Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings

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

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Dancing Lady (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933)

Dancing Lady (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933)

Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Fred Astaire, Ted Healy, Moe Howard, Curly Howard, Larry Fine, Robert Benchley, Arthur Jarrett, May Robson, Nelson Eddy. Screenplay: Allen Rivkin, P.J. Wolfson. Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh. Art direction: Merrill Pye. Film editing: Margaret Booth. Music: Maurice De Packh, Louis Silvers.

Sunday, May 12, 2019

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Nagisa Oshima, 1969)

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Nagisa Oshima, 1969)

Cast: Tadanori Yokoo, Rie Yokoyama, Moichi Tanabe, Tetsu Takahashi, Kei Sato, Rokko Toura, Fumio Watanabe, Juro Kara. Screenplay: Masao Adachi, Mamoru Sasaki, Tsutomu Tamura, Nagisa Oshima. Cinematography: Seizo Sengen, Yasuhiro Yoshioka. Art direction: Shigemasa Toda. Film editing: Nagisa Oshima.

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Sally (John Francis Dillon, 1929)

Sally (John Francis Dillon, 1929)

Cast: Marilyn Miller, Alexander Gray, Joe E. Brown, T. Roy Barnes, Pert Kelton, Ford Sterling, Maud Turner Gordon, E.J. Ratcliffe, Jack Duffy, Ethel Stone, Nora Lane. Screenplay: Waldemar Young, Andrew Percival Younger, based on a play by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse. Cinematography: Devereaux Jennings, Charles Edgar Schoenbaum. Art direction: Jack Okey. Film editing: LeRoy Stone. Music: Leonid S. Leonardi, Jerome Kern.

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975)

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, 1975)

Cast: Angela Winkler, Mario Adorf, Dieter Laser, Jürgen Prochnow, Heinz Bennent, Hannelore Hoger, Rolf Becker, Harald Kuhlmann, Herbert Fux, Regine Lutz. Screenplay: Volker Schlöndorff, Margarethe von Trotta, based on a novel by Heinrich Böll. Cinematography: Jost Vacano. Production design: Ute Burgmann, Günter Naumann. Film editing: Peter Przygodda. Music: Hans Werner Henze.

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, 1957)

Love in the Afternoon (Billy Wilder, 1957)

Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier, John McGiver, Van Doude, Lisel Bourdin, Olga Valéry. Screenplay: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond, based on a novel by Claude Anet. Cinematography: William C. Mellor. Art direction: Alexandre Trauner. Film editing: Léonide Azar, Chester W. Schaeffer.

The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo, 2011)

The Day He Arrives (Hong Sang-soo, 2011)

Cast: Yoo Jun-sang, Kim Sang-joon, Song Seon-mi, Kim Bo-kyung, Kim Eui-sung. Screenplay: Hong Sang-soo. Cinematography: Kim Hyung-ku. Film editing: Hahm Sung-won. Music: Jeong Yong-jin.