April 27, 2024
1582.) Vintage: Let’s venture once again to the swingin’ Sixties in France, this time for a satire on the packaging of pop stars that is part spectacle, part theatrical “happening,” and all nasty abuse of the music industry. The film is Les Idoles (1968), and the writer-director is Marc’O, a key member of the Lettrist movement of the Fifties (for more info, check out my review of Isidore Isou’s “Venom and Eternity” on YouTube) and noted playwright-director. Here he keeps intact the cast of his original play, each performer incarnating an interesting (and creepy) type of pop star: Pierre Clementi plays a “tough kid from the streets” who has become a rocker; Bulle Ogier (in her first significant movie role) plays a ye-ye girl whose delivery is grating and whose lyrics are quite perverse; and Jean-Pierre Kalfon is a fortune-teller turned rocker who specializes in agonizingly self-deprecating psychedelic tunes (also sung out of key). Marc’O thus is able to spoof different kinds of stardom and different record-company gambits (including the sudden romance of Clementi and Ogier’s characters and the excusal from military service of Clementi). The film is intentionally abrasive and in-your-face (witness guest star Bernadette Lafont’s incarnation of “the Singing Nun”), and it shares the mod/psych look with items we’ve debuted on the Funhouse (especially the films of William Klein and Anna).
Last week:
1581.) One of the films that I waited several decades to see, Il Pap’occhio (read: Eye of the Pope) is an episodic farce that recounts the efforts of a TV host-producer, played by real-life TV host- producer Renzo Arbore, to find people to appear on a new “Vatican state television” network. Along the way we see a variety of ridiculous acts and several guest stars — only one of whom, Mariangela Melato, will be known to U.S. cinephiles. While Arbore’s character keeps auditioning oddball talent for the new network (including a very special choir), we also witness efforts to teach the Pope proper Italian (this was during the time of John Paul II, who evidently retained his Polish accent while speaking the Mother Tongue) and different sequences involving Arbore’s two world-famous discoveries (who flourished while on his Sunday night TV show), Isabella Rossellini and Roberto Benigni. The former makes a joke relating to her mama, while the latter does a few comic bits that were clearly improvised on the spot (including one where he’s repainting a part of the Sistine Chapel ceiling). Also showing up in this collection of bits and pieces is Isabella’s then-husband, who is seen in a cameo appearance “directing” the first night of the new network — the bearded (the sign of quality!) Martin Scorsese.