Oh he is Bote.
It's showtime.
People pay good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater.
They want cold sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in the protection booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Cut it off, turn it.
Off, Nina m Max no right.
Or let to l le Massy medi now legy Lemassi the la prima I can't be laid there. Miche gene gin No.
Miami Americano, Michael stop lultimasters depas mon Moviemento mondiale almost.
As well, Ky Michael Stophon philosopher. Yeah, you know, you know I can understand. Mas Jack.
The Ves.
Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host.
Mike White joined me once again as mister Spencer persons Hello, also joining us as mister David A.
Heath.
Glad to be here.
We are continuing a month of Patreon requests with one from Andre du We recently had him on for our weekend episode with our nineteen sixty nine film from writer director Giuseppe Petroni Griffi, who also wrote the play and was joined by Daria Argento to write the screenplay for Love Circle, also known as Metti Juna sera accena or
suppose one Night at Dinner. The film stars Jean Luis Trentigne as Michelle, every known writer who spins elaborate fantasies about an affair between his wife Nina played by Florinda Volcan and his best friend, a charismatic bisexual actor Max played by Tony Mussante. What he doesn't realize is that their relationship isn't just a figment of his imagination. It's been a reality for years. But the deception runs even deeper.
The couple also are entangled with a fourth player, actually a fifth player too, but we'll talk about the fourth one for now, an enigmatic anarchist poet Jigglow named Rick Seeleno Capolicio, who resides in a decayed basement and shares feverish encounters with Bulkan beneath the shadow of a Nazi schwastika.
We will be.
Spoiling the movie as we go along, so I we do want anything ruined, please go ahead and turn off the podcast and come back after you've tracked down the film.
It is out there.
Spencer, When was the first time you saw Love Circle and what did you think The.
First time I saw A Love Circle was last night, and I really love this movie.
It's a crazy one. I guess I'm an easy win.
Once you get this cinematographer to Nino della Colli going with Annio Morricone, those images and those sounds come together and pretty much anything is going to keep me pretty happy. But I really it's not one that I knew about at all, and it seems like it's actually pretty hard to get a hold of. I've seen one other film by this director, Griefy Identicit, which is also a big favorite of mine.
I really that's probably my.
Favorite Elizabeth Taylor movie ever when I first saw Identicate.
The cinematography in that one is also.
Really beautiful, and it's by Vittorio Serrao and is admittedly a step up from the cinematography in this movie, but very similar kinds of strategies where I really think that Griefi is a visual stylist who works really well with the best cinematographers in Italy. Deli Coley worked on a lot of my favorite films, a bunch of Pasolini, Rossollini, Lin old Vert, Mueller, Boloccio. The list goes on Sergia Leoni,
Fellini really like a legendary kind of figure. The story, as is the case with a lot of Italian movies from this period, is sketchier. But I was really surprised and delighted by it, and I knew nothing.
I really knew nothing going in, which I think is a good way to see this film.
And David, how about yourself, I don't have the same feelings. I feel like this was perverted Barney episode I love her, she loves him, He loves her, he loves the other hymn. I will agree, though, that the trimmings were good on this film. As far as the Maricone music is almost as good as anything I think I've heard that wasn't in a Surgery of Leone film. I was very impressed with the soundtrack, which of course you expected to be from Marcone, but he was just on fire with this.
The music fit the film perfectly. Unfortunately, I just had problems with the meat of the film, and I just felt like the premise of how exciting that this could possibly be. I felt like it was toned down a lot, and I don't know, I just wasn't totally followed by anything except the music and the cinematography is very fantastic. It's very claustrophobic. I felt like the first fifteen minutes
was actually quite good and setting up for something great. Ultimately, my favorite part, I'm not gonna lie was Florinda a Bulkan when she winded herself off of the plural toy or what are those mets? What do they call those mattresses? Yeah, when she prailed off of the raft. That was actually the most exciting moment besides just listening to the Marcone soundtrack. I do find that the title love Circle definitely fits because it wasn't a love triangle at all. It was
a circle. And I think that one other highlight would be the or two other right, it would be the conversations at dinner. Those were fun, but ultimately I just felt he was trying to go for something and he just didn't go near all the way, if any of that makes sense. I didn't hate it, but I definitely didn't love it. Those are my initiate takes.
Yeah, I think I'm somewhere in the middle there. I definitely found it a little perplexing, but I think part of that is because I've talked about Franco Arcolli before the editor of this film, and he does a great job when it comes to circular storytelling and just the way that he will play things off of each other. We've talked about him on the Djengo Kill If You Live Shoot episode. We talked a little bit about him and his work on Death Laid an Egg, things like
The Conformists. I think he really helps make The Conformist the movie that it is because of the nonlinear storytelling.
He worked a.
Few times with Griffy. A few times he did this one 'tis a pity, She's a whore. I'm not sure what else he did with them, but yet it's an interesting way of cutting it because it's definitely it moves back and forth, I think in time, but definitely in location. There's a lot of times where Trenton Ye will be telling a story and we'll basically transport the audience to that story, and we're not exactly sure if they're real stories or if they're lies, if they're just things that
he's making up on the spot. Because it comes out pretty early in the movie he says, talking to his best friend.
So I'm writing this news story.
You wouldn't like it as a comedy and as a comedy about man whose wife is cheating on him with
his best friend. And then from there he starts to spin out these stories like say, the man was away and the wife got very lonely and went to see the friend at the theater and then boom cut to the friend Max at the theater and I don't know if that's Nina that's supposed to be with him, but I think they meet up later and there's some kind of horse in around and stuff, and they're just like, Okay, is this really the way that it happened or is
this just a figment of Michelle Jean Louis Twintinier's imagination. And I love the way that we'll just slide into like a character will walk into a fantasy sequence almost and it's just like, okay, this is interesting. I like that kind of stuff. I just don't know if I needed two hours and two minutes of it, because it just seems to go on for quite a while, and after after about an hour or so, I was just like,
wait a second, who is this person again? I just felt like it felt like like Giuseppa gets introduced at one point, who is another friend of theirs, but then they I think they were talking about her beforehand. It's just, oh, you should get you Zeppa pregnant and then leave her.
And it's like, it.
Strikes you about Max that he should get this woman pregnant and then abandon her, and it's I don't know exactly what's going on, but that's one of those dinner conversations that you're talking about. And the beautiful cinematography, especially the colors in front of their faces, the way the camera's kind of zipping around and flipping back and forth between these people is really elegantly shot and very well
put together. I just don't know if I was as compelled by the material as I should have been.
I agree that it's too long, but I am actually compelled by a lot of what's going on and the story of the sort of meta levels and the slipperiness of what might be the writer's imagination versus reality, and that the movie, especially because it's got this cinematography that's like constantly moving and circling in an editorial style that blends together locations, and even some great camera tricks and staging tricks where a scene will start out with three
characters talking and in the midst of it, two of them have completely disappeared, and you realize over the course of a long take that we've gone from a fantasy into reality.
But it doesn't always give cues for that.
And I guess I'm an easier win for that kind of a thing than you guys are. And I think it also speaks to a lot of very indebted to Pirandello, and even put some Pirandello right in the movie at one point. And so this play of reality versus fiction, the reality of fiction. And then I will say that just as a character, I felt so bad for Rick throughout this literally poor but obviously also artistically engaged boy toy for these rich people.
And he's a compelling sort of character.
And at one point one of the characters I forget who says he's the only one of us who is who he is. And there's something very interesting about that, given his particular position, because there's also that sort of sense that the jiggolow the sex worker has to put on love and is acting and there's fiction going on while other facts are also happening. The sense that he could be the most authentic of all of them is interesting.
I'll also say where it ends up. And the philosophical stuff that they chew on throughout for me is like anti winter Light. It's as confronted by imminent nuclear holocaust. Their notion is let's just get together and we're all gonna fuck. There is something about that time and place and that kind of response. As much as it's like a bunch of boogie people, I find to be a
compelling and less expected sort of reaction to things. The libertinism under the circumstances, I think is a kind of an interesting social position to examine.
I get all what you're saying, and I think that you're bringing some solid points to it. I think I'm like Mike though, or to just like feel like overall the meat wasn't wasn't enough. And I can also say that he watched another production by him called The Divine Nymph. It was almost a replica of this one with Terrence Stamp, and it is so annoying because it's Terence Stamp. What's
not Arren Stampswice. That drove me crazy. But anyway, The Divine Nymph was actually probably less meaty this one, and I do think one of the interesting things about it is there's an underlying concept here of be careful when your feelings get involved. I feel like the film is a bit of a cautionary tale, Like Bob and Carrold Ted and Alice spoiler alert. At the end, they're like, is this really what we should be doing?
I don't know.
I don't feel right about this. There's something about when you have all this circling like that's going on, somebody's bound to have some hurt feeling. And I think there is an underlying concept there. And if you watch The Divine Nymph, which I would suggest for you, Spencer, because if you love this, you'll at least like the Divine nim. Yeah, I think that there's a somewhat of a cautionary tale in there, a little bit of morality. What looks on the service to be a completely depraved film.
Well, there's a really nice line in the last scene that works in two ways that they talk about the table and the round table, and even before this scene there's a reference to King Arthur, and of course, given the intertwined natures, you can't help but think of Arthur and Lancelot and Gwenevere. But Michelle Jean Jean Tritagnan. He man my French teacher's mad at me right now. He at one point says, it's not a table, it's a raft. And I think this plays in a couple of ways.
One this idea that really develops of the course of that particular scene, that this is a life raft in a world where they are perceiving, whether they're correct or not, apocalyptic forebodings, that they're taking this as a life raft. But it also visually takes me back to that incredible scene of Florinda Bocan on the raft, which is so beautifully shot. I do think it's also worth talking about the eroticism in the film, because it isn't just a matter that these folks are hooking up.
And I think there's.
Some interesting careful qualities about this because there's the eroticism. There's maybe less skin in this than other Italian movies and especially like Italian exploitation movies of the period, But the way that the sex is photographed and dramatized by following hands, for instance.
Is incredibly hot.
It's a much hotter movie than it should be, considering even like mores of the time. And I do wonder if one of the reasons for that is because it was perceived at the time as scandalous enough. It says that these dudes do have sex at pivot point in the film, the menage atois, but it really dances around it very carefully, and I think actually remains pretty hot while doing that. I'm actually impressed how much it works
at that point in the film. Also in that I really think Tony Mussante's performance I don't quite buy him as fully bisexual.
His performance and the way that things have staged for him, and this I think actually works within the film.
But I find this anapsis of the film really funny when it describes him as bisexual, because I think, I don't know, his sexuality seems a lot more like he's maybe there to watch or something. He does not feel fully comfortable, And I don't think that's necessarily bad. I think that's actually like interesting in the mix, but maybe
not totally intentional. But I do think that the movie holds back just a little bit in order to get away with its big you know, the big guns of its provocation, which at the time were difficult and even now like in the Year of Challengers, which I found to be pretty chaste. Actually, I was very surprised at that, and it is so I think even now there's a bit of a third rail that certainly back at the time that this was made, is in play.
What's funny because Griffy's previous film that he wrote from sixty two wrote and directed, because he wrote quite a bit. I mentioned before, he's a playwright as well, so he had a bunch of stuff that was changed from plays to movies. The one that he directed before this was from sixty two. It is called El Mar and there's a bisexual relationship in that one as well. And I agree with you that really I don't feel that Max is that bisexual, but yeah, he definitely seems to be
down to watch what's going on. It reminded me a little bit of Radley Metzger and Radley Metzger's score with the whole bisexuality and these multiple couples and stuff, because really, at the end of the day, you've got like the five people, and you talked about there's really the one outsider with Rick who doesn't match that when it comes to their social standing or any of that stuff. I kept thinking that Rick was going to go on some sort of rampage at the end of this and chill everyone,
just because he seems so unhinged. I's got Oh I'm so cold in this apartment. Oh here, take this Nazi flag and wrap yourself.
In it and I'll keep you war.
Could we get more provocative than a Nazi flag for you to wrap yourself in.
It's very strong imagery.
His whole apartment set is very interesting, especially we've got him firing that gun that I guess it's a picture of.
Her in the opening scene.
Yes, oh yeah, and yeah, the.
Whole thing of her try and find the apartment or going to the apartment. You've got the more conic score going during the credits and everything. It was really striking, and there are many moments in this film that are equally striking to this. And yeah, it's interesting too because when you're seeing them together, you're like, is this the future?
Is this the past? Because they're cutting away from that and cutting to her, and then they'll cut back to it, and we're getting more information about the relationships than they're even talking about. We obviously start to see the whole setup of the lover's triangle, but then we start seeing oh no, there's a fourth point. Oh no, there's actually a fifth point to this, and like you said, it's
much more of a rounded thing. And I think the whole idea of them going to a boxing match where you've got the squared circle is pretty telling as well. And I'd like these metaphors that are going on. I'm always curious when it comes to plays that have been turned into movies, do they lose the play feel to it. There are certain movies where you're just like, oh my god, this was such a play, like Six Degrees of Separation.
You're just like, all the actors are talking to the back row, and you're just like, this is a movie. You can do a little bit smaller than this. And then there are other movies, even with big performances like Jack Nicholson, like A Few Good Men, where you're like.
Oh no, this was a movie.
Yes, it was based on a play, obviously a courtroom drama, but I really feel like they did a good job taking it out of the theater and putting it into the movie theater.
Yeah, And that's where the style of cinematography I think is really key, because the performances are off kind of screechy in the film, but they fit together with this kind of florid camera work that keeps moving around them and dancing with them, so that in particular, Bolkhan is she's beautiful, just like throwing her hair around all over this movie as the camera follows her through a room and she's got to.
Yell at people.
But yeah, so there is there's like a there's a certain theatricality that stays, but the cinematic form and all the beautiful locations and the intense arc direction and everything also really contribute to a feeling of it's the heightened quality is more cinematic than theatrical.
I definitely was seen that during that boxing match scene where they do a really good job of making the crowd around them seem much bigger than it needed to be, because generally when you do, oh, here's the people at the boxing match, and obviously they weren't at the boxing match. But with that, it's like you see her stand up and leave and you're like, oh, that actually looks like the actress is leaving. You can see that they were actually in the location at some point, and then when
they come back to them, they're having their conversation. During this fight, they have a lot of people behind them. It's not just like two three people or just the knees. You get the stands and everything, so you can barely see the people that are behind them.
But it's oh no, this.
Is actually like a pretty good crowd around them, and the crowd is doing some really good acting as far as reacting to that fight, and I'm like, oh, okay, this actually seems very legit.
I forget whether it was Max or Mikkel. I feel like I'm gonna be wrong whichever one I commit to. Walks out of the scene, and the camera follows them through a lot of space out of the arena and then also down the hall and everything.
The way that.
It's conceiving of the space constantly keeps giving us a lot of atmosphere and psychological quality. As I'm seeing this guy walk out and around and when I can't remember which of the characters it was, it's partly because of the I think, a semi deliberate confusion. Maybe it's not all deliberate confusion, but as semi deliberate confusion that's being created that sort of conflates these people into each other.
But the yeah, the act of following opens up a kind of psychological space for the character and the relationships, and that comes at a cost when you're doing a big crowd scene. That's, I got to say, pretty expensive shot for a movie that's based on a play that basically has five main characters who end up all around a dinner table at the end.
But yeah, I gotta say hooray for cinema.
This is one of those movies that reminds you not everything has to be Hollywood. Will you watch it? Then? I my own podcast, I talk about movies of all kinds, and sometimes when I go out and left field that people don't listen to the show what to leave you when they hear a movie all I've seen that movie a hundred times, all of some of that. But this is one of those films though that like I said, I think everything that Spencer is saying I agree with.
I almost want to watch it again now after banning it. But all of that is true what you say, Spencer. The shots in this film are really good. I think if the script was buttoned up a little bit, and I think it had less fat on the bone, I would.
Have enjoyed it a lot more.
I truly did.
Well.
You mentioned this script, and this leads to Dario Argento's
participation in the movie. He worked on adapting the script from a play into a screenplay, and I don't want to overdo it in terms of maybe this was just a I was not able to determine how much of an exciting project this was for Argento, but some there are some real connections to argento work that I found in this, So it seems like at the least, if it was just a job of work, he was right guy for the job, because there are a lot of interesting jallo and horror kind of elements that don't pay
off in that particular way. And the premise is actually similar to some Argento premises, particularly Tenebre, where you've got the author of a book full of these murders that then the murders start to occur in real life. That kind of reality and fiction and art and life a kind of mixture coming in. So I think Argento is
definitely vibing on that kind of material. And then also I think the director, as far as briefly, as far as I could find out, I think he's either gay or bisexual and definitely wrote a lot of important kind of queer stuff but there's also a lot of queerness in argento films under the surface, and again back to Tenebre, that's one where there's some real sexual fantasies that are I don't even know if homo erotic is quite right,
but definitely queer and touching on the home erotic. And Argento often has gay characters in the background in a lot of interesting ways.
So I guess there's two prongs.
There's the Argento connection and then did you guys get anything out of the sense of connection with the queer side of Argento's work at all.
I don't know Argento's work as well as I would like. I am fascinated by these movies that he was writing before he became a director, and obviously I'm a huge fan of Once upon a Time in the West, But then things even like Cemetery without Crosses or five man Army, and so this is very interesting because he was more of a He's very similar to your Gradar, your Truffaus. As far as I know, he was a film critic first and I moved into screenwriting and then eventually becomes
a director's writer director. But yeah, I'm just I've only seen a handful of Argento, probably the ones that we've covered on the show, which is maybe three or four, so not a ton.
I have a lot of experience with those either. But I will say that I felt like this film spent the entire time except at the dinner table, maybe on the perimeter of subjects, and didn't actually open the door and walk in. That's something that I did feel. The dinner table scenes were pretty great. Ultimately, I just think if this film were hour and twenty seven minutes, I
probably would have loved it. But it was just an awful lot to get to those really good, needy scenes, And to be fair, that's the way almost every film today is made with the thirty minutes too long.
This is one where I really wish I could see it on a big screen. I have suspicions that obviously, and I'll fess up. The audio visual quality of just pictures and sounds going together is like my primary a source of pleasure in the movie. I really wonder if maybe it would still be too long, but it might not be quite as much too long were I seeing this in a theater and was really able to be a watch in it. We also watched on a pretty
I will say low grade transfer. And this is really making me if any boutique labels out there are listening right now, I think this would really be an excellent title to restore and give a proper transfer if there are in fact decent elements still out there. When I looked around, I found and have already bought a DVD, but this one really seems to me like a worthy project for a proper restoration and transfer. So I don't know, Vinegar Syndrome or somebody, if you're listening to check this out.
Was that the Raal video version, and I think that might be the source of what we watched.
I don't know, it seemed to be well.
I found a few different versions of this one with hard coded Spanish subs, which I thank you yea, which really challenged my Spanish. Am I Italian because I took
both of those. I took Spanish in high school and Italian in college, so that was interesting and also to see because I found English subtitles, so the English subtitles would run over the Spanish ones, but then I'm like, oh, they just said bourgeois, but then they're saying middle class and the English subtitle anyway, there was a different version that I also watched, which every couple reels it would go to color bars and that horrible noise that was
going and I'm like, oh, this is rough, and then it would go back to it. But thank goodness, whoever put the subtitles on that had it timed correctly so that after that break it would come back into sync. I did find one that's fairly decent with burned in English subtitles, which is the one that I've got going right now while we're talking about this, But still the quality isn't as good as I would like.
And I agree with you.
If there was a beautiful print of this, I could really see myself starting to like this a lot more. And yeah, had I seen this at the theater, because that's the one thing I've always said on the show too, where it's I can handle longer movies when I'm at a movie theater than I can at home, just because there's so many temptations of getting distracted at home, versus when you're in a movie theater, you're locked in. I'm
here for this. I'm here for this only, and other than the occasional Terrence Malick.
Film, I don't get bored with longer films.
I think with a movie like this, the social part of it could be pretty interesting as well. How are people reacting as this goes on, even if it's dated. It's sort of libertine, a kind of quality of the
characters and the storytelling. The way the characters think of each other, think of marriage, think of sex is still abrasive, and I hope we'll always be abrasive because these are not necessarily very likable people, and what they're on about is somebody is going to get hurt, and they seem not to care enough about how someone will get hurt.
And in particular Rick, the lower class Jigglow, he's the one who consistently gets the most hurt, even if he also wraps himself up in the cold with this whole Nazi flag. That's also something about the film that I find interesting. I wonder about reactions in a crowd. I don't know that I can ever clock what that Nazi flag is really supposed to quote unquote mean.
But I'd be interested to be.
In an audience where we all have to feel our way through that, because I don't know that it necessarily has a meaning.
If he saw it at the movie theater. Your parents were probably alive during World War Two. That's just jarring to me in the opening scene. Yeah, I just it's just jarring. Where did that come from and why is it here? I don't understand.
Yeah, I don't know if it's supposed to be that he's some sort of edge lord or something, or what his deal is, because I think describe me as an anarchist. At one point, I'm like, let's you wouldn't add and adhere to Nazi belis if you're an anarchist. But maybe it was just some sort of big misunderstanding. Maybe it was supposed to be some sort of symbol of love that got horribly mistranslated by the miss mainstream media.
I take his possession of the object as ironic and in that way, maybe a little bit edge lordy. But I'm not so I can follow what it's supposed to mean with the character. But in the world of the film, this is a group of such nihilistic people. No, I don't think it's saying that they're Nazis. That does not seem to be what the movie is about. But at the same time, it's an obvious, big loaded symbol that comes up repeatedly.
It gets used dramatically in the scene I love.
This is my favorite scene in the movie, probably the scene where he hangs himself on the set of the play that they're part of, and bo Khan she has to go in and get him down before he dies.
And the way that it revealed who it is and.
What's going on is we see his feet hanging and then the flag, the red of the flag drops into the frame.
So it's being used in these really interesting ways.
And then that scene, I have to say, as much as I really don't, I like Rick, but I don't like these other characters very much, and I like Rick. The Nazi flag notwithstanding, this is a gross thing for him around to have around, but he's a more likable character. But as he takes a breath and kind of comes back to life, it's this nice little bit of traditional melodrama, really wanting for him not to die and to see what's going to happen between him and Nina over the rest of the film.
Yeah, you talk about how they're unpleasant people, and they are this whole It's like they talk about each other like they're pieces of meat or game pieces, and it's just like, oh, you should be with Guzeppa, No it should be you, or no you should do this, and like throwing people at each other and just yeah, it feels very much like they're I like that the boor upper class kind of thing, where it's just how can
we spice this up? I'm gonna start this affair. I'm going to have this happen, or you should start an affair. You should, like I said before, you should get this woman pregnant and then abandon ear. It's what the hell are you guys on about? And they just seem to just be so up their own asses so much, and yeah,
Rick seems to be the only genuine character. And then I was talking before about how confusing sometimes this is because we are going back and forth and we're jumping locations, and it's just we're at this dinner table and now boom, we're in a car, and now we're over here, and now we're over there. Then you come to the play section of the movie, like you're talking about with the last part, and then it suddenly becomes wait are we watching the play? Are we watching the real thing? What's
happening here? Reminded me a little bit of some of the Cassavetti's works that I guess Opening Night where it's just is this the movie that they're shooting? Is this the play that they're in? What part of this world am I looking at? Opening Night has that kind of horror overtone to it, And there were times where I was just like, I wonder, what's going to happen here?
Because I just, like I said, I kept feeling like something bad was going to happen, or like we're committing suicide is a bad thing, but here I thought he was just going to go nuts and kill all these people. But as far as I know, he does not do that, and it just makes it mix. It very tense through the whole thing, which I feel that the maintains throughout this whole movie.
I would definitely agree that tension is pretty high. And then Rick is again.
It's interesting, there's that sense that he could kill off everybody. This is actually interesting because in recent years we've had our own run of let's make fun of the bourgeoisie movies like Triangle of Sadness and The Menu and these that kind of have this eat the rich ethos. That is fun to begin with, But I've got to say that, especially as I see more and more of these movies, like one of them, I can go, oh, yeah, a hah, funny, But after I see a whole bunch of them, do you not want.
A better world? Do you just want to bring other people down?
Are we settling for tormenting and murdering our tormentors and murderers?
Is that really the best that we can expect?
And there's something about this movie that does similar kind of stuff and playing around with ideas of the bourgeois, and that's not uncommon for art movies of this period, but I feel like there's something a lot more interesting going on to make us fit with them, and to whatever degree can we empathize or sympathize, and then to what degree can we observe and draw a larger philosophical sense of how the world works from their behavior.
And it's interesting too that this was nineteen sixty nine that this movie came out, and I did a whole series a couple of years ago of just movies from nineteen sixty nine and how the world was in such turmoil, and this movie also seems to plug into it. It's looking at something that's a little different than student riots and things. But I could see Rick joining those riots. I could see Rick eventually maybe I should join the Red Brigade. I'm not exactly sure here what should I do.
But this is endemic of those things that were going on in the rest of the world and just oh yeah, no, this is how this upper strata of Italian society is working and operating. And these people are assholes, and yeah, it's okay to make fun of them. But to your point, I agree about those kind of more recent wave of let's talk about influencers and let's talk about how vapid they are and it's okay, yeah, that's like a couple jokes, but we're gonna have it out for ninety five minutes.
I enjoyed the menu. I think I enjoyed that more than Triangle of Sadness. I think, but I guess I take that back because I didn't realize that there was the second half of Triangle of Sadness when I was watching it. I thought it was all going to be on the boat. Once they get off the boat, that's when I found it interesting.
And thinking about those current movies that are about bringing the rich down to the level of the people who they're tormenting. This has a kind of provocative question of what is it for Rick to get to sit at the table with them.
That's a very good point. Yeah, and Rick is basically yeah he did. Yeah, he just feels left out in the cold. And I think one of the things, going to one of Spencer's points is that often in these type of films it's a female that is in that position and not a man. Often it happens that way. But I wanted to bring up one of the things I didn't want to forget. As impressive as this score is,
I think equally as impressive are the silent moments. There are moments where the film just dead silence for where you can just cut an eye through it, and I wanted to make sure to bring that up. I know that kind of gear shifts us away from what we were talking about, but I wanted to bring that up because I just felt like that is an aspect of this film that utilize that that start and stop music so effectively.
It's not just a men's story. It's not just Griffy saying oh yeah, I'm the Trintonnier character and look at how important I am, or something like that it feels very much like the Giuseppe seems a little like I said, she doesn't even come in until almost a half an hour into the movie, so they talk about her beforehand, and then she eventually shows up. It always feels like she's on the outs as well, even though she seems
to travel in the same circles. But I would have to say that the wife is just as important as the two men. She really has agency. It's not just these two men are struggling and eventually there's a third man that comes in kind of thing. No, it's very much the three main people, and then like Giuseppa and Rick, especially Rick on the outside.
For me, David, your point about the sound in the way that the music comes in and out is not off from the topic really, because the music is really used in a formal fashion to help sell these moments of connection and disconnection between the people and the moments of silence between them can be pregnant and thrilling and exciting. But then also any almricone will come in. The music is very edited here, it's not there's a certain amount that feels scored to the movie.
But I will say from my own experience in the editing room. I love this kind of use of music.
There's a lot of scoring that gets used in a very editorial way where it's will suddenly be bringing it in and then we'll cut you off just as we feel like we're getting going with the score again. That is I think really beautifully done. And there's also like a kind of circular pattern to the way that it's
composed that really brings us back. It's funny that the original title is not love circle at all, but that round table is suggesting things for as well in creating this kind of circular pattern that's a little bit like a Ballero sort of thing. The characters in their attractions, have you.
Guys seined the Maricone documentary that was released years ago, A few years ago, No, I need to Well, it's so worth it. He was eighty years old before he realized how loved he was. When he received an honorary Academy award, his dad beating down pretty bad verbally with well, you're not making earal music. This is just commercial stuff. And he really he didn't go to his grave thankfully
believing that. But he was a very old man by the time he realized that he was beloved, and I don't think anyone can discount what he did for the film industry because he was unique. And it's a terrible word to use most of the time, because unique means there's only one or only one of a kind, and he is unique. John Williams is not unique. There are other people that can do John Williams type stuff. But then you know, Maracone is one of a kind and
we never had anyone that was like him. And I think that my initial takeaway from the first few moments. I was really into this film for the first few months because of the cluster phobic feeling that I was giving, and then that wonderful music, and I think I actually turned it on before I really before I looked at the Wikipedia or whatever to see who did the music. I said, that's really good. That sounds Maracone, and sure,
uh as Maracone. And usually I'm five minutes deep in a movie before I start doing any research in it. But I love the music. I can appreciate the fact that it was probably was heavily edited, but I also like those the stoppages of the music, and all of a sudden, one thing from these people in the film. You see a lot of acting with eyes, and when people act with their eyes, that's really that's powerful stuff,
and not everybody can do that. And do you watch your average oh, I don't know, Family Disney Live action production. You're gonna see people mailing in performances well that kind of thing, but you don't see people really into what they're doing. And these people acting in this film were really into what they were doing, and that's something that I can deeply appreciate.
Speaking of the score, I like when Morcone employees whistling. I think that was always something that I liked when he would do, especially during the spaghetti westerns, but there's some good whistling in this one as well. And I think he worked with the same whistler very often because they got along and then whistler could keep up with them.
Going back to the whole circular thing too, I think the camera work really emphasizes that whenever they are around that table, because the camera, like I said before, was whipping between the people. But there's a lot of movement going around those tables. There's some really good camera moves. I remember there was one shot of you Sepa where the camera just backs away from her and it's just the camera. Sometimes it's towards the end, I think it's very here's a close up, here's a close up.
Here's a close up.
But until maybe ninety minutes into the film, whenever they're at a table, you really get that sense of motion and going around. Like the opening scene of Roseanne, that's what I heard inspired Tarantino with the camera work around the table at reservoir Dogs. Yes, yes, oh that's crazy. I could a godar but he said Roseannes.
Tarantino thing to say, wherever you get it from.
Yeah, but I could wax rhapsodic about this camera work all night. I do really think that the sense uneasy, constant movement. It's funny because plot wise, one of the things is this guy is laying out his plot as a comedy, and of course this movie that's outside of the play within the play, doesn't have to be a comedy. But it's really far from being a comedy in that it's far more built for unease and worry and whatnot.
The camera prowls and it zooms. They're actually a couple of really masterful zoom outs in the movie to reveal something that's going on that are in the zip code of those beautiful Barry Linden zoom outs that reveal more and more.
This is very different from Barry Linden.
It's revealing more plot and character, skullduggery and whatnot, whereas Barry Linden is constantly revealing more the larger, corrupt world. But yeah, just really beautiful control. In relationship to the Maricone music, a lot of Italian film score music has become available and pops up online now repeated experience, because I love the Italian film scores of the sixties and seventies.
It's really become some of my favorite music, not just film score music, and I've become familiar with a lot of these films before I can ever track them down. I've actually heard this particular Maricone score before because it's been out there.
But Moricone and the kind of scene.
Around him is also he was quite a mentor to a lot of other great composers. So if you're hearing this and you can't track down the movie, do track down the music. It's out there and it's great, just fantastic to listen to.
Going back to what you were talking about with our gento, I'm guessing maybe Argento was on the set at some point because Tony Messante would end up showing up in Berwick Crystal Plumage, which came out the next year.
That's right.
He's absolutely fantastic in that I wanted to. I was talking about my Italian teacher, possibly before we began, but I didn't realize that I had seen Lino Cappolicio before, because my teacher showed us the Garden of Fitzencotinas all those years ago. He's one of the main characters. And I didn't realize that we had talked about the lady that played Giuseppa Annie Giredo. She is the incredible mother from The Piano Teacher. Holy shit, is she amazing.
In that I did not Oh, man, I did not know that.
Rate.
Yeah, she was also in Hidden or Cachet, the other Hannicke film, but yeah, the long, long career, and yeah, I did not recognize her. And she just, oh, she's so good, just such a wonderful villain in The Piano Teacher.
Man, this movie is really stacked.
That also, I don't know you can have movies that are stacked that get lost. I do find the way that this one is really not very available to be so strange given all the different figures involved. God, I hope that the negative still exists, or that there's a decent innernegative or interpositive or something out there to restore from any kind of decent print or prints, because it could be really beautiful on a blu ray or four K.
I would put it on in a theater in a second if I could.
This is one of those movies where I feel like, now after having had this discussion, I feel a lot more connected with it, and I'm just really glad we had this conversation because as of the first time I watch it, I was just like, oh my god, what a slog this thing was.
But even though I still feel it's.
A little long in the tooth, I really do appreciate what this was going for. And I'm really glad that Andrea picked this one because I was a little hesitant. I mentioned that he had picked out Weekend. I was really dreading talking about Weekend, but had a great conversation and then same thing here with you guys talking about this movie. I'm just like, Okay, yeah, now I feel much more at ease with this film, And to your point,
I think I would definitely check this out again. I feel now that I really want to see more of the films that were directed by this gentleman, and then maybe even some of the films that he wrote but didn't direct.
I know he did.
Was it Anama Nira? The Russellini film was also based on one of his plays. I'm just like, okay, yeah, let's check that out as well.
Yes, Spener, I'm really glad that you enjoyed it a lot, because I enjoy it a little bit more having heard you gush about it.
I'm glad then that's good to hear your opinions also totally valid. You don't have to tell me I'm right, but yeah, I guess. I just also find this era of filmmaking always rewarding. There was just incredible weird shit going on in every country in nineteen sixty eight to seventy two through in particular, where it's let's throw down
all this philosophy and stuff. But in the context of some Schnitzler had done this, I did read that this was partly inspired by Schnitzler's Laurande again to the Circle and whatnot. I'm interested to see if that really would
bear out. It seemed different, but I buy it the way in which this was a time where creating a kind of sensory overload with picture and sound and also really putting the characters into all these sort of fascinating and corrupt sexual situations in order to tease out philosophical ideas about how are we to live.
In this particular time?
And I have to say, for our own times, it seems quite inspiring.
All right, We're going to take a break and play a preview for next week's show right after these brief messages.
I call it do say content oky, but sino choi.
So sula Richard with.
All de manda, the melopo comfer Marigo Meloan.
Ferma to day, the man on army.
Save on quando temnt.
Partia no domanicoloside a party called let me don't.
Sh sh.
Sh sh shut?
Is that about the amounty transit? And humi gino calash.
Bet or no restant.
Looks like you're a.
Don't macause so ok to say, the daughter Journey, the time she stem at a case.
Came regal ses degree clappy.
Sativo commissaries, dominic atonym is parda non.
Free, the resonam branches at telape.
Caldero ora Qui.
That's right.
We'll be back next week with another Patreon pick Blood and Diamonds. Until then, one thing, my co host Spencer and David.
So, Spencer, what's the latest.
With you, Sir?
I'm hunger down in post production and teaching like crazy, and yeah, hopefully I'll have something to show for it soon. And I'm writing a new project that might be unfilmable, so that's super exciting.
And David, what's going on in your world?
Sir?
I host the podcast as well, called Cinema Chat, and you have to type in Cinema Chat with David Heath then, because if you just type in cinema Chat, there's a few podcasts on there that show up. I named my podcast, and then six months later I realized why did I name it that? So I added my name to it. That way, no one can take it away from me.
We talk about movies from every era.
We go all the way back to the Silent Era. We've covered movies in the eighteen nineties, and we'll cover movies from today and everything in between, just about every genre. We drop a new episode every Sunday. Lots of fun guests, on there. But I am with somebody that was actually influenced by Mike White, because I think you are the reason, Mike why I.
Said, if this schmuck can do it, anybody can do it.
I didn't say that, but I I will say that you go back to what.
Twenty fourteen, twenty eleven, actually Tony eleven.
Okay, Yeah, I remember saying to somebody, I said, I'm never going to be bored again because this is good stuff, and they're two and three hours long sometimes. And remember what you had almost a five hour Conan the Barbarian episode.
That was a monster.
I think it took me three days to actually get through it because I just had to posit so many times.
I'm gonna have to look for that. I have not heard the Grek Conan episode yet. Well, it's fantastic, and that's probably five six years ago. You also go to my Facebook page. It's just send them a chat on Facebook.
I appreciate anything. Anybody that listens there goes to the page. And I'm really glad that I've been able to come on the show with you.
Mike.
Thank you again, guys for being on the show. Thanks everybody for listening. If you want to hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out some of the other shows that I work on. They're all available at weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If you want to join the community, visit patreon dot.
Com Projection Booth.
Every donation we get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
M oh No Peer counsel so Stout Jaguardi Mondi, Prince Salmon because of Samon won the improve this on Nanda through Theamo to a tick Wo moment ticket, Amorycordarisama no It coun trn the cause of Goliday, Where Anna start Sennebor, Lancy Lensers rented the Moody the Chaco joasad pss not is not no mine little mine because of mine.
It's to no say.
Go say.
Yeah cha.
No so the more.
You proving.
To three this is no cher do do the d.
Blood do.
Siven thumb smell but.
Don't seven about them.
Some doom.
And cha good lord pasad persons not ess.
Not no man, no money on the money side.
Say.
Go you say.
Child no so no
London man