Trenchcoats in films

Dear Lorraine

The second letter from 'isawherinatrenchcoat':

"... To stick to French titles for a moment: Jane Birkin was famous for quite a while for wearing trenchcoats in movies -- such as SERIEUX ... COMME L'AMOUR (final scenes), but better is CATHERINE ET Cie, in which she plays a girl who overcomes her naivety and puts up a way to combine having sex with making a lot of money and yet not to be a prostitute.

Marthe Keller wears a trenchcoat while playing a Baader-Meinhof type of terrorist in IL FAUT TUER BIRGITT HAAS (the movie is mainly about manipulation and how-far-can-you-go-to-have-your-ideals-realized).

So much for the French titles, for the moment.

From HONG KONG there are THE KILLER, a film by John Woo about gangsters in Hong Kong. The last half hour of it is a shoot-out that would make Bush feel like a schoolboy and in which a young blinded woman wears a trenchcoat while she and her saviour try to stay alive in all this. Better, I think, is Wong Kar-Wai's CHUNKING EXPRESS, a film about a few characters that live sort of isolated in a big city and accidentally meet but then each go their own way again. One of them is a young woman, wanted by the police, wandering around in the metro wearing sunglasses and a trenchcoat (you couldn't do without these in a metro), and also high heels and a blonde wig ...

One of my favourites is THE BERLIN AFFAIR, by Liliana Cavani but English spoken. In this movie a woman (played by Gudrun Landgrebe) falls in love with/is seduced and manipulated by the daughter of the Japanese ambassador, plenty of scenes with Gudrun wearing her beautiful trenchcoat here... The action takes place in Hitler's Third Reich, in which lustful sexual relationships were forbidden.

Mary Crosby wears a trenchcoat in the first part of MIDNIGHT LACE, a film in which a husband tries to make his wife believe that she is mentally ill to get his hands on her considerable bank account. And there is NUMBER ONE FAN with one (just one, unfortunately) scene where a young woman, obsessively in love with an actor, makes her move and after that, nearly rapes him, all this wearing a trenchcoat."

End of the copy. I have more, though not much, and I'll send it to you later. By the way, do you know the movie "EVERYTIME WE SAY GOODBYE"? In this the main characters are played by Tom Hanks and a young Israeli actress -- I forgot her name, but not her face, and not her trenchcoat (final scenes). Delicious!

Till ...

Johan

Trenchcoats in films

Dear Lorraine,

Your readers may be interested in a posting on the Yahoo site 'isawherintrenchcoat' :

"there are also LA MARTINGALE, with Cathérine Spaak wearing a beautiful trench in a few long scenes in the first half of the movie (she and Omar Shariff play a couple that deceive the casinos all over Europe); UNE FLAMME DANS MON COEUR (directed by I think Alain TANNER) with Myriam Mézières; MEURTRIER à DOMICILE where Anne Duperey plays a young police officer investigating a murder on an inhabitant of the appartment building where she herself lives, by, presumably, another inhabitant of the same house; Anne Duperey again in LE DIABLE SUR L'ILE wearing a trenchcoat when she breaks in in the house of a weird doctor to find proof of his suspect practices; Marlène Jobert wears trenchcoats in UNE SALE AFFAIRE (an ordinary housewife is manipulated by the police to catch a gang of hard drug dealers) and FOLLE à TUER (a young au pair is kidnapped together with the spoiled kid she looks after; it looks as if she 'll be blamed if anything happens to the kid: she was a mental patient before).

These are all french titles, right? I'll come up with more next time.

Johan