It’s understandable that most movie and TV fans remember Maggie Smith for her dynamic work in the “Harry Potter” films and “Downton Abbey.” More recent and far more widely seen in their time, they are worthy examples of her outstanding work.

But unknown to even some of the most knowledgeable cinephiles is most of her screen work before the 1980s beyond her two Oscar wins (Best Actress for “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” and Supporting Actress for “California Suite”). Her passing at 89 represents a chance to look back at not only roles that conveyed her later brilliance but also, in some cases, present a broader range than what became the standard — though always with nuance and distinctiveness — Maggie Smith role of later years.

When reviewing her film career until at least 2008, it’s critical to remember that she was first and foremost a stage actor. She joined Laurence Olivier...

Unless you’re savvy with torrenting, Orson Welles’ trippy and disturbing 1962 film “The Trial” has been hard to find. Various restorations from 35mm negatives have popped up over the years, but Welles fans have long been resigned to inferior-quality rips on DVD, VHS, or the internet. That’s no longer so, as Rialto Pictures is releasing a long-overdue 4K restoration of the Franz Kafka adaptation starring Anthony Perkins as a man being persecuted for an unspecified crime. The 60th-anniversary 4K restoration opens at Film Forum December 9 before expanding nationally, and IndieWire has the exclusive trailer below.

“The Trial” also stars Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and Elsa Martinelli as the women who become entangled with Josef K. (Perkins) and his trial. The film, which has occasionally played repertory houses in low-quality formats, was restored by Studiocanal and La Cinematheque Francaise. The image and sound restorations were carried out in 4K at...

You know how they say history repeats itself? Well, if you need proof, pick up a copy of Kristin Hannah's latest novel, The Four Winds. The story of the Martinelli family, and particularly the relationship between mother Elsa and daughter Loreda, is a familiar one, but it's told so beautifully that you can't help but invest yourself in their lives. The story centers on Elsa, but weaves in and out between the perspective of Elsa and Loreda, giving you a more complete look at the family's circumstances and highlighting the different realities of mother and daughter. Elsa begins the book as a quiet, unloved little girl, and we watch her pour all that love she wished she had gotten into her children, Loreda and Ant. Life on a farm in 1930s Texas is excruciatingly difficult, and after a barrage of dust storms, Elsa takes her family to the promised land of California,...

Ask Lina Wertmüller if she’s pleased to be honored by Hollywood, and here’s the typical response you get from the groundbreaking director, who at 91 is still out to shock: “I certainly am. It beats a kick in the balls!”

Wertmüller, in 1976, became the first female director to receive an Academy Award nomination for helming grotesque Holocaust drama “Seven Beauties,” which received four nominations, including original screenplay for her, foreign-language film and lead actor Giancarlo Giannini. She will be celebrated on Oct. 27 with an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards ceremony, followed the next day by a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Genoma Films, which funded the restoration of her Oscar winning “Seven Beauties,” and Sardinia Film Commission are spearheading a retrospective of her films at the American Cinematheque on Oct. 20 and 25.

Wertmüller has always been a free spirit. After being kicked out of 11 convent schools, by her count,...

Versatile star of Hollywood’s international years whose work spanned romantic comedies, period epics and spaghetti westerns

For more than a decade from the mid-1950s, the film star Elsa Martinelli, who has died aged 82, was one of the most prominent female Italian exports to Hollywood, along with her compatriots Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Claudia Cardinale. In addition, Martinelli’s appearance seemed to be the sine qua non of Italian co-productions of period epics, romantic comedies, erotic sketch movies and spaghetti westerns.

It was during Hollywood’s international years that Martinelli starred opposite Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Charlton Heston and Anthony Quinn, and, both in the Us and Italy, worked with directors such as André De Toth, Guy Hamilton, Dino Risi, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles. Her slim, elfin looks led to her being described by one newspaper in the 1950s as a “kind of Audrey Hepburn with sex appeal”.

Continue reading.

Elsa Martinelli, the Italian bombshell actress known for her classic looks and jet-set lifestyle, working between Hollywood, Paris and Rome, died Saturday in Rome. She was 82.

Martinelli was originally discovered as a model in 1953 by designer Roberto Capucci. She began taking on small roles, beginning in 1954 with Claude Autant-Lara’s The Red and the Black.

But her most famous role came just two years later after Kirk Douglas (or his wife, according to an alternate version of the story) claimed to have spotted her on a Life magazine cover. Douglas recruited her to play a Sioux chief’s daughter...

Martinelli and Wayne in "Hatari!" (1962)

Elsa Martinelli, who gravitated from modeling to a successful acting career in the 1950s, has died at age 82. Martinelli was a popular model in her native Italy when she was discovered by Kirk Douglas and his wife Anne. The Douglases decided to cast the unknown as an Indian maiden in Kirk's 1955 hit Western "The Indian Fighter". The film raised eyebrows at the time for presenting an inter-racial love affair between their characters. The movie helped successfully launch Martinelli's screen career in European cinema but it would be years before she starred in her next major Hollywood production. In 1962 director Howard Hawks cast her as the female lead opposite John Wayne his big budget African adventure "Hatari!". The film was a sizable hit and Martinelli began to appear in more American studio productions. She starred opposite Charlton Heston in "The Pigeon That Took Rome", with Richard Burton...

Italian actress Elsa Martinelli, known to U.S. audiences her breakout role in 1955’s The Indian Fighter opposite Kirk Douglas, died Saturday in Rome at the age of 82, according to Italian media.

Born in Tuscany, Martinelli began her career as a model — appearing in the pages of Vogue and on the cover of Life. She then began taking on smaller roles in films, becoming one of the first models to make the crossover into film and paving the way for stars like Cameron Diaz, Sofia Vergara, and Charlize Theron.

A role in 1954’s Le Rouge et le Noir — the French...

By John M. Whalen

It goes without saying that Kirk Douglas is a Hollywood icon. From his first role as Walter O’Neill in “The Strange Love of Martha Ivers,” (1946) to “Spartacus” (1960) and beyond that until his last, so far, appearance in a made for TV movie, he remains—even in retirement after a stroke and a helicopter crash— one of those larger than life movie stars, the kind they just don’t make any more. He had a look and a style. Those shiny white teeth could as easily smile charmingly at you or snarl like a barracuda. His bright blue eyes could be full of tenderness one minute, as in his love scenes in “Spartacus,” or fierce and mean as in “Gunfight at the Ok Corral.” He played complex characters that were always a mix of good and bad, but never evil.

Such a character is Johnny Hawks,...

Kirk Douglas grits his teeth and goes full macho, wrasslin’ with that beautiful Sioux up in the high country — the Sioux miss in question being the Italian model Elsa Martinelli in her screen debut. Kirk can’t decide if he wants to stay with Elsa, or lead what must be the most shameful bunch of pioneer bigots ever to cross the plains. Walter Matthau and Diana Douglas are standouts in this vigorous action western directed by André de Toth.

The Indian Fighter

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1955 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 88 min. / Street Date May 9, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Kirk Douglas, Elsa Martinelli, Walter Matthau, Diana Douglas, Walter Abel, Lon Chaney Jr., Eduard Franz, Alan Hale Jr., Elisha Cook Jr., Ray Teal, Frank Cady, Michael Winkelman, William Phipps.

Cinematography: Wilfrid M. Cline

Art Direction: Wiard Ihnen

Film Editor: Richard Cahoon

Original Music: Irving Gordon, Franz Waxman

Written by Robert L. Richards,...

By Lee Pfeiffer

I recently wrote in relation to a review of "The Big Show" that circus movies have gone the way of the Model T. You can add to that another genre of film that used to be a Hollywood staple- the safari movies in which the hero was a great white hunter. Changing social attitudes make it unlikely we'd ever again cheer some rock-jawed leading man as he unloads some hi caliber bullets into a grazing elephant or a lazing hippo. The last word on such films was Clint Eastwood's woefully underrated (and woefully under-seen) 1990 film "White Hunter, Black Heart", which was loosely based on the hunting obsessions of director John Huston during production of "The African Queen". Nevertheless, jungle-themed adventures are still the stuff of cinematic thrills in the minds of retro movie lovers. One of the best is "Rampage", a 1963 opus directed by Phil Karlson...

The dirty book of the '60s became an all-star dirty movie with Brando, Burton, Starr, Coburn, Matthau, Astin, Aznavour and Huston all wanting a taste of the Swedish nymphet Ewa Aulin. Camerawork by Rotunno, designs by Dean Tavoularis, effects by Doug Trumbull -- and the best material is Marlon Brando making goofy faces as a sub-Sellers Indian guru. Candy Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1968 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 124 min. /Candy e il suo pazzo mondo / Street Date May 17, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Ewa Aulin, Charles Aznavour, Marlon Brando, James Coburn, Richard Burton, John Astin, John Huston, Walter Matthau, Ringo Starr, Anita Pallenberg, Elsa Martinelli. Cinematography Giuseppe Rotunno Production Designer Dean Tavoularis Opening and closing designed by Douglas Trumbull Film Editor Giancarlo Cappelli, Frank Santillo Original Music Dave Grusin Writing credits Buck Henry from the book by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg Produced by Robert Haggiag Directed by Christian Marquand

Reviewed...

Rod Taylor dead at 84: Actor best known for 'The Time Machine' and 'The Birds' Rod Taylor, best remembered for the early 1960s movies The Time Machine and The Birds, and for his supporting role as Winston Churchill in Quentin Tarantino's international hit Inglourious Basterds, has died. Taylor suffered a heart attack at his Los Angeles home earlier this morning (January 8, 2015). Born on January 11, 1930, in Sydney, he would have turned 85 on Sunday. Based on H.G. Wells' classic 1895 sci-fi novel, The Time Machine stars Rod Taylor as a H. George Wells, an inventor who comes up with an intricate chair that allows him to travel across time. (In the novel, the Victorian protagonist is referred to simply as the "Time Traveller.") After experiencing World War I and World War II, Wells decides to fast forward to the distant future, ultimately arriving at a place where humankind has been split...

Finally seeing Roger Vadim's Blood and Roses (a.k.a. Et mourir de plaisir, 1960) in a watchable, if imperfect form, was a minor revelation. (If all you're interested in is major revelations, move along.) By plundering freely from Cocteau, and doing so with some panache, Vadim surpasses his usual standard of titillation and serves up some haunting images, with much help from regular cinematographer Claude Renoir (yes, of that family), and anticipates a whole lot of developments in the European horror field.

By borrowing both from La belle et la bête (a masked ball allows the cast to get into period costume) and Orphée (mythology goes mod) Vadim is paving the way for all those films that combine Gothic with pop, particularly those of Jean Rollin, who simply upped the kink factor while retaining the crumbling castles, vampires and costumed role-play pioneered by Vadim.

The movie would doubtless be...

Hatari!

Written by Leigh Brackett

Directed by Howard Hawks

USA, 1962

Hatari! is essentially about a group of men with a job to do, which makes it a perfect vehicle for John Wayne and Howard Hawks. Hawks reveled in stories about professional people who take their job seriously, and more often than not, Wayne played a character who was the best man for the job. As in their other collaborations — two Westerns before and two after — this film highlights what these two can best bring to the cinematic table. While Hatari! mostly falls into the action/adventure category (though throughout its 157-minute runtime, relatively little is concentrated on extensive action), it ends up being an entertaining and amusing character study, something perhaps more in line with Hawks than Wayne.

This was Leigh Brackett’s third screenplay for Hawks (with two more to follow) and as usual, she expertly captures the banter...

Moviefone's Top DVD of the Week

"Inside Llewyn Davis"

What's It About? Folk singer Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) has a guitar, a dream, and a big orange kitty cat. He's looking for his big break in New York City, but he's too busy being a bit of an aimless schmuck to do anything great. Inspired by the '60s folk scene in Greenwich Village, this comedy/drama has a whole lot of good music performed by stars Isaac, Justin Timberlake, Carey Mulligan, and Adam Driver.

Why We're In: The Coen brothers, a fantastic soundtrack produced by T-Bone Burnett, and one cool cat that rides the subway? We're in.

Moviefone's Top Blu-ray of the Week

"George Washington" (Criterion Collection)

What's It About? Writer/director David Gordon Green's feature-length debut is about a group of tweens in North Carolina, and the very bad thing we know they did one summer.

Why...

Norma Bengell dead at 78: Iconic (and controversial) Brazilian film, stage, television, and recording star made history as the first actress to be seen naked (full frontal) in a mainstream film (photo: Norma Bengell and John Herbert in ‘As Cariocas’) Norma Bengell, a sort of Brazilian Jeanne Moreau, Brigitte Bardot, and Jane Fonda rolled into one, died of lung cancer in her hometown of Rio de Janeiro on October 9, 2013. She was 78. Best known internationally for her leading-lady roles in several Italian-made cult classics of the mid-’60s, Norma Bengell was known in Brazil as a controversial show business veteran and for being the first “name” actress (purportedly anywhere in the world) to be seen fully naked — full frontal — in a mainstream film. Note: Hedy Lamarr, then billed as Hedy Kiesler, does swim and run around in the nude in Gustav Machaty’s 1933 Czech drama Ecstasy. However, Lamarr’s naked swimming was disguised by the water,...

French film director who attracted big stars and box-office success but was disdained by the Nouvelle Vague

Denys de La Patellière, who has died aged 92, was of the generation of French film directors described with ironic contempt by François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and other critics turned Nouvelle Vague directors as representing le cinéma de papa. But De La Patellière had several huge box-office hits in France in the 1950s and 60s, featuring some of the biggest internationally known French stars of the period such as Lino Ventura, Danielle Darrieux, Michèle Mercier, Pierre Fresnay, Bernard Blier and, above all, Jean Gabin, whom he directed in six films.

"I was a commercial director, which for me is not a pejorative word," De La Patellière recalled. "I never had the ambition to become an auteur, but to make entertaining films that pleased general audiences." In a way, his first film, Les Aristocrates (1955), could...

Elsa Martinelli reads the article in Cinema Retro #23 about the filming of Howard Hawks' Hatari! (Photo copyright: Roland Schaefli. All rights reserved.

By Roland Schaefli

When Elsa Martinelli checked out our “Hatari!” article in issue #23 of Cinema Retro while attending the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, she enlightened us about how she induced baby elephants to follow her around in the film. Not surprisingly, we ended up following her everywhere. Here are a few highlights of one of our discussions.

We did an article about the making of “Hatari!” and how the locations look today.

Oh. They must have changed a lot.

Not that much. The Ngorongoro Crater (where the pre title sequence was shot) is full of tourists, of course.

Back then, we were to first to actually go down there. But you were very lucky to travel there nowadays. You know, we were there four months and...

Divas In Brazil Introduction: Marlene Dietrich, Madonna, Brigitte Bardot. [Photo: Jayne Mansfield.] First of all, what made you decide to write a book about international female entertainers visiting Brazil? I am an eternal lover of divas. Whenever I read something about them here in Brazil, I was amazed and tried to find out more details about [their visits]. So I started looking for a book specifically about the subject, and seeing that there wasn't any, I decided to write one myself. Was it difficult to find documentation on the countless international stars that have visited the country in the last century or so? It was very difficult. It took me eight years gathering information. Unfortunately, the few people who had contact with the divas here in Brazil either did not have time to help me or wouldn't do it. So I looked for imported materials to gather information: autobiographies and biographies in several languages — English,...

by Colleen Wanglund, MoreHorror.com

Directed by Roger Vadim (…And God Created Woman {1956}, Barbarella {1968}) Blood and Roses (1960) is a psychological thriller that may….or may not be about vampires. Based on the novella “Carmilla” written in 1872 by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu, The movie tells the story of Carmilla (Annette Vadim) who has just found out the man she loves, Leopoldo (Mel Ferrer) is marrying Georgia (Elsa Martinelli). In her grief Carmilla is driven to the tomb of her long-dead ancestor, a vampire named Millarca. Millarca has possessed Carmilla, who is now killing and terrorizing the people in and around the family’s castle.

Early in the movie Leopoldo and Carmilla, who are cousins, are explaining to friends their family’s history of vampires. They explain the superstitions of the villagers and how supposedly only one body in the family cemetery escaped staking and burning—Millarca. Her portrait hangs in the...

Intrada Records has announced a soundtrack for the 1963 adventure movie Rampage. The album marks the premiere release of the complete score by composer Elmer Bernstein. To listen to audio clips and order the CD, visit Intrada’s online store. Rampage is directed by Phil Karlson and stars Robert Mitchum, Jack Hawkins, Elsa Martinelli and Sabu. In the movie, a German zoo hires two hunters to catch a rare breed of panther in Malaysia...

Rank the week of September 13th’s Blu-ray and DVD new releases against the best films of all-time: New Releases Thor

(Blu-ray & DVD | PG13 | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #227

Win Percentage: 58%

Times Ranked: 18033

Top-20 Rankings: 90

Directed By: Kenneth Branagh

Starring: Chris Hemsworth • Natalie Portman • Anthony Hopkins • Jeremy Renner • Kat Dennings

Genres: Action • Adventure • Based-on-Comics • Comic-Book Superhero Film • Fantasy • Fantasy Adventure

Rank This Movie

Conan O’Brien Can’T Stop

(Blu-ray & DVD | Nr | 2011)

Flickchart Ranking: #5260

Win Percentage: 54%

Times Ranked: 719

Top-20 Rankings: 5

Directed By: Rodman Flender

Starring: Conan O’Brien

Genres: Comedy • Documentary

Rank This Movie

Incendies

(Blu-ray & DVD | Nr | 2010)

Flickchart Ranking: #4296

Win Percentage: 51%

Times Ranked: 947

Top-20 Rankings: 8

Directed By: Denis Villeneuve

Starring: Lubna Azabal • Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin • Maxim Gaudette • Rémy Girard • Abdelghafour Elaaziz

Genres: Drama • Foreign Language Film

Rank This Movie

The Tempest

(Blu-ray & DVD | PG13 | 2010)

Flickchart Ranking: #7784

Win Percentage: 37%

Times Ranked: 385

Top-20 Rankings: 2

Directed By: Julie Taymor

Starring: Helen Mirren • Djimon Hounsou • Alfred Molina...

Article by Dana Jung

Decades before there was ‘J-Lo’. or ‘LiLo’, we had ‘La Lollo’,. one of the most beautiful actresses ever to grace movie screens, Gina Lollobrigida. Along with Sophia Loren, Elsa Martinelli, Monica Vitti, and others during the new wave. of Italian and European cinema, she gained fame as an international sex star in the 1950’s and 60s in low-budget Italian films with racy titles such as Fast & Sexy and Go Naked In The World. But when Loren won her Oscar for Two Women, Lollobrigida was already 35 years old, way beyond starlet status. In 1968 (ironically the same year her compatriot actresses Claudia Cardinale & Luciana Paluzzi respectively starred in the cult classics Once Upon A Time In The West and The Green Slime), Gina made probably her best Hollywood film, Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell, which is sadly not available on DVD.

A pleasant mash-up of Hollywood screwball comedy and Italian sex farce,...

George Burns, Walter Matthau in Herbert Ross‘ The Sunshine Boys, based on Neil Simon‘s play Walter Matthau on TCM Schedule and synopses from the TCM website: 3:00 Am Indian Fighter, The (1955) A trail guide has to bring two crooked traders to justice to save his wagon train from Indian attack. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Elsa Martinelli, Walter Matthau. Dir: Andre de Toth. C-88 mins. 4:45 Am Onionhead (1958) An irresponsible student enlists in the Navy expecting to sit out World War II. Cast: Andy Griffith, Felicia Farr, Walter Matthau. Dir: Norman Taurog. Bw-111 mins. 6:45 Am Fail Safe (1964) A failure in the U.S. defense system threatens to start World War III. Cast: Henry Fonda, Walter Matthau, Larry Hagman. Dir: Sidney Lumet. Bw-112 mins. 8:45 Am Ensign Pulver (1964) A young officer on a World War II supply ship battles his captain to keep the men happy. Cast: Robert Walker, Jr., Burl...

Italian model and film actor, she left the cinema and joined the jet set

Rosanna Schiaffino, who has died aged 69, was one of those Italian beauty queens who began a promising acting career in the post-neorealist cinema of the 1950s. She gave up the cinema in the 1970s and married the handsome playboy and steel industry heir Giorgio Falck. Their marriage and, a decade later, their break-up and divorce, had overtones of melodrama more piquant than the content of any of the 45 films in which Schiaffino had starred.

She was born in Genoa, in north Italy, into a well-off family and, although her father wanted her to pursue studies as a surveyor, her mother encouraged her showbusiness ambitions, helping her to study privately at a drama school and then to take part in beauty contests, which she usually won. These led to modelling jobs, with photographs in important magazines, including Life.

Here’s a list of some of the new DVD and Blu-ray releases this week we’re particularly interested in. Plus, some old favorites (and not so favorites) coming out this week for the first time on Blu-ray.

Movies

Fast & Furious ~ Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster (DVD and Blu-ray)

Repulsion – Criterion Collection ~ Catherine Deneuve (Blu-ray)

12 Monkeys ~ Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis, and Madeline Stowe (Blu-ray)

Dragonball: Evolution ~ Justin Chatwin, James Marsters, Yun-Fat Chow, and Emmy Rossum (DVD)

This Is Spinal Tap ~ Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer (Blu-ray)

Fast & Furious 4 – Movie Collection ~ Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, and Jordana Brewster (DVD)

Bart Got a Room ~ William H. Macy (DVD)

The 10th Victim ~ Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, Elsa Martinelli, and George Wang (DVD)

Miss March ~ Zach Cregger, Trevor Moore, Raquel Alessi, and Molly Stanton (DVD)

The 10th Victim ~ Marcello Mastroianni, Ursula Andress, Elsa Martinelli,...

Holger Haase Oct 12, 2019

From the mesmerizing Countess Maja to the captivating Carmilla Karnstein, lesbian vampires embody immortal sin.

This article comes from Den of Geek UK.

Vampire lesbians, is there any creature more seductive, hypnotic or seductively sinful? Jesus Christ himself had to come back in the 2001 film Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter to protect Canadian lesbians from the most provocative of predators.

Saphic sanguinarians started staking their claim in Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's novella Carmilla (1872). From Gloria Holden’s magnetic eyes in Dracula's Daughter (1936) through Ingrid Pitt’s sultry invitation in The Vampire Lovers (1970) to the revivalist Lesbian Vampire Killers, the irresistible sirens have held an almost fetishistic fascination over moviegoers.

Charles Busch lightly spoofed them in the downtown stage play Vampire Lesbians of Sodom. Jesús Franco exploited them in the 1971 West German-Spanish horror film Vampyros Lesbos, starring Soledad Miranda as the Countess Nadine Carody.

Here are ten reasons why...