Palme Thursday is A.A. Dowd’s monthly examination of a winner of the Palme D’Or, determining how well the film has held up and whether it deserved the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival.
Viridiana (1961) and The Long Absence (1961)
There was a time when the most surefire way to win Cannes was, apparently, to earn the condemnation of the pope. Okay, so maybe that only happened twice, but it was in consecutive years. La Dolce Vita, arguably the most celebrated movie by the legendary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, deeply offended the Catholic church, which objected especially to the symbolic Second Coming of the opening minutes, when a helicopter dangles a statue of Christ over the partiers and sunbathers of then-contemporary Rome. But the Vatican’s ire, strongly worded in the pages of official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, couldn’t stop Fellini’s portrait of ...
Viridiana (1961) and The Long Absence (1961)
There was a time when the most surefire way to win Cannes was, apparently, to earn the condemnation of the pope. Okay, so maybe that only happened twice, but it was in consecutive years. La Dolce Vita, arguably the most celebrated movie by the legendary Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini, deeply offended the Catholic church, which objected especially to the symbolic Second Coming of the opening minutes, when a helicopter dangles a statue of Christ over the partiers and sunbathers of then-contemporary Rome. But the Vatican’s ire, strongly worded in the pages of official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, couldn’t stop Fellini’s portrait of ...
- 4/20/2017
- by A.A. Dowd
- avclub.com
The Long Absence (Une aussi longue absence)
Directed by Henri Colpi
Written by Marguerite Duras and Gerald Jarlot
France, 1961
The 1960s were an important and innovative time in French film history. Although France has always been the front-runner for the daring, the urbane and the inventive when it comes to cinema (amongst other things), it was during this revolutionary decade in particular that French filmmakers began to personalise their work in ways that changed the filmic landscape permanently. There are many praiseworthy and well-known examples that can be given to further emphasize this statement, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Le mépris (1963) or Jacques Demy’s Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), however, there are also some lesser known films that help to further accentuate what was going on in France post World War II. It is with these less familiar films that perhaps audiences are able to better comprehend the everyday struggles...
Directed by Henri Colpi
Written by Marguerite Duras and Gerald Jarlot
France, 1961
The 1960s were an important and innovative time in French film history. Although France has always been the front-runner for the daring, the urbane and the inventive when it comes to cinema (amongst other things), it was during this revolutionary decade in particular that French filmmakers began to personalise their work in ways that changed the filmic landscape permanently. There are many praiseworthy and well-known examples that can be given to further emphasize this statement, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Le mépris (1963) or Jacques Demy’s Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), however, there are also some lesser known films that help to further accentuate what was going on in France post World War II. It is with these less familiar films that perhaps audiences are able to better comprehend the everyday struggles...
- 5/26/2014
- by Trish Ferris
- SoundOnSight
Viridiana
Written by Julio Alejandro and Luis Buñuel
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Spain/Mexico, 1961
The Cannes Film Festival has long been a venue to court controversy, and filmmaker Luis Buñuel was likewise one who consistently reveled in the divisive. At the 1961 festival, Buñuel brought his latest release, Viridiana, and the results were spectacular, and spectacularly contentious. The film, which shared Palme d’Or honors with Henri Colpi’s The Long Absence, was subsequently met with charges of blasphemy from the Vatican’s newspaper, and it was promptly banned in Buñuel ‘s native Spain.
The Spanish reaction was particularly critical. Viridiana’s production in Buñuel’s place of birth was already a hot topic. Having left for America and Mexico in 1939, Spain’s surrealist native son was back home, the adamantly leftist filmmaker now working amidst Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship. What’s the worst that could happen?
Viridiana is what happened,...
Written by Julio Alejandro and Luis Buñuel
Directed by Luis Buñuel
Spain/Mexico, 1961
The Cannes Film Festival has long been a venue to court controversy, and filmmaker Luis Buñuel was likewise one who consistently reveled in the divisive. At the 1961 festival, Buñuel brought his latest release, Viridiana, and the results were spectacular, and spectacularly contentious. The film, which shared Palme d’Or honors with Henri Colpi’s The Long Absence, was subsequently met with charges of blasphemy from the Vatican’s newspaper, and it was promptly banned in Buñuel ‘s native Spain.
The Spanish reaction was particularly critical. Viridiana’s production in Buñuel’s place of birth was already a hot topic. Having left for America and Mexico in 1939, Spain’s surrealist native son was back home, the adamantly leftist filmmaker now working amidst Francisco Franco’s fascist dictatorship. What’s the worst that could happen?
Viridiana is what happened,...
- 5/14/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
The long absence from the movie industry is about to end for writer, director Dario Argento. Filming for his latest movie which is an adaption from the movie Dracula will begin tentatively on May 30th, 2011 in Hungary. Dracula 3D is said to be a period piece that's faithful to the Bram Stoker novel. Rutger Hauer, who's been on fire as of late, will be playing the role of Van Helsing. Other names associated with the movie are; Marta Gastini, Asia…...
- 5/4/2011
- Horrorbid
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