.

 

[Harp]

^Great write up. Belita's init so this flick has legs.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Uncut TV series DVD, 282 min. nonstop.