Funny how the simplest things are the hardest to translate. The literal English translation of the title of this iconic film, starring two of the world's best comedians of all time, Anna Magnani and Toto', is "Joyful Laughter" and yet that's all wrong. It doesn't capture the soaring, hysterical, belly laugh, jouissance of "Risate di …
HARDLY A FEMALE IN SIGHT: DAVID THOMSON’S THE BIG SCREEN My March Column at Bookslut
Midway through David Thomson's meandering and (self-) reflective history of world cinema, The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies and What They Did to Us, he discusses British director David Lean's classic film Brief Encounter, a "woman's film" about an adulterous affair. Thomson is mystified by the film's "tacit admission of women's tragic position, …
“Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman, Let’s Go Make A Picture on the Island of Stromboli”
Billy Bragg sings Woodie Guthrie's song about Ingrid Bergman while she was filming Roberto Rossellini's STROMBOLI (1950) . A documentary has recently been made about the highly romantic and scandalous love affair between Bergman and Rossellini that erupted into public view during the filming of STROMBOLI . The War of the Volcanoes ( La guerra …
Jenny McPhee 