ON THIS PAGE:
- The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial by William Friedkin
- Menus Plaisirs Les Troisgros by Ariane Louis-Seize
THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL
Usa, 2023. Director William Friedkin Cast Kiefer Sutherland e Jason Clarke. Running Time 110’.
We wanted to see him introduce the new film and the restored version of The Exorcist in Venice Classics fifty years after the release of a work that radically changed the horror genre. Moreover, William Friedkin did the same with the detective story in The French Connection. And looking at the overall filmography of this Hollywood giant, the regret, if not sorrow, of losing him only days before the start of this film exhibition number 80 increases. Fortunately, he left us one last film. Friedkin received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in 2013 from the hands of the Artistic Director Alberto Barbera. It was two years after bringing in competition Killer Joe, starring an outstanding Matthew McConaughey. Friedkin was a frequent visitor of the Lido. In 2006, he brought Bug, a small movie with Michael Shannon and Ashley Judd. In 1995, he scandalized the festival with the noir Jade and its unforgettable dark lady, Linda Fiorentino.
The Caine Mutiny Court-martial is based on the novel by Herman Wouk that was already adapted for the screen by Edward Dmytryk, starring a monumental Humphrey Bogart as the cruel Commander Queeg. Friedkin took the story and wrote a new screenplay that, as he said before passing away, “I waited a long time to make. I wanted to create a tense, pressurized scenario that moved as quickly as a bat out of hell. I wanted to balance good and evil as ambiguous as possible.” Moreover, something has characterized all his cinema, just like the cops of “To Live and Die in L.A.” As always, Friedkin has assembled a cast of exceptional talent, starting with Jason Clarke, most recently seen in Oppenheimer as the inquisitor of the nuclear physicist. Clarke wears the uniform of Lt. Barney Greenwald. Queeg’s role is taken over, with braveness, by Kiefer Sutherland. We also find the late Lance Reddick in the film. The Caine Mutiny Court-martial is also his last film. One more reason not to miss it.
Alessandro De Simone
MENUS PLAISIRS – LES TROISGROS
Venezia 80 – Out of competition
Id., France/USA, 2023. Director Frederick Wiseman. Running Time 4h.
«Making a film about a three-Michelin-starred restaurant has always been one of my dreams», confesses Frederick Wiseman, the magnificent 93-year-old documentary filmmaker who returns out of competition at the Venice Film Festival with Menus plaisirs – Les Troisgros, where the director’s gaze (Golden Lion and Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, respectively in 2014 and 2016) focuses on the work of the Troisgros family, which for four generations has been running one of the most renowned culinary businesses in France, today made up of the Troisgros, Le Central and La Hills. The film shows us the different stages of the dish making process, highlighting the protagonists’ attention to biodiversity and the reduction of food waste, as well as the different roles of family members in running the business. “I thought that a film about a restaurant had links with my documentaries on institutions,” says Wiseman, who in the past had repeatedly described the functioning of various entities in American society, from the psychiatric hospital of Titcuit Follies (1969) to public library of Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (2017) at the Municipality of Boston (hometown of the filmmaker) in City Hall (2020), both presented at the Lido, where last year the director had competed with the unusual parenthesis in fiction A couple. Wiseman recounts the genesis of his gastronomic doc thus: «In the summer of 2020, I spent a month at a friend’s house in Burgundy. To thank him, I looked in the Michelin Guide for a good restaurant in the area. I found the Troisgros, where we had a wonderful lunch. After the meal, the chef, César Troisgros, stopped by our table. We thanked him for the delicious lunch. Without having premeditated it, I suddenly asked him if he would be interested in me making a documentary about his restaurant. He said he would think about it. Half an hour later he came back and said to me: “Why not?”».
Emanuele Bucci
