Rome, Open City (Rossellini, 1945): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6pm
This classic Italian movie, screening as part of the Roots of Neorealism season at BFI Southbank, is also being shown on May 25th at the cinema. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Roberto Rossellini's 1946 story of a group of workers and a
priest in 1943-'44 Rome, declared an “open city” by the Nazis, was
begun only two months after the liberation. Its realistic treatment of
everyday Italian life heralded the postwar renaissance of the Italian
cinema and the development of neorealism; the film astonished audiences
around the world and remains a masterpiece.
Don Druker
Here is the trailer.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 141: Tue May 21
Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.30pm
Renowned zombie books author Max Brooks is at the Prince Charles tonight to introduce Romero's seminal movie. He will also be signing books and be around for a Q&A afterwards. If you want to read some of Brooks' thoughts on why zombies, and in particular why movies about the undead are so popular now, take a look at this Guardian article he wrote a few years back.
Chicago Reader review:
George Romero's gory, style-setting 1968 horror film, made for pennies in Pittsburgh. Its premise—the unburied dead arise and eat the living—is a powerful combination of the fantastic and the dumbly literal. Over its short, furious course, the picture violates so many strong taboos—cannibalism, incest, necrophilia—that it leaves audiences giddy and hysterical. Romero's sequel, Dawn of the Dead, displays a much-matured technique and greater thematic complexity, but Night retains its raw power.
Dave Kehr
Here is the trailer.
Renowned zombie books author Max Brooks is at the Prince Charles tonight to introduce Romero's seminal movie. He will also be signing books and be around for a Q&A afterwards. If you want to read some of Brooks' thoughts on why zombies, and in particular why movies about the undead are so popular now, take a look at this Guardian article he wrote a few years back.
Chicago Reader review:
George Romero's gory, style-setting 1968 horror film, made for pennies in Pittsburgh. Its premise—the unburied dead arise and eat the living—is a powerful combination of the fantastic and the dumbly literal. Over its short, furious course, the picture violates so many strong taboos—cannibalism, incest, necrophilia—that it leaves audiences giddy and hysterical. Romero's sequel, Dawn of the Dead, displays a much-matured technique and greater thematic complexity, but Night retains its raw power.
Dave Kehr
Here is the trailer.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 140: Mon May 20
Bonnie and Clyde (Penn, 1967): Islington Vue Cinema, 9pm
This film, part of the Vue Cinemas Back to Vue season, is also being screened on Wednesday 22nd. More details here. You can find all the details of the full season here.
Chicago Reader review:
When Fritz Lang filmed it in 1938 (as You Only Live Once), the story had a metaphysical thrust. When Nicholas Ray filmed it in 1948 (They Live by Night), it was romantic and doom laden. But by the time Arthur Penn got to it in 1967, it was pure myth, the distillation of dozens of drive-in movies about rebellious kids and their defeat at the hands of the establishment. It's by far the least controlled of Penn's films (the tone wobbles between hick satire and noble social portraiture, and the issue of violence is displayed more than it's examined), but the pieces work wonderfully well, propelled by what was then a very original acting style. With Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard, and Gene Wilder.
Dave Kehr
Here is the trailer.
This film, part of the Vue Cinemas Back to Vue season, is also being screened on Wednesday 22nd. More details here. You can find all the details of the full season here.
Chicago Reader review:
When Fritz Lang filmed it in 1938 (as You Only Live Once), the story had a metaphysical thrust. When Nicholas Ray filmed it in 1948 (They Live by Night), it was romantic and doom laden. But by the time Arthur Penn got to it in 1967, it was pure myth, the distillation of dozens of drive-in movies about rebellious kids and their defeat at the hands of the establishment. It's by far the least controlled of Penn's films (the tone wobbles between hick satire and noble social portraiture, and the issue of violence is displayed more than it's examined), but the pieces work wonderfully well, propelled by what was then a very original acting style. With Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Michael J. Pollard, and Gene Wilder.
Dave Kehr
Here is the trailer.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 139: Sun May 19
Victim (Dearden, 1961) & The Servant (Losey, 1963) : Rio Cinema, 1pm & 3pm
A superb Dirk Bogarde double-bill, perfect Sunday afternoon viewing at the Rio.
Time Out review of Victim:
Released in 1961, when ‘convicted homosexual’ could still accurately describe a person’s legal status, ‘Victim’ was justifiably seen as a daring step for both its director Basil Dearden and star, Dirk Bogarde. Bogarde plays prominent barrister Melville Farr, who jeopardises his standing by investigating the blackmail of a late young man whose appeals for help he had earlier rejected. His performance marked his shift from romantic lead to serious actor and remains the film’s most fascinating ingredient: characterised by resolute continence punctuated with irruptions of desperate candour (‘I stopped seeing him because I wanted him. Do you understand? I wanted him!’), it speaks of a determined self-policing that has cordoned off passion, tracing a progression towards public openness that Bogarde himself never saw fit to follow. Unpacking a shadow society that cuts across age and class, Farr’s investigations unearth plenty of pleas for sympathy but no declarations of pride: if the homophobic are coded as hypocrites, the gay characters tend towards the passive and precious; only Farr, the diligent aspirant to heterosexual norms, shows real guts. The script’s good intentions can tend towards the preachy (it has been credited with contributing to the eventual change in the law), and it isn’t immune to the melodramatic or schematic. But there are many pleasures to be found in the quirky supporting cast, expressive, noir-style lighting and an effectively suspenseful opening all too aptly based around the construction of a façade and the withholding of information.
Ben Walters
Here is director Terence Davies on what Bogarde and the movie mean to him.
Here is the trailer.
**********************
If you want to read an excellent article on The Servant I can recommend John Patterson's in the Guardian Guide here.
He writes: "Joseph Losey kicked off the 1960s proper with The 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 is the trailer.
A superb Dirk Bogarde double-bill, perfect Sunday afternoon viewing at the Rio.
Time Out review of Victim:
Released in 1961, when ‘convicted homosexual’ could still accurately describe a person’s legal status, ‘Victim’ was justifiably seen as a daring step for both its director Basil Dearden and star, Dirk Bogarde. Bogarde plays prominent barrister Melville Farr, who jeopardises his standing by investigating the blackmail of a late young man whose appeals for help he had earlier rejected. His performance marked his shift from romantic lead to serious actor and remains the film’s most fascinating ingredient: characterised by resolute continence punctuated with irruptions of desperate candour (‘I stopped seeing him because I wanted him. Do you understand? I wanted him!’), it speaks of a determined self-policing that has cordoned off passion, tracing a progression towards public openness that Bogarde himself never saw fit to follow. Unpacking a shadow society that cuts across age and class, Farr’s investigations unearth plenty of pleas for sympathy but no declarations of pride: if the homophobic are coded as hypocrites, the gay characters tend towards the passive and precious; only Farr, the diligent aspirant to heterosexual norms, shows real guts. The script’s good intentions can tend towards the preachy (it has been credited with contributing to the eventual change in the law), and it isn’t immune to the melodramatic or schematic. But there are many pleasures to be found in the quirky supporting cast, expressive, noir-style lighting and an effectively suspenseful opening all too aptly based around the construction of a façade and the withholding of information.
Ben Walters
Here is director Terence Davies on what Bogarde and the movie mean to him.
Here is the trailer.
**********************
If you want to read an excellent article on The Servant I can recommend John Patterson's in the Guardian Guide here.
He writes: "Joseph Losey kicked off the 1960s proper with The 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 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 is the trailer.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 138: Sat May 18
Breaking The Waves (Von Trier, 1996): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8pm
This film, part of the Lars Von Trier season at BFI Southbank, is also being shown on May 27th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
A breakthrough feature by Lars von Trier--the postmodernist Danish director of The Element of Crime, Zentropa, and The Kingdom--this all-stops-out melodrama set on the remote north coast of Scotland in the early 70s produces some waves of its own. The plot concerns a naive young woman (a galvanizing performance by Emily Watson) who falls in love with a worldly oil-rig worker (Stellan Skarsgard) and marries him despite some opposition from her tightly knit Calvinist community. When the husband is paralyzed by an explosion, he persuades her to find a lover and describe her sexual experiences to him. Shot by the great Robby Müller, the film shifts powerfully between dizzying handheld footage (given an unusual texture by having been transferred to video and then back to film) recounting the harrowing story and gorgeous, digitally doctored chapter headings that linger meditatively over landscapes to the accompaniment of pop songs of the period. Improbably combining elements from Carl Dreyer and Federico Fellini, this 159-minute feature shamelessly pushes the audience's emotions to the breaking point--you won't come out of it indifferent, and even if it winds up enraging you (I could have done without most of the ending myself), it nonetheless commands attention.
Jonathan Rosenabum
Here is the trailer.
This film, part of the Lars Von Trier season at BFI Southbank, is also being shown on May 27th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
A breakthrough feature by Lars von Trier--the postmodernist Danish director of The Element of Crime, Zentropa, and The Kingdom--this all-stops-out melodrama set on the remote north coast of Scotland in the early 70s produces some waves of its own. The plot concerns a naive young woman (a galvanizing performance by Emily Watson) who falls in love with a worldly oil-rig worker (Stellan Skarsgard) and marries him despite some opposition from her tightly knit Calvinist community. When the husband is paralyzed by an explosion, he persuades her to find a lover and describe her sexual experiences to him. Shot by the great Robby Müller, the film shifts powerfully between dizzying handheld footage (given an unusual texture by having been transferred to video and then back to film) recounting the harrowing story and gorgeous, digitally doctored chapter headings that linger meditatively over landscapes to the accompaniment of pop songs of the period. Improbably combining elements from Carl Dreyer and Federico Fellini, this 159-minute feature shamelessly pushes the audience's emotions to the breaking point--you won't come out of it indifferent, and even if it winds up enraging you (I could have done without most of the ending myself), it nonetheless commands attention.
Jonathan Rosenabum
Here is the trailer.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 137: Fri May 17
Ossessione (Visconti, 1943): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.10pm
This film, which screens as part of the Roots of Neorealism season, is also showing at BFI Southbank on May 15th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Luchino Visconti's first solo effort and the first great Italian neorealist film (1942, 139 min.), Ossessione has remained virtually unknown because of legalities involving the novel on which it was based (James Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice). Visconti transforms the story's sexual tensions into something almost musical. Where would neorealism and its imitators have gone if this film had reached America ahead of Rossellini's Open City, if the lyricism of Visconti's reading had set the tone for filmmaking in the 40s instead of Rossellini's bitter, misunderstood matter-of-factness?
Don Druker
Here is the opening scene.
This film, which screens as part of the Roots of Neorealism season, is also showing at BFI Southbank on May 15th. Details here.
Chicago Reader review:
Luchino Visconti's first solo effort and the first great Italian neorealist film (1942, 139 min.), Ossessione has remained virtually unknown because of legalities involving the novel on which it was based (James Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice). Visconti transforms the story's sexual tensions into something almost musical. Where would neorealism and its imitators have gone if this film had reached America ahead of Rossellini's Open City, if the lyricism of Visconti's reading had set the tone for filmmaking in the 40s instead of Rossellini's bitter, misunderstood matter-of-factness?
Don Druker
Here is the opening scene.
Capital Celluloid 2013 - Day 136: Thu May 16
The Burning (Maylam, 1981): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.30pm
Don't know a lot about this screening right now but it's presented by the Cigarette Burns film club team so keep an eye on their Facebook page here.
Here's the wiki introduction: The Burning is a 1981 slasher film directed by Tony Maylam, with music by Rick Wakeman. It tells the story of a cruel, alcoholic, sadistic caretaker at a summer camp (nicknamed "Cropsy" and based on the urban legend of Cropsey) who falls victim to a prank that went out of control which leaves him horribly burned and disfigured. Following his release from hospital, he returns to his old stomping ground and begins a murder spree. The film was one of the first from Miramax Films: Harvey Weinstein produced the film and Bob Weinstein was a co-writer. Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens and Oscar winner Holly Hunter all made their motion picture debuts in this film.
Here is the trailer.
Don't know a lot about this screening right now but it's presented by the Cigarette Burns film club team so keep an eye on their Facebook page here.
Here's the wiki introduction: The Burning is a 1981 slasher film directed by Tony Maylam, with music by Rick Wakeman. It tells the story of a cruel, alcoholic, sadistic caretaker at a summer camp (nicknamed "Cropsy" and based on the urban legend of Cropsey) who falls victim to a prank that went out of control which leaves him horribly burned and disfigured. Following his release from hospital, he returns to his old stomping ground and begins a murder spree. The film was one of the first from Miramax Films: Harvey Weinstein produced the film and Bob Weinstein was a co-writer. Jason Alexander, Fisher Stevens and Oscar winner Holly Hunter all made their motion picture debuts in this film.
Here is the trailer.
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