Digitisations, Restorations and Revivals (28) - Venice Festival 2017 Classics selection

Associate Editor (Restorations and Revivals) Simon Taaffe has come across the following screenings and other information. Click on the links for times, more detail etc where indicated.

So...If You Are In The Neighborhood the Venice Festival has this on offer. I’ve decided to be a bit creative and list the top five in the order I’d personally like to see them if we had to make a choice. The word is out, unofficially at this stage, however, that all will be screened at next year’s Sydney Film Festival so there’s no cause for immediate envy.

La Donna Scimmia/The Ape Woman

The Ape Woman (Marco Ferreri, Italy/France, 1964) Ugo Tognazzi and Annie Girardot in one of Ferreri’s ultra-smart satires on social mores. Never screened in Australia as far as I know. Restoration by Cineteca Bologna

Come and See(Elem Klimov, USSR, 1985) Klimov’s monumental story of the sacking of the Ukraine by the invading Nazi forces. Graphic beyond belief. Restoration by Mosfilm supervised by Karen Shakhnazarov)

Chikamatsu Monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1954) Mizoguchi’s late masterpiece, premiered in Australia at the 1980 Melbourne Film Festival. Very sober film-making. Restoration by the Kadokawa Corporation and The Film Foundation with the cooperation of The Japan Foundation 

Batch '81 (Mike de Leon, Phillipines, 1982) “Mike de Leon’s sparingly told exploration on fraternity culture made during the last years of Martial Law….  it’s one of the greatest films in Philippine Cinema.” Esquire. Restored by the Asian Film Archive

The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Raoul Walsh, USA, 1956) A late Walsh from his full on vulgarity drawer. Restoration by Twentieth Century Fox.

And now to the others just in case you aren’t sufficiently envious

The Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1964)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg, USA, 1977)

The Old Dark House (James Whale, USA, 1932)

Wanderers of the Desert (Nacer Khemir, Tunisia/France, 1984)

Under the Olive Tree (Giuseppe De Santis, Italy, 1950)

Flavour of Green Tea over Rice (Yasujiro Ozu, Japan, 1952)

Into the Night (John Landis, USA, 1985)

Black Peter (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia, 1963) aka Peter and Pavla

1900 (Act one) and 1900 (Act two) (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy, 1976) (Never saw it described that way before.)

Sansho Dayu (Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, 1954)

L'Oeil du Malin (Claude Chabrol, France, 1961)

Dainah La Matisse (Jean Gremillon, France, 1931)

Zero de Conduite (Jean Vigo, France, 1933)

Rosita (Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1923)