Tag Archives: Robert Hamer

Cinema Ritrovato 2026 Wrap-up

Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , ,

Richard and I get together to chat about our experience of this year’s Cinema Ritrovato. The programming is so vast and diverse that everyone who attends will have a completely different Ritrovato. In this podcast we spend quite a lot of time discussing the strand on Juan Antonio Bardem, Javier’s uncle, one of the key Spanish directors of the Franco era, and a real discovery for Richard. We also touch on the Mitchell Leisen program, concluding that it will invariably raise his standing as a Hollywood director, particularly for those interested in the queer dimension of his work, without quite succeeding in putting him at the level of the very greatest (Lubitsch, Hitchcock, etc). The Stanwyck program demonstrated that the great star could do anything – comedy, drama, westerns; aristocrats and subalterns – much more convincingly than her rivals to the title of classic Hollywood’s greatest star/ actress, Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn. We touch briefly on the Daisuke Ito, Ritwick Ghatak, and Josephine Baker strands but mainly dwell on some of the films shown under the Cinemalibero banner, always one of the highlights of the festival: A SPRING FOR THE THIRSTY (Yuri Ilyenko, 1965/1987), LA DÉRIVE (Paula Delsol, 1964), WEIGHED BUT FOUND WANTING (Lino Brocka, 1974), MUDAR DE VIDA (Paulo Rocha 1966), among others. From other strands we also discuss SUGATA SHANSHIRO (Kurosawa, 1943), THE LONG MEMORY (Robert Hamer, 1953), LA BUGIARDA (Luigi Comencini, 1965). We end with comments on the chairing (applauding the Guy Maddin event), the Piazza Maggiore screenings (NEW YORK, NEW YORK), the amazing tinting on some of the silent masterpieces (WHAT PRICE GLORY). Our one critique is that the festival really has to remind itself that the introductions are for the audience rather than for the presenters. A great year.

The podcast may be listened to below:

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

 

José Arroyo and Richard Layne

 

It Always Rains on Sunday (Robert Hamer, UK 1947)

Uncategorized, , , , ,

it alwasy rains

The thrills and quiet desperation of working class life in Bethnal Green, vividly rendered in this exciting noir. The film doesn’t just tell us a story but evokes the ‘structures of feeling’ of a whole way of life, one that unlike in Ken Loach’s films, recognises poor people’s pleasures: the thrill of illicit sex, of betting and crime, the joy of what can be done with a simple mouth organ; the little treacheries, the lies and power ploys that even nice people engage with to get what they want. The film works with the greys of family life, we get to know what it is to settle but also to love; the reasons why a stepmother might not be very nice to her stepdaughters, why otherwise good people give in to temptations, how a Jewish family with high moral standards resists and accommodates criminality and both suffer and gain from it as a result. Through it all, the tedium of this rainy Sunday in Bethnal Green is lashed through with crime and passion, ending with a marvellous set-piece at the rail-yard. Googie Withers is the personification of surly discontentment as a good-time girl who’s settled for a quiet life with an older man only to have all her old passions explode when her old flame escapes from prison and tries to find shelter in her busy home. She throws enough shade to shroud all of Bethnal Green in a fog of dashed hopes, sexual expectation and seething discontent.Brilliant.

 

José Arroyo