We talk a lot on this show about film festivals, and film itself as a mass-produced art form, redefining the vertices of contact between cultures post-WWII, and Satyajit Ray is one filmmaker that changed countless people’s perceptions of India in the 50’s. We chart his history at the euro festivals as a way of understanding his stature in the wider film world, and we talk about this virtuoso film, and what moved us.

Next week: Pierrot le Fou (1965) by Jean-Luc Godard

We’re recording a grab-bag episode soon on 2025 films and our film history project, send questions and comments to unauthorizedpod@gmail.com

Hosted by Zachary Domes (hetchy on letterboxd) and J Brooks Young (jyoun on letterboxd). Music by hetchy

Bicycle Thieves topped the first BFI Sight and Sound List of the Greatest Films of All Time, published in 1952. Vittorio De Sica’s portrait of an impoverished family, shot all across the real streets of Rome, was the perfect avatar for postwar italian cinema, which astonished audiences and made the cinema of carefully designed sets feel dated and fake in comparison.

So when the new Sight and Sound list arrived in ’62, the fact that Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura came two votes short of the #1 spot (and four votes ahead of Bicycle Thieves) signaled a shift in attitudes. De Sica’s neorealism was passé, patronizing, and obvious. Antonioni’s modernism was startlingly provocative, unresolved, and new. Red Desert in ’64 would cap off this series of films set in Italy with soon-to-be ex-partner Monica Vitti, and it challenged audiences more than ever. Critics loved it — but how does it stand up today? We talk about it.

Next week: Charulata (1964) by Satyajit Ray

Hosted by Zachary Domes (hetchy on letterboxd) and J Brooks Young (jyoun on letterboxd). Music by hetchy

How does a silly goofy comedy take a young director of minor note and launch him into the upper echelon of auteurs to pay attention to in the 60’s? Before he was the patron saint of film bros, Stanley Kubrick was a low budget film stylist, a hired hand for Kirk Douglas’s Spartacus, and a provocateur still in search of the right buttons to push. We talk about how Lolita and Dr. Strangelove attempt to push the envelope in very different ways, and we answer the age-old question — what’s the deal with Peter Sellers?

Next week: Red Desert (1964) by Michelangelo Antonioni

Hosted by Zachary Domes (hetchy on letterboxd) and J Brooks Young (jyoun on letterboxd). Music by hetchy