 Continental Film Review ties modern cinema up in a tidy little package. 
Above and below, the cover and assorted interior pages from Continental Film Review, with all the rare imagery and erudite commentary from the European cinema scene readers had come to expect. The cover features German actress Brigitte Skay bound with rope, and those of note inside include Anna Gaël, Romy Schneider, Alain Delon, Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin, and Edwige Fenech. Skay and Gaël are featured because of their roles in the 1969 sci-fi film Zeta One, aka The Love Factor, which it happens we discussed way back in 2010. Shorter version: Barbarella it ain't. Continental Film Review had a secondary focus on non-performance visual arts. This issue looks at animation from Sweden and talks about some hot illustrators of the time, including Jan Lenica and Per Ahlin, drawing comparisons between them and famed painters like René Magritte. All of that and more in thirty-plus scans.                                  
 For British movie lovers Continental Film Review was their ticket across the English Channel. 
Continental Film Review was first published—as far as we can discern—in November 1952. We decided on that month because we saw a copy from February 1953 numbered Vol. 1 Issue 4, and the masthead said the magazine was published the first week of every month. CFR would go on to become one of Britain's most popular film magazines, exposing English language readers to the wide variety of foreign movies being made across continental Europe. The above issue appeared this month in 1966 with cover star Maria Pia Conte, and numerous film personalities inside, including Vanessa Redgrave, Alan Bates, Rossana Podesta, Evi Marandi, and more. We have other issues we'll get around to sharing at some point. In the meantime see more here, here, here, and here.                    
 Continental Film Review was a leading voice of foreign film in Britain, as well as a leading source of cheap thrills. 
We’re showing you this August 1966 Continental Film Review for one reason—Raquel Welch. She appears in both the front and back of the magazine, and the latter photo was made while she was in the Canary Islands filming One Million Years B.C. That photo session featuring a blonde, windblown Welch was incredibly fruitful, at least if we’re to judge by the many different places we’ve seen frames from the shoot, including here, here, here and especially here. There had not been a sex symbol quite like Welch before, and in 1966 she had reached the apex of her allure, where she’d stay for quite a while. On the cover of the magazine are Christina Schollin and Jarl Kulle, pictured during a tender moment from the Swedish romantic comedy Änglar, finns dom? aka Love Mates. Inside you get features on the Berlin and San Sebastian film festivals, Sophia Loren, Nieves Navarro, Anita Ekberg, and more. CFR had launched in 1952, and now, fourteen years later, was one of Britain’s leading publications on foreign film. It was also a leading publication in showing nude actresses, and in fact by the 1970s was probably more noteworthy for its nudity than its journalism. The move probably undermined its credibility, but most magazines—whether fashion, film, or erotic—began showing more in the 1970s. CFR was simply following the trend, and reached its raciest level around 1973, as in the issue here. Fifteen scans below.
              
 Continental Film Review mixed serious cinema scholarship with cheesecake. 
We located this July 1965 copy of the British cinema magazine Continental Film Review, and found two good reasons to post it—the great Sylva Koscina cover shot, and the adverts for London’s x-rated Compton Theater, at bottom. In between you get Ugo Tognozzi, Rossana Podesta, Luciana Gilli and more. CFR was actually one of the most serious and informed film magazines of its era, but instead of sharing scans of pages and pages of text, we posted the photos. However, in this issue are articles on the San Sebastian and Berlin film festivals, Canadian and Québécois cinema, and near-scholarly treatments on Italian neorealist director Vittorio De Sica, and Pier Paolo Pasolini’s award winning biblical film The Gospel According to St. Matthew. Doesn't that all sound great? See a CFR with Christina Lindberg here, and Laura Gemser here.
         
 Was it journalism, pornography, or both? 
Here’s one of our favorite old magazines, the great Continental Film Review, with a cover shot of one our favorite vintage actresses, Christina Lindberg, who you may remember from our post about Sex & Fury a while back. CFR was published in Britain and, like other magazines of its ilk, such as France’s Cine-Revue, purposely blurred the line between journalism and smut by publishing sober reviews and features, while not-so-incidentally showing acres of skin. Their wry, we’re-not-really-porn approach was a roaring success across four decades, from 1952 until 1983. We have some racy interior pages below, featuring more Lindberg, as well as Marion Forster, Gabriela Grimaldi, Veronique Vendell and others. And at bottom, in the final panel, we've located the orginal image upon which CFR based their cover image. Enjoy.
             
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1954—Joseph McCarthy Disciplined by Senate
In the United States, after standing idly by during years of communist witch hunts in Hollywood and beyond, the U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for conduct bringing the Senate into dishonor and disrepute. The vote ruined McCarthy's career. 1955—Rosa Parks Sparks Bus Boycott
In the U.S., in Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The boycott resulted in a crippling financial deficit for the Montgomery public transit system, because the city's African-American population were the bulk of the system's ridership. 1936—Crystal Palace Gutted by Fire
In London, the landmark structure Crystal Palace, a 900,000 square foot glass and steel exhibition hall erected in 1851, is destroyed by fire. The Palace had been moved once and fallen into disrepair, and at the time of the fire was not in use. Two water towers survived the blaze, but these were later demolished, leaving no remnants of the original structure.
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