Tag Archives: Indicator

Thinking Aloud About Film: Pastor Hall (Roy Boulting, 1940)/ Obsession (Edward Dmytryk, 1949)

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Pastor Hall (Roy Boulting, 1940)/ Obsession (Edward Dmytryk, 1949)

 

Richard I talk about two films screened recently at Cinema Rediscovered in Bristol, that will be touring around art cinemas this Autumn and will also be released through Indicator.

 

PASTOR HALL is an early anti-Nazi film that somehow feels very timely now. A small village in Germany, a happy recognisable place, patriotic, is taken over by a platoon of stormtroopers and suddenly young women are being brutalised, jews have their homes destroyed and even the Pastor is in trouble. Based on a true story about how German pastor Martin Niemöller got sent to Dachau concentration camp for criticising the Nazi Party. In the podcast we discuss how the film raises questions of morality, ethics, collaboration, resistance, how easily it lends itself to current events in the US now, and how much people knew about concentration camps then.

 

OBSESSION is a British noir in which Robert Newton kidnaps his wife’s lover to murder him at a later date and commit the perfect crime. It’s directed by Edward Dmytryk (FAREWELL MY LOVELY, CORNERED, CROSSFIRE) then on the run from the House of Un-American Activities and finding temporary shelter in the UK. We discuss it as a noir, as a British film, and praise the way the film uses the bombed out setting, London in ruins as setting for a life in ruins, an Empire dissolving and Americans walking ‘our’ streets and stealing ‘our’women.

 

Two old films that feel newly relevant and are worth looking forward to.

 

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may be listened to here:

The podcast may also be listened to on: Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

“The Silent Village” which Richard mentions in relation to Pastor Hall is available for free in the UK online  on BFI Player:

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-silent-village-1943-online

Pastor Hall screenedd at Film House in Edinburgh August 9th and 10th as part of Cinema Rediscovered on Tour..

José Arroyo

LA LLORONA (Ramón Peón, 1933)

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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.

José Arroyo