Anne
Gleich and Isabella Jeschke in Der Dunkle Reigen
(2017) in 720p
Franziska
Walser in Nie mehr wie immer (2015) in 720p
Emmanuelle
Beart in La Belle Noiseuse (1991) in 1080hd (part
2 of 3)
(Captures in yesterday's page)
You have to credit director Jacques Rivette
for one thing - the man has a set of cojones the size of
Luxembourg. This movie is 238 minutes long. Lawrence of
Freakin' Arabia runs 228 minutes in the extended
director's cut.
That takes some brass ones, right?
A four hour film can only be shown once per evening, so
the box office potential is infinitesimal unless the
film IS Lawrence of Arabia.
But there's more.
La Belle Noiseuse is not a sweeping epic like Lawrence,
or a fantasy masterpiece like The Return of the King, or
a lengthy multi-part historical narrative like Andrei
Rublev, or a brilliant saga of friends from childhood to
old age, like Once Upon a Time in America. It is
essentially an artist in his studio with one model. He
spends time getting her in precisely the correct pose,
then a hand sweeps a brush over a canvas for five
minutes, dabbing, swirling, inking. Repeat as needed -
for hours. There isn't much more to it than that. In
fact, that is the only thing happening for more than
half of the film - two hours worth, which is essentially
a full-length film of its own.
And the other half is not that much more lively.
The model's boyfriend and the artist's wife become
jealous of the bond being formed between the painter and
his subject. It is not a romantic relationship which
threatens them. The painter is a decrepit old fella, and
the model is the young and stunning Emmanuelle Beart.
The fact that there is no courtship, however, doesn't
mean that the relationship isn't close. A man and a
naked woman working together for weeks, with the man
trying to capture the essence of the woman's soul on
canvas, can form a deeper intimacy than any lovers. His
questions and his staring eyes probe her deeper than any
penis could. It is this unique bond, and its
all-consuming nature, that gets in the way of their
relationships with others.
Many critics were dazzled by this film. It won the grand
prize at Cannes. Roger Ebert gave it four stars and
raved that it conveyed a complete understanding of the
artistic process. He argued that the long sessions with
the model were completely necessary to show the link
between the artist and the subject in the artistic
process, and that the long scenes which consisted solely
of a hand painting on a canvas were completely necessary
to allow the audience to experience directly in the
creation of art from nothing.
Obviously, I am an aesthetically-challenged Philistine.
I can understand the point he is making, and I guess I
could even be persuaded to agree with it on a cerebral
level, but I can't imagine how anyone could stay awake
during this film. It's four hours long; there's very
little dialogue; the minimal dialogue is in French with
subtitles and seems inordinately pretentious; there's
basically one set; there are basically only two
important actors.
There is really only one element of the film which held
my attention, and that was the constant naked presence
of Beart. Given the length of this film, and the fact
that she is completely naked for about half of its
running time, Beart may have done more minutes of full
nudity in this movie than any other legitimate actress
in the history of cinema has done in a single film. It
could be titled "Two Hours of Emmanuelle Beart posing
stark naked," and have no fear of a false advertising
claim. The only problem with that it is that the
quantity kills the eroticism. Suppose you were married
to a very beautiful woman and she walked around the
house stark naked every minute of the day and night. How
long do you think that would turn you on? Most likely,
the quantity of the nudity would have a numbing effect
on your libido, to the point where it would no longer be
erotic, a phenomenon not unlike the lack of erections in
nudist camps. Ms Beart, therefore, is stark naked
constantly, and she is very beautiful, but the erotic
value of that exposure is rapidly exhausted, and her
naked body simply becomes one of the art supplies in the
studio.
Julie
Warner in Doc Hollywood (1991) in 1080hd
Lucia
D Elia, Simonetta
Allodi and Cinzia
Monreale in Buio Omega (1979) in 1080hd
Elia
Allodi
Monreale
Glenda
Jackson in Women In Love (1969) in 1080hd
In England, circa WW1, an artist
named Gudrun (Glenda Jackson), and her schoolteacher
sister Ursula (Jennie Linden) fall in love with a
couple of fine gentlemen from the wealthy class
(Alan Bates and Oliver Reed). The two relationships
take very different directions. One couple learns to
love each other in a traditional marriage. The other
couple comes into conflict, struggling for
domination. The foursome takes a Swiss honeymoon,
during which Gudrun engages in an affair with a
bisexual sculptor, causing her enraged husband
(Reed) to flee into the mountains and wander about
until he freezes to death. The other man (Bates)
then philosophizes about the mystery of relations
between men and women.
Women in Love was groundbreaking twice: once as a
novel, once as the eponymous film.
The book, written in the WW1 era, presented the
independence of women in the brightest light then
possible in literature. Because the novel was filled
with doubts about the sanctity and necessity of
marriage, and because D.H. Lawrence treated women as
highly sexual beings, D.H. Lawrence shocked his own
time and led the way toward the sexual revolution of
the 1920s.
The movie version played a similar role in the
sexual revolution of the late 60s. It was daring in
three respects:
- There was an extended nude wrestling match
between Alan Bates and Oliver Reed, complete
with extensive frontal nudity from both of them.
(This is the primary reason why the film is
remembered today, if at all. Mention this film
to someone from my era, and you'll see that
glimmer of recognition when you say, "you know,
it's the one where the two guys wrestle stark
naked for five minutes".)
- There were explicit sexual encounters on
several occasions.
- There was a bisexual man in make-up
Many of those once-powerful elements are no longer
shocking by today's standards. The psychological and
sexual aggressiveness of women is well accepted
today, and the male/female scenes that shocked in
1969 are completely tame by our standards, so
there's not much erotic stimulation for you
heterosexual men. On the other hand, for those of
you who like to look at naked men, Women in Love is
the Holy Grail of male cinema nudity. The nude
wrestling match between Bates and Reed still stands
today as the zenith of male homoerotica in
mainstream cinema. Although female nudity in
mainstream films has gone far beyond what you see in
this film, male nudity has not. Imagine, if you
will, a five minute nude wrestling match between Tom
Cruise and Brad Pitt, in which every inch of their
bodies is exposed to the camera in loving detail.
Hard to picture that ever happening? Well, that
would be the equivalent of what you see in this
film!
Apart from the nude male wrestling match, you
probably can't get a sense of how revolutionary this
film was if you are younger than 45. Things have
changed too much for you to be able to "feel" the
context that existed then. The middle 60s were a
time when film nudity was infrequent, seen most
likely in foreign language films or softcore films,
neither of which were shown in mainstream suburban
theaters. Unlike today, when even the biggest stars
(Kidman, Winslet, e.g.) strip down, you never saw
major actors and actresses naked. This film broke
the mold. Glenda Jackson, Alan Bates, and Oliver
Reed were considered top-notch, Oscar-worthy stars,
and this was considered an intellectual movie. D.H.
Lawrence's work was considered serious literature.
In fact, the pretentious, stuffy intellectualism of
the characters' conversations is what made the
nudity possible. After all, it was difficult for
anyone but the most rigid moralist to condemn a
movie which was praised by the Movie Academy and The
New York Times. In the context of the times, the
boring philosophical bits in the movie made the film
acceptable for "good boys" to see. Even my mom
thought it was OK for me to see this movie. My mom,
for heaven's sake! For suburban dweebs like me, the
artiness and lofty literary pedigree of the film
meant that we could see some sex and breasts,
assuming we were willing to endure boring speeches
and naked guys.
In those days, it was a small price to pay.
It's a different story today, when you can see
mainstream actresses naked without having to listen
to male windbags or look at their nutsacks.
Oh, yeah ... the movie ....
Looks great. Beautiful, highly-saturated photography
evoking the period, especially as it looked in the
English countryside. There is one visually dazzling
scene in which Oliver Reed comes upon drowned lovers
entwined on the bed of a drained lake. The colors
are beautiful and the transfer is nearly pristine.
Boring as hell. Lawrence's ideas seem to have been
totally revolutionary when the novel was written,
and were still fresh and topical in the late
sixties, when the movie was made. Unfortunately most
of the film is filled with philosophizing and
pontificating about those very ideas, which now seem
trite and sophomoric.
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