The talcum powder scene from Tristesse et Beauté.My Myriem Roussel fever continues to run high. Thanks to eBay, I've been able to obtain ancient VHS PAL and SECAM pre-records of Joy Fleury's
Tristesse et Beauté ("Sadness and Beauty," 1985) and Robert Van Ackeren's
Die Venusfalle ("The Venus Trap," 1988), both featuring Roussel, neither of which was ever exported to America.
The former, which co-stars Charlotte Rampling and Andrzej Zulawski, casts Roussel as a sculptress. the younger woman in a lesbian relationship, who is sent by her partner to seduce and destroy a successful writer who broke her heart years before. The film was given a DVD release in Italy, which would certainly have yielded a much superior picture to the French SECAM crap I watched, but it would also have stuck me with Italian dubbed audio; at least on the tape, the original dialogue recording was intact. I found the movie compelling even without understanding all the dialogue; its images are gripping, its depictions of artistic process valid, and Roussel is absolutely lovely, acting with equal conviction in her love scenes with Rampling and Zulawski. It's an erotic film whose standout scenes spotlight personal hygiene, firstly as Roussel powders her body prior to an assignation with Zulawski, and secondly as Rampling uses a straight razor to shave her lover's underarms.
Die Venusfalle, from the director of
A Woman in Flames, curiously downplays Roussel in its packaging, which toplines and pictures "
Der Neue Erotik-Star" Sonja Kirchberger, though Roussel is given top-billing on the film itself. The movie is typical, pretentious, coked-up, '80s Eurotrash in many ways, with a soundtrack featuring various uncredited Bowie, Roxy Music and Iggy Pop tracks. Nevertheless, Roussel comes across as a real rock star here.
Her introduction, withheld until we're more than 20 minutes into the picture, must be one of the most outrageous ever dared. The unlikeable, arrogant, fashion-plate male protagonist, Max (Horst-Gunther Marx), struts into a pool hall, where he finds Marie (Roussel) playing billiards with a man. It's obvious they notice one another, but they're too cool to acknowledge the attraction, not even exchanging glances as she and her partner finish and leave. Cut to later that night, as both toss and turn in their respective beds with their respective lovers asleep beside them. They both awaken, silently dress, climb into their cars and roar off into the night. Moments later, their two cars independently arrive on opposite ends of the same street and accelerate toward one another in a game of Chicken, finally deflecting off one another in a scrape that sends both vehicles spinning out of control.
The two staggered drivers sit in their cars for a moment or two, eyeing each other like diagrammatically fated pawns. They recover their senses, exit their cars, start walking then running toward one another, collide in an embrace and proceed to make love right then and there, in the middle of the empty
strasse.
Yes, the scene is ludicrous, even kitschy, yet it's more vividly staged and carries a stronger erotic charge than anything in Cronenberg's CRASH. And I ask you, does the cinema have a better reason to exist than to bring visions such as this within everyone's reach? (Well, everyone able to play PAL or SECAM tapes, anyway.)
There's another enjoyably preposterous scene where Max disrupts Marie's ballet recital; it's preposterous because Roussel, despite having a perfect swan-like neck and balletic grace, is much too tall to be part of a ballet chorus and looks awkward when raised. This doesn't alter the fact that she's an extraordinary creature and makes the film endurable, even irresistable, with her uncanny presence alone.
Throughout this alternately fascinating and annoying movie, I kept thinking that Georges Franju would have given his left arm to work with Roussel: she's Édith Scob and Francine Bergé rolled into one. Indeed, the final shot, in which she slips out a window wearing a fetching black danceskin, could easily pass for something Franju directed. Alas, though the very young Roussel was the protégé of Jean-Luc Godard, the Roussel of her late 20s and 30s appears never to have found the ideal interpreter of her particular brand of magic.
I understand that Die Venusfalle played in years past with English subtitles on the Australian superstation SBS. If anyone in my audience has a recording of that broadcast, or a copy of the Fleury film in English, please let me know how I might obtain a copy from you.
Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni is Italian horror's reigning Diva of Delicious Death Scenes, but she is also a dear friend, an inspiring fellow artist, and our beloved sister, so Donna joins me today in sending her our warmest regards on the anniversary of her birth. She's seen here with us at last October's Cinema Wasteland convention, embracing her own personal copy of the Bava book, while we embrace her -- as I wish we could be doing right now.
Robert Taylor chases Irene Dunne's skirt right into the path of a speeding car in the 1935 version of MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION.
If this blog should be doing anything, it is helping to promote the venerable hub of this freewheeling enterprise: VIDEO WATCHDOG magazine. I've been solipsistically remiss in mentioning here that VW 147 is now en route to subscribers and newsstands, and available now from our toll free 1-800-275-8395 number.
VW 148 is not billed as such, but it's actually one of our popular "all-review" issues. We weren't planning to emphasize STARDUST to this extent, but the quality of Sheldon Inkol's writing about the film, and the wealth of beautiful images available to us from it, conspired to give this issue both a special identity and sense of direction. Charlie did a lovely job of framing the ever-photogenic Michelle Pfeiffer on the cover, and adding sprinkles of his own stardust to the framing background. I also like the diversity of Donna's choices for the supporting images on the cover stripe, ranging from the British TV miniseries DEAD SET to Al Pacino (so memorable opposite Pfeiffer in FRANKIE AND JOHNNY) in the thriller 88 MINUTES, to classic stars like Fred Williamson and Sidney "Charlie Chan" Toler. This should be shorthand to our readers that, while our cover aims to appeal to wider or at least consistent numbers, the innards of this issue delve well into our usual depths. 
While perusing the Mario Bava items currently being hawked on eBay, I was startled to find this strangely familiar box art for a Greek VHS release of BLOOD AND BLACK LACE [Sei donne per l'assassino, 1964]. This Video Cronos release isn't dated anywhere on the auction page, but it's possible this box art design actually predates the debut of VIDEO WATCHDOG, since VHS has been around since 1979 or thereabouts. If this release came after 1990, it would offer compelling proof of VW's influence. If it dates from before 1990, it's an impressive bit of foreshadowing, linking Bava with the magazine that would later publish his biography.
Donna and I spent the Valentine's Day weekend in Nashville, Tennessee -- our first-ever visit there -- where we visited with friends, had some delicious sushi at a Sapporo in Rivergate, and spent some time at a full-scale replica of the Parthenon, constructed there over 100 years ago for the city's centenary celebration.
While there, I also went inside to pledge eternal fealty to the goddess Athena.
The nominations for the 7th Annual Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards were posted over the weekend at the Rondo Award website, and I'm pleased to report that VIDEO WATCHDOG earned no fewer than ten (10) nominations, while my own outside projects, including this blog, earned another three (3)! They are as follows...
While watching the new Criterion Collection disc of LuÃs Buñuel's SIMON OF THE DESERT (1965), in preparation for reviewing it for next month's SIGHT AND SOUND, I saw a couple of things that struck me as worth noting here -- namely, a previously unnoted set of connections or coincidences linking the work of Buñuel and his contemporary Mario Bava.
The hoop accessory is interesting, being analogous to the white ball of Bava and Fellini's evil spectres, but also because it has a Freudian dimension of entrapment when contrasted with the phallic pillar of Simon's proud asceticism.
After the failure of her thwarted seduction, Pinal's Devil returns as a bearded, lamb-cradling Jesus Christ and, still later, as a bare-breasted goddess. The Buñuelian irony of all this, of course, is that Simon's prayers for godly intervention into his selfless life attract only the brickbats of a friendly Hell. Finally, abruptly, the Devil sweeps Simon off the top of his pillar by introducing a jet plane into this early Anno Domini fable.
Criterion has also issued Buñuel and Pinal's earlier masterpiece THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL (1964), in which a severed hand briefly runs amok. The look of this deathly appendage is nearly identical to a sculpture of a disembodied hand that plays a prominent role in Bava's final feature, SHOCK aka BEYOND THE DOOR II (1978).
Here's the reply card, provided with copies of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, that the late, great Lux Interior sent to us back in October 2007. Such a sweet thing to revisit after the sad events of last week. Wish we could have met...
The talcum powder scene from Tristesse et Beauté.
Her introduction, withheld until we're more than 20 minutes into the picture, must be one of the most outrageous ever dared. The unlikeable, arrogant, fashion-plate male protagonist, Max (Horst-Gunther Marx), struts into a pool hall, where he finds Marie (Roussel) playing billiards with a man. It's obvious they notice one another, but they're too cool to acknowledge the attraction, not even exchanging glances as she and her partner finish and leave. Cut to later that night, as both toss and turn in their respective beds with their respective lovers asleep beside them. They both awaken, silently dress, climb into their cars and roar off into the night. Moments later, their two cars independently arrive on opposite ends of the same street and accelerate toward one another in a game of Chicken, finally deflecting off one another in a scrape that sends both vehicles spinning out of control.
The two staggered drivers sit in their cars for a moment or two, eyeing each other like diagrammatically fated pawns. They recover their senses, exit their cars, start walking then running toward one another, collide in an embrace and proceed to make love right then and there, in the middle of the empty strasse.
Yes, the scene is ludicrous, even kitschy, yet it's more vividly staged and carries a stronger erotic charge than anything in Cronenberg's CRASH. And I ask you, does the cinema have a better reason to exist than to bring visions such as this within everyone's reach? (Well, everyone able to play PAL or SECAM tapes, anyway.)
Donna and I were saddened to learn of the death yesterday of legendary Cramps frontman Lux Interior, who, under his real name of Erick Purkheiser, was a longtime subscriber to VIDEO WATCHDOG magazine and one of the original patrons of MARIO BAVA ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK. He was kind enough to send in the index comment card provided with his copy, which he filled out enthusiastically; I've asked Donna to pull it from our files so that I can share it with you in the days ahead.
Tomorrow marks the commencement of the 59th annual Internationale Filmfestspiele in Berlin. I have a number of friends who are boarding planes today to attend, hopeful of meeting and attracting investors for their current projects, and I wish them all success. Their scripts are all something seldom seen in theaters today -- originals, not remakes-- so they can use all the positive thinking you can send their way. I, for one, don't believe a country that voted Barack Obama into office is interested in continuing to subsist on a steady diet of remakes, but evidently stubborn Hollywood thinks differently. Even flops like THE ILLUSTRATED MAN are being green-lit.
Me (third from left) with the Mirror staff, photographed on the ground floor of the then-under-construction new building of Norwood High School in 1971. Click to embiggen.
