Maureen O'Hara's flaming red locks and Ray Milland's eyes as blue and gleaming as the waters of the Tejo River, captured in lush Technicolor—but above all, the arresting beauty of Lisboa Antiga, immortalized in celluloid in a way only possible when seen through the curious and reverent eyes of a foreigner.
A very pleasant surprise.
In Wim Wender's Tokyo-Ga, atop the Tokyo Tower, a disenchanted Herzog complains about the lack of clarity in contemporary images. Our overly saturated metropolitan landscapes, he says, make it impossible to find images that are pure, transparent, absolute — "images that reflect our civilization as a whole and our own deep inner voices." Seeing him return, over three decades later, to the exact place where he uttered these words, I couldn't help but wonder if he managed to find, in…
This piece was originally published on Simulacro Mag.
Architecture and space are core aspects of Antonioni’s œuvre: they are the frameworks through which we understand his characters’ inner worlds. The Passenger (1975), the final installment in his English-language trilogy, is a beautiful testament to the sophistication and empathy with which the director uses these elements to handle concepts of existential malaise, mortality, and identity.
This is the tale of David Locke, a renowned yet disillusioned journalist who is presently in…
