Showing posts with label National Gallery of Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Gallery of Art. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Jean-Paul Belmondo, R.I.P. Without Jean-Paul Belmondo, The French New Wave film revolution -la Nouvelle Vague- never reaches so far around the globe. Never touches every single part of 1960's Popular Culture. In Belmondo, an actor with enormous magnetism, savoir-faire, and a particularly Gallic strand of studied nonchalance, he becomes the de facto New Wave Ambassador, and the very face of what was (and was not) cool, dark, and even slightly threatening.

photo via The British Film Institute

Without Jean-Paul Belmondo, The French New Wave film revolution -la Nouvelle Vague- never reaches so far around the globe. Never touches every single part of 1960's Popular Culture. In Belmondo, an actor with enormous magnetism, savoir-faire, and a particularly Gallic strand of studied nonchalance, he becomes the de facto New Wave Ambassador, and the very face of what was (and was not) cool, dark, and even slightly threatening. 

And always, in every film, he is eminently watchable! 

Belmondo becomes that most magical of all entertainers: he is #sublime.

Belmondo becomes both his very own brand, as well as representing a certain style of dramatic acting, AND in the process, becomes a representation of a certain way of thinking, living, and of film-making. 

And he is always, for both good and bad, France personified.

A cool France that has ideas and feelings uniquely its own, not American or British.


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It wasn't until I was living and working in Washington, #DC in the 1990's and could actually see great prints of French 🇫🇷 and Italian 🇮🇹 #NewWave films at the National Gallery of Art main building on weekends when I wasn't up in Baltimore for an Orioles ballgame or at home or sports bar watching a football or basketball game.

The NGA was one of my favorite social haunts, and there, I could watch and absorb films I'd never been able to see in a theatre while growing up in #SoFL.

It was in those moments when one of Belmondo's films was being shown in a packed theatre that all the dozens of New Wave articles and books I'd read over the years while in Bloomington, Chicago, Evanston and DC -and learning French!- all made sense when #Belmondo entered a scene.

Then, all of the dots were connected! 😊

British Film Institute: https://www.bfi.org.uk/
Cahiers du cinéma: https://www.cahiersducinema.com/

A tribute will be paid to Belmondo in the next issue of Cahiers du cinema magazine.


Sans Jean-Paul Belmondo, la révolution cinématographique française de la Nouvelle Vague -la Nouvelle Vague- n'atteindrait jamais aussi loin le globe. Ne touche jamais à chaque partie de la culture populaire des années 1960. Dans Belmondo, acteur au magnétisme énorme, au savoir-faire et au brin particulièrement gaulois d'une nonchalance étudiée, il devient de facto l'ambassadeur de la Nouvelle Vague, et le visage même de ce qui était (et n'était pas) cool, sombre, et même légèrement menaçant. Et toujours, dans chaque film, il est éminemment regardable !

Belmondo devient le plus magique de tous les artistes : il est #sublime.

Belmondo devient à la fois sa propre marque, tout en représentant un certain style de jeu dramatique, ET dans le processus, devient une représentation d'une certaine façon de penser, de vivre et de faire des films.

Et il est toujours, en bien comme en mal, la France incarnée.

Une France cool qui a des idées et des sentiments qui lui sont propres, pas américains ou britanniques.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

John Mica's great new idea for U.S. taxpayers, art lovers and tourists to Washington, D.C.

I saw this story on Sunday night while looking for some other information on the Washington Post's excellent website, http://www.washingtonpost.com/
I repeat, this is a great idea!

As someone who spent hundreds and hundreds of hours at the National Gallery of Art over the 13 years I lived in the Washington area, there is absolutely nothing to fault in this idea from Central Florida congressman John Mica, whom I usually mention here on the blog in relation to transportation-oriented stories, as he has been both the Ranking Minority member and the Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
http://transportation.house.gov/

More personal thoughts of mine on the NGA are below the article.

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The Washington Post
Congressman Mica’s quest pits FTC against National Gallery
By Ned Martel
Published: June 19, 2011

Rep. John L. Mica has what he calls a “weakness,” an obsession with art. He has fulfilled it as any aspiring connoisseur might. He scours odd shops and auction sites for objects treasured only by dust mites but still accruing worth with each passing year. He makes frequent trips to the National Gallery to research what he has bought and what he could buy. One day, while at the museum, he looked across the street and saw something old and undervalued: the Apex building, home to the Federal Trade Commission.

Read the rest of the story at:


Back on May 1st, 2005, I wrote an email to a friend whose very popular non-fiction book was to be the basis for a then-forthcoming film, and this excerpt about the NGA seems a propos:

Hey movie star!

Found these two Enron movie related postings on pullquote.typepad.com, which, to my way of thinking, is one of the best written film blog/culture sites around, due to its smart and knowing sensibility and encyclopedic film knowledge.

It's smart not snarky, and since any site that -in one month- acknowledges the talent of the wonderful Jena Malone, blisters NYT film critics for both their fashion and literary faux pas, and intelligently discusses Italian docs, is MY kind of site.

A number of summers ago, maybe '96, the National Gallery of Art ran what amounts to a summer-long film course on Italian Masterpieces, and I must've spent just about every Saturday and Sunday afternoon there that summer, except for a few when I had tickets to Oriole games up at Camden Yards.

The NGA, while focused on art and sculpture, has a really great, though smallish film theatre, equipped with excellent sight lines, terrific speakers and a great A/C.
One that made me forget that it was about 96 very humid and miserable degrees outside most of those days.

Seeing practically every great Italian film ever made in just a few weeks, sometimes double-features, often on brand-new prints, was a great experience for me.

I gradually became a regular at their film series on weekends when they focused for 5-6 weekends in a row on French and other international hits as well as
classic Westerns -American, Japanese & spaghetti- it was like cowboy heaven.

The famous scene of John Wayne standing in the middle of the door jamb in John Ford's The Searchers never looked like that on my TV screen.

Over the years, I've had the proverbial subscriptions to Premiere, Movieline, Film Comment, BFI, et al, and I used to read them the night before heading over to The Mall.

Those afternoons of great double-features on good film prints in comfortable chairs and a great A/C, while it was sweltering like crazy outside, are some of my best memories of DC.

Then, either going solo or with some friends in tow whose horizons I had just tried to expand, I'd head over to Georgetown or Washington Harbour for cool drinks and some quality people-watching.

After a French film, maybe head over to Au Pied du Cochon for some wine and great bread, and pretend there were actually a lot more people like me than there really were.
But finding parking in Georgetown quickly bursts any illusions that you're living la dolce vita.

Because the NGA theatre was, relatively speaking, towards the small size, I always liked to be there early and grab a seat in the first few rows, towards the middle if possible, so I could see and hear everything without too much distraction.

The few minutes before the film started always struck me as something straight out of a New Yorker cartoon or Will & Grace, before I finally stopped watching it.
Or, where Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David would overhear something they'd incorporate into a classic episode of Seinfeld about human behavior.

With few exceptions, I'd be surrounded by people straight out of Central Casting's bohemian/SoHo/culture vulture dept., complete with their all black ensemble or tweeds -and not just in the fall- berets and oversized egos.

Like a quarterback working the ball downfield in a two-minute drill, they'd wax philosophical in a short period of time about things they appeared to have memorized from some highbrow magazine they'd recently read.
It recalled nothing so much as the Marshall McLuhan scene from Woody Allen's Annie Hallm below.


Friday, April 11, 2008

Charlton Heston films on TCM April 11th

Posted this a few minutes ago on parent blog South Beach Hoosier, www.SouthBeachHoosier.blogspot.com , and thought I'd post it here as well on the chance that someone in the area might want to catch some good films over the next week on TV.
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Friday, April 11, 2008

Meant to post this on Wednesday night shortly after South Beach Hoosier received an email from Turner Classic Movies, letting me know about these schedule changes due to the recent passing of Charlton Heston http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000032/ and Jules Dassin, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0202088/ .

In fact, I just watched The Greatest Show on Earth from 1952 a few weeks ago, so when the news came the other morning that Heston had died, his great authentic performance was still very fresh in my mind. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044672/

In the TCM Private Screenings that he filmed with TCM's Robert Osborne about ten years ago, Heston makes reference to the fact that one of the best reviews he ever got was when someone -De Mille?- showed him a letter written by someone who'd really loved the film, particularly Jimmy Stewart as the clown with a secret and Betty Hutton as the strong-willed high-wire aerialist.

But the letter writer said the performance he liked most was the real circus manager working with the actors -Heston's role.

He joked that when they think you're not an actor, that's when you know you've turned in a good performance. Agreed!

I especially commend two of the Heston films to you.

Khartoum, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060588/#comment , a 1966 film that many people thought Charlton Heston deserved to win an Academy Award for and for which Ralph Richardson won a BAFTA, and Sam Peckinpah's Moby Dick-like Major Dundee from the year before. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059418/

I remind you, too, that TCM has also re-scheduled two films by Jules Dassin, including Naked City, the terrific crime film entirely set in 1948 New York City. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040636/

It's often seems to media maven South Beach Hoosier that it's almost impossible to go a month without some TV program doing their homage to noir -often for the flimsiest of reasons- even if we'd prefer they wouldn't.

While sometimes amusing if done with the appropriate level of both and humor and purposefulness, as was usually the case with some episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092455/ , when Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) assumes his 1930's San Francisco detective persona in the Enterprise's Holodeck, more often than not, it's resulted in some perfectly awful faux noir in other TV programs or historic flashbacks.

That list is too long to mention here!

Like so many great films I've enjoyed, the first film of Dassin's that I ever saw was on TCM, Reunion in France, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035250/ starring John Wayne and Joan Crawford.

Naked City is so fantastic and compelling, that the first time I saw it, the documentary style made me recall the afternoon I first saw Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (Roma, città aperta) at the National Gallery of Art's film auditorium, when they had an Italian-themed film series one summer.

To see this film again is to be powerfully reminded of what noir really tastes and smells like, and I heartily recommend you get your VCR/TiVo/DVR ready to go.

South Beach Hoosier was a very devout film go-er to the NGA's film series, where I saw so many dozens of great and influential films over the years I lived in Washington, often bringing friends along to help build their film education. http://www.nga.gov/programs/film/

I'd even schedule my Oriole games every year up at Camden Yards around the better films, so that I wouldn't miss them, since so many of the French and Italian films I saw at the NGA -on great prints!- especially the New Wave films, weren't available on videotape or DVD.

That it was all FREE only made it harder to resist!
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"We're making the following changes on Friday, April 11th to honor Charlton Heston:

Add: (All times ET)

2:30 PM Private Screenings: Charlton Heston

3:30 PM The Buccaneer (1958)

5:30 PM The Hawaiians

8:00 PM Private Screenings: Charlton Heston

9:00 PM Ben-Hur

1:00 AM Khartoum

3:30 AM Major Dundee

The schedule on April 20th is also changing to honor the great director Jules Dassin:

Add:
8:00 PM Naked City (1948)

9:45 PM Topkapi (already scheduled)