The Best Film Ever?

In some recent Tudor novels and series there has been an emphasis on St. Thomas More's role in Henry VIII's persecution of religious dissenters. As Chancellor of England, St.Thomas had the morbid task of overseeing the execution of heretics according to the laws of the land. Most countries at the time saw heresy as a capital offense so St. Thomas was not doing anything unusual in carrying out the King's will in such matters. It is the mistake of our post-Enlightenment era to judge the past by our present way of doing things. Just as we are horrified by their burning of heretics, so would they be horrified by our massive numbers of aborted babies. From George Weigel at First Things:

I recently rewatched Fred Zinnemann’s riveting cinematic adaptation of Robert Bolt’s play for at least the sixth time, and the thought occurred: Is A Man for All Seasons the most perfect film ever made? Everything about it seems exactly right.

Bolt’s screenplay keeps the action moving, highlighting the story’s pivotal moments while losing nothing of consequence from the play’s script. Everyone in the cast is terrific, beginning with Paul Scofield’s Thomas More and continuing through Wendy Hiller’s Alice More, Robert Shaw’s Henry VIII (the young Renaissance hero, not the porcine lecher of later years), Orson Welles’s Cardinal Wolsey (embodiment of a Church crippled by its alliance with state power), Nigel Davenport’s rough-and-tumble Duke of Norfolk, Leo McKern’s cynically amoral Thomas Cromwell, and John Hurt’s Richard Rich, corrupted by intellectual arrogance and overweening ambition. Vanessa Redgrave’s lascivious, eighty-second cameo as Anne Boleyn hints at the sorry end awaiting the woman for whom King Henry broke with the Church of Rome.

Ted Moore’s cinematography is both gorgeous and true to history; I once looked out the window in More’s cell in the Tower of London and was struck by how cannily Zinnemann and his cinematographer used that view of the Thames embankment to convey the changing seasons during Sir Thomas’s lengthy imprisonment. Georges Delerue’s score is well-matched to the flow of the film and gives it an authentic Renaissance flavor.

If there is anything awry in A Man for All Seasons, I didn’t notice it. 

I’ve often taken exception to Bolt’s attempt, in the preface he wrote for the 1962 paperback edition of his play, to justify to his secularist peers his esteem for More, an ardent Catholic. In that apologia, the agnostic-bordering-on-atheist playwright positioned Thomas More as a proto-existentialist hero: one who died in defense of “an adamantine sense of his own self,” King Henry’s threat to which caused “this supple, humorous, unassuming, and sophisticated person [to] set like metal, [and be] overtaken by an absolutely primitive rigor”—a man who “could no more be budged than a cliff.” Yet in his screenplay, Bolt could not escape some decidedly Catholic facts: that the More family prayed together; that More, as a theologically knowledgeable consultant, helped Henry VIII win the title “Defender of the Faith” for a book defending the seven sacraments against Martin Luther; and that More, at his trial, insisted that the papacy was a divinely mandated institution. Then, at the end, Bolt’s More confesses that he dies “the King’s good servant, but God’s first”—the God who “will not refuse one who is so blithe to go to him.” (Read more.)

Share

The Catholic Revival

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

Sergio Infante, a professor at Yale, is on a mission from God. He’s determined to make sure the new Catholic revival energizing Generation Z is woke. Contra Professor Infante, it is essential that the new wave of young Catholics be anti-communist. I’d like to encourage them to sign up for the Anti-Communist Film Festival, which will be held at the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C. in October. Registration is free. Here is Professor Infante from his piece in Slate:

Around the United States, as you’ve probably heard, Gen Z Catholics are heading to the pews in eye-popping numbers. They meet up in pizzerias and follow one another on social media. They flock to Catholic student organizations, which are booming. And at Yale University, where I teach Latin American and global history, they attend classes and public lectures to learn about their faith.

(Read more.)

Share

The Future of the Anti-Communist Film Festival

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

  Movies change lives. Film gets into the soul and the subconscious, altering perceptions of the world and creating understanding. It’s why Roger Ebert called movies “an empathy machine.” the Left has owned Hollywood for a century. It’s time to change that. We also intend for the festival to be an annual event. As Al Pacino once put it, I’m just getting warmed up!

    I had the idea for the Anti-Communist Film Festival over a year ago, and the response has been great enthusiasm and some solid media hits. Before taking a short break for the August recess and then letting the Victims of Communism Foundation host news about the festival, including the schedule, I wanted to briefly lay out what I envision as the future of the festival.

    I see the Anti-Communist Film Festival as an annual event, a success from the first year but also expanding in size and stature into the future. I’d like it to become a place where young and upcoming filmmakers can creatively express their love of freedom and expose the lies told by Marxists. I want dramas and comedies and cartoons and shorts. I want this to expand into a national or even international event, with digital simulcasts going to anywhere people want to participate. (Read more.)

Share

King Vidor and 'Duel in the Sun'

 It seems Duel is based on a novel in which Laura Belle is an alcoholic. That explains a lot. My main criticism of the film is that Laura Belle does not protect Pearl from Lewt. From SteynOnline:

The film's reputation as a (doubtless unintended) camp classic led to Paul Bartel making a loose parody of it in 1985 using Vidor's film's mocking nickname as his title, with the transvestite Divine starring alongside onetime matinee idol Tab Hunter. And yet Bartel's movie never manages to be more outlandish than Vidor's original, no matter how hard it tries.

From the outside Duel in the Sun looks like a western: there are cowboys and railroads and cattle barons and saloons and six-shooters and ranches and gunfights under the blistering sun. But there's so much more going on under the hood – a Rube Goldberg contraption of genre and style built of lurid Technicolor that makes most of John Ford (My Darling Clementine was released the same year) look like Samuel Beckett. (Read more.)

My thoughts on the film are here:

Perhaps too much of Selznick's personal life, namely his affair with the leading lady, spilled over into the production, heightening the melodrama. Yes, the film was initially banned by the Catholic Church and in several Midwestern towns. However, compared to what is now shown on prime time television, commercials included, Duel in the Sun seems wholesome and almost pristine. Since it is often shown on TCM, I thought it would be worth revisiting, especially in terms of the family dysfunction which creates an atmosphere conducive to disaster. Pearl's father Scott Chavez and Lewt and Jesse's mother Laura Belle had been in love in their youth but had been unable to marry each other. It was after the War Between the States and southerners were reduced to poverty so Laura Belle had to marry money. Both Scott and Laura Belle end up in unhappy marriages but each are too gentle to stand up to spouses who were either negligent or abusive. Unable to control his slutty wife, Scott should have at least sent Pearl to be educated at a convent or a school rather than let her run about in the streets. Laura Belle married the wealthy Yankee senator Jackson McCanles, who never got over the fact that Laura Belle deep down always loved Scott. The Senator takes Laura Belle away to his ranch, where he proceeds to torment her with sneers and reproaches. It seems they worked out their relationship problems by each taking over one of the boys. While Laura Belle raised Jesse to be a gentleman, the Senator spoiled Lewt, taking pleasure in his wild ways, almost as a way to get back at Laura Belle. As the film opens, the McCanles household is a veritable tinderbox of angers, resentments and passions, just waiting for a spark like Pearl Chavez to walk in and make it explode. One aspect of the story which irks me more and more as I grow older is how Laura Belle fails to protect Pearl from Lewt. Pearl is a conflicted child, as anyone can see at first glance. She is torn between her wanton mother and her noble father; she is torn between trying to be a lady like Laura Belle and being a floozy like her mother; she is torn between love for upright Jesse and her lust for no-good Lewt. She is obviously the type of teen age girl that a mother keeps an eye on. Laura Belle should have kept Pearl right at her side rather than let her loose on the ranch. Pearl was her own cousin and had been entrusted to her care. Since predatory Lewt made it clear that he was interested in Pearl without respecting her, Laura Belle should have taken Pearl upstairs to live. Instead, Laura Belle allows Pearl to sleep downstairs with the cowboys where it is easy for Lewt to ravish her. How can any woman be so simple-minded? But to give Laura Belle some slack, she was raised not to think ill of others and, as time went on, she taught herself to ignore the ugly side of life. She tried not to see what Lewt was becoming, and would not acknowledge that he was a reprobate until blood had already been shed. Such blindness on the part of a mother can be costly indeed. (Read more.)

Share

The Norma Desmond Revolutionaries

 From Unlicensed Punditry:

There is something patently ridiculous about watching people (many highly privileged) in the freest, most prosperous, most tolerant country in the world wrap themselves in the ragged costumes of revolutionaries.

I happen to believe that most, if not all, self-identified and so-called “revolutionary” movements in America today are fraudulent. In an age and a country where everybody can afford to hold luxury beliefs, the people leading or people close to the people leading these movements are actually privileged dilettantes cosplaying revolutionary characters.

The recent wave of ridiculousness started with a certain Justice Democrat bartending lassie from Westchester surrounded by her gaggle of supporters from the Island of Misfit Toys. Now these “democratic socialists” have added more comedic value to the show.

America has no shortage of self-described dissidents, resisters, radicals, abolitionists, insurgents, and movement leaders who speak as if they spend their days dodging secret police and composing manifestos by candlelight in some damp cellar. They borrow the vocabulary of people who opposed absolute monarchies, communist dictatorships, military juntas, and theocracies as they invoke the moral authority of men and women who faced prison, torture, exile, and death merely for saying aloud what everyone around them knew to be true.

The problem is that most American revolutionaries face no such danger. In truth, many of them are wealthy in their own right, are children of privilege, or from a “protected class” that has been funded and/or supported by the very society and systems they oppose.

They organize publicly, raise money, and give interviews. They sell books, teach university courses, operate nonprofit organizations, collect speaking fees, post revolutionary slogans on social media, and in an absolute denial of irony, appear on cable television to explain, at length, how thoroughly they have been completely silenced. (Read more.)

Share

The Anti-Communist Film Festival - Official Dates Announced!

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

The 2026 Anti-Communist Film Festival will take place October 1-4 at the Victims of Communism Museum in Washington, D.C. The headline film will be The Lives of Others, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary. Other films will be announced shortly. I’m hard at work promoting the festival, corresponding with filmmakers, and talking to would-be donors and friends.

    I would, however, like to take a brief moment to acknowledge the ground troops and Hot Air readers who helped get this thing off the ground. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell you a story about it.

    Over a year ago I was taking a shower (as we all know this is where ideas happen) when I was hit with a thunderbolt: the Anti-Communist Film Festival. I worked in a movie theater in college and have long been a fan of film festivals (although maybe not all of them). Over the course of time, I began to accumulate a mental list of great anti-communist movies - On the Waterfront, Trial, Night People. Then God gave it to me: Why not show these great films all together? Why not have a film festival? 

    This is where grassroots people, many of them reading these words, helped make this happen. I launched a GoFundMe for the festival with the idea that if it did not gain traction, I would shut it down. It gained traction, and quickly. A major breakthrough came last November when I got a call from Eric Patterson at the Victims of Communism Foundation. They were offering to host the event. It was the breakthrough I needed. There can be no better people and no better place to have this party. (Read more.)

Share

The 9 Most Beautiful Historical Movie Theaters in the US

 

From Architectural Digest:

“Theaters help bring people together to learn and laugh and just be in community,” says Benita VanWinkle, a photographer and associate professor of visual arts at High Point University in High Point, North Carolina. Theaters are also treasure troves of architectural brilliance, as evidenced in VanWinkle’s soon-to-be-released book America’s Hometown Movie Theaters: Please Remain Standing (Bauer & Dean Publishers, September 2026). The book features 395 theaters, all built before 1965, that VanWinkle has photographed while traveling the country for more than 40 years. In the process, VanWinkle also captured tales of resilience as communities have come together over the decades to preserve historical theaters. Her hope is that they remain, not just for design lovers, but as essential community gathering places. “Theaters have always been these places where we get to see a different version of ourselves and have a place together that doesn’t have judgment,” she says. “Most theaters have places to have discussions, share conversations, be educated, and be entertained.”

Here, we’ve pulled our nine favorite historical movie theaters featured in the book. The date listed alongside each theater name and location is the year it was photographed by VanWinkle. Looking for even more movie house magic? There are literally hundreds more movie retro theaters and drive-ins to be admired in her book. (Read more.)

Share

'The Trial': A Rare Documentary Reveals the Hell of a Communist Show Trial

 From Mark Judge at Hot Air:

A cold Moscow winter in 1930 is the setting for The Trial, a rarely seen but vitally important 2019 documentary by Ukrainian filmmaker  Sergei Loznitsa. The Trial - which should not be confused with Trial, the great 1955 anti-communist drama starring Glenn Ford - is constructed of restored black-and-white footage from one of Joseph Stalin’s first show trials, recorded in 1930 in Moscow. Stalin had falsely accused a political rival of seeking to sabotage the USSR at the behest of French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré and other Western leaders. In shocking footage, the accused, all innocent, confess to crimes they never actually committed. 

    The Trial is not available on streaming, but I reached out to director Loznitsa and his team was kind enough to provide me with a screener. I am currently in talks with them to perhaps show the film at the upcoming Anti-Communist Film Festival. The Trial is a film that should be shown in every university classroom in the United States and the West. It depicts the kind of nightmare that our own American socialists would not hesitate to inflict on the rest of us. (Read more.)

Share

5 Obsession-Driven Noir Films Adapted from Novels

From Laura (1944)

 From CrimeReads:

When I first heard Sting’s lyrics to “Every Breath You Take,” the song’s chilling, threatening tone made me genuinely uneasy. Was someone watching me? Should I be looking over my shoulder? It seemed he had written a definitive stalker’s anthem. And yet, as unsettling as it was, the song was the sole number one hit for The Police and won a Grammy award for Song of the Year in 1984.

Are we obsessed with obsession? Possibly. Obsessive characters abound in creative works, and as I thought about it, several of my favorite films immediately came to mind. Characters with unrelenting fixations drive the disturbing plots of the following classic noir or noir-ish films, all craftily adapted from popular novels.

I recall reading Daphne du Maurier’s suspenseful masterpiece, Rebecca, in high school. I became immediately intrigued by the tangled tale of “the first Mrs. de Winter,” the beautiful and captivating Rebecca. Presumed to have died in a tragic boating accident near Manderley, her husband’s family’s estate on the southern shore of England, she reaches out from her watery grave to extend a forceful hold on the lives of those who loved or hated her. Her former temperamental husband Maxim, the naively insecure “second Mrs. de Winter,” and Manderley’s sinister housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, are all trapped, unable to escape from Rebecca’s manipulative grasp, as if she were stalking and haunting them from the afterlife.

And Mrs. Danvers, a name that has become synonymous with wickedness in film lore, is especially vulnerable. “Danny” professes that she would do anything for her former mistress, and her unrelenting obsession ultimately leads to devastation and her own demise. Hitchcock’s Gothic film noir adaptation, riveting and true to du Maurier’s novel, won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Cinemaphotography (Black and White). (Read more.)

Share

Make Humans Great Again

 From Chronicles:

One day in the 1960s, in a forest in Tanzania, a 26-year-old British ethologist watched a chimpanzee she had nicknamed “David Greybeard” digging termites out of a mound with a stick. Birds had long been known to use “tools”—Egyptian vultures drop stones onto eggs to crack them open, and Darwin had seen finches on the Galapagos Islands using cactus spines to pry insects out of wood. But Jane Goodall was astounded to see a mammal doing something similar. It strengthened in her mind something that had often been surmised—that chimpanzees were proto-humans, us as we used to be millions of years before we diverged into Australopithecus, Neanderthal, and, finally, Sapiens. 

Humans have always been fascinated by primates. African animists worshipped gorillas as gods, the Dayaks of Borneo saw orangutans as near-kin (“orangutan” means “people of the forest”), and Westerners encountering primates after the 16th century embraced them as pets and circus animals. We would later derive endless entertainment from the likes of King Kong, Tarzan, Planet of the Apes, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Linnaean taxonomy and Darwinian evolution can even be seen as systematizations of an ancient obsession with the “wild men” of legends—hirsute forest-dwellers both disconcertingly familiar and dangerously fey. 

Goodall had been a student of the paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey, originator of the “out of Africa” theory of human evolution, who was likewise fascinated by the great apes. Other 20th-century influencers famously interested in apes included Robert Yerkes, the once-celebrated psychologist who devised intelligence tests for the U.S. Army, and whose 1925 book Almost Human recounted his delight in the company of Prince Chim, an “intellectual genius” of a bonobo, with whom he shared his New Hampshire home.

Growing liberalization and secularization of thought over the 20th century would encourage new ways of viewing ourselves and animals. By 1965, Goodall was on the cover of National Geographic, celebrating the chimpanzee as an almost-person—no mere bundle of Brownian instincts, but a distant cousin, whose obvious skeletal similarities were mirrored by humanlike behavioral traits. (Goodall herself was careful never to read too much into chimpanzees’ apparent “emotions,” however.) (Read more.)

Share

The Lost Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe

 

Marilyn worked very hard to better herself, as an actress and as a human being. She studied at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasburg and while in New York became friends with journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. She was good with money, too. She lived frugally and invested wisely. She was no spendthrift, as some people might think. From Mark Judge at Chronicles:

Marilyn Monroe read books. A lot of them. That’s the revelation of Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe, a fascinating new volume by Gail Crowther. It isn’t a grasping-at-straws attempt to make Monroe a literary figure based on her love of a few good novels. Crowther has done her research, itemizing the books Monroe owned when she died, finding receipts for books she bought at the Ivy Bookstore in Los Angeles, and going through old letters in which Monroe discussed her favorite books. Monroe was a reader, which may explain why she was drawn to one of her husbands, the playwright Arthur Miller—a man who made his living with words.

When Monroe died in 1962, her collection included more than 400 books. “These books,” Crowther notes, “some dating from her childhood, had followed Marilyn around from one address to another.” Crowther describes the collection: 

The scope of Marilyn’s personal library and the number of genres it contained was impressive. She read literature from all around the world, America, England, France, Germany, but certainly favored Russian novels. She enjoyed poetry, politics, psychology, plays, biographies, science, short stories, cookbooks, horticulture, contemporary novels, children’s books, religion, crime, adventure, art, pets, music, reference, and self-help. She was probably one of the few readers in the world whose personal library contained a biography of herself (Marilyn Monroe “Her Own Story,” 1961, by George Carpozi). 

Monroe loved D. H. Lawrence and owned a poetry collection, the novel Sons and Lovers, a collection of his travel writings, Etruscan Places, and a critical study of Lawrence and his works by Mary Freeman. She also owned copies of The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald. She owned a first edition of Ian Fleming’s From Russia, With Love, a book that included a chapter titled “The Mouth of Marilyn Monroe.” Monroe loved Russian literature, bonding with actress, columnist, and writer Sheilah Graham over Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekov, Turgenev, and Pushkin.

Monroe also had “an edgy liking for banned books.” This included The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. Monroe’s copy of the novel sold for $3,220 in a 1999 auction. She also owned a 1934 first edition of Ulysses, published after the ruling that the James Joyce novel was not obscene and could not be banned. (Read more.)

Share

'The Killers': The Only Adaptation That Ernest Hemingway Loved

From Far Out:

A masterful example of the quintessential film noir, The Killers has gone down in history as one of the best works from the immensely popular genre. Based on a story by Ernest Hemingway, this was the film that landed Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner unprecedented fame and success. However, the greatest achievement of The Killers is that it has firmly retained its cinematic magic even after all these years.

Right from the very beginning, The Killers keeps the audience on its toes and confronts them with quasi-surreal imagery. Presented like the contents of a bizarre dream, two professional assassins casually walk into a small-town diner in order to capture and kill a man known as the Swede (Lancaster). Within minutes, the atmospheric silence ignites into a cloud of chaos. A hostage situation arises out of nowhere and is defused just as quickly. The protagonist is brutally gunned down in the first ten minutes. Everything falls apart.

This initial spiral into beautiful absurdism plays a vital role in the momentum of the film’s subsequent discursive pathways. We follow an insurance investigator (played by Edmond O’Brien) who enters a dangerous world of crime and intrigue while trying his best to pick up the fragmented pieces of the narrative. Unlike many other suspense thrillers whose success hinges on the excitement of the final destination, The Killers is all about the journey and what a journey it is indeed!

Throughout his life, Hemingway was a very vocal critic of the Hollywood factory and often criticised films that were based on his works. However, The Killers is a significant exception to Hemingway’s general disdain for the machinations of the film industry. He famously wrote: “It is a good picture and the only good picture ever made of a story of mine.”

The screenplay, although credited to Anthony Veiller, was also co-written by the likes of John Huston and Richard Brooks. A major reason behind the efficiency of The Killers is the slick screenplay which manages to capture the poetry of Hemingway’s art.

Structured through the flashbacks and recollections of various characters, we are given fleeting visions of the past life of our dead protagonist. Director Robert Siodmak arranges these accounts in the form of poignant puzzle pieces which come together to form a mesmerising gestalt instead of a mere summation. Ranging from ex-lovers to prison inmates, The Killers functions like a fictional documentary that attempts to reconstruct the impenetrable mythology of a film noir mystery.

There are philosophical reflections sprinkled in there as well, most evident in the figure of the Swede’s cellmate in prison who spends his time studying constellations which invoke the memory of Oscar Wilde’s famous quote: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” (Read more.)

Share

Audrey Hepburn’s Pearl Necklace In 'Breakfast At Tiffany’s'

 From British Vogue:

Under the lavender light of dawn in New York City, a yellow taxi stops in front of Tiffany & Co. on Fifth Avenue. A slender figure emerges, dressed in a sleeveless black Givenchy dress, her arms covered by elbow-length gloves. She moves slowly towards the shop window. The camera lingers first on her back: her hair swept into an elegant updo, almond-shaped diamanté clips at her ears, and the open cut of the dress revealing her shoulders. Above the black straps of her dress runs a five-strand pearl necklace, luminescent and striking. As the camera pans, the delicate features of Audrey Hepburn’s face come into view. Her eyes are hidden behind dark sunglasses; a small diamanté coronet crowns her hair. As Holly Golightly, Hepburn elegantly bites into a croissant and sips coffee from a paper cup.

The opening frames of 1961’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s are some of the most memorable – and most stylish – in cinematic history. Lily Collins (taking a break from playing Emily in Paris, Rome and potentially Greece), is set to star as Hepburn in a film about the making of the adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella. While Hepburn’s Hubert de Givenchy gown remains one of the most iconic dresses ever captured on film (she and the French couturier had a 40-year friendship, with him also designing her costumes for 1953’s Funny Face and 1957’s Sabrina), the pearl necklace she wears – which closes at the front with a sparkling clasp – is also one of the most memorable jewellery pieces in film history. Poignantly, the most famous pearl necklace in the history of cinema was not made of pearls at all. Rather it is non-precious costume jewellery, created by the French jewellery designer Roger Scemama.

To begin with, the film faithfully echoes the look described in Capote’s story, in which Golightly is introduced wearing “a slim cool black dress, black sandals, a pearl choker”. The multi-strand pearl necklace complements the architectural simplicity of the dress. On set, a necklace made of real pearls and precious stones would have been an impractical costuming choice: it would have taken longer to produce – and of course cost far more. But most importantly of all, it would not have been right for Holly Golightly – a young woman in the process of inventing her identity and her place in New York society. As her supposed talent agent, OJ Berman, memorably tells Paul Varjak (the “kept man” and struggling writer played by George Peppard): “She is a phoney.” Costume jewellery, therefore, becomes a perfect metaphor for a character whose glamour is largely performative. (Read more.)

Share

The Leopard (2025)

 

 

If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change. ~The Leopard

The 1963 Visconti film The Leopard (Il Gattapardo), based upon the novel by Giuseppe de Lampedusa about his great grandfather, is an undoubted masterpiece. Both the novel and 1963 film depict the struggles of a princely Sicilian family, under the leadership of their patriarch Don Fabrizio, to navigate the Revolution, called in Italy Il Risorgimento. Il Risorgimento (1848-1870) also labelled the unification of Italy, involved the dominance of the House of Savoy over the other principalities of the Italian peninsula, including the ancient Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, likewise known as the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. The unification was a violent process led by the masonic revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi and his Red Shirts. Don Fabrizio, Prince of Salina, peer of the Sicilian Kingdom, must make some hard decisions in order to protect his wife and children, while salvaging his patrimony and preserving his honor. This is no small task in an era of war and of swiftly changing loyalties amid political upheaval. Luchino Visconti, in spite of being a Communist, crafted an authentic yet transcendent portrayal of a family in crisis, set to a magnificent score by Nino Rota. The 1963 film has become for many the defining depiction of Il Risorgimento. It certainly has been for me, until I recently decided to watch the Netflix series based on Il Gattapardo. The 2025 version is a masterpiece in its own right.

 

From The National Review:

The new series is in the grand tradition, with all the cinematic bells and whistles (no matter that I watched it on my laptop). Wikipedia says this:

Principal photography began in April 2023. Filming took place over 105 days and required the use of 5,000 extras; 130 carriages, carts and boats; 100 animals; and 12 animal trainers.

A friend of mine (Italian) said, “The real star of the show is Sicily.” She makes a good point. I’m not sure that Sicily has ever been more beautiful or alluring than in this show. The Netflix Leopard is a feast for the eyes. Almost indecently sumptuous. The flowers, the lemon groves, the palazzos — the food! And, of course, the people: the principal actors and actresses. Gorgeous people, on a gorgeous island, gorgeously shot. That is a commendation already.

The title character — the prince, the Leopard, also known as Don Fabrizio — is portrayed by Kim Rossi Stuart. (One of his grandparents was Scottish. He was named for Kipling’s title character.) Stuart’s prince is suave, worldly, world-weary, charismatic — every inch a prince, really.

Tancredi, that Garibaldian rascal, is played by Saul Nanni, born in 1999. I came to detest the character — not because the actor does anything wrong but because I wanted Tancredi to do right by Concetta and Angelica (and he does right by neither). Do you ever try to “edit” a movie, so as to make it come out right, by your lights? Life can be frustrating, onscreen as off . . .

Concetta is Benedetta Porcaroli, who reminds me of Lady Di, as we knew her, before she became a princess. Angelica is Deva Cassel, born in 2004. Signorina, or Mademoiselle, Cassel is the daughter of Vincent Cassel (the French actor) and Monica Bellucci (the Italian model and actress). How ugly can she be, I ask you? Angelica in this series is sex on wheels — a danger to young men, old men, and, you could say, herself.

 Don Calogero is portrayed by Francesco Colella. The character is supposed to be a villain of the piece, and in a way he is: he behaves badly. But many do. And he is a man born poor who is trying to rise in the world: trying to have some of the money, influence, and power that the likes of Don Fabrizio have dropped into their laps at birth. (Read more.)

One would think that a film about Sicilian aristocrats would have nothing to say to American audiences. Yet the story is essentially about family cohesion in a rapidly changing world, to which just about anyone alive today can relate. Dysfunctional dynamics can haunt palaces as well as cottages, with petty jealousies, spousal disagreements, infidelities. But devotion and sacrifice are also there, as well as shared jokes and effervescent joy. Most of all the roles of the father and the mother in keeping the family together, in spite of their personal issues, are inspiring.

At the core of the story is Don Fabrizio's daughter Concetta, a devout and disciplined principessa, convent-bred, who is in love with her cousin Tancredi. In the course of the series, Concetta is faced with painful choices, but in spite of being as passionate and headstrong as the men in the family, chooses the most noble courses of action. Both her suffering and contentment are projected in her jewel-like eyes, even while her modest and dignified bearing attempt to hide her emotions.

Fabrizio himself tries to follow the traditional code of chivalry. His patriarchal duties, especially the duty to protect his family, are second nature to him. When the mayor's daughter, the magnificent Angelica, hints that being his mistress would not be distasteful to her, the Prince lightly dismisses the idea, ignoring his own desire for the girl. He encourages her to marry his nephew, knowing that will be the best thing for everyone. He comes as close as he can to her in a single waltz, in which he maintains a gentlemanly reserve. Meanwhile, the new order has triumphed, as the characters dance in resplendent, frescoed rooms built by the old order.

There is one glimpse of boudoir activity which renders the series unsuitable for children. It would be odd to make a series about Sicily without scenes of religious faith. The Leopard is full of displays of piety, such as when the family prays the rosary together, although in the old film they were kneeling, not sitting. But there is certainly more Catholic imagery than there is sex. The family chaplain is in practically every scene, along with discussions of heaven and hell. The visuals are stunning on a life-changing level; the costumes prove that authenticity and artistry can work side-by-side. It shows what beauty Netflix can produce when willing to do so.

 

 

Share

On the Waterfront (1954)

  

From Word on Fire:

The film became the definitive work of “actors’ director” Elia Kazan, inspiring countless artists, including Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, who called Kazan “a master of a new kind of psychological and behavioral faith in acting.” Marlon Brando’s powerful, complex, and vulnerable performance as Terry Malloy set the standard for acting in the generations to come, with Kazan concluding, “If there is a better performance by a man in the history of film in America, I don’t know what it is.”

As On the Waterfront was included in the Vatican’s 1995 Alcuni film importanti list, here are some of the Catholic themes woven throughout the film. 

Elia Kazan (1909–2003) was a Greek-American filmmaker, producer, screenwriter, and actor, described by Stanley Kubrick as “without question, the best director we have in America, and capable of performing miracles with the actors he uses.” Kazan started his career in acting and was an early adherent to the new “method acting” school under the direction of Lee Strasberg. From the outset, Kazan had a particular attraction to stories exploring personal and social issues, including racial prejudice, domestic violence, and union corruption: “I don’t move unless I have some empathy with the basic theme.”

He acted in a few films but found acclaim for his directorial work at the helm of classics like Gentlemen’s Agreement, Pinky, A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, and On the Waterfront. Kazan and the young Marlon Brando first worked together on the Broadway adaptation—and subsequent film adaptation—of Tennessee Williams’s play A Streetcar Named Desire, the story of Blanche DuBois who leaves her wealth to live in the working-class apartment of sister Stella and brother-in-law Stanley (Marlon Brando).

Brando later wrote: 

I have worked with many movie directors. . . . Kazan was the best actors’ director by far of any I’ve worked for . . . the only one who ever really stimulated me, got into a part with me and virtually acted it with me. . . . He was an arch-manipulator of actors’ feelings, and he was extraordinarily talented; perhaps we will never see his like again. 

After the success of Streetcar, Kazan and Brando collaborated again on Viva Zapata! before embarking on their most ambitious project to date, On the Waterfront. The film was inspired by the 1948 New York Sun article series “Crime on the Waterfront” by Malcolm Johnson, which outlined corruption on the New Jersey waterfront. (Read more.)

 

Share

Nicholas and Alexandra (1971)

  

The portrayal of the chief murderer of the Imperial Family, Yakov Yurovsky, as a reluctant and humane executioner, has always disgusted me. From Paul Gilbert:

The year 2021 marked the 50th anniversary of the release of the film adaptation of Robert K. Massie’s (1929-2019) classic book Nicholas and Alexandra. Published in 1967, it remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for 46 weeks, and has never gone out of print! Selling more than 4.5 million copies, it is regarded as one of the most popular historical studies ever published. Praised in The New York Times as a “long-needed and balanced account” of the last tsar and his family. In Massie’s study, Nicholas comes across not as the “stupid, weak or bloodthirsty” monarch, as he is often been portrayed by his Western counterparts.

The film version was released on 13th December 1971, and nominated for numerous awards. At the 44th Academy Awards (1972), Nicholas and Alexandra won two awards of six nominations; at the 25th British Academy Film Awards (1972), Nicholas and Alexandra received three nominations; at the 29th Golden Globe Awards (1972), Nicholas and Alexandra received three nominations; and at the 15th Annual Grammy Awards (1973), Richard Rodney Bennett was nominated for Best Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special.

The film featured a star-studded cast of notable British actors and actresses: Michael Jayston (1935-2024) as Nicholas II; Janet Suzman [b. 1939] as Alexandra Feodorovna; Irene Worth [1916-2022] as the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna; Tom Baker [b. 1934] as Grigori Rasputin; Jack Hawkins [1910-1973] as Count Vladimir Frederiks, the Minister of the Imperial Court; Timothy West [1934-2024] as Dr. Botkin, the court physician; Jean-Claude Drouot [b. 1938] as Pierre Gilliard, the children’s Swiss tutor; Laurence Olivier [1907-1989] as Count Witte, the Prime Minister; Michael Redgrave [1908-1985] as Sazonov, the Foreign Minister; Eric Porter [1928-1995] as Pyotr Stolypin, the Prime Minister after Witte; John McEnery [1943-2019] as Kerensky, leader of the Russian Provisional Government; Michael Bryant [1928-2002] as Lenin; Martin Potter [b. 1944] as Prince Felix Yusupov; Richard Warwick [1945-1997] as Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich; among many others.

Personally, I greatly disliked this film for a number of reasons. It is due to the popularity and cult-like status of this film which compelled me to address some of the many factual errors of this film, and that it will serve as a resource for those who have viewed it for the first time. (Read more.)

 

Share

AFI Theater Declines Journalist Mark Judge’s Anti-Communist Film Festival Without Explanation

 From Breitbart:

The AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring, Maryland, has declined journalist Mark Judge’s upcoming Anti-Communist Film Festival without explanation.

As Breitbart News reported last year, Mark Judge, whose book The Devil’s Triangle chronicled his life’s derailment during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, launched the anti-communist film festival in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the 20th anniversary of The Lives of Others – winner of the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. After generating significant grassroots support with his GoFundMe and even some interested sponsors, Judge set his sights on the AFI Silver as a potential venue due to its reputation for being a curator of high quality cinematic arts as well as for its mission statement to educate and enrich the community as a 501C3 non-profit.

Starting in October of last year, emails shared with Breitbart News showed that Judge’s correspondence with the AFI had been amicable and professional, with little to no pushback from the event manager about his desired event. In one email, dated in November 2025, the AFI proposed hosting the festival in August due to September being a relatively busy month.

“September is definitely busier for us than August, so the change to August is a good idea, especially if you are considering expanding the scope of the event,” the event manager said. “Are you interested in Silver I, the 400-seat theater, for both days, or would you like to explore renting multiple theaters? This can be challenging for us at any time of the year, but I am happy to find out what’s possible.”

“For every rental, regardless of the scope, we offer technical support and a dedicated stage manager who will be on site throughout your event, so staffing should not be an issue,” the event manager later added.

As the months unfolded, Judge worked on securing sponsorships while correspondence with the AFI remained amicable. However, in January, when Judge informed the AFI that he stood on the verge of securing the Victims of Communism Memorial (VOC) Foundation as a potential sponsor, the event manager suddenly informed him that prices had increased – the first since it opened in 2003.

“I look forward to learning more about what you and VOC are planning for the Silver. I want to ensure we’re all aligned and confirm what’s feasible on our end before your internal planning progresses too much further. I haven’t yet asked our Programming Director for availability, as I’m waiting for more details from you,” the event manager said.

“Additionally, I’ve just learned that our rental rates will increase for events booked after May, marking our first increase since we opened in 2003,” the manager added. “In September, I quoted you $3,900 for a 2.5-hour event in Silver I, and this will now be $4,400. I apologize for the bad news, but I wanted to give you a heads-up so you can notify VOC if needed.”

That correspondence occurred in early January of this year; nearly three weeks later, after Judge secured the VOC as an official sponsor, the AFI informed Judge it would not be able to host his event. (Read more.)

Share

Grace Kelly's Wedding Invitation

 

They call it a "royal" wedding but it was a "princely" wedding, as Monaco is not a kingdom but a principality. From Town and Country:

[GraceKelly's] lavish April 1956 wedding to the Prince of Monaco was filled with the allure and public speculation you'd expect—but there were also quieter, intimate moments under all the glitz and glam. From the first sketch of her handcrafted, lace-embroidered gown to sweet shots of the couple on their honeymoon, get a rare glimpse into what the wedding festivities were really like. (Read more.)

Share

Happy New Year!

Marie-Antoinette (center) accompanied to a costume ball by Artois, Monsieur and Madame.

Wishing all the readers of Tea at Trianon a New Year of blessings and joy! Share

The Lion in Winter (1968)

My life, when it is written, will read better than it lived. Henry Fitz-Empress, first Plantagenet, a king at twenty-one, the ablest soldier of an able time. He led men well, he cared for justice when he could and ruled, for thirty years, a state as great as Charlemagne's. He married out of love, a woman out of legend. Not in Alexandria, or Rome, or Camelot has there been such a queen....
~ The Lion in Winter (1968)

Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) is one of those historical personages about whom there are many wild stories. In Eleanor's case, most of the stories are probably true, although it is highly unlikely that she poisoned her husband's mistress, Fair Rosamund. Fair Rosamund was idealized at Eleanor's expense by later generations, especially the Victorians, for reasons surpassing comprehension. No doubt Rosamund was sweet and lovely, but Eleanor is immensely more interesting, or at least modern people have found her so.

Perhaps part of the contemporary fascination with Eleanor is that she is seen as being a feminist before her time. I doubt that Eleanor saw her actions in terms of being a liberated woman, asserting herself on behalf of the freedom and dignity of women everywhere. Eleanor's motives were usually part of a larger political maneuver which as a queen, a mother and a duchess she found necessary for retaining her power and influence. For a lady of rank, especially rank as exalted as Eleanor's, the loss of power and influence could mean imprisonment or death. Scheming was a matter of expediency; there is no question that she played the game well.

The film The Lion in Winter captures the spirit of the tempestuous relationship between Eleanor and her unfaithful husband, Henry II of England, and their perpetual attempts to outwit each other. Alison Weir's biography of Eleanor sifts through the legends and plumbs the truths. One of the opening lines of the film in which Henry carelessly admits to pederasty is not based on the known historical record. Henry was known for the sins of the flesh but not for sodomy. Eleanor left Henry after many years and many children, the murder of St. Thomas Becket being the last straw. She returned to France and became the catalyst for the development of the courts of love. Courtly love was not so much about sex as it was about music, Arthurian legend, chivalry, charming repartee, and showing respect for ladies.

Eleanor eventually found herself imprisoned by her husband for making war against him. He would let her rejoin the family at Christmas and Easter. Their daughters were accomplished and lovely; their sons were mostly wretches, and caused no end of trouble. Eleanor was a generous benefactress of the Church and the poor. She retired at last to the abbey of Fontevrault where she made religious vows before she died. A wonderful book for young readers about Queen Eleanor is E.L. Konigsburg's A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver. 

Below is the scene of Queen Eleanor's arrival for the Christmas court at Chinon in France.

Share