Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 204: Thu Jul 25

Nathalie Granger (Duras, 1972): ICA Cinema, 8.40pm

This film is part of the excellent Marguerite Duras season at the ICA (full details here) and will also screen on August 9th. The evening will start  with a new restoration of François Barat’s Gaumont-Palace, screening for the first time in the UK.

Chicago Reader review:
A neglected early feature by Marguerite Duras (1972), produced by Luc Moullet, full of poker-faced, absurdist humor and deceptive sound cues. Jeanne Moreau and Lucia Bose sit around in a country house doing very little apart from listening to radio reports about two teenage killers in the neighborhood. Occasionally they’re joined by their two little girls (one of them named Nathalie Granger); more often we’re reminded of them by the offscreen sound of their piano lessons. On two occasions, a very young Gerard Depardieu turns up, trying to sell a washing machine and getting more than he bargains for. It’s hard to describe this beautiful miniature, but somehow it reduces the whole modern world to audiovisual shorthand; Duras’ verbal and visual terseness has seldom been put to better use.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 203: Wed Jul 24

Hardcore (Schrader, 1979): Picturehouse Central, 6.30pm

This film is being screened across Picturehouse cinemas in London. Details here.

New Yorker review:
Paul Schrader’s second feature, “Hardcore,” from 1979, is his version of John Ford’s “The Searchers.” Both movies are dramas of an isolated, stoic, rigidly principled man who takes it upon himself to rescue a young female family member from a way of life—captivity, or something like it—that he deems unfit for her. But Ford’s film, from 1956, is a Western, a philosophical drama set just after the Civil War, in a place and a time far removed from the director’s birth in Maine, in 1894, whereas Schrader’s is contemporary—set in his home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan (where he was born in 1946), and in the religious community of rigorous Calvinists in which he was raised. Built on the very bedrock of Schrader’s being, “Hardcore” is one of the key works of his career, a cinematic declaration of identity and principle that echoes throughout his body of work.
Richard Brody

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 202: Tue Jul 23

Down By Law (Jarmusch, 1986): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm

This film, which also screens on August 8th, is part of the Jim Jarmusch season at the Prince Charles Cinema. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Reissued in a new digital print, Jim Jarmusch’s deliciously deadpan third feature (first released in 1986) looks more than ever like a milestone in American independent cinema. Though not bound to the intellectual angst of Cassavetes, the anti-authoritarian anger of ‘Easy Rider’ or the aloofness of European art cinema (yet clearly influenced by all three), Jarmusch proved DIY film could be heartfelt, charming, wise and silly all at the same time. On a sweaty night in New Orleans, three mismatched oddballs – DJ Zack (Tom Waits), hipster pimp Jack (John Lurie) and stray Italian tourist Roberto (Roberto Benigni) – are banged up for a variety of perceived misdemeanours. Trapped together in a tiny cell, the men must learn to deal with each other’s shortcomings. The claustrophobic setting and semi-improvised tone might suggest something closer to sitcom than cinema (had Jarmusch seen ‘Porridge’?), but Robby Müller’s stately monochrome photography single-handedly lifts it into the realm of Proper Art. It’s a sad and beautiful world indeed.
Tom Huddleston

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 201: Mon Jul 22

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (Pollack, 1969): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.35pm

This film is part of the Discomfort Movies season and is also screening on July 9th.

Chicago Reader review:
The hopelessness of human life as represented by a marathon dance contest in the darkest 30s. The material is simple and irresistible, and Sydney Pollack stages it well (though without transcending the essential superficiality of his talent). Jane Fonda offers the first signs that she inherited something more than her father’s jawline, and Gig Young is reborn as a character actor. With Susannah York, Michael Sarrazin, Red Buttons, Bonnie Bedelia, and Bruce Dern.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.