In July 2009, I wrote in Senses of Cinema about Rossellini’s remarkable Voyage to Italy that the film “was shot from 2 February through 30 April 1953, on a variety of locations throughout Italy, including Naples, Capri, Pompeii, and at the Titanus studios in Rome, and was a tempestuous production throughout. The plot is simple: […]
Classic 40s Movie: Les enfants du paradis And a masterpiece of storytelling of a kind that’s out of the mind of an utterly unique sensibility obsessed with ambiguity: political, sexual, moral—that of director Marcel Carné, himself a study in ambiguity. (Sidebar: Walk, don’t run to read William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity. You’ll learn more […]
La famosa secuencia en que Leslie Crosbie dispara a su amante fue también la primera escena de la película en rodarse. “Esa escena inicial debía dejar al espectador en estado de shock. Todo debía estar muy tranquilo y silencioso al principio para conseguir el máximo impacto con el disparo”, declararía más adelante Wyler. Tanta calma, […]