Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 119: Wed Apr 30

Beware of a Holy Whore (Fassbinder, 1971): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.30pm

This screening is part of a Reiner Werner Fassbinder season at the Prince Charles. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1971 film about a movie crew trapped in a Spanish seaside hotel, waiting first for the star (Eddie Constantine) to arrive and then for the director (Lou Castel) to find his inspiration. This edgy, violent, impacted movie was based on incidents that occurred during the shooting of Fassbinder’s Whity, and survivors claim that it more or less accurately records the paranoia and desperate needfulness that reigned on Fassbinder’s sets. It was also the last film of his ragged avant-gardist period; with the subsequent Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, he moved into an emulation of a Hollywood director’s distance and control. With Hanna Schygulla, Ulli Lommel, and Magdalena Montezuma.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 118: Tue Apr 29

Le Boucher (Chabrol, 1970): Cine Lumiere, 6.15pm

This film is part of the Claude Chabrol season at Cine Lumiere and also screens on April 26th followed by a discussion with Prof. Antoine de Baecque (author of the biography Chabrol, Stock, 2021)

Time Out review:
Classically simple but relentlessly probing thriller, set in a French village shadowed by the presence of a compulsive killer. Some lovely Hitchcockian games, like the strange ketchup that drips onto a picnic hamburger from a clifftop where the latest victim has been claimed. But also more secretive pointers to social circumstance and the 'exchange of guilt' as Audran's starchy schoolmistress finds herself irresistibly drawn to the ex-army butcher she suspects of being the killer: the fact, for instance, that alongside the killer as he keeps vigil outside the schoolhouse, a war memorial stands sentinel with its reminder of society's dead and maimed. With this film Claude Chabrol came full circle back to his first, echoing not only the minutely detailed provincial landscape of Le Beau Serge but its theme of redemption. The impasse here, a strangely moving tragedy, is that there is no way for the terrified teacher, bred to civilised restraints, to understand that her primeval butcher may have been reclaimed by his love for her.
Tom Milne

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 117: Mon Apr 28

Movie Movie (Donen, 1978): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.50pm

This late Stanley Donen film is part of the 'You Must Remember This presents: The Old Man is Still Alive' season at BFI Southbank. Many great directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age, from the 1930 to ’50s, radically changed course in the later years of their career – a theme that runs through the new season of the podcast You Must Remember This and this BFI season. The men behind undeniable classics like It’s a Wonderful Life, My Fair Lady, Sunset Boulevard, Gigi and Psycho, attempted – or were forced – to engage with massive changes in technology; shifts in attitudes towards race and gender, and a new generation of studio executives and audiences who could be sceptical that an ‘old man’ had anything to offer in a world obsessed with burning down the past and starting fresh. Some railed against the new ‘degenerate’ cinema made by, in Billy Wilder’s phrase, ‘the kids with beards’ and tried to preserve the status quo; others attempted to make films that confronted the generation gap and a transformed society.

This 35mm presentation is also screened on April 20th. Full details of the season can be found here.

Chicago Reader review:
A parody of Old Hollywood conventions that is, for once, clever, insightful, and genuinely funny—thanks, no doubt, to the intelligence and stylistic know-how brought to bear by Stanley Donen, who was there (Singin’ in the Rain). It’s a double feature—a fight picture and a backstage musical—with actors, lines, plot twists, sets, and shots repeated in both films. The screenplay relies too heavily on facile non sequiturs, but Donen has the shape down pat: squared off, symmetrical, and wholly self-contained.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 116: Sun Apr 27

Journey to Italy (Rossellini, 1954): ICA Cinema, 

Chicago Reader review:
'Roberto Rossellini's finest fiction film and unmistakably one of the great achievements of the art. Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders play a long-married British couple grown restless and uncommunicative. On a trip to Italy to dispose of a piece of property, they find their boredom thrown into relief by the Mediterranean landscape—its vitality (Naples) and its desolation (Pompeii). But suddenly, in one of the moments that only Rossellini can film, something lights inside them, and their love is renewed as a bond of the spirit. A crucial work, truthful and mysterious.'
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 115: Sat Apr 26

La Femme Infidele (Chabrol, 1969): Cine Lumiere, 3.45pm

This film, part of the Claude Chabrol season at Cine Lumiere, will be followed by a discussion with Prof. Antoine de Baecque (author of the biography Chabrol, Stock, 2021)

Chicago Reader review:

Claude Chabrol’s richly ironic 1969 melodrama, in which it is shown that nothing revitalizes a dried-up marriage quite like murder. Not the least of the ironies is that the point is made sincerely and responsibly: when the film’s smug, tubby hero kills his wife’s lover, he genuinely becomes a richer, worthier individual. The observation of bourgeois life (as practiced in France, where it was perfected) is so sharp and funny that the film often feels like satire, yet its fundamental seriousness emerges in a magnificent last act, and an unforgettable last shot.

Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 114: Fri Apr 25

Altered States (Russell, 1980): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.05pm

This film is part of the Ken Russell season at the Prince Charles Cinema and is also screened on May 28th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
This Ken Russell film (1980) is just as much a camp joke as Lisztomania or Mahler, but this time nobody’s laughing, perhaps because Paddy Chayefsky’s screenplay provided the first recognizably realistic context for Russell’s obsessions since Women in Love. Chayefsky, who had his name removed from the credits, may have thought it was about the agony and ecstasy of scientific investigation, but in Russell’s hands it becomes another nutball Neoplatonic allegory, riddled with Catholic epiphanies. There isn’t a lucid moment in it (and much of the dialogue is rendered unintelligible by Russell’s subversive direction), but it has dash, style, and good looks, as well as the funniest curtain line since Some Like It Hot.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 113: Thu Apr 24

Turang (Siagain, 1960): Barbican Cinema, 6.30pm

Barbican introduction (screening as part of the Cinema Restored series):
Directed by Bachtiar Siagian, this neorealist gem captures the turbulence and resilience of a community caught in the fight for independence. The story follows Rusli, a wounded freedom fighter who finds sanctuary in a remote, Dutch-occupied village. As he heals under the care of Tipi and her father, the village chief, bonds of loyalty, love, and courage emerge amidst the unrest. A powerful reflection on solidarity and survival, Turang offers a rare cinematic insight into the spirit of a nation striving for liberation. Don't miss this beautifully restored classic, a vital part of Indonesia's film heritage.

Here (and above) is the trailer.