The Big Picture Magazine
Monsieur Klein is an art dealer living on the Left Bank in Paris, on Rue de Bac. Played by Alain Delon, with his good looks, refined clothes, stern haircut and minimal mimic, he looks at ease and undisturbed in his generous apartment, lavishly decorated in rich colours and trimmed with paintings. Dressed in a luxurious […]
What remains if people let go of their illusions, or delusions? In one of the best films of last year, Sean Durkin’s The Nest (2020), Jude Law is Rory, a high-risk investment specialist who moves back to his native England from New York with his American wife, Allison (Carrie Coon, in a wonderfully paced performance), and […]
They are men who are staring down death as they are flying dangerous missions over treacherous mountain terrain, come rain, shine or fog. The short landing strips are no less hazardous. They have poor navigational equipment and makeshift planes, but they are hard-shelled and have an unconquerable spirit. It’s an electrifying, fast-paced, past-the-edge-of-yourself world, one […]
“The living room was still stuffy from last night’s cigars. The windows were closed and the sunshine coming in through the Venetian blinds showed up the dust in the air.” The only time when Fred MacMurray’s Walter Neff is shown in broad daylight in Double Indemnity (1944) is when the flashback begins, right before he meets Barbara […]
When Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor) first meets Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) in the bird shop in San Francisco, his look is impeccably executed. In his charcoal grey suit – fit cut, slim tie and white shirt – he is an urban careerist in San Francisco (a defense lawyer), equally brash and charming, arrogant and worldly. […]
Giorgio Armani’s menswear, and womenswear, aesthetic defined and ruled an era, giving birth to a new form of democracy, a new modernity, a new elegance, by going against the grain and proposing diffused lines, a less severe allure to the male figure, and a less constricted allure to the female figure. It was an aesthetic […]
It begins with a Princeton jacket and an innocent identity mix-up. Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), a working class young man, wears one when he fills in for a friend who has had an elbow injury and can’t play the piano at a high class party. The party is given by shipping magnate Herbert Greenleaf and […]
She rips the sleeve off of a denim shirt and makes herself two bandanas to wear around her neck. She’s dressed in washed-up blue jeans, white cowboy boots and white tank top. She then sits next to an old man with a beat-up white cowboy hat on. She takes off all her jewellery, her earrings, […]
A bleak, dark detective story that taps into noir, Claude Sautet’s Max et les ferrailleurs (1971) is more than a “policier” film. It draws two fine character studies: Michel Piccoli’s Max, a former judge converted into a cop, and Romy Schneider’s Lily, a prostitute linked to a gang of hard-luck, two-time crooks whom Max wants […]