May 23, 2026
May 16
The forgotten (read: undistributed in the U.S.) Dogme 95 film Truly Human.
May 23
This episode is the fifth in a series I’ve done about the work of the brilliant and imaginative (and underappreciated in the U.S) Elio Petri. This is a very different look at one of his works, since the film in question, a three-part telefilm version of Sartre’s Dirty Hands (1978), has its virtues and drawbacks. Both aspects can be seen in the casting: The lead role is played by a young actor who overacts his way through the part (and isn’t the slightest bit sympathetic, as the character in question should be). The second lead male character, though, is played by Marcello Mastroianni, who by the Seventies had quite decidedly given up his “Latin lover” roles to play multi-dimensional characters in a series of challenging films. Thus, this show is entirely focused on Marcello’s performance in the film, which is terrific and (surely, Petri’s goal) changes the focus from other movie versions of the Sartre play (including the Finnish telefilm by Aki Kaurismaki, which I featured on the show a few years ago). What emerges through the way that Petri staged the play for television (in a reverent, only minutely altered fashion) and Marcello’s performance is a fuller portrait of the character “Hoederer,” a Socialist party leader who cares more about the members of his party than the dogma that spawned it (who is up against a young tyro who cares nothing about his comrades and only about the dogma).
May 30
A discussion about and scenes from Yannick Bellon’s Somewhere, Someone.
