The 70th anniversary 2K restoration of Jean Cocteau’s LES PARENTS TERRIBLES—with La belle et la bête stars Jean Marais and Josette Day—is screening in lower Manhattan for one more week.
LES PARENTS TERRIBLES, through June 7
QUAD CINEMA, 34 West 13th Street, New York City.
Josette Day and Jean Marais (center) in Les parents terribles (1948).
Between 1949 and 1956, Luchino Visconti directed Marcello Mastroianni onstage seven times, mostly in Rome. Reflecting the early years of what David Thomson called “Visconti’s taste for high–minded literary thunder,” Mastroianni played the younger son in Death of a Salesman, Michail Astrov in Uncle Vanya, and Mitch in A Streetcar Named Desire, among others.
For their first film together, Visconti and Mastroianni chose Dostoevsky’s “White Nights”—also the source for Robert Bresson ’s Quatre nuits d’un rêveur—the story of a lonely, nameless narrator and his brief, unfulfilled encounter with an unattainable young woman. Visconti’s 1957 version, LE NOTTI BIANCHE/WHITE NIGHTS, co-stars Maria Schell and Jean Marais.
Ten years later, after Alain Delon dropped out of the role, Mastroianni—by then an international star—reunited with the director to play Meursault in LO STRANIERO/THE STRANGER, an unjustly forgotten film unavailable on DVD. Anna Karina and Bernard Blier co-star.
As part of their Il bello Marcello series, the Film Society of Lincoln Center will screen both Visconti/Mastroianni collaborations in beautiful 35 mm prints from the Istituto Luce Cinecittà.
LE NOTTI BIANCHE / WHITE NIGHTS
Thursday, May 25, at 2 pm.
Saturday, May 27, at 7 pm, and Tuesday, May 30, at 4:15 pm.
Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street, New York City.
Top: Marcello Mastroianni and Maria Schell in Le Notti bianche.
Above: Jean Marais (left), Schell, and Mastroianni on set, Le Notti bianche. Image credit: AFP/Getty Images.
Below: Mastroianni in Lo Straniero.
Jean Marais in Orphée, directed by Jean Cocteau
Image: Pop ClassicsJean Cocteau—perfectly suited to the visual medium of mirrors, dreams, and life after death—was a filmmaker for three decades, but his greatest engagement took place during the five years immediately following the end of the Second World War, a period which began with one masterpiece (LA BELLE ET LA BÊTE, 1945) and ended with another—ORPHÉE.
Cocteau’s perennial star Jean Marais takes the title role, and the film features François Périer, Edouard Dermithe, Juliette Greco, and a cameo by Jean-Pierre Melville (who directed the film of Cocteau’s novel LES ENFANTS TERRIBLES the same year.) Death is played by Maria Casarès—the great star of Bresson’s LES DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE—and her henchmen in wide leather cummerbunds attend to their errands on motorcycle.
ORPHÉE is dedicated to the artist and designer Christian Bérard, who died while the film was in pre-production.
ORPHÉE / ORPHEUS (1950, Jean Cocteau)—in 35 mm—Saturday, March 18 at 3 pm.
CINEFAMILY AT THE SILENT MOVIE THEATRE, 611 North Fairfax, Los Angeles.
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