The Furniture: Giulietta Masina's House of Spirits

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is a series on Production Design. 

This week we mark the centennial of actress Giulietta Masina, which I consider an opportunity to do something a little different. The Furniture, as you might expect, is rarely a column about performance. I spend a lot of time trying to get screenshots without any actors present at all. Production design often works in support of performance, or in parallel, but rarely are they what you might call intertwined.

In the films of Federico Fellini, Masina’s husband and collaborator, design often threatens to overwhelm or absorb performance. Actors become moving props in his most extravagant productions, rotating like carousel horses around a central figure or two. And these protagonists are often ciphers of style themselves, particularly when they’re played by Marcello Mastroianni.

Not so with 1965's Juliet of the Spirits. Masina is the well from which the entire production springs...

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Showbiz History: Madonna at the Grammys, Judy at the Globes, Tilda at the Oscars

7 random things that happened on this day, February 24th, in showbiz history...

Judy and Marlon seated together at the Globes; They both won that night.

1955 The 12th annual Golden Globes are held honoring 1954 cinema. On the Waterfront (Drama) and Carmen Jones (Comedy/Musical) took the Best Picture prizes. Both James Mason and Judy Garland (neither of whom ever won a competitive Oscar) of A Star is Born won Globes for their leading work in the Comedy/Musical fields but the fact that the picture lost (when it's a hundred times the film Carmen Jones is) was an ill omen of what would happen later at the Oscars... 

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Almost There: Marlene Dietrich in "Shanghai Express"

by Cláudio Alves

A cabaret performer and silent film actress during the Weimar years, Marlene Dietrich left Berlin at the dawn of the 1930s. She abandoned Germany, traveling to Hollywood with director Josef von Sternberg who'd go on to make Dietrich into Tinseltown's most glamorous star. The pair of creative partners and off-screen lovers shot seven films together, all of them classics whose sensuous allure and grotesque opulence make for some of the weirdest pictures to come out of Hollywood at the time. Theirs was a cinema of provocation, hedonistic spectacles that overwhelmed the senses even as they moved at a lethargic pace as if the films themselves are bodies recuperating in the aftermath of an orgasm. As an avowed fan of Marlene Dietrich, this septet represents some of my favorite flicks, their dreams of celluloid working as siren songs that never fail to seduce and enchant.

The Criterion Channel is now streaming these seven glistening gems, so it's a good time to explore a Sternberg-directed Dietrich performance that came palpably close to an Oscar nomination. Let's talk Lily in Shanghai Express…

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Lunchtime Poll: When will you go back to movie theaters?

Yesterday they announced that movie theaters in NYC will be able to reopen on March 5th. That's just two weeks shy of one full year since they were closed down due to the pandemic. Seating will be at 25% capacity or 50 people in the room, whichever is less. But will that be enough to convince people to gather in indoor spaces again? If theaters have reopened in your town have you been back? Or are you waiting for the vaccine? Or do you have some other marker by which you'll venture out again? Do tell in the comments. 

I'm sure I would feel safe once I get the vaccine but I dont qualify. Not the right age. Not an essential worker -- movie-blogging doesn't count, alas. (Here's what qualifies you in NYC if you're here and curious. If you're elsewhere your state or city probably has a similar page and you should definitely check. I have a friend who has asthma, for example, and he didn't realize he qualified but now he's scheduling his vaccination.)

FYC: Ben Affleck, The Way Back

By: Patrick Gratton

Has anyone set flame to their post Oscar goodwill as quickly as Ben Affleck? And he did it not once but twice! The eternal comeback kid, Affleck has been lunging forward and falling back in and out of the public and critical favor for the larger part of his career. Bouncing back and forth, whether it be his “Hollywood’s new leading man” phase, his Gigli-tabloid fodder phase, his Affleckassance directorial efforts, his Batfleck phase and the Sadffleck meme, Affleck has continuously struggled to maintain a second act in his career. In retrospect, through baggage-induced trial and error, Affleck has built a career of rising above lowered expectations, only to fall again.

After a career's worth of trying to fit the bill that Hollywood gave him, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he wears 'rundown & disgruntled' so well in Gavin O’Connor’s The Way Back...

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