We’ve got a raft of updates to our Movies section from across the spectrum and around the world. The films range from the 1940s to today, and include a documentary, an action film, a film noir, a comedy, an obscure sci-fi film — even a film that hasn’t even been made yet.
We begin with Antoine et Antoinette, a film by French director Jacques Becker, released in 1947. A romantic comedy about a lost lottery ticket, the film tells the story of a typographer, Antoine (Roger Pigaut) and Antoinette (Claire Mafféi), a Photomaton operator in a department store. The film adds another chapter to the still sparsely populated decade of the 1940s in our list.
Home movies and photobooth photos are key sources in the arsenal of the documentary filmmaker. In Julien Temple’s film The Future is Unwritten, we see Joe Strummer of The Clash in some terrific photobooth shots.
Thanks to Charles for letting us know about a brief, tantalizing photobooth appearance in the Don Siegel late noir The Lineup. This 1958 film has a claim to fame as the only feature film shot in the fully-built Sutro Baths in San Francisco. The baths had been converted to a skating rink by that time. We see Dancer (Eli Wallach) enter “Sutro’s” and walk past a number of great arcade attractions, including two beautiful Model 11 photobooths.
We’ve been looking out for the hard-to-find sci-fi film The Passing (1985), and finally found a copy. Two World War Two buddies take a photobooth photo together in a booth in a 7‑Eleven, in one of two different photobooth appearances in the same film — a first?
Thanks to Jaime, and a tip from two years ago, about the film Sur mes lèvres (Read My Lips). The photobooth photo plays a small but important role in revealing a surprising truth as the story unfolds. Carla is played by Emmanuelle Devos, who also makes an appearance in a photobooth in Ma vie sexuelle, and Paul by Vincent Cassel, seen here in the photobooth at Le 104 in Paris. It’s all connected…
We’ve finally gotten ahold of Hanna, a 2011 film from director Joe Wright, which features a brief but important scene with a photostrip. Hanna, living with her father in the woods, looks at a photostrip of her mother, pregnant with her, from before her mother was killed.
And finally, we’ve heard from Sam O’Donovan Jones, who’s working on a “black-comedy/horror” film called Photo Booth. You can find out more about the film on its Facebook page and website. We’ll list the film when it’s finished.