Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 178: Thu Jun 27

TAKE YOU PICK

1 Blood and Roses (Vadim, 1960): The Montpelier 43 Choumert Road, SE15 4AR

This rare screening of Roger Vadim's vampire movie is from the great Days Are Numbers film club. It's free entry and you can read all the details on their Facebook page  here.

Here is their introductionAn all-too rare chance to see this legendary - yet tragically still not available on DVD - vampire classic from the original enfant terrible of modern French film Roger Vadim.

Blood and Roses, like several other bloodsucking classics both before and after, takes its inspiration from Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu’s pre-Dracula novella ‘Carmilla’ and tells the tale of a modern-day European aristocrat haunted by her vampiric ancestor and driven to murder.

An exquisitely beautiful and unforgettably haunting film, this is easily Vadim’s best and deserves to be more widely seen than his infinitely more famous duo of And God Created Woman and Barbarella. That long-awaited DVD release would help, of course, but until then you can’t afford to miss our screening.

The Montpelier can easily be reached via train from Peckham Rye Station. You can catch the new and swanky Overground, as well as trains to and from London Bridge, Victoria, Blackfriars and more.

Here is the trailer.


The Lady from Shanghai (Welles, 1947): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.30pm

This film, screening as part of the Rita Hayworth season at the cinema, also screens on June 29th. Tonight the movie will be introduced by David Benedict. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The weirdest great movie ever made (1948), which is somehow always summed up for me by the image of Glenn Anders cackling "Target practice! Target practice!" with unbalanced, malignant glee. Orson Welles directs and stars as an innocent Irish sailor who's drafted into a bizarre plot involving crippled criminal lawyer Everett Sloane and his icily seductive wife Rita Hayworth. Hayworth tells Welles he "knows nothing about wickedness" and proceeds to teach him, though he's an imperfect student. The film moves between Candide-like farce and a deeply disturbing apprehension of a world in grotesque, irreversible decay—it's the only true film noir comedy. The script, adapted from a novel by Sherwood King, is credited solely to Welles, but it's the work of many hands, including Welles, William Castle, Charles Lederer, and Fletcher Markle.
Dave Kehr

Here is the trailer.

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