Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 131: Sat May 11

L'Argent (Bresson, 1983): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm
This film, part of the Passport to Cinema season at BFI Southbank, also screens on May 12th and 13th. Here are the details. The screening on Monday 13 May will be introduced by Philip Kemp.

There has been a late change to the BFI programme which has enabled me to slot this late masterpiece by Robert Bresson in. The original entry for today is reproduced below and has been moved to Wednesday May 15 this week in the blog.

Chicago Reader review:
Robert Bresson's 14th film in 40 years, made in 1983. It returns to some of the themes of his earlier work—the notion of stolen grace from Pickpocket, the suppression of scenes in favor of a continuous flow of action from A Man Escaped—but there is also a new passion and electricity in Bresson's minimalist images; it nowhere feels like the work of an 80-year-old man. Among the violent events are a bank robbery, a car chase, a prison insurrection, and a series of brutal murders; the world is ready to explode into chaos, but Bresson retains his contemplative distance, searching for the sense in which this "avalanche of evil" can lead to the ultimate spiritual victory of his protagonist. Bresson, working his sound track as assiduously as his visuals, once again makes us realize how little use most films make of the resources of the cinema. A masterpiece. 
Dave Kehr

Bresson's minimalist trailer.


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Journey to Italy (Rossellini, 1953): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 4.15, 6.30 & 8.45pm
This brilliant film is on an extended run at the BFI until June 6th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
'Roberto Rossellini's finest fiction film and unmistakably one of the great achievements of the art. Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders play a long-married British couple grown restless and uncommunicative. On a trip to Italy to dispose of a piece of property, they find their boredom thrown into relief by the Mediterranean landscape—its vitality (Naples) and its desolation (Pompeii). But suddenly, in one of the moments that only Rossellini can film, something lights inside them, and their love is renewed as a bond of the spirit. A crucial work, truthful and mysterious.'
Dave Kehr

Time Out review:
'Some films have to be seen to be believed: the secret of this most beautiful and magical of films is 'nothing happens'. From the slight tale of a bored English couple holidaying in Italy, Rossellini builds a magnificently passionate story of cruelty and cynicism swirling into a renewal of love: life is so short, we must make the most of it... Rarely has screen chemistry worked so indefinably well; Sanders' suave, caddish businessman superbly complements Bergman's Garbo-like presence and the sensuous locations in which they feel so ill at ease. And though critics may have always praised it as 'one of the most beautiful films ever made', its genuinely romantic tenderness (it ends in 'I love you') mark it as never so unfashionable, never so moving.'
Don McPherson

Here is an extract.