Duel of the Cool

Duel of the Cool

APRIL 29 - MAY 14, 2008
 

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. TE MAIN EVEN

In the cinematic bout of the century, Belmondo and Mastroianni duke it out in three rounds of classic European cinema! We'll be running a month-long audience survey to determine which actor wins the title of "King Of Cool."

Series Pass $25/NWFF Members, $40/General


 

Leo the Last

May 13 - May 14, 2008

(John Boorman, UK, 1969, 35mm, 103 min)

John Boorman's shamefully neglected dramatic comedy chronicles impoverished Italian nobleman Marcello Mastroianni's alternately whimsical and wistful experiences residing in a London ghetto. Boorman veers beautifully between a carefully observed character study and guerrilla theater. Despite a Best Director award at the 1970 Cannes Film Festival, LEO THE LAST has rarely been heard of since.

"A most engagingly shy and sensitive Marcello Mastroianni, in a performance of great self-effacing intelligence." -Roger Greenspun, NY TIMES

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Breathless

Apr 29 - Apr 30, 2008

(Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1960, 35mm, 90 min)

Jean-Luc Godard's first feature still breaks the rules nearly fifty years on. Twenty-six year-old Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the lip-stroking pug on the run, shooting cops and stealing cars - as well as cash from girlfriend Jean Seberg. With the typically French undertone of femmes vs. hommes, the couple engages in boudoir philosophy, staring contests, and plenty of le smoking. Belmondo's performance as the hood marks the real beginning of an extraordinary career of the biggest French star since Jean Gabin.

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La Dolce Vita

Apr 29 - Apr 30, 2008

(Federico Fellini, Italy, 1960, 35mm, 174 min)

This film suits the freewheeling early 1960’s with its alternately funny, feral, sweet and seductive meditation on what is truly meaningful (if anything). Marcello Mastroianni was catapulted into superstar status as the sensitive tabloid reporter juggling the affections of several women (including voluptuous movie star Anita Ekberg, icy mistress Anouk Aimee and neurotic girlfriend Magali Noel) while making the rounds of the spirit-destroying nightlife of the Via Veneto. Mastroianni’s scene with Ekberg in the Trevi Fountain at dawn remains one of the most timeless, memorable images ever to emerge from world cinema.

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Le Doulos

May 06 - May 07, 2008

(Jean-Pierre Melville, France, 1963, 35mm, 108 min)

Jean-Paul Belmondo, still somewhat BREATHLESS, plays Silien, a petty thief who may or may not be a doulos (stool pigeon). Indeed, Belmondo didn't know whether or not he was playing an informer until he saw the final cut of the film. The impossibly cool LE DOULOS, all turned up trench coats and brotherly betrayal, is a pure expression of Melville's style and ethos. It is also his richest tribute to American cinema.

"The second Jean-Paul Belmondo's Easter Island mug fills the screen; there's no doubt who owns LE DOULOS." -TIME OUT NEW YORK

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8 1/2

May 06 - May 07, 2008

(Federico Fellini, Italy, 1963, 35mm, 135 min)

Mastroianni steals the show as Guido Anselmi, a film director experiencing a heavy dose of director’s block on his latest project. His performance here is flawless as he deals with the obstacles and crushing defeats of his life with a cock-eyed optimism. Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1963, Federico Fellini's 8 1⁄2 is a dazzling mix of past and present, fantasy and reality containing all the stylistic elements and thematic obsessions that have characterized Fellini's films throughout his distinguished career.

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Pierrot Le Fou

May 13 - May 14, 2008

(Jean-Luc Godard, France/Italy, 1965/69, 35mm, 110 min)

Belmondo (who elevates onscreen smoking to an art form) plays a bored bourgeois who gives up his button-down life and goes on the lam with his mistress, Anna Karina (the pin-up girl for existential angst). Godard’s cinema explodes off the screen as his ideas come at a furious pace while Belmondo and Karina play out the death of romance in lurid widescreen Technicolor. A titillating blend of fiction, poetry, discussions and digressions, PIERROT is a vivid celebration (and simultaneous condemnation) of the joys of cinema. Belmondo was nominated for a BAFTA for his performance.

"Belmondo moves with the athletic grace of the boxer he had been, yet plays a complex, reflective intellectual with the ease and poignancy he brought to his Bogart-idolizing petty thief in Godard's BREATHLESS." -LA TIMES

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