I Kiss Your Hand, Madame (Robert Land, 1929) Eloise Ross April 2021 CTEQ Annotations on Film This lightly sophisticated comedy, indulging in its opportunities at the tail-end of two eras – those of silent cinema, and the Weimar Republic’s Golden Twenties – has something that we might call the Marlene t...
Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957) Eloise Ross March 2019 CTEQ Annotations on Film “Some of my best friends are ghosts,” says Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews). He is being sarcastic (and Dana Andrews was one of the best serious men at reading a dry line); Holden, a “prominent psychologist” invi...
Ida Lupino’s Hard Noir: Private Hell 36 (Don Siegel, 1954) Eloise Ross October 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film In this grim, sexy film noir about corrupt male police officers, its lasting effect can be attributed to its lead woman, Ida Lupino. Yet the first woman on screen in Private Hell 36 (Don Siegel, 1954) is Doroth...
She knows, I feel: a lifelong windswept vortex in the Hebrides Eloise Ross June 2018 Stardust Memories: Cinephilia and Nostalgia Dreams Father: “Have you ever been there?” Joan: “Often! In my dreams.” We’ve all been to places in our dreams. If they are positive dreams, with resonances that we yearn for, we might take a train, bus, and...
Eva (Joseph Losey, 1962) Eloise Ross March 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film “And the man and the woman were naked together, and were unashamed.” These words are spoken in voiceover as the camera slowly pans across Venetian waters and a frieze featuring Adam and Eve, their bodies almo...
Olivia (Jacqueline Audry, 1951) Eloise Ross March 2018 CTEQ Annotations on Film Published pseudonymously in 1949 under the author name ‘Olivia’, Dorothy Bussy’s novel Olivia was likely written thanks to the influence of the 1931 German film Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in Uniform, Leontine Sa...
Pioneering Australian Women Filmmakers: Introduction Eloise Ross July 2017 Pioneering Australian Women “I just close my eyes and a sing, and I feel like I’m above the crowd.” - Jo Kennedy as Jackie Mullens, Starstruck (Gillian Armstrong, 1982) Made in 1982, Starstruck is the earliest feature film covered by t...
High Spirits: Jo Kennedy in Starstruck (Gillian Armstrong, 1982) and Tender Hooks (Mary Callaghan, 1989) Eloise Ross July 2017 Pioneering Australian Women Before Baz Luhrmann presented Sydney’s Coca Cola sign as a glittering icon and made it as famous as the city’s Harbour Bridge, other filmmakers had already recognised its symbolic potential: Mary Callaghan feat...
“What the Hell’s a Nun Doin’ Out Here?”: Budd Boetticher Revised in Two Mules For Sister Sara (Don Siegel, 1970) Eloise Ross June 2017 Revisiting Budd Boetticher Directed by Don Siegel from a screenplay by Albert Maltz, it might seem odd that Two Mules For Sister Sara has a place in a Budd Boetticher dossier, given that he was not involved in production, nor seen on set...
Love Affair or The Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator (Dušan Makavejev, 1967) Eloise Ross March 2017 CTEQ Annotations on Film “I didn’t sign on to be your slave.” It’s the cry of every woman who has ever been born, and every country who has ever been created, annexed, oppressed. Hungarian woman Izabela Garodi (Eva Ras) speaks these wo...
Visit or Memories and Confessions Eloise Ross September 2016 CTEQ Annotations on Film Visita ou Memórias e Confissões is Manoel de Oliveira’s lasting cinematic elegy: a visit to a house filled with evidence of a life well lived, an exploration of memories that permeate through spaces and objects...
“There is Something Very Strange in Cinema”: An Interview with Whit Stillman Eloise Ross August 2016 Feature Articles “Facts are such horrid things!” writes Mrs Alicia Johnson to Lady Susan Vernon in Jane Austen’s early novella, Lady Susan. In Whit Stillman’s film Love & Friendship (2016), adapted from Austen's posthumous...