
Lady in the Water: 1947
via shorpy
4/30/09
Germaine Dulac - L'Invitation Au Voyage aka Invitation to a Journey (1927)



- one comment about this film from IMDb:
«A Symbolist film merging images of romance, voyaging, and cabaret.
Expanding poetically on lines from Baudelaire (Mon enfant, ma soeur / Songe à la douceur / D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!...Des meubles luisants / Polis par les ans / Décoreraient notre chambre), Dulac's film takes place in a stage-set night club with painted nautical decorations—even the outside walls and doorway are obviously painted, too. The Woman (Emma Gynt) enters, wearing a voluminous white fur coat which she keeps up to shroud half her face. In several short, repeated vignettes we've seen her mending or embroidering at home, ignored by a faceless husband. Now she sits in a corner of the club, spurns the advances of a merrymaker, and orders a drink as the band plays and people dance. At the bar a naval officer sits—I'm not sure whether it's le Matelot (Paul Lorbert) or le Marin (Raymond Dubreuil)—and gazes. In this symbolist film he's the object of desire, or perhaps the catalyst, dressed in a handsome double-breasted blazer, with brilliantined hair, a strong profile and smoldering eyes, and mixed Afro-European features. He approaches the Woman, they dance and go back to the table, she lets her cloak slip off her shoulders, they drink champagne and gaze at each other, he strokes her hand, she imagines herself on board a ship, he opens a stage-set porthole and then there are shots of ships and water but when she looks through she sees a messy backstage workshop, he buys her a souvenir miniature ship with Invitation au voyage painted on the side, they sit entranced by a violinist and imagine romantic nautical scenes, he notes her wedding ring and a locket with a photo of a child, she withdraws a little, he dances with another woman, and she goes home to bed. The invitation has gone no further. The film is very attractively photographed, and the overlay of artificial sets and dreamy longing is fascinating, as is the curious emphasis on the power of music, even in a silent movie.»
Baden Verboten (No Swimming) - 1906



Video
Uma forma de relembrar o Europa Film Treasures, site que felizmente continua activo.
4/29/09
A dor é o seu deleite. Busca-a, desejo febril! – por hospitais, por cadeias, por antros, por alcoices. Fareja-a de noite nos bairros leprosos, cloacas de humanidade, vazadouros de almas, onde crimes, virtudes, vícios, angústias, raivas, desesperos, fermentam promiscuamente, aglomerados e abandonados, como esterqueiras, como entulhos. Pesquisa dédalos caliginosos, cafurnas sem fundo, abismos hiantes, boqueirões de sombra. Explora desvãos, trapeiras, minas, covas, esconderijos. Louco de piedade, engolfa-se nas trevas mudas e soturnas, que gotejam sangue, nas roucas escuridões tumultuosas, pávidas de gemidos, cortadas de clamores, anavalhadas de blasfémias.
E do âmago dessas noites insondáveis pululam turbas espectrais de crucificados, hordas de monstros, bandos de misérias, cardumes de abominações e de agonias. Ululam tropéis disformes e sangrentos, regougam fauces patibulares, choram, coroadas de úlceras, Madalenas lívidas, bocas de escárnio crocitam sem dentes e sem pudor, arquejam ralas estertorantes, gemem crianças vagabundas, tossem tísicos, ardem febres, luzem gangrenas e podridões... E tudo vago, indistinto, confuso, num rumor longo e subterrâneo. Não se destacam, não se desenham as formas. Olhos, bocas, gestos, relampeando na sombra... Nada mais. A sombra voraz esbate as linhas e os contornos. É o mundo caótico da miséria, que a noite pútrida gerou e a noite soturna há-de engolir... o seu mundo, o mundo dos pobres, meu grande visionário, quase desconhecido e genial.
Homens de gosto coleccionam quadros ou estátuas. O meu amigo colecciona dor. Não em galerias ou museus, como quem se dedica ao estudo biológico das várias formas de sofrer. Quando uma chaga aterradora o surpreende, não a envasilha num frasco, guarda-a no coração.
Guerra Junqueiro - Carta-Prefácio a Os Pobres, de Raul Brandão
check the cool wax

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4/28/09
4/27/09
Voyages Extraordinaires



«Voyages Extraordinaires is a weblog for people of intelligence and good breeding who enjoy Victorian-Edwardian Scientific Romances and Retro-Futurism, Victoriana and Neo-Victorianism, Voyages Extraordinaires and Imperialist Romances, Gothic Horror, Pulp Fiction, the Golden Ages of Hollywood and of Travel, silent and early films, points suprêmes and real life adventures into places exotic and historic.»
Soa um bocado cagão, mas o blog é bonito.
4/25/09
Fiction of the Absurd

- Fiction of the Absurd -
Nikolai Gogol . . . Franz Kafka . . . Bruno Schulz . . .
Daniil Kharms . . . Eugene Ionesco . . . Albert Camus and others





































