Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 160: Tue Jun 11

The Machine that Kills Bad People (Rossellini, 1952): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This presentation, part of the BFI Southbank's Italian Neorealism season, is also being screened on June 5th, 19th and 27th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
This rarely shown early film by Roberto Rossellini (1948), one of his few comedies, anticipates with remarkable prescience the conceits of Godard and others about photography in the 60s. A professional small-town photographer finds that he has the power to kill his subjects by taking their picture, turning them into statues of themselves. Rossellini left this project before it was finished, and it was edited and released a few years later without his approval—but it still comes across as a remarkably suggestive fable.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.

No comments: