Alex Deleon, <filmfestivals.com>

The main event of the day was a  champagne fueled Press conference with iconic Nouvelle Vague actress Anna Karina. Her once mellifluous voice now has a slight senior citizen tinge to it but her Danish flair is still there. Maybe the early freshness is History but she is still a Legend in her own time and has fascinating tales to tell -- and not only about Godard. Asked why her marriage to him floundered she said that he was hard to live with. Example: He would go out to buy some cigarettes and come back three weeks later. En somme, he drove her nuts -- to the point where she had to take refuge in an institution for a while. She hasn't seen him for years. He lives today as a recluse. 

Following Champagne with Anna I dropped in to -- and walked out of -- Jancso's Italian film "Private Vice and Public Virtue", his prescient answer to The Penthouse porno film "Caligula" to be made a couple of years later. Lots and lots of nudity and nudes of both sexes dancing and rolling about on top of each other. Pointless bullshit can be seen as a prequel to Guccione's pointless mainstream porno flick, Caligula, 1979, which featured, among others, British actress Helen Mirren and Peter O'Toole.

At 9:AM to start the day it was "A Harangok Romába mentek" (The Bells went to Rome) --

Early Jancso. 1958. b/w. Stars Miklós Gábor, already known from Szabo's "Apa", as a high school teacher trying to keep his students out of enforced service in the occupying German army in 1945. Opens with a shot of church tower bells reminiscent of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, but this is stark WW II realism, not a period romance. Well made accessible picture before Jancsó abandoned normal narrative and went into poetical abstraction with equine enhancement.

Followed by,

"A zsarnok szive' avagy Boccaccio Magyarorszagban"

(The Tyrants heart, or Boccaccio in Hungary) -- Color. Italy. 1981.    86 minutes. Already forgotten it. Features Teresa Ann Savoy and a cast of other unknowns. Jancso's  Italian throwaway flick. Ever present Jozsef Madaras decked out in blood red shroud before getting killed. Everything is red in this film. Set in the 1400s. Lots of white shrouds later. Cserhalmi comes in late and dominates the second half of the picture. Many group dances, horses, and lots of rousing music. Hungarian Bollywood, 1981.

The third Jancso of the day was "Private Vices, Public Virtues", 1976, in  Italian with no subtitles. (guess what, the Italians don't need them to understand their own language!) --  Starring Teresa Ann Savoy again in a tale centering on an uninteresting depraved young prince who stages outdoor sex orgies  on the palace grounds to pass the time.  Reminded me of my own nude garden~swimming pool parties in 1965 at the Lionel Barrymore estate in Beverly Hills in my own orgiastic years. Time to call it a Day!

Karina with American husband, Dennis Berry. Dennis is the son of once blacklisted Hollywood director John Berry who helmed John Garfield's last film, "He ran all the way home", in 1951. The couple will be guests of the AMC American Movie Classics festival in Hollywood in April.

TO SEE ON SATURDAY

9:30, Pane e Ciocolatta, Dir. F. Brusati. Karina in Italy, 1974.

11:30. Zbanić,  2010. Na Putu. Bosnia. Auditorium

15:00 This is England, '90. Shane Meadows. San Marco.

17:30, Jedan dan u Sarajevo. Zbanić.  

20:30, Heaven Can Wait. Lubitsch, 1943. In glorious Technicolor. With Don Ameche and Gene Tierney. 

Sunday.

Szegénlegények.  Jancso, 1965. His most famous film.

Losey 1960. The Criminal. (The Cement Jungle) with Stanley Baker, British Noir.

22:00 The final Jancsó, Csillagosok, Katonák, 1967.