#1960 Polish movies

[phantomladyoverparis]

Nie tylko o modzie... (1965), dir. Maria Kwiatkowska

[inthedarktrees]

Śpiąca królewna (Sleeping Beauty), Polish film poster design by Hanna Bodnar, 1962

[williamkisser]

✰— Pola Negri and Kinna the cheetah (1963, 1964)

[sickfreaksirkay]

in theory i learned french to like speak to french people go to france etc but in reality i only ever use it for arthurian stuff which hasn't been translated/subtitled yet

[stillunusual]

Classic Polish movie posters - SAFARI 5000

Directed by: Koreyoshi Kurahara (1969)

[historyguide]

Pola Raksa and Daniel Olbrychski in The Ashes (1965).

Explore our visual guides and documentaries about art & history.

[puppy--jam]

Favourite movie: 012

directed by Tadeusz Chmielewski (1969)

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[bleueandmoody]

Mother Joan of the Angels (Matka Joanna od Aniołów) 1961 | Dir. Jerzy Kawalerowicz

[trustmeineedu]

[pacingmusings]

Seen in 2023:

Identification Marks: None (Jerzy Skolimowski), 1964

[sapphireshorelines]

quieter movies

pather panchali (1955), bengali

valerie and her week of wonders (1960), czech

where is the friend's house (1987), persian

the scent of green papaya (1993), vietnamese

in the mood for love (2000), cantonese

uncle boonmee who can recall his past lives (2010), thai

ida (2013), polish

paterson (2016), english

roma (2018), spanish

portrait of a lady on fire (2019), french

[phantomladyoverparis]

Nie tylko o modzie... (1965), dir. Maria Kwiatkowska

[allergictocolor]

Character Profile - Thing T. Thing

"The Thing is often observed watching the family through the balustrades of the balcony over the living room. We don't know quite who or what he is, but, whatever, he's the soul of good nature - at least, he grins perpetually and may occasionally whimper." - Chas Addams

You may have noticed a weird little guy peeking at the family from odd places in some of the comics I’ve already posted in previous character profiles. It’s okay if you didn’t see him. He’s easy to miss. In case you missed him, I’ve circled him below:

That‘s the original Thing. Charles Addams created him as a silent observer of the family. He’s never fully visible, just poking out from the bars of the balcony or a closet, or mostly buried in the snow. He serves no purpose. He isn’t a butler like Lurch, or a helping hand like Thing was on TV. There’s one comic with a sign posted in front of the mansion reading “Beware of the Thing”, which may refer to him or may just be another silly thought Charles Addams had. Nevertheless, it was used in the 1960s sitcom.

There was a comic with some helping hands switching records while the family relaxed at home. This was probably the inspiration for the hand in a box that was Thing in the sitcom. He was in a dark, plain box in the pilot (and therefore the opening credits) and a more ornate box later on, as shown below.

It wasn’t initially made clear whether there was more to Thing than what the audience could see, perhaps in some metaphysical sense. We could see an arm as far as the elbow at times, but no more than that, and never a second arm. He almost always emerged from a box, but not always the same box. He could travel between boxes in all rooms of the house and out to the mailbox. He even came out of a safe, from behind curtains, and other odd places.

Thing’s full name is Thing Thing Thing, stated by Morticia in an episode of the sitcom. According to his Wikipedia page, he’s called "Mãozinha" (Little Hand) in Brazil, "Cosa" (Thing) in Spain, "Dedos" (Fingers) in Hispanic America, "Mano" (Hand) in Italy, "La Chose" (The Thing) in French speaking countries, "Eiskaltes Händchen" (Ice Cold Hand) in German, and "Rączka" (Small Hand) in Polish. My husband likes to say that his full English name is “Thing Tentertainment Thing”. I’m not sure if people younger than 30 will get that reference. Is Chuck E. Cheese still traumatizing America’s youth?

In the 60s, Thing was played by Ted Cassidy, who also played Lurch. I don’t know if they did this because he was 6’9” tall and that made his arms long enough to reach through the boxes. Some people have noted that his height made hiding his massive body more difficult when shooting those scenes. Then there were times when Lurch had to interact with Thing. In those cases, a crew member filled in. So presumably, anyone could have done it. But it was usually Cassidy. In the credits, it said that Thing was played by “Itself”.

No one ever explains Thing’s whole deal in the TV show, where the rest of him is, or how he does anything. He gets the mail, hands Gomez cigars and lights them, makes cocktails, helps Morticia with her knitting, and does so many other helpful things around the house. When the family goes to court, he goes along in Gomez’s briefcase. And in a flashback, there’s a portrait of his parents, a male hand and a female hand. So we can safely assume that he is just a hand. Of course, the effects in the 1960s didn’t exist to have a severed hand running around. They had to use the boxes because there was no alternative.

In the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, of course it was easy to just draw a severed hand out on its own. So once those came out, it was established that Thing is just a hand. Then in the 90s movies, the technology existed to make that become a reality in live action. In the musical, an actor pulls the curtain aside while obscuring the rest of their body, thereby “playing” Thing. Later on in the musical, Thing is a prop hand on a pillow. And if you’ve seen the behind the scenes footage from Netflix’s Wednesday, you’ve seen the amazing body work that Victor Dorobantu did, in addition to CGI, to bring Thing to life.

How does he see? How does he drive a car? There’s basically no explanation for any of that. In the 2019 3D animated film, sometimes there’s an eye on Thing’s wrist, but not all the time. In the 60s sitcom, Thing falls in love with a visiting woman’s handmaiden Lady Fingers. It’s clear to the audience that he’s taken aback by her beauty, so he can definitely see her. We’re just never told how. How he’s able to do anything is, according to 2022’s Wednesday Addams “an Addams family mystery.”

Is Thing a right hand or a left hand? It depends! Ted Cassidy almost always used his right hand, but would sometimes use his left “to see if anyone would notice.” In the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, it seems to have depended on whatever the animators felt like that day. It could change from right to left, even within the same episode. In the 90s movies, he was always a right hand. In the 3D movies, he’s a left hand. In Wednesday, he’s a right hand once more.

The most surprising thing about Thing isn’t that one severed hand can do so much; it’s that he manages to steal almost every scene he’s in. Must be that five-finger discount. I can’t wait to see him steal more scenes (and who knows what else) in season two of Wednesday some time in 2025.

[2offayyo-kzt]

50+ random hcs about Sean because I have too much free time :

• One day Charmaine found a strange vase while looking for something in the garage. The next day Sean woke up to see flowers in his bong

• Sean owns a boat that he renamed "the Ocean's 12"

• Sean is the kind of guy who only celebrates Halloween to traumatize children with a real chainsaw

• He has never learned to tie his shoes, and doesn't plan to

• Sean has a lot of sleep disorders (including sleep apnea, insomnia, night terrors, confusional arousals...), so that's one of the reasons he drinks, so he can 'sleep' easily

• He suffers from bipolar disorder (type I), "The Guy Pillow", "the Casino", and "A Night Out With the Guys" were manic episodes, "Pine Barrens" a depressive episode

• The first kiss he shared with Laszlo was on a mechanical bull

• Sean and Charmaine attend couple therapy with the conclusion "put yourself in each other's shoes." Sean took the advice to the letter, wore one of his mom's dress, bought a cheap wig and stole makeup from Charmaine's purse. In the morning Charmaine woke up to see her husband dressed as a woman baking cookies and listening to the Spice Girls. 20 minutes later Charmaine changed into jeans, grabbed a bottle of wine and turned on the TV

• If Sean learns that vampires are real, he'll turn into a conspiracy theorist

• He has a scar from his liver transplant

• He secretly does drag when his wife's not at home, stealing her dresses, heels and make-up

• He owns glasses but never wears them, except when driving at night without passengers

• Sean is color blind, so he always chooses clothes with neutral colours or regular patterns (leopard, military), he is also dyslexic but not diagnosed

• He killed his father when he was a teenager (premeditated)

• Sean has a tribal tattoo on his right arm, 'Charmaine' on his left pec and 'Carpe Diem' written on his lower back

• As a child he was not allowed to watch cartoons so his childhood was forged with VHS of old movies. His favourite was Ocean Eleven 1960, it became his comfort film. He exploded with joy when he learned that there would be a remake (2001) It's also because his father forbade him to watch PBS, that today he only watches sports games and cartoons in front of the TV

• He has been fascinated by the occult and the supernatural since he was a teenager, his father considered it to be bullshit so Sean has always been discreet about it

• Sean gets frequent migraines so he uses essential oils, peppermint or CBD oil. He especially can't stand the smell of nail polish (and remover)

• He and Mikey slept together in college, mainly because they couldn't get any 'chicks'

• Sean lived in Canada for few years, so he knows some French

• He still can't identify the bushes that Laszlo has cut (the vaginas)

• He would never admit it but he loves to sew and crochet, yet he always asks his wife to put the thread in the needle because he can't do it and it makes him furious real quick

• Sean would like to grow a beard but Charmaine can't stand it because it scratches her when they kiss

• While Charmaine is a fucking danger in the kitchen, Sean is excellent, and his favorite dish to cook is lasagne. He uses his cooking skills to sell (edible) cookies in front of universities (it has a great success)

• He's had a string of odd jobs, but now he's the manager of a sex shop

yes I totally based this hc on this image :

• He wears matching underwear with Charmaine (leopard or zebra pattern)

• He has a terrible sense of hygiene; he doesn't brush his teeth because it's "too long", so he only uses mouthwash. To wash his body and hair, he borrows his wife's products, but in the past but he's already used white vinegar for washing himself because it's "more economical". And he only cuts his nails with a pair of scissors

• He has a birthmark on his ass

• He can make a "W" with his tongue

• Charmaine always prepares Sean's baths and makes sure the water is hot, even scalding, because Sean is traumatized by freezing baths (for the same reasons as Gregory in House MD)

• To this day, he's convinced that being pansexual means being attracted to "pans"

• When he was little, his mother forced him to learn the piano, he hated it, so he stopped after a year

• Every time Charmaine sees her husband watching wrestling on TV, she laughs at him saying it's soft porn, her husband's response is "you're not wrong."

• Despite his love of the ocean, he suffers from seasickness

• Sean's biggest fear is having the same baldness as his father, so he buys all kinds of miraculous products he's seen on TV to try and stem the problem

• While Charmaine is a shit at geography, Sean is pretty good

• For a short period of his adolescence he was Satanic, the only trace of which is the inverted pentagram he had scarified on his arm, which is why he always wears long sleeves, to hide his numerous self-inflicted scars

• To reach Sean you have to call him, he never replies to messages, if you're lucky he read, and if you're extra lucky he put an "👍" emoji

• When Sean goes to the bathroom, you don't see him again for at least 30 mins. Charmaine often wondered what Sean did to take so much time to shit, and he simply replied that it was his only moment of peace of the day

• Since he's a "man" he's not supposed to cry, so he only cries in front of movies (his love for the Ocean's trilogy is explained by the fact that it's the only time he allows himself to sob)

• He has a naturally artistic temperament : storytelling, crochet, painting etc...

• When he eats, he always starts with dessert because "the best comes first"

• At the beginning of their relationship, he and Charmaine had a little dog (Toy Poodle) named "Biscuit". One day, Sean almost killed the dog by sitting on it while being stoned (the Sopranos ref)

• He's an energy vampire (only Colin knows about it)

• During the pandemic curfew, he drank hydroalcoholic gel out of desperation because he had run out of beer at home

• He has a stuffed animal named "Badger", It was a bear but now he looks more like a rag, Charmaine almost threw it away by accident, Sean threatened to kill her if anything happened to the first love of his life. Franky has already ended up with a black eye for insulting Badger

• He is still a fan of the occult, tarot, gems energy and astrology etc...

• Every time he goes to the movies with Charmaine, he asks her to hide beer cans under her breasts. At first she thought it was absolutely stupid, but eventually Charmaine did it a few times. She never admitted to him that she could hide a bag of weed in her vagina if need be, for obvious reasons

• He hates IQ tests because the only time he took one online, he scored 89 and Charmaine 130

• If he's rich today, it's because he won a game show when he was 30

• Sean suffers from depersonalization/derealization

• He grew his hair to look like the Joker (and subconsciously Laszlo)

• Most of Sean's savings went into expensive jewelry that he bought for his wife to make up for it

• Behind his Ocean's Twelve memorabilia there's a secret room with absolutely everything needed to organize a casino heist : A notebook with personalized costume sketches for each of his friends + 11 extremely extensive custom-made costumes protected in covers, an entire library about robbery and action books, entire handmade maps of New Jersey and more precisely Atlantic City's casinos, an impressive collection of various weapons and safes to practice opening them, twenty years of research for the perfect heist, accumulated in notebooks and plastic sleeves, a notebook with all the formulas on how to make a bomb, and of course, the homemade bomb in the corner of the room, a huge table in the center with a video projector, a cupboard with other figures and goodies from the trilogy, and posters all around the room

• Sean is a kid mentally, and annoying his wife is his favorite pastime, his favorite activity, being upstairs and shouting Charmaine's name, if she answers, he doesn't answer, until she freaks out

• If someone knocks on the toilet while he's occupying it, he shits louder

• At the beach, every time Sean passes by a sand castle, Charmaine is forced to threaten him by whispering "Don't" because she knows that her husband wants to "accidentally" destroy the castle

• If Sean dies at some point, his unfinished business as a ghost is to kiss Laszlo

• He has very long feet, when he goes bowling with Mikey and Franky. They call him "Bozo", which is the nickname he chooses on the screen to play

• Sean suffers from sleep apnea, so he snores like a pig, and for the past few years he's had a CPAP machine

• In his teen, he sympathized with the Jersey Devil, but after the brain scramblies he forgot that he had become close to the creature

• Sean already asked Charmaine to do ASMR videos just to gain money

• He is stronger than Laszlo at chess

• He wrote plenty of Ocean's 11/12 fics on ao3. Charmaine corrects his spelling mistakes, and she's annoyed to see that her husband only writes sex scenes between men, she'd also like to see between women. His excuse : "I don't have a vagina, how the fuck I'm supposed to write the sensations of having one duh-"

• During a manic episode, he bought 6 Roomba to make an army of them

• He knows the Ocean Twelve lines by heart

• If Charmaine and Sean don't judge the clothing style of their neighbors it's because they probably had a goth period in their youth

• He is a reincarnation, just like Jeff/Gregor

• Jenna is the secret love child of the Rinaldi

• Although he and Charmaine have reconciled, they no longer sleep in the same room; because Sean has insomnia and gets up often to go out on the balcony and smoke his cigarette (which awakens Charmaine)

[stillunusual]

Classic Polish movie posters - NA LOS SZCZĘŚCIA BALTAZARZE (Balthazar At Random)

Directed by: Robert Bresson (1966)

[rgr-pop]

My goal for the year was to watch & log 100 movies. Shorts count, didn't matter whether I had seen them before, but they can only count once for the year. I logged 117!

First & last watched: Ken Russell's Women in Love (1969)--the reason I cared about movies so much this year, just an obvious life-changer for me--and Ken Russell's The Rainbow (1989)--Westlin's suggestion for the perfect round out. Surprised to be surprised by how good it was. Great films! Totally on the program! Questions to this day unanswered! Let's go!

Shorts (everything short of Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story) watched: 16

Favorite shorts: Nuit et Brouillard (Alain Resnais, 1956) (decided this year one of my all-time favorite films); Un Chant d'Amour (Jean Genet, 1950); Fireworks (Kenneth Anger, 1947)

Next year my shorts watching will be more programmatic

Films I watched twice in 2023: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987) (another film I realized this year obviously belongs in my top ten--more specifically I decided finally that this is my favorite non-Texas Chain Saw film); Beau is Afraid (Ari Aster, 2023); The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993)

By decade: Before 1900: 0 1900 - 1910: 1 1910 - 1919: 1 1920 - 1929: 1 bro come ON what the FUCK 1930 - 1939: 1 im literally evil 1940 - 1949: 7 1950 - 1959: 3 1960 - 1969: 24 1970 - 1979: 14 1980 - 1989: 16 1990 - 1999: 17 2000 - 2009: 13 2010 - 2019: 9 2020 - 2023: 10

By nation/language roughly: uk/english: 6 us/english: 66 canada/english: 6 france/french: 10 italy/italian: 4 italy/france/french: 1 italy/english: 1 czechoslovakia/czech: 5 palestine/arabic: 3 soviet/russian: 2 russia/russian: 1 austria/german: 1 austria/french: 1 spain/spanish: 1 japan/japanese: 1 poland/yiddish: 1 poland/polish: 1 senegal/wolof: 1 brazil/portuguese: 1 sweden/swedish: 1 eur/farsi: 1 south africa/afrikaans: 1

numbers not adding up there but w/e

By director: Not sure if this is surprising or totally unsurprising, but in spite of my auteurial talk (and all the thematic/completionist plans I like to make), I very rarely watched more than two movies by the same director. I can't decide how I feel about this, nor do I know how to proceed this year given that my goal is to discover who my top five directors might actually be. How do you go about investigating that?

Overwhelmingly the director I watched the most was Adrian Lyne, with five films. I have a few more things to work on but I'm close to done with my shakedown/theory. Neither my favorite director nor favorite guy, I would say I probably 'enjoy' and 'personally get more out of watching' his films more than most. In second place, I watched three Kenneth Anger films--all shorts of course. I watched two films each by the following directors: Ken Russell, David Cronenberg, Stanley Kubrick, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Paul Schrader, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ti West, Todd Haynes, Michael Haneke, Jan Švankmajer (both shorts), and Billy Wilder (one of which being a war department documentary short).

I have mixed feelings about this approach (let me watch man movies if i I want to!) but a quick skim suggests I watched about 15 films directed by women (12%)--lower than expected and probably low for me typically. I always have a romance habit on the backburner so it's never hard for me to watch a lot of movies by women, but obviously my focus on revered directors I never previously wanted to spend time on has had an impact here, meaning I should make an effort with Great women directors in 2024 to keep that in check. I will also say that I specifically recall having a hard time getting my hands on things I wanted to watch by women in a few different cases, including by Great women directors (Barbara Hammer and Akerman), and especially also soviet women directors. There's an overlap here with difficulty accessing short films!

I'm not an active or thoughtful starrer, but these are the films I watched in 2023 that I've given five stars to:

Women in Love (Ken Russell, 1969) (upgraded from four after the year of appreciating it) Mandabi (Ousmane Sembène, 1968) Crash (David Cronenberg, 1996) Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987) The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) Night and Fog (Alain Resnais, 1956) Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975) (demoted Teorema [1968] to four stars to prevent Salo is A Perfect Film deflation) Un Chant d'Amour (Jean Genet, 1950)

Least favorite films watched in 2023: Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi, 2019), Barbie (Greta Gerwig, 2023), All My Good Countrymen (Vojtěch Jasný, 1968), Zahrada (Jan Švankmajer, 1968), the one streaming true crime doc I watched that I then had to log (will not repeat in 2024)

Loved/treats for me: Barry Lyndon, Crossing Delancey, Unfaithful, The Cremator, The Night Porter, Cabaret, talking to people about Funny Games and realizing I love it more than I think I do

Recommended for the romance girls as a thank you for the good romance you have recommended me: Habibi (Susan Youssef, 2011)

Most incredible movie experience of the year by miles and I can only hope 2024 has something this good to offer: House of 1000 Corpses (Rob Zombie, 2003) anniversary screening my birthweek

The otherwise defining film of 2023 for me: Hostel (Eli Roth, 2005)

Onward! Back to work! On the Terror and Violence line! The Family is out there, comfortable, in relative peace…