 Hello, welcome to St. LeVoe's World Cinema. I'm your host, Betty St. LeVoe. On this show, we look at international cinema and tele, television. And I hope that you enjoy this particular genre. I certainly do, since I was little, very little, Ma was always throwing those foreign films at us. So I'm just going to point out a couple that are near and dear to my heart. In this first episode, we'll check out three very quickly. I'm not going to give so much the statistics, like I do on any other TV shows here at Orca. I'm just going to simply state the plots and why they're beautiful and why maybe you should check them out. Okay, so the first one is one of my all-time favorite foreign films, Ansela Dolce Vida, directed by the genius who is Federico Fellini, starring Marcello Mastro Antonio, Rosemary Rod, Jean Moreau, Anita Ekberg, and Lex Barca, the guy who played Tarzan, okay, and a whole bunch of other people. So this particular movie, I always felt, is a bit semi-autobiographical because Federico, from what I remember, grew up, I think, an outlying small town outside of Rome. And when he was young, he went to go make his fortune in the big city. Omicord is part of his childhood. But then Eve Deluni, I think, comes in between Omicord and this particular one, if I've got my facts straight. So basically, in this particular movie, Marcello, our journalist, through a series of several vignettes, grows up. Marcello is probably in his 20s when the movie starts, but our actor here, the very handsome Mr. Mastro Antonio, he looks a bit older for his age. So he might be in his 30s as he's still maturing. At any rate, the very scenes are him interviewing a famous Hollywood movie star and her jealous husband, going to an old castle, Italian family, centuries, they've had the castle, and the party is on time's decadence and poignant. He and one of his pals goes slumming one night, and in another vignette, his father comes to visit with disheartening and, again, maturing results on Marcello's paw. So there's something about Fellini movie that has a dreamlike quality. The first one I ever saw was Juliette of the Spirits. I saw that when I was about 14 or 15, and as a teenager, we're all used to American cinema. And when you watch a surrealistic movie in narrative form, you realize that there's other mediums out there, other ways to express the story. So Federico is just near and dear to my heart. If you haven't ever seen a Fellini movie, I suggest that La Dolce Vita should be your first one. You're going to laugh and also be a little bit disturbed. But if you can't get to this one, please check out Almaclod and Evidoloni. Evidoloni is very hard for me to find at the moment. Okay, so the next movie we're going to check out is Jules and Jim, directed by Francois Truffaut. It's a French movie. Almanacea and Oscar Bueno play two best friends, and Jean Moreau plays the enigmatic woman who makes up part of this very disturbing and very disturbing, upon disturbing love triangle. All right. So unfortunately, I don't have the author's name written down here, but it's a book. And Francois Truffaut, excellent, excellent director, French New Wave, and an excellent critic of film, read the book, made the movie. And when the author watched the movie, he said to Francois Truffaut, you captured all, you captured the time period, you captured our relationships, and you did a really good job. So what a treat if Francois had never made another movie again, what an homage. That's better than Oscar, you know what I mean, French Oscar. So this movie's not for the squeamish. It unfortunately was one of those movies that, I'd overheard my parents talking about it over time, and then I think they went to do some drumming workshop, and we're in Versure, you know, I'm 12, and out of all the put dinner on then, and this and that was Watchills and Jim, and they said that we'd like the movie. So the family lore and the family myth is, of course you like the movie. It's like, no, there are parts of this movie I don't like. I don't. And it's not that romantic. I mean, come on, all right. Love triangle. That's not romantic. Okay. But the buddy part of it, just like in Casablanca, the relationship with men, it's wonderful. And Jean-Marie as Catherine, she's so beautiful, but what a hellcat, okay. I'm sorry, all right. So I like this movie, and if you want to watch a great classic, the first half of this movie is so wonderful. And the last half, yeah, okay, it's, I've got a friend of mine, I showed her Chinatown. To this day, she's like, I can't believe you showed me that movie. Just to let you know, she, I'll show her this movie, she'll be like, I can't believe it. All right. But in my family, you know, when you watch movies like this, you have this kind of toughen up. So sometimes not all movies have happy endings, and sometimes they do. And if they do, they can be disturbing. Just want to let you all know. Okay. So Jules & Jim, directed by Francois Truffaut, Henri Serre, Jean-Marie and Oscar Werner. Check it out if you want. All right. So our last entry is not a movie per se. It is a, what do you call that, mini-series. It's a British mini-series, and it is called Love in a Cold Climate, and it's based on the books by Nancy Mitford called Love in a Cold Climate and the Pursuit of Love. This eight-part mini-series, and I think it's filmed in 1974. I didn't put down the, I didn't put down when it was shot, but if you've grown up in a large family, you'll totally get everything that's going on here. And if you are British, you're totally going to get it, because you know about the Mitfords. And if you love a great story without explosions, and it's just about people, and about how they are relating with one another, you're going to love it, all right? So Nancy Mitford was the eldest of the famous Mitford sisters and son, and all of those women had extremely interesting lives in the time a little bit before and during the Second World War. Ms. Mitford became the French lady writer of the family and proceeded to sprout and begin what they call the Mitford industry. But I don't really see it as an industry or a firm or a college industry. I just see it as all those women, as sisters, were also very different. And I have five sisters, and we are all so very different. You can appreciate the fact that even though you come have the same genetic pool, you're going to take different stances on ideologies. So at any rate, as I watched this all last weekend, it's enjoyable. It's very funny. Some of the characters are characters. Please understand that. It is the British upper class. Please understand that. And yes, that mansion is a house. It's not a mansion that's what they call a house, okay? So the rack with children, which I remember that's their name fictionally, are indulged, but harmlessly so. They continually are testing their parents. All the petty jealousies and adorations which exist in a family are displayed here very realistically. And joy and tragedy are experienced by this family. So it's not only a story about family, a coming of age story. We see them all mature and progress, interact with one another, romance occurs, and so does anti-romance. All right, so I hope you all check that out. And please check out the books, too, if you do. And Mary S. Lovell's wonderful The Midford Sisters will also give you some insight about the relationships in the family. However, these fictional accounts, Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate, Pursuit of Love, I believe, is the first one. Please read that. Love in a Cold Climate. And I've been asking Kellogg Hubbard, Bless Their Hearts, for a copy on Interlibrary Loan of Don't Tell Alford, which is the third book by Nancy Midford, but I can't find it, but maybe I can hunt for it on Amazon. All right, that's it for me. This is the first episode of World Cinema St. LeVoe. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I didn't really give a lot of statistics about the movies per se. I think if you all choose to rent or try and check these out on YouTube, please do. You can certainly find Love in a Cold Climate on YouTube. And you want the 19, you want the first version, you want the 1974 version, 1972, 1974. And at any rate, take care of one another. Check out something outside our beautiful Republic here until next time. Don't watch any bad European or African or Asian or South American movies. Until I see you next time, bambinos. Ciao.