The brooding, Pinter-penned ACCIDENT (1967; July 28 at 7 pm), with Bogarde and Stanley Baker, actors Losey met on earlier films, is that era’s Losey masterpiece. A scene between Bogarde and Delphine Seyrig, old lovers on an impromptu date, recaptures and updates the shabbiness of American Losey.
We read that Losey was too much under the influence of Resnais and other European art filmmakers during this period. That does not account for the strange pleasures of SECRET CEREMONY (1968; July 13 at 9:15 pm) and BOOM! (1968; August 9 at 9 pm), Elizabeth Taylor vehicles campier than Losey’s colorful, unimpressive MODESTY BLAISE (1966; August 8 at 7 pm). Both Taylor films survive as embodiments of camp; both are so straight-faced and mysterious that they transcend it. Losey’s camera moves through them with a surreal elegance. One has Robert Mitchum in it, the other Noël Coward.
After the Taylor sub-period, Losey doesn’t cohere. All his late films are interesting, all have something to offer, all reflect Loseyan values to varying degrees, some return to his roots in Brechtian theater and socialist æsthetics in a more naked way than his in earlier work. Two films he made in France with great stars are as good as anything he’s done: MR. KLEIN (1976; August 3 at 8 pm), a World War II noir with Alain Delon as an art seller haunted by his Jewish double, and THE TROUT (1982; August 11 at 7 pm), with Isabelle Huppert as a country girl whisked to Tokyo by a businessman to be his mistress. Huppert bowls in The Trout, wearing a T-shirt that says “peut-être” on the front and “jamais!” on the back.
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For many backlashing film scholars and canonical cinéastes, most of the big players in the French New Wave — Truffaut, Chabrol, Rohmer, Resnais, etc. — have been, over time, at least a touch overrated, save two: Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Rivette.
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In culture-crazy Reykjavík, the city of 200,000 that spawned Björk, Icelanders have practically everything to get them through the cool-to-cold weather: a symphony orchestra, dance and theater companies, rock bands and poetry readings, and an astonishing number of Euro-hip galleries and art museums.
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In 1989, filmmaker Brian De Palma directed the potent Hollywood feature Casualties of War , taking his audience back in time to a vile true-life incident from Vietnam.
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With the upcoming November elections poised to determine the future of Congress, what better gift could Republicans ask for than a popular Hollywood movie that conjures the image that for five years has granted them power and impunity? Watch the trailer for World Trade Center (QuickTime) Off-Center: Oliver Stone's trite take on 9/11. By Peter Keough
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Maine film buffs have it tough.
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Speaking to the legendary German filmmaker is like speaking to God.
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It plays like a glossary of alternative stereotypes.
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This year, at least one element in “Boston Film Festival” is no longer true.
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Features
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, Entertainment, Movies, Elizabeth Taylor, Howard Hughes, Delphine Seyrig, Noel Coward, Joseph Losey, Fritz Lang, Harold Pinter, Peter Lorre, Less
