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      ‘The Strangler’ Review: All the Pretty, Pitied Corpses

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      This strange, seductive film from 1970, directed by Paul Vecchiali, borrows the conventions of the serial-killer thriller and turns them inside out.Originally released in France in 1970, and now available in a new restoration, “The Strangler” is a strange, seductive film that takes the conventions of the serial-killer thriller and explodes them with baroque colors and convulsive camera movements. It’s like “Peeping Tom” meets one of Dario Argento’s giallo joints, but slathered in a coat of melancholic malaise.The titular lady-killer isn’t frantic and blood-starved; he’s a baby-faced young man, Émile (Jacques Perrin), who takes to the streets of Paris on the lookout for women he perceives as lonely and suicidal. For the most part, these women indeed meet Émile, their agent of mercy, halfway — a process the director, Paul Vecchiali, depicts as an eerie, enigmatic dance of death and desire.Born in 1930, Vecchiali belonged to the same generation as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Despite beginning his filmmaking career in the early ’60s, he was never associated with the “nouvelle vague” crowd. He came to prominence later in life, with the critical success of “The Strangler” playing a substantial role in his rise. With Diagonale, the production company he founded in 1976, he gained a reputation for transgressive themes and experimental methods — and up until his death in January of this year, he continued to work on the margins of the French film industry.Using a white knitted scarf as his weapon of choice, Émile stalks new victims as three individuals separately stay on his tail, each with a different pursuit: Simon, a burly detective (Julien Guiomar); a thief (Paul Barge) who swipes cash and jewelry from each corpse; and a woman, Anna (Eva Simonet), who seems to want to be a future victim.Contrary to what you might expect from such a lurid nightmare scenario, “The Strangler” is quite unlike the exploitative slasher fare from which it draws inspiration. The killer loses his will to kill; the investigators, their desire to solve the crimes. Vecchiali makes poetic — and tragic — what the true-crime junkie must experience after bingeing one too many episodes: the emptiness of all those pretty corpses.The StranglerNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Jimmy Kimmel Said to Be Returning as Oscars Host

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      It will be the late-night comedian’s fourth time as M.C. of the awards ceremony, which won back some viewers last year.Academy Awards organizers have decided to stick with a tried and true host: Jimmy Kimmel.Mr. Kimmel, the late-night comedian who has hosted the event three times, will return to the Oscars stage on March 10 to steer the 96th ceremony, according to two people briefed on the plan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose it. Molly McNearney, the co-head writer and an executive producer of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” on ABC, will serve as an executive producer for the 96th Oscars telecast.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did not respond to requests for comment.Seeking cultural relevancy for the ceremony following a period of plunging ratings, the academy and ABC, which broadcasts the Oscars, have bounced between formats in recent years. They tried three hosts in 2022 (Wanda Sykes, Regina Hall, Amy Schumer) and zero hosts, from 2019 to 2021. For the 2023 show, the academy returned to one host — Mr. Kimmel, who also did the job in 2017 and 2018.He delivered. Viewership rose to nearly 19 million people this year, according to Nielsen, up from 16.6 million the year before and 10.4 million in 2021, the lowest ever. Before 2018, the telecast had never dropped below 32 million.Just as important for the academy, Mr. Kimmel’s return was free of controversy, helping to restore luster to an event tarnished in 2022 when Will Smith marched onstage and slapped Chris Rock. The academy and ABC also overhauled the red carpet preshow, hiring consultants with experience at the Met Gala to make star arrivals feel less chaotic and more glamorous. The red carpet was vanquished in favor of a champagne-colored one.Hosting the ceremony was once viewed as a feather in the cap of top comedians like Billy Crystal, a nine-time host, and Whoopi Goldberg, who was M.C. four times. But many stars have become leery about the time commitment and potential backlash that hosting can bring. Trash-talking the Oscars — for its stilted banter, for the choices made by voters, for its very existence — has become a hallmark of the social media age.Hollywood’s awards season has been slow to start this time around because of the actors’ strike, which prevented stars from promoting finished work. With the strike resolved, studios and publicists have quickly ramped up awards campaigns, pushing stars like Emma Stone, a front-runner for a best actress nomination for her debauched performance in the surrealist comedic drama “Poor Things,” and films like “American Fiction,” a satire about a writer who puts together a fake memoir that turns on racial stereotypes.Other films expected to prominently figure into the 96th Academy Awards include “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” both of which were runaway successes at the global box office. If they receive as many nominations as people in Hollywood expect, it will help Mr. Kimmel: Viewership for the Oscars tends to increase when popular films are honored. More

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      “Harry Potter” Stuntman Tells His Story in a New Documentary

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      In a new documentary, David Holmes, a stunt performer in the ‘Harry Potter’ films, recalls his life before and after a harrowing accident on set that left him paralyzed.When David Holmes arrived at rehearsal to perfect a fight scene for the penultimate “Harry Potter” film, he was strapped into a harness that was supposed to send him flying backward.But Holmes was jerked back too fast, hitting a wall and breaking his neck, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down.His career as a stunt performer was over, at age 25. He had portrayed Daniel Radcliffe’s title character and others, including Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom, since the franchise’s first installment.After years behind the scenes, Holmes will now tell his story in a new documentary, “David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived,” which is streaming on Max and will air on HBO on Wednesday at 9 p.m. and on Sky Documentaries and NOW in Britain on Saturday.Holmes is teaming up again with Radcliffe, the executive producer on the project, which captures his life before and after his injury. Radcliffe and Holmes said they hoped to call attention to stunt performers, who often put their lives at risk with little recognition.“It’s nice to know my legacy in film is not just me hitting that wall,” Holmes said in an interview.Holmes hasn’t fully embraced the limelight, Radcliffe said, and “just wants to shine it onto other people.”Radcliffe and Holmes had known they wanted to work on a project together for a while, they said. Initially, though, Holmes didn’t want to be the focus.“You put on a costume, and you take on a character the same way an actor does. You have that safety net to live behind that character,” Holmes said. “It’s very different now because it’s me.”Radcliffe and Holmes had worked together on a podcast called Cunning Stunts, interviewing stunt performers and coordinators about their work. Radcliffe had also filmed some of the interviews and thought that he’d try his hand at directing a documentary. But he wasn’t quite satisfied with his work.“We started filming some stuff, and then after a while I thought, ‘I don’t think I’m very good at this,’” he said. “We should bring someone else in.”To direct, they landed on Dan Hartley, who had worked as a video assist operator among other roles in the “Harry Potter” films and recently directed “Lad: A Yorkshire Story,” a coming-of-age film about a 13-year-old boy befriending a park ranger after losing his father. The three eventually agreed to shift the focus of the film to Holmes.It wasn’t the plan to use someone from the “Harry Potter” crew, but Hartley seemed like a perfect fit, Radcliffe said.The cast and crew grew close on the film sets, and Radcliffe referred to Holmes as a “cool older brother.”“We wanted someone who has the same kind of connection to Dave that we do,” Radcliffe said. “Not someone from the outside who is going to shape Dave’s story into something else for the sake of making something more sensationalized.”As they started creating the film, they realized it was the first time they had all spoken together about Holmes’s accident.“No one wanted to be the first one to bring it up,” Radcliffe said, “but I definitely think there was something like quite cathartic for everybody on this film who got to talk about it with each other.”Holmes spoke about what life was like after the injury and the people he had met while he was hospitalized, including Will Pike, who was injured in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks and was in the bed next to his.Hartley and Radcliffe said that seeing young men being emotional was moving, as was parting from traditional masculine stereotypes that can be prevalent in stunt culture.“What I think is really powerful is seeing these young, sensitive men talking,” Hartley said. “They were just so vulnerable and honest.”Above all, Holmes said he wants his story to bring hope.“We all experienced loss in our life. I learned that at the age of 25,” he said, “and it taught me to be present to appreciate the now.” More

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      Kevin Hart to Receive Mark Twain Prize for American Humor

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      The comedian and movie star will get the honor, the most prestigious in comedy, at a March ceremony.In his rise to the very top of the comedy world, Kevin Hart has done everything from delivering hit specials to selling out a football stadium to starring in box office smashes like “Jumanji.”On Wednesday, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts recognized that versatility and announced that it would award its 25th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to Hart at a ceremony on March 24. The center cited his “iconic characters, inimitable physical comedy, and relatable narratives,” as well as his achievements as a comedian, actor, writer and producer.In a statement, Hart, 44, noted that he had been performing stand-up since at least the inception of the award. “To be honored in this commemorative year feels surreal,” he added. “Comedy is my outlet for social commentary and observations on life — I am grateful to the Kennedy Center for recognizing my voice and impact on culture. I can’t wait to celebrate!”He got his start in Philadelphia at a comedy club amateur night and built up a career that included major tours like “Laugh at My Pain” (2011), one of several shows that were turned into concert films. That includes his 2015 performance before 53,000 fans at the Philadelphia Eagles stadium. In addition to appearing in TV series like “Real Husbands of Hollywood” and “Modern Family,” he found big-screen success as a foil for Dwayne Johnson (the “Jumanji” movies, “Central Intelligence”), Ice Cube (the “Ride Along” franchise) and Mark Wahlberg (“Me Time).There have been controversies along the way. Hart was to host the Oscars in 2019, but a backlash over old tweets and jokes that were considered homophobic led him to withdraw, saying, “I sincerely apologize to the L.G.B.T.Q. community for my insensitive words from my past.” More

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      Did ‘Demolition Man’ Predict the Millennial?

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      A cult classic saw the future — kind of.Now that we live in the future, we no longer seem to make as many films about the future — at least not the way we once did, when we tried our hardest to imagine a future as different from the present as we were from ancient history. Today, with all of human knowledge in our pockets, we prefer to think in terms of alternate timelines, paths not taken, the multiverse of infinite possibilities. We’re looking sideways, not forward. But for most of the existence of cinema, a glorious near-centennial from “Metropolis” (1927) to, let’s say, “WALL-E” (2008), people used celluloid to dream of what lay ahead.Growing up with those movies, I liked to keep a mental scorecard concerning which of their futures seemed most likely. I would have hoped that by now we’d be experiencing the vibrant urban chaos of “The Fifth Element” (1997). But no. What about HAL and the blind faith in technological advancement that connotes progress in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)? Kind of. The computers controlled by constant hand-waving in Steven Spielberg’s “Minority Report” (2002)? Not quite. All of these are classics, but the one that I think got it most right is a 1993 action-comedy whose hallmark is a tremendous recurring poop joke.In “Demolition Man,” a cop named John Spartan (played by Sylvester Stallone) is frozen in 1996, for spurious reasons, and thawed out in the year 2032, when Southern California has been merged into an enormous metroplex called San Angeles. He’s tasked with hunting down a homicidal maniac, played by a blond, mugging Wesley Snipes. The joke is that in this future, everyone is kind and gentle to one another. Lenina Huxley, Spartan’s ’90s-loving partner, explains that alcohol, caffeine, contact sports, meat, bad language and gasoline, among other things, are banned. “It has been deemed that anything not good for you is bad,” goes the tao of “Demolition Man.” “Hence, illegal.” ‘Demolition Man’ imagined a future generation who might view our civilization, at the peak of its powers, as utterly barbaric.The movie’s pleasure doesn’t lie in its plentiful violence (well, some of it does). It’s in the humor that arises from these future San Angeleans’ disgust over Spartan’s primitive ways, like his desire to use guns and to smoke and to have sex “the old-fashioned way,” rather than through a virtual-reality headset. They mock him over the fact that he asks for toilet paper. (Everyone now uses something called the Three Seashells, which is never explained.) Spartan is baffled by new technology like the omnipresent Alexa-like morality boxes that issue instant fines for offensive language, and kiosks that offer words of affirmation on the streets (“You are an incredibly sensitive man who inspires joy-joy feelings in all those around you”). Stallone’s cop has been subliminally rehabilitated while frozen and wakes up knowing how to knit. “I’m a seamstress?” he laments.What separates “Demolition Man” from other sci-fi films of much higher aspiration is that it imagined a future generation who might view our civilization, at the peak of its powers, as utterly barbaric. We’re not quite there, but it feels as if the world that the younger generations loathe is the one I was raised in. And in the process, this has turned the film, at least for me, into an explosive, sometimes vituperative allegory for aging. As Spartan finds out, it hurts to wake up one day and find that the world has moved on without you.Some days I feel like I’ve woken up from cryosleep, and am looking around to discover that I’m the only one who misses our previous era of casual cynicism and dubious morality and brilliant jerks. Back in the ’90s, I sat in the cinema and watched this film like thousands of other people, never imagining that I might one day feel like Spartan. I am living in the future, and I don’t belong. Everyone else has moved on. I’m still wiping myself with toilet paper instead of the Three Seashells.It’s a shame that “Demolition Man” doesn’t have more of a place in popular culture. If it has any presence at all, it’s through unhinged libertarians online. There’s a person on X, for example, who takes inspiration from the film and rants about what he describes as the “deranged parallel universe” we’re in. These types might be more similar to the only people who reject society in the movie. Led by a cholesterol-loving Denis Leary, who longs to “smoke a cigar the size of Cincinnati in the nonsmoking section,” they live underground eating rat burgers.I’m more ambivalent. Newly unthawed, how would I live? I turn to “Demolition Man” for guidance on how to navigate the future. Most everyone else accepts this timid new world. I can see why — it’s very appealing. Everyone is extremely nice. There’s no crime. There’s the choice of only one restaurant. (It’s Taco Bell.) No conflict is necessary because they’ve banned everything worth fighting over. If this is where we’re heading, it might be better than the past, if not as much fun, infused with a whiff of the dystopian. Everyone else seems to have made their accommodation with this future. Why can’t I?Perhaps I find this film resonant not so much because it turned out to be prophetic, but because it reminds me that I once was certain of what the future would look like and my place in it. I think I’m like Spartan, but I’m actually more like a wistful Lenina Huxley, surrounded by 1990s contraband, unable to let go. “You’re still addicted to the 20th century,” another cop admonishes her. “High from its harshness.” I know how she feels.Kabir Chibber is a writer and filmmaker. Born in Hong Kong, he lives in New York. More

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      John Bailey, Oscars President at a Time of Strife, Dies at 81

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      A respected cinematographer, he guided the motion picture academy at the height of the #MeToo movement and dealt with infighting around the Oscar ceremony.John Bailey, an accomplished cinematographer who was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 2017 to 2019, a tumultuous period when Harvey Weinstein was excommunicated from the group and complaints mounted about the Academy Awards ceremony, died on Friday. He was 81.His death was announced by the academy, which did not say where he died or specify the cause.As a cinematographer, Mr. Bailey collaborated frequently with celebrated directors like Paul Schrader and worked on many well-known movies, including “Groundhog Day” (1993) and “The Big Chill” (1983).Before he was chosen to head the academy, he had never held a prominent public role, and he was never nominated for an Oscar himself, though he helped others win the award. In an interview in 2020 with the publication American Cinematographer, Mr. Bailey said he generally tried to make his own work “invisible.”After the academy announced in August 2017 that he would be its next president, The New York Times reported: “Hollywood scratched its head. Who?”It took only two months for Mr. Bailey to find himself in the news. Shortly after The Times and The New Yorker published investigations revealing previously undisclosed allegations of sexual harassment against the producer Harvey Weinstein, the academy voted overwhelmingly to “immediately expel” him. It was only the second known instance of an expulsion from the academy.(The first happened in 2004, when the character actor Carmine Caridi had his membership revoked after he broke rules about lending DVD screeners of contending films. Since then, the comedian and actor Bill Cosby, the director Roman Polanski and the cinematographer Adam Kimmel have also been expelled.)In a letter Mr. Bailey sent to members of the academy days after the vote, he wrote that the organization could not become “an inquisitorial court.” But he also expressed passionate support for the decision.“We are witnessing this venerable motion picture academy reinvent itself before our very eyes,” Mr. Bailey said to a luncheon of Oscar nominees several months later, according to Vanity Fair. “I may be a 75-year-old white male, but I’m every bit as gratified as the youngest of you here that the fossilized bedrock of many of Hollywood’s worst abuses are being jackhammered into oblivion.”In the kind of head-spinning turn of events that became familiar during the height of the #MeToo moment, Mr. Bailey himself became the subject of a sexual harassment accusation only weeks later.Variety reported that the academy had received three harassment complaints about Mr. Bailey. But the academy later announced that it had only one such accusation to look into, and within weeks it determined that there was no merit to the claim.More turmoil for Mr. Bailey’s academy lay ahead. The 2018 Oscars telecast saw a drop-off in ratings that has never been fully reversed. The comedian Kevin Hart was hired to host the 2019 ceremony, then stepped down amid criticism of jokes he had made years earlier about not wanting his son to be gay, leaving that year’s event hostless.Mr. Bailey made the case for two changes to the ceremony designed to maintain viewer interest in a new era: adding a “popular film” category, to include the kind of blockbuster movies that the Oscars otherwise overlook, and holding some award announcements during commercial breaks to shorten the broadcast. The academy encountered such severe blowback to those proposals that it scrapped both of them.In 2019, when term limits compelled Mr. Bailey to step down from his position, The Times described his tenure as “chaotic,” but in hindsight, perhaps none of the scandals of Mr. Bailey’s era rose to the level of Will Smith giving Chris Rock an unscripted slap to the face midbroadcast. (Mr. Smith received a ban of 10 years from the Oscars.)Getting embroiled in culture wars and power struggles was an unexpected career development for Mr. Bailey. He made it his modus operandi, he told American Cinematographer, to avoid “tawdry” films. Describing his youthful aspirations in a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Mr. Bailey said, referring to a long-dead French film critic, “I wanted to write — to be the American André Bazin.”Mr. Bailey in 1983 with the director Lawrence Kasdan on the set of “The Big Chill.”Columbia Pictures, via Everett CollectionJohn Ira Bailey was born on Aug. 10, 1942, in Moberly, Mo. He grew up in Norwalk, a city in Los Angeles County, California. He told American Cinematographer that his father was a machinist who never went to high school.He earned a bachelor’s degree from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles in 1964, and several years later he earned a graduate degree in cinema from the University of Southern California. He entered that program to pursue film studies, a young cinephile hoping to become a critic, but found himself drawn instead to cinematography.Early in his career, he had small jobs on several enduring films, like being the camera operator on Mr. Malick’s “Days of Heaven.” The beauty of Néstor Almendros’s cinematography in that movie remained an inspiration for Mr. Bailey.When Mr. Schrader was preparing to shoot “American Gigolo” (1980), he planned to find a European cinematographer. But then, American Cinematographer reported, he was introduced to Mr. Bailey, found himself impressed by Mr. Bailey’s knowledge of foreign film and decided to hire him instead. The two men would go on to work together on five movies.That same year, Mr. Bailey worked with Robert Redford on “Ordinary People,” Mr. Redford’s directorial debut, which won several Oscars, including for best director.In later years Mr. Bailey repeatedly collaborated with the directors Michael Apted (on the 1996 movie “Extreme Measures” and other films) and Ken Kwapis (on films including “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” in 2005 and “He’s Just Not That Into You” in 2009). He also wrote a blog about film for American Cinematographer.His accomplishments at the academy included expanding international membership, which he told The Times helped the South Korean film “Parasite” win the best-picture award in 2020.He is survived by his wife of 51 years, Carol Littleton, an Oscar-nominated film editor.At the 2018 luncheon for Oscar nominees, Mr. Bailey had some useful advice for winners, The Times reported.“Thank your mom,” he said, “not your personal trainer.” More

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      What’s on TV This Week: ‘BlackBerry’ and ‘Jay-Z and Gayle King: Brooklyn’s Own’

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      AMC airs its original program in three parts. And Gayle King interviews Jay-Z on CBS.With network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Nov. 13-19. Details and times are subject to change.MondayLOVE HAS WON: THE CULT OF MOTHER GOD 9 p.m. on HBO. On April 28, 2021, police searched a house in Moffat, Colo., where they had gotten reports of a dead body. The remains they found belonged to Amy Carlson, a livestreamer and leader of a group called “Love Has Won.” Carlson and her followers believed that she was a reincarnation of Jesus, Cleopatra and Joan of Arc, among others, and referred to her as Mother God. The coroner reported that her cause of death was a combination of alcohol abuse, anorexia and chronic colloidal silver ingestion, which she sold as supplements. This three-part documentary series interviews former cult members, including her partner, who calls himself Father God.BLACKBERRY 10 p.m. on AMC. This film, which originally had a limited release in Canadian and U.S. theaters, is coming to small screens after the filmmaker Matt Johnson reworked it into a three-episode limited series with 16 minutes of previously unseen footage added. “BlackBerry” is scripted and fictional, but shot like a docu-series, looking behind the scenes of the company that created the BlackBerry pagers, personal digital assistants and cellphones. It stars Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton and Johnson.TuesdayFrom left: William McInnes, Mavournee Hazel and Olivia Swann in “NCIS: Sydney.”Daniel Asher Smith/Paramount+NCIS: SYDNEY 8 p.m. on CBS. This spinoff in the extremely popular “NCIS” universe was originally meant to air only in Australia — but after other American-based NCIS franchise series had their release dates delayed to 2024 because of strikes by the Hollywood writers and actors unions, the network decided to air the Australian show here as well. It centers on a joint task force of U.S. NCIS agents and the Australian Federal Police working to uncover naval crimes.JAY-Z AND GAYLE KING: BROOKLYN’S OWN 9 p.m. on CBS. Jay-Z, the famously private rapper, sat down with the interviewer Gayle King for three hours in conjunction with the opening of “Book of HOV,” billed as a tribute exhibition, at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. The exhibition follows him from his Brooklyn childhood to stardom and devotes attention to each of his releases as well as to his philanthropic work and to artifacts from his life. Though some of this interview aired on CBS in October, this special features longer excerpts from the interview and portions never aired before.WednesdayDaniel Radcliffe and David Holmes in “David Holmes: The Boy Who Lived.”via HBODAVID HOLMES: THE BOY WHO LIVED (2023) 9 p.m. on HBO. While David Holmes was working on “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1” as Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double, his neck was broken in an on-set accident that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Through it all, his friendship with Radcliffe continued. This documentary contains interviews with Holmes, Radcliffe, friends and family about how Holmes overcame his injury and adjusted to life after the accident.ThursdayCREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) 8 p.m. on TCM. While now we have “Saw,” “Hereditary” and “A Quiet Place” as modern-day horror films, this one is a classic. When a group of scientists treks to the Amazon rainforest to try to capture and study a jungle-dwelling prehistoric beast, all hell breaks loose.THE BLOB (1958) 9:30 p.m. on TCM. If the creature from the lagoon doesn’t raise the hairs on the back of your neck, you can scream in terror as you watch a giant blob of jelly from another planet consume everything in its path. “One thing you can count on with ‘The Blob,’” Howard Thompson wrote in his review for The New York Times, “goo galore.” (My father made me watch this movie when I was way too young and I probably haven’t been the same since.)FridayNATIONAL LAMPOON’S CHRISTMAS VACATION 8 p.m. on TBS. It seems like this year while some of us are still buying festive fall decorations and pinning recipes for creative Thanksgiving sides, TV has decided to skip right to Christmas. If you’re ready to indulge, this winter favorite is already on the schedule. Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo, at the helm of the Griswold family Christmas planning, see their arrangements go awry when a long lost country cousin shows up with his family that needs a place to live.SaturdayFrom left: Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Judy Garland and Bert Lahr in “The Wizard of Oz.”Everett CollectionTHE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) 8:45 p.m. on TBS. “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz!” In this essential movie, the magic begins when a tornado picks up Dorothy (Judy Garland) and her dog, Toto, from Kansas and drops them in Oz. There, she meets all sorts of colorful and often frightening characters and teams up with the Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), who wishes for a brain, the Tin Man (Jack Haley), who longs for a heart and the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr), who desperately needs courage, for a perilous journey up the yellow brick road to Emerald City in the hope of asking the wizard to grant all their wishes.SundayANNIKA 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). This show about the Glasgow Marine Homicide Unit, starring Nicola Walker in the title role, is wrapping up its second season this week. In the six new episodes, the team investigates more complicated murders that metaphorically — and literally — wash up on the shores of Scotland. More

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      Marina Cicogna, Italy’s First Major Female Film Producer, Dies at 89

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      A countess from an influential Italian family, she charted her own course and produced films by the likes of Pasolini and Zeffirelli.Marina Cicogna, an Italian countess who became her country’s first major female film producer, guiding to the screen celebrated films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Franco Zeffirelli and Elio Petri, died on Nov. 4 at her home in Rome. She was 89.Her death was announced by La Biennale di Venezia, the organizer of the Venice Film Festival. No cause was given.Rising to prominence in an era when the only female names on film posters were often those of actresses, Ms. Cicogna (pronounced chi-CONE-ya) became one of the most powerful women in European cinema, as both a producer and a distributor.She started from a lofty perch. Her maternal grandfather, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, was an industrialist and statesman who served various government roles, including as Italy’s minister of finance under Mussolini. He also founded the Venice Film Festival. In the mid-1960s, when Ms. Cicogna was in her early 30s, she and her brother Bino took control of her family’s production and distribution company, Euro International Films.Even so, she faced challenges: working with imperious male auteurs; earning the respect of the country’s left-leaning cultural leaders despite her titled upbringing; and openly dating women as well as men at a time when such topics were rarely discussed in public by figures of authority.Ms. Cicogna in 2009. She brought prominent films to the screen, including Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “Medea” and “Teorema,” as well as Elio Petri’s “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” which won the 1971 Academy Award for best foreign-language film.Nick Harvey/WireImage, via Getty ImagesNor was her path as a woman always easy. “At the time I didn’t think about it,” she said in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter Roma this year. “But at the end of the day, yes, the intention to put you down was there, definitely.”Among the prominent films she produced or distributed were “Medea” (1969), Pasolini’s hypnotic reimagining of the Euripides tragedy, starring the opera singer Maria Callas; “Teorema” (1968), also directed by Pasolini, in which Terence Stamp plays an enigmatic stranger who seduces, one by one, members of a wealthy family in Milan; “Brother Sun Sister Moon” (1972), Zeffirelli’s lush retelling of the life of St. Francis of Assisi; and “Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion,” Petri’s Kafkaesque thriller, which won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 1971.Ms. Cicogna also had three films at the 1967 Venice Film Festival, including Luis Buñuel’s “Belle de Jour,” starring Catherine Deneuve as a Paris housewife who secretly works at a bordello, which won the festival’s highest prize, the Golden Lion. In addition, she put her stamp on the proceedings by throwing a lavish party that became festival lore.“I didn’t give a big ball, but rather said that everyone could dress as they wanted, as long as they were in white and yellow or white and gold,” Ms. Cicogna said in a 2013 interview with T, The New York Times’s style magazine. “I sent two small Learjets, one to Corsica to pick up Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, and the other to Rome to pick up Jane Fonda and Roger Vadim.”Such obvious displays of wealth would go out of fashion following the leftist student uprisings in Europe in 1968. “You couldn’t have a big party without hurting people’s feelings,” she continued. “You couldn’t go around with a Rolls-Royce without being thrown eggs at.”Ms. Cicogna, center, with the actresses Gina Lollobrigida, left, and Jane Fonda at the lavish party the countess threw for the 1967 Venice Film Festival. The party became festival lore.Giorgio Lotti/Mondadori, via Getty ImagesCountess Marina Cicogna Mozzoni Volpi di Misurata was born on May 29, 1934, in Rome, the daughter of Count Cesare Cicogna Mozzoni, a banker, and Countess Annamaria Volpi di Misurata, who purchased Euro International Films, ultimately handing control over to her children.Growing up, Ms. Cicogna was a cinema lover who mingled among the children of David O. Selznick, the producer of “Gone With the Wind,” and other film heavyweights at the Venice festival.After an education in Italy, she enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., where she roomed with Barbara Warner, whose father was the Hollywood film mogul Jack Warner. During a school break, Ms. Warner invited her to California.“I never went back,” Ms. Cicogna told T. “I stayed for three months in California at the Warners’.”She later studied photography in the United States, brokering her platinum connections to shoot luminaries like Ezra Pound and Marilyn Monroe in candid moments.Her early forays into the film business included distributing a 1967 West German film, “Helga.” “It was the first time you saw a birth, a woman producing a child, on film,” she told T. “I decided we should publicize it. We put ambulances at the exit of the film, saying that people would faint when they saw that.”Ms. Cicogna in 1967 with the director Luis Buñuel, whose “Belle de Jour” won the Venice festival’s highest prize, the Golden Lion.Giorgio Lotti/Mondadori Portfolio, via Everett CollectionShe was at times linked romantically with the likes of Warren Beatty and Alain Delon, but she also spent decades in a relationship with Florinda Bolkan, a Brazilian model and actress.After they split, she began a long relationship with Benedetta Gardona, a woman more than two decades her junior, whom Ms. Cicogna legally adopted for financial reasons. Ms. Gardona remained her companion until Ms. Cicogna’s death. (Complete information on survivors was not immediately available).Ms. Cicogna looked back on her career highlights of the 1960s and ’70s in the 2021 documentary “Marina Cicogna: La Vita e Tutto il Resto” (“Life and Everything Else”), directed by Andrea Bettinetti, as well as her autobiography, “Ancora Spero: Una Storia di Vita e di Cinema” (“I Still Hope: A Story of Life and Cinema”), published this year.Still, in a 2017 video interview, she expressed regret that she had not remained in the film business. “If I had to look back, I should have never stopped producing, although Italian cinematography has not been the same since. It’s not so great,” she said, adding: “I am also a person who is very torn between the European rather lazy aesthetic way of life and the American more creative, more active way of life.”“I’ve been more European than active,” she said. “I haven’t done as much as I should have done. But I can’t say I’m sorry. That’s the way it was, and that’s it.” More