Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957) provides us with various levels of content.  First, it is the story of a dissatisfied, certainly unloved prostitute (Giulietta Masina, masterly).  Second, it is an unprofound but appealing portrait of life in 1950s Italy.  Third, it presents Fellini inching toward what is to me religious or transcendent truth, albeit it is inconclusive about it.

Truth to tell, however, any religious theme in Cabiria is not quite as interesting as the prostitute’s being victimized by the diverse appetites, not always sexual, of men.  But there is a remarkable contrast between these self-seeking men and the peregrine gent who helps destitute individuals living in caves (life in 1950s Italy?)  That is, not all the men in the film are scoundrels.

Cabiria on the streets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When do the tastes of other people dictate too much?  Director-scenarist-actor Agnes Jaoui and scenarist-actor Jean-Pierre Bacri, in The Taste of Others (2000), have some idea.  When they’re not expressing this idea, they are at any rate contemplating when the tastes of others dictate a great deal.

The subject of taste is extensively covered in this French production, and included is the amatory taste in, or for, people: the desire of others.  A married businessman desires his English-language tutor, a 40-year-old stage actress named Clara.  The tastes of his interior decorator wife, who has arranged that the couple live in a “candy dish” home, leave the businessman cold.  Beau-less Clara refuses to reciprocate but, not getting any younger for her audiences, is gradually tempted.  There is a hole at the center of her existence.  Likewise with a chauffeur called Bruno, who is discarded by his faraway girlfriend on whom he has cheated, anyway.  Tastes at cross purposes.

The married businessman’s bodyguard, Frank, falls for a pretty barmaid with a taste for both selling and using illegal drugs and for fornication.  Ex-policeman Frank will accept the latter but not the former.  The thought of conventional married life appeals to the pair, but do they really have a taste for it?   We know what demands Frank will be making of the barmaid.

The film has much to do with transience.  Because of the taste of others, transience arises.  Clara’s acting career is slowly evaporating.  The businessman’s marriage gets upended.  And so on.  Life with its transience, however, must go on.  To the self-centered interior decorator, Bruno mutters, “The world is what it is,” and since this woman insists on wearing blinders—notice how indifferent she is to owning a dog that nips at people—Bruno adds that she ought to go live in Disneyland.  Disneyland is the equivalent of a candy-dish home.

I was delighted that this acclaimed comedy-drama arrived and did relatively well in Tulsa . . .

Cover of The Taste of Others [Region 2]

The old screwball comedies were not always funny, but were still worth watching for their interesting plots.  Such is the case with a late screwball comedy—Pillow Talk (1959)—except for the happy fact that this Doris Day-Rock Hudson effort manages to become funny as it goes along.

Assuredly hormones get secreted in the film, and watch out for the free-floating corruption!  (Hudson plays a horndog and Thelma Ritter plays a lush.)

Cover of Pillow Talk

In a World . . . (2013), a new comic film by a woman named Lake Bell, is frequently droll and honest (with some atypical humor), but finally too soft and tame for my taste.  The love interest for main character Carol (Bell)—an amiable, none-too-virile bore (Demetri Martin)—is the kind of man who perfectly confirms this softness.  It’s good, then, when hairy Fred Melamed appears on screen to shake things up.

The main action and a subplot involving Carol’s sister Dani and her husband do not gel, and visually the film is too dark.  I couldn’t get a handle on the faces of Bell and Michaela Watkins.  Yes, for a long time In a World . . . has a strange appeal, the appeal of what seems like a rara avis.  And the acting is delicious.  Even so . . . this Bell isn’t ringing for me.

English: Lake Bell at the 2011 Comic Con in San Diego (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Hard Day’s Night, directed by Richard Lester, is the Beatles’ best movie, which is not saying much.  What says significantly more is that it is probably the finest screen comedy of 1964 (to me, it ain’t Dr. Strangelove).  Alun Owen’s script is funny and witty, literate in a way the Beatles’ early-60s songs are not.  But those songs—“And I Love Her”, “I Should Have Known Better”, etc.—make for a very engaging jukebox musical, with no missteps made in Lester’s smart “staging.”

I’ve seen this thoroughly English movie on both the big screen and DVD and, oddly, it has a way of making London seem small.  So be it.  A Hard Day’s Night is just for entertainment, and the Beatles themselves are not diminished. 

A Hard Day’s Night poster (Photo credit: Wikipedia)