Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 05/19/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, May 19, 2024

Lilith (Robert Rossen, 1964)

Jean Seberg in Lilith

Cast: Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Peter Fonda, Kim Hunter, Anne Meacham, Jessica Walter, Gene Hackman, James Patterson, Robert Reilly. Screenplay: Robert Rossen, based on a novel by J.R. Salamanca. Cinematography: Eugen Schüfftan. Production design: Richard Sylbert. Film editing: Aram Avakian. Music: Kenyon Hopkins.

A Little Romance (George Roy Hill, 1979)

Laurence Olivier, Thelonious Bernard, and Diane Lane in A Little Romance

Cast: Diane Lane, Thelonious Bernard, Diane Lane, Arthur Hill, Sally Kellerman, Broderick Crawford, David Dukes, Andrew Duncan, Claudette Sutherland, Graham Fletcher-Cook, Ashby Semple. Screenplay: Allan Burns, based on a novel by Patrick Cauvin. Cinematography: Pierre-William Glenn. Production design: Henry Bumstead. Film editing: William Reynolds. Music: Georges Delerue.

Can-Can (Walter Lang, 1960)

Frank Sinatra and Shirley MacLaine in Can-Can

Cast: Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan, Juliet Prowse, Marcel Dalio, Leon Belasco, Nestor Paiva, John A. Neris, Jean Del Val, Ann Codee. Screenplay: Dorothy Kingsley, Charles Lederer, based on a musical comedy book by Abe Burrows. Cinematography: William H. Daniels. Art direction: Jack Martin Smith, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: Robert L. Simpson. Music: Nelson Riddle; songs: Cole Porter.