‘All men are bad’ says a Judge in LE CERCLE ROUGE (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1970), ‘they’re born innocent but are quickly corrupted. In this film, two of the main ones are crooks: Corey (Alain Delon) just released from prison; Vogel (Gian Maria Volonté) recently escaped capture and on the run. The two others are cops: Inspector Mattei (André Bourvil) who’s chasing Vogel; and Jansen (Yves Montand) now an alcoholic and open to a heist. All are lonely: the inspector returning home to his cats, Corey returning from prison to find his girlfriend with an old crony and his apartment full of dust; Jansen alone battling nightmares brought on by alcoholism; Mattei, is in hiding. They get together for a heist at Boucheron on the Place Vendome, a triumph, only to be caught and shot by the Inspector and his men at the end. It’s a beautiful, fatalistic film, the mood constructed by the framing, wide, but sparsely peopled. On this viewing, what I noticed most was sound. It has no extra-diegetic music that I can detect. Most of it is heard in the nightclub scenes. There are a few moments where I’m unsure but I attribute the soft jazz to the car radio. There are entire scenes with the only sound we hear is diegetic and then singled out – brough to the fore singly — for narrative purposes: the sound of footsteps, or doors unlocking. All of this adds to the loneliness and alienation evoked by the imagery. Yet none of this adds up to futility. It’s as if each of the main characters, unafraid of death, find purpose and meaning in doing what they do best, even if it contravenes social norms and ends in the red circle we’re warned off in the opening title. Women in this film signify merely sex and betrayal. This is a marvellous disc, by Studio Canal, showcasing its first restoration, the 140 minute version beautifully shot by the great Henri Decaë, with lots of extras, including an introduction by Ginette Vincendeau.
On a side note, it’s surprising how little Melville appears in film noir festivals considering how he is one of the greatest directors in that particular vernacular.
Two men are in love with the same women but only one is married to her. The trio lose track of time when walking in the countryside and find shelter in a monastery, where Brothers of the Order of Silence assure them they’re safe so long as they don’t harbour ill intent. Since one man is in love with the partner of the other and since she loves him back in spite of the vows that bind her, they’re already off to a bad start. A very beautiful restoration, rich blacks, a gradation of whites, of a prototype of the haunted house film, this one with more religious overtones than most as rationale for the supernatural, and with an understated but nonetheless central misogyny at its heart: the woman brings in evil and potentially death to the house of God. One offshoot of the genre – the haunted house – here meets another – the mummy film – as we’ll find out that these monks who go about their chores at night, spend their days as mummies in coffins. It struck me whilst watching this film how often books and knowledge are posited in film as both the source of evil and the way of over-coming it. A handsome-looking film, well-plotted, with a rich concept and striking imagery, and as one of the end titles reminds us, made entirely in Mexico. Another handsome disk from Indicator with an interesting introduction, rich in context from Abraham Castillo Flores and audio commentary (which I have yet to listen to) from Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.
I loved the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Tate. I have had friends gripe that the exhibition is lacking some of her most famous paintings, which is true, but then it also has some smaller, lesser seen works. Besides, the clue is in the title FRIDA: THE MAKING OF AN ICON, and this the exhibition does superbly. We see her clothes, her jewellery, films of her in her house, how she was painted by her contemporaries, most famously by her husband, Diego Rivera. How and why she was taken up by pop cultures globally. The exhibition ends with these huge glass cases showing the hundreds of books written on her in the past few decades, dolls, merchandising, the posters of films about her. Her connection to liberation struggles, Marxism, Surrealism, feminism, queer cultures, indigenous cultures, Mexicanidad and its connections to broader Latin American cultures etc. It’s a great exhibition. Her painting is central but not the main focus of the exhibition; and how she became an icon and why she remains one is well illustrated and fascinating.
Others have argued that it doesn’t have a main narrative thread, which I also don’t agree with. The exhibition is chronological from ‘construction/ self-construction, the first room, to the Fridamania of the last room. In between we see how the one led to the other though works ‘On the Other Side of the Border’, Neo-Mecicanisms, A Pro-Activist Legacy, etc. Some were bothered by the recurrent mention of ‘gender fluidity,’ finding it too obvious. There’s clearly needed by some people; and also ‘Gendered dialogues’ on her iconicity is a running thread through the exhibition. I would also have liked to have seen more of her most famous works but still appreciated how the exhibition accomplished its own goals. And brilliantly so.
Friends who teach in the areas of Latin American cinema will be interested in LA LLORONA (Ramón Peón, 1933), ostensibly the first horror film made in Mexico in the sound era. It begins with a man who dies in front of a church apparently seeing a ghost and sets up a discussion of superstition vs science. It then cuts to a child’s fourth birthday party where a father tells his son of a curse on the family where the firstborn son gets killed at four years old. This is then explained through a tale where Hernan Cortés betrays the mother of his child, whom he’d seduced but refused to wed, in order to marry a Spanish aristocrat. In response, the woman kills her four-old son, then herself and curses his lineage. So this is a tale of the crazed woman, the vengeful woman. Half-way through the film the story is told again through the tale of La Llorona, this time through an indigenous woman whose Spanish lover betrayed her and she too kills her son and herself and curses the family. But in this indigenous retelling the story also becomes a metaphor for the Spanish conquistadors killing off the indigenous population and the rape of Mexico. La Llorona is Mexico herself. It’s a fascinating film, lots of attempts at camera movement, some of it a bit stodgy, lots of double exposure for the ghost parts, and interesting contrast between imagery of the conquistadors with their fanned collars and Mayan imagery. It’s a very teachable film that should lead to lots of interesting discussion in an excellent disk from Powerhouse with lots of history, and context and an audio-commentary from Stephen Jones and Kim Newman.
I had never heard of POPPERS (José María Castellví, 1984), until I came across it on the marvellous box set of Spanish ‘S’ classified films of the transition, EXORCISMO: DEFYING A DICTATOR AND RAISING HELL IN POST-FRANCO SPAIN. And it’s a discovery: a punk/new wave proto queer film made at the height of the Movida Madrileña. It’s about a punk musician who finds his girlfriend flirting with another guy during one of his sets and, before he knows it, he’s stabbed him. Cut to two years later when he’s mysteriously released from prison. It turns out the father of the boy he killed wants in turn to kill him. But not in any old way, no; he wants to organise a hunt, with a coterie of his most perverse rich industrialist friends as the hunters and with the young punk killer as the hunted. The film does posit a new generation out of control versus the old Francoist guard, steeped in power, privilege, and, in this film at least, perversion. In this type of film in this period, a beautiful woman wearing as little as possible is necessary to ensure financing and distribution. Giannina Facio, who later went on to wed Ridly Scott is that woman here, though she’s of so little interest to the main narrative that she’s dropped in as killer/accomplice, love interest and not given much else to do. Miguel Ortiz, whose first film this is, and who wears less than she does, is the punk and real object of the film’s desire: the narrative starts off with a close-up of his chest. The film is beautifully designed, steeped in queer S/M imagery, with surrealist touches (a horse giving birth in a palace, a church (Madrid’s Almudena Cathedral, before it was finished) decked out with 18th century furniture in which farm animals walk through, a herd of goats barely separated from mad dancers in the nightclub scenes. Castellví was a famous photographer of huge stars (Sara Montiel, Carmen Sevilla, etc) undressed for Interviu magazine as well as – for a while – Julio Iglesia’s personal photographer, so the film looks ravishing. It’s very interesting to consider it next to other queer films of the period such as LAW OF DESIRE (Almodóvar, 1987), which was also designed by Javier Fernández. The title has no bearing on the film except by association. It is the intoxicant most sniffed in gay nightclubs of that period. It’s not a great film, perhaps not even a good one, but few bring up the queer structure of feeling, even with its alibis and delusions, of that particular place and time better. It would make an interesting double-bill with Tony Scott’s THE HUNGER, which visually at least, looks like an influence. Alfredo Mayo, one of the icons of Francoist cinema, is the leader of the hunters.
We’ve tuned out of Marvel on the podcast for a little while, but one of the eternally entertaining superheroes, Spider-Man, reignites our interest with Brand New Day. With Doctor Strange having cast a spell at the end of 2021’s No Way Home to make the entire world forget Peter Parker, for reasons that Doctor Strange presumably cast another spell to make us forget, Peter, newly isolated, returns to fighting street-level crime in New York City while pining for his old relationships and suffering severe headaches. Can he revive his former life? Surely it wouldn’t be a Marvel film if an enormously significant, cliff-hanging event had permanent consequences.
Still, even for those as cynical as it’s possible to be about the MCU, Brand New Day has plenty to recommend it. It aims for thematic depth – though how fully that’s achieved is up for discussion – and is genuinely moving. Indeed, certain moments move the audience to cheer and applaud, which in turn moves Mike to harrumph bitterly. Destin Daniel Cretton, directing his second MCU entry following Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, demonstrates a gift for working with actors and a strong instinct for staging action, although Cineworld does its best to undermine those virtues with its poor projection.
We also return to our discussion of IMAX and The Odyssey, asking whether the frame’s envelopment of the visual field impedes filmmakers’ ability to express through composition and framing, and considering whether there’s something fundamentally anti-democratic about making films whose fullest form can only be experienced at a handful of cinemas around the world.
As ever Richard and I loved attending this year’s edition of Cinema Rediscovered at the Watershed in Bristol. They do so many things for the city and for cinema; bringing in so many venues into the festival; offering young people the opportunities to programme, to get experience with criticism, to learn about Bristol as a cinema city (Mark Fuller’s wonderful walks), familiarise themselves with different histories (Rosie Taylor’s equally wonderful talk on 9.5mm film; the Queen Kelly programme with Pamela Hutchinson’s superb introduction, and in two different venues, so one can explore different cinemas in Bristol) and so much else. In this podcast Richard and I go through the programme day by day, speaking on all the events we attended (everyone will have a slightly different experience of Cinema Rediscovered), praising much (Different Ways of Seeing panel, the Cruising pop-up, many of the individual films, with ANNIE GIVES IT THOSE ONES, a particular highlight for borth Richard and I) and offering some criticisms which we aim to be constructive (is it time to let go of the 70s, rogue or not? Might the comic book adaptation strand have been better shaped and signalled; might connections between films in the programme have been better highlighted). That said, another brilliant year, it’s tenth! Here’s to many more. Congratulations to Mark Cosgrove, Maddie Probst and the dozens of other people who made it all possible.
The sound problem with ‘In The Soup’ mentioned by Richard has been identified and fixed for the rerelease”
Realising his dream of shooting an entire film on 70mm IMAX stock, Christopher Nolan adapts Homer’s ancient Greek poem The Odyssey, a vast mythological epic and one of the foundational works of Western literature. We haven’t seen it in full IMAX but IMAX Digital, the pretender to the IMAX name that nonetheless offers the best screen in Birmingham, which for three hours immerses us in the story of a war hero’s attempt to return home and handle his past.
Other than the film’s tempo and structure, which tell the story swiftly and non-chronologically, but without ever losing us, we don’t agree on much. For José, it’s beautiful to look at; for Mike, the visual pleasures are few and far between. José likes the performances across the board; Mike expresses serious reservations about some of them. We also discuss the disappointment of the final action scene, the extent to which the film treats the Greek gods as real, Zeus’ law and how well the film represents ancient Greek culture and ways of thinking, and whether its explicit contextualisation of the story as a metaphor for PTSD is earned.
My first impressions after seeing THE ODYSSEY for the second time, the first in IMAX 70mm, is that it’s more richly a film about morality for immoral times. The 1.43 IMAX 70mm ratio and the huge screen make it a more intimate epic. One is immersed in these faces, often shot in two-shot, medium close-up, close-up. It’s amazing to see the preponderance of these shots in an epic. One is instantly immersed in these thinking, feeling beings. Focus pull doesn’t seem easy in this format and often the frame goes in and out of focus when in movement, which adds to the lack of clarity in the character’s understanding. There is a lot of shooting through screens, particularly in the scenes with Penelope, which have a similar effect. Mike was telling me the other day that in an interview with cinematographer with Hoyte van Hoytema, he discusses the compositional restrictions of the format, how everything important has to be shown in the centre of the frame, and this viewing experience confirms it. The screen is so huge, and one is so immersed, everything important happens at the centre of the frame. Of course this the begs the question of the experience in digital widescreen IMAX and whether that’s a diminished experience, and if so how.
In this viewing I particularly appreciated Travis Scott as The Bard in the opening; the calm, elegant strength of his bearing and the way he says the opening lines:’ “A face… a fleet… a war… a man… a thought… a trick… a trick to break the walls of Troy… and burn it screaming to the ground!”, and which reinforces my disagreement with those accusing the film of being tokenistic with people of colour (including Wilson).
Maybe because of the format, I also found the film more moving (Leguizamo on Odysseus’ return; the exchange between father and son, coded and clear; the husband’s return, each emotional beat achieved by the actors at their peak; and I liked Tom Holland much more this time around, the callowness, lack of strength, powerlessness, etc being part of the character, though I do think the final exchange in that scene of recognition could have been better handled. But this is quibbling. A serious film about our times, beautiful, delicate, exciting. The image of the cyclops clearly taken from Goya’s Saturn Devouring his son becomes even more potent this time around. Also seeing it at the BFI’s IMAX brought out all the sound work on the film, a work of art on its own, a sharpening of feeling. I think it a better film this second time around and now want to see it once more.
Third time seeing The Odyssey, in yet another format, 70mm. at London’s Picturehouse Central. It becomes clear that the only design proper in relation to composition is in the IMAX 70mm format, the rest is mere cropping, with some of the beauty and story-telling lost in translation to other formats. I still loved seeing it, now with other episodes eliciting emotion, this time, for example, those last lines of the siren scene, ‘What you want most is what you can’t have, and what you can’t have is what you already had and lost’, which seem straight out of a noir. What comes into sharper focus on this third viewing is the ingeniousness of the structure, the telling and re-telling of the Trojan Horse scene, by different people and at different times, its play with time, point-of-view, reliability, and then re-told again to Penelope at the end, just at that moment and related to the scene where Odysseus return Antinous his shame, just as he’s acknowledge, perhaps by confessing to Penelope, unburdened himself, of his own. And doesn’t that whole set up with Penelope, the way, she’s photographed, now convey both cloister and confessional? I find it brilliant. It does now seem that when most people refer to the weakness of the script they’re really saying they don’t like the dialogue, primarily Tom Holand saying Mom and Dad. I’ve noted no references to structure, imagery or sound design when detractors reference a script. Sometimes, as Richard Brody commented recently, the process of translation encompasses translating written words into sounds and images, sometimes images and sounds are part of the script, and the process, perhaps more of realisation in another medium, which I suppose is also a process of translation, if of another type or degree.
Mike and Jen, who I saw it with, responded differently, and to different degrees. They certainly didn’t like it as much as I. Online, one already sees backlashes to the good reviews it’s been getting, the absurd positions attention-seekers often deploy (‘Nolan is the worst director in history!’), well-meaning but half-baked political positionalities (boycott the film because part of it was filmed in Morocco occupied Western Sahara). I found it beautiful, entertaining, a successful attempt to make one of those ancient rune-y texts people go to to seek answers newly relevant (about marriage, father-son relationships, duties and responsibilities, home and exile, the individual vs the community, drugs and trauma, ptsd and the rule of law, etc), and inclusive. The MAGA twits are already in a snit over the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen. There’s been less mention of the wonderful uses of Elliot Page as Sinon. I loved seeing Samantha Morton, Robert Pattinson, magical movie goddesses like Charleze Theron and Zendaya play legendary magical beings, John Leguizamo, and I think Matt Damo is superb. I’m not sure Tom Holland succeeds in conveying that move from callow youth to someone ready to be King, but that and some of the action sequences, particularly the ending one, would be my main quibbles. It’s a film to see on a big screen. I’m booked at the London IMAX. I also want to see it on 35mm at the Warwick Arts Centre. Podcast will follow.
Saw MINIONS AND MONSTERS yesterday and it is a film buff’s delight; Muybridge, Meliês, the Lumières, Harold Lloyd, Chaplin, Keaton, all get referenced; and jokes are made of those references visually and aurally. In fact, the pidgin dialogue (I can pick out bits of Spanish, French, German and Italian) is as witty as the use of music and visuals. It’s like a whole history of cinema ( Citizen Kane, Casablanca, gangster films, monster movies, ad nauseum) is brought out and dusted off with the intent of making the audience laugh. And it succeeds, as much with children as with adults. A delight. I’d be surprised if this wasn’t used in future film courses to illustrate bits of film history and aesthetics.
Part of the Juan Antonio Bardem cycle of films screened at Bologna and available to see through a marvellous Criterion Edition.
An adulterous couple run over a cyclist in a deserted road and run off in fear of their affair being found out. The cyclist dies. An epicene art critic claims to have seen them and starts a blackmail scheme. What are they willing to do to protect their wealth, family name and social standing? What are the effects of murder on an already tainted love? A noir influenced by neo-realism that uses striking compositions and innovative editing to create an atmospheric and scathing social critique, where the circus is rendered equivalent to the Church, tenement subsistence living is contrasted to upper class life where charity fundraisers focus on the festivities rather than the cause. Made at the height of the Franco era. Lucia Bosé post Antonioni and at the height of her fame is the Garboesque enigmatic femme fatale. We discuss all of this and more in the podcast below. It won the International Critics Award in Cannes in 1955.
In his magisterial work on Nicholas Ray, NICHOLAS RAY, AN AMERICAN JOURNEY, surely one of the greatest works on film studies, Bernard Eisenschitz writes that PARTY GIRL (Nicholas Ray, 1958) was met with a ‘unanimously condescending critical reception in the United States’ and that French critics, ‘adopting an extremist stance within AUTEURIST theory, were of the opinion that Ray had here perfected his method. Time and distance permit one to see both points of view and for me now it falls somewhere in between.
Surely, the film’s greatest pleasures are those provided by an auteurist lens: the originality of the CinemaScope compositions, the architectural use of space, the striking and dramatic uses of colour within the colour scheme (from red, to blue, to green); the persistence of themes of alienation – Vicky Gaye (Cyd Charisse) is the Party Girl who sells herself for money; Thomas Farrell (Robert Taylor) is the gangland lawyer who sells his skills to the higher bidder. Their tired worn impassive faces evoke the toil this has taken on them. Ray uses their impassivity to evoke life leaving substance; until they fall in love of course and love re-ignites, redeems and changes. All the compromises of before, both necessary and deadening, can be cast aside…though Ray being Ray, compromise, corruption, sell-outs…well, that’s life’s daily challenges.
One of the fascinating things about this film is how the mise-en-scène embroiders that impassive central duo – and not just with composition, camera, movement and colour – but with other traditions of acting: the ebullient ‘method’ of Lee J. Cobb and Corey Allen, John Ireland’s liveliness – all immensely watchable though only Ireland feels true; and this juxtaposed with much of the rest of the cast, in a polished style that would become standard TV issue. It’s worth noting that Ray is full of praise for Taylor, stating that he worked like ‘a true method actor’. What is evident to me is that Ray uses him most effectively, though whenever he says a line, I can always think of five ways of being more interesting with them, and ten stars who could double that number. The Warner Archive print is gorgeous; the film’s central equivalence between selling sex and selling legal advice is one that stays with me. Ray is not responsible for filming the musical numbers (choreographed and directed unimaginatively by Robert Sidney), a pity, as the film would have been better had they been more coherently, visually and thematically integrated into the rest of the film. The Warner Archive print is gorgeous. The film is set in 30s Chicago though the viewer only knows because they’re told; what they see is pure 50’s.
When I read THE CURSE OF QUEEN KELLY, I wrote to Pam Hutchinson, its author: ‘I found it it so much fun to read — a rarity! And it’s narrative techniques, those one associates with the 19th century novel — old fashioned but that seems radically original in a film book — engaging the reader with the use of ‘you’ — or other forms of direct address ‘we will now turn to,’ having cliff-hangers at the end of chapters… It’s truly brilliant and engaging and knowledgeable. Gives one a sense of the sheer FUN of learning about film history’.
That I enjoyed the book so much was one reason for wanting to do a podcast with Pam on it. The other reason is that Cinema Re-Discovered is hosting two screenings of the ‘Cursed’ film, its UK premiere — 98 years after production formally ended –on Saturday 25 July, 14.05, at the Watershed, Bristol.Followed by another screening the day after,Sunday 26th of July at 13:00 at Curzon Clevedon (which boasts a Christie organ), both screenings hosted/introduced by Pam herself.
I begin the podcast with citing the book’s first paragraph:
‘“A naughty little number”
‘This is a story of how not to make a film. A story about three people who should have known better – people we could dismiss as a spendthrift, a swindler and a sadist, but who are far more interesting than that. They almost made a movie, but succeeded in creating a legend. This is the story of how a 1920s movie star, a businessman, and an artist set out to make an impossible film, the infamous Queen Kelly, of how they hit breaking point and threw it all away. It is also the tale of how that star spend the rest of her life trying to save the trio’s beleaguered infant.’
The podcast then proceeds to discuss that spendthrift/movie star, swindler/businessman, and sadist/ artist, the production of the film and then the various efforts to re-constitute it into the version we will all be able to see at CINEMA RE-DISCOVERED.
A fun and informative podcast that may be listened to here:
Joe (Seth Rogan) is a music teacher who’s long given up on his dream of a music career and is embarrassed to be living in his late parents’ apartment. Angela (Olivia Wilde) suffers from anxiety and is sublimating all her frustrations into home decoration. She’s invited the couple upstairs (Penélope Cruz and Edward Norton) over for dinner, a shock to Joe as the sound of their orgasms keep are preventing him from sleeping. It turns out the couple upstairs are swingers. Will the dinner turn into an orgy? Will Joe and Angela find a way forward in their marriage? A very funny comedy of manners, well-directed by Olivia Wilde. I laughed out loud throughout and kept marvelling at Penélope Cruz who I find one of those stars, like Audrey Hepburn, who makes everything she does interesting, always compelling and rewarding to look at: a star, and luminous with it; on film, a creature of light. Seth Rogan is …well far from that.. but he’s got a warmth and a way of saying a line that makes his character emotionally accessible, legible and funny simultaneously. A different, though no lesser, type of gift, marvellously on display in this very funny film.
Based on a Spanish film, adapted from a play by Cesc Gay, THE PEOPLE UPSTAIRS.
Rashida Jones and Will McCormack are credited with the screenplay.
I’m a big fan of the SUPERGIRL: WOMAN OF TOMORROW graphic novel on which the current SUPERGIRL film is based. I loved the idea of making Supergirl a punky, self-destructive young woman with issues, who heads off to planets with red suns so she can get good and proper drunk; and I think Milly Alcock is excellent. Screenwriter Ana Nogueira has woven in all these proto-feminist elements, the relationship between the super-powered young woman and the young girl out to avenge her family; making some of their biggest adversaries also be powerful women; a sub-theme of young women abducted by macho fascists for child-rearing purposes…..I’m beginning to see why so many young men of a certain type disliked the film. But there is more, more reasonable people may dislike. The director seems tone deaf to the story’s capabilities. A film called SUPERGIRL and Jason Momoa as a who-knows-what drunken semi-God has to rescue HER? Are you kidding? There are too many flashbacks, too much context-telling. But I love Milly Alcok’s bruised, determined, face, fuelled by rebellion. I wish the film had been better. Matthias Schoenaerts is wonderful as the villain (though again the film could have better showcased his performance). David Corenswet, who I love as the most recent Superman, is not only wasted here, but rather diminished, something this director seems to have a knack for.
At the risk of offending all the friends and colleagues who’ve been involved in all the MARILYN events across various institutions in London (BFI, NPG), can someone tell me what the point of it is? Marilyn does not need your help. There was a private, and very popular, exhibition which Adrian and I went to just last year. These events, at this level, involve so much money, organisation, scholarship, resources that could have been focussed on bringing something new to light. There’s something unpleasant about the NATIONAL portrait gallery devoting all those resources and publicity to Marilyn when figures like Deborah Kerr and Jean Simmons risk oblivion. Lastly, it smacks of the very same kind of exploitation that plagued Marilyn all her life. Yes, she’ll bring the punters in. But is that enough for major national institutions to be involved? Shouldn’t they be more daring, more imaginative, more concerned with national histories, education and the public good? The NFT showing Marilyn films is understandable, she is part of national history of filmgoing; the NPG’s involvement, less so. Their combined efforts, bewildering. Nonetheless, I will of course be going.
Had a perfect day yesterday with a triple bill of pre-Coders at the BFI Southbank, SHANGHAI EXPRESS, HOLD YOUR MAN (In 35 mm) and then De Mille’s CLEOPATRA with Claudette Colbert. I’d not seen HOLD YOUR MAN, and it’s barely above an MGM programmer but worth seeing for Gable and Harlow, neither yet quite good but both fizzing and sparkling on their own and with each other and machine-gunning 30s wisecracks – my favourite mode of film speech — at all and sundry. I’d never seen CLEOPATRA on a big screen and it’s sexy and shocking (Colbert’s costumes in Cleopatra’s unfurling onto Ceasar). It’s kitsch of course, and the audience laughed out loud at various moments but it’s gorgeously designed, it moves beautifully, DE Mille has a clear eye for visuals (which are dazzling) and for a narrative that never ceases to move and communicates to all the audience’s instincts (including the basest). What I got from this big screen presentation was the sensuality of fabric (Claudette lounging in feathers and skins that vibrated and seemed alive. Claudette is tremendous, which I did not expect, thinking her too modern. I’ll say nothing about SHANGHAI EXPRESS — what more is there to say about this masterpiece? — except that the audience audibly gasped and swooned at some of Lee Garme’s lighting effects. We also went to see THE ORESTIA at The Bridge, which I loved, and which more on later; and even managed to get home in time to catch the last third of the football and see England win the match.
I’ve been waiting 50 years to see BHOWANI JUNCTION on a big screen, ever since I read Gavin Lambert’s book of interviews with Cukor, where he described how Ava Gardner grew as an actress here, and of a scene where she washed her mouth with gin, in his eyes tragically edited out and a great loss to the film and the prestige Gardner could have garnered by having it seen. . For me, it’s an amazing discovery of gifts I didn’t know Cukor possessed, here for the epic, for making drama out of the composition of hundreds of figures onscreen, in Cinema Scope and Eastman Colour. The colour design is some of the most beautiful, subtle and dramatic I’ve ever seen, and gorgeously filmed by Freddy Young (with Nicholas Roeg contributing). And someone really must do a book about Cukor’s collaborations with Gene Allen and George Hoyningen-Huene: their work here is at least on the level of A STAR IS BORN or HELLER IN PINK TIGHTS. Sublime. And sublime is also the word to use in relation to Gardner, not only astonishingly beautiful, but externalising all the anguish of a split identity, failed searches for identity, an alienation from groups, people, society; a search for an authentic self that fails and fails again. So much of the internal struggles are externalised in many, varied and sometime extreme close-ups so that it comes across as silent movie acting of the highest order. It’s hard not to read this as a dramatization of Cukor’s own sexual identity mapped onto that of this particular Anglo-Indian. Ava Gardner as Victoria Jones, c’est lui; or could be; certainly the character’s questions and struggles, were not unknow to the director, at least in the abstract. The film was ostensibly butchered in the edit reducing it in Cukor’s eyes from a serious work into trite melodrama. There is a sense in which Indian independence is reduced to a kind of imperial romance amidst colonial independence struggles with Gandhi and the Brits as the good guys, the communist as the bad etc. In a wonderful introduction to the film, curator Anumpa Shanker discusses the problem of ‘brown-face’ and some of the film’s politics while praising Gardner, the film’s sweep, and its in dramatization of action. i was surprised to see the film described as British, though it makes sense, particular as a kind of pre-cursor to the ‘run-away’ production. A film to re-discover and discuss in spite of evident problems.
Beautiful landscapes, beautifully filmed, with a vibrant and charismatic Woody Norman at the centre. The film is based on David Vann’s autobiographical novella Sukkwan Island about a divorced father who wants to take his son to a remote cabin in the Finnish fjords to bond with him. The boy chooses not to go. The father commits suicide and the film is a re-imagining by the son, ten years later, of what might have happened had he indeed gone. I’ve rarely seen such poor visual story-telling, with clearly not a though as to how an audience might react to various moments. It is grim, sometimes assaultive, and ultimately dishonest too. Swann Arlaud is not up to the part and merely comes across as self-indulgent, whiny and overly self-involved at the expense of his son’s needs. Not surprised I was the only person viewing it at the ICA yesterday.
Steven Spielberg returns to science fiction with Disclosure Day, an ambitious alien thriller that consciously recalls Close Encounters of the Third Kind, still one of his defining films fifty years on. We marvel at its extraordinary visual storytelling, virtuoso camerawork and sense of cinematic wonder, while asking whether its ideas about conspiracy, religion, the media and empathy are as sophisticated as its technical brilliance. We also revisit the perennial debate between CGI and practical effects, and consider the different worlds in which Disclosure Day and Close Encounters were made and released. Is Spielberg’s enduring belief in communication and human connection still resonant in an age of fractured media and competing truths?
