My Father
...is Jess Franco.
I have a very special relationship with the old man, and lately I have been neglecting him. And like in any good family, this temporary broken link does not affect all the love I have for him. We may be separated by the Atlantic Ocean and years of misunderstanding, by my anti-smoking militantism and his chain smoking bad habits, and by him jumping the bones of someone else than my mother - who is certainly not Lina Romay - but we share something, we share blood, we share a certain taste - hunger, even - for life.
This blog is intended to explore the fascination that this man, and his movies, is exercing on me. It will adopt many different angles, many tones, and reveal many facets of my reflections. But the subject will be consistent : Jesus Franco Manera.
Man with many faces, director, actor, script writer, music lover, supreme appreciator of life at large, with a fine taste in food & women, Jess could have lead many lives.
He is the personification of what everybody aspires to be : a guy who does ONLY what he wants to do. His twisted lens record life's movements, shakin' hips and pubic hair. His achievement is impressive : more than 150 feature films, and still counting. Of course, not all of them are masterpieces, but what's surprising is that most of them ALMOST are.
There is always a moment of sheer genius in a Franco film, and it is my understanding that we will, from now on, explore this together, hand in hand.
Like father & son.
I have a very special relationship with the old man, and lately I have been neglecting him. And like in any good family, this temporary broken link does not affect all the love I have for him. We may be separated by the Atlantic Ocean and years of misunderstanding, by my anti-smoking militantism and his chain smoking bad habits, and by him jumping the bones of someone else than my mother - who is certainly not Lina Romay - but we share something, we share blood, we share a certain taste - hunger, even - for life.
This blog is intended to explore the fascination that this man, and his movies, is exercing on me. It will adopt many different angles, many tones, and reveal many facets of my reflections. But the subject will be consistent : Jesus Franco Manera.
Man with many faces, director, actor, script writer, music lover, supreme appreciator of life at large, with a fine taste in food & women, Jess could have lead many lives.
He is the personification of what everybody aspires to be : a guy who does ONLY what he wants to do. His twisted lens record life's movements, shakin' hips and pubic hair. His achievement is impressive : more than 150 feature films, and still counting. Of course, not all of them are masterpieces, but what's surprising is that most of them ALMOST are.
There is always a moment of sheer genius in a Franco film, and it is my understanding that we will, from now on, explore this together, hand in hand.
Like father & son.
posted by Clifford Brown at 1:23 PM
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