Eyes Without A Face (1960)

I thought about transition scenes in movies and the greater power that some can have over others. In Eyes Without A Face (1960), a French horror movie about a plastic surgeon (Pierre Brasseur) who kidnaps women to provide a new face for his disfigured daughter (Edith Scob). There is a transitional scene where we see […]

The Plot Against Harry (1971)

I love a movie where an operator makes the rounds. Our protagonist moves around their world, connecting with other characters and settings, each a mini-world of their own. Each stop along their circuit is another insight, another layer into our main character. The Plot Against Harry (1971) is about a Jewish low-level criminal named Harry […]

The Whip And The Body (1963)

When a film communicates two emotions happening across a character’s face, all in the one shot, the magic trick of that. In the Mario Bava directed film, The Whip and The Body (1963), there’s a tremendous close-up of the character of Nevenka (Dahlia Lavi), walking down a darkened castle hallway, approaching a door where she […]

Venus In Furs (1969)

The meeting point between exploitation demands and arthouse pretensions is ideal cinematic terrain to my mind. Base pleasures that Venus In Furs (1969) – directed by Jess Franco – offers is nudity and sex (well, what accounts for it late 1960s international cinema) with Maria Rohm nude in a fur coat with stockings and a […]

Blast Of Silence (1961)

A testament to the magic of shooting without permits. New York streets alive with commotion and people. Christmas decorations, shop displays and christmas lights. All you need is a guy with a hat and a trench-coat wandering through, shot by a camera from a car coasting along beside him. Allen Baron is the writer and […]