Great Movies Written By Philosophers

[MortSahlFan]

Example: "The Stranger" by Albert Camus.. The movie was directed by Luchino Visconti (great director) with a fine actor - Marcello Mastroianni.

[Sin Agog]

Pain & Gain

[Sin Agog]

Think I mentioned them recently, but Roberto Rossellini's 'educational period' was remarkably close to the sources.  Very direct, unassuming, but totally engaging in an ambient way. They featured tomes of verbatim dialogue and big, lovely sets. I've seen The Age of Medici, Augustine of Hippo, Blaise Pascal, the one on Descartes, and Socrates (didn't click with me as much as t'others, but that may be because the real dude was a bit of a stubborn, arrogant cock).

[chveik]

Camus didn't write the script, so it doesn't work. and it's an adaptation of a novel, not a work of philosophy. last but not least, it's really not a great movie.

[Dex Sawash]

Dirty Love

[MortSahlFan]

Camus didn't write the script, so it doesn't work. and it's an adaptation of a novel, not a work of philosophy. last but not least, it's really not a great movie.

He wrote the book, which is good enough for me. It's not one of my favorite movies ever, but I gave it a 7.5/10. There's something interesting about "guilty for being non-conformist" - the courts thinking the man was guilty because earlier in another situation, he didn't cry when his mother died.   

[Shaky]

He wrote the book, which is good enough for me.

Hmmm. By that logic, Shakespeare, Austen et al are churning out film work at an impressive rate. Are screenwriters novelists as well?

[Blumf]

Bruce Lee; master of Jeet Kune Do (martial arts style and philosophy) and writer of Circle of Iron (1978)

[Twit 2]

Benjamin Fondane

[dissolute ocelot]

Sartre wrote several films, depending on definitions: he adapted Alexandre Dumas's Kean and Arthur Miller's The Crucible. He also had a number of good movies made from his work, notably Brady Corbet's Childhood of a Leader (arguably a great movie). There's Iris Murdoch, whose books have also been adapted. Pushing the definition of philosopher, Terry Eagleton has written screenplays (Wittgenstein for Jarman, and St Oscar). Bernard-Henri Levy has directed films, but I refuse to watch the tedious centrist on principle. You could also argue Jean-Paul Sartre and maybe Chris Marker as philosophers. And novelist-philosopher Alain Robbe-Grillet has reportedly made some interesting porn.

[MortSahlFan]

Sartre wrote several films, depending on definitions: he adapted Alexandre Dumas's Kean and Arthur Miller's The Crucible. He also had a number of good movies made from his work, notably Brady Corbet's Childhood of a Leader (arguably a great movie). There's Iris Murdoch, whose books have also been adapted. Pushing the definition of philosopher, Terry Eagleton has written screenplays (Wittgenstein for Jarman, and St Oscar). Bernard-Henri Levy has directed films, but I refuse to watch the tedious centrist on principle. You could also argue Jean-Paul Sartre and maybe Chris Marker as philosophers. And novelist-philosopher Alain Robbe-Grillet has reportedly made some interesting porn.

Yes, I wouldn't watch tedious Levy, either.. His interviews were annoying enough. I did love "Le Joli Mai" by Chris Marker. Fine documentary.

[Ant Farm Keyboard]

You should definitely watch Day and Night, by Bernard-Henri Lévy.

If there's a 30 page long thread about the new series of After Life here, you're ready for one of the most asinine films in history, directed by a pompous first time director who's certain he's about to revolutionize filmmaking.

Lévy or, as we call him, BHL wrote a love letter to his wife, Rohmer alumna Arielle Dombasle, who's about as self-centered as him and is mostly noticeable for the amount of plastic surgery she has had.
BHL is hugely influential in French media, and epitomizes the exchange of good practices. BHL is extremely wealthy. He knows a few major businessmen, and, when they want to get a more progressive image, he gives them advice on how to spend money on philanthropy, including journalist foundations, until they get a new reputation. He's connected with most of the major press groups in France. And when he publishes some glowing review of a book, he expects the writer to praise similarly his next books in due time.

So, the press coverage in France for Day and Night was almost uniformly positive, he got cover features in many weeklies for his film, etc.
The film itself is a piss poor, grandiloquent remake of Under the Volcano, with some light BDSM sex scenes added to the mix, ridiculous dialogue, awful direction, and a shitload of pretentiousness, which turns it into an unintended comedy. Lévy would brag about having Orson Welles' director of photography or being the first guy in history questioning the point of view of the camera, that sort of thing, while it feels so amateur, by somebody who's simply out of his element. Even if it's Delon who plays the lead, it reaches some Garth Marenghi levels of delusion and narcissism. And the ending is just hilarious.

After it flopped big time, BHL went into seclusion and grew for weeks Christ-like stigmates on his hands. I'm not even kidding. He never got over the bad reviews the specialized press had given to his film. He wrote a book about a cabal by critics to torpedo his film, accusing them of the same networking he has actually built in the French publishing world. Then, when the film was released on DVD, 14 years afterwards, he had a documentary commissioned as a bonus feature about the uphill battle the film had to endure in the French press, and then appeared in a second extra, a right of reply about the documentary, which makes no sense given that he necessarily approved this documentary for inclusion on the DVD.

Dombasle is also a director. Her latest film, Alien Crystal Palace, released in 2019, is every bit as pretentious as the work of her husband. She gave herself the part of the Ideal Woman as part of the myth of the Androgyne (according to the definition of Plato's Symposium) and she's paired with a guy who must be her current lover IRL, a musician who plays a self-destructive Gainsbourg-like figure, and mumbles every line he says. It's low budget, it's supposed to be quite random, witty and humorous, but it's shot by somebody whose narcissism kills all hope for salvation. Small turns by Jean-Pierre Léaud (in an Egyptian God costume surrounded by topless women) and Asia Argento.