Capital Celluloid 2025 — Day 232: Fri Aug 22

Electra Glide in Blue (Guercio, 1973): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.45pm

This film, also being screened on August. 21stis part of the great Moviedrome: Bringing the Cult TV Series to the Big Screen season.

Time Out review:
Striking one-off by a former record producer. A weirdly funny black comedy about an undersized cop, barely five feet tall but nursing a dream of becoming a Clint Eastwood hero. He makes the grade (after a fashion, since the dream turns sour) by way of an alarmingly funny echo of Dr Strangelove (his mentor in detection has no use for evidence, preferring instead to stand in the moonlight listening to his inner voices) and some spiky mockery of police methods. The message may be a little naïve when he finally opts for humanity rather than authoritarianism, but the film has an extraordinary texture, peeling away layer after layer to reveal dark depths of loneliness and despair as this cop Candide learns that he isn't living in the best of all possible worlds. And Conrad Hall's photography, especially of the Monument Valley landscapes, is a joy.
Tom Milne

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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