Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 3: Thu Jan 3

The Lady Without Camelias (Antonioni, 1953): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.30pm


This excellent early film from Michelangelo Antonioni is part of the director's season at BFI Southbank. The movie also screens on January 12th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Perhaps the most unjustly neglected of Michelangelo Antonioni's early features, La Signora Senza Camelie (1953) is a caustic Cinderella story about a Milanese shop clerk (Lucia Bose) who briefly becomes a glamorous movie star. One of the cruelest and most accurate portraits of studio filmmaking and the Italian movie world that we have, it's informed by a visually and emotionally complex mise en scene that juggles background with foreground elements in a choreographic style recalling Welles at times. Though it's only Antonioni's third feature, and its episodic structure necessitates a somewhat awkward expositional method, this is mature filmmaking that leaves an indelible aftertaste.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.

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