Capital Celluloid 2014 - Day 19: Sun Jan 19

No 1 Petulia (Lester, 1968): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm


This film, one of the best from the Hollywood of the1960s, is part of the Passport to Cinema season. The movie also screens on Monday 20th January when Richard Combs will present an introduction. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
One of the finest films of and about the 60s, Richard Lester's romantic comedy tells the story of the relationship between a recently divorced surgeon (George C. Scott) and an unhappily married San Francisco socialite (Julie Christie) and takes deft, unexpected turns into the tragic and terrifying. Lester's volatile, quick-cut style finds its most expressive application in his description of a world fatally fragmented into rich and poor, past and present, compassion and indifference. Scott has never been more powerful or so subtle: his weary but still hopeful physician is a Shakespearean figure, cloaked in a majestic sadness. But the film belongs to Christie, who earns the Oscar she won for Darling with a plangent portrayal of a woman struggling to transcend her own shallowness. With Richard Chamberlain, Shirley Knight, Arthur Hill, and Joseph Cotten; the excellent screenplay is the work of Lawrence Marcus, and Nicolas Roeg did the cinematography (1968). 105 min.
Dave Kehr

Here is the trailer.

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No2 A Private Function (Mowbray, 1984): Tricycle Theatre, 269 Kilburn High Rd, NW6 7JR, 5pm



Time Out introduction: Over the next four months, the Tricycle in Kilburn will host a series of great British movies accompanied by directors, writers and cast members, and they’re kicking off with this. Both writer Alan Bennett and star Michael Palin will be on hand – alongside director Malcolm Mowbray and fellow actors Jim Carter and Bill Paterson – to introduce this Yorkshire-set tale of post-war pig theft.

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