Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 108: Sat Apr 18

Secret Ceremony (Losey, 1968): Nickel Cinema, 3.45pm

Time Out review:
It's difficult to know why Robert Mitchum, slouching through a few scenes in the ill-fitting disguise of an ageing, bearded academic with little girls on his mind, should have accepted this part. Elizabeth  Taylor, however, is very fine as a tacky madonna: a devout prostitute who's offered a respite from the streets when a regressive child-woman called Cenci (Mia Farrow in long wig and Pollyanna tights) adopts her as substitute mother and moves her into a mansion of art-déco splendour. No wonder then that Taylor/Laura should fervently pray 'Oh Lord, let no one snatch me from this heaven'; and as the strange 'secret ceremonies' begin, her treatment of Cenci displays the same mix of greed and generosity. Losey's mannered direction, somehow entirely appropriate, makes for a memorable film.
Jane Clarke

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 107: Fri Apr 17

Psychomania (Sharp, 1973): Nickel Cinema, 3.30pm

Time Out review: The first British Hell's Angels pic, and just about the blackest comedy to come out of this country in years. It features a bike gang called The Living Dead, whose leader (Nicky Henson) discovers the art of becoming just that. So he kills himself and is buried along with his bike, until he guns the engine and shoots back up through the turf; two victims later, he drives to a pub and calls his mother (Beryl Reid), a devil worshipper ensconced in her stately old dark house with George Sanders as her sinisterly imperturbable butler, to say he's back. This level of absurdity could be feeble, but director Don Sharp knows how to shoot it straight, without any directorial elbows-in-the-ribs. Consequently, much of the humour really works, even though the gang as individuals are strictly plastic. David Pirie

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 106: Thu Apr 16

Les Abysses (Papatakis, 1963): Garden Cinema, 8.15pm

This screening will be introduced by freelance writer and programmer Savina Petkova. It will feature English subtitles. 

Synopsis:

Papatakis’s debut unfolds in a country home where two domestic servants are cruelly exploited by the family they work for. When their abusive employers push them too far, it provokes a shocking and escallating rebellion. This allegorical portrait of the Algerian resistance was inspired by the real-life story of the Papin sisters, two maids who brutally murdered their employers in 1930s France - also the basis for Jean Genet’s influential 1947 play The Maids and Claude Chabrol’s 1995 psychological thriller La Cérémonie.

Curator’s note:

Boycotted by the selection committee of the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, Les Abysses was publicly defended by Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, André Breton, and Jean Genet. The case of the two sisters has long been cited in French left-wing intellectual circles as a perfect example of working-class struggle. In Papatakis' view, the sisters' violence stemmed directly from their living conditions - the humiliations they endured and the exploitation they suffered at the hands of their employers.

The film exemplifies Papatakis' hyper-stylized, expressionistic approach, escalating the domestic conflict into paroxysmic class warfare. Like ancient Greek tragedies where masked actors embodied archetypes rather than nuanced psychological portraits, the performances are deliberately exaggerated - raw and symbolic rather than naturalistic.

Here (and above) is an interview with the director at the Cannes film festival in 1963

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 105: Wed Apr 15

Pacific Heights (Schlesinger, 1990): Nickel Cinema, 6pm

This film is creening as part of 'The Consummate Professional: John Schlesinger at 100' season. You can find all the details here.

Time Out review:
Carter Hayes (Michael Keaton) is not the ideal tenant: he trifles with razor blades, cultivates cockroaches, and doesn't pay the rent. It's a sign of the times when the landlord gets all our sympathy, but that's the general idea. Live-in lovers Drake and Patty (Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith) buy a sprawling Victorian house in San Francisco. To pay for renovations, they rent out apartments to a quiet Japanese couple and to the psychopathic Hayes, who proceeds to strip the fittings and terrorise everyone in the house. But the law is firmly on his side. Schlesinger stages the action with smooth assurance, gradually building tension until Hayes goes completely round the bend. The problem lies in Daniel Pyne's script: the relationship between Drake and Patty is half-realised, while Hayes' motivations remain strangely muddled. That said, Keaton is chillingly convincing.
Collette Maude

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 104: Tue Apr 14

Witness (Weir, 1985): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm

This film, which also screens on March 31st, April 5th and April 22nd, is part of the Peter Weir season at BFI Southbank. You can find all the details here. Tonight's screening is introduced by season curator Elena Lazic.

Time Out review:
Peter Weir's first film set in America explores a theme familiar from his earlier work: the discovery of an all but forgotten culture in modern society: in this case the Amish, a puritanical sect whose life in Pennsylvania has remained unchanged since the 18th century. Threat explodes into this community when an Amish boy witnesses a murder; cop Harrison Ford investigates the case and, finding his own life endangered, is forced to hot-foot it back to the Amish ranch with the bad guys in pursuit. The film also allows Ford to fall in love with the boy's mother (Kelly McGillis), and comments on the distance between the messy world Ford leaves behind and the cloistered one in which he takes refuge. Powerful, assured, full of beautiful imagery and thankfully devoid of easy moralising, it also offers a performance of surprising skill and sensitivity from Ford.
Richard Rayner

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 103: Mon Apr 13

Normal Love (Smith, 1964): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm

This is a 16mm presentation screening as part of the Trash season at BFI Southbank. The screening of Normal Love on Wednesday 1 April will be introduced by Professor Dominic Johnson, Queen Mary University of London.

Chicago Reader review: Though Jack Smith never quite completed Normal Love (1963), what he left behind maintains a consistent level of intensity, its weirdly costumed characters cavorting before the camera in role-playing more twisted than the word “drag” could ever convey. Mostly filmed the year Smith?s orgy-comedy Flaming Creatures became a famous obscenity case, Normal Love is a kind of lyrical sequel, replacing the earlier film’s bleached-out black and white with lush color (faded somewhat in this restoration) and its urban claustrophobia with rural locales outside New York City. Over the years Smith showed Normal Love in various versions; the present film was assembled using notes from actual screenings and records he’s known to have played with it. His cast of “creatures,” including Mario Montez and Tiny Tim, perform in a series of disjointed sequences that oscillate between trancelike impersonation and utterly reflexive self-parody: a mermaid in a tub, for example, is larger than life yet totally ridiculous, her tail phonier than the worst B-movie costume. Smith’s gender-fuck visions, more radical than mainstream concepts of drag, conflate dress-up with striptease, ludicrous acting with a sure belief that one can become one’s costume. His visual style is a dense and demented re-creation of von Sternberg, the smallest fashion accessory a radiant surface as camera and character—and character and costume—move in a coordinated ballet at once graceful and spastic. Fred Camper

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2027 — Day 102: Sun Apr 12

The Hurricane (Jewison, 1999): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 5.50pm

This 35mm presentation, which also screens on April 24th, is part of the season devoted to boxing films at BFI Southbank. You can find all the details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in 1967, boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (Denzel Washington) spent years asserting his innocence, growing increasingly hopeless until he was befriended by an American teenager living in Canada (Vicellous Reon Shannon). In this deeply moving biopic, some of the characters who rally to Carter’s defense seem like saints, and some who oppose him seem like demons. Yet the narrative–a complex structure of flashbacks and shifts in perspective that’s part inspirational story, part courtroom drama, part character study, part expose–never makes it seem that history is being oversimplified.
Lisa Alspector

Here (and above) is the trailer.