She can't remember anything about the photo session—it was all such a blur.
This photo shows French actress Michèle Mercier and it was made as a promo image for her 1970 film Macédoine, about a model who experiences the highs and lows of the fashion industry. We’ll bring her back soon, completely in focus. In the meantime you can see another promo image of her here.
Jane Fonda takes a trip through outer and inner space.
We’ve shared plenty of promo material from the watershed 1968 cult landmark Barbarella. Why wouldn’t we? It’s one of the most visually beautiful sci-fi movies ever made. In order to be complete in our coverage we needed to include two of its very best promo posters—this pair painted by Kája Saudek for its run the former Czechslovakia, where it opened today in 1971. Saudek was a legend in the world of comics, so he was a natural choice to put together posters for a film that itself grew from a comic character created in 1962 by French illustrator Jean-Claude Forest. You’ve heard us say it before but we’ll say it again anyway—you don’t see movie posters like this anymore. After all, why pay a brilliant artist when you can underpay a graphic designer and rake off the savings for the shareholders? Profit seeking always eventually cannibalizes the industries it first nurtures.
There isn’t a person reading this website who doesn’t already know what Barbarella is, at least anecdotally. Jane Fonda stars as the titular character, a five-star double-rated astronavagatrix, who’s physically superior (duh), if perhaps overly credulous. The film’s far distant, fur-lined, unsubtly phallic future is brought to life with outrageous costumes, acid-drenched visual effects, small scale models, and fantastic sets sometimes built at huge scale. Fonda occupies the center of all this dazzle as a government agent charged with locating a missing scientist named Durand Durand before he teaches the inhabitants of the galaxy’s Tau Ceti region the workings of a weapon he invented—the positronic ray. The universe is at peace. At least, the center of it is. But the positronic ray and all it represents could spread “archaic insecurity, selfish competition, and war.”
The gag that runs through the movie is that, superior though Barbarella may be, she hasn’t experienced the more corporeal pleasures of life. In other words, she’s never had any dick. Some contrarians think—or at least pretend to think—that Barbarella being sexually inexperienced indicates anti-woman attitudes. But she isn’t sexually inexperienced. She’s hyperexperienced in a form of sex that is super-advanced—i.e. completely psychic. Other forms of sex are considered where she
comes from to be primitive, therefore worthless, if not even taboo. But not out in Tau Ceti. The physical pleasures out in the galactic boonies throw Barbarella for a loop, but the subtext isn’t about women or feminism, but merely the idea that the future must be sleek, clean, and controlled. Barbarella’s non-coital status, then subsequent embrace of sex in all its sticky joy is an anti-corporate, anti-repression, anti-assimilation message.
But as an enduring cult classic promoting unashamed attitudes about sex, Barbarella is ripe for revisionism and deliberate misrepresentation. Ultimately, it’s not a movie that holds up long to big-brained academic analysis because it’s no more than a contradictory fun-filled romp made by horny filmmaker Roger Vadim. There are unavoidable pro-feminist tropes, but also unavoidable anti-feminist clichés. It’s unavoidably steeped in the liberation ethos of the era, but also portrays the sort of non-diverse fantasy world fascists adore. Digging deep into Barbarella is like parsing the lyrics of a ’70s disco song. It was probably never meant to be anything but fun. It’s a voyage through deep space with a simple premise allowing Fonda to tease the audience with flashes of skin. That’s more than adequate.
We hear there’s a new version in development, but we don’t have hopes for anything good. Yes, we were wrong about Blade Runner‘s sequel, but that was the only time. The sexual insouciance of the late 1960s that gave us Barbarella is gone. Journalist Kim Newman insightfully remarked that the film was the product of a generation “that thought sex was, above all, fun.” So what can result from a generation for whom sex is dangerous, not only because of more disease than in the past but because of government enforced consequences? With the original Barbarella‘s glowing sex positivity dissipated only cynicism can remain. But we’ll give the filmmakers credit for guts. It’s a bold move to remake a movie that helped define the term cult classic.
Putting on their top hats, tying up their white ties, getting in her personal space, giving her the pervy eye...
We’ve looked at some art deco styled publications over the years, usually Paris Plaisirs. Last year in Lisbon we picked up another magazine of that ilk—the above copy of Le Frou-Frou published today in 1911. The title translates from French literally as “frilly.” It isn’t quite as frilly as Paris Plaisirs, but it was inexpensive so we grabbed it. Because it appeared during the upswing of classic U.S. pulp magazines (which began around 1896), we think of it as an interesting addendum to what was happening across the Atlantic.
The cover of this issue, which is in pristine condition by the way, looks to be signed V. Mégeeres or V. Mégüres. Or maybe the first initial is an “N”. Whatever, we can’t locate an artist with any of those names, or anything similar. We like the illustration, though, of a woman beset by two gents who both have top hats and monocles. It’s her duty at this point to say something risqué that makes both their monocles pop out.
Beyond the cover, there are eight pages of humorous stories by authors like Jean Gravigny and Victorien du Saussay, and many pages of cartoons. It’s all signed, but unfortunately we can read only the scrawl of Jack Abeillé, who was fairly well known in his day. The others consigned themselves to oblivion with their artful but illegible script. That’s the way it goes sometimes. If we learn anything about them we’ll add it here later. Au revoir jusqu’à demain.
Above you see Russian painter Boris Grinsson’s French promo poster for the international heist flick Un hold-up extraordinaire, better known as Gambit. Grinsson worked in France for most of his career. The movie, which premiered there today in 1967, starred Michael Caine and Shirley MacLaine as uneasy partners trying to rob a one-percenter of a priceless statue. Despite such a promising above-the-line pairing the movie could have been better. You can read what we thought about it here, and you can see more Grinsson by clicking his keywords.
David Dodge writes a 239 page love letter to the South of France.
A few years back we happened upon two of American author David Dodge’s travel books. The first was 1953’s A Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, which shared anecdotes and tips for the adventurous, budget-minded continental traveler trying to cross borders and broaden horizons. He wrote the second after his novel To Catch a Thief became an Alfred Hitchcock movie starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. It’s called A Rich Man’s Guide to the Riviera and was published in 1962. You see its summery cover above, with Dodge’s schnozz making a dent in the righthand margin.
Dodge was a budget traveller, so we thought the title of the book was tongue-in-cheek, but it isn’t. His life had changed. To Catch a Thief had been a bestseller, had been lucratively optioned from him, hit the book lists again in conjunction with the film, and had provided a windfall of Hollywood residuals. Instead of focusing on how to advantageously work exchange rates and hustle for cheap room and board as in A Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, he focuses on the jet-set lifestyle of the South of France, some of its unusual history, and many of its unforgettable characters.
He writes about the origins of the Cannes Film Festival, describing it as a counterweight to the Venice fest, which up until World War II had been dominated by fascists from Italy and Germany. He bewails the construction of the Palais des Festivals film exhibition space, a sharp-edged and oversized box that brought about the demolition of the elegant Cercle Nautique, a Belle Epoque structure built in 1859 as a sailing club. And he tells never-heard-before tales about many participants in the Festival, from the famed Sofia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida to the never-famed bikini girls that drove photographers crazy for ten days every year.
It’s all written with Dodge’s trademark panache, with plenty of deft wordplay. We were especially amused by his discourse on the difference between playboys and playgirls, and how women inevitably fall short in the area of pointless profligacy because they’re not egomanical enough to do ridiculous things like light a cigar with a thousand dollar bill—which any number of Côte d’Azur playboys did. We want to quote some of his stories, but they tend to be long, so instead we’ll transcribe some of their final sentences. You’ll have to fill in the anterior blanks yourself, but you’ll get the picture:
The bartender had to walk home and explain the situation to his girlfriend, who hit him on the head with a ravioli cutter she happened to be holding and scarred him for life.
For all that he was short, roly-poly, balding, a sloppy dresser, and a dull conversationlist, he could keep more beautiful movie stars in the air at one time than Pan Am.
All that stood between Jayne Mansfield and myself was a single partition, the mountain of muscle she was married to, and my wife.
He took forty two rooms at the Hotel Carlton for his entourage and demanded the poached ears of the maître d’hôtel for dinner.
Two years later, when the thieves had exhausted the cash and were picked up attemping to fence off her jewelry, her reproach when called to identify them was, “You might have left me half!”
Guinevere’s voice said confidently from the bar: “Don’t you worry about me and that slab of Tasmanian ham, Elvita, honey. I’d roll him up like a Venetian blind.”
That last one is about Errol Flynn. They’re all great tales, and the book is a joy. The only thing it lacks is the illustrations of A Poor Man’s Guide to Europe, which had the artful ink/watercolor stylings of Irv Koons as accompaniment. Perhaps some of Dodge’s earlier travel books contain art. He wrote seven others, including two or three that visited some of our old haunts in Latin America, so we’re likely to try those too at some point. For anyone who enjoys a trip back in time, vintage novels are the best, but vintage travel books do it too, in a different and very satisfying way.
There's a reason he's never invited over for holidays.
Above: a cover for Le diable est mon cousin by Le Roy Irving (surely a pseudonym), published by Éditions Baudelaire as part of its Collection Détective Pocket in 1963. This is highly successful art, but uncredited.
Italian illustrator Tino Avelli isn’t the only mid-century poster or paperback artist who produced a set of cards, but his deck of tarots might be the coolest. Above is the copertina or cover, and below are twenty-two more representing Avelli’s take on the entire major arcana, including the always popular cards depicting La morte (Death—symbolic of change in standard tarot), and L’appeso (the Hanged Man—symbolic of self-sacrifice). Since the lettering and numbering on these are just longhand scribbles, we can be sure they’re studies for versions that were never finalized or produced. But either way, they’re very interesting pieces.
Tarots first appeared in the 15th century and, after some refinement, eventually reached their common form of seventy-eight cards with twenty-two trumps and four suits (wands, cups, swords, and pentacles) of fourteen cards each. Originally they were used as playing cards, but thanks to the efforts of French occultists in the late 18th century acquired their current association with divination, as well as their usefulness as a tool to fleece the credulous, or at least the curious. We don’t know when Avelli produced his deck, but he was most active during the 1960s, so possibly they date from that period.
This is pretty nice work for Éditions R.R. and its 1969 paperback Qui êtes-vous, chérie? by René Roques. It doesn’t look painted by any of the usual French illustrators, but we’ll never know one way or the other because R.R. often didn’t attribute its covers. You can see the company’s best here, here, and here.
Above you see a poster for the exploitation flick La comtesse perverse, which we decided to watch because it was directed by Jesús Franco, and his films have only two outcomes, both entertaining—they’re either cult gems or total train wrecks. La comtesse perverse was originally French made, is known in English as Countess Perverse, and stars Robert Woods, Howard Vernon, and Alice Arno, the latter of whom we last saw in an issue of the tabloid Rampage. The poster gets the idea across effectively: it’s a human hunt movie, a type of exploitation that goes back to 1933’s The Most Dangerous Game, and which has been explored in films like the The Suckers, as well as various women-in-prison entries such as Frauen für Zellenblock 9—coincidentally one of Franco’s craziest efforts.
Here you get a group of people lured to the island house of a countess, played by Arno, who happens to be cannibal. We don’t mean a wild cannibal cooking hanks of dripping meat over an open fire. We mean a gourmet cannibal. A genteel wine-drinking cannibal. A Hannibal cannibal. The guests are first treated to a dinner at which they unknowingly eat human flesh, then the bad news drops that they’re the star attractions in an organized hunt. Arno is not the type of minor royalty who lets others do all her work. She’s the main hunter, dispatching prey with her trusty bow and arrows. And we sort of misspoke earlier. She’s genteel, yes, but she later goes on the hunt stripped to the skin. So she’s wild too.
Her house, by the way—and this will be a long digression—is actually a real place, an apartment building named Xanadu, located on Spain’s central Mediterranean coast, near the city of Calp. It was designed by Catalan architect Ricardo Bofill, who created some interesting buildings, but architecture is about context as well as design, and in this case he defiled a beautiful rocky point with an Escheresque monstrosity. It’s an epidemic here in Spain, the ruining of pristine spots. Casa Xanadon’t has nice views of Calp, but seen from the opposite direction—which nobody has a choice about—is a monument to ugly excess and an insult to people who care about beauty, nature, sharing the environment, and forging a sustainable future. That it’s central to a horror movie makes perfect sense.
Franco can likewise be said to be a maverick of ugly excess, but in the unobtrusive medium of film. With Xanadu’s exteriors and a couple of other mindbending locales to help set the mood, he revels in his favorite indulgences—everything from transgressive violence to full frontal bushes. Lina Ronay, Tania Busselier, Arno, and the other performers give Franco the total commitment he needs to make his masturbationpiece, and once again present a final product that will leave viewers divided. Do you love cheap cinema in the grindhouse vein? Then you’ll love La comtesse perverse. Do you hate undeniably shoddy cinema that people seem to adore anyway? Then stay as far away from this one as you can. Which group do we fall into? Guess. La comtesse perverse premiered in France today in 1975.
Wow, check out that house. It gives off very inviting vibes, don’t you think?
Here come our dinner guests. Should we just pan sear them like usual or get ambitious and put them in a paella?
As you can see, I’ve done all the stairwells in slaughterhouse red. I consider it a very livable color.
Usually I’m too shy to frolic nude, but I felt more body confidence after the Countess said we had barely enough meat on us to make a meal.
Is this Kobe beef?
No, but it’s a very high quality protein.
Oh, there they are. Clever girls. I almost didn’t see them. They were hiding behind their own bushes.
Above is a dark poster for a dark movie—the drama Peine capitale. That translates from French into English as “capital punishment,” which kind of gives away the plot, no? It’s better known as Yield to the Night, as well as Blonde Sinner, and starred Diana Dors as—we suppose this means it counts as a women-in-prison flick—a killer who has a date with the hangman. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1956, but we didn’t want to wait until May to post this great piece, so we’re sharing it today, when the movie went into general release in France. The art is by someone who signed as J. Mayo, but that’s all we have on this person for now, except a few other posters we’ve found. It’s nice work. We especially like the fact that, though Dors is a bit of an abstraction, her lips are exactly correct. Have a look at the bottom of this post.
Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.
1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty
A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.
1961—Soviets Launch Venus Probe
The U.S.S.R. launches the spacecraft Venera 1, equipped with scientific instruments to measure solar wind, micrometeorites, and cosmic radiation, towards planet Venus. The craft is the first modern planetary probe. Among its many achievements, it confirms the presence of solar wind in deep space, but overheats due to the failure of a sensor before its Venus mission is completed.
1994—Thieves Steal Munch Masterpiece
In Oslo, Norway, a pair of art thieves steal one of the world’s best-known paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” from a gallery in the Norwegian capital. The two men take less than a minute to climb a ladder, smash through a window of the National Art Museum, and remove the painting from the wall with wire cutters. After a ransom demand the museum refuses to pay, police manage to locate the painting in May, and the two thieves, as well as two accomplices, are arrested.
1938—BBC Airs First Sci-Fi Program
BBC Television produces the first ever science fiction television program, an adaptation of a section of Czech writer Karel Capek’s dark play R.U.R., aka, Rossum’s Universal Robots. The robots in the play are not robots in the modern sense of machines, but rather are biological entities that can be mistaken for humans. Nevertheless, R.U.R. featured the first known usage of the term “robot”.