Titulo em portugues: DINHEIRO SUJO

english title: DIRTY MONEY

com:

Alain Delon

Catherine Deneuve

Richard Crenna

1972.

referencia para diversos filmes do tarantino.  fotografia absurda.  muito maneiro.

O ator francês Jean Desailly morreu na madrugada de quarta-feira (10), aos 87 anos, comunicou hoje (12) a família.

Ele era conhecido principalmente por seu trabalho em filmes dos anos 50 e 60, como "Um Só Pecado", de François Truffaut, e "Técnica de um Delator", de Jean-Pierre Melville.

O ator foi também membro da Comédia Francesa e da companhia de teatro de Jean-Louis Barrault e de Madeleine Renault. A causa da morte não foi informada pela família.

Leia mais clicando aqui.

O ator foi indicado ao BAFTA em 1960 na categoria Best Foreign Actor pelo papel de Marcel Maurin. Fotos e filmografia do autor neste link:
http://dvdtoile.com/Filmographie.php?id=5474

Jean-Pierre Melville, a French director above all the rest. He took otherwise normal storylines and turned them into fascinating mysteries with plot twists, American style entwined, and cinematography secrets far before it's time. Some of the best French New Wave films of this past century are in his credit. Le Samourai, Le Cercle Rouge, Bob Le flambeur, and so many others are evidence of incredible films that can't be forgotten. Do yourself a favor and check those and others out. I guarentee you will be hooked from then on out. Here's some clips of the three I mentioned. Absolutely stunning!

Le Samourai

Le Cercle Rouge

Bob Le Flambeur

SECRET CEREMONY is a film maudit if ever there was one. Even many hardcore Loseyites find it hard to defend.

"Anyway, to go back to SECRET CEREMONY, here is how it was finally set up. I was sitting in Rome; I had just been doing the dubbing of BOOM!, Burton was going off to do WHERE EAGLES DARE, or whatever they do -- shit -- WHERE EAGLES SHIT -- and we were all in the Grand Hotel. Elizabeth said 'Why don't we do something again?' I remembered this script and thought she would be ideal for it. I got her the script a few days later from London, and she said 'I'll do it', and we did it, at once. Now, of course, I brought [writer George] Tabori back in and we did a great deal of re-working, mostly out of that particular house."

~ from Conversations With Losey by Michel Ciment.

(I like Ciment, he has a particular enthusiasm for the mad and visionary strains of British cinema that are at least as big a part of our culture -- the valuable part of it -- as social observation and all that muck.)

So, having finished Tennessee Williams' BOOM! (which is John Waters' favourite movie for reasons that are evident if you can manage to see it ), while Burton is off where the eagles shit, Liz Taylor is parading around in various Christian Dior outfits in this deeply weird art movie in this weird house in Addison Road, London. The house had been a rest home for the mentally ill, run by some kind of religious organisation who had fallen on hard times -- Losey's regular collaborator Richard MacDonald ran amok in it and created one of the very best London houses in cinema -- it stands alongside Asshetton Gorton's work in THE KNACK and BLOW-UP, and John Clark's in PERFORMANCE. The great London house films of the period.

Early on Liz, grieving her lost child, is adopted as mother by orphaned loony Mia Farrow, who cooks her a splendid sausage breakfast. And the film slams on the brakes and simply observes, with Farrow, as Liz wolfs down the lot. A whole breakfast consumed, in silence... It seems like a dreadful mistake at screenplay stage: The script must have said, "She eats the sausages," and nobody thought anything of it, but it's one of those sentences, like "The Indians capture the fort," that really entails much more than it seems to. Yet somehow the film knows we want this. We want to see Liz eat those sausages. All of them. It's pornographic, but we can't look away. The fact that Liz is carrying, shall we say, a few extra pounds and Farrow, who does not eat, still has the emaciated spidery limbs she sports in ROSEMARY'S BABY, adds to the pervasive and enticing wrongness of it all. This is a terrible thing we are witnessing.

Later, Liz will pat her jowls reflectively and complain, "Christ, I'm so f=a=t," her voice rising to a hoarse beep on the final word.

What's going on? All the characters are insane, as Losey admitted. This makes things pretty alienating for any audience member with a grasp of reality. And while Losey announced that Farrow's character was "in every detail thought out as a hysterical schizophrenic," I get the impression that his sense of those words may be rather loose. Jean-Pierre Melville also described Delon's character in LE SAMOURAI as schizophrenic, and I have no idea what he meant by that. Autistic might be closer in that case. I think Farrow's schizophrenia, like protagonist George Harvey Bone's in Hangover Square, may be a plot device as much as a condition.

(Damnit, I now have private information regarding Farrow's mental state at the time, but I don't think I can repeat it. Never mind, Losey loved her, and she's very good in his film.)

I think that by making Liz's character so nutty, the film kind of disables itself, since if she functioned as a vaguely reliable guide to the labyrinth, she could get away with being distraught, maybe a bit irrational, but not this totally random screwball she is.

Screenwriter George Tabori, who is no Pinter, obviously has no shortage of ideas, but his organisation is lacking. David Caute's Losey book criticises the dialogue for muddling American and British idioms, but I got the impression that's Liz's character -- a yank who fakes a Brit accent when she's pretending to be the mother. It's just about the one thing I was clear on. But it's a throw-away film full of throw-away notions, like Farrow's fear of "Moondog", the God figure in a William Blake illustration on the bedroom mantel. It probably relates to her incestuous stepfather, and maybe when Robert Mitchum turns up ("C'mon, you know I'm harmless before lunch!" with an Irish beard and a bunch of flowers, we're meant to be reminded of the sinister figure. But why "Moondog"?

ALTHOUGH -- the environments of the film are beautiful and the various performers do fascinating things. Mia Farrow essays her note-perfect English accent, also displayed in Anthony Mann's swan-song, A DANDY IN ASPIC, and her physical acting is likewise remarkable, all flailing arms and manic grin so wide it threatens to crack the outline of her face and break out on its own. Liz is just Liz, she stomps about, giving her all, seizing on anything she can emote at. Robert Mitchum turns up and shows his bravery again, playing loathsomeness without apology. Decorative eccentricity is provided by Peggy Ashcroft and Pamela Brown, who are always welcome round my place, but Losey's use of the phrase "sort of comedy relief" in describing them is a clue to the fact that they're not actually funny, just more neurotic whimsy.

Richard Rodney Bennett did some fantastic music for Losey, and his stuff here is absolutely right for the film, a messed-up music box tinkle that helps make us feel as crazy as the characters. When Liz and Mia go to the seaside, a stunning resort filmed in Holland, the design and score lift us into a wonderful dream state. Then Mia Farrow shoves a stuffed frog up her dress and pretends she's pregnant. Put this on a double bill with William Cameron Menzies' THE MAZE, a 3D mystery in which the lord of a Scottish castle is secretly a giant frog, having never evolved out of the amphibian stage we all supposedly go through in the womb.

Better yet, you know what this would make a great Fever Dream Double Featurewith? BOOM! is obviously a good choice, which might prove fatal if you didn't have strong drink to hand, but try it with Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's THE DRIVER'S SEAT, also known as IDENTIKIT, which has lots of equally barking mad Lizwork in it, and an even louder frock. Liz gets very irate at the suggestion that she might want a stain-proof dress, at one point: a fine Liz moment. It's from a book by Muriel Spark, apparently reasonably faithful in its adaptation. Ian Bannen is around to supply, what? Himself, I suppose.

Onze anos antes de realizar um dos grandes filmes do cinema francês, Jean-Pierre Melville já experimentava a inusitada exposição sentimental das peças que compunham o submundo do crime francês – ingrediente principal de sua filmografia. O resultado deste promissor projeto não consegue nem mesmo chegar próximo às expectativas refletidas pela estória interessante e, principalmente, pela assinatura do mestre de O Samurai - não bastasse tudo isso para apimentar a sessão (e aumentar a decepção), valeria dizer ainda que O Jogador também é considerado um dos mais fundamentais precursores da nouvelle vague francesa.

Mas é inegável a presença constante de algumas das características mais importantes daquilo que viria a ser a nouvelle vague, a partir de 1959 – sendo que o filme é de 1955. A primeira meia-hora (e estou sendo generoso na contagem), por exemplo, não desenvolve absolutamente nada em termos de trama (não que isso seja próprio ou fundamental aos filmes de Truffaut, Godard e Cia, claro), servindo apenas para apresentar os principais personagens, em especial o protagonista, Bob, e costurar os laços sentimentais e afetivos entre eles e suas respectivas moçoilas graciosas – fato que, embora seja imprescindível para o desenvolvimento da idéia de Melville, torna esta primeira parte cansativa e arrastada demais, sem foco.

Tudo poderia ser perdoado caso o filme conseguisse ser algo mais forte na segunda parte, quando o circo realmente pega fogo. Novamente, isso não acontece, e os caminhos mais interessantes a serem percorridos acabam se fechando automaticamente para o desenrolar da estória de crime fracassado de Melville. Embora construa de forma interessante toda a articulação do plano e alguns pequenos aspectos que envolvem a premeditação do fracasso, como por exemplo as complicações com a namorada de um dos integrantes do bando, que tem um caso com um policial, o diretor perde várias oportunidades de reverter a banalidade (por ser uma trama ordinária mesmo, o que não necessariamente é um problema) em prol do produto final, concluindo tudo de maneira interessante, porém simplista demais (e tentando posar de bacana).

No fim, acaba não sendo um mau filme em virtude de algumas grandes qualidades, a maior parte delas técnicas, como a fotografia e a direção de arte exuberantes e a facilidade com que elas são utilizadas a favor de toda a ambientação da obra, além de algumas seqüências verdadeiramente boas e do reforço na humanização das peças que compõem o quadro de personagens principais. Mas o gosto que deixa é de que poderia ter sido algo muito, muito melhor, se não fosse tão mal cozido assim – uns 30 minutos a mais da idéia no forno e o resultado poderia ter sido realmente empolgante. Mas Melville tem crédito mesmo assim, e faz uns rabiscos da genialidade que apresentaria mais de uma década depois.

2/4

Daniel Dalpizzolo

É estranho como toda a frieza e disciplina e metodismo do personagem parecem ter sido transmitidos a todo o filme como que por contágio viral. Ele é inteiro impregnado de uma beleza pálida, com as cores desaparecendo morrentes em cada cena frente à predominância limpa e absoluta dos tons de cinza. É lindo. Como se a solidão inerente ao seu trabalho colocasse entre os olhos do Samurai e o mundo uma lente, e tudo que ele visse fosse metal, fosse limpo, ártico e sem vida. Como se a essência das coisas estivesse se perdendo diante dele numa linha de fumaça.

E o ambiente a sua volta é todo de um desenho mecânico. Tudo é retilíneo, anguloso, perfeito. Nada através do filme parece orgânico. Como o próprio Samurai.

Alain Delon transforma-se numa máquina. Gélido, com a face paralisada, e todos os seus atos e movimentos delineados de uma elegância e precisão quase robóticas. Nem é sangue, é óleo e fluido de bateria que ele limpa quando é baleado.

Daí que o final revela uma honra (tão banalizada por esses tempos) que só pode ser encontrada no mais humano dos seres. E é a coisa mais triste do mundo, pois em um segundo Melville provoca uma metamorfose que enlouquece o espectador, transformando um vilão ou apático ou mesmo odioso, pelo qual muitos torceram para que fosse pego, num verdadeiro mocinho; o que por pena ocorre tarde demais, podendo recriar inclusive um certo remorso como efeito. Cruel e genial.

4/4

Luis Henrique Boaventura

There is ,however, a different side to WWII that is barely considered in English-language cinema: occupation. Guernsey is an island surrounded by memories, both mental and concrete, but apart from recently lambasted television series Island At War, one has to look eastwards to find stories of occupation.

The granddaddy of all occupation dramas has to be Roma, Citta Aperta (Rome, Open City). Shot by Roberto Rossellini on the streets of Rome in early 1945 Roma, Citta Aperta is one of the classics of Italian Neo-Realist Cinema. Whilst it cannot be denied that the film is often melodramatic, this tale of a priest's defiance has an immediacy that grips from start to shattering finish.

Closer to home is Jean-Pierre Melville's L'Armee Des Ombres (Army of Shadows). This episodic drama follows a group of fighters in the French Resistance as they mount a covert war against the Third Reich. Treachery, death and espionage are the hallmarks of this sombre epic that feels less like a testimonial to those that fought than a purging of feelings about collaboration and the national scar of Vichy France.

Following a similar line, albeit with a Dutch twist, is Soldaat Von Oranje (Soldier Of Orange). Paul Verhoeven's film is based on the true story of the experiences of a group of friends throughout the Nazi occupation of Holland. It centres on Erik (played with utter conviction by Rutger Hauer) and his journey from university to the underground and eventually the side of the Dutch Queen. Like L'Armee Des Ombres, Soldaat Von Oranje captures the divisions and hatred caused by military occupation in a manner that can only be described as personal.

Whilst all of these films offer an insight into the hardships of WWII in a way that English speaking cinema rarely does, they do not come close to the literal nightmare experienced by their more easterly allies. If you want to experience the horror of war at the cinema then the closest you can get is the visceral shock of Idi I Smotri (Come And See). Named after a passage in Revelations, this Russian tour-de-force is war as it has never been depicted before or since (the only parallel artistic work that I can think of is the Chapman Brothers' Hell - link) and every frame, from the cold, accusing eyes that look out from the screen to the SS's massacre of Perekhody, is utterly captivating. Once seen this film is never forgotten.

...of course these films are the tip of the iceberg of alternative takes on WWII but they are great movies and a nice introduction to another viewpoint.

"Like Moliere, Jacques Becker died on a strange and terrible battlefield: that of artisitic creation. It was the moment when Caroline bites her finger till she draws blood because she has left Edouard, when Golden Marie (Cristobal's Gold, or course) forces back her tears as Manda climbs the scaffold. It was Saturday evening. The studio phoned to say that the mixing of LE TROU was finally complete. Our btoher Jacques breathed again. Mortally wounded for so long, he could now give up the struggle without dishonour. And a few minutes later, Jacques Becker was no longer alive. It was Sunday morning, the hour when Max plays his favourite record, when Lupin meets the Princess at Maxim's when day finally dawns over 7 rue de l'Estrapade.

"There are several good ways of making French films. Italian style, like Renoir. Viennese, like Ophuls. New Yorker, like Melville. But only Becker was and is French as France, French as Fontenelle's rose and Bonnot's gang. I happened to meet him during the sound mixing of LE TROU. Already ill, he was more handsome than ever. He talked about Les Trois Mousquetaires and suddenly I understood. That dark moustache, than grey hair ... he was D'Artagnan in Twenty Years After. And he was Lupin too. Just compare a photograph of Becker seated behind the wheel of his Mercedes with the opening shot of LES AVENTURES DE ARSENE LUPIN and you will see that Robert Lamoureux was his spitting image.

"So Jacques Lupin, alias Artagnan Becker, is dead. Let us pretend to be moved, for we know from LE TESTAMENT D'ORPHEE that poets only pretend to die."

~ Jean-Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinema 106, April 1960. Quoted in Godard on Godard, translated and edited by Tom Milne.

[Includes references to Becker's EDOUARD ET CAROLINE (1951), L'OR DU CRISTOBAL (1940), CASQUE D'OR (1952), TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (1954), LES AVENTURES D'ARSENE LUPIN (1957), RUE DE L'ESTRAPADE (1953). Becker was planning a film of Dumas' The Three Musketeers.]

Surprisingly emotional stuff from Godard, I thought. And a reminder that I need to take a look at some of the Becker films lurking in my collection. I saw TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI back in the '80s, I think, but don't remember a thing. But I love that feeling of watching a long-forgotten movie and feeling it all come back.

Rui Nogueira: 'So the quotation from Georges Courteline with which L'ARMEE DES OMBRES opens is a reflection of your own feelings -- "Unhappy memories! Yet be welcome, for you are my distant youth."'

Jean-Pierre Melville: 'Precisely. I love that phase and I think it's extraordinarily true. I suffered a lot during the first months of my military service, and I thought it hardly possible that a man as witty, intelligent and sensitive as Courteline could have written Les Gaîtes de L'Escadron, whereas of course he too had been very unhappy during his service. The one day, thinking over my past, I suddenly understood the charm that "unhappy memories" can have. As I grow older, I look back with nostalgia on the years from 1940 to 1944, because they are part of my youth.'

~ from Melville, by Rui Nogueira.

No profound observations from me. But I love L'ARMEE DES OMBRES (translators please note : it's The Army of the Shadows, not The Army in the Shadows) dearly, and would recommend it as an excellent place either to get started on an appreciation of Melville, or as an alternative point of contact if you've seen one of his crime thrillers and been left cold by it. I like the thrillers a lot, but this is something else.

É estranho como toda a frieza e disciplina e metodismo do personagem parecem ter sido transmitidos a todo o filme como que por contágio viral. Ele é inteiro impregnado de uma beleza pálida, com as cores desaparecendo morrentes em cada cena frente à predominância limpa e absoluta dos tons de cinza. É lindo. Como se a solidão inerente ao seu trabalho colocasse entre os olhos do Samurai e o mundo uma lente, e tudo que ele visse fosse metal, fosse limpo, ártico e sem vida. Como se a essência das coisas estivesse se perdendo diante dele numa linha de fumaça.

E o ambiente a sua volta é todo de um desenho mecânico. Tudo é retilíneo, anguloso, perfeito. Nada através do filme parece orgânico. Como o próprio Samurai.

Alain Delon transforma-se numa máquina. Gélido, com a face paralisada, e todos os seus atos e movimentos delineados de uma elegância e precisão quase robóticas. Nem é sangue, é óleo e fluido de bateria que ele limpa quando é baleado.

Daí que o final revela uma honra (tão banalizada por esses tempos) que só pode ser encontrada no mais humano dos seres. E é a coisa mais triste do mundo, pois em um segundo Melville provoca uma metamorfose que enlouquece o espectador, transformando um vilão ou apático ou mesmo odioso, pelo qual muitos torceram para que fosse pego, num verdadeiro mocinho; o que por pena ocorre tarde demais, podendo recriar inclusive um certo remorso como efeito. Cruel e genial.

Reparto principal:
Alain Delon ... Jef Costello
François Périer ... comisario
Nathalie Delon ... Jane Lagrange
Cathy Rosier ... Valérie
Michel Boisrond ... Wiener

Fotografía:
Henri Decaë

Música original:
François de Roubaix

Montaje:
Monique Bonnot
Yolande Maurette

Palabras clave:
Alibi, Assassin, Assassination, Atmospheric, Based On Novel, Car, chase, Claustrophobic, contract, Contract Killer, Crime, Crime Thriller, Crisis of Conscience, Detective, Drama, Film-Noir, France, French New Wave, Gangster Film, Garage, Hard Boiled, Hired Killers, Hitman, Key, Listening Device, Loner, Meditative, Metro, mob-boss, Nightclub, Not For Children, On The Run, Paris, Paris France, Pianist, piano, Police Lineup, police-inspector, Post-Noir (Modern Noir), Reflective, Remake Of American Film, rival, Stylized, Surveillance, Tense, Thriller, Tough Guys, Very Little Dialogue, Violence

Jean-Pierre Melville. 1972. VOSEnglish
dvd: 20
imdb: 6.9