Capital Celluloid - Day 182: Sunday July 3

Badlands (Malick, 1973): & Days of Heaven (Malick, 1978) Ritzy Cinema 4pm

The place to be this weekend is the Ritzy in Brixton where film buffs can catch up on Terrence Malick's work so far prior to the long-awaited release of his Cannes Festival Palme d'Or winner The Tree of Life in the UK on July 15.

The Tree of Life has clearly divided audiences wherever it has been shown and on Monday night on Radio 3 critic Nigel Floyd, who is on record as saying he has liked none of Malick's work since Days of Heaven, will discuss The Tree of Life with the director of Senna, Asif Kapadia. The debate will take place on the programme Night Waves (details via this link).

If Malick's three most recent works have caused arguments as to their merits these are two bona-fide classics hailed pretty universally as key American films of the 1970s.

Here is the Chicago Reader review of Badlands:

'Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek as an aw-shucks madman killer and his fudge-brained girlfriend. Loosely based on the Starkweather-Fugate horror show of the late 50s, writer-director Terrence Malick's 1973 first feature is a film so rich in ideas it hardly knows where to turn. Transcendent themes of love and death are fused with a pop-culture sensibility and played out against a midwestern background, which is breathtaking both in its sweep and in its banality. Days of Heaven put Malick's intuitions into cogent form, but this is where his art begins. With Warren Oates and Alan Vint.' Dave Kehr

Here's a clip.

Here is the Chicago Reader review of Days of Heaven:

'Terrence Malick's remarkably rich second feature (1978) is a story of human lives touched and passed over by the divine, told in a rush of stunning and precise imagery. Nestor Almendros's cinematography is as sharp and vivid as Malick's narration is elliptical and enigmatic. The result is a film that hovers just beyond our grasp—mysterious, beautiful, and, very possibly, a masterpiece. With Richard Gere,
Brooke Adams, and Sam Shepard.' Dave Kehr

Take a look at the wonderful opening credits.