This film is part of the Passport to Cinema season. Tonight's screening is introduced by Dominic Power. The film is also being shown on November 27th. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: A scientist (Grant Williams) exposed to radiation grows smaller and
smaller in this faithful 1957 adaptation of a bad Richard Matheson
novel; it's a lot more interesting than its source, thanks to the
special effects and Jack Arnold's taut, no-nonsense direction. The
surreal intensity of outsize objects that loom as the hero shrinks is
handled effectively, and the mystical happy ending is a better payoff
than one would expect of the genre. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This film is screening as part of the Gothic season at BFI Southbank. The film is also being shown on November 18th. All the details are here.
Chicago Reader review:
Atmospheric and underplayed in the tradition of Val Lewton (I Walked With a Zombie, Cat People, The Seventh Victim),
this British horror feature (1961) operates from the premise that
witchcraft survives as an open secret among some women, in both benign
and malevolent forms. A small-town academic (Peter Wyngarde) convinces
his wife (Janet Taylor) to stop casting spells to advance his career; he
doesn't believe in the occult, so he's taken aback by the various
disasters that ensue. Charles Beaumont and Richard Matheson are credited
with the intelligent and efficient script, which adapts Fritz Leiber's
American novel Conjure Wife to an English setting. Director
Sidney Hayes can be needlessly rhetorical at times, relying on a campus
statue of an eagle to create a sense of menace (the UK title was Night of the Eagle), but this is still eerily effective. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This film screens as part of the Iggyfest at the ICA. Here is their introduction:
Dubbed a 'Psychedelic Western' by writer and director Jim Jarmusch, Dead Man
stars Johnny Depp, Billy Bob Thornton, and Iggy playing the part of
Salvatore ‘Sally’ Jenko, a cross-dressing, Bible-reading fur trader.
Shot entirely in black and white, the film includes twisted elements of
the Western genre, and a soundtrack composed by Neil Young.
The screening on 35mm includes an introduction by Paul Trynka, author of the acclaimed biography Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed.
Chicago Reader review: A quantum leap by American independent Jim Jarmusch—a hypnotic and
beautiful black-and-white western (1995). Johnny Depp plays an
accountant from Cleveland named William Blake who travels west with the
promise of a job to the infernal town of Machine, only to be told that
the job's been taken. After killing a man (Gabriel Byrne) in
self-defense and sustaining a mortal bullet wound, Blake is guided
toward death by a Native American outcast named Nobody (Gary Farmer)
while a trio of bounty hunters and various others try to track him down.
This masterpiece is simultaneously a mystical, highly poetic account of
dying; a well-researched appreciation of Native American cultures; a
frightening portrait of modern American violence and capitalist greed
that refuses to traffic in the stylistic alibis of Hollywood; a warm,
hilarious depiction of cross-cultural friendship; and a hallucinatory
trip across the American wilderness. With Billy Bob Thornton, Mili
Avital, John Hurt, and Robert Mitchum (in his last screen performance). Jonathan Rosenbaum Here (and above) is the trailer.
This looks fascinating. Passenger Films present the Roman Polanski classic.
Here is their introduction:We'll be screening Roman Polanski's classicChinatown(1974) - a story of murder, reservoirs, and the birth of Los Angeles - and reframing it with a selection of short films:
The British Public Information FilmDark and Lonely Water(1973), Peter Nestler's innovative early workAm Siel(1962), and Wanuri Kahiu's dazzling Kenyan sci-fi shortPumzi(2009), which imagines society on a desiccated future earth.
Chicago Reader review: A tribute to the detective thriller and all it represented
in terms of notions of heroism and possibilities for action—and an
elaboration of Roman Polanski's black thoughts on the absurdity of it
all. This stylish 1974 whodunit stars Jack Nicholson (never better) and
Faye Dunaway (likewise). A bit abstract, though gorgeously shot (by John
Alonzo) and cleverly plotted (by Robert Towne), Polanski's film
suggests that the rules of the game are written in some strange,
untranslatable language, and that everyone's an alien and, ultimately, a
victim. Don Druker
Seven short movies exploring strange atmospheres, incomplete narratives and haunted other worlds.
Meshes of the Afternoon (Deren, 1943); An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge (Enrico, 1962); On The Edge (Harrington, 1949); Spill (Gussin, 2006); Rabbit's Moon (Anger, 1952); The Hyrcynium Wood (Rivers, 2005) and Striborg: Homosapiens Devoid (Phaedra and Nanna, 2007).
This is part of the Gothic season at BFI Southbank. Here is their introduction: ‘I have always considered movies evil,’ commented the notoriously
occult- influenced filmmaker Kenneth Anger: ‘The day that cinema was
invented was a black day for mankind.’ Featuring Anger’s Rabbit’s Moon,
this ghoulish assortment channels strange atmospheres, incomplete
narratives and haunted other worlds, and includes works by Ben Rivers,
Maya Deren and Tasmanian Black Metal musician Striborg, plus an
incredible adaption of an old, weird tale by Ambrose Bierce. Here, the
shadow sides of consciousness find a place in the bleak and brutal
landscapes of cinema. A sinister, experimental adjunct to the BFI’s Gothic season.
Here (and above) is An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge.
This screening is part of Iain Sinclair's 70x70, a season of 70
films that have appeared in his novels to mark his 70th birthday. The ICA introduction:
A screening of Le Mépris for Iain
Sinclair's 70x70, a season of 70 films that have appeared in his novels
to mark his 70th birthday, followed by a discussion between Sinclair and
writer and film producer Colin MacCabe.
'I
remember seeing this one at the National Film Theatre on the night
before I left London for the Mediterranean island of Gozo. Where I
would correspond with William Burroughs and work on the script that was
never made, The Face on the Fork. Godard’s film played in
every way like a trailer.
Like an art movie shot over the weekend as a
real-estate brochure for a special property, the Villa Malaparte on
Capri. (Another island film, from the series of women arriving,
returning or disappearing: Bardot here, Lea Massari and Monica Vitti in
L’avventura, Magnani in Vulcano, Ingrid Bergman in Stromboli. Capri
also features in Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia, a Godard favourite.) Le Mépris is a promo for Bardot as widescreen topography – while Godard thinks up something for her to do.
If
the 70 films are a novel made from broken parts – word falling, photo
falling – a number of sustaining motifs arrive among these loud, lush
colours. A film of blue and white, sky and stone. The revenant Fritz
Lang, out on the terrace, pontificating on Homer, trying to assert
classical values. Putting The Return of Frank James way behind him. Fold back the darkest of shadows, Berlin, and exile in Hollywood. Problems with Brecht. Le Mépris is also known as Contempt – which suggests the direct contrary of Chris Petit’s Content
Le Mépris
is about discontent: ugly producers, difficult actors, the tyranny of
scripts and stardom. Post-production inserts to fulfil the porn quota.
It’s about making pictures and framing pictures. About rivalry with
Antonioni (like Godard, a tennis player). Compare and contrast two
films taken from Alberto Moravia novels: Contempt and La Notte. In La Notte, Monica Vitti reads Hermann Broch’s The Sleepwalkers. Bardot, under instruction, lies on the bed beside a pile of hardboiled Americans in black-cover translation.' Iain Sinclair
Chicago Reader review: A tense, sensitive, and rigorous film by Jean-Luc Godard, based on Alberto Moravia's novel A Ghost at Noon.
Michel Piccoli stars as a French screenwriter unable to counter the
contempt that his wife (Brigitte Bardot) builds for him as he humbles
himself before a producer (Jack Palance) and a legendary director (Fritz
Lang). Made in 'Scope and color at the behest of producer Joseph
Levine, who expected a big commercial success, this 1963 feature begins
as an unlikely project for Godard but develops (some would say
degenerates) into one of his most archly stylized films. In English and
subtitled (or orally translated) French, German, and Italian.
This film, part of the BFI Gothic season, also screens on November 21st and 24th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: 'The treacherous-mate theme that has been a staple of “women's pictures” since Gaslight
gets its ultimate, most agonizing development in this 1968 story about a
young woman (Mia Farrow) who discovers her husband has sold her body
for use by a witches' coven. The horror is more clinical than
supernatural, as Polanski transforms Ira Levin's story into a metaphor
for the loss of identity induced by pregnancy. A very sophisticated,
very effective piece of work spun from primal images, with an excellent
cast that includes John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Ralph
Bellamy, Maurice Evans, Patsy Kelly, and Elisha Cook Jr. Dave Kehr
