Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 264: Thu Sep 26

Chinatown (Polanski, 1974): Castle Cinema, 7.30pm

This is a Cine Real screening and enjoyment is guaranteed thanks to the pair that put together their presentations. Cine Real is one of the only film clubs in the UK to exclusively play films in their original 16mm format. Cine Real is a non-profit organisation which aims to unite film makers and enthusiasts in their appreciation of classic film. The film also screens on Septmeber 22nd - you can find all the details here.

Time Out review:
'The hard-boiled private eye coolly strolls a few steps ahead of the audience. The slapstick detective gets everything wrong and then pratfalls first over the finish line anyway. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is neither - instead he's a hard-boiled private eye who gets everything wrong. Jake snaps tabloid-ready photos of an adulterous love nest that's no such thing. He spies a distressed young woman through a window and mistakes her for a hostage. He finds bifocals in a pond and calls them Exhibit A of marital murder, only the glasses don't belong to the victim and the wife hasn't killed anyone. Yet when he confronts ostensible black widow Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) with the spectacular evidence, the cigarette between his teeth lends his voice an authoritative Bogie hiss. Throughout, Gittes sexes up mediocre snooping with blithe arrogance and sarcastic machismo. It's the actor's default mode, sure, but in 1974 it hadn't yet calcified into Schtickolson, and in 1974 a director (Roman Polanski), a screenwriter (Robert Towne) and a producer (Robert Evans) could decide to beat a genre senseless and dump it in the wilds of Greek tragedy. 'You see, Mr Gits,' depravity incarnate Noah Cross (John Huston) famously explains, 'most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything.' As is Chinatown. The last gunshot here is the sound of the gate slamming on the Paramount lot of Evans' halcyon reign, and as the camera rears back to catch Jake's expression, the dolly lists and shivers - an almost imperceptible sob of grief and recognition, but not a tear is shed.'
Jessica Winter

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 263: Wed Sep 25

The Exterminating Angel (Bunuel, 1962): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This is the UK premiere of the restoration via Radiance Films of this Luis Bunuek classic.

Chicago Reader review:
Luis Buñuel's 1962 film takes an old Mexican proverb—"After 24 hours, corpses and guests smell bad"—and turns it into a marvelous satire on the life of the bourgeoisie. Augusto Benedico gives a sumptuous party, but when the guests try to leave, they discover they're unable to step across the threshold of the music room. They stay on for days, finally reduced to eating a stray sheep that wanders providentially through the house; and when at last they escape and go to church to celebrate their deliverance, the whole thing starts again. Essential viewing. With Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, and Jacqueline Andere.
Don Druker

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 262: Tue Sep 24

Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (Peckinpah, 1973):  BFI Southbank, NFT1, 7.30pm

This film screens as part of the Restored strand at BFI Southbank. The film was restored in 4K in 2024 by The Criterion Collection from the original 35mm camera negative and the original magnetic tracks and the restoration was supervised by Paul Seydor and Roger Spottiswoode. Tonight's presentation will be introduced by Jason Wood, BFI executive director of public programmes & audiences.

This movie, one of my all-time favourites, was one of the films central to my developing a passion for cinema. As is now widely known director Sam Peckinpah had the film taken away from him soon after completion and his work was substantially re-edited in order that the studio could put out a truncated 105-minute version which they thought would prove more popular in cinemas.

Peckinpah arranged for his original cut to be stolen and hidden away and it was this version, which was found after his death and released in 1988, which will be shown tonight. The beginning and end are radically different and scenes integral to the understanding of the relationship of the two main characters are included in the director's 0final cut.

I saw the film at the Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester and that experience, plus reading Richard Combs's article on the then restoration in the September 1989 issue of the Monthly Film Bulletin, had a major impact on me.

Time Out review:
Restored and reassembled, this is the full and harmonious movie that Sam Peckinpah wanted to be remembered by before the butchers at MGM got their hands on it. Starting with a framing sequence from 1909 which shows James Coburn's aged Garrett being gunned down by the same men who hired him to get Billy the Kid back in 1881, the additional 15 minutes introduce the menacing figure of Barry Sullivan's Boss Chisum, a frolicsome brothel scene ('Last time Billy was here it took four to get him up and five to get him down again'), some engaging Wild West cameos, and a less obtrusive use of Bob Dylan's soundtrack. All in all the film is more playful, more balanced, and very much an elegy for the old ways of the West, rather than a meandering bloodthirsty battle between Kristofferson's preposterously likeable outlaw and Coburn's ambivalent survivor, Garrett. Like Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it both records and condemns the passage of time and the advent of progress; and there is a sombre, mournful quality which places the film very high up in the league of great Westerns. Steve Grant 

Here is an extract on YouTube with commentary on one of the most famous scenes.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 261: Mon Sep 23

Went the Day Well? (Cavalcanti, 1942): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.20pm

Alberto Cavalcanti’s brilliant and often brutal thriller about a rural English village’s fightback against Nazi fifth columnists is part of the excellent Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here. This screening is from a 35mm nitrate print.

Chicago Reader review:
Produced in 1942 at the Ealing Studios, this British drama was conceived as anti-Nazi propaganda but has since been recognized as a brutal, crafty thriller and a vivid portrait of ordinary Britons in World War II. A company of royal engineers arrives at the tiny village of Bramley End to prepare the residents for a possible invasion, but the local vicar’s sharp-witted daughter (Valerie Taylor) begins to suspect that the tight-lipped soldiers are actually German spies. The screenplay was inspired by Graham Greene’s short story “The Lieutenant Died Last,” and though most of the plot has been grafted onto his minimal tale, the movie seizes on and amplifies his central moral concern, as an assortment of simple, kindly folk must suddenly decide whether they’re willing to die—and, even worse, kill—for their country.
JR Jones

Here (and above) us the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 260: Sun Sep 22

The Mind Benders (Dearden, 1963): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6pm

This fascinating Basil Dearden Cold War-era thriller (which also screens on October 2nd) is is part of the excellent Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here.

BFI introduction:
Most often associated with his issue-driven ‘social problem’ films, the prolific Basil Dearden’s work – made with producer Michael Relph – in fact ranged far more widely. Continuing his move away from matinee-idol roles, Bogarde plays a scientist who undergoes a series of dangerous sensory-deprivation experiments that leave him susceptible to brainwashing. A fascinating fusion of domestic drama with Cold War-era paranoia.
James Bell

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 259: Sat Sep 21

The Damned (Losey, 1962): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm

This fascinating Joseph Losey film (which also screens on October 4th) is is part of the excellent Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Joseph Losey’s black-and-white SF thriller, made in 1962 during his pre-Pinter British period, begins as a sort of love story—MacDonald Carey is an American businessman who shows interest in Shirley Anne Field and as a consequence gets beaten up by teddy boys led by Oliver Reed—then gradually turns into an antinuclear parable about radioactive children sequestered from humanity in an underground cave. Originally titled The Damned, the film was mangled by distributors but later restored for TV; more than an interesting curiosity, it’s one of Losey’s best English efforts, and Viveca Lindfors contributes a striking part as an eccentric sculptress.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 258: Fri Sep 20

Yield to the Night (Thompson, 1956): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6pm

This impressive, downbeat but very affecting film (which also screens on September 28th) is is part of the excellent Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here

BFI introduction:
J Lee Thompson’s Palme d’Or-nominated feature gave Dors the chance to shake off the ‘blonde bombshell’ label and demonstrate her acting talent. In this melodrama exploring themes of class and infidelity, she shed the glamour to turn in an incredibly moving performance as a condemned woman recalling the events that led to her sentence. Yvonne Mitchell gives excellent support as a sympathetic warder.
Josephine Botting

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 257: Thu Sep 19

Rear Window (Hitchcock, 1954): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 8.45pm

This Alfred Hitchcock classic is part of the Big Screen Classics season at BFI Southbank and is alps being screened on September 4th, 7th and 16th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
The most densely allegorical of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpieces (1954), moving from psychology to morality to formal concerns and finally to the theological. It is also Hitchcock's most innovative film in terms of narrative technique, discarding a linear story line in favor of thematically related incidents, linked only by the powerful sense of real time created by the lighting effects and the revolutionary ambient sound track. James Stewart is the news photographer who, immobilized by a broken leg, dreams stories about the neighbors in his courtyard and demands that they come true. With Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 256: Wed Sep 18

Zardoz (Boorman, 1974): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm

This presentation of a genuine cult classic includes aQ&A with writer-director John Boorman.

Chicago Reader review:
Probably John Boorman's most underrated film—an impossibly ambitious and pretentious but also highly inventive, provocative, and visually striking SF adventure with metaphysical trimmings (1974). Set in a postapocalyptic society in 2293, it stars Sean Connery as a warrior and noble savage with dawning awareness; interestingly enough, the plot in many ways resembles that of Boorman's best film, Point Blank.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 255: Tue Sep 17

The Elephant Man (Lynch, 1980): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm

This screening is the first in a selection of films presented by actor and screenwriter Reece Shearsmith, an occasional series that will see him share his cinematic influences. It will be fascinating to discover the others from one of the creators of League of Gentlemen and Inside No 9 TV programmes.

Time Out review:
More accessible than Lynch's enigmatically disturbing Eraserhead, The Elephant Man has much the same limpidly moving humanism as Truffaut's L'Enfant Sauvage in describing how the unfortunate John Merrick, brutalised by a childhood in which he was hideously abused as an inhuman freak, was gradually coaxed into revealing a soul of such delicacy and refinement that he became a lion of Victorian society. But that is only half the story the film tells. The darker side, underpinned by an evocation of the steamy, smoky hell that still underlies a London facelifted by the Industrial Revolution, is crystallised by the wonderful sequence in which Merrick is persuaded by a celebrated actress to read Romeo to her Juliet. A tender, touching scene ('Oh, Mr Merrick, you're not an elephant man at all. No, you're Romeo'), it nevertheless begs the question of what passions, inevitably doomed to frustration, have been roused in this presumably normally-sexed Elephant Man. Appearances are all, and like the proverbial Victorian piano, he can make the social grade only if his ruder appendages are hidden from sensitive eyes; hence what is effectively, at his time of greatest happiness, his suicide. A marvellous movie, shot in stunning black-and-white by Freddie Francis.
Tom Milne

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 254: Mon Sep 16

Mandy (Mackendrick, 1952): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.35pm

This film (which also screens on September 28th) is is part of the Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Alexander Mackendrick was chiefly known for his wry comedies (The Man in the White Suit, Whisky Galore); this 1952 film was one of his rare forays into drama, and it shows him the master of an understated but highly charged style. What seems at first a typical problem drama of the period—a mother’s attempts to secure some kind of education for her deaf daughter—is revealed as only the central image in a more general evocation of the failures of communication in the British family structure. The vivid performances Mackendrick elicits from his players (Phyllis Calvert, Mandy Miller) combine with a subjective camera style to create one of the few emotionally demanding experiences in the British cinema. With Jack Hawkins and Terence Morgan; retitled Crash of Silence in the U.S.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

 

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 253: Sun Sep 15

Stolen Face (Fisher, 1952): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This 35mm presentation (which also screens on October 1st) is is part of the Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here. It's part of a Terence Fisher double-bill with 'To the Public Danger' (1948), also screening on 35mm.

BFI introduction:
This similarly noir-ish B-picture, made for Hammer, exploits the postwar fascination with plastic surgery and identity, with Paul Henreid as a surgeon, and Lizabeth Scott in a double role as the woman he transforms to resemble the lover who spurned him.
James Bell

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 252: Sat Sep 14

Dead of Night (Cavalcanti/Hamer/Dearden/Crichton, 1945): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 12.30pm

This film is part of the 'Roots, Rituals and Phantasmagoria' season at BFI Southbank curated by Daniel Kokotajlo, director of the forthcoming film Starve Acre and also screens on September 2nd.

Daniel Kokotajlo introduction: When an architect arrives at a potential client’s house, he gets the feeling he’s been there before. A classic anthology; here again English politeness is critiqued to great effect. A film that puts a spell on you as it develops, the brilliant final segment takes us to an eerie climax; the fatalistic nature of the closing scene is chilling, and an inspiration for the concept of fate in Starve Acre.

Time Out review:
Nearly 60 years on, Ealing's compendium of spooky tales remains scary as hell. The best of the five stories, which we see enacted as they're related in turn by guests at a country house, are Alberto Cavalcanti's 'The Ventriloquist's Dummy', with Michael Redgrave possessed by his deceptively lifeless little partner, and Hamer's 'The Haunted Mirror', with the splendid Googie Withers a reluctant participant as history repeats itself; least frightening, but amusing, are Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as typically obsessive sporting coves in Crichton's 'Golfing Story'. Best of all, however, is the overall narrative arc, with the framing story finally taking a headlong rush into a nightmarish realm almost surreal in its weird clarity and familiarity.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 251: Fri Sep 13

A Warning to the Curious (Gordon Clark, 1972) + Baby (Nelson-Burton, 1976):

This TV film double is part of the 'Roots, Rituals and Phantasmagoria' season at BFI Southbank curated by Daniel Kokotajlo, director of the forthcoming film Starve Acre.

Daniel Kokotajlo introduction to A Warning to the Curious:
When you’re in the mood, there’s nothing quite like a 1970s British ‘curiosity killed the cat’ creeper. Don’t mess with weird effigies and cursed relics buried in the ground or walls of your new home. A Warning to the Curious is particularly effective in its quiet and menacing atmosphere, as an archaeologist goes hunting for a mystical crown buried somewhere along the Norfolk coast.

Here (and above) is an extract from A Warning to the Curious.

Daniel Kokotajlo introduction to Baby:
By contrast, Baby brings relationships, children and hysteria back into frame. A young couple move to the countryside and discover a creepy, mummified animal in the walls. The wife’s concerns are all but ignored by her pragmatic husband, played to an agonising tee by 1970s Quatermass star Simon MacCorkindale.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 250: Thu Sep 12

The Man from London (Tarr, 2007): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm

This rarely screened film is also being shown on September 24th at the Prince Charles.

Chicago Reader review:
After the more complicated story lines of Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies, Hungarian master Bela Tarr boils a Georges Simenon novel down to a few primal essentials: a railway worker in a dank and decaying port town witnesses a crime while stationed on a tower and then stumbles into some of the resulting situations. His 2007 film is about looking and listening, with a suggestive minimalist soundtrack and ravishing black-and-white cinematography by German filmmaker Fred Kelemen. Tarr’s slow-as-molasses camera movements and endlessly protracted takes generate a trancelike sense of wonder, giving us time to think and always implying far more than they show. (As Tarr himself puts it, “The camera is inside and outside at the same time.”) The fine cast includes Tilda Swinton and Hungarian actress Erika Bok, who played in Satantango when she was 11 and is now in her early 20s.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 249: Wed Sep 11

The Miracle Worker (Penn, 1962): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.10pm

This presentation features an introduction by Clare Baines, BFI Inclusion Partner and Founder, Crip Club. There are other screenings in September and October. Details here.

Time Out review:
Arthur Penn's remarkable screen version of William Gibson's play about Helen Keller, which he directed on Broadway. It's a stunningly impressive piece of work, typically (for Penn) deriving much of its power from the performances. Patty Duke as the young girl born deaf and blind, and Anne Bancroft as the stubborn Irish governess who helps her overcome her inability to speak, spark off each other with a violence and emotional honesty rarely seen in the cinema, lighting up each other's loneliness, vulnerability, and plain fear. What is in fact astonishing is the way that, while constructing a piece of very carefully directed and intelligently written melodrama, Penn manages to avoid sentimentality or even undue optimism about the value of Helen's education, and the way he achieves such a feeling of raw spontaneity in the acting.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 248: Tue Sep 10

Carnival (Wilcox, 1931): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.15pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the 'Projecting the Archive' strand at BFI Southbank and will be introduced by BFI curator Josephine Botting.

BFI introduction:
To mark 25 years since the death of British screen superstar Dorothy ‘Chili’ Bouchier, we present a rare outing of this archive print with beautiful stencil colour sequences. This Venice-set drama revels in the lavish spectacle of the carnival, enhanced by stunning sets and costumes by renowned artist and theatrical designer Doris Zinkeisen. Matheson Lang plays a celebrated actor convinced of his wife’s infidelity and so consumed with jealousy that he plots her murder during a performance of Othello. Bouchier’s affecting performance as a woman trapped in a stifling marriage saw her labelled the ‘British Garbo’.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 247: Mon Sep 9

Robin Redbreast (MacTaggart, 1970): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.30pm

This film, one of the strangest and memorable BBC Play for Todays, is part of the 'Roots, Rituals and Phantasmagoria' season at BFI Southbank curated by Daniel Kokotajlo, director of the forthcoming film Starve Acre.

Daniel Kokotajlo introduction:
After being dumped by her partner, Norah moves to the countryside and falls for a local gamekeeper, with dire consequences. This is a perfect case study of the city-slicker moving to the country and finding themselves trapped in the ways of old. For me, Mr Fisher has always been one of the greatest villains, and a character that influenced the pagans in Starve Acre; it’s the way he behaves without glee – his despicable acts carried out with the banal behaviour of someone milking cows.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 246: Sun Sep 8

Ju Dou (Zhang, 1990): ICA Cinema, 4pm

This 16mm presentation is part of the Celluloid Sunday strand at the ICA.

Time Out review:
A magnificent melodrama, even more visually sumptuous and emotionally draining than the same director's earlier Red Sorghum, even though its cruel tale of adultery and revenge constitutes, to some extent, a blatant reworking of themes. This time, it's set in and around a dyeing workshop in a remote town in the 1920s, where the young wife of the ancient, impotent and sadistic dyer decides to make the old man's adopted nephew her lover and protector. Even when she finds herself with child, their affair remains a secret; but after the dyer is left partly paralysed by an accident, they brazenly flaunt their love, so that the vengeful cuckold's only hope is to turn the child against its parents. Hardly surprising, perhaps, that the Chinese authorities virtually dissociated themselves from this Japanese-financed, less-than-rosy picture of a country given over to unfettered sexual desire and murderous hatred. But it's this vision - expressed through superbly forthright performances, and in images whose stunning colours are sure to stick in the mind - that lends Zhang's movie the stark, searing power of Greek tragedy. Its dark wit and fiery pace ensure that even the occasional overheated moments carry conviction.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 245: Sat Sep 7

Murrain (Cooper, 1975) + Whistle And I'll Come to You (Miller, 1968):
BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.20pm

Two unnerving television dramas dealing with spiritual undercurrents in country life make up this double-bill as part of the 'Roots, Rituals and Phantasmagoria' season at BFI Southbank curated by Daniel Kokotajlo, director of the forthcoming film Starve Acre. The screening will be introduced by novelist Andrew Michael Hurley.

Kokotajlo's introduction to Murrain:
A no-nonsense vet is forced to join a local witch-hunt after a virus attacks the local pigs. A starting point for many discussions I had on Starve Acre, Murrain unashamedly captures the strangeness of rural England. The combination of Nigel Kneale’s script and John Cooper’s direction results in an intoxicating mix of off-kilter acting, strange framing and oblique storytelling. The landscape is dirty grey – it was sourly shot with typical TV cameras. I connect with its melancholic tone and the way it honours the dignity of the bullied witch.

and... Whistle And I'll Come to You:
Jonathan Miller masters the transformation of the intelligentsia into thumb-sucking infants in less than an hour. Micheal Hordern stars as an academic who, while rambling along the coast of East Anglia, finds a strange and enchanted whistle. On paper, Whistle and I’ll Come to You is very simple, but on screen it’s masterfully executed and a joy to watch.

Here (and above) is an extract from the latter drama.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 244: Fri Sep 6

The Man in Grey (Arliss, 1943): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.10pm

This film, also screening on September 17th, is part of the Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Time Out review:
James Mason was in fine caddish fettle for this Gainsborough bodice-ripper, a Regency romp (from Lady Eleanor Smith) chronicling the fortunes of old school chums Phyllis Calvert and Margaret Lockwood, the latter eventually to seduce her pal's roguish husband, Mason's glacial Lord Rohan. The strangled vowels and heaving sighs play like the highest Barbara Cartland camp, but in its day this was raunchy stuff for the British screen. In fact, the low-cut dresses distressed the Americans so much, they asked for portions of the film to be reshot so they could get it past the censor.

BFI Screenonline wrote that it was "easy to see why" the film was so well received: "It caught the national mood quite brilliantly, by fusing elements of previously successful "women's pictures" such as Rebecca (US, d. Alfred Hitchcock, 1940), Gaslight (d. Thorold Dickinson, 1940) and of course Gone With The Wind (US, d. Victor Fleming, 1939) with a surprisingly distinctive formula of its own, blending authentic star appeal (James Mason, Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, the then newcomer Stewart Granger) with a plot whose novelettish surface concealed an intricate labyrinth of contrasts and doublings: good against evil, obedience against rebellion, male against female and class against class. The ingredients of virtually all the subsequent Gainsborough melodramas can be clearly seen taking root here." Full review here.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 243: Thu Sep 5

Sympathy for the Underdog (Fukasaku, 1971): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.15pm

This film is part of the Radiance Presents season at the Prince Charles. Details here.

Little White Lies review:
“I don’t do things halfway,” says gangster Noburo Kudo (Noburo Ando), about halfway through Kinji Fukasaku’s film, “We’re into it now, let’s go all the way.” His former rival turned friend Masuo Gunji (Kōji Tsuruta) can only agree. Fresh out of a ten-year stint in a Yokohama prison, Gunji has reassembled the remnants of his old gang, and moved in on Naha, Okinawa, whether for the criminal opportunities the American-occupied island capital offers, or perhaps because he is looking for his ex-lover there. This leads to conflicts with new local gangs, as well as with his old enemies from the mainland, as he and Kudo prove gutsy albeit outnumbered underdogs in some very unfair fights. The ninth and final entry in Toei Studios Bakuto (‘Gambler’) series, this may be a yakuza film, but it plays more like noir, not least thanks to Takeo Yamashita’s hard jazz score, the flashbacks told in stylised photomontages, and the brooding fatalism that pervades everything. These characters are all in, even if they know there can be no going back, and as Gunji, sporting his characteristic shades, cuts a cool figure, this will also be his last stand, and his glorious revenge.
Anton Bitel

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 242: Wed Sep 4

Lawrence of Arabia (Lean, 1962): Prince Charles Cinema, 1.45pm

The Prince Charles are showing this classic movie from 70mm in a season that continues throughout August and September. You can find the full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
David Lean's 1962 spectacle about T.E. Lawrence's military career between 1916 and '18, written by Robert Bolt and produced by Sam Spiegel, remains one of the most intelligent, handsome, and influential of all war epics. Combining the scenic splendor of De Mille with virtues of the English theater, Lean endeared himself to English professors and action buffs alike. The film won seven Oscars, including best picture and direction, yet the ideological crassness of De Mille and most war movies isn't so much transcended as given a high gloss: the film's subject is basically the White Man's Burden—despite ironic notations—with Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, and Omar Sharif called upon to represent the Arab soul, and Jose Ferrer embodying the savage Turks. The all-male cast helps make this one of the most homoerotic of all screen epics, though the characters' sexual experiences are at best only hinted at. 
Jonathan Rosenabum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 241: Tue Sep 3

Brief Ecstasy (Greville, 1937): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.30pm

This 35mm presentation, also screening on September 11th, is part of the Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Time Out review:
A remarkable film, thematically not dissimilar to Brief Encounter, except that lust is given a fair crack of the whip. A strong erotic undertow runs through the witty opening scene: in the exchange of covert glances as Hugh Williams comes into a snack bar where Linden Travers is having coffee; in the 'accidental' pawing of her person as he mops the coffee he has spilt; in the over-pitched fury with which she slaps him. His subsequent apology accepted, a superb montage (soft music, silhouettes, champagne, whispered exchanges) heralds a brief night of ecstasy, after which he announces his imminent departure for India. Five years later, he returns to find her the beloved wife of a distinguished, much older scientist (Paul Lukas), and desire is reborn. The excellent script plays fair by all the characters (one scene has Lukas start skipping gaily upstairs to bed in his wife's wake, only to pause, puffing, before he makes it). And Travers' inner struggle, no becoming yes then no again as she realises what she means to her husband, is beautifully detailed in both performance and Richard T. Gréville's expressionist-tinged direction, which makes it clear that her choice of love is made at the bitter cost of the other thing.
Tom Milne

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 240: Mon Sep 2

The Rebel (Day, 1961): BFI Southbank, 2pm

BFI introduction:
In this hilarious satire, Tony Hancock excels in his feature debut as an anonymous city worker who escapes the drudgery of modern existence to pursue the life of a Bohemian artist in 60s Paris. Restored to its Technicolor glory, the comedian-turned-actor’s wit and wry humour still sparkle today.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 239: Sun Sep 1

L’Homme Atlantique (Duras, 1981) + Les Mains Négatives (Duras, 1979):
ICA Cinema, 6pm

This programme of two shorts is part of the excellent Marguerite Duras season at the ICA (full details here) and is also being screened on August 24th.

ICA introduction (to L’Homme atlantique):
Duras described L’Homme atlantique as her “most listenable film”, and what we hear is a woman’s account (voiced by Duras, and undoubtedly autobiographical) – often informed by cruelty – of her pain, having just been left by the man she loves. But Duras was also aware of its aesthetic shock, and, at the time of its one-cinema release in Paris, wrote a “warning” to potential audiences in Le Monde: " I would like to warn everyone that most of the film is composed of black. It has become customary for the majority of cinemagoers in France to act as though cinema is something that is owed to them, to protest and scream bloody murder at the appearance of films that weren’t made for them alone.
Therefore, I would like to tell these viewers not to step foot in the cinema that is screening L’Homme atlantique, that there is no use in doing so because the film was made in total ignorance of their existence, and that, by entering, they will only be disturbing those who are about to become the film’s audience. To these people, I say: do not take the risk of walking out of the film, do not buy a ticket in the first place."  Please be warned: the ICA will issue no refunds.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 238: Sat Aug 31

Agatha and the Limitless Readings (Duras, 1981): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the excellent Marguerite Duras season at the ICA (full details here) and is also screened on August 22nd.

MOMA introduction:
Marguerite Duras called Agatha “the first film I’ve written about happiness.” A brother and sister, as “frighteningly stiff” and eternal as ancient Olmec statues, gaze beyond each other toward the deserted beach and the incessant sea. In an uninhabited villa of bare walls bathed in a cold, silent winter light, they find themselves lost in memories of a “marvelous” summer in their youth, suspended over the abyss of an incestuous love: blissful, violent, impossible. Duras, whose voice we hear off camera with her then-partner Yann Andréa, filmed Agathe in an abandoned seaside hotel in Trouville-sur-Mer, Les Roches Noires (“The Black Rocks”), a Belle Époque retreat for Claude Monet, Gustave Flaubert, and Marcel Proust. In 1963 Duras had purchased an apartment adjoining what was once the suite where Proust would regularly stay with his grandmother. There, for the rest of her days, Duras would spend summers awash in her own memories of lost time.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 237: Fri Aug 30

Charulata (Ray, 1964): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm

This film, part of the Big Screen Classics season, is also screened on August 6th and 11th.

Chicago Reader:
Also known as The Lonely Wife, this relatively early (1965) film by Satyajit Ray (The World of Apu), based on a Tagore novel of Victorian India, may be the first of his features in which he really discovers mise-en-scene, and it's an exhilarating encounter. It's typically rich in the nuances of grief and in extraordinarily allusive dialogue, though not very much happens in terms of plot (a sensitive woman is neglected by her newspaper-publisher husband and drawn to his younger cousin). But at every moment, the gorgeous cinematography and expressive camera movements and dissolves have plenty of stories of their own to tell. You shouldn't miss this.
Dave Keh

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 236: Thu Aug 29

The Terrorizers (Wang, 1986): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Edward Yang retrospective at ICA Cinema. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Edward Yang’s evocative and deliberately ambiguous third feature (1986) pivots on a chance encounter between a rebellious Eurasian girl and a novelist and housewife who decides to leave her husband, a lab technician. As Taiwanese film critic Edmund Wong has noted, the film offers “a refreshing look at Yang’s theme of urban melancholy and self-discovery”—a preoccupation running through Yang’s early work that often evokes some of Antonioni’s poetry, atmosphere, and feeling for modernity. Well worth checking out.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 235: Wed Aug 28

Mothra (Honda, 1961): Barbican Cinema, 6.15pm

This film is part of the '70 Years of Japanese Monster Movies' season at the Barbican. Details here. This event will begin with a live performance on stage by Frank Chickens. Frank Chickens are a Japanese punk pop performance group with a cult following in the UK, who were founded in London in 1982 as a duo with Kazuko Hohki and Kazumi Taguchi, but the group has now expanded to more than 20 members. They were John Peel‘s favourite, had an independent chart hit with “We Are Ninja”, had a Channel 4 TV series: “Kazuko’s Karaoke Klub”, won the Foster Comedy God Award in 2010, released five albums and toured worldwide. Their song “Mothra” is directly inspired by the 1961 film.

Barbican introduction:
The divine Mothra is an unusual beast, a rare female kaiju, who appears in three different forms over the course of her debut film – first as an egg, then a larva, before emerging from a chrysalis, built against the then new Tokyo Tower, as a giant moth. Her city rampages are provoked not by malevolence, but in her desperate search for the Shobijin, her two kidnapped guardians - the mini-priestesses, or ‘Small Beauties’, memorably played by Yumi Ito and Emi Ito. Mothra has many moments of humour, casting comedian Frankie Sakai in the lead role and satirically swiping at the imperialist land of Rolisica, a thinly veiled parody of the US and the Soviet Union. But the exciting scenes of Mothra’s destruction of Tokyo landmarks and a city clearly based on New York, are played straight, and remain classic moments of kaiju fury.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 234: Tue Aug 27

Le Camion (Duras, 1977): ICA Cinema, 6.30pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the excellent Marguerite Duras season at the ICA (full details here) and is also being screened on August 7th.

New Yorker review:
Marguerite Duras's control of film technique here suggests that she has become a master. But there's a joker in her mastery: though her moods and cadences and her rhythmic phrasing, with its emotional undertow, might seem ideally suited to the medium, they don't fulfill moviegoers' expectations. There are only two people in this film: Duras herself and G�rard Depardieu, and they sit at a round table in a room in her home, and never leave it. Serene, half-smiling, she reads aloud the script of a film in which Depardieu would act the role of a truck driver who picks up a woman hitchhiker. The film alternates between sequences in the room and sequences of a rolling truck, seen always at a distance. Each time Duras cuts from the room to the truck, we're drawn into the hypnotic flow of the road imagery--we half-dream our way into a "real" movie--and each time she pulls us back into the room we feel an emotional wrench, a rude awakening. Duras makes us aware of our mechanisms of response, and it's tonic and funny to feel the tensions she provokes. Her picture has been thought out with such supple discrimination between the values of sound and image that you could almost say it's perfectly made--an ornery, glimmering achievement.
Pauline Kael

Here (and above) are the opening credits.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 233: Mon Aug 26

Excalibur (Boorman, 1981): Picturehouse Central, 8pm

Chicago Reader review:
John Boorman's 1981 retelling of the Arthurian legends is a continuation of the thematic thrust and visual plan of his Exorcist II, though the failure of that bold, hallucinatory, and flawed film seems to have put Boorman into partial retreat. There is humor here (in the form of a vaudeville Merlin, played by Nicol Williamson) as well as a diminution of scale that seems intended to help audiences through the thornier byways of Boorman's vision. But Boorman has not compromised in his temporal manipulations and his rigorous depsychologizing of his characters, which is where many viewers will have the most trouble. The Waste Land arrives via T.S. Eliot and From Ritual to Romance, though this slightly threadbare interpretation doesn't distract from Boorman's personal concerns, which remain as proudly recondite as ever.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

 

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 232: Sun Aug 25

Les Enfants (Duras, 1985): ICA Cinema, 6pm

This film (35mm) is part of the excellent Marguerite Duras season at the ICA (full details here.

ICA introduction:
Co-written with Jean-Marc Turine and her son, Jean Mascolo, Marguerite Duras’s last film Les Enfants is, in her words, “an endlessly desperate comedy whose subject has something to do with knowledge”, and was inspired by her reading of Ecclesiastes. The film’s protagonist is seven-year-old Ernesto (played by Axel Bogousslavsky who, at the time, was 38), who – much to the dismay of his traditional parents (Daniel Gélin and Tatiana Moukhine) – refuses to go to school “because they teach me things I don’t know”. Les Enfants is a philosophical fable that postulates childhood as a redress to societal failings, and celebrates resistance to a failing education system (one that May ’68 was, in the end, not able to rehabilitate). In Duras’s words: “Ernesto takes on the whole world: God, America, chemistry, knowledge, Marx and Hegel, the great mathematical powerhouses of the world. He has no popular ideas. He has no recipes, no principles, no morals. Ernesto is a hero."

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 231: Sat Aug 24

Il Dialogo di Roma (Duras, 1983): ICA Cinema, 7pm

This film is part of the excellent Marguerite Duras season at the ICA (full details here) and is also being screened on September 7th.

ICA introduction:
Il dialogo di Roma was a commission from the Italian broadcaster RAI. After her short film Césarée, Duras paid another tribute to Berenice, “queen of the Jews”, through the impossible love story between a Roman soldier and the Queen of Samaria. Around the Via Appia and the Piazza Navona, Duras films the landmarks of Rome’s city centre in the early eighties, in dialogue with her own partner, Yann Andréa.

Here (and above) is an extract.