Simone Simon: Remembering the 'Cat People' and 'La Bête Humaine' star (photo: Simone Simon 'Cat People' publicity) Pert, pretty, pouty, and fiery-tempered Simone Simon – who died at age 94 ten years ago, on Feb. 22, 2005 – is best known for her starring role in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic Cat People (1942). Those aware of the existence of film industries outside Hollywood will also remember Simon for her button-nosed femme fatale in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938).[1] In fact, long before Brigitte Bardot, Annette Stroyberg, Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Ann-Margret, and Barbarella's Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm – with a tad of puppy dog wistfulness – in a film career that spanned two continents and a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both...
- 2/20/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
—Seamus Heaney, The Tollund Man
It ended, like all journeys do, in Solitude, a long way from any cinema. Solitude—or rather Zolitūde, in Latvian—is a suburb of Riga, four miles as the crow flies from the fancy Scandi-Gothic-Art Nouveau city centre; six miles on foot if the pedestrian avoids diversions. But by the time I reached Solitude on that cold December Saturday afternoon, however, my inadvertent divagations must have pushed the total to the ten-mile mark. I'd looked at maps prior to departing from my hotel, of course but deliberately didn't bring one along (not a fan); I don't...
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
—Seamus Heaney, The Tollund Man
It ended, like all journeys do, in Solitude, a long way from any cinema. Solitude—or rather Zolitūde, in Latvian—is a suburb of Riga, four miles as the crow flies from the fancy Scandi-Gothic-Art Nouveau city centre; six miles on foot if the pedestrian avoids diversions. But by the time I reached Solitude on that cold December Saturday afternoon, however, my inadvertent divagations must have pushed the total to the ten-mile mark. I'd looked at maps prior to departing from my hotel, of course but deliberately didn't bring one along (not a fan); I don't...
- 1/4/2015
- by Neil Young
- MUBI
Amaaaazing experimental cinema from Henri Chomette, entitled Jeux des reflets et de la vitesse (Games of Reflection and of Speed, 1925/6). Quite a few filmmakers were exploring the possibilities of abstract movement in the twenties, dispensing with narrative and focusing on the unique formal properties of film. Chomette just happens to be one of the best.
There are bits here of Kubrick-Stargate-kinetic-awesomeness, especially when he dissolves between movement forward and movement backward, and you get a vertiginous tromboning of space that arches your back and goggles your eyes. I'm also reminded of the sequence in Rodney Ascher's Room 237 when The Shining is projected forwards and backwards on top of itself at the same time...
And there's an excellent surprise moment when we emerge from a tunnel and find ourselves... not where we might have expected.
Backstory: Chomette had partnered up with Man Ray, as I understand it, to produce...
There are bits here of Kubrick-Stargate-kinetic-awesomeness, especially when he dissolves between movement forward and movement backward, and you get a vertiginous tromboning of space that arches your back and goggles your eyes. I'm also reminded of the sequence in Rodney Ascher's Room 237 when The Shining is projected forwards and backwards on top of itself at the same time...
And there's an excellent surprise moment when we emerge from a tunnel and find ourselves... not where we might have expected.
Backstory: Chomette had partnered up with Man Ray, as I understand it, to produce...
- 7/25/2013
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
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