Tuesday, April 1, 2008

My current favorite poster in Seattle


I saw this on a lamp pole at my bus stop at Denny and Dexter and almost ripped it off the pole, (instead, I went to the website and printed it out:)

AND, this seems like a cool series...I encourage you to attend and see some of these classic films. Belmondo amd Mastroianni were some iconic dudes that not only looked good, but they were superb actors. (They also had the good luck to be around at a time when there were legendary filmmakers like Fellini and Godard and Melville and Boorman making the kinds of films best suited to their personas.)

Here's the blurb from the NW Film Forum website:

In the 1960's, two actors defined the finger-snapping confidence of Europe’s post-war boom: France's Jean-Paul Belmondo and Italy's Marcello Mastroianni. These leading men found themselves cast as Casanovas, wanderers, gangsters and of course lady-killers. Belmondo was the brute, the thug in a fedora and tight pants with lips no woman could deny. Mastroianni was the lover, the romantic idealist with unattainable desires.

These men became stars thanks to two of Europe's top directors of the time, Jean-Luc Godard and Federico Fellini. Belmondo emerged with his performance as Michel Poiccard, the antihero of Jean-Luc Godard's groundbreaking BREATHLESS. The actor was one of the key figures of the 'New Wave' and became a major international star by the early 1970s. With the look of a boxer, Belmondo projects a tough yet sensuous persona. Fellini made Mastroianni into a sex symbol, casting him in such classics as LA DOLCE VITA and 8 1/2. He was an elegant, understated actor who could command the screen while never monopolizing it. The men performed opposite such bombshells as Catherine Deneuve, Brigitte Bardot, and Sophia Loren, and under direction of masters such as Ettore Scola, Francois Truffaut and Michelangelo Antonioni, among others.


Here's the website: http://www.nwfilmforum.org/cinemas/duel.php

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