Passages

[domino harvey]

Ruthless People gets overlooked by their parody films but it really is the platonic ideal for a mainstream comedy— just an incredibly well-made, written, and performed film with no pretensions but plenty of intelligence

[MichaelB]

Not that they ever made an American film (I suspect Good Morning Babylon was primarily European in terms of production if not subject), but presumably Paolo & Vittorio Taviani would have qualified?

[MichaelB]

Joëlle Coeur, of The Demoniacs/Schoolgirl Hitchhikers fame/notoriety.

[dadaistnun]

Silvia Pinal

[hearthesilence]

Silvia Pinal

There was quite a bit of discussion about her earlier this year in conjunction with the Mexican Buñuel retrospective at MoMA. sabbath's post from the other thread:

Silvia Pinal was not just the star and (the wife of) a financier but the major driving force behind [Viridiana]. According to her interview on the Criterion DVD:

I met Ernesto Alonso, and he suggested we go talk to Buñuel about working together. I wanted to work with him. He said, "Let's go together." When we got there, I said, "I want to make a movie with you." "Silvia, you know I don't do commercial films." "I don't care. You're an extraordinary and talented director with an important body of work. I'd love to work with you." He said, "It's just so happens I'm adapting a story." This was 1950-something. He said, "I'm adapting a story called Tristana. You two would be just right for it." I loved the idea. I'd read the book. So we began looking for a producer among those who'd worked with Buñuel: Barbachano, Clasa Films, Gelman. "No, we never make any money with him." "We made a film with him years ago and didn't earn a penny." None of them would do it. Imagine: Ernesto and I could have been in Tristana, a wonderful film. So that's how I met Buñuel and how he found out I wanted to work with him.

Gustavo came into my life first. Actually, I met him at Ernesto Alonso's house. We made a life together for about two years. He'd tell me, "You've helped me so much. Tell me how I can help you." I said, "I've always wanted to work with Buñuel." And that's how those two came to work together. I introduced Gustavo around in Spain, where he and I were traveling. I told Francisco Rabal, with whom I'd worked before, "We'd like to meet with Don Luis. Do you know where he is?" "Yes, I have an appointment with him today at the Hotel Plaza." So we agreed to meet there that evening. We arrived to find Don Luis surrounded by admirers. He said, "Silvia! What are you doing here?" "Don Luis, this is my husband, Gustavo Alatriste." "Pleased to meet you." I said, "I'm sorry to barge in, but remember how I wanted to work with you? I still do. Let's make a movie together." He said, "But you have no producer." I said, "Yes, I do. My husband." And he says, "What does he do?" "He deals in furniture." "Furniture? Then why produce a film with me? He won't make a cent." "Because he loves me." "Ah, I see." He understood the situation. And that's when we began thinking about making a film.

So Gustavo started seeing who they could work with. But Buñuel said, "No, as long as Franco is alive, I won't work in Spain. My personal life there goes on, but I won't work there." Gustavo said, "We'll work with whomever you want. In any case, we need the name of a Spanish producer. Why don't you suggest someone?" "Well, if I were to do it, I'd want to work with Bardem, Berlanga, Muñoz Suay or Domingo González. They're all leftists like myself."

...

After Viridiana won the Palme d'Or, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, called it "sacrilegious," along with another film from Cannes that hadn't won the Palme d'Or. So Franco was fiercely attacked, since he'd allowed it to be made. The anit-Franco clergy made problems for him. The matter grew so serious that Franco ordered absolutely everything burned that had anything to do with the making of the film. So I went to Paris and got the dubbed master, took it out of the cans, put it in plastic bags, and personally carried it back to Mexico. That's how we saved a copy for ourselves. But the Spaniards did the same thing in Madrid. They buried it on Domingo González's farm, where it would have been very difficult to find. So in theory everything having to do with Viridiana disappeared.

But what happened during those ten years was extraordinary. It had no country of origin and couldn't be sold, because it had no import permit for any country. It was shown in cellars and on hillsides. In Italy they showed it on one of the seven hills. The police came along and confiscated the print, because what they were doing wasn't legal. But after many years and great expense, and with a team of French lawyers, we won, and finally, ten years later, Viridiana was declared, to be of Mexican origin.

[JSC]

This might have slipped past the radar, but Uma Dasgupta, who played Durga in Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali
passed away on November 18.

https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/ ... 882307.ece

[hearthesilence]

This goes into more detail on what happened to her after the film (as well as why she never pursued acting further.)

[dwk]

1st AD Adam Somner

[MichaelB]

Marshall Brickman, fated to remain most famous as Woody Allen's best co-screenwriter (Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Manhattan Murder Mystery) than for his other work as both writer and director, but there was a fair amount of the latter too - including co-writing the musical Jersey Boys, subsequently filmed by Clint Eastwood.

[MichaelB]

Niels Arestrup, Danish-French actor most celebrated for his work with Jacques Audiard (The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A Prophet, both Best Supporting Actor César-winning performances), but he also worked with a wide range of major auteurs including Chantal Akerman, Marco Ferreri, Alain Resnais, Volker Schlöndorff, István Szabó, Bertrand Tavernier and Steven Spielberg (War Horse).

[domino harvey]

I enjoyed his César-winning supporting performance in Tavernier’s Quay d’Orsay when I watched it earlier this year, a real “lived-in” peek of a character who is quietly extremely good at what they do (though Lhermitte was robbed of any recognition for his bombastic, totally opposite comic perf)

[beamish14]

Marshall Brickman, fated to remain most famous as Woody Allen's best co-screenwriter (Sleeper, Annie Hall, Manhattan, Manhattan Murder Mystery) than for his other work as both writer and director, but there was a fair amount of the latter too - including co-writing the musical Jersey Boys, subsequently filmed by Clint Eastwood.

Simon (1980) is an amazing film. With his passing, all of Allen’s co-screenwriters have now died

[GaryC]

Mawuyul Yanthalawuy, star of Manganinnie (1980), aged 85.

[MichaelB]

Veteran Swedish producer Katinka Faragó, who worked her way up from script supervisor to production manager to producer, and was particularly associated with the work of Ingmar Bergman, with whom she collaborated on nineteen films, earning her the nickname "Bergman's right hand" - and she also produced his son Daniel's Sunday's Children, written by his father. But she also produced distinguished films for others, notably Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice and Aki Kaurismäki's Leningrad Cowboys Go America.

[MichaelB]

Stanisław Tym, much more famous as a comedy writer/performer in his native Poland (often in collaboration in both roles with director Stanisław Bareja), so it's ironic that he's been most internationally visible in serious and indeed downright sinister parts in such films as Jerzy Skolimowski's Barrier and Piotr Szulkin's War of the Worlds: Next Century.

[hearthesilence]

Miho Nakayama (1970-2024), popular singer and actress affectionately known as Miporin who debuted as one of the most beloved idols of the 1980s and is best known internationally for her lead role in Shunji Iwai’s Love Letter.

[colinr0380]

Miho Nakayama (1970-2024), popular singer and actress affectionately known as Miporin who debuted as one of the most beloved idols of the 1980s and is best known internationally for her lead role in Shunji Iwai’s Love Letter.

As well as in Iwai's 2018 film Last Letter. Plus the 1989 Shintaro Katsu film of Zatoichi; co-starring with Naoto Takenaka in Tokyo Biori (which Takenaka also directed); and with Hidetoshi Nishijima (of Drive My Car) in 2010's Goodbye, Someday.

[hearthesilence]

I didn't realize Silvia Pinal (Hidalgo) had official Facebook and Instagram accounts that are very active. They have posted some photos from her memorial.

[hearthesilence]

Poet Nikki Giovanni, one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement.

[hearthesilence]

The great jazz pianist Martial Solal. He's old (and talented) enough to have played with Django Reinhardt though he's played with plenty of greats throughout his long and distinguished career. He's also an excellent composer who has scored some notable films: Godard's À bout de souffle for one and Melville's Léon Morin, Priest.

[hearthesilence]

Great interview with Solal, he talks a lot about Godard:

Martial Solal lives in Chatou – the island-like Paris suburb on the Seine they call the ville des impressionistes. His house is so unlike any jazz musician's home I've visited that I feel I've flipped into a parallel world. Peering like a child through the high metal fence at a tree-shrouded villa beyond an ornamental garden, I'm in a fairytale in which jazz artists are feted, instead of consigned to dividing up the door money. But eventually I have to break the spell, press the buzzer, and wind my way through the shapely flowerbeds to meet France's most famous living jazz artist.

"Jean-Luc Godard has something to do with the story of this house," Solal says, with a boyish grin, worldly and self-deprecating at the same time, that despatches his 82 years in an instant. He's referring to the then 29-year-old Godard's fast, documentary-like 1960 drama À bout de souffle (Breathless), for which the Algiers-born pianist composed the score. That classic of the French new wave returns to the art house circuit from June, rereleased to celebrate its 50th anniversary, but its cult status has been earning Solal royalties for years. "I tell people it's like I won the Lotto," Solal laughs. "It was very fantastic luck for me, because back in 1959 when I did it, I was mainly known for being the house pianist in the St Germain des Prés jazz club. Fortunately, the film-maker Jean-Pierre Melville, a jazz fan who knew my work and was a close friend of Godard, suggested me for the job."

...

Solal was anchoring the St Germain des Prés band (and beginning his speciality career as an unaccompanied soloist, inspired by piano virtuoso Art Tatum) when he got the call for Breathless.

"Godard had no ideas about the music, so fortunately I was completely free," Solal recalls. "He did once say, 'Why don't you just write it for one banjo player?' – I thought he was being funny, but you couldn't be sure with him. Anyway, I brought a big band and 30 violins. I never found out if he liked it, even now, but it seems to have worked. His films got more obscure later, but he was very interesting then, the films were very innovative but they still had a story.'