Now Playing ABSOLUTELY FREE on You Tube - Mauro Bolognini Edition

Lately in my sojourn across You Tube I happened upon a channel that has so many goodies lined up that I'd be a wretched creep not to share it with you. It's called Belles Actrices and if you like French & Italian films from the Fifties and Sixties you're going to hit the motherlode. There is such an embarrassment of riches in terms of great obscure foreign films that you won't be able to decide which movie to watch first.

Every film features a great European actress in some obscure movie you've probably never seen before: Catherine Deneuve, Elsa Martinelli, Claudia Cardinale, Jane Fonda (during her French period), and a whole bunch you've never even seen before. While some of the films I viewed were directed by Julien Duvivier, Claude Chabrol and Roger Vadim, many of them were directed by an Italian I've never heard of before: Mauro Bolognini.

How Mauro Bolognini flew under the radar for so many decades without attracting the attention he deserved is a mystery to me. His films are provocative, intelligent and have some of the best visual composition of any films I've ever seen.

And The Devil Leads The Ball, 1962/dir. Grisha Dabat - A French teen noir starring a very young Catherine Deneuve, Devil is the tale of Eric, a very spoiled, arrogant teenager who racks up an expensive roadster which naturally doesn't belong to him. The garage he borrowed it from gives him 48 hours to come up with the cash to pay for the damages or have his legs broken.

With no money to pay off the debt he runs off with his rich girlfriend (Deneuve) to a teen party pit where two other couples get high and trade partners. The usual teen movie sex play goes on until Deneuve's rich daddy shows up and tells Eric to dump his daughter or, you guessed it, he'll break his legs. It's easier said than done because Deneuve clings on to Eric like a new born puppy dog. It's not easy being a kid! Also starring Bernadette Lafont.

La Notte Brava (The Big Night or Bad Girls Don't Cry), 1959/dir. Mauro Bolognini - Working with a script co-written by Pier Paolo Pasolini, you can bet that this film will be gritty and sleazy. The film begins with two prostitutes (Elsa Martinelli and Rosana Schiaffino) brawling on the street, only to have it broken up by three joy riding yobs who pick up the two hookers and take them to a fence who'll pay them for stolen war rifles (?). Yeah, it's pretty weird.

More guys and hookers get picked up until the yobs decide to ditch the hookers in the middle of nowhere, not realizing that the hookers have snatched the fence money behind their backs. Realizing this, the boys hurry back to the empty countryside to find the sneaky hookers and get their dough back.

Careless (Senilita), 1962/dir. Mauro Bolognini - Based on an Italo Svevo novel, Careless stars Anthony Franciosa taking a break from his normal spoiled playboy roles to play Emilio, a plain, dullsville office clerk madly in love with Angiolina (Claudia Cardinale). Angiolina is all sweetness and virtue at the beginning of the film, until 20 minutes in she does a complete 360 and becomes progressively more and more slutty with all the men in town. Every time Emilio goes out on the town he catches Angiolina with a different man, acting looser and looser as the film progresses. Sounds like most of my ex-girl friends!

Bolognini's compositions are really outstanding in this one, esp. a scene where Franciosa's agonizing behind a stone column with a ridiculously steep stone staircase descending to the left of him in utter darkness (dig the heavy symbolism). Where the fuck is The Criterion Collection when you need them? Highly recommended.

The Game Is Over, 1966/dir. Roger Vadim - Made around the time of Barbarella, Jane Fonda plays the spoiled, over-pampered horny wife to Michel Piccoli who flirts just a wee bit too much with her stepson Peter McEnery. This film is about as bad as most Roger Vadim films and Fonda's ridiculously uptight about her body, too uptight to play a Bardotesque sex kitten, but the mod/psych fashions are eye-popping and Peter McEnery is always fun to watch.

Wise Guys, 1962/dir. Claude Chabrol - One of Chabrol's earliest efforts, this is a sort of malevolent Jules & Jim about two guys and a girl running around reaping anarchy wherever they go. Comedy doesn't really suit Monsieur Chabrol and it shows: the humor is mean spirited and poorly staged. It's still worth a view for its strange morality play - the climax is too weird, and the performances by Jean-Claude Brialy and Bernadette Lafont (yes, her again) are top notch.

Highway Pick-Up (Chair De Poule), 1963/dir. Julien Duvivier - Based on a noir novel by James Hadley Chase, the Robert Hossein movie is about an escaped burglary suspect who hides out in a beat gas station run by a friendly fat guy and his hot, banging wife. Faster than you can say Postman Always Rings Twice, the sticky wife finds out Hossein is the escaped safecracker from the newspapers. She blackmails him into busting the gas station safe and proposes they run off together. Guess what happens?

Three Faces of a Woman, 1965/dir. Mauro Bolognini & Michelangelo Antonioni - Three Faces of a Woman stars Soraya, former Persian princess divorced by the Shah of Iran in the Fifties for her inability to bear him any children. Following the divorce, she fled to Europe in hopes of becoming a hot Italian starlet, which obviously didn't take off much. While she isn't very pretty and can't act too well, she appears well suited for the trilogy of stories presented in this picture.

The Antonioni segment is about a Princess who's about to give her first screen test and she's just a bundle of nerves and having second thoughts, etc. This is notable for the wild set design and angular composition, which is really a feast for the eyes. The Bolognini story fares much better in that she's married to Richard Harris, who can't deal with her stardom or the constant barrage of paparazzi accosting them wherever she goes. There's a wild scene with a fashion photo shoot which has to be seen to be believed.

The third segment is some weird comedy thing with Alberto Sordi that doesn't really go very far. It's a bad sex comedy type thing, a dime a dozen back in the Sixties. Although the film is called Three Faces of a Woman, I have never seen so many hair and costume changes on one woman in any film that I've ever seen (more than What A Way To Go!), so if you hated the way Soraya looked a minute ago, don't worry, she'll look better in the next scene. This movie's definitely 100% weird!

What's surprising about all these movies is their lack of DVD release or even TCM/Sundance broadcasting. These are all pretty decent films that are worth a watch, and even the lesser ones deserve a view. Just remember that you have to click on the "CC" Closed Captioned circle on the far right of the play slider to get your language preferences. You can even choose your subtitle color and opacity controls. And don't forget, Mauro Bolognini lives!

Now Playing ABSOLUTELY FREE on You Tube - European Girls Edition

You Tube is better than ever. They’ve opened up the floodgates with posting full-length films in order to compete with Netflix and other assorted cinema providers, and needless to say, everybody wins. This month I’m going to review a few foreign films with strong female performances I wholeheartedly recommend. Most of these films are already legendary in foreign film circles, so if you’re well-versed in new wave cinema you’ll already know about these great films. These films are all currently available for your entertainment on You Tube.

1. Les Bonnes Femmes (The Good Time Girls): This is one of Claude Chabrol’s earliest efforts (his fourth) and considered by many to be the beginning of his sinister yet understated style. He films must be the quietest murder mysteries I’ve ever seen. They are so unassuming that when a murder eventually occurs it’s genuinely shocking.

Les Bonnes Femmes is the story of four shopgirls who dream aloud of men, money and freedom, not necessarily in that order. Bernadette Lafont heads the cast as a wayward party girl who continuously makes bad choices in men, but that’s the point of the film. The women fantasize about the perfect romance but the men they choose are arrogant control freaks.

The climax of the film is pretty powerful, making you wonder what you just watched to the point of wanting to see the film all over again in a different light. And Lafont towers over all the other girls, no small feat.

2. Les Novices (1970): Bizarre psychedelic romp featuring Brigitte Bardot as a bored nun escaping the order to run wild through the streets of Paris. She’s taken in by a worldly wise prostitute played by Annie Giradot.

The irony is that the prostitute exhibits more compassion and intelligence than the runaway nun, but maybe we shouldn’t read too much into this. It’s supposed to be a sort of Odd Couple-style buddy comedy with French ladies running through the streets of Paris. It’s all good fun, anyway, and BB looks amazing. One of her last good movies, maybe THE last.

3. Sweet Ecstasy (1962): This one has long made the rounds on cheap, low-budget public domain video companies, but the You Tube version is the best with a clean, beautiful letterboxed transfer. This French film is a pretty good juvenile delinquent movie about a bunch of reckless thrill seekers featuring a young, hair hopping Elke Sommer.

Elke’s boyfriend Maddy talks her into flirting with a shy rich nerd named Olivier in the hopes they can mess with him. In between picking on this poor dude there’s tons of le jazz hot, Elke striptease dancing, et al, topped with an amazing final scene where Elke the babe’s bound in bondage aboard a burning boat. Try saying that fast ten times. Two years later Sommer became a huge international star from the Peter Sellers comedy A Shot In The Dark.

4. Il Demonio akaThe Demon (1963): There has never been a film quite like Il Demonio (The Demon). Dalia Lavi gives a performance most performance artists would give their first born for. She plays Purificazione, a misfit from a chaste ultra-Catholic village in the Italian countryside. Unlike the other women she’s unruly and perpetually in a state of ardor, making the religious locals believe she’s possessed by the devil. The sad truth, of course, is that she’s madly in love with the utterly gross Antonio, who thinks she’s trash.

Lavi spits and screams and writhes around like a wild animal in heat, but raises the horror movie bar with her upside-down spider walk (pre-dating Iggy by about ten years!), which has to be seen to be believed. This movie and the Mario Bava classic The Whip And The Body are probably her two best films before she transitioned to spy movie fame (Casino Royale, The Silencers, etc.).

5. L’Enfer (1994): Yeah, everything goes back to Chabrol. This latter day work by the master doesn’t disappoint. It’s the story of Paul, a struggling hotel resort manager played by Francois Cluzet, rapidly burning out to the degree that he sees his wife (Emmanuelle Beart) cheating on him every time he turns his back.

Paul imagines best friends and hotel residents all having a go at his wife, manically fantasizing about her infidelities. He spies on her continuously, stalking her more like a sex-starved stranger than a husband. The pinnacle of his insanity is his jealousy over his wife doting on their four-year-old son. Paul is the jealous husband from Hell!

L’Enfer, aka Inferno is one of the cinema’s great unfinished projects, originally filmed by Henri-Georges Clouzot (The Wages of Fear, Diabolique) in 1964 and starring Romy Schneider and Serge Reggiani. A documentary about the original film is available on You Tube (in Spanish subtitles) and it’s a knockout!

The documentary includes footage from the film as well as test shots which freely experimented with the use of color, lights and sound. Some of these test shots, when used, were highly innovative and reminded me of the films of Kenneth Anger and the Hans Richter film Dreams Money Can Buy (also available on You Tube).

Cinematographers and sound engineers discuss the making of the film and the various difficulties the film suffered – budget shortages, the leading man falling ill, dropping out and Clouzot’s own failing health. Truly a great documentary about a film that would have raised the stakes of the cinema and revived Mr. Clouzot’s career.

So, that’s it for now. Five and a half films from Europe, all showcasing some of the strongest female performances I’ve ever seen and most of them date over fifty years ago. Catch all these films when you can. They’re absolutely free and available on You Tube.