Last night I saw The Sicilian Clan, part of SIFF Theater's French Crime Wave series. (My mom got me a series pass, for which I thank her again.) Its best feature: the Ennio Morricone score.

I have a kind of basic distaste for Hollywood caper films of the '60s This was French, but the version we saw wasn't the original French, it was the English-dubbed one released to U.S. theaters in 1960 (earlier than I'd taken it for--I was guessing '68 or '69--but it shouldn't surprise me since the clothing was still very suit-and-dress). It's well made, the acting is fine--but hearing those barking American voices, as if Alain Delon were Lee Marvin, made it seem really boringly American, in the pre-New Hollywood style. (Though I have to say, the dubbing was probably the best I've ever seen, not that this is in itself a recommendation.) Re-reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (I keep almost calling it Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and especially reading Pictures at a Revolution, I realized why I had never been that into movies: most of what my mom watched and hence I grew up on were of that era, the weird everything's-pink part of time when Doris Day ruled. (Rod Smith, weirdly enough, is enthusiastic about Please Don't Eat the Daisies.) This movie didn't help--felt like ticking a box, not experiencing art. (I should use that metric somewhere else.)