Papa: Hemingway in Cuba, a memoiristic drama about Ernest Hemingway’s paranoid twilight in Havana and the Miami Globe reporter he “adopts” into his entourage, holds a significant distinction: It’s the first Hollywood film to shoot on location in Cuba since the 1959 revolution, an achievement reached over a decade of legal wrangling. It’s a shame that it was all in vain. The … [Read more...]
The View From Home 75: De Santis’ neorealism, Fonda and Hitch, Wim and Bruno, and Stoppard directs
Silvia Magnano in Bitter Rice. (1949) Bitter Rice: A tragedy on tenterhooks, Giuseppe De Santis’ Bitter Rice (Criterion, $22.99 Blu-ray, $17.99 DVD) is a slippery fusion of docu-naturalism and noir expressionism. And with its first proper Region 1 release now widely available, it should earn its rightful place in the feminist film pantheon. Released in 1949, Bitter Rice is … [Read more...]