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Bille August on adapting a Stefan Zweig novel for his new film THE KISS ~ “It’s probably one of the most beautiful and peculiar stories that exists.”

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Next week we’re opening the latest film from veteran Danish director Bille August, best known for Pelle the Conqueror, The Best Intentions, The House of the Spirits and dozens more.

“He spoke to Variety about The Kiss, his enduring interest in the complexity of human beings, book-to-screen adaptations, and his belief in the big screen experience.

“Loosely based on Stefan Zweig’s novel Beware of Pity and transposed from an Austrian to a Danish setting, The Kiss is a romantic drama set in 1913. The helmer has reunited with A Fortunate Man’s lead Espen Smed, cast as cavalry officer trainee Anton. Introduced to Baron von Løvenskjold’s daughter Edith, a wheelchair user following an accident, Anton is attracted to her, but unsure if his feelings are of pity or true love.”

What was the genesis for The Kiss and what attracted you to the story?

Originally the film was meant to be a more international co-production but for several reasons it didn’t go through. I was so much in love with the story, and keen to make it happen, that I decided to turn it into a Danish story, to have a better control of the financing process.

The Kiss is freely adapted from a Stefan Zweig’s novel Beware of Pity. Now it is set in Denmark, just before the outbreak of WWI. It’s probably one of the most beautiful and peculiar stories that exists, about the love between the soldier Anton and handicapped girl Edith. There is a profound humanity in the story, that makes it relevant and important today for a wide audience.

The film deals with exclusion, bullying, which is a real issue in our societies, and why I feel the story has to be told. It exposures the reasons why intolerance happens. And tolerance, compassion and healing are themes that I’m very fond of.

The complexity of love relationships is a recurrent theme in your films. We’ve seen it earlier in The Best Intentions, A Fortunate Man and The Pact, for instance….

Yes. I love stories about the complexity of human beings, that dive into the secret side of people. And telling it in a dramatic context is super interesting.

Do you feel that the complexity of the human soul deepens as we grow in age?

It does! It is strange. You would think that with age, you know more about human beings and that things get clearer. But it’s not the case. That’s the beauty of it. At the same time, there is always a healing process, and it is possible to dig into the human soul to unravel this complexity.

You’ve done many literary adaptations over the years. What was the challenge of transferring this story into a Danish content?

First of all, when you decide to make a film based on a novel, you have to decide what’s the story in the story that you want to tell, and you have to dare to be unfaithful to the novel in order to be faithful. Otherwise you risk creating illustrated literature, which doesn’t work.

For me, a lot of great films in history are literary adaptations. like The Godfather, One Flew Over a Cuckoo’s Nest or The Shawshank Redemption. It is the director’s role to decide how to make the stories work for the big screen.

Did you have Esben Smed in mind when you wrote the script? And how did you cast Clara Rosager as the young handicapped Edith?

I knew Esben very well after A Fortunate Man and wanted him to do this part from the beginning. He goes deep into a character and has a leading quality to carry a movie. He is so perceptive, clever and wonderful to work with.

Regarding Clara, I wanted an actress who had the beauty, the innocence, and a great quality as an actress. We did a lot of casting with different actors but when I saw her I knew it was right. She is amazing. It will be her big breakthrough.

When you do a love story, as director and storyteller, it’s all about engaging and you have to find this magic connection between actors, to make audiences believe in their relationship. There has to be a chemistry, an urgency for characters to be together. And you should want the relationship to happen, even if it’s forbidden.

I believe photography was your very first love and introduction to the visual world. How was your collaboration with cinematographer Sebastian Blenkov on this film?

He is a great photographer and works a lot in the U.K., with John Madden among others.

Yes, I did start as cinematographer, and have a pretty clear vision about how I want a film to look, regarding the light. Light influences the truth of the story, the characters’ lives.

Here, I didn’t want the film to look like a period film. Thanks to today’s cameras that are super sensitive, we were able to shoot with the existing light, which makes it so beautiful and authentic.

I guess advances in technology enable you to fully concentrate on the actors…

Yes of course, my job is to make sure actors are comfortable and do their best. But you have to make it cinematically interesting. And a film has to be one piece. The level of acting, has to fit with the level of cinematography, costume, production design and so on. Again, when you look at The Godfather, everything is at the highest level. It all comes together as one piece, which makes it true and very cinematic. This is what makes film true art.

How do you feel about films being financed by streamers and many people watching films in their homes?

It’s true and not true. I think it’s great that we have so many platforms. However, when I go to a cinema, I can see how people enjoy being in a dark room to watch a film. It allows them to have an open mind, to be like children again. When you’re watching a film at home, your concentration level is very different. You don’t have the same openness. It’s a different experience.

People who make films for streamers are aware of that. Films or TV dramas made for the small screen are for different concentration levels by the audience. They are perhaps less sophisticated.

A film made for the big screen, can be more ambitious and challenging in its film language, which I love. This is why I don’t think films in cinemas will ever die.

You rarely have a break between each film. What drives you?

I just love it! It’s not a job, more like a big hobby that I’m lucky to be paid for. And if you are surrounded by the right crew, actors and have a great story – it’s fantastic. It stimulates my curiosity to dive into different universes and to try to find the best cinematic form for each project.

Do you have favorite films in your filmography?

I’ve made so many films. Already when I start shooting, I know if it will work or not. It’s horrible when you start filming and you realize – for whatever reason, that something is wrong. Other times, you feel things come together magically.

After finishing a film, it’s key to reflect and recognize the mistakes you’ve made, not to repeat them and learn from your experience.

“The French public’s relationship to movies and movie theaters is ‘almost mystical.'” The New York Times on the resurgence of moviegoing in France.

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It says a lot that the grandest French movie theaters are designed by famous architects. (Renzo Piano designed the Pathé Palace in Paris.) Over the weekend, the New York Times published a fascinating glimpse into cinema’s profound place in French culture and how that strength has led to a renaissance of moviegoing. “France was one of the few countries that saw an increase in movie theater attendance last year over 2023, with more than 181 million attendees, an uptick of nearly a million. Brazil, Britain and Turkey also saw an increase.”

One reason is the French version of American exceptionalism: The French people believe their culture is superb. The national government agrees and backs up that conviction with subsidies of tiny cinemas in small towns and supporting schoolchildren’s field trips to movie theaters. “In a statement, the National Center for Film and Moving Images, or CNC, the French government film agency, chalked up the industry’s recovery from the pandemic to ‘the artistic and industrial excellence of our model of cultural exception,’ a reference to national policies meant to promote and protect French culture.”

But the French reverence for cinema is not mere nationalism. Citizens simply feel a “moral obligation to support the arts.” If you go to the Pathé Palace website, you’ll see that right now they’re mostly showing American movies you can see at Laemmle Theatres, and one of the photos accompanying the article shows a theater box office featuring stills from David Lynch films.

You can read the article here.

Oscars 2025: The ANORA director advocates for movie theaters, and the Academy honors Robert Laemmle. Plus: Oscar Contest winners.

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The 2025 Oscars are in the history books. It was a good night, with a funny, skilled host in Conan O’Brien and a fairly equitable distribution of statuettes for some terrific movies. It was also a good night for theatrical exhibition, better known as good, old-fashioned moviegoing. As he did during his speech accepting the Palme d’Or last year in Cannes, Anora filmmaker Sean Baker gave a passionate, trenchant speech in favor of seeing movies as filmmakers have always intended them to be seen, in theaters. After accepting the Oscar for Best Director from filmmaker (and movie theater owner) Quentin Tarantino, Baker said the following to almost 20 million Americans watching live and far more people worldwide:
“I’m going to take this time up here really quick to read something I’m very passionate about…so we’re all here tonight and watching this broadcast because we love movies. Where did we fall in love with the movies? At the movie theater. Watching a film …in the theater with an audience is an experience. We can laugh together, cry together, scream in fright together, perhaps sit in devastated silence together. And in a time in which the world can feel very divided, this is more important than ever. It’s a communal experience you simply don’t get at home, and right now the theatergoing experience is under threat. Movie theaters, especially independently owned theaters, are struggling, and it’s up to us to support them. During the pandemic we lost nearly 1000 screens in the U.S., and we continue to lose them regularly. If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll be losing a vital part of our culture. This is my battle cry. Filmmakers, keep making films for the big screen. I know I will. Distributors…please focus first and foremost on the theatrical releases of your films. Neon did that for me, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Parents…introduce your children to feature films in movie theaters, and you’ll be molding the next generation of movie lovers and filmmakers. And for all of us, when we can, please watch movies in the theater, and let’s keep the great tradition of the moviegoing experience alive and well.”
The always moving In Memoriam section of the Oscars broadcast was especially powerful this year. This may have been because the losses of huge talents seemed particularly heavy this year. For us at Laemmle Theatres, of course, we are still grieving the loss of Robert Laemmle, our former president and Greg Laemmle’s father. What an honor for Bob to be the first exhibitor included in the in Memoriam montage.
Finally, we are pleased to announce this year’s winners of the Umpteenth Annual Laemmle Oscar Contest.
FIRST PLACE: Stefan with 18 correct answers.
SECOND PLACE: Joel with 18 correct answers.
TIE for THIRD PLACE: Kelly & Cole with 17 correct answers (plus closest run-time to actual runtime broadcast).
Check out our nifty pie charts to see how our savvy customers divined the Academy members’ choices. Last year our winner correctly guessed 21 categories, so this was a tough year. As predicted, the Best Actress category was one of the trickiest; only 10.7% guessed that Mikey Madison would win for her turn in Anora, defying the conventional wisdom that Demi Moore would win for The Substance, and that Fernanda Torres was the true dark horse for her performance in I’m Still Here. Half of our contestants thought The Wild Robot would take the Best Animated Feature prize, but the acclaimed little Latvian film Flow came out on top. Almost 25% of contestants thought Timothée Chalamet would win for Best Actor for A Complete Unknown, no doubt misled by his Screen Actors Guild Awards victory.
Winners, we will be in touch to get you your movie pass prizes. Congratulations!

Oscar winners still on screen, as they were meant to be seen: ANORA, THE BRUTALIST, NO OTHER LAND, I’M STILL HERE & FLOW.

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If you still haven’t seen some of the films honored at the Academy Awards on Sunday, you can still see all of the following this week: Anora (winner for Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Editing, and Actress), The Brutalist (Best Actor, Score, and Cinematography), Flow (Best Animated Feature), I’m Still Here (Best International Film), and No Other Land (Best Feature Documentary). All are fantastic and, as one social media user posted after listening to Sean Baker’s speech extolling the virtues of seeing movies in movie theaters, “movies just hit different at the cinema.”
And if you’ve already seen these films, check out The Fishing Place, which we open Friday at the Royal. The New Yorker film critic Richard Brody wrote that it’s better than all of the ten Best Picture nominees!

All movies free tonight and tomorrow at the Monicas and Royal!

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To honor our one-of-a-kind city and its amazing communities, we’re giving you the gift of FREE MOVIES! Thanks to our amazing friends at NEON, catch any film at the Monica Film Center and Royal tonight and tomorrow absolutely free. Come take a much-deserved break and experience the joy of an arthouse film. The offer only applies in-person at the theater box offices. Take the money you would have spent on tickets and donate it to fire relief.

Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge Launch New Video Podcast INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE.

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Greg Laemmle, President of Laemmle Theaters, along with actor and Emmy Award-winning director Raphael Sbarge, are launching a new  Video Podcast called INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE. The show is dedicated to highlighting new  releases, repertory classics, filmmakers, distributors, and the key personalities who bring movies to the big screen. INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will be filmed and recorded at the Laemmle Royal Theatre, the 100-year-old theater that has been operated by three generations of Laemmles for the past half century.  

Laemmle says, “My family has been dedicated to providing a home for independent, foreign and documentary film for almost a century, and we have decided to launch INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE in order to promote the release of new films that will ultimately play in arthouses all across the country.” 

“Our interviews will be recorded in person or via Zoom, with filmmakers appearing large on  the screen,” says Sbarge, an independent filmmaker himself. “Opening a movie in theaters requires all the support they can get, and INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE, is dedicated to the  celebration of seeing films in theaters.” 

Their first guests include Stephen Soucy, the director of MERCHANT IVORY, a documentary about art house mainstays Ismail Merchant and James Ivory; the Golden Lion-winning director of the Swedish film PARADISE IS BURNING, Mika Gustafson; the writer and director  of PREY FOR ROCK AND ROLL, Cheri Lovedog and Alex Steyermark, re-released in theaters via Kino Lorber, for their 20th anniversary; and the co-directors of the new documentary UNION, out of the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals, Brett Story and Steven Main.

In subsequent episodes – initially to be released every two weeks – INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will focus on new releases and repertory classics, filmmakers, distributors, and  personalities who are responsible for bringing movies to the big screen. The first episode of INSIDE THE ARTHOUSE will premiere on August 28, 2024. The show can be found on  YouTube and all major podcast platforms. For more information, visit www.insidethearthouse.com!

“Guess what? Movies aren’t dead. So let’s stop with the prophecies of doom for a minute.” ~ Mary McNamara in the L.A. Times

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We’ve posted quite a bit about the importance of theatrical movie exhibition — most recently here, here, and here. Now the L.A. Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Culture Columnist and Critic Mary McNamara has weighed with her typically trenchant observations. If only her paper’s film department would return to its decades of glory when it treated the vibrant L.A. cinema scene with the respect it deserves by giving it robust coverage!) But we digress. Here’s an excerpt from McNamara’s piece:

When I became a television critic for the Los Angeles Times, way back in early 2007, many people told me it was a Very Bad Idea. Why would I give up a job as a film writer to review TV? Didn’t I know “The Sopranos” was ending? And that, with a few notable exceptions, original scripted television was dead, murdered by reality TV and endless internet content?

Mercifully, I listened to none of it; instead I was able to watch and write about one of the most stunning artistic revolutions of our time. The pendulum (and Hollywood’s penchant for excess) being what it is, television is now facing a financial crisis due, in large part, to that marvelous period of growth. But though the industry is in a belt-tightening phase, no one is predicting the demise of the art form altogether.

I think of television in 2007 every time a consortium of pundits calls time of death on anything. I certainly thought about it a month ago when so many people were announcing the demise of moviegoing.

In May, “The Fall Guy,” “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “The Garfield Movie” failed to live up to prerelease expectations. Instead of questioning the wisdom of the expectations themselves,especially given crippling writers’ and actors’ strikes, the industry, and many of those who cover it, preferred to announce that the sky was falling.

“People just don’t want to go to the movies anymore,” is something more than one person said out loud and in public.

Then “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” “A Quiet Place: Day One” and especially “Inside Out 2” premiered and suddenly everyone was, and is, going to the movies again. The box office has roared to life and “Deadpool & Wolverine” isn’t even out yet.

As it turns out, people do still want to go to the movies.

(Read the full piece here.)

 

 

“The future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theater.” ~ ANORA director Sean Baker in his Palme d’Or acceptance speech.

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Over the weekend, writer-director Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket) was awarded the Palme d’Or, the top prize, at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Anora, his comedy about a sex worker. New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis called the film “a giddily ribald picaresque.” In his acceptance speech, Baker spoke eloquently about seeing movies in theaters. You can watch the whole thing online, but here’s the key excerpt:
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“This literally has been my singular goal as a filmmaker for the past 30 years. So I’m not really sure what I’m gonna do with the rest of my life, but I do know that I will continue to fight for cinema because right now, as filmmakers, we have to fight to keep cinema alive. This means making feature films intended for theatrical exhibition. The world has to be reminded that watching a film at home while scrolling through your phone and checking mail, emails and half paying attention is just not the way, although some tech companies would like us to think so. Watching a film with others in a movie theater is one of the great communal experiences. We share laughter, sorrow, anger, fear, and, hopefully, have a catharsis with our friends and strangers, and that’s sacred. So I see the future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theater.”