David Cairns

Party Girl is kinda bad but it's Nick Ray.

Piège pour Cendrillon is a dazzling outlier, his legal dramas are the heart of his output and all well worth seeing. He was really serious about this stuff in a way that's quite un-nouvelle vague, though I still can't understand the antipathy in artistic terms.

Wait till you try Cayatte! At least Becker does have defenders, Criterion discs, etc.

Can you create a new shovel WITHOUT a heap of ash in it, by moving only two of the toothpicks?
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The Tracking Shot in Bicycle Thieves (again) I’ve written before about one of the most important and influential and beautiful tracking shots in all cinema. As I wrote at the time, the brilliance of the shot is that, while it derives it…

in THE SHOES OF THE FISHERMAN we get a shot stolen from Vittorio De Sica's BICYCLE THIEVES -- and we also get Vittorio De Sica (centre).
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PAPA KNOWS BEST: A is for “Affair of the Poisons” The advent of a new series by David Melville Wingrove is a cause for celebration! I share his love of this period of French film history, though I also like a lot of the nouvelle vague. What I neve…

Henri Decoin's L'AFFAIRE DES POISONS inaugurates a new series by David Melville on the "cinema du papa".
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Guest Shadowplayer David Melville Wingrove celebrates the Cinema du Papa as only he can: dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/p...

Help my family Hello everyone, I am Alaa Al-Masry from Gaza, a dental student. I was in my fourth year. I was studying day and night to save my family from poverty and help them. They suffered a lot for my studies. ...

Dear friends,my account is suspended.I am writing to you after a long absence due to the internet outage in my area. We are homeless in a tent, and the situation is extremely difficult. My family and I are very.
We are dying of hunger every day 😭.
Please help us 🥺
www.chuffed.org/project/1158...

Yesterday’s Man on Tomorrow Today I got sucked in to see James Gunn’s SUPERMAN via favourable remarks on social media. I thought it was fine but not that engaging to me. What had intrigued me was Gunn’s decision to chas…

Not bird, not plane. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/30/y...

BED SITTING ROOM has a BFI disc, DELITTO you would have to go bootleg, which is a shame as the downloads I've seen are not nearly as gorgeous as the print we saw. WILD RIVER should be very gettable on DVD.

New to almost all of us! Comencini is underrated. Oh, also THE BED SITTING ROOM -- Lester told me he was influenced by reading Rachel Carson's The Silent Spring. It's a bizarre, challenging film though, whereas I think the Comencini is smart but very accessible.

Thinking Aloud About Film: DELITTO D’AMORE (Luigi Comencini, 1974). https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/16/thinking-aloud-about-film-delitto-damore-luigi-comencini-1974/ DELITTO D’AMORE (Luigi Comencini, 1974), also known as CRIME OF LOVE or SOMEWHERE BEYOND LOVE in Engl

Luigi Comencini's DELITTO D'AMORE made converts at Il Cinema Ritrovato this year: soundcloud.com/user-7660425... I'm also very keen on Kazan's WILD RIVER.

Page 66: Phase 2 Vintage illustration of a Sailing ship being wrecked on rocky coastline, Shipwreck, Victorian 19th Century. But, lo !” at last from tenfold darkness born, Forth issues o’er the wave the…

Page 66 of the internet is mainly about naval matters.
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The daughter-automaton trope in silent cinema...
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Martyred Accountants I’d read some people enjoying THE ACCOUNTANT II more than they did the new MISSION IMPOSSIBLE so when a cheap Blu-ray of part one fell into my field of vision I decided to take a punt on it. …

Expensive action movie THE ACCOUNTANT and British quota quickie COUNTERSPY are both thrillers set in the giddy world of accountancy, but which is the more gripping? (A: Neither of them.) dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/26/m...

TVS6: The Fatal Doormat I keep forgetting I’m supposed to be blogging my way through 1934 movie serial THE VANISHING SHADOW. Also: I’m doing an anthology film AND a serial at the same time — how lazy is …

Oh yes -- I forgot, I was watching a movie serial, wasn't I? dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/25/t...

Finally got around to the newish SUSPIRIA thing. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/24/c...

Love Not At Twenty (Nino/Risi/Lisi) I had persuaded myself that the next anthology film I watched, after ROGOPAG, would be LOVE AT TWENTY, the one where Truffaut brought his alter ego Antoine Doinel, and his alter ego Jean-Pierre Lea…

Anthology time, with LE BAMBOLE (part one)
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Kihachi Okamoto always brings stylistic exuberance to his work: here, it's DESPERADO OUTPOST, an eastern western that's also a WWII detective story and a comedy.
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Page 66: Phase 1 Before Wilder could speak the door of the next apartment opened sharply. Staring at Wilder with undisguised hostility were a tax specialist from the 40th floor and an over-muscled choreographer wit…

What's on page 66 of the internet today?https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/21/page-66-phase-1/

lol

My favourite edit in all of pre-code Hollywood. I think. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/19/t...

SEVEN SAMURAI certainly circulated in the west in at least one cut-down version, but not cut by AK, I don't think.

Fascinating! This version was pretty long and did hammer home plot points multiple times - which is indeed a very Kurosawa thing to do. I'm not sure if the shorter cut circulates anymore? And I don't think there are any other AK films with such official variations.

This is Japanese... I don't know what you mean by two versions, what is the other version?

She Who Must Be Obie Lansing C. Holden got to be co-director of SHE (1935) after flying alongside producer Merian C. Cooper in WWI. Who says Hollywood isn’t a meritocracy? The skills of dogfighting are so obvious…

SHE (1935) is either the ur-text of literally everything or hugely derivative of everything else. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/18/s...

So, Donald Cammell saw this and thought "I can sell this to Hollywood and call it DEMON SEED"?

Collision Coverage Jose Arroyo & Richard Layne discuss Luigi Comencini’s magnificent DELITTO D’AMORE (CRIME OF LOVE, 1974) here. Leaving me to talk about SENZA SAPERE NIENTE DI LEI (WITHOUT KNOWING AN…

Luigi Comencini folds together noir, proto-giallo, Antonioni's cinema of alienation, and Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT: dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/17/c...

The Bewitching Hour After a slight delay, got my copy of Mitchell Leisen’s MIDNIGHT from Criterion, to which I contributed the booklet essay. Fascinated to dig into Michael Koresky’s commentary track and t…

Got my MIDNIGHT. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/16/t...

Rat Racers Masumura’s BLACK TEST CAR is a kind of noir remake of his earlier GIANTS AND TOYS. It pares things down so there are only two competing companies this time, each hoping to launch Japan’…

Masumura's skill with crowding a widescreen frame is one of many pleasures in corporate noir BLACK TEST CAR. dcairns.wordpress.com/2025/07/15/r...