La Dérive | First Impressions

Richard and I get together to chat about our experience of this year’s Cinema Ritrovato. The programming is so vast and diverse that everyone who attends will have a completely different Ritrovato. In this podcast we spend quite a lot of time discussing the strand on Juan Antonio Bardem, Javier’s uncle, one of the key Spanish directors of the Franco era, and a real discovery for Richard. We also touch on the Mitchell Leisen program, concluding that it will invariably raise his standing as a Hollywood director, particularly for those interested in the queer dimension of his work, without quite succeeding in putting him at the level of the very greatest (Lubitsch, Hitchcock, etc). The Stanwyck program demonstrated that the great star could do anything – comedy, drama, westerns; aristocrats and subalterns – much more convincingly than her rivals to the title of classic Hollywood’s greatest star/ actress, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. We touch briefly on the Daisuke Ito, Ritwick Ghatak, and Josephine Baker strands but mainly dwell on some of the films shown under the Cinemalibero banner, always one of the highlights of the festival: A SPRING FOR THE THIRSTY (Yuri Ilyenko, 1965/1987), LA DÉRIVE (Paula Delsol, 1964), WEIGHED BUT FOUND WANTING (Lino Brocka, 1974), MUDAR DE VIDA (Paulo Rocha 1966), among others. From other strands we also discuss SUGATA SHANSHIRO (Kurosawa, 1943), THE LONG MEMORY (Robert Hamer, 1953), LA BUGIARDA (Luigi Comencini, 1965). We end with comments on the chairing (applauding the Guy Maddin event), the Piazza Maggiore screenings (NEW YORK, NEW YORK), the amazing tinting on some of the silent masterpieces (WHAT PRICE GLORY). Our one critique is that the festival really has to remind itself that the introductions are for the audience rather than for the presenters. A great year.

The podcast may be listened to below: