May 15
Anouk Aimée, Model Shop, 1969
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Anouk Aimée, Model Shop, 1969
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Model Shop (1969) | Dir. Jacques Demy
Released in US cinemas on this day (1 April 1969): strange, moody and downbeat art movie Model Shop (1969), French nouvelle vague director Jacques Demy’s sole English-language effort. It’s a loose sequel to Demy’s earlier (and objectively superior) New Wave masterpiece Lola (1961). The leading lady in both is the exquisite Anouk Aimée (pictured) – the most feline and inscrutable of all mid-twentieth century European art cinema actresses. I’ve only seen Model Shop once, years ago at the BFI: Gary Lockwood from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) plays the troubled anti-hero (Demy’s first choice was a then-unknown young actor called Harrison Ford, but the studio balked!). There are long, hypnotic segments of Lockwood following chic mystery woman Cecile (Aimée), dressed in white and driving a white convertible, in his car. Eventually he tracks Cecile down where she works: the “model shop” of the title, a tawdry photography studio where men take “glamour shots” of the scantily clad female models. (Considering she’s portrayed by Aimée, Cecile looks ready for an avant-garde haute couture Vogue photo shoot by Richard Avedon or Irving Penn). Anyway, Model Shop absolutely tanked at the box office, for years remained little seen and was mostly regarded as a curious footnote in Demy’s career. More recently, it's been rehabilitated as a flawed but underrated curiosity and praised for Demy’s outsider’s view of Los Angeles. Sight & Sound magazine, for example, includes Model Shop on its “75 Hidden Gems” list and Quentin Tarantino cites it as an influence on his 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. And memorably, the third episode of season seven of Mad Men entitled “Field Trip” opens with Don Draper (chain-smoking of course) seated alone in a sparsely populated darkened cinema. The other patrons look like beatniks or habitués of Andy Warhol’s Factory. When it cuts to the movie screen, we see Don is watching … Model Shop!
Two boys gaze into a model shop window - UK - 1950's
image from the Tate collection
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MODEL SHOP (1969) dir. Jacques Demy
R.I.P Anouk Aimée. 1932-2024.
Anouk Aimée in Model shop by Jacques Demy 1969.
Anouk Aimée dans Model shop de Jacques Demy 1969.
(Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Frames from the amazing, 1960s tv series, Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons from Gerry Anderson. Having had a hit with Thunderbirds (1965–1966), Anderson moved on to produce another "supermarionation" hit with Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967). I've been revisiting the work of Gerry Anderson recently, having discovered his strange and nearly forgotten photo-comic book series Candy (featured here a few posts back). I see now, more clearly than before, what a master of production design he was, or at least, his team was. The sets, while miniature, feature the most considered (and stylish) design details - modern furniture, colour coordinated wall and material colours, clothing on the characters are very on-trend (for the late 60s), the natural landscapes are incredible and detailed, and of course, the design of the vehicles is particularly impressive. Cars, jets, rockets, tanks, flying bases, on and one. And Gerry Anderson loved pyrotechnics - there are lots of fires and explosions. He managed to mitigate miniaturism (made up word) within these effects, which when produced at a small scale, can feel, well, small. His explosions feel big. But they are smooth, in terms of frame rate - they've not simply been slowed down, or if they have, they were shot at a high speed frame rate that allowed slowing down in post-production. There's an incredible moon base explosion in Season 1 Episode 1: The Mysterons (around 3:07) where you can see the impact of the explosion creating turbulence across the dust on the lunar surface. It's an impressive, special effects, attention to detail.
These frames give a glimpse into the impressive production design of the Captain Scarlet series, which is often overlooked, with the focus being on the puppets.
