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Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero: Filmed mostly on the streets in newly-liberated territory, Roberto Rossellini’s gripping war-related shows are blessed with new restorations but still reflect their rough origins. The second picture, the greater masterpiece, looks as if it were improvised out of sheer artistic will.

Roberto Rosselini’s War Trilogy

Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 500 (497, 498, 499)

1945-1948 / B&W / 1:37 & 1:33 flat full frame / 302 minutes / Street Date July 11, 2017 / available from the Criterion Collection 79.96

Starring: Aldo Fabrizi, Anna Magnani; Dots Johnson, Harriet White Medin; Edmund Moeschke, Franz-Otto Krüger.

Cinematography: Ubaldo Arata; Otello Martelli; Robert Julliard.

Film Editor: Eraldo Da Roma

Original Music: Renzo Rossellini

Written by Sergio Amidei, Alberto Consiglio, Federico Fellini; Klaus Mann, Marcello Pagliero, Alfred Hayes, Vasco Pratolini; Max Kolpé, Carlo Lizzani.

Directed by Roberto Rossellini

Criterion released an identical-for-content DVD set of this trilogy in 2010; the new Blu-ray...

Mubi is exclusively showing Billy Wilder and Alexander Esway's Mauvaise Graine a.k.a. Bad Seed (1934) in the United States and most countries around the world from August 18 - September 16, 2016.In light of his illustrious Hollywood career to follow, Billy Wilder’s obscure directorial debut, Mauvaise Graine (1934), may seem like a mere curiosity. Making the film as he was passing through France by way of Germany en route to America, Wilder regarded the work with little adoration. For him, the experience was one rife with difficulty; it wasn’t fun, there was tremendous pressure, and he simply wasn’t accustomed to have such sweeping control over a production. But the writing was on the wall by 1933, and Wilder, like so many others, was keen to get out of Berlin while the getting was good. Arriving first in Paris, he met other film professionals seeking refuge from the burgeoning Nazi party,...

Marta Eggerth: Operetta and film star — a sort of Jeanette MacDonald of Central European cinema — dead at 101 Marta Eggerth, an international star in film and stage operettas who frequently performed opposite husband Jan Kiepura, died on December 26, 2013, at her home in Rye, New York. The Budapest-born Eggerth had turned 101 last April 17. (Photo: Marta Eggerth ca. 1935.) Although best known for her roles in stage musicals such as the Max Reinhardt-directed 1927 Hamburg production of Die Fledermaus, and various incarnations of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow, Marta Eggerth was featured in nearly 40 films. The vast majority of those were produced in Austria and Germany in the 1930s, as the Nazis ascended to power. Marta Eggerth films Marta Eggerth films, which frequently made use of her coloratura soprano voice, include Max Neufeld’s drama Eine Nacht im Grandhotel ("A Night at the Grand Hotel," 1931); the Victor Janson-directed musicals Once There Was a Waltz...

I started writing this piece a little over two years ago when, wondering if this was a debate whose terms I wanted to propagate, I thought twice. After the recent Godard retro in New York, however, thinking thrice, I've decided not to think about it again. With very special thanks to Sam Engel, Matthew Flanagan, Danny Kasman, Andy Rector, Gina Telaroli, who provided so much of the source code for this piece. There's no greater fount of wisdom in the world for a guy to plagiarize.

And so:

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“Pauvres choses! Elles n’ont que le nom qu’on leur impose.”

“Poor things! They have nothing but the name imposed upon them.” — Film Socialisme

“You can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll.

Very sorry baby, doesn’t look like me at all.” — Leonard Cohen, “Tower of Song”

"Three Jewish characters, it's a lot for a single film. The fourth...