Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 188: Tue Jul 7

Beyond The Valley of the Dolls (Meyer, 1970): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.20pm

This is a Funeral Parade Presents presentation. Here's the full season of their screenings.

Venerable and adored film critic Roger Ebert crossed the line to become scriptwriter in this collaboration with 1970s skin-flixster Russ Meyer.  An enduring camp cult classic, it follows three pneumatic wannabees who come to Hollywood to make it big but find only sex, drugs and sleaze.  Sophisticate Ebert brings a touch of sly wit and class to this most unlikely of projects.

From Kate Arthur, on BuzzFeed:
“…But always enhancing Ebert’s place as a seminal figure in movie criticism was his hilarious contribution to movies themselves: the 1970 release Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. He cowrote it with shlocktarian Russ Meyer, and it’s just an unparalleled spectacle of amazingness. On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, Ebert wrote about the experience in Film Comment: “We wrote the screenplay in six weeks flat, laughing maniacally from time to time, and then the movie was made.”

“The plot doesn’t make any sense, but if you want to try, Wikipedia has a good summary. And Louis Peitzman has written the “19 Reasons “Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls” Is The Greatest Cult Film Of All Time.” As Louis points out, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls gave us many gifts, but my favorite (and I’m sure I’m not alone) was the Z-Man character, who Ebert said was based on Phil Spector (“but neither Meyer nor I had ever met Spector,” he wrote).”

Two thumbs up, Roger!

Time Out review:
'With his first movie for a major studio, Meyer simply did what he'd been doing for years, only bigger and better. That's to say, he turned the homely story of an all-girl rock band's rise to fame under their transsexual manager into a delirious comedy melodrama, soused in self- parody but spiked with dope, sex and thrills.'
Tony Rayns

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 187: Mon Jul 6

Good Morning (Ozu, 1959): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm

Very rare screening of a late Ozu movie ...

Chicago Reader review:
Perhaps the most delightful of Yasujiro Ozu’s late comedies (1959), this very loose remake of his earlier I Was Born, But . . . (1932) pivots around the rebellion of two brothers whose father refuses to buy a TV set. The layered compositions of the suburban topography are extraordinary, as are the intricate interweavings of the various characters and miniplots. The title is Japanese for “good morning,” and the film’s profound and gentle depiction of social exchanges extends to the farting games of schoolboys. The color photography is vibrant and exquisite.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 186: Sun Jul 5

Clash by Night (Lang, 1952): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 12.10pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Marilyn Monroe season at BFI Southbank. The movie also screens on July 17th and features an introduction by season curator Kimberley Sheehan. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
A love triangle set in a scruffy seaport town, with Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, and Robert Ryan. The script, adapted from a Clifford Odets play, seems to have roused the realist in director Fritz Lang: the backwater atmosphere is as authentic as it is oppressive. The naturalism of this 1952 film, one of Lang’s most underrated, makes an interesting contrast with the wild exaggerations of his Rancho Notorious, made the same year; for the buffs, there’s also an early starlet appearance by Marilyn Monroe.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 185: Sat Jul 4

Don't Bother to Knock (Baker, 1952): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.15pm

This film is part of the Marilyn Monroe season at BFI Southbank and will feature an introduction. The movie also screens on July 18th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Unusually seedy and small-scale for a Fox picture of 1952, this black-and-white thriller is set over one evening exclusively inside a middle-class urban hotel and the adjoining bar. The bar’s singer (Anne Bancroft in her screen debut) breaks up with her sour pilot boyfriend (Richard Widmark), a hotel guest. He responds by flirting with a woman (Marilyn Monroe) in another room who’s babysitting a little girl (Donna Corcoran), but the babysitter turns out to be psychotic and potentially dangerous. Daniel Taradash’s script is contrived in spots, and the main virtue of Roy Ward Baker’s direction is its low-key plainness, yet Monroe—appearing here just before she became typecast as a gold-plated sex object—is frighteningly real as the confused babysitter, and the deglamorized setting is no less persuasive. With Jim Backus as the girl’s father and Elisha Cook Jr. as Monroe’s uncle, the hotel elevator operator.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 184: Fri Jul 3

Ladies of the Chorus (Karlson, 1948): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.45pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Marilyn Monroe season at BFI Southbank. The movie also screens on July 12th with an introduction by season curator Kimberley Sheehan.

BFI introduction:
Peggy and her overprotective mother Mae work as chorus girls in a burlesque troupe. When the star of their show quits, Mae hatches a plan for Peggy to take the top spot. In her first major screen role, Monroe elevates a low-budget, uneven b-movie musical. It’s fascinating to see the then 22-year-old performing with her natural voice and building the foundations of her future star persona. It showcases both her gift for comedy and her musicality, culminating in the catchy, if somewhat questionable, sugar-baby anthem Every Baby Needs a Da-Da-Daddy.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 183: Thu Jul 2

Shanghai Express (Von Sternberg, 1932): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.40pm

 This film, also screening on July 11th and 16th, will be introduced by writer and season curator Kazuo Ishiguro and is part of the 'Station to Station: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top Ten Train Films' season. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review: 
More action oriented than the other Dietrich-Sternberg films, this 1932 production is nevertheless one of the most elegantly styled. The setting, a broken-down train commandeered by revolutionaries on its way to Shanghai, becomes a maze of soft shadows and shifting textures, through which the characters wander in a philosophical quest for something—anything—solid. The screenplay, by Jules Furthman and an uncredited Howard Hawks, has a quality of wisecracking wit unusual in Sternberg's films: when someone asks Dietrich why she's going to Shanghai, she retorts, "To buy a new hat." 
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2026 — Day 182: Wed Jul 1

Rome Express (Forde, 1932): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.50pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the 'Station to Station: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Top Ten Train Films' season. Full details here. The screening of Rome Express on Tuesday 21 July will include an introduction with writer Jonathan Coe, hosted by writer and season curator Kazuo Ishiguro.

BFI introduction:
German star Conrad Veidt and ace Austrian cameraman Günther Krampf bring a near-expressionist Weimar sensibility to this riveting British thriller, set aboard a train filled with enjoyably stiff-upper-lipped stereotypes. Deplorably neglected today, this deserves to be remembered both as a classic and as a strangely serendipitous blending of two normally opposed cinematic styles.

Here (and above) is the opening.