One of the most anticipated films of the year. This is a special preview screening with director Andrew Haigh and stars Tom Courtneay and Charlotte Rampling on hand to discuss the film afterwards. The event is a sell-out but BFI Southbank will get returns so try calling the box office or going along on the night to see if you can get in.
Here is the BFI introduction: Geoff and Kate Mercer (Courtenay and Rampling) are planning a reception
to duplicate their wedding 45 years ago when a letter addressed to
Geoff brings back memories of a previous relationship. A study in
regret, this Norfolk-set drama from director Andrew Haigh (Weekend)
delivers an emotional fragility and tension that wowed critics at its
Berlin International Film Festival premiere.
This is part of the London on Film season at BFI Southbank. The film also screens on August 16th and 22nd. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: Mike Leigh's very watchable up-to-the-minute bulletin from Thatcher
England centers on a posthippie working-class couple in London named
Cyril (Philip Davis) and Shirley (Ruth Sheen), who are beautifully
conceived and realized, as well as on Cyril's mother (Edna Dore), his
middle-class sister (Heather Tobias) and brother-in-law (Philip
Jackson), and his mother's yuppie next-door neighbors (Leslie Manville
and David Bamber), most of whom live around King's Cross. The texture of
everyday life in contemporary London is precisely rendered. Leigh, a
household name in England because of his extensive theater and TV work
and one previous feature (the 1971 Bleak Moments), tends to satirize and
even caricature the upper-class characters, but the jabs are generally
accurate, and the overall construction of this episodic movie is deft
and ingenious, pointing up parallels and contrasts in the sexual habits
of his three couples and making interesting connections between other
characters as well. Alternately bleak and hilarious, saddening and
refreshing, this very political reflection on the state of England today
is not to be missed. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Time Out review: Released in the wake of the early social realist films of Karel Reisz
and Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger’s physical world is the same – northern
and working-class – but his approach to social commentary and
storytelling, as adapted from Keith Waterhouse and Willis Hall’s
book and play, is more playful and less concerned with realism than
films like ‘Taste of Honey’ and ‘Saturday Night, Sunday Morning’.
Schlesinger’s Billy (Tom Courtenay)
is a confused young man with too much imagination for considering
kitchen sinks: nominally he’s an undertaker’s clerk, but his real job is
to carve a parallel, fantasy world for himself, whether leading men to
war in a state called Ambrosia or forging himself a career in showbiz.
Billy’s endless lies feel less like deceptions and more like an
expression of the conflicts within a young man who’s uneasy in a
fast-changing world. Funny and unexpectedly poignant.
Dave Calhoun
Chicago Reader review: John Carpenter's 1988 SF action-thriller about aliens taking over the
earth through the hypnotic use of TV. The explicit anti-Reagan
satire—the aliens are developers who regard human beings as cattle,
aided by yuppies who are all too willing to cooperate for business
reasons—is strangely undercut and confused by a xenophobic treatment of
the aliens that also makes them virtual stand-ins for the Vietcong.
Carpenter's wit and storytelling craft make this fun and watchable,
although the script takes a number of unfortunate shortcuts, and the
possibilities inherent in the movie's central conceit are explored only
cursorily. All in all, an entertaining (if ideologically incoherent)
response to the valorization of greed in our midst, with lots of Rambo-esque violence thrown in, as well as an unusually protracted slugfest between ex-wrestler Roddy Piper and costar Keith David. Jonathan Rosenbaum
If you want to read an excellent article on this Joseph Losey film I can recommend John Patterson's in the Guardian Guidehere. He writes: 'Joseph Losey kicked off the 1960s proper withThe Servant, an absolutely pivotal movie that exactly caught the spirit of the age as the country shook itself awake after the long frigid winter of 1962-3 and emerged, blinking and disoriented, into the torpid hothouse atmosphere surrounding the Profumo affair.
'The story of an aristocrat (James Fox) taken in by his machiavellian manservant (Dirk Bogarde), its themes of working-class insurgency, upper-class degeneracy and mutually destructive, sexually-driven power-games – already hallmarks of the stage work of first-time screenwriter,Harold Pinter– not to mention a notorious scene that seems to depict incest between a supposed brother and sister, dovetailed in the popular mind with the emerging sex-and-spy scandal whose fumes would finally waft the Conservative party out of power in 1964.
'The Servant was also perhaps the most baroquely stylised movie made in the United Kingdom since the heyday of Powell & Pressburger a decade earlier, but with Powell's optimistic high-Tory stylistic flourishes replaced by Losey's avowedly pessimistic Marxist mannerisms, or, as I prefer to think of them, his mise-in-sane.' Here (and above) is the trailer.
This is part of the London on Film season and the screening includes a Q&A with stars Barbara Windsor and Murray Melvin. Full details here.
BFI Southbank preview: Joan Littlewood’s only feature paints a vivid picture of London’s East End
and its larger-than-life characters (so vivid that it was subtitled for
American audiences). When Charlie (James Booth) returns from two years at sea
he finds his wife (a terrific performance by Barbara Windsor) has traded in
their two-up, two-down for a highrise, and him for a bus driver.
Time Out review: Not so much an 'I had it tough' catalogue of economic and physical
hardships as a strangely stirring account of human dignity triumphing
over emotional and spiritual confusion. And indeed, the form reflects
this, transforming Liverpudlian Robert Tucker's development - from
victimised schoolboy, through a Catholic closet-gay middle-age, to death
in a hospital - into a rich, resonant tapestry of impressionistic
detail. There is plenty to enjoy: a bleak, wry wit and an imaginative
use of music undercutting the grim but beautiful imagery; flashes of
surrealism; and superb performances throughout (none more so than
Brambell as the 80-year-old Tucker, wordlessly struggling the last few
steps to meet his Maker). But what really elevates the films into their
own timeless realm is the luminous attention to faces in close-up: a
stylish strategy that turns an otherwise chastening look at a lonely
man's life into an uplifting experience. (The film is in three parts: Children, 1974; Madonna and Child, 1980; Death and Transfiguration, 1983.) Geoff Andrew
This film is part of the Vittorio De Sica season at BFI Sothbank and also screens on 15th August. You can find full details here.
BFI Southbank introduction: A landmark of neo-realism – and an Oscar®-winner – this tells of two boys who survive by shining shoes but dream of buying a horse; with this in mind, they agree to a shady deal with some older boys, but things go wrong... De Sica elicits robust, utterly plausible performances from his cast while showing the chaos and poverty of post-war Italy in harrowing detail.
This screens as part of the Ingrid Bergman Selectrospective at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find full details of the short season here. Chicago Reader: Roberto Rossellini's first filmic encounter with Ingrid Bergman, made in
the wilds in 1949 around the same time the neorealist director and the
Hollywood star were being denounced in the U.S. Senate for their
adulterous romance. Widely regarded as a masterpiece today, the film was
so badly mutilated by Howard Hughes's RKO (which added offscreen
narration, reshuffled some sequences, and deleted others) that
Rossellini sued the studio (and lost). The Italian version, which
Rossellini approved, has come out on video, and this rarely screened
English-language version is very close to it. A Lithuanian-born Czech
refugee living in an internment camp (Bergman) marries an Italian
fisherman (Mario Vitale) in order to escape, but she winds up on a bare,
impoverished island with an active volcano, where most of the locals
regard her with hostility. The film is most modern and remarkable when
the camera is alone with Bergman, though Rossellini wisely shows neither
the wife nor the husband with full sympathy. Eschewing psychology, the
film remains a kind of ambiguous pieta whose religious ending is as
controversial as that of Rossellini and Bergman's subsequent Voyage to Italy
(though its metaphoric and rhetorical power make it easier to take).
Rossellini's blend of documentary and fiction is as provocative as
usual, but it also makes the film choppy and awkward; the English
dialogue is often stiff, and Renzo Cesana as a pontificating local
priest is almost as clumsy here as in Cyril Endfield's subsequent Try and Get Me!
Nor is the brutality of Rossellini's Catholicism to every taste; Eric
Rohmer all but praised the film for its lack of affection toward
Bergman, yet the film stands or falls on the strength of her emotional
performance—and I believe it stands. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This 35mm screening is part of a Don Siegel Selectrospective at the Prince Charles Cinema. You can find full details of that short season here. Chicago Reader review: The second film version (1964) of Ernest Hemingway's short story,
directed by Don Siegel with far more energy than Robert Siodmak could
muster for his overrated 1946 effort. Siegel turns the story inside out,
taking the point of view of Hemingway's two faceless hit men and
following their attempt to find out why one of their victims refused to
run. It was planned as one of the first made-for-TV movies, but Siegel,
with the perversity of a true auteur, went ahead and shot it in 'Scope
anyway. Thankfully, Universal decided it was too violent and released it
to theaters. With Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, and
Ronald Reagan in his final, appropriately loathsome, screen role. Dave Kehr
A bona fide masterpiece which grows in stature with the passing years
and now in a remastered print which simply adds to the beauty of a
magisterial work of cinema.
Here is critic Dave Kehr on the film's history, it was butchered on release and only seen in a truncated form for many years, and here
is Martin Scorsese talking about his involvement in the restoration.
The Leopard is one of the American director's favourite films as
evidenced in this list.
Chicago Reader review: Cut, dubbed, and printed in an inferior color process, the U.S.
release of Luchino Visconti's epic didn't leave much of an impression
in 1963; 20 years later, a restoration of the much longer Italian
version revealed this as not only Visconti's greatest film but a work
that transcends its creator, achieving a sensitivity and intelligence
without parallel in his other films. Burt Lancaster initiated his
formidable mature period as the aging aristocrat Don Fabrizio, who
works to find a place for himself and his family values in the new
Italy being organized in the 1860s. The film's superb first two hours,
which weave social and historical themes into rich personal drama, turn
out to be only a prelude to the magnificent final hour—an extended
ballroom sequence that leaves history behind to become one of the most
moving meditations on individual mortality in the history of the
cinema. With Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale. In Italian with
subtitles. Dave Kehr
This is part of the Cult Season at BFI Southbank and also screens on 6th August. Full details here.
Time Out review of God Told Me To: 'A delirious mix of sci-fi, pseudo-religious
fantasy and horror detective thriller, with Lo Bianco as the perfect
existential anti-hero - a New York cop and closet Catholic, guiltily
trapped between wife and mistress. His investigations into a bizarre
spate of mass murders lead right to the top: Jesus Christ, no less, is
provoking innocent citizens to go on a murderous rampage. The
wonderfully insane plot - involving spaceships, genetics and police
corruption - builds to an ambiguous climax: a 'gay' confrontation which
suggests an outrageous alternative to anal intercourse. God Told Me To
overflows with such perverse and subversive notions that no amount of
shoddy editing and substandard camerawork can conceal the film's unusual
qualities. Digging deep into the psyche of American manhood, it lays
bare the guilt-ridden oppressions of a soulless society.' Steve Woolley
This is part of the Somerset House Film 4 Summer season from August 6th to 19th which is already proving very popular. A number of screenings have sold out but you can get details here and keep checking for returns. Tonight's event is part of a double-bill with An American Werewolf in London.
Time Out review: That rare thing: an intelligent, beautifully acted, and gloriously funny
British comedy. At the butt-end of the '60s, two 'resting' young thesps
- Withnail (Grant, a revelation), a cadaverous upper middle class
burning-out case with an acid wit and soleless shoes, and the seemingly
innocent unnamed 'I' (McGann) - live on a diet of booze, pills, and fags
in their cancerous Camden flat, until a cold comfort Lakeland cottage
is offered for their use. For all its '60s arcana, this is no mere
semi-autobiographical nostalgia trip, but an affecting and open-eyed
rites-of-passage movie. Robinson's debut as writer/director (he scripted
The Killing Fields) exhibits the value of the old virtues:
characterisation, detail, and engagement. His characters are oddball,
degenerate even, but rounded - none more so than the elephantine figure
of Griffiths as Withnail's gay uncle Monty. Beautifully scripted,
indecent, honest, and truthful, it's a true original. Wally Hammond
Chicago Reader review: Dziga Vertov's 1929 Russian film amounts to a catalog of all the tricks
the movies can perform. As a newsreel cameraman travels through a city
(actually an amalgam of Moscow and Odessa), Vertov transforms the images
captured by his camera through a kaleidoscope of slow motion,
superimposition, animation, and wild montage effects. Vertov's motives
were impeccably Marxist-Leninist—he wanted to expose the materialism
behind an illusionist medium—but his film set off a storm of debate
among his colleagues, who accused him of the bourgeois crime of
“impressionism.” The film's real influence did not emerge for another 40
years, when it was taken up by American structuralist filmmakers on one
side of the Atlantic and by French neoleftists on the other. The film
remains a fascinating souvenir, though its flourishes are now fairly
familiar. Dave Kehr Here (and above) is an extract.
An excellent chance to see one of Alfred Hitchcock's most perfectly realised films, with the bonus being that this is a 35mm screening. This is part of an Ingrid Bergman Selectrospective at the Prince Charles and you can find the full details of that short season here.
Chicago Reader review: 'The
Hitchcock classic of 1946, with Cary Grant as a charming and
unscrupulous government agent and Ingrid Bergman as a woman of low
repute whom he morally blackmails into marrying a Nazi leader (Claude
Rains, in a performance that makes a sad little boy of him). The
virtuoso sequences—the long kiss, the crane shot into the door key—are
justly famous, yet the film's real brilliance is in its subtle and
detailed portrayal of infinitely perverse relationships. The concluding
shot transforms Rains from villain to victim with a disturbingly cool,
tragic force.' Dave Kehr Here (and above) is the trailer.
This is part of the BFI 35mm Collection series at Prince Charles. Full details here.
Time Out review: A maddening mixture, this adaptation of John Kander's fine musical based
on Christopher Isherwood's Berlin stories. Superbly choreographed by
Fosse, the cabaret numbers evoke the Berlin of 1931 - city of gaiety and
perversion, of champagne and Nazi propaganda - so vividly that only an
idiot could fail to perceive that something is rotten in the state of
Weimar. Doubling as director, Fosse unfortunately feels the need to put
the boot in with some crude cross-cutting (eg from a man being beaten up
by Nazis in the street to the leering faces of the cabaret performers)
which lands the film in a queasy morass of overstatement. Tom Milne
This film, part of the Vittorio De Sica season, also screens on 1st August. Tonight's presentation will be introduced by film scholar and critic Pasquale Iannone. Full details here. Chicago Reader review: Screenwriter Cesare Zavattini likely deserves as much credit as director
Vittorio De Sica for such masterpieces of Italian neorealism as The Bicycle Thief
(1947) and this 1952 feature about a retired civil servant
(schoolteacher Carlo Battisti) who discovers that his meager pension
won't pay the rent for his room. He's befriended by a maid in the same
flat who's pregnant but unsure of the father's identity; apart from her
the only creature he feels close to is his dog, and though he
contemplates suicide, he has to find someone to care for it. This
simple, almost Chaplinesque story of a man fighting to preserve his
dignity is even more moving for its firm grasp of everyday activities.
In Italian with subtitles. 89 min. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This film, part of the Passport to Cinema season, also screens on 2nd August. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: 'There are too many conflicting levels of authorship—between Alfred Hitchcock, Daphne du Maurier, and David O. Selznick—for this 1940 film to be a complete success, but through its first two-thirds it is as perfect a myth of adolescence as any of the Disney films, documenting the childlike, nameless heroine's initiation into the adult mysteries of sex, death, and identity, and the impossibility of reconciling these forces with family strictures. As a Hitchcock film, it is, with the closely related Suspicion, one of his rare studies from a female point of view, and it is surprisingly tender and compassionate; the same issues, treated from a male viewpoint, would return inVertigo andMarnie (Laurence Olivier's Maxim becoming the Sean Connery character of the latter film).' Dave Kehr
This film, increasingly considered Orson Welles' finest achievement, is part of the season devoted to the director's films at BFI Southbank and also screens on 1st and 3rd August. Details here.
Chicago Reader review: Orson Welles's 1966 version of the Falstaff story, assembled from
Shakespearean bits and pieces, is the one Welles film that deserves to
be called lovely; there is also a rising tide of opinion that proclaims
it his masterpiece. Restrained and even serene (down to its memorably
muddy battle scene), it shows Welles working largely without his
technical flourishes—and for those who have never seen beyond his
surface flash, it is ample proof of how sensitive and subtle an artist
he is. With Keith Baxter, John Gielgud, Margaret Rutherford, and Jeanne
Moreau. Dave Kehr
Director Josephine Decker will be at BFI Southbank for a special double-bill featuring her debut Butter on the Latch and her latest film, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely (which screens at 6.10pm). You can find all the details here.
BFI introduction: Josephine Decker is one of the most exciting new talents to emerge from recent American independent cinema. Fascinated with the deceptive beauty of the American pastoral landscape, Decker uses her blissful cinematic settings to delve into the mysteries of the female mind and body. We’re delighted to welcome Decker to BFI Southbank to discuss her debut features, with special guests, as the Independent Cinema Office launch a UK tour.
Bechdel Test Fest presents a special screening of Gina Prince-Bythewood's acclaimed music drama.
The film will be followed by a panel discussion Beyond 'Black' Film
with lead actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ackee and Saltfish/Strolling
director Cecile Emeke and film journalist Simran Hans (Little White
Lies, Sight & Sound), hosted by Jasmine Dotiwalla.
Observer review: The cinema release calendar is more crammed than it has ever been, yet
good films still slip through the cracks on an alarmingly regular
basis. Not even an Oscar nomination and a recent Edinburgh film festival premiere could save Gina Prince-Bythewood’s throbbing, neon-hot musical soap opera Beyond the Lights
(Universal, 12) from direct-to-DVD ignominy here, echoing the fate of
far too much vital African American fare on our shores. It deserves more
generous exhibition, not least as a star-sealing showcase for British
ingenue Gugu Mbatha-Raw, whose livewire turn as a Rihanna-esque pop star
on the brink of self-destruction marks a more emphatic arrival than
last year’s Belle.
There’s nothing here you haven’t seen in countless backstage dramas
dating back to the pre-sound era: she’s the supernova for whom money
can’t buy inner peace; Nate Parker is the good civilian who might yet be
her saviour; a peak-form Minnie Driver
is the merciless stage mother driving her to the edge. The devil (or
the diva) is in the details, as Prince-Bythewood perceptively probes
modern-day definitions and demands of class, race and celebrity within
the grand, velvety framework of Hollywood melodrama. Like the star at
its centre, it does not suit being ignored. Guy Lodge
This film is part of the Passport to Cinema season at BFI Southbank. The film also screens on 27th July with an introduction by Richard Combs. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: This paranoid 1965 thriller by Otto Preminger is one of his most darkly
poetic and wrenching films, a reflective mid-60s return to the ghostly
film noir style he developed at Fox in the 40s. An American woman living
in London (Carol Lynley) believes her four-year-old daughter has been
kidnapped. The police can't do much to help because, try as she might,
Lynley can't prove to them that she ever had a daughter at all.
Gradually it becomes clear that the subject of the investigation is not
the missing child but the absence of love in Lynley's own life. As in The Human Factor,
Preminger approaches the mystery of human irrationality and emotion
through logic and detachment; the effect is stingingly poignant. With
Laurence Olivier, Noel Coward, and Keir Dullea. 107 min. Dave Kehr
This is part of the London on Film season at BFI Southbank. The film also screens on 31st July and tonight's screening includes a Q&A with Ian Hart and Kika Markham. Details here.
Time Out review: A long weekend in the lives of an extended family of strangers in South
London. Dad and mum (Jack Shepherd and Kika Markham) have long since settled for
habitual resentment, their general disappointment accentuated by runaway
son Darren. They also have three grown daughters: Nadia (Gina McKee) has
resorted to the lonely hearts columns; Debbie (Shirley Henderson) is the eldest,
with an 11-year-old boy and a good-for-nothing ex (Ian Hart); the youngest,
Molly (Molly Parker), is pregnant, and blissfully happy with her partner,
Eddie (John Simm). Only Eddie's getting cold feet. Michael Winterbottom's best film
by some measure offers an intimate, suburban panorama of London life
now. In the past, this director has slapped style over substance with
more vigour than sensitivity; here he's opted for handheld 16mm cameras
and a skeleton crew to shoot on the streets of Soho and SW1. The result
rings true in a way precious few London films have managed, so that the
experience of going to the movie in a local cinema practically blurs
with what you've seen on screen. Not that the technique obscures the
humanity in Laurence Coriat's fine screenplay, which keeps tabs on
half-a-dozen emotionally deprived lives, and endows mundane occurrences
with an unforced resonance. Shored up with a memorable Michael Nyman score, this achingly tender film makes most new British cinema look downright frivolous. Tom Charity
This Passport to Cinema event, postponed in April, includes an introduction by Powell and Pressburger scholar Ian Christie. The film also screens on 25th July. You can find the full details here.
Chicago Reader review: It's almost impossible to define this 1943 masterpiece by Michael Powell
and Emeric Pressburger. It was ostensibly based on a cartoon series
that satirized the British military class, yet its attitude toward the
main character is one of affection, respect, and sometimes awe; it was
intended as a propaganda film, yet Churchill wanted to suppress it; it
has the romantic sweep of a grand love story, yet none of the romantic
relationships it presents is truly fulfilled, and the film's most
lasting bond is one between the British colonel (Roger Livesey) and his
Prussian counterpart (Anton Walbrook). Pressburger's screenplay covers
40 years in the colonel's life through a series of brilliantly
constructed flashbacks, compressions, and ellipses; Powell's camera
renders the winding plot through boldly deployed Technicolor hues and
camera movements of exquisite design and expressivity. It stands as very
possibly the finest film ever made in Britain. With Deborah Kerr,
Roland Culver, and James McKechnie. Dave Kehr
Chicago Reader review: Though debatable as an adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel, Orson
Welles's nightmarish, labyrinthine comedy of 1962—shot mainly in Paris's
abandoned Gare d'Orsay and various locations in Zagreb and Rome after
he had to abandon his plan to use sets—remains his creepiest and most
disturbing work; it's also a lot more influential than people usually
admit (e.g., After Hours, the costume store sequences in Eyes Wide Shut).
Anthony Perkins gives an adolescent temper to Joseph K, a bureaucrat
mysteriously brought to court for an unspecified crime. Among the
predatory females who pursue him are Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, and
Elsa Martinelli; Welles himself plays the hero's tyrannical lawyer, and
Akim Tamiroff is one of his oldest clients. Welles adroitly captures the
experience of an unsettling and slightly hysterical dream throughout.
Given the impact of screen size on what he's doing, you can't claim to
have seen this if you've watched it only on video.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Here is the Barbican introduction to a special 35mm screening of the Alain Resnais film:
This first English-language film from French director Alain Resnais (Last Night in Marienbad, Hiroshima, Mon Amour) is a typically mesmerising and tricksy affair. An ageing writer, Clive (John Gielgud),
roams his shadowy, empty mansion one night composing the plot of his
final novel, its characters based on his family, among them son Claud (Dirk Bogarde) and his wife Sonia (Ellen Burnstyn).
The following day, the real characters assemble for his birthday lunch,
and we see them suddenly without the filter of Clive’s warped
imagination.
On the surface a sparkling comedy, it is at base
another of the director’s famously knotted, thorny explorations of the
distorting processes of memory and time, complete with surreal slips
into dream logic, characters whose identities morph and merge, and an
unsettling geographic fluidity to the locations. Providence
has been chosen for us by artist Tacita Dean, and is screened at her
request from an archive 35mm print brought in especially from France.
Tacita joins us after the screening for a ScreenTalk.
Chicago Reader review: Alain Resnais' first feature in English (1977, 110 min.) focuses on the
imagination, dreams, and memories of an aging British novelist (John
Gielgud) over one night as he mentally composes and recomposes his last
book, using members of his immediate family—Dirk Bogarde, Ellen Burstyn,
David Warner, and Elaine Stritch—as his models. Although David Mercer's
witty, aphoristic script can be British to a fault, the film's rich
mental landscape is a good deal more universal, with everything from
H.P. Lovecraft's werewolves to a painted seaside backdrop providing the
essential textures. Like all of Resnais' best work, this is shot through
with purposeful and lyrical enigmas, but the family profile that
emerges is warm and penetrating, recalling the haunted Tyrones in Long Day's Journey Into Night
rather than the pieces of an abstract puzzle. The superb performances
and Miklos Rozsa's sumptuous Hollywood-style score give the film's
conceit a moving monumentality and depth, and Resnais' insights into the
fiction-making process are mesmerizing and beautiful. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Phoenix Cinema introduction: Njinga, an African Warrior Queen of the area now referred to as
Congo/Angola, was on her throne at the time as England's James I. This
epic historical action-drama tells the astonishing true story of this
female general who fought a 40 year war against slavery. The story
begins in 1617, the year Njinga's father King Kilwanji dies. The
Portuguese army takes advantage of the political confusion and invades
Southern Africa so they can kidnap the population and force them to work
on sugar plantations in Brazil. Princess Njinga has to fight to gain
the throne and then lead her people in a battle for national freedom.
We're delighted to welcome Dr Michelle Asantewa for a Q&A after the screening. This event is an extension of the BFI African Odysseys programme in
association with the Phoenix Cinema: Inspirational films by and about
the people of Africa, from archive classics to new cinema. Explore the
African roots of World Cinema through our monthly programme of Sunday
screenings.
This is part of the London on Film series and also screens on 28th July. Full details here.
Time Out review: Although Babylon shows what it's like to be young, black and
working class in Britain, the final product turns dramatised documentary
into a breathless helter-skelter. Rather than force the social and
political issues, Rosso lets them emerge and gather momentum through the
everyday experience of his central character Blue (sensitively played
by Forde). A series of increasingly provocative incidents finally
polarise Blue and lead to uncompromising confrontation. Although the
script runs out of steam by the end, the sharp use of location, the
meticulous detailing of black culture, the uniformly excellent
performances and stimulating soundtrack command attention.
Ian Birch
This is part of the Orson Welles season and also screens on 26th July. Full details here. Chicago Reader review: For all the liberties taken with the play, Orson Welles's 1952
independent feature may well be the greatest Shakespeare film (Welles's
later Chimes at Midnight is the only other contender)—a brooding
expressionist dream made in eerie Moorish locations over nearly three
years, yet held together by a remarkably cohesive style and atmosphere.
(The film looks better than ever in its 1992 restored version, though it
sounds quite different thanks to the restorers' debatable decision to
redo the brilliant score and sound effects in stereo, altering them
considerably in the process.) The most impressive performance here is
Micheal MacLiammoir's Iago; Welles's own underplaying of the title role
meshes well with the somnambulistic mood, but apart from some
magnificent line readings he makes less of a dramatic impression. With
Suzanne Cloutier (as Desdemona), Robert Coote, Fay Compton, Doris
Dowling, and Michael Laurence. Jonathan Rosenbaum
This film, part of the Orson Welles season at BFI Southbank, also screens on 17th and 25th July. You can find the full details here. I have written a feature about the drama both on and off the screen involving this brilliant movie here at the Guardian Film website.
Chicago Reader review: The weirdest great movie ever made (1948), which is somehow always
summed up for me by the image of Glenn Anders cackling "Target practice!
Target practice!" with unbalanced, malignant glee. Orson Welles directs
and stars as an innocent Irish sailor who's drafted into a bizarre plot
involving crippled criminal lawyer Everett Sloane and his icily
seductive wife Rita Hayworth. Hayworth tells Welles he "knows nothing
about wickedness" and proceeds to teach him, though he's an imperfect
student. The film moves between Candide-like farce and a deeply
disturbing apprehension of a world in grotesque, irreversible decay—it's
the only true film noir comedy. The script, adapted from a novel by
Sherwood King, is credited solely to Welles, but it's the work of many
hands, including Welles, William Castle, Charles Lederer, and Fletcher
Markle. Dave Kehr
This 35mm screening is part of the London on Film season at BFI. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: This turned out to be Alfred Hitchcock's penultimate film (1972), though
there's no sign of the serenity and settledness that generally mark the
end of a career. Frenzy, instead, continues to question and
probe, and there is a streak of sheer anger in it that seems shockingly
alive. The plotting combines two of Hitchcock's favorite themes: the
poisoned couple (Marnie, The Man Who Knew Too Much) and the lone man on the run (North by Northwest, Saboteur); its subjects are misogyny and domestic madness. With Jon Finch, Alec McCowen, Barry Foster, Vivien Merchant, and Anna Massey. Dave Kehr
This film screens as part of The Pakula Paranoia Trilogy. Full details here.
Time Out review: Inevitably softened by hints of self-congratulation concerning the
success of Woodward and Bernstein's uncovering of the Watergate affair,
Pakula's film is nevertheless remarkably intelligent, working both as an
effective thriller (even though we know the outcome of their
investigations) and as a virtually abstract charting of the dark
corridors of corruption and power. Pakula's visual set-ups are often
extraordinary, contrasting the light of the Washington Post
newsroom with the shadows in which hides star informant Deep Throat, and
dramatically engulfing Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in monumental buildings to
stress the enormity of their task. Geoff Andrew Here (and above) is the trailer.
This is part of the Passport to Cinema season. Tonight's screening will be introduced by Dominic Power, head of Screen Arts at the National Television Film School. The film can also be seen on Sunday 19th July. You can find the full details here.
Chicago Reader review: Released in 1975, near the end of Arthur Penn's most productive period (which began in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde),
this haunting psychological thriller ambitiously sets out to unpack
post-Watergate burnout in American life. Gene Hackman plays an LA
detective tracking a runaway teenager (Melanie Griffith in her screen
debut) to the Florida Keys while evading various problems of his own
involving his father and his wife. The labyrinthine mystery plot and
pessimistic mood suggest Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald, and like
them screenwriter Alan Sharp has more than conventional mystery
mechanics on his mind. One of Penn's best features; his direction of
actors is sensitive and purposeful throughout. With Jennifer Warren,
Susan Clark, Edward Binns, Harris Yulin, Kenneth Mars and James Woods. Jonathan Rosenabum
This screens as part of the French Leading Ladies season at Cine Lumiere. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review: Jacques Demy's first and in some ways best feature (1961), shot in
exquisite black-and-white 'Scope by Raoul Coutard, is among the most
neglected major works of the French New Wave. Abandoned by her sailor
lover, a cabaret dancer (Anouk Aimee) brings up their son while awaiting
his return and ultimately has to choose among three men. Chock-full of
film references (to The Blue Angel, Breathless, Hollywood musicals, the work of Max Ophuls, etc) and lyrically shot in Nantes, the film is a camera stylo love letter, and Michel Legrand's lovely score provides ideal nostalgic accompaniment. In his third feature and biggest hit, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,
Demy settled on life's disappointments; here at least one major
character gets exactly what she wants, and the effect is no less
poignant. With Marc Michel, Jacques Harden, and Elina Labourdette (the
young heroine in Robert Bresson's 1945 Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne). In French with subtitles.
Jonathan Rosdenbaum
This is part of the London on Film season and also screens on 3rd July. Details here.
BFI Southbank preview: Oliver! co-stars Wild and Lester were reunited for Hussein and Alan
Parker’s engaging, eccentric child’s-eye-view of Lambeth schooldays.
Posh Danny (Lester) and urchin Ornshaw (Wild) are inseparable until
Danny falls for classmate Melody, and the pre-teen couple decide to
marry. This sweet, uplifting love story has a fab soundtrack by the Bee
Gees and Crosby, Stills and Nash.
This is showing as part of the John Cassavetes season at Close-Up. There
are a number of screenings of the film until 31st July and you can find
the full details here.
Chicago Reader review: John Cassavetes's galvanic 1968 drama about one long night in the lives
of an estranged well-to-do married couple (John Marley and Lynn Carlin)
and their temporary lovers (Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel) was the
first of his independent features to become a hit, and it's not hard to
see why. It remains one of the only American films to take the middle
class seriously, depicting the compulsive, embarrassed laughter of
people facing their own sexual longing and some of the emotional
devastation brought about by the so-called sexual revolution.
(Interestingly, Cassavetes set out to make a trenchant critique of the
middle class, but his characteristic empathy for all of his characters
makes this a far cry from simple satire.) Shot in 16-millimeter black
and white with a good many close-ups, this often takes an unsparing yet
compassionate "documentary" look at emotions most movies prefer to gloss
over or cover up. Adroitly written and directed, and superbly acted—the
leads and Val Avery are all uncommonly good (and the astonishing Lynn
Carlin was a nonprofessional discovered by Cassavetes, working at the
time as Robert Altman's secretary)—this is one of the most powerful and
influential American films of the 60s.
Jonathan Rosenbaum
