living in this crazy climate,

is it any wonder I keep finding images of women and the elements?









The original of an often remade Mexican film:
La Mujer del Puerto (1934)
aka Woman of the Port
directed by Arcady Boytler and Rafael J. Sevilla
cinematography by Alex Phillips

Mexico City in the 1930s must have been an incredibly inspiring place to work, judging by the modern themes and the general output of the multinational artists gathered there. One director is from Russia, the cinematographer is Canadian-born - not to mention other artists such as Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti....

vintage hellions

It's not surprising with the winter-like conditions of late that I would catch a horrendous flu bug.
I'm on the mend now and at least I was able to make a couple really fine discoveries during the down time. Perhaps the anti-bodies coursing through my veins in attack were an influence, but these two films really fit the bill.



The Belles of St. Trinian's (1954)
directed by Frank Launder

Where has this film been all my life!
I've often lamented the lack of solid, rebellious girl role models as I was growing up.
These lasses could kick the behinds of the trouble-makers from Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows.
Bootlegging, smoking, seducing wenches popular enough to spawn a series of films and lately a set of remakes. Even young Jodie Foster would've run away from this boarding school.




Konec srpna v Hotelu Ozon (1967)
aka The End of August at the Hotel Ozone
directed by Jan Schmidt
cinematography by Jiri Macak

This Searchers-like framing is really prettying up the depiction of the most ferocious troupe of young women on film, including Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Who else could survive the apocalypse and thrive? The fight to survive, flu or no flu.

at least it isn't monsoon season

This was recommended to me
but I just couldn't finish it.
You?

Yi jiang chun shui xiang dong liu (1947)
aka The Spring River Flows East
directed by Chusheng Cai
and Junli Zheng

socked in

Apparently the rest of the world is suffering through a devastatingly hot summer. Here, it's one of the coldest in the past 40 years. The blankets are back out of storage and I make sure to grab my winter coat for outings after sundown. The culprit is the fog - the perpetual gray overcast kind, not the billowy, romantic Hollywood version. No pretending to be Bogart in The Maltese Falcon; besides the strong winds would just blow the hat right off his head and slap his trench coat lapels onto his face.

Sure looks pretty in this film, though.

Night Train to Munich (1940)
directed by Carol Reed
cinematography by Otto Kanturek (who also worked on Fritz Lang's Woman in the Moon)

single image meme

This one happened during the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.
It took me a while to recover, but here is my entry.

Really, my whole reason for blogging is to share images of what makes watching film so magical for me.
However, anytime I settle in to watch something I've been anticipating for whatever reason,
as soon as the familiar dot-dash sounds start under this image,
I feel an extra thrill because so many of my favorite experiences watching movies also began exactly the same way.

Single image meme is being hosted by The Dancing Image blog
and Checking on My Sausages blog.