Oh, William Klein, how I love you. Delphine Seyrig in a spangly leotard, three rockin’ wrestlers, and a superhero-cum-quarterback-cum-fascist cowboy delight. Oh, and Serge Gainsbourg (off-screen) playing the piano. So much to admire in MR. FREEDOM’s (1969) bombast.
Little Richard Attenborough’s “choirboy’s looks and killer’s cold stare” in BRIGHTON ROCK (1947). Perhaps inspiration for his naturalist brother’s nature series on reptiles and amphibians: Life in Cold Blood?
Eldridge Cleaver and fellow African revolutionaries in Algiers, meeting during the Pan-African Cultural Festival. My favorite of his diatribes: “F*@# Queen Victoria to her bones!”
Klein works the Helvetica credits, as per usual, here hurtling at us, in ELDRIDGE CLEAVER, BLACK PANTHER (1970).
And as much as Cleaver likes to talk, this guy, below, doesn’t want to. See the ringing telephone that gleams menacingly in the extreme foreground? SHE PLAYED WITH FIRE (1957) and this one may have helped her do it.
Really, in this case, the hackneyed blogger speak of “le sigh” is warranted. QUI ÊTES-VOUS, POLLY MAGGOO? (1966):
And “le purr” if you were the cinematographer on THE OCTOBER MAN (1947). I’m talking about you, Erwin Hillier:
Train whistles really do a number on the psyches of post-war Brits, here and in Brief Encounter especially. Are there other films where train whistles toot themselves into the plot? Maybe Strangers on a Train?
Did Cassius Clay invent the media circus? Here he is, by that point Muhammad Ali, manipulating the *#@! out of his image.
By the way, he does admit that he shouldn’t have been calling himself “The Greatest” back in ’64, as Allah takes that heavyweight title.
SO EVIL MY LOVE (1948) seemed like it would never end. As a rule, the period Brit Crime films (like this one, set in the Victorian era) are duds.
