Chronophotograph

A cinephile's blog.

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Women, bodies and reflections in Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life (1959)

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The Loneliest Planet (Julia Loktev, 2011)

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Rock Hudson's Home Movies (Mark Rappaport, 1992)

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Douglas Sirk’s compositions of entrapment in All That Heaven Allows (1955)

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Mes Petites Amoureuses (Jean Eustache, 1974)

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Sound and Fury (Jean-Claude Brisseau, 1988)

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Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)

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Touki Bouki (Djibril Diop Mambéty, 1973)

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Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini at Cannes, 1956.

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Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk, 1954)

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The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1942)

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Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)

This August, I watched seven Anthony Mann westerns. Today I saw the last one, Man of the West, and it became my most favorite of the seven films.

Watching his westerns, especially The Man from Laramie and The Tin Star alongside Man of the West, one could argue that the way Antonioni uses a frame within a frame in his compositions, might have been very much influenced by Mann’s [western] films.

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Body Snatchers (Abel Ferrara, 1993)

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Sirk employs legs, feet and footwears as more than mere body parts or props, signifying the ever-present duality of perversity vs. having your feet on the ground. They represent the idealistic/practical pursuit of happiness and euphoria.

The Tarnished Angels (Douglas Sirk, 1957)

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Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Philip Kaufman, 1978)

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The Man from Laramie (Anthony Mann, 1955)

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Apart from the delicate design of the sound of spurs and boots, windows and frames do most of the work of pin-pointing Ben’s transformation into a powerful sheriff (In other words the father figure, Morgan). One could track and compare the gestures of Morgan and Ben in relation to the space beyond the windows and the people occupying it.

The Tin Star (Anthony Mann, 1957)