Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 28: Tue Jan 28

The Annihilation of Fish (Burnett, 1999): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.15pm

BFI introduction:
In this tender and bittersweet comedy of outsiders, a former housewife and a Jamaican widower, the latter freshly released from a mental institution, strike up an irresistible romance. Directed by one of America’s most revered independent filmmakers, this delicate tale approaches aging, mental illness and race in a poignant and honest way. Unreleased for decades, this 4K restoration finally does justice to the film and the late, great James Earl Jones’ performance.

Here (and above) is an introduction to the film.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 27: Mon Jan 27

Murder by Contract (Lerner, 1958): Regent Street Cinema, 1pm

Chicago Reader review:
This rarely screened 1958 gem about the mind of a contract killer is one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite thrillers, and it’s easy to see why. The film follows an existential hipster (Vince Edwards) who coolly regards his work as a business until he gets thrown by a big-time assignment to rub out a woman about to testify in court. Neither the screenwriter (Ben Simcoe) nor the director (Irving Lerner) ever made it big, but here they achieved something nearly perfect–with a memorable guitar score, a witty feeling for character, dialogue, and narrative ellipsis, and a lean, purposeful style. Lucien Ballard did the black-and-white cinematography.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 26: Sun Jan 26

In The White City (Tanner, 1983): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.35pm

This is a 4K restoration screening and part of the Alfonso Cuáron on Alain Tanner season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
A sailor (Bruno Ganz) abandons his job as a hand on an automated oil tanker to spend a few days exploring the city of Lisbon. Suddenly liberated from purpose, responsibility, and structured time, he finds that the world looks different to him, and slowly he loses himself in its newly opened fissures. What gives this 1983 film its authenticity and powerful moodiness is perhaps the fact that the director, Alain Tanner, has followed the course of his own protagonist, cutting himself off from a planned scenario and allowing the shape of the city to dictate the incidents of his drama. Temperamentally it's like no other Tanner film (at times, it suggests the work of Wim Wenders), but it has all his rigor and visual acuteness. With Teresa Madruga (of Manuel de Oliveira's Francisca).
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 25: Sat Jan 25

White Nights (Visconti, 1957):  BFI Southbank, NFT1, 12pm

This 4K premiere, also screening on January 7th, is part of the Luchino Visconti season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Long dismissed as a footnote to Luchino Visconti’s career, this 1957 film, from the Dostoyevsky story, now seems to be a crucial turning point, the link between Visconti’s early neorealist manner and the obsessive stylization of his late films. Shot on forthrightly false sets entirely within a studio, the film brings a lonely stranger (Marcello Mastroianni, in one of his first important parts) together with a surrealistically detached woman (Maria Schell) for a brief, enigmatic affair. Robert Bresson treated the same material in his Four Nights of a Dreamer; curiously, it became one of Bresson’s most socially oriented films, while this is one of Visconti’s least.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 24: Fri Jan 24

Vanishing Point (Sarafian, 1971): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.25pm

Chicago Reader review:
After driving nonstop from San Francisco to Denver, a silent macho type (Barry Newman) accepts a bet that he can make it back again in 15 hours; a blind DJ named Super Soul (Cleavon Little) cheers him on while the cops doggedly chase him. While Richard Sarafian's direction of this action thriller and drive-in favorite isn't especially distinguished, the script by Cuban author Guillermo Cabrera Infante (writing here under the pseudonym he adopted as a film critic, G. Cain) takes full advantage of the subject's existential and mythical undertones without being pretentious, and you certainly get a run for your money, along with a lot of rock music. With Dean Jagger and Victoria Medlin.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 23: Thu Jan 23

Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922): Castle Cinema, 7.30pm

This is a 16mm screening from the Cine-Real team and is also being shown on January 26th. 

Chicago Reader review:
A masterpiece of the German silent cinema and easily the most effective version ofDracula on record. F.W. Murnau's 1922 film follows the Bram Stoker novel fairly closely, although he neglected to purchase the screen rights—hence, the title change. But the key elements are all Murnau's own: the eerie intrusions of expressionist style on natural settings, the strong sexual subtext, and the daring use of fast-motion and negative photography.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 22: Wed Jan 22

Conversation Piece (Visconti, 1974): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.30pm

This 35mm presentation (introduced by critic Phuong Le), and also screening on January 13th, is part of the Luchino Visconti season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.

Time Out review:
A parable about the approach of death, this centres around a slightly Prospero-like professor (Burt Lancaster incarnating a role similar to the one he played in The Leopard) who finds his carefully nurtured, opulent solitude upset by the eruption into his life of a wealthy woman (Silvana Mangano) and her chaotic jet-set entourage. Helmut Berger, for whom the film on one level seems a valedictory love-song, plays an angel of death figure, to whom a certain mystery attaches. If the dolce vita-style intrusion is given distinctly Jacqueline Susann-like overtones by the rather dissociated dialogue in the English language version, Conversation Piece nevertheless comes across as a visually rich and resonant mystery, far more fluid and sympathetic than Death in Venice.
Verna Glaessner

Here (and above) is the trailer.