This is part of the Claude Chabrol season and features an introduction by season curator Catherine Wheatley. Other screenings of the film (September 21st and 25th and October 4th and 6th) during the season are detailed here.
Time Out review: Classically simple but relentlessly probing thriller, set in a French village shadowed by the presence of a compulsive killer. Some lovely Hitchcockian games, like the strange ketchup that drips onto a picnic hamburger from a clifftop where the latest victim has been claimed. But also more secretive pointers to social circumstance and the 'exchange of guilt' as Stephane Audran's starchy schoolmistress finds herself irresistibly drawn to the ex-army butcher she suspects of being the killer: the fact, for instance, that alongside the killer as he keeps vigil outside the schoolhouse, a war memorial stands sentinel with its reminder of society's dead and maimed. With this film Claude Chabrol came full circle back to his first, echoing not only the minutely detailed provincial landscape of Le Beau Serge but its theme of redemption. The impasse here, a strangely moving tragedy, is that there is no way for the terrified teacher, bred to civilised restraints, to understand that her primeval butcher may have been reclaimed by his love for her. Tom Milne
Marking the reopening of the refurbished Ciné Lumière under the
auspices of its figurehead, Kristin Scott Thomas, and the 30th
anniversary of the release of The English Patient, the
screening on 8 Sept at 18.30 will be preceded by an extended
introduction by lead actors Kristin Scott Thomas and Ralph Fiennes.
Time Out review: Tuscany, as the Allies pursue the Germans north at the end of WWII:
traumatised by loss and carnage, Canadian nurse Hana (Juliette Binoche) decides
to stay behind in an abandoned, bombed monastery and care for her dying
patient (Ralph Fiennes). He seems to recall little of his life, but when
Caravaggio (Willem Dafoe), a vengeful, morphine-addicted thief, turns up and
quizzes him over past dark secrets, and as Hana reads from his beloved
Herodotos, memories return of the pre-war years when, as an
archaeologist/cartographer in the Sahara, he had a passionate affair
with Katharine (Kristin Scott Thomas), wife of a British colleague. Though Anthony Minghella's
adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's novel simplifies, jettisons and
changes certain elements of the original story, it remains a rich,
complex, entrancing piece of work. Part poignant romance, part
suspenseful adventure, part enigmatic mystery, it's essentially a study
in different responses to love and war, honour and betrayal, nationality
and identity, falsehood and forgiveness, which sounds subtle echoes as
the narrative flashes to and fro between two main time frames. Needless
to say, the performances are flawless; more surprising is the fluency,
poetry and scale of Minghella's direction (John Seale's sensuous desert
photography is superb), equally eloquent whether depicting boudoir
intimacies, bomb-disposal skills, drunken dementia or a deadly
sandstorm. Geoff Andrew
Chicago Reader review: Along with The Man Who Would Be King and The Dead, this is
arguably John Huston's best literary adaptation, and conceivably his
very best film—a very close rendering of Flannery O'Connor's remarkable
first novel about a crazed southern cracker (a perfectly cast Brad
Dourif) who sets out to preach a “church without Christ,” and winds up
suffering a true Christian martyrdom in spite of himself. The period,
local ambience, and O'Connor's deadly gallows humor are all perfectly
caught, and apart from the subtle if highly pertinent fact that this is
an unbeliever's version of a believer's novel, it's about as faithful a
version of O'Connor's grotesque world as one could ever hope to get on
film, hilarious and frightening in equal measure. O'Connor conceived her
novel as a parody of existentialism, and Huston's own links with
existentialism—as the director of the first U.S. stage production of No Exit, as well as Sartre's Freud
script—make him an able interpreter. With Harry Dean Stanton, Amy
Wright, Daniel Shor, Ned Beatty, and Huston himself as the hero's
fire-and-brimstone grandfather. The producer is Michael Fitzgerald,
whose family's friendship with O'Connor guaranteed the fidelity and
seriousness of the undertaking. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Chicago Reader review: Chris Marker’s 1982 masterpiece is one of the key nonfiction films of
our time—a personal philosophical essay that concentrates mainly on
contemporary Tokyo but also includes footage shot in Iceland,
Guinea-Bissau, and San Francisco (where the filmmaker tracks down all
the locations from Hitchcock’s Vertigo). Difficult to describe
and almost impossible to summarize, this poetic journal of a major
French filmmaker radiates in all directions, exploring and reflecting
upon many decades of experience. While Marker’s brilliance as a thinker
and filmmaker has largely (and unfairly) been eclipsed by Godard’s,
there is conceivably no film in the entire Godard canon that has as much
to say about the state of the world, and the wit and beauty of Marker’s
highly original form of discourse leave a profound aftertaste. A film
about subjectivity, death, photography, social custom, and consciousness
itself, Sans Soleil registers like a poem one might find in a time capsule. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Time Out review: An accomplished film of Ronald Harwood's theatrical two-hander, animated
by two gigantic performances. Albert Finney, grossly Shakespearean as Sir, the
imperious, declamatory actor-manager with a Moses-like command of his
company and inanimate objects ('St-o-o-p th-a-a-a-t tr-ai-ai-n!' he
bawls, bringing British Rail to its knees), is fully matched by Tom Courtenay's pantomime poof Norman, Sir's devoted dresser: mincing,
nagging, but the only one able to reach to the furthest depths of Sir's
hair-tearing madness and coax him into the costumes and roles that have
by wicked irony destroyed him. Especially pleasing, then, that in the
final act it is the quiet craft of an actress - Eileen Atkins as the
long-suffering, love-lorn stage manageress - that rises above
constrictions of plot and thankless part to upstage them.
This 35mm screening in the 'Projecting the Archive' strand features a Q&A with actors Hayley Mills, Diane Poole and Alan Barnes.
BFI introduction: When a stranger appears in their barn, three siblings care for him in
the belief that he’s Jesus returned to Earth. Forbes shot his
directorial debut on location in rural Lancashire with a cast of local
children, who give performances of astonishing wit and candour. A film
about childhood that avoids sentimentality, it has enchanted audiences
across the generations.
'I've tried to vary my films considerably, but I would
have to admit that Bleak Moments remains, in some ways, the mother of
all Mike Leigh films. And I'm very proud of it.' Mike Leigh
The film screened by Contemporary 75, a London festival screening films that inspired generations of British audiences and filmmakers, will be followed by a Q&A with director Mike Leigh.
Chicago Reader review: Mike Leigh's auspicious first feature focuses on the painful gaps in
communication between a lonely accountant's clerk (Anne Raitt) and an
uptight schoolteacher she halfheartedly tries to seduce. Kitchen-sink
realism with a vengeance, punctuated by painful and awkward silences,
this was made before Leigh formed a fully coherent social and political
view of his material, but his feeling for the characters never falters.
One can find a glancing relationship with John Cassavetes's first feature, Shadows,
but the style and milieu is English to the core. This might seem
overlong, and the drabness and emotional constipation may drive you
slightly batty, but the film leaves a powerful aftertaste. Jonathan Rosenbaum
Sight & Sound review: This is the
first feature in Africa to be directed by a woman. Set in 1961, at the
start of the Angolan War of Independence, and shot in Congo, the film
tracks the resistance efforts of the Popular Movement for the Liberation
of Angola (MPLA), a militant group whose
leader Mário Pinto de Andrade was also Maldoror’s husband. In part, it’s
about the arrest and brutal torture of a tractor driver, Domingos
Xavier, who lives in a working-class district of the capital city Luanda
and harbours seditious beliefs such as, “There are no whites, no
mulattos, no blacks. There’s only the poor and the rich.” She
gives equal importance to his wife Maria who, carrying along her infant
child, sets out to find him, going from one prison to another,
confronting indifference, lechery, dead ends. In her suffering, she
becomes a kind of Mother Angola. Her doggedness and her heartache are
portrayed with wounding acuity and illuminate Maldoror’s much-quoted
belief that “African women must be everywhere. They must be in the
images, behind the camera, in the editing room and involved in every
stage of the making of a film. They must be the ones to talk about
their problems.” Yet
Maria’s plight is not solely African or colonial; a dogged seeker of
justice, she resembles the desperate women in Zhao Liang’s documentary
Petition (2009). For the director, she evokes “the alone-ness of a woman
and the time it takes to trudge… It could be any woman, in any country,
who takes off to find her husband.” Sukhdev Sandhu
This is part of the Andrzej Zulawski season at the Garden Cinema. This film is also being shown on September 16th and October 13th. The screening on the September 1st will be introduced by Garden Cinema team member, writer, and filmmaker Sarah Grice. Chicago Reader review: Polish-born director Andrzej Żuławski was a master at depicting worlds divorced from traditional moral order, whether the Nazi-occupied Poland ofThe Third Part of the Night(1971), the supernatural Berlin ofPossession(1981), the strange planet ofOn the Silver Globe(1988), or the sweetly absurd universe of his final film,Cosmos(2015). Few filmmakers have rendered so palpably the experience of losing one’s grip on reality, and with the 1975 French dramaL’Important C’Est D’Aimer, Żuławski marries this lifelong subject to a romantic sensibility unlike anything else in his body of work. The title can be translated as “the important thing is to love,” and Żuławski presents love as an all-consuming force, similar to madness or addiction. The film is deliberately overstylized—with outsize performances, lush music (by Georges Delerue), and delirious camera movements—yet the grandeur reflects the intensity of the characters’ experience. Żuławski considers a relationship between two lost souls. Servais (Fabio Testi) is a former war photographer now shooting pornography and working for tabloid magazines; Nadine (Romy Schneider) is a onetime starlet now slumming in sexploitation films. Servais falls for Nadine after taking her picture on a movie set and, to prove his devotion, borrows money from the gangster who finances his porno shoots to produce an avant-garde staging ofRichard IIIthat will star Nadine and, she hopes, jump-start her career. During the production, Servais gets closer to the actress but keeps his beneficence a secret; he also gets to know her husband, a mentally unbalanced cinephile (pop singer Jacques Dutronc in one of his first serious roles) whom Nadine pities more than she loves. The growing attraction between Servais and Nadine comes to destroy all three characters, who regret how they’ve failed to live up to their ideals. They try to reclaim their dignity, but only too late, after the stage production flops and Servais is hunted down by the gangster. Żuławski boldly mixes sensationalist elements with high art, defamiliarizing all of them. Scenes of Shakespeare follow S-M porno shoots; protestations of romantic yearning come between depictions of graphic violence. The director connects these disparate pieces with a uniform emotional potency; no matter what takes place onscreen, the characters respond with deep, sometimes terrifying feeling. Also shining throughL’Important C’Est D’Aimeris a genuine sense that love enables us to transcend the most degrading experiences. Thanks in part to towering performances from Testi and Schneider, the film makes one believe that the characters’ love is a matter of life and death. JR Jones Here (and above) is the trailer.
BFI introduction: Hailed by Ingmar Bergman as ‘a work of genius’, Watkins’ film
fragments the difficult formative years of the Norwegian painter’s life
into a vivid, intensely subjective exploration of memory, illness,
sexuality and artistic creation. Blending interviews, direct address,
documentary techniques and impressionistic montage, the film evokes both
the emotional turbulence of Munch’s work and the social and emotional
conditions that shaped it. James Bell
Time Out review: Peter Watkins' biography of the formative
years of the pioneer Expressionist easily vindicates its running time.
As Munch moves through his youth, quiet and alienated, we realise that
he too was eluded by any lasting intimacy: a long, abortive affair with
an older woman joins the ubiquitous ghosts of a childhood scarred by
sickness and death. In the end it's the paintings which do Munch's
talking for him, both directly and through the prefigurations and
echoes in the film's set pieces, a fuzzed, mutely anguished procession
of half-profiles and silently helpless groups with numb, naked eyes.
It's a remarkable film. Giovanni Dadomo Here (and above) is a clip from the film.
This film is part of the Peter Watkins season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
BFI introduction: Watkins’ monumental account of the 1871 Paris Commune stages
revolutionary history as if covered by live television, with rival
broadcasts interviewing workers, soldiers and citizens. Shot in a
disused warehouse and developed collaboratively with its
non-professional cast, the film reveals uncomfortable connections
between the suppression of the Commune and contemporary inequalities.
Hailed as the culmination of Watkins’ life’s work, it is an unmissable
work that deserves to be seen on the big screen. James Bell
Time Out review: What looks likely to be the final film from the director of ‘The War
Game’ returns in style to Peter Watkins’ first feature, the provocative and
committed ‘Culloden’. He adopts a similar framing device – the
television presentation of a historical event – to explore the rise and
fall of the 1871 Paris Commune. Around 200 citizens from the relevant
districts reconstruct the events in a film that rigorously interrogates
media authority, political power and personal responsibility. Fluidly
shot in crisp monochrome, it builds a remarkable sense of popular
participation (reflected in its communal making) in a seminal historical
moment and deals head on with both how one makes a revolution actually
work and similarly how it is betrayed by hierarchical interests.
Chicago Reader review: This
is an experimental film in the original rather than fashionable sense
of that term—a 1980 adaptation by Michelangelo Antonioni of Jean
Cocteau's play The Eagle Has Two Heads that
reunites the filmmaker with Monica Vitti in the starring role as a
widowed queen who falls in love with an anarchist poet sent to
assassinate her. What makes this experimental is neither the play nor
the performances, but the fact that Antonioni shot it in color video
(later transferred to 35-millimeter), regarding the medium not as
“television” but as a new kind of cinematography, and associating each
character with a different color as part of his visual exploration. The
choice of the Cocteau play seems more arbitrary than inevitable, which
raises the form-versus-content issue even more than in most Antonioni
features. The results are singular, to say the least. Jonathan Rosenbaum Here(and above) is an extract.
BFI Southbank introduction: Prophetic in its depiction of surveillance culture and the erosion of
civil liberties, Watkins’ drama constructs a portrait of Denmark’s
‘model society’ in crisis during a NATO summit that is overshadowed by
strikes in a Copenhagen shipyard, terrorism and mounting social unrest.
Blending staged drama with the texture and immediacy of television
reportage, the film follows the state’s increasingly authoritarian
response to dissent. James Bell
Time Out review: A thinly disguised commentary on Japan's post-war history, using
ceremonial family gatherings (mainly weddings and funerals) as a key to
the changes in Japanese society: individual characters represent
specific political factions, just as events in the narrative mirror the
twists and turns in the country's domestic and foreign policies. However
dense the allegory, though, Oshima keeps it very accessible to his
audience by stressing individuals' feelings as much as ceremonies; their
dreams, aspirations, frustrations and agonies are all too familiar. A
significant political film for the time. Tony Rayns
This is part of the Andrzej Żuławski season at the Garden Cinema. Full details here.
This screening will be introduced by writer Michael Brooke. The screenings on September the 11th and 27th will feature a video introduction by Andrzej Jaroszewicz, camera operator on The Devil and frequent collaborator of Andrzej Żuławski.
Garden Cinema introduction: During
the Prussian army's invasion of Poland in 1793, a young Polish
nobleman, Jakub, is saved from imprisonment by a stranger, who in return
wants to obtain a list of his fellow conspirators. Following his
mysterious savior across the country, Jakub sees the overall chaos and
moral corruption, including his father's death and the betrayal of his
friend who stole his fiancee. Becoming apparently demented by what he
has seen, he commits a number of seemingly motiveless and gory killings. An
allegory for the political crisis in Poland during 1968, when communist
leaders created riots to punish student, the film was shelved upon
completion by the government. It was accused of excess of violence and
erotic scenes, but the political undertones of Żuławski’s film were more
objectionable to the government. The film had to wait 16 years for its
cinema premiere and was not released to the public until 1988. Before
this happened, however, Żuławski was forced to leave Poland, deprived of
the chance to make films in his country, he left for France to continue
his career there.
Time Out review: This is Oshima's post-1968 analysis of the failure and disillusionment
of the student Left, and it's among his most biting and cautionary
films. Like Death by Hanging and other movies, it starts with a
riddle (the real or imaginary disappearance of a student militant), and
then follows through all the implications with a remorseless logic.
Another student sets out to trace the missing boy, fearing that he
committed suicide; his only leads are conversations with the militant's
estranged girlfriend and a roll of film shot by the boy just before he
vanished. But it's less a mystery thriller than a series of provocative
questions. What is militancy? Does 'struggle' mean violence? Is it
really possible for an individual to identify with the interests of a
group? And what part do sexual problems play in determining the feelings
and actions of young people? Tony Rayns
BFI Southbank introduction: A woman is given a video camera and decides to record everything in her
life. However, the ever-present camera reveals the dark secrets of her
marriage and triggers an existential crisis. The final big-screen
appearance by Vitti – and the only film she wrote and directed – sees
her give a vulnerable and heartbreaking portrayal of a woman on the
verge.
This film is part of the Peter Watkins season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
BFI introduction: Peter Watkins’ vast portrait of August Strindberg examines the Swedish
playwright not simply as a literary figure, but as a lens through which
to explore class, nationalism and artistic freedom. Produced as part of a
video production course for the Swedish Folk High School, the project
took Watkins and 24 students two years to complete, and combines
dramatised scenes with discussions between performers and crew,
continually interrogating its own methods of representation. James Bell
Time Out review: Coming-of-age stories don’t get much bleaker than Nagisa Ôshima’s
tale of a preadolescent who assists his itinerant family in moneymaking
scams. But it’s the kind of cynicism that invigorates and energizes—a
bracing dose of misanthropy that is nonetheless suffused with robust
empathy for its hardened juvenile protagonist. Based on an actual
incident, the film follows ten-year-old Toshio (Tetsuo Abe), his father
(Fumio Watanabe), his stepmother (Akiko Koyama) and his infant brother
(Tsuyoshi Kinoshita) as they trek across Japan, stopping in each new
location to fake traffic accidents and extort money from stunned
drivers. It’s a true nomad’s life, with high highs (a night spent in a luxury
hotel with copious food and geisha attendants) and very low lows (Dad
beating Mom for refusing to get an abortion). Though filmed in teeming
real-world locales in what occasionally seem like clandestine
circumstances, the movie has the feel of the science-fiction stories
that Toshio tells to his sibling. Ôshima often situates his characters
at the edges of a rigorously composed widescreen frame that emphasizes
the oppressive architecture of a rapidly modernizing nation. He also
employs visual distortions like monochrome tinting and image squeezing
to suggest the skewed perspective of his corrupted young lead. Happiness and contentment are not in the cards for Toshio, and Ôshima
never sentimentalizes his existence nor lets him off the hook for his
crimes. But still we feel, deeply and profoundly, for this lost soul. Keith Uhlich
BFI Southbank introduction: Taking the personal and the political into bleak environs, Watkins’
futuristic chamber piece sees an enforced family reunion unfurl in an
underground shelter next to a nuclear waste station. It’s an unsettling
portrait of a near future. The film screens with a short that sees
pirates and social outcasts fight property developers in a flooded
future East London.
This film also has its London premiere at the Prince Charles on August 4th. Details here.
Time Out review: New Yorker Adolpho Rollo (Steve Buscemi) is your classic head-movie auteur. In
his mind he's creating deathless classics of the screen. Back in the
real world, he can't pay the rent on the downtown grothole he calls
home. He knows he must be getting really desperate when he puts a script
'Unconditional Surrender' - 500 pages of angst-drenched gobbledygook -
up for sale and attracts the attentions of one 'Joe' (Seymour Cassel), a
warm-hearted minor gangland figure. Director Rockwell's affectionate
screenplay pits innocence against experience, artist against philistine,
but unexpectedly weighs sympathies towards Cassel's force-of-nature mob
mentor, who's soon giving his po-faced protégé a life-lesson
masterclass in generosity of spirit, wooing the girl-next-door (Beals),
and seat-of-the-pants petty crime. Rockwell's wonderfully unassuming
movie throws a big hug around youthful ambition, b/w filmstock, and the
glowing screen charisma of Cassel. An unheralded gem. Trevor Johnston
BFI introduction: A young Sicilian woman flees her repressive family for London, finding
liberation amid a more permissive environment. Vitti effortlessly blends
humour and dramatics as Assunta, who attempts to track down and murder
the boyfriend who abandoned and dishonoured her. The film follows her as
she travels around the country, gradually discovering the joys of
women’s liberation and self-fulfilment.
Peter
Mandelson’s grandfather Herbert Morrison, deputy Prime Minister in
Clement Attlee’s landmark post-War Labour government, famously carried
his Desert Island Discs choices in his wallet, expecting the call to
appear on the programme.It wasan invitation that sadly was never extended to himandI thought of that tale when I wasactuallyasked to contributeto the most famousof all moviepolls, run by Sight & Sound magazine, the latest of which was in 2022. All those years of trawling the previous decades choiceswith rapt fascination, readingthe articles on the canonand the time keeping thatrunning list of my ten all-time favourites that wereinevitablemixed up withthegreatest in my headwas not wasted. Now,though,I was going to be forced to think about it and make a definitive list. Othersweredoing the same,prompting responses varying widely from“it’s a bit of fun” to “it’s agony”.
The
more I thought about it the more I wanted my contribution to be just
that, a genuine heartfelt one, made up of the films I desperately wanted
people to seebut had not been consideredin the previous voting,and modestlyhoping fora re-evalutionof the choices.I made two rules.All ofthe films in my list(reproduced below) would deserve to bepart oftheSight&SoundGreatest poll conversation andallthe choiceswould not havereceived a single vote in the previous 2012 poll.
Some in this list are simply neglected favourites but in other cases thereareverygoodreasonssome ofthese
films have been overlooked. Jean Grémillon, for instance, faded from
view after an ill-fated directorial career, and has only resurfaced in
the last decade with devoted retrospectives and DVD releases. The
heartbreaking Remorques is one of his masterpieces. The Alfred Hitchcock melodrama Under Capricorn, which quickly disappeared afterbombing at the box officeand thesubsequentdissolving of the director’sproduction company,deserves high rank in the Master’s work but languishesin limbo, only seen at major retrospectives.The Exiles and Spring Night, Summer Night are bothoncelost American independent classics only just receiving their due after recent rediscovery.White Dog,after a desultory release overshadowed bymisguidedaccusations of racism, was not in circulation for many years.Warhol's Vinly, based on Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, wasshownin 2013from(fortuitously I later discovered)16mm in an ICA gallery and feltthrillinglyauthentic,thesoundof thewhirring projectorand the artist’s singular framingcombining to create a mesmeric experience. Here is the full list:
Remorques/Stormy Waters (Jean Grémillon, 1941)
Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1949)
The Exiles (Kent Mackenzie, 1961)
La Baie des anges/Bay of Angels (Jacques Demy, 1963)
Vinyl (Andy Warhol, 1965)
Spring Night, Summer Night (Jospeh L. Anderson, 1967)
Heroic Purgatory (Yosgishige Yoshida, 1970)
Straw Dogs (Sam Peckinpah, 1971)
White Dog (Sam Fuller, 1982)
Three Times (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2005)
Seven from the list have been shown in a London cinema since the poll
appeared and now the Jacques Demy film gets anothert screenings at the Prince Charles Cinema.
Time Out review: Jacques Demy's second feature has a ravishing Jeanne Moreau, ash-blonde for the
occasion and dressed all in white, as a compulsive gambler who doesn't
care what happens to her so long as she has a chip to start her on the
roulette tables. Ostensibly the subject is gambling, but the real theme
is seduction - with Moreau casting a spell on Claude Mann that turns him every
which way - and this is above all a visually seductive film. Shot mainly
inside the casinos and on the sunstruck promenades of Nice and Monte
Carlo, it is conceived as a dazzling symphony in black and white.
Moreau's performance is magnificent, but it's really Jean Rabier's
camera which turns the whole film into an expression of sheer joy - not
only in life and love, but things. Iron bedsteads make arabesques
against white walls; a little jeweller's shop becomes a paradise of
strange ornamental clocks; a series of angled mirrors echo the heroine
as she runs down a corridor into her lover's arms; roulette wheels spin
to a triumphant musical accompaniment; and over it all hangs an aura of
brilliant sunshine. Tom Milne
Here (and above) are the evocative opening credits.
