lchadbou-326-26592
Joined Mar 2012
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lchadbou-326-26592's rating
Le Bel Age which is also referred to in the film as a book title (Translated there as Love Is When You Find It) is a French literary expression for Youth but also connotes the question, what is the appropriate age to still engage in the game of picking up women and when is it the right time to give it up, it also suggests the good old times.
The collaboration between Pierre Kast and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (the latter co-writing and playing one of the main characters) is of interest as a sophisticated expression of the game of love, told in three flashback episodes from a forest setting where both the men and the women are seen with guns engaging in a different kind of hunt The first episode is set in a classy several levels boutique where women don't seem to have an issue about stepping in to shop for art objects, records or whatever knowing that the men standing around are waiting in competition to flirt with them, it is taken from a Moravia story.
These are upper middle class at least people of leisure who have the wherewithal to jaunt off on excursions to Deauville, Saint-Tropez or a ski resort to continue their amorous attempts It is to the filmmakers' credit that they don't give us just a masculinist (and what might seem today as sexist) perspective but offer their third episode from the point of view of one of the women, where we see the ladies strategizing on their own about how to handle the men An interesting cast has been assembled including New Wave heartthrob Jean-Claude Brialy and novelist Boris Vian and the Italian Marcello Pagliero who worked with Rossellini.
The overall oeuvres of both Kast and Doniol-Valcroze are worth pursuing further. Both made important contributions at Cahiers Du Cinema (the latter actually was one of its founders) and represented with the more well known Rohmer (the witty philosophizing about love in Le Bel Age may remind the viewer somewhat of him) a generation roughly ten years older than that of Chabrol, Godard, Rivette and Truffaut) and they didn't always incline toward the main line of that publication.
The collaboration between Pierre Kast and Jacques Doniol-Valcroze (the latter co-writing and playing one of the main characters) is of interest as a sophisticated expression of the game of love, told in three flashback episodes from a forest setting where both the men and the women are seen with guns engaging in a different kind of hunt The first episode is set in a classy several levels boutique where women don't seem to have an issue about stepping in to shop for art objects, records or whatever knowing that the men standing around are waiting in competition to flirt with them, it is taken from a Moravia story.
These are upper middle class at least people of leisure who have the wherewithal to jaunt off on excursions to Deauville, Saint-Tropez or a ski resort to continue their amorous attempts It is to the filmmakers' credit that they don't give us just a masculinist (and what might seem today as sexist) perspective but offer their third episode from the point of view of one of the women, where we see the ladies strategizing on their own about how to handle the men An interesting cast has been assembled including New Wave heartthrob Jean-Claude Brialy and novelist Boris Vian and the Italian Marcello Pagliero who worked with Rossellini.
The overall oeuvres of both Kast and Doniol-Valcroze are worth pursuing further. Both made important contributions at Cahiers Du Cinema (the latter actually was one of its founders) and represented with the more well known Rohmer (the witty philosophizing about love in Le Bel Age may remind the viewer somewhat of him) a generation roughly ten years older than that of Chabrol, Godard, Rivette and Truffaut) and they didn't always incline toward the main line of that publication.
If you have access to the Criterion DVD of The Eclipse you might take an hour to watch this supplement which includes numerous clips of Antonioni philosophizing, a few clips with his collaborators, and tidbits from most of his work.
The most interesting bits of footage are the "filming of" clips from several titles and an entire deleted scene from L'Avventura which would have added some humor to that otherwise somber film.
The least interesting parts are the clips of the director philosophizing. It would have been more helpful to have feedback from more of the people who worked with him. Maybe even from a few articulate critics. Scenes of him receiving awards at festivals are, expectedly, as uninspiring as footage from your typical Academy Awards ceremony.
For some reason a number of the films are not represented by actual clips (the best option for giving viewers a taste ) but instead by still footage .
The most interesting bits of footage are the "filming of" clips from several titles and an entire deleted scene from L'Avventura which would have added some humor to that otherwise somber film.
The least interesting parts are the clips of the director philosophizing. It would have been more helpful to have feedback from more of the people who worked with him. Maybe even from a few articulate critics. Scenes of him receiving awards at festivals are, expectedly, as uninspiring as footage from your typical Academy Awards ceremony.
For some reason a number of the films are not represented by actual clips (the best option for giving viewers a taste ) but instead by still footage .
The second installment in Italian director Riccardo Freda's adaptation of the epic Victor Hugo novel mostly sustains the superb mise en scene as described in my user review of the first part.
A couple of questionable decisions though are made in the script, which typical of Italian cinema was collaborated on by a number of writers: the young firebrand revolutionary Marius is no longer the abandoned scion of a reactionary Royalist but is now the missing son of the Paris chief of police. And the subplot in which Marius's ancestor had his life saved at the Battle of Waterloo (which made up a whole chapter in the original) by the sleazy money grabbing inkeeper Thenardier is eliminated, thus depriving us of the more complicated response Marius has to helping the elderly Valjean when he is surrounded by Thenardier's fellow thugs.
Look closely or you may miss several shots of a young Marcello Mastroianni as one of the student radicals, arrested after their failure at the barricades, and shot by a firing squad. This particular part of the story compared to the first film may have involved some writing by the politically oriented Mario Monicelli.
A couple of questionable decisions though are made in the script, which typical of Italian cinema was collaborated on by a number of writers: the young firebrand revolutionary Marius is no longer the abandoned scion of a reactionary Royalist but is now the missing son of the Paris chief of police. And the subplot in which Marius's ancestor had his life saved at the Battle of Waterloo (which made up a whole chapter in the original) by the sleazy money grabbing inkeeper Thenardier is eliminated, thus depriving us of the more complicated response Marius has to helping the elderly Valjean when he is surrounded by Thenardier's fellow thugs.
Look closely or you may miss several shots of a young Marcello Mastroianni as one of the student radicals, arrested after their failure at the barricades, and shot by a firing squad. This particular part of the story compared to the first film may have involved some writing by the politically oriented Mario Monicelli.