The Big Picture Magazine
What drew me to Howard Hawks’ safari film, Hatari!, in the first place was something I had read about one of the female characters, Dallas (Elsa Martinelli), having been inspired by real life wild life photographer Ylla, considered “the best animal photographer in the world”, who was killed while on the job in North India in […]
During the making of La Chinoise, Jean-Luc Godard – the renowned pioneer of the Nouvelle Vague – fell in love with actress Anne Wiazemsky and later married her. She was his muse and his wife for 12 years. Adapted from Anne’s own memoirs, One Year After, Le Redoutable is structured around Wiazemsky and Godard’s marriage, but set largely […]
It’s one of the most memorable scenes in cinema. As Michel Poiccard swaggers down the Champs-Élysées, he spots a picture of Humphrey Bogart displayed outside a cinema screening The Harder They Fall. “Bogie,” he drawls as he rubs his upper lip, channelling the American movie star’s gritty aura while staring at the picture with wide-eyed […]
In the concluding part of a two-part piece on cinema’s wicked, wanton women, Emma Simmonds shifts the focus to four significant French contributions to the character type. Despite Hollywood’s popularisation of the enchantress paradigm as a staple of its fabulous noirs, these slinky villainesses are still most commonly described by the French expression femme fatale. […]
The character of Lemmy Caution – a cliché-surfing private eye in the Sam Spade / Philip Marlowe mould – first appeared in a series of stories (with titles like ‘Dames Don’t Care’ and ‘You Can Always Duck’) by English author Peter Cheyney and then, played by American actor Eddie Constantine, in a number of popular […]