ItalianoThe 14th Rome Film Fest will devote two retrospectives – curated by Mario Sesti – to two paramount figures of international cinema.
A retrospective, organized in collaboration with the Japanese Embassy and the Japan Cultural Institute in Rome, will be dedicated to Japanese cult filmmaker Kore-eda Hirokazu – who will also attend a Close Encounter – whose work takes an original approach to themes such as life and death, family ties, loved ones and memories.
Another retrospective will focus on German director Max Ophüls, considered one of the most brilliant and sophisticated auteurs of the seventh art, an essential reference for many directors including Stanley Kubrick.
KORE-EDA HIROKAZU
In collaboration with the Japanese Embassy and the Japan Cultural Institute in Rome
If Maborosi is Kore-eda’s Big Bang, and all his later films the stars and planets it generated. The director would perfect his style by carefully polishing recurring themes such as memory, isolation, and grief, while, in his early films especially, his mise-en-scènes betray his thorough training as a documentarian. Thanks to his enormous talent, Kore-eda has made films adapted from manga and books; he’s turned out fantastic genre films and samurai, and he is particularly good at turning child actors into characters. Kore-eda uses ‘pillow’ shots and family scenes, like Ozu, but his mise-en-scènes feature no original angles, all-enveloping camerawork, turning points, sentimental and social extremism, or that obsession with melodrama so frequent in Asian cultures. On the contrary, Kore-eda creates the resonance of the drama by triggering memories of old songs, he enriches his mise-en-scènes by heaping minute detail on minute detail, and loads his frames with domestic scenes, everyday chatter and semi-documentary-style exterior shots that strike a western eye especially as being an unknown way to downplay the drama of a scene. Kore-eda, it seems, has discovered both the secret to portraying pain and the treatment for it – at the same time. The Rome Film Fest celebrates the Japanese master with a retrospective including nine of his most significant films.
THE FILMS
MOU HITOTSU NO KYŌIKU – INA SHOGAKKŌ HARU GUMI NO KIROKU | LESSONS FROM A CALF
by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 1991, 47’ | Doc |
DARE MO SHIRANAI | NOBODY KNOWS
by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2004, 140’
Cast: Yūya Yagira, You, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimura, Momoko Shimizu
MABOROSHI NO HIKARI | MABOROSI
by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 1995, 110’
Cast: Makiko Esumi, Takashi Naito, Tadanobu Asano, Gohki Kashiyama, Ren Osugi
ARUITEMO ARUITEMO | STILL WALKING
by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2008, 115’
Cast: Hiroshi Abe, Yui Natsukawa, Kirin Kiki, Yoshio Harada, Shohei Tanaka
KÛKI NINGYÔ | AIR DOLL
by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2009, 125’
Cast: Bae Doo-na, Arata, Itsuji Itao, Joe Odagiri, Masaya Takahashi
KISEKI | I WISH
by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2011, 128’
Cast: Kōki Maeda, Oshirō Maeda, Nene Otsuka, Joe Odagiri, Hiroshi Abe
ISHIBUMI
by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2015, 85’ | Doc |
SANDOME NO SATSUJIN | THE THIRD MURDER
by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2017, 124’
Cast: Masaharu Fukuyama, Koji Yakusho, Mikako Ichikawa, Yuki Saito, Suzu Hirose
MANBIKI KAZOKU | SHOPLIFTERS | UN AFFARE DI FAMIGLIA
by Kore-eda Hirokazu, Japan, 2018, 121’
Cast: Kirin Kiki, Lily Franky
MAX OPHÜLS
The Rome Film Fest takes its audience on a journey through Max Ophüls’ extraordinary filmography with a retrospective that includes fourteen films directed by the German master. Several paramount directors have revered and admired Ophüls’ work: among them, there are some of the most charming filmmakers in the history of the seventh art, such as François Truffaut and Stanley Kubrick. While the first was hypnotized by the perfectionism in his style, the latter loved the technical quality of his long tracking shots. “Happiness is never gay” is the comment from one of his greatest films, Le Plaisir, based on stories by Maupassant. This is perhaps the only maxim that would do as a fitting epitaph to adorn the monument represented by his entire filmography in in his over-thirty-year career.
Ophüls’ films, in fact, are deliciously amusing and ruinously tragic. His first masterpiece, A Love Story, is the story of an illicit love affair against the backdrop of fin-de-siècle Vienna. His last, Lola Montès is about a woman whose sentimental misadventures have been transformed into an elaborate, appalling circus show.
THE FILMS
LIEBELEI
by Max Ophüls, Germany, 1933, 88’
Cast: Magda Schneider, Wolfgang Liebeneiner, Luise Ullrich, Willi Eichberger, Gustaf Gründgens, Olga Tschechowa
LA SIGNORA DI TUTTI
by Max Ophüls, Italy, 1934, 89’
Cast: Isa Miranda, Memo Benassi, Tatyana Pavlova, Friedrich Benfer, Franco Coop, Nelly Corradi
DIVINE
by Max Ophüls, France, 1935, 82’
Cast: Simone Berriau, George Rigaud, Gina Manès, Philippe Hériat, Paul Azaïs, Catherine Fonteney
LA TENDRE ENNEMIE
by Max Ophüls, France, 1936, 69’
Cast: Simone Berriau, Georges Vitray, Marc Valbel, Lucien Nat, Jacqueline Daix, Catherine Fonteney
YOSHIWARA
by Max Ophüls, France, 1937, 88’
Cast: Michiko TanakaSessue Hayakawa, Pierre Richard-Willm, Foon Sen, Roland Toutain, Camille Bert
SANS LENDEMAIN
by Max Ophüls, France, 1939, 82’
Cast: Edwige Feuillère, Georges Rigaud, Paul Azaïs, Daniel Lecourtois, Georges Lannes, Pauline Carton
DE MAYERLING À SARAJEVO
by Max Ophüls, France, 1940, 95’
Cast: Edwige Feuillère, John Lodge, Gabrielle Dorziat, Jean Worms, Aimé Clariond, Marcel André
LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN
by Max Ophüls, United States, 1948, 87’
Cast: Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Art Smith, Carol Yorke
CAUGHT
by Max Ophüls, United States, 1949, 88’
Cast: Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan, James Mason, Frank Ferguson, Curt Bois, Ruth Brady
THE RECKLESS MOMENT
by Max Ophüls, United States, 1949, 82’
Cast: James Mason, Joan Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, Henry O’Neill, Shepperd Strudwick, David Bair
LA RONDE
by Max Ophüls, France, 1950, 93’
Cast: Anton Walbrook, Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Simone Simon, Jean-Louis Barrault, Isa Miranda
LE PLAISIR
by Max Ophüls, France, 1952, 97’
Cast: Jean Galland, Claude Dauphin, Madeleine Renaud, Jean Gabin, Daniel Gélin, Simone Simon
MADAME DE…
by Max Ophüls, France, Italy, 1953, 100’
Cast: Danielle Darrieux, Charles Boyer, Vittorio De Sica, Jean Debucourt, Jean Galland, Mireille Perrey
LOLA MONTÈS
by Max Ophüls, France, West Germany, 1955, 110’
Cast: Martine Carol, Peter Ustinov, Anton Walbrook, Henri Guisol, Lisa Delamare, Paulette Dubost
#RomaFF14 | Retrospectives
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