The apex of the Janiculum and the Fontana dell’Acqua Paola constitute the backdrop of the sacred and the profane, which in The Great Beauty concern those inhabitants of the city of Rome. This location of the opening scene has as its precedent the Trevi Fountain, to which the film La Dolce...
Under the French administration at Vichy during the Second World War, the French Resistance formed in order to combat a regime collaborating with the Germans. Others resisting collaboration with Vichy, unwilling to become bystanders, also contributed to the Resistance, many being Christian rescuers...
Approaching death himself and conceiving an excellent metaphor for the disillusions of his own happiness, Edgar Allan Poe published in 1849 a poem by the name of Eldorado, whose last stanza alludes to the folly of those men of centuries earlier venturing into the Amazon, searching for an imaginary...
Joe Franklin writes in Classics of the Silent Screen that “along with Griffith, Stroheim, Keaton and Fairbanks, Chaplin remains one of the half-dozen immortals of the American screen,” delimiting a pantheon that has since grown while retaining its primary figures, of whom Chaplin is one of the...
As the congregants of a wedding walk to the riverside, accompanying newlyweds leaving by barge, a woman exclaims, “couldn’t she marry a local boy?” to which another quickly responds that “she always has to be different.” But the poignant difference is to be one of love. The marriage of Jean to...