Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 131: Fri May 10

His Girl Friday (Hawks, 1940): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This classic Howard Hawks movie, which also screens on May 19th and 23rd, is part of the Big Screen Classics season at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Most of what Robert Altman has done with overlapping dialogue was done first by Howard Hawks in this 1940 comedy, without the benefit of Dolby stereo. (The film, in fact, often circulates in extremely poor public-domain prints that smother the glories of Hawks's sound track.) It isn't a matter of speed but of placement—the dialogue almost seems to have levels in space. Hawks's great insight—taking the Hecht-MacArthur Front Page and making the Hildy Johnson character a woman—has been justly celebrated; it deepens the comedy in remarkable ways. Cary Grant's performance is truly virtuoso—stunning technique applied to the most challenging material. With Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy, a genius in his way too.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 130: Thu May 9

In Celebration (Anderson, 1975): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.25pm

This film, which also screens on May 22nd, is part of the Lindsay Anderson season at BFI Southbank. You can find all the details here.

BFI introduction:
Lindsay Anderson’s capacity for drawing out extraordinary performances hits full flight in this tight, tense domestic drama starring Brian Cox, James Bolam and Alan Bates. The powerhouse trio play three successful brothers returning home to celebrate their working-class parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. As the actors hit their stride, it’s not long before old secrets, suppressed bitterness and quiet sadness resurface.

Here (and above) is Alan Bates talking about the making of the film.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 129: Wed May 8

Sudden Fury (Damude, 1975): Cinema Museum, 7.30pm

Cinema Museum introduction:
The Nickel Cinema continues its season of offbeat road film with the lean, mean and rarely seen Canuxploitation thriller Sudden Fury (1975). Psychosis and matricide on the Ontario backwoods! This forgotten grindhouse gem triumphs over its low budget with a tight script and a memorably deranged performance by regional actor Dominic Hogan, building to a breathless crescendo of an ending. You wont see this on Disney Plus!

Here (and above) is the trailer for this road movie season.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 128: Tue May 7

Bonjour Tristesse (Preminger, 1958): Cine Lumiere, 6.30pm

This film also screens on May 5th and 9th. Full details here. I wrote a feature about the film and its star, Jean Seberg, for the Guardian when the movie was screened at the London Film Festival in 2012.

Chicago Reader review:
Jean-Luc Godard conceived Jean Seberg's character in Breathless as an extension of her role in this 1958 Otto Preminger film: the restless teenage daughter of a bored, decaying playboy (David Niven), she tries to undermine what might be her father's last chance for happiness, a romance with an Englishwoman (Deborah Kerr). Arguably, this is Preminger's masterpiece: working with a soapy script by Arthur Laurents (by way of Francoise Sagan's novel), Preminger turns the melodrama into a meditation on motives and their ultimate unknowability. Long takes and balanced 'Scope compositions are used to bind the characters together; Preminger uses the wide screen not to expand the spectacle, but to narrow and intensify the drama. With Mylene Demongeot, Geoffrey Horne, and Juliette Greco; photographed in Technicolor (apart from a black-and-white prologue and epilogue), mainly on the Riviera, by Georges Perinal.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 127: Mon May 6

Paisan (Rossellini, 1946): BFI Soutbank, Studio, 3.20pm

This film, part of the Italian Neorealism season at BFI Southbank, also screens on May 10th, 19th, 20th and 29th. You can find the details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Roberto Rossellini’s six-part film about the liberation of Italy was released in 1946; it confirmed the neorealist style of his Open City, released a year earlier, but also extended that style into melodrama, where many critics did not want to follow. The episodes all seem to have an anecdotal triteness—black soldier befriends orphan boy, prostitute finds redemption, etc—but each acquires a wholly unexpected naturalness and depth of feeling from Rossellini’s refusal to hype the anecdotes with conventional dramatic rhetoric. The concluding episodes—a final skirmish between Germans and partisans in the Po valley—is one of Rossellini’s most sublime accomplishments, a largely wordless sequence that uses shifting focal lengths, drifting camera movements, and natural sounds to create a suspense of almost unbearable intensity and immediacy.
JR Jones

Here (and above) is Martin Scorsese's introduction to the film.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 126: Sun May 5

Tattoo (Brooks, 1981) + The Skin I Live In (Almodovar, 2011): Cinema Museum, 6pm

Cinema Museum introduction:
Lost Reels continues its series of provocative celluloid double bills with two of the most terrifying, horror-infused love stories ever made. Love stories and horror are synonymous with the movies, and Lost Reels’ provocative new double bill presents two of the most unusual – and terrifying – films of passion in cinematic history. First is the virtually forgotten and completely out of circulation, Tattoo (1981) starring Bruce Dern and Maud Adams. Described by Variety as, “your standard boy-meets-girl, boy-kidnaps-girl, boy-tattoos-girl-against-her-will love story” the film caused controversy when first released, gained an ‘X’ certificate in the UK, and is a genuinely bizarre, outrageous cult curio. Second is The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito) (2011), Pedro Almodóvar’s brilliantly subversive foray into provocation and horror starring Antonio Banderas, Elena Anaya, and Jan Cornet. Unique within Almodóvar’s filmography, it’s a film first-time audiences should know as little about as possible while at the same time being prepared for one of the most perverse and unsettling experiences a trip to the cinema can provide.

Here (and above) is the trailer for Tattoo.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 125: Sat May 4

Ossessione (Visconti, 1943): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.15pm

This film, part of the Italian Neorealism season at BFI Southbank, also screens on May 12th. You can find the details here.

Time Out review:
Luchino Visconti's stunning feature debut transposes The Postman Always Rings Twice to the endless, empty lowlands of the Po Delta. There, an itinerant labourer (Massimo Girotti) stumbles into a tatty roadside trattoria and an emotional quagmire. Seduced by Calamai, he disposes of her fat, doltish husband (Juan de Landa), and the familiar Cain litany - lust, greed, murder, recrimination - begins. Ossessione is often described as the harbinger of neo-realism, but the pictorial beauty (and astute use of music, often ironically) are pure Visconti, while the bleak view of sexual passion poaches on authentic noir territory, steeped, as co-scriptwriter Giuseppe De Santis put it, 'in the air of death and sperm'.
Sheila Johnston

Here (and above) is an extract.