Cult Classic Archives - Page 2 of 2

Spione (1927) | DVD release

Dir.: Fritz Lang; Cast: Fritz Klein-Rogge, Gerda Maurus, Lien Deyers, Willy Fritsch; Germany 1927, 144 min.

SPIONE, whilst directed by Lang, is much more a Thea von Harbou film, co-written by her, based on her novel of the same name. It has long become fashionable to put all the blame for the weaknesses of Lang’s films before his emigration on von Harbour – after all, she stayed in Germany, being a convinced national socialist. But it is not so easy: Kracauer rightfully criticises that “SPIONE could have been a true forerunner of the Hitchcock thrillers if Lang had not fashioned it after the pompous manner of METROPOLIS, with empty sensations taking on the air of substantial revelations.” But to say that its “virtuosity alienated from the content”, and later alleging that Lang only found his true ‘style’ in Hollywood, is simply going too far and forgetting that Lang’s Hollywood B-movies were much leaner because of restricted budgets. But one should not forget that on his return to Germany in 1958, Lang’s last films again could be put into the category of “form above content”; mainly for the reason that he could command a much higher budget – using scripts co-written by von Harbou (who had died in 1954) and himself based on her novels for “Der Tiger von Eschnapur” und “Das Indische Grabmal”.

In many ways SPIONE is a more rational version of Lang’s earlier “Dr. Mabuse” films from 1921/2. The main protagonist, Haghi (Klein-Rogge, who also featured as Mabuse), has a triple existence: he is leader of a powerful spy ring; the (crippled) president of a bank and the circus clown Nero. But whilst Mabuse was driven by lust for power alone, Haghi is much more a protagonist of the “Neue Sachlichkeit” (New Objectivism). He does not want power, he wants to have a better organisation than his opponent, the boss of the state run counter-espionage. Being a pragmatist, he underestimates the power of emotions: Haghi’s agent Sonja (Maurus) falls in love with her opposition agent no. 326 (Fritsch), and after Haghi fails to kill 326 off in a wonderfully staged railway accident, he flees into the circus world, but is even cornered there: he commits suicide on stage, the audience clapping, wildly believing it to be the highlight of his performance.

As usual, in most films from Kracauer’s so-called “Stabilised Period” in German cinema (1924–1929), neutrality is the order of the day. Whilst Mabuse was seen as the enemy, Haghi and his opponents are just competitors – like police and underworld in M (1931). In Lang films of this era, technology is perhaps the most dominant factor. Haghi’s spies use planes, which are much quicker than the trains used by the agents of the state. (A copy of SPIONE was taken by Zeppelin to New York for its US premiere). And all the walls in Haghi’s banking empire have spy-holes, as in Metropolis: so he could spy on his workforce. Spying is the central idea of many Lang films, SPIONE morphing without little transition into MINISTRY OF FEAR sixteen years later. AS

RELEASED AS A DUAL FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD ON 17 NOVEMBER COURTESY OF MASTERS OF CINEMA

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) blu-ray

Dir: Don Siegel | Wri: Daniel Mainwaring | Cast: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter | 90min Sci-Fi/Thriller US

Don Siegel’s sci-fi noir, based on Jack Finney’s novel, is one of the best screen metaphors for collective paranoia in fifties America, and possibly the most glamorous and well-dressed. Shot in pristine black and white, it showcases the creeping undercurrents of fear that permeated the anti-McCarthy era from a melodramatic opening sequence right through to a stunning denouement. Further adaptations followed on, from Philip Kaufman (1978), Abel Ferrara (1993) and Hirschbiegel & McTeigue (2007) but none match the edgy exhilaration of Siegel’s elegant outing.

Dr Miles Bennell investigates alien duplicates that surface to replace their real-life owners in the starchy, middle-class town of Santa Mera, California. The aliens are almost attractive in their surreal perfection, making them seem eerie rather than horrific, and their mysterious arrival feels otherworldly and serene, giving INVASION an unnerving and strangely magical feel. Well-paced and gripping, Siegel’s thriller also serves as a tender love story between Dr Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) and Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) who conform to the traditional macho male and submissive female roles consistent with the era.

An atmosphere of disorientation and fear pervades this cosy bourgeois corner as a gradual dehumanisation creeps into the ordered lives of a trusting close-knit community that gradually morphs into a climate of downright hostility and alienation. The “pod people” look and act the same, but progressively lose their emotional engagement. Crime novelist, Daniel Mainwaring, cleverly scripts the piece to reflect these subtle mood changes from slight cognitive dissonance through to full blown paranoia. Carmen Dragon’s moody score primps moments of romance with shrill melodrama to fabulous effect. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS not only reflects the socio-political zeitgeist of the era, it is a story that feels evermore timely in the middle America of today: When Dr Miles Bennell pleads with the police he could so easily be speaking to audiences here and now. MT.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) – first UK Blu-ray release, out for Halloween on 25 October

Zabriskie Point (1969/70) |IMAGE © WARNER BROS

Dir.: Michelangelo Antonioni; Cast: Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, Rod Taylor: USA 1969/70, 111 min (IMAGE © WARNER BROS)

Zabriskie Point was an unmitigated commercial failure at the box office but has since become somewhat of a cult classic largely due to its atmospheric, otherworldly score by Pink Floyd complimenting ravishing widescreen visuals of Death Valley. Along with Blowup (1966) and The Passenger (1975) it completes a trilogy of English-language films made by Michelangelo Antonioni. Critics were not very kind at the time of the premiere: Pauline Kael wrote: “Antonioni has always been a clumsy director and has never had much luck at solving the mechanical problems of how to get his characters in and out of places”. But when you realise the Americans, as a nation, didn’t like themselves at the time, why should they like foreigners holding up a mirror?

ZABRISKIE POINT is not a masterpiece, but a rather misunderstood film poem that became at important signpost in US counter-culture of the time. Since everyone wanted to see action and revolution, nobody was happy: neither the European art house audience nor the American counter-culture brigade. Strange to think that anybody could expect ‘action’ from Antonioni; and his sort of revolution was mainly an internal process, slow burning and with a lot of self destruction. The only point worth making is that Antonioni himself tried too hard to please the audience – just leave out the fireworks and shoot in black and white and all what would have worked out much better. But then, he could have stayed in Italy. This way, he fell between two stools, but there is still a lot to admire about ZABRISKIE POINT.

The narrative is sparse: Mark (Frechette) is at a student’s meeting in LA “willing to die, but not of boredom”. Later he nearly shoots a police officer during a violent demonstration, steals a small plane, circles in the desert over a Buick, driven by young, naive pot-smoking Daria (Halprin). Later the two meet, make love in the desert, “Zabriskie Point” being the lowest one in the whole of the USA, before Mark paints the plane full of political slogans and psychedelic colours, and on landing is shot dead by the police in LA.
ZABRISKIE POINT is predominantly a road movie, with some Western thrown in. But is not political, let alone revolutionary. Yes, what we see about America is rather ugly and violent, not much change there, but Mark’s actions come from the heart: he wants fun, sex and travel. Sure, the police are in way way, but not as a collective political force.

In the end, ZABRISKIE POINT is just about a man lost in the vastness of LA, needing another point of view (like most of Antonioni’s heroes), finding Daria in a sort of no-mans-land, where happiness can exist, before choosing to go back to the city and death, spurning his second chance. Alfio Contini’s camera paints both the vast city and the valley in the desert as a melancholic death dance. AS/MT

RE-RELEASED FROM 24 OCTOBER AND AVAILABLE ON DCP FOR THE FIRST TIME – IMAGE SUBJECT TO COPYRIGHT OF WARNER BROS ENTERTAINMENT INC.

City Visions – Cult classics in the Metropolis

For the upcoming CITY VISIONS STRAND at the Barbican – Andre Simonoveisz looks at how the social impact of the metropolis is reflected in the cult classics from the roaring twenties to the year 2000.

In the beginning there was the city as a growing, permanently moving, uncontrollable juggernaut: Walter Ruttmann’s BERLIN – SINFONIE EINER GROSSSADT (1927) looks at Berlin for twenty-four hours and finds nothing but badly regulated chaos: everything is in motion, but somehow the humans are not the masters of the action but victims of the industrialisation, which enslaves them. After we see workers in the morning, on their way to the factories – shown like demons with their smoking chimneys – Ruttmann cuts abruptly to a herd of cows. But the film lacks any social commentary: rich people in posh restaurants and hungry children in the poorer districts, signify nothing, and are shown in the same superficial way as the delicate legs of a little girl, and the muscular legs of a cyclist. In the end the film is a victim if its own dogma of showing speed at any cost: the viewer is forced to watch, and has no time for any reflections of his own.

Paris, the city were the seventh Art was born, is naturally the setting for the most emotionally charged movies. Whilst many American productions are set in the city of light, we will concentrate on three Parisian filmmakers, and their view of the city they love –or hate. Eric Rohmer, who lived for decades above the offices of his production company “Films du Losange” (which he founded 50 years ago with Barbet Schroeder) in the fashionable 16th arrondissement, set many of his films in Paris, a very gentle Paris as shown in his debut film Signe du Lion (1962). He continued his view through to his Six Moral Tales, and the last of this series L’amour l’apres-midi: a celebration not only of Paris, but of large cities that allow covert liaisons to be conducted in clandestine corners. When Frederic (Bernhard Verley), a lawyer, meets his girl friend Cloe (Zouzou), his wife Helene (Francoise Verley) is meanwhile expecting their second child in a western suburb of the metropolis. Frederic sings Paris’s praises: “I m part of the great throng of people, leaving the Saint-Lazare Station, getting lost in the many little side streets nearby. I love the metropolis. The provinces and suburbs depress me. And in spite of the chaos and the noise I love being part of the masses. I love these masses like I love the sea, not to go under, loosing myself, but to be lone rider on the waves, seemingly following the rhythm of masses, but only to the point that I can follow my own way if the force of the waves dwindle. Like he sea, the masses thrill me and help me to dream. I have nearly all my ideas of the streets of the city, even the ones connected with my work.”

From his office in the Rue de la Pepiniere (8th arr.), near the Boulevard Haussmann, he often goes shopping, flirting with the beautiful shop assistants; endlessly discussing the colours of a shirt – and making love to Cloe, whilst his wife gives birth to their son. Frederic lives a gentle life and work seems to be only a vehicle for meeting people and having coffee with them in a café round the corner. Rohmer’s Paris does not exist any more, we suspect, that it was mainly part of Rohmer’s imagination – but it was wonderful, nevertheless.

Now we go five years back in time to Jean-Luc Godard’s Two or Three Things I Know About Her (2 or 3 Choses Que Je Sais D’Elle). His anti-consumerist portrait of Paris makes one wonder: did Rohmer and Godard really go to see the same films, never mind writing together for “Cahiers du Cinema”? TWO OR THREE is the antidote to Rohmer’s romantic diary of a man with too much time on his hands – and on top, Godard produced it five years EARLIER. The mind boggles. Paris, by the way, doesn’t get very good grades neither. But one has to know that the “elle” of the title is Paris, undergoing a change for the worse. Rising prices and crass materialism mean that many housewives turn to part-time prostitution, whilst their husbands work in their offices. Needless to say; the husbands hate their jobs and their wives hate being prostitutes and it is all the fault of the giant advertisement boards we can see at length. The narrative follows the housewife Juliette (Marina Vlady), whose child is at nursery, whilst Juliette turns her flat into a part-time brothel. Then she shops for clothing, is accosted by a pimp, who offers her protection for ten percent of her earnings, and in the evening we see her playing happy family. Next we encounter her in a room with another woman, wandering around naked with air flight bags over their heads, to fulfill the sick phantasy of an American called John Bogus. There are off- narration containing agitation and poetry, whilst high-rise buildings rise into the sky, and people are hurrying through the streets. And DOP Raoul Cotard gives the film a Kodachrome-like image, further depicting the alienation of the Parisians, running aimlessly around in the raising tide of consumerism.

Twenty-eight years later, the children of the adult Godard protagonists were most likely languishing with their parents in the cynically called HLM (Habitation à Loyer Modéré) blocks in the newly formed ‘banlieu’ of Paris, were Mathieu Kassovitz’ LA HAINE is set. These bleak high-rise blocks are even worse than the worst of the UK’s so called ‘estates’. Criminality is the norm, particularly among the teenage boys. The film tells the story of three of them: Vinz, a Jew, Hubert, a black boxer and Said, an Arab. They hang out together, terrible bored. They are not ring leaders, but move along the peripherie of the occasional small riots, staying mostly at the Youth centre, waiting for something to happen: their way of life. After an Arab youth is shot, something is going to happen: a major riot. After the school of Vinz’ sister has been burned down, his grandmother warns him “to stay out of it.” On a short trip to Paris, the trio run into trouble with the police. Hubert, being the least violent of the them, draws the attention of the police because of his skin colour. In Mathieu Kossovitz’s 1995 version, Paris has become the citadel of consumerism, Godard warned about. The only difference is that the prostitutes are now real professionals, because the housewives who stay at home can afford to have a good life on one salary – the rest of the undesirables has been “deported” to the banlieu. (London lagging some twenty years behind these developments). The young guys feel rightly that they are now in a different country: banks are the new cathedrals of the city. Shopping malls, full of goods, whose functions they can only guess. The huge advertisement boards have vanished, no need for incitements to buy are needed: shopping is the only game in town. Away from their concrete jungles, the guys react with bewilderment, then, when the police turn on them with hatred. The ending might be predictable, but the film is not: it is about a generation alienated from the society, but it is society itself who has made this choice.

David Lynch had shown in TWIN PEAKS how nightmarish the suburbs can be – but Los Angeles in MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001) is a ‘city of angels of death’, in a cinematographic, absurd way, of course. To ponder the plot would be to miss the point of the film, it is the ultimate “McGuffin” movie, where all clues end in a cul-de-sac. Still, some sort of narrative develops: Betty (Naomi Watts), is a Hitchcock blond, who is staying as a guest in her aunt Ruth’s apartment in, whilst auditioning for a film role. Rita (Laura Elena Harring) is a brunette, type Rosalind Russell, who is about to be murdered in her limousine, but crawls out the wreck at Mulholland Drive and lands up with Betty. The girls now audition together, meet sinister detectives, a rotten corpse and have lots of lesbian sex. All this explains nothing, but that’s not the point. But LA is the real star of this movie, together with the music, and the permanent quotes of Hollywood’s history. LA has become the studio backdrop for all living in this city, were all genres, but particularly thrillers, are permanently played out – for the living, who are cops, detectives –are so simply victims. The lack of narrative in MULHOLLAND DRIVE coincides with the lack of any rationale in this city – when the whole cplace has become a mega studio, so many stories will collide, and nobody will ask for any logic. Lynch’s film is therefore full of dreams, and they are, more often than not, much more realistic than what’s going on with Betty and Rita. And since every landmark in LA has dozens of movie connections, and many more are in the making, the border lines between life, dream and cinema have vanished. You can have a nightmare like Betty and Rita, but you will wake up, telling your friends, that you have had this awful dream/saw this nightmarish film, and life will go on. Most of the time. AS

CITY VISIONS RUNS FROM 25 SEPTEMBER AT THE BARBICAN LONDON EC2

Jim Jarmusch Collection | Blu-ray restoration

Born in 1953 to middle class parents in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, Jim Jarmusch spent his childhood regularly being left in movie theatres to watch matinee double-bills by his mother, a former film critic. In spite of this ploy, his first love was reading, and he majored at Columbia University in English and American Literature in 1975, wanting to become a poet. Instead he went to NY University’s Tisch School of Film, where he met his future partner and co-operator Sara Driver, Tom DiCillio and Spike Lee.

Jarmusch’s graduation film, PERMANENT VACATION (1980) was a great hit in Europe but found no support in his homeland. Starring Christopher Parker as Aloysius Parker, an early slacker who goes by the name of ‘Allie’ –perhaps an abbreviation of ‘Alienated” due to his inability to engage with anybody, he goes through life totally dissociated. This could, in part, be attributed to his mentally ill mother whom he visits in a grubby psychiatric ward in New York. Parker meets the street musician John Lurie, steals a car, and has a meaningful conversation with a popcorn seller who is obsessed by Eskimos. Finally, in autobiographical touch, he sets off for Paris: Jarmusch himself spent his last university year in the French capital. PERMANENT VACATION is without a narrative, it deals with Parker’s encounters with a world he does not understand. Going through life in a slow motion dreamscape, he is, like many Jarmusch heroes, a stranger in this world, and feels comfortable as the permanent outsider.

STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1984) was the first of Jarmusch’ “Triangle-Films”, where eccentric characters feed of each other, taking the narrative not so much forward, but keeping it among themselves. Here, the trio is set in a sort of permanent state of purgatory – rather like a Sartre play, but with much more humour. Willie (John Lurie), is Hungarian born but speaks perfect English, unlike his niece Eva (Esther Balint), who has arrived in New York to be ferried to an aunt in Cleveland by Willie and his friend Eddie (Richard Edson), the latter making his living by playing the horses and cheating at cards. Eva upsets the male comradeship at first, but after she steals food and cigarettes for them, Willie is very much taken by her and buys her a dress. Eva is not impressed: “I think it’s kind of ugly”, she says. After surviving a snow storm, the men deliver Eva to the aunt and Eddie comments on the way back the motto of the film: “It’s kind of funny. You are some place new, and everything looks just the same”. Beguilingly filmed in black and white, the film is composed of single shots each giving way to a black screen.

DOWN BY LAW (1986) is the story of three prison inmates in New Orleans who escape into the swampy Bayou: Roberto (Roberto Benigni), Zack (Tom Watts) and Jack (John Lurie). Roberto is learning English and his hilarious use of the language (via a phrase book), is one of the main attractions of DOWN BY LAW. Zack, a radio DJ, on the run from a miserable relationship and Jack, a pimp equally trying to leave his past behind; may not be the finest of men but Jarmusch gives them every opportunity to find the better part of themselves, in this delightful road movie. But the real star is Robby Müller’s monochrome camera which finds poetic images in this minimalism, driven by interaction rather than narrative. Jarmusch had found his signature style which he would continue to hone until his characters are left bereft of any identity, the minimalism robbing them of attributes; making them pure functionaries of their roles, with the audience finding little to love or hate.

MYSTERY TRAIN (1989) follows a group of disparate characters through an interconnected series of seemingly haphazard events, all linked by a shabby hotel in Memphis. In the first story (“Far from Yokohama”), a pair of Japanese teenagers are on the search for the grails of American pop music, but end up in the Hotel. The second episode (“A Ghost”) features a depressed woman staying in the hotel on the way to the airport, where she will take the coffin with her dead husband back to Italy. The third segment features Steve Buscemi and Joe Strummer as comically inept criminals. Featuring the ghost of Elvis in the middle section, MYSTERY TRAIN is one of Jarmusch’s most innovative aesthetic achievements.

No wonder therefore, that he stayed with this structure for his next outing NIGHT ON EARTH (1991). Five cabbies drive their customers in as many cities around the world: Winona Ryder ferries movie agent Gena Rowland around LA; Armin Müller-Stahl’s passengers are Giancarlo Esposito and Rosie Perezin in NY; Isaach De Bankole takes Beatrice Dalle through Paris; Roberto Benigni shows Paolo Bonacelli Rome and Kaurismaki star Matti Pellonpaa drives his fellow country folks Kari Vaananen, Sakari Kuosmanen and Tomi Slamela in the Finnish capital Helsinki. All the action happens at exactly the same time. Jarmusch captures the glorious night time drives, romantically well-supported by Tom Wait’s songs. The actors are brilliant and Jarmusch again creates his own little universe, separated from everything we might call real. Again, the narratives are just there to make the film hang loosely together.

Robby Müller again shot DEAD MAN (1995) in glorious monochrome, perfectly matched by Neil Young’s soundtrack. Since this Western is Jarmusch’s most narrative-driven film, one understands why he usually chooses different formats. Johnny Depp stars as William Blake, a rather sterile account who travels to a town at the very end of the world in the Wild West, to find a job. After killing a man in self-defence, Christian Bale has to flee, a bounty on his head. He meets an Indian called “Nobody”, who mistakes him for the great English poet. The two of them embark on a journey to find a place in the spiritual world. Haunting, poetic and rather unnerving, DEAD MAN is often too enigmatic for its own good but the atmosphere of permanent death is so overwhelmingly gloomy that the viewer is eventually transported away in dark undercurrent of hopelessness. AS

JIM JARMUSCH’S SIX FIRST FILMS ARE NOW AVAILABLE FULLY RESTORED ON BLU-RAY WITH EXCITING EXTRAS FROM 6TH OCTOBER 2014

Salvatore Giuliano (1962)

Dir.: Francesco Rosi; Cast: Frank Wolff, Salvo Randone, Frederico Zard;

Italy 1962, 123 min.

When the body of the bandit Salvatore Giuliano is found in the Sicilian market town of Castelvetrano (1950) we expect some sort of de-mystification of this legendary figure – a sort of CV with full explanation. But this vivid political masterpiece just offers the bare facts; the action is carried by his friends and enemies, the people of Sicily. In Rosi’s enigmatic treatment Giuliano is just a peripheral figure who appears fleetingly and, for the most part, in disguise. The Mafia, the Police and the Military all had a vital interest in Giuliano’s death – as they had in his murderous career.

After killing a policeman in the late 1930s, Giuliano is forced to flee into the mountains where he lives mainly from organised kidnappings and well executed robberies. After the Allies land in 1943, he supports their campaign and when the war is over, Giuliano supports the Sicialian independence movements of EVIS and MIS despite their low profile in the elections in 1946. The Mafia and local landowners recruited Salvatore to discourage the Popular Front from realising the land reforms they planned. At the Farmers’ May Day meeting of 1947, Giuliano and his men fired into the crowd at Portella della Ginestra, killing eleven, among them women and children. A year later, Salvatore “organised” the election against the Popular Front in Sicily, helping to “return” a two-thirds victory for Christian Democrats and their followers. Afterwards he returned to his usual business of kidnapping and robbery. But he was becoming an embarrassment for the Police and the military, which send 2000 men into the mountains to capture him – in vain. Finally the Police convinced Gaspare Pisciotta, a close ally of Salvatore, to kill him – in return for a pardon Pisciotta never got. He was poisoned 1954 while in jail, having threatened, like Giuliano before him, to reveal the men really responsible for the massacre of Portella della Ginestra.

Unlike Viscont’s colourful Il Gattopardo, which dealt with the Sicilian question at the time of Garibaldi’s unification campaign and produced around the same time as SALVATORE GIULIANO, this is a dark affair of conspiracies, murder and betrayal. Shot in grainy black and white by Gianni De Venanzo (who at the beginning of the 60s was DOP for Antonioni’s trilogy of bourgeois alienation), the factions who direct Giuliano and profit from him are shown as the main protagonists of the tragedy of this rather simple man, who was killed by the very forces he served so well. Therefore, Rosi’s decision to show him as a shadowy figure is the basis of his form of neo-realism. Rosi had worked with Antonioni and Visconti before and developed his own narrative style, away from the central characters of earlier films, who dominated the action, whilst Rosi developed a style away from the idealisation or vilification of characters, in favour of showing the role of protagonists acting for violent interest groups like the Police, the Military or the Mafia, who cooperate to subvert any form of democracy not only in Sicily, but in the whole of Italy. A year later, Rosi would surpass himself with Hands over the City. AS

OUT ON GENERAL RELEASE IN SELECTED CINEMAS FROM 26 September 2014

Life of Crime (2013)

Dir.: Daniel Schlechter

Cast: Jennifer Aniston, Tim Robbins, Isla Fisher, Mos Def (as Yasiin Bey), John Hawkes, Will Forte

USA 2013, 94 min.

Based on the novel The Switch (1967) by Elmore Leonard, LIFE OF CRIME is set in Detroit in 1978, were two small time crooks Ordell (Bey) and Louis (Hawkes) are setting their minds on a million Dollar coup: they kidnap Mickey Dawson (Anniston), wife of the crooked property developer Frank (Robbins). But they have not bargained for Melanie (Fisher), Frank’s girlfriend, who has persuaded him to send his wife the divorce papers, which coincides with her kidnapping. And when Ordell phones Frank at Melanie’s at her place in Florida, Frank seems to be reluctant to come up with the one million Dollar ransom – particularly since Melanie is telling him how much he can save if his wife “disappears” for good.

Meanwhile, Ordell and Louis have trouble on their own: they have incarcerated Mickey in Richard’s flat, but the fat man is a crazed fascist and Hitler fan, who wants to rape Mickey. Louis saves her just in time, and takes her back to her home, where she finds the divorce papers. Meanwhile, Ordell has travelled to Miami, where he meets Melanie, to put the screws on. But after they got to get to know each other better, Melanie tells him that he is a great stud, but a lousy extortionist. She goes with him to Detroit, to take things into her own hands. But Louis and Mickey convince Ordell, that they have taken the wrong “Mrs” Dawson..

Schlechter stays very much with the style of Barry Sonnenfeld’s film of Leonard’s novel of the same name, Get Shorty, from 1995. Apart from the Richard character (who is later shot by the police) nobody is really dangerous, just misguided. Robbins is particularly convincing as the double-crossing husband, he is ice cold when he meets Mickey after her ordeal, just interested in how much the divorce will cost him. Fisher is slightly over the top in her utter superficiality, but Bey and Hawkes are brilliant at the two low-lives, being in over their heads. There is little to chuckle about, because everything is simply too lightweight to make any impact. Whilst everything, including the camera work, is very professional, LIFE OF CRIME feels like one of those slick but slightly anonymous pictures from the nineties. And there’s nothing wrong with that.. AS

OUT ON 5 SEPTEMBER 2014 COURTESY OF CURZON WORLD

Venice Film Festival 2014 – preview

With a focus on World premieres from maverick directors from France, Italy and the USA, this year’s Venice Film Fesitval (27 August until 7th September) may yet prove to be a treasure trove of gems. Stars gracing the Red Carpet at the 71st Edition of the Italian Lido’s most glamorous event will include Ethan Hawk and Al Pacino. Composer, Alexandre Desplat, heads up the Competition jury that includes Tim Roth, Jessica Hausner, Sandy Powell.

The Festival opens on 27th August with BIRDMAN, or the UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) starring Michael Keaton and Ed Norton and closes on 6th September with Ann Hui’s THE GOLDEN ERA, that looks back at Japanese Imperialism in China.

The Competiton line-up at the World’s oldest film festival looks at new work from Abel Ferrara with a biopic on the Italian filmmaker PASOLINI, (his Welcome to New York recently shocked critics at Cannes) Swedish director, Roy Andersson brings his existential film A PIGEON SAT ON BRANCH and Fatih Akin’s THE CUT, starring Tahar Rahim as a father looking for his lost daughters, promising to be a contraversial year with hardly any offerings from Eastern Europe or the Far East . Most noticeably, Venice agent provocateur of the past two festivals, Kim Ki-duk, has been side-barred to Venice Days with his latest outing ONE ON ONE.

Five American films feature in the competition line-up among them: R Bahrani’s subprime mortgage drama 99 HOMES, with Laura Dern and Joshua Oppenheimer’s documentary THE LOOK OF SILENCE, a welcome follow-up to his critically-acclaimed The Act of Killing. Last year David Gordon Green brought Joe to the Lido, this year his film MANGELHORN stars Al Pacino as a small-town Texan locksmith suffering from unrequited love. Ethan Hawke appears in Michael Almereyda’s modern take on Shakespeare’s CYMBELINE.

From France, Benoit Jacquot’s drama THREE HEARTS stars Charlotte Gainsbourg and Catherine Deneuvre. THE PRICE OF GLORY is a seventies-set comedy involving the imaginary theft of Charlie Chaplin’s coffin, starring Peter Coyote. Viggo Mortensen plays a teacher in David Oelhofften’s LOIN DES HOMMES that centres on the French war in Algeria.

From Italy comes Francesco Munzi’s mafia thriller ANIME NERE, Saverio Costanzo’s New York love story HUNGRY HEARTS starring Alba Rohrwacher and Adam Driver and Mario Martone’s historical biography IL GIOVANE FAVOLOSO that tells the fascinating story of the poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi.

Another Turkish director vying for the Golden Lion in this year’s competition is Kaan Mujdeci who makes his debut with SIVAS, that tells the story of an 11-year-old boy and his dog on the steppes. Already we have two contenders for the “Golden Dog” along with Vittorio De Sica’s Neo Realist drama UMBERTO D‘s mutt who appears in the Venice Classics strand this year. Meanwhile British outings are thin on the ground (in the Horizons (Orizzonti) sidebar) and include Duane Hopkins’s social-realist crime thriller BYPASS and Guy Myhill’s Norfold-set debut drama THE GOOB, starring Sienna Guillory and Sean Harris.

Other highlights from the East include Andrei Konchalovskiy’s POSTMAN’S WHITE NIGHTS that depicts an isolated community that live a neolithic lifestyle in contemporary Russia. Iranian director, Rakhshan Bani-Eternad’s TALES, Shanghai director, Xiaoshuai Wang’s thriller RED AMNESIA (Chuang ru zhe) and, finally, not to be missed in the competition line-up is, WWII epic drama FIRES ON THE PLAIN (NOBI) – the original 1959 version involved the starvation and privation of its entire crew and cast and is said to be one of Roman Polanski’s favourite films. Shin’ya Tsukamoto’s remake is one of the most anticipated dramas, starring Riri Funaki (Like Father Like Son) in the lead role and is a fitting tribute to this year’s WWII commemorations.

Debut films competing for the Lion of the Future
“Luigi De Laurentiis” Venice Award for a Debut Film

Kaan MÜJDECI, Sivas (Turkey) (Venezia 71)
Naji ABU NOWAR, Theeb (Jordan/U.A.E./Qatar/United Kingdom) (Orizzonti)
Michele ALHAIQUE, Senza nessuna pietà (Italy) (Orizzonti)
Salome ALEXI, Kreditis limiti (Line of Credit) (Georgia/Germany/France) (Orizzonti)
Veronika FRANZ, Severin FIALA, Ich Seh / Ich Seh (Goodnight Mommy) (Austria) (Orizzonti)
Chaitanya TAMHANE, Court (India) (Orizzonti)

Suha ARRAF, Villa touma (Palestine) (SIC)
Stéphane DEMOUSTIER, Terre battue (40-Love) (France/Belgium) (SIC)
Ivan GERGOLET, Dancing with Maria (Italy/Argentine/Slovenia) (SIC)
Timm KRÖGER, Zerrumpelt Herz (The Council of Birds) (Germany) (SIC)
Hoàng Điệp NGUYỄN, Đập cánh giữa không trung (Flapping in the Middle of Nowhere) (Vietnam/France/Norway/Germany) (SIC)
Vuk RŠUMOVIĆ, Ničije dete (No One’s Child) (Serbia) (SIC)
Yukun XIN, Binguan (The Coffin in the Mountain) (China) (SIC)

Shawn CHRISTENSEN, Before I Disappear (USA/United Kingdom) (Venice Days)
Mario FANFANI, Les nuits d’été (France) (Venice Days)
Peter HOOGENDOORN, Tussen 10 en 12 (Between 10 and 12) (Belgium/France/Holland) (Venice Days)
Guy MYHILL, The Goob (United Kingdom) (Venice Days)
Adityavikram SENGUPTA, Asha Jaoar Majhe (Labour of Love) (India) (Venice Days) ”

THE 71ST INTERNATIONAL VENICE FILM FESTIVAL RUNS FROM 27TH AUGUST UNTIL 6TH SEPTEMBER 2014

To Catch A Thief (1955)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Writer: John Michael Hays

Cast: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jesse Royce Landis, H H Hughson, Charles Vanel, Brigitte Auber

106min Technicolour drama UK RE-RELEASE

In this frothy frolic, Alfred Hitchcock captures the essence of Riviera joie de vivre laced with intrigue and not a drop of blood to be seen. Cary Grant plays retired cat burglar, John Robie, who honed his skills during the French Resistance and now hangs out in a villa on the Côte D’Azur. But when a series of jewellery thefts hits rich heiresses holidaying in this ‘sunny place for shady people’, Robie comes under suspicion and goes undercover to discover the real villain of the piece. His task is complicated by a tricky relationship with a nouveau-riche American widow (Jesse Royce Landis) and her ravishing daughter (Grace Kelly), in Cannes to find a husband. Witty dialogue, sumptuous scenery and costumes to die for it (designed by Edith Head) , To Catch A Thief is the ideal Summer film, showcasing Grant’s suave charm and Kelly’s incandescent beauty to perfection. The only cloud on the horizon was that Grace Kelly would drive along exactly the same road to her death nearly thirty years later, as Princess Grace of Monaco. MT

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ON GENERAL RELEASE FROM 8 AUGUST, COURTESY OF PARK CIRCUS

Scarecrow (1973)

Dir: Jerry Schatzberg | Wri: Garry Michael White | Cast: Gene Hackman, Al Pacino, Dorothy Tristan, Anne Wedgeworth, Richard Lynch, Eileen Brennan, Penelope Allen. Richard Hackman, Al Cingolani | US Drama 112mins”

It’s easy to see why Hackman and Pacino were drawn to this screenplay: it leaves so much scope for the actor to act. Indeed, Hackman cites Scarecrow as his favourite piece of work. The two of them are given full licence to get in some serious character work and went hitchhiking through California in hobo gear to scope out their roles.

The two hander is very much about their interplay, and the chemistry sparkles as this latter day ‘odd-couple’ busk their way across America, via goods trains, casual labour and hitching rides in open trucks.

Vilmos Zsigmond (The Deer Hunter) provides the cinematography, much of it beautiful long lens stuff extracting the max from the fabulous vistas the journeying buddies find themselves oblivious to.

Hackman’s Max is an ex-con hoping to get across to Pittsburgh to pick up a stash he salted away and set up in the carwash trade. Like tumbleweed, he bumps into ex-Sailor Francis (Pacino) on a dusty, windswept California road, waiting patiently for a ride into town. Any town. Sure enough their individual stories soon get spilled as there’s precious little else to do but talk to each other.

Chanelling Five Easy Pieces and Midnight Cowboy, it’s the story of a difficult mission promising nirvana at the rainbow’s end but although the performances are exemplary from two bonafide character actors in the finely observed minutiae of hobo life. There are several great scenes but all this cannot quite compensate for the lack of a plot and distinctly underwhelming ending.

Interestingly, the film did far better abroad than at home, where it tanked at the box office. That said, it won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Best Foreign Film at Bodil and at the prestigious Tokyo Kinema Junpo Awards; foreign audiences more accepting of this unorthodox, meandering approach to storytelling. What plot there is comes in the final third and, without giving anything away, isn’t in keeping with what we’ve already seen.

Already a big star for the likes of The French Connection and The Poseidon Adventure among many others, Hackman was sincerely disappointed by the film’s performance and vowed henceforth to do more commercial fare.

A great many of us look back at the Seventies through rose-tinted specs, but that isn’t to say they didn’t make the odd star-laden misstep, even then. Without Scarecrow’s undeniable star power, it would never have been considered for the award season. Accordingly, there are perhaps other more worthy 35mm sparklers sitting in cold, dark archives. Let’s hope they get an airing too. Worth seeing then, for vistas, scenes and perfs, but by no means a classic. AT

SCARECROW IS now on AMAZON PRIME

It’s A Wonderful Life (1946)

Dir: Frank Capra | Script: Francis Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Frank Capra | Cast: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi, Frank Faylen, Ward Bond, Gloria Grahame, H.B. Warner, Frank Albertson | USA 1946 130mins Comedy Drama

History might argue this was not his finest film, as Capra bestrode the 1930’s like a colossus, previously winning Best Director at the Academy Awards no less than three times, but going away empty handed from this one, despite five nominations. Indeed, it was perceived as something of a flop upon its release, making a loss at the box office and marking the end of an extraordinary run of hit films and indeed an era, for Frank Capra. What however cannot be argued now, is the nascent and evergreen popularity of It’s A Wonderful Life for filmgoers now.

Now an Christmas chestnut, it is only since the early Seventies, when Wonderful Life fell into the public domain, that Capra’s unerring ability to portray emotional truth coupled with his absolute mastery of filmmaking as a craft enabled it at last to finally find its audience.

Quite aside from it being a staple Christmas movie and epitomising all that America stands for, what underlies is a Capra standard through and through containing surprisingly dark undertones for the day: A man George Bailey decides his life isn’t worth living seriously and contemplates suicide but his guardian angel then leads him through what life in his home town of Bedford Falls would have been like if he hadn’t existed. Tying this story in with the concept that any one person can effect change for the better in the face of overwhelming odds, and you have both a Capra classic and the recipe for some serious ‘feelgood’.

In interview, Capra stated that he was against: “mass entertainment, mass production, mass education, mass everything. Especially mass man. I was fighting for, in a sense, the preservation of the liberty of the individual person against the mass.”

Capra was born in Sicily in 1897 and came over to America penniless, in the stinking bowels of a ship at the tender age of six. He worked very hard, under terrible privation for many years; his father dying in a dreadful factory accident when he was just 15. But he also studied hard against the wishes of his parents, it must be said, but made good and then worked as writer, as an editor and even as an extra on many films, before finally getting a go at directing. He described filmmaking as akin to drug addiction; once it was in your bloodstream…that was it.

And a brilliant filmmaker he was. He made some extraordinary documentaries during the war and a string of feature hits, working with the biggest actors of the day, from Frank Sinatra to Clarke Gable, Cary Grant, Barbara Stanwyck and of course the great Jimmy Stewart. But he was also directly responsible for dragging the medium of film forward; just as the silent era was ending, he was changing the way films were conceived and shot, jumping characters in and out of scenes instead of waiting for them to walk in and out of rooms. Of overlapping dialogue to make it feel both more natural, but also picking up the pace of storytelling and again, moving away from the staged play. The Directors Guild of America voted him a lifetime membership in 1941 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1959.

Capra will always have his detractors; those that saw his brand of filmmaking too saccharine, but as he saw it, life was tough and cinema was the perfect place for escaping, if only for a short while. And it was by his focusing on the emotional and moral issues his protagonists faced; conflict between cynicism and the protagonist’s faith or idealism, that has made this film in particular endure for so long with audiences. Well, that and Jimmy Stewart.

In short, be unmoved by this film and there has to be something wrong with you. AT

NOW ON

It Always Rains On Sunday (1947)

Dir: Robert Hamer | Cast: Googie Withers, Sydney Taffer, John McCallum | 92mins UK Thriller

It Always Rains On Sunday is a tale of Post War austerity and a noir thriller rolled into one. And Post War austerity is a phrase that’s bandied about liberally when talking about Britain in the late forties. What’s not often mentioned is the positive cameraderie of that generation and the positive energy tinged with poignancy that the era ushered in. And nowhere was that more in evidence than in London’s East End where on one rainy late winter Sunday in Bethnal Green the search for a runaway convict is underway.

Tommy McCallum’s escape rapidly becomes the talk of the town and it’s possible to identify London locations such as Chalk Farm, with its classic tube station, in the chase to bring this criminal to ground. It all transpires that he is in hiding in the garden of his former girlfriend Rose (Googie Withers), seen in flashback as a bubbly blond, who is now married to an older man with three children from his previous marriage. Over the course of a day we see a slice of social history within this chirpy Cockney corner with a gritty edge and sinister underbelly. MT

NOW ON TALKING PICTURES | Originally headlined a BFI celebration of Ealing studios Ealing: Light & Dark.

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

Dir/Wri Peter Strickland | Cast: Toby Jones, Cosimo Fusco, Antonio Mancino, Tonia Sotiropoulou | 90mins Thriller

It’s 1976, and in a sleazy sound editing studio somewhere in Rome two monstruous egos are working on “The Equestrian Vortex” a cheap and nasty horror flick based on the “Gialli” paperback thrillers of the era. Francesco (Cosimo Fusco) is the mercurial producer and Santini (Antonio Mancino) the womanising director. Frothing with self-importance and seventies machismo, they are arrogant and faintly ridiculous. Then into the mix slips Gilderoy (Toby Jones) a timid English techie all the way from Dorking. Still living with his mother he is remarkable only for his well-honed skills at mixing and manipulating sound on analogue equipment. His unique ability at producing sounds with a variety of fruit and veg that mimic flesh and bone being crushed and severed by unknown forces and supernatural powers is matched only by his meagre financial demands to get the job done. But no one is being paid for this gig and Gilderoy’s blokish modesty is at odds with the Italians’ smouldering sexuality. Their snide banter, jibes and bare-faced chauvinism towards the women “screamers” in the studio creates a palpable ambiance of provocation and some minxy female characters with Bond girl Tonia Sotiropoulou standing out as the sultry and recalcitrant PA.

Gilderoy steadily works his magic on the sound effects but the toxic brew of personalities and claustrophobic interiors start to have a negative impact as he longs for soft memories of home. Losing his grasp on reality, Gilderoy sinks into a morass of auto-suggested horror echoing that of Roman Polanski’s character in “The Tenant”, strangely of the same year. There’s a a lot of early Polanski here: the lighting and sinister shadows, the misery of tortured souls and anxiousness of the outsider. It’s a subtle and finely-tuned performance from Toby Jones and Cosimo Fusco strikes just the right balance between absurdity and condescension. Peter Strickland is a director first feature Katalin Varga won a Silver Bear at Berlin in 2009, his latest, a comedy entitled Flux Gourmet, was back in this year’s Berlinale Encounters strand, but came home empty-handed. MT©

ON ARROW PLAYER

God Bless America (2011) Mubi

Dir: Bobcat Goldthwait | Cast: Joel Murray, Tara Lynne Barr | US Comedy Drama 104’

“My name is Frank. But that’s not important. The important question is “who are you?” America has become a cruel and vicious place. We reward the shallowest, the dumbest, the meanest and the loudest. We no longer have any common sense or decency. No sense of shame. There is no right and wrong. The worst qualities in people are looked up to and celebrated. Lying and spreading fear are fine. As long as you make money doin’ it. We’ve become a nation of slogan-saying, bile-spewing hate-mongers. We’ve lost our kindness. We’ve lost our soul.”

If your idea of hell is X-Factor, inconsiderate, noisy neighbours and the down-spiralling of civilisation as we know it then this film is for you. If you sometimes want to ‘take out’ the entire queue of texting teenagers in Starbucks, or have a pot shot at a pointless, self-seeking celebrity then you’ll cheer out loud for Bobcat Goldthwait’s character Frank (Joel Murray) in his latest black comedy. If not, pass on this one or you are going to get riled or at best wonder what all the fuss is about.

With a wincingly tart screenplay and well-observed storyline God Bless America was real tonic, and arguably the least politically correct film of 2012, but as political correctness is now reaching its zenith a decade later, things have clearly moved on to an era where practically everything is out of bounds. Frank is a mild-mannered decent guy who has reached the end of his marriage and his tether with the neighbours next door. After several dispiriting incidents at home and at work, and a possible terminal illness to deal with, he decides to come out fighting and goes on the rampage with a Colt 45 and a young and spunky accomplice called Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr). This farcical ‘Bonny and Clyde’ duo vow to take down any tedious suspects crossing their path and although they lose steam in the final stages we can’t help having fun on their joyride. MT

NOW SHOWING ON MUBI

Lawrence of Belgravia (2011)

Dir: Paul Kelly | Biopic, UK 90mins

‘Felt’, ‘Denim’ and ‘Go-Kart Mozart’ were British alternative rock bands in the 1980s and Lawrence was their charismatic frontman. On indie labels ‘Felt’ alone released ten albums and ten singles – one for each year of that decade, and it’s difficult not to be caught up in the optimism of this quirky biopic that charts Lawrence’s rise to fame; a fame that never quite happened in the way that he hoped it would. There’s little chance that his dreams of money, mainstream success and ‘never having to ride the tube’ will ever happen but this disappointment seems secondary to Lawrence’s sheer enjoyment of his music.

From the opening titles we are drawn to this rock star manqué with his wry lyrics and air of self-deprecation. Maverick, loner and trailblazer, he admits to putting money before friendship yet there is something undeniably appealing and gentle about Lawrence that makes him likeable just the same. For most of the film he wanders around looking dishevelled with his plastic bags and wistful take on life, and never taking himself too seriously is probably his greatest asset.

Musician turned filmmaker Paul Kelly captures his essence in this idiosyncratic biopic, one of a clutch of documentary London-focused features in a career that started in 2003 with Finisterre – a psychogeographical study about the capital’s effect on the musicians who live there, namely the band members of St Etienne; This is Tomorrow (2008) a tribute to the South Bank’s cultural centre; and Monty the Lamb, a short film about Hendon Football Club narrated by its mascot Monty.

Well-edited footage encorporates witty exchanges and interviews as Lawrence goes about his business promoting the band and visiting various haunts including his childhood home in Birmingham, and Belgravia, where he currently hangs out. Fans will particularly love this oddball documentary. Even for the uninitiated this is a small cinematic gem. ©MT

A BFI SUBSCRIPTION EXCLUSIVE FROM 7 JUNE 2022

Vampyr (1932) 90 Anniversary Blu-ray release

Dir: Carl Theodor Dreyer | Fantasy Horror | 83 mins

Deep, dark and undeniably disturbing Carl Dreyer’s 1932 experimental feature based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s ‘In A Glass Darkly’ was actually financed by the main actor, Baron Gunzberg.

As young traveller Allan Grey, he comes across an old castle in the village of Courtempierre and decides to stay there, entranced by a series of weird and inexplicable events that capture his imagination or is it his imagination?: A grim figure carrying a scythe, a ghastly landlady who appears at nightfall, shadowy figures flitting across walls, revolving sculls and a nightmare where he is buried alive. Events come to a head when the elderly squire of the village voices his fears for the safety of his young daughters and gives him a strange parcel to be opened after his impending death. According to local folklore, souls of the unscrupulous haunt the village as vampires, preying upon young people in their endless thirst for blood.

Dreyer evokes an eerie and supernatural beauty to all this as the camera sweeps gracefully across luminously-lit rooms and chiaroscuro passages in the ancient castle. Curiously disembodied shadows counterbalanced by a soundtrack of strange voices, primal screams and periods of unsettling silence add to the feeling of otherwordliness. To create the curious half-light, filming took place during the early hours of misty dawn with a lens black cloth.

The performances are really strong considering the only professional involved was a household servant. Sybille Schmitz as daughter Leone, gives a bloodcurdling series of expressions when she realises her vampire fate ranging from abject fear and misery through to madness and finally menace (see clip). Grey’s burial scene is also eerily evocative as he looks up through wild and staring eyes as the lid is screwed down on his coffin and a candle is lit on the small window above and he is carried through the streets looking up at the drifting clouds and lacy treescapes on the way to his macabre interment. This is a film that stays to haunt you a long time after the Gothic titles have rolled. MT

90th Anniversary Blu-ray release through www.mastersofcinema.com

The Portuguese Nun (2009) Mubi

Director: Eugene Green | Leonor Baldaque, Adrien Michaux, Beatrix Batarda | 127min

This study of love and faith seen through the eyes of Julie, a French actress visiting Lisbon to shoot a film, is both a tribute to Portuguese cinema and an eulogy to the mist-laden Atlantic port.

Green – who also stars – manages to evoke the melancholy still silence of the city with a deft interweaving of lingering static shots over the Tagus, crumbling facades and empty courtyards, and in the mournful faces of Fado musicians whose sad songs emanate from bars as Julie wanders round exploring. Wishing you were here, or wishing I were there, is very much the message here. Julie has a chance meeting with a mysterious aristocrat who takes her out to dinner then disappears, and then with another French actor who plays her lover for a one-night stand. But her life will change forever when she comes across a gentle orphan boy called Vasco, and a Portuguese nun whose subtle appeal is quietly mesmerising MT©

NOW ON MUBI

Bluebeard (2009)

Director: Catherine Breillat | Starring Dominique Thomas, Lola Creton, Daphne Baiwar | France 2009/80mins

Catherine Breillat’s latest film isn’t for everyone. Some may see this over-stylized and stagey costume drama of medieval misogyny as a poke in the eye for female supremacy in the boudoir. Others will find it about as exciting as an evening out with the man himself. Either way it’s certainly not the spine-chilling tale that springs to mind when Bluebeard is mentioned. You could even call it weird.

The story comes in two layers. The first features two little sisters and is set in an attic. The youngest and funniest one (Marilou Lopes-Benites) loves frightening the older by reading the story of Bluebeard with her own cheeky interpretations of marriage and love thrown in. This is actually very appealing. As she does so a series of set pieces filmed in 16-century garb plays out featuring Lola Creton as Marie-Christine, better known as Bluebeard’s last wife, or the one that got away and her recently bereaved mother and older sister. This strand is not dissimilar in setting to one of those medieval banquets with sixteen removes you may have once attended where your mother run you up an outfit in green chintz brocade, and a ‘town cryer’ kept saying Oye Oye and everyone looked slightly ridiculous.

Here Marie-Christine skilfully deals with the death of her father, impending family poverty and the realization that local bore and wife-killer Bluebeard might not be such a bad catch after all while she thinks about Plan B and saves the family from financial ruin.

After becoming his chatelaine, she niftily manages to avoid his bedchamber by claiming to be far too young for that that sort of thing but eventually has to call for backup to avoid the evil man’s dagger and her demise. BLUEBEARD is hardly scary, but it’s delicately-performed by Lola Creton and beautifully captured in a stylistic classical aesthetic. According to Breillat, we absolve ourselves of all the fears of real life by confronting them head-on in fiction. ©

NOW AVAILABLE ON DVD AT AMAZON.CO.UK

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2012)

Dir: David Gelb | Cast: Jiro One, Yoshikazu One, Masuhiro Yamamoto, Daisuke Nakazawa, Hachiro Mizutani, Hiroki Fujita, Toichiro Iida, Akihiro Oyama, Shizuo Oyama | Doc 82′

For any self-professed sushi nut, this film is a must see. Jiro One is a legend in his own lifetime; a man devoted to the creation and serving of sushi for 75 years from the basement of a faceless Tokyo office building in a restaurant that only seats ten. The sushi is served up in specific order and you are expected to demolish it piece by piece, under his rather intimidating gaze in about 15minutes flat, shelling-out something like £300 for the privilege. That makes this one of the most expensive restaurants in the world.

What is remarkable though is the skill, dedication and thought that has gone into a meal. And the rest of the world has recognised this: Jiro’s tiny, unassuming Sukiyabashi Jiro sushi bar has garnered all three Michelin Stars and, as the makers of this film attest, global recognition.

Jiro One is one of the old school; a believer in hard work, total commitment and dedication to a chosen field, whatever it may be. To serve an apprenticeship under Jiro is to spend ten years of dedicated to the most gruelling, repetitive, thankless work in the kitchen, learning the trade. And all this against the prevailing tide of today’s theme of growing fat doing the minimum with little application or indeed mastery in any field, all the while aspiring to coin maximum cash.

The title alludes to Jiro as a young man dreaming of making not just sushi but the best sushi. This film illustrates how Jiro never believes he has arrived, and that there is always room for improvement be it in the choice of the fish, the preparation of the rice, or the serving of the sushi. In doing so it opens out the film as an allegory or lesson in life and how best to live it. But also demonstrates how hard it must be for his sons to live under the shadow of a man who has truly reached the pinnacle of his profession, even if he himself doesn’t see it as so.

Food and film often make for successful lovers and any gourmand who truly appreciates the subtleties and depth of haute cuisine will relish this one. Make sure to eat beforehand or you will find yourself scrambling to a sushi bar straight after, only to feel all but affronted that it isn’t Jiro’s hand that serves up a concerto in seafood for, hereafter, nothing else will do. AT

NOW ON MUBI

The Absence of Love | Michelangelo Antonioni Retro

Humans are intruders in the film world of Michelangelo Antonioni: they destroy the harmony of nature and society. Only in a few cases, when they act in solidarity with others, do they have a chance to become part of something whole.

Antonioni grew up in Ferrara in the Po Valley not far from the setting of his documentary short GENTE DEL PO (1943-47). Visconti was in the throws of filming Ossessione nearby. Despite its neo-realistic moorings, this is a personal statement: an effort to interpret the world via the moving image, rather than the other way round. Antonioni’s realism is not to show anything natural, humane or dramatic, and particularly not anything like an idea, a thesis. Memory alone forms the model for his art. Memory in the form of images: photos, paintings, writing – they form the basis of his later work – an adventure, where the audience peels off the many layers, like off an onion: a painting, more than once painted over.

Antonioni was already 38 when he made his drama debut with Cronaca Du Un Amore (1950) Superficially a film noir, in the mood of Visconti’s first opus Ossessione, this expressed the overriding existential angst, loneliness and alienation that would permeate his work. Paola and Guido grew up in the same neighbourhood in Ferrara, and want to do away with Paola’s rich husband Enrico Fontana. This is no crime of passion, because Paola and Guido are unable to love, or even imagine a life together – but they both stand to profit from Fontana’s death. And the city of Milan is much more than a background: life here is a reflection of the state of mind of the conspirators: like a drug, the street life full of chaos, the neurotic atmosphere in the cafes. All this is unreal, jungle like: modern urbanity as hell, a central topic of Antonioni’s opus. And he observes his main protagonists often, when they are alone, not only in dramatic scenes. This way, he creates an elliptical structure, with two combustion points: action and echo. As Wenders said: “The strength of the American Cinema is a forward focus, European cinema paints ellipses”.

I VINTI (1952) is set in three different countries (Italy, France and the UK), and tells the stories of youthful perpetrators, who commit their crimes not out of material necessity, but just for fun. Even though the crimes are central, Antonioni is not much interested in the structure of the genre. The police work is secondary, as are the criminals themselves: Antonioni is fascinated with the daily life of his protagonists, the crimes are more and more forgotten, the investigations peter out – shades of L’ Avventura and Blow Up.

In LE AMICHE (1955) Antonioni finds the structure for his features, seemingly overpopulated with couples and friends – who are all busy, but play a secondary role to their environment, in this case Turin. Clelia who comes to Turin, to open a designer shop for clothes, falls in with four other young women, all of them much wealthier than she is. Their changing couplings with men end tragically. Set between Clelia’s arrival in Turin and her leaving for Rome, LE AMICHE is a kaleidoscope of human frailty, in which the audience is waiting for something to happen, some sort of story of boy meets girl story, but when something like it really happens, it is so secondary, so much overlaid by all the small details we have learned before, that we are as dislocated as the characters: we flounder because Antonioni does not tell a story with a beginning and an end (however much we pretend), but he tells us, that the world can exist without stories. Because there is so much more to see in the city of Turin, as there will be in Rome: Clelia is only the messenger, send out by Antonioni to be a traveller, not a story teller. In so far, she is his archetypal heroine.

Aldo, the central protagonist in IL GRIDO (1956/7) is the most untypical of all Antonioni heroes: he has been expelled from paradise, after his wife left him. His travels are romantic, because he does not let himself go, but sticks to his environment, travelling with his daughter in the Po delta. Whilst looking back on his village, towered over by the factory chimney, it is his past history, which forces him to leave. He becomes more and more marginalised: an outsider, even when living near the river in a derelict hut, he becomes the victim of the environment, of the background of landscape, seasons and the history of his live, spent all here. El Grido ends tragically, because Aldo (unlike most other Antonioni heroes) insists on keeping to his past: he does not want to cross the bridges, which are metaphorically there to be crossed. And Aldo’s titular outcry becomes a good-bye, even though he is back home. Il Grido is also Antonioni’s return to neo-realism, another contradiction, because he never really was part of it.

L’AVVENTURA (1960) has four main protagonists, three of them humans, but they are dwarfed by Lisca Bianca, a rocky island in the Mediterranean See. A group of wealthy Italians visit the island but when they want to leave, the main character Anna, is missing. Her boyfriend Sandro starts the search, but is soon more interested in Claudia, Anna’s best friend. When they all leave, without having found Anna, Claudia and Sandro are ready to start a new life together. Antonioni is often compared with Brecht. Like the German playwright, he refuses the dramatization of the narrative, because it is a remnant of the bourgeois theatre. Analogue to this comparison, L’Avventura is epic cinema. Brecht’s plays are often transparent, because the actors do not identify with their roles. The audience is not drawn into the play, but left outside to observe. The same goes for Antonioni, because, as Doniol-Valcroze wrote “to direct is to organise time and environment”. Antonioni genius is, that he first introduces time scale and environment, before he develops the narrative, via the actions and words of the protagonists. The breakers on the island, are the real music of the feature. The fragility of the emotions manifests it selves mainly in the way the protagonists talk – but mostly they are on cross purpose. Yet the overall impression is not that of a modern film with sound, but of a very sad silent movie. At Cannes in 1960, the feature was mercilessly jeered at the premiere, but won the Grand Prix nevertheless – a rarity of the jury being ahead of the public.

In LA NOTTE (1960) we observe twenty-four hours in the live of the writer Giovanni and his wife Lydia. Whilst their friend dies in a hospital, they have to accept that their love has been dead for a while. Antonioni uses his characters like figures on a chess board. They are real, but at the same time ghosts. He does not tell their story, but follows their movements from one place to an another. There is no interconnection between them and their environment. They have lost the feeling for themselves, others and the outside. Their world is cold and threatening. Antonioni offers no irony or pity. He is the surgeon at the operating table, and his view is that of the camera: mostly skewed over-head shots. It is impossible to love La Notte. Whilst Antonioni is the first director of the modern era, he is also its most vicious critic.

When L’ECLISSE (1962) starts in the morning, it feels somehow like a continuation of La Notte. Before Vittoria (Vitti) ends her relationship with Francisco, she arranges a new Stilleben behind an empty picture frame. Next stop is Piero (Delon), a stockbroker. Vittoria is like Wenders’ Alice in the City: a child in a world of grown ups, repelled by their emotional coldness. Piero, very much a child of this world, is all calculations and superficiality, his friend’s remark “long live the façade” sums it all up. Long panorama shots show very little empathy with the eternal city, particularly the shots without much noise (music only sets in after the half-way point of the film), are representative of a ghost town populated by little worker ants, dwarfed by the huge buildings. The couple’s last rendezvous is symbolic for everything Antonioni ever wanted to show us: none of the two shows up, we watch the space where they were supposed to meet for several minutes. L’Eclisse will lead without much transition to Deserto Rosso, where Monica Vitti is Guiliana, wandering the streets, getting lost in a fog on a very unlovable planet.

DESERTO ROSSO (1963/4)

Guiliana: “I dreamt, I was laying in my bed, and the bed was moving. And when I looked, I saw that I was sinking in quicksand”. Guiliana’s world is threatening, everything is monstrous, the buildings of an industrious estate are unbelievable tall. The machines in the factories, the steel island in the sea, and the silhouettes of the people surrounding her are enclosing around her. We travel with her from this industrial quarter of Ravenna to Ferrara and Medicina. She is never still, only at the end she is standing still in front of a factory gate. In Deserto Rosso objects become blurred, they seem to be alive, making their way independently. The camera never leaves Guiliana during her nightmare. We see the world through Guiliana’s eyes: “It is, as if I had tears in my eyes”. In the room of his son she sees his toy robot, his eyes alight. She switches it off – but this the only activity she is allowed to master successfully. There is always fog between her and everybody else, even her lover Corrado is “on the other side”. And the fable, which she tells her son Vittorio, who cannot move, before he is suddenly running through the room, lacks anything metaphysical. Roland Barthes called Antonioni “the artist of the body, the opposite of others, who are the priests of art”. For once, Antonioni is one with the body of his protagonist: Guiliana’s body is not one of the many others, she will never get lost.

BLOW UP (1966)

A feature one should only see once – never again. Otherwise one will suffer the same as Thomas photos: Blow Up. Antonioni to Moravia: “All my films before are works of intuition, this one is a work of the head.” Everything is calculated, the incidents are planned, the story is driven by an elaborate design. The drama, which is anything but, is a drama perfectly executed. Herbie Hancock, the Yardbirds, the beat clubs, the marihuana parties, Big Ben and the sports car with radiophone, the Arabs and the nuns, the beatniks on the streets: everything is like swinging London in the 1960ies: a head idea. Blow Up is Antonioni’s most successful feature at the box office – and not one of his best.

ZABRISKIE POINT (1969/70)

Given Cart Blanche by MGM, Antonioni produced a feature in praise of the American Cinema. Zabriskie Point is the birth of the American Cinema from the valley of the Death. Antonioni has to repeat this dream for himself. But he had to invent his own Mount Rushmore, his Monument Valley, to make a film about this country in his own image. A car and a plane meet in the desert. The woman driver and the pilot recognise each other immediately. The copulation in the sand is metaphor for the simultainacy of the act, when longing and fulfilment, greed and satisfaction are superimposed. Then the unbelievable total destruction: the end of civilisation; Antonioni synchronises both events, a miracle of topography and choreography. This is Antonioni’s dream: the birth of a poem.

Both, the TV feature MISTERO Di OBERWLAD (1979) nor IDENTIFICAZIONE DI UNA DONNA (1982) have in any way added something to Antonioni’s masterful oeuvre. The same can be said of his work after he suffered a massive stroke in 1985, leaving him without speech partly paralysation: BEYOND THE CLOUDS (1995), a collaboration with Wim Wenders, and Antonioni’s segment of EROS (2004). AS

A RETROSPECTIVE TAKING PLACE AT THE BFI EARLY IN 2019

Archive for the ‘Cult Classic’ Category

Humans are intruders in the film world of Michelangelo Antonioni: they destroy the harmony of nature and society. Only in a few cases, when they act in solidarity with others, do they have a chance to become part of something whole.