Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 207: Sat Aug 4

Velvet Goldmine (Haynes, 1998): Prince Charles Cinema, 5.45pm


This 35mm screening is part of the Cinematic Jukebox strand at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find all the details here.

Time Out review:
This witty, evocative re-creation of the heady days of glam rock is loosely structured on the lines of a Citizen Kane-style flashback narrative, with a journalist (Christian Bale) sent back from New York to Britain to investigate, ten years on, the disappearance of Bowie-like star Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) after an on-stage assassination is revealed to have been a publicity stunt. Partly a film à clef which retranslates real-life events and personalities into a dazzling fiction, partly an unsentimental celebration of an era of (potential) pan-sexual liberation (complete with unexpected but fitting tribute to Oscar Wilde), and partly a typically Todd Haynesian study of transgression, identity and the gulf between private and public image, it's superbly shot, edited and performed, and exhilaratingly inventive throughout. 
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) are the opening credits.

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