I. The First Beauty Rome is the first (and perhaps the only) Beauty in La Grande Bellezza. Artists, editors, mobsters, magicians, and businessmen are drawn to its splendor and immortality. Classical ruins only become more […]
Category: CLASSICS
The Real Betrayal in Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques
Nicole’s betrayal of Madame Christine Delassalle was for me more devastating than the Mr. Delassalle’s betrayal of his wife. After all, Monsieur is set up to be thoroughly cruel, miserly, capricious, domineering and selfish. At […]
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis dir. Vittorio de Sica (1970)
The Garden in question is certainly Edenic; from the opening credits we are treated to the dappled, soft, pastel haze of sunlight through the trees. There is a high garden wall which keeps out the […]
Two Women by Vittorio de Sica (1960)
The threat of sexual violence pervades throughout Vittorio de Sica’s astute and complete La Ciociara, for which Sophia Loren won an Oscar. Throughout the film, de Sica captures the jittery, overhead threat of war; whether […]
Rosemary’s Baby and the Feminine Mystique
Rosemary’s Baby, released just after the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, is an accidental portrait of women’s changing roles in America in the 1960s–a portrait which is every bit as terrifying as the […]
Leonine Films 