The other places are like kindergartens compared with this. It smells so incredibly evil! I didn't think such a place existed except in my own imagination. It has a ghastly familiarity like a half-remembered dream. *Anything* could happen here... any moment... Pauline Kael called it "hilariously, awesomely terrible". Others consider it "
a forgotten gem of a film that set the gold standard for noir films to come".
It was Josef von Sternberg's last major film -
The Shanghai Gesture (1941).
(parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
posted by Joe Beese
on Jan 18, 2011 -
7 comments
Three years after the failure of his recklessly ambitious Marxist epic
1900, Bernardo Bertolucci returned to directing with
La Luna - a story of opera and
incest featuring a Golden Globe-nominated performance by Jill Clayburgh, then at the height of her late 70s fame. [Also appearing in small roles were Fred Gwynne and an up-and-coming Roberto Benigni.] Writing in The New York Times,
Vincent Canby described it as "one of the most sublimely foolish movies ever made by a director of Mr. Bertolucci's acknowledged talents."
Roger Ebert wrote, "Bertolucci has sprung his gourd this time."
[more inside]
posted by Joe Beese
on May 30, 2009 -
4 comments
