Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 347: Fri Dec 13

The Apartment (Wilder, 1960): Prince Charles Cinema, 12.35pm

This 35mm screening will also be shown at the Prince Charles on December 18th. Details here.

Time Out review:

Re-teaming actor Jack Lemmon, scriptwriter Iz Diamond and director Billy Wilder a year after ‘Some Like It Hot’, this multi-Oscar winning comedy is sharper in tone, tracing the compromises of a New York insurance drone who pimps out his brownstone apartment for his married bosses’ illicit affairs. The quintessential New York movie – with exquisite design by Alexandre Trauner and shimmering black-and-white photography – it presented something of a breakthrough in its portrayal of the war of the sexes, with a sour and cynical view of the self-deception, loneliness and cruelty involved in ‘romantic’ liaisons. Directed by Wilder with attention to detail and emotional reticence that belie its inherent darkness and melodramatic core, it’s lifted considerably by the performances: the psychosomatic ticks and tropes of nebbish Lemmon balanced by the pathos of Shirley MacLaine’s put-upon ‘lift girl’. 

Wally Hammond

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 346: Thu Dec 12

First A Girl (Saville, 1935): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6pm

BFI introduction:

Based on the German film Viktor und Viktoria (remade with Julie Andrews in 1982), this Jessie Matthews vehicle sees her as a performer who builds a career by posing as a female impersonator. Matthews was as big a musical star as Gracie Fields, but, although both were working class, Matthews developed a very different screen persona based on glamour and sophistication. Here, the theme of cross-dressing (rather risqué for 1930s Britain) leads to some exquisite comic situations in which Matthews proves her talent for comedy and manages to be convincing in the gender swap scenes, despite her petite frame and feminine features. Josephine Botting

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 345: Wed Dec 11

London Fields (Cullen, 2018): Rio Cinema, 6pm

Rio Cinema introduction:

The Rio Cinema is proud to welcome director Mathew Cullen and actor Jim Sturgess, who will be introducing a very special screening, plus director's Q&A with Empire Magazine Editor Chris Hewitt

London Fields is based on Martin Amis’ much-celebrated novel of the same name. Considered by many to be an unfilmable, mind-meddling masterwork along the lines of Naked Lunch or Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, the adaptation went through various permutations in preproduction for over a decade. Eventually, it entered production in 2013 with acclaimed commercial and music video director Mathew Cullen at the helm for his feature debut.

What happened in the five years between London Fields’ production and its unveiling has only been detailed in an article published by The Hollywood Reporter and in a podcast of The Director’s Cut. In short, two different groups within the film’s thirty-eight credited producers completed two different edits of the film behind Cullen’s back while Cullen used his personal finances to complete his own cut. Through some complicated legal loopholes, different producers’ cuts have been released internationally and both the final producers’ cut and Cullen’s cut were released domestically—though Cullen’s only had one confirmed theater screen it.

New York Times review:
In limbo for years because of a number of legal disputes, this laboriously bizarre picture is narrated by Samson Young (Billy Bob Thornton, drained and dispirited), a dying, creatively stalled American writer who has swapped apartments with a celebrated British author (Jason Isaacs). Failing to even glancingly approximate the book’s trippy energy or linguistic dazzle, Cullen ricochets between Heard’s slow-motion, perfume-ad close-ups and lurid, comic-book noir. The result is alienating and bogus, as senseless as the image of Nicola’s floating, diaphanous panties. “I’m pretty worried that the critics are going to call you a male fantasy figure,” Samson frets. Done.
Jeanette Catsoulis

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 344: Tue Dec 10

India Song (Duras, 1975): Cine Lumiere, 7.45pm

This 35mm screening, part of the Delphine Seyrig season at Cine Lumiere, is introduced by noted film academic, Professor Richard Dyer of King’s College, London. There is another presentation of India Song at Cine Lumiere on Sunday December 8th. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
There's so little to the subjects in Marguerite Duras' films—here it's that old favorite, doomed love among the rotting aristocracy—that it's easy to think of her as the most perverse of minimalists. But Duras' thin dramas are perceived through layers upon layers of style—she's the Busby Berkeley of structuralism. In this 1974 film, she uses constantly shifting tenses, rigorous patterns of camera movement (and stillness), acting boiled down to broad isolated gestures, nonsynchronous dialogue (often between characters who don't appear in the visuals), and a dozen other radical devices. The result is a film that is extremely boring in rather fascinating ways, well worth seeing for those with a tolerance for stasis and a taste for French abstraction.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 343: Mon Dec 9

Kiss Me Kate (Sidney, 1953): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6pm

This 3-D 35mm presentation is part of the BFI musicals season (details here). The screening will be introduced by season programmer Robin Baker. There are other presentation of the film on the same day at 2pm and 8.40pm. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
One of the classiest and most experimental 3-D efforts from Hollywood—as well as one of the best MGM musicals of the 1950s that didn't come from the Arthur Freed unit. Adapted by Dorothy Kingsley from the successful 1948 Cole Porter stage musical and directed by the underrated George Sidney, this 1953 feature does interesting things with mirrors, windows, and the relationship between stage and audience, playing on the differences between theatrical and film space and, paradoxically, exploiting 3-D as an artificial and antirealistic effect. Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel play an estranged couple who uneasily join forces in a musical version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, with much comic confusion between life and art. The cast (including Ann Miller, Tommy Rall, Bobby Van, Bob Fosse, and Carol Haney) and score are consistently pleasurable.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 342: Sun Dec 8

Swan Lake: The Zone: (Ilyenko,1990): Cine Lumiere, 7pm

This screening is part of the Ukrainian Film days season at Cine Lumiere. Details here

Time Out review:
Written by the Georgian director Sergo Paradjanov while imprisoned by the Soviet authorities between 1974 and 1977 - and filmed by his former cameraman Illienko - this bleak, sometimes elusive parable bears some resemblance to Paradjanov's renowned works in terms of its elliptical development, startling imagery and lack of dialogue. Shot in high-contrast b/w, however, the film adopts a more realist visual approach than the painterly tableaux of The Colour of Pomegranates, and the narrative has more flow. It starts with Solovyov on the run, taking refuge inside a metal hammer and sickle monument. The mother of a boy who plays there comes to his aid - and falls in love - until the son betrays him to the authorities. Back in prison he attempts suicide, only to be rescued from the dead at the morgue because of a crude blood transfusion from his accompanying prison guard, and is thus indebted... Despite its enigmatic nature, the film has a real and direct power thanks to Solovyov's haunting, cadaverous performance. Some searing images, too - not least that of swans, lured by the gleam of water to land on a washed down prison yard amid the baying inmates.

Here (and above) is an extract,

Capital Celluloid 2019 - Day 341: Sat Dec 7

Sarraounia (Hondo, 1986): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 2pm

Joining the Q&A after this 35mm screening will be political historian Ama Biney, and Rob Lemkin, founder and director of Old Street Films who is currently in post with his new feature, Exterminate all the Brutes. This film is also being shown on December 10th. Full details here. You can find the details of the Med Hondo season here.

BFI Southbank introduction:
‘I wanted to illustrate authentic historical facts to show that the African continent was not easily colonised and had a history of resistance to colonialism. There were a number of African women involved in the fight against colonialism. Queen Sarraounia in Niger, Jinga in Angola, Ranavalona in Madagascar, Beatrice of the Congo, to name a few. We never speak of the role of African women in history, but they headed kingdoms and had an important status in matriarchal societies.’ Med Hondo, 1997 interview with Francoise Pfaff. Shot in glorious widescreen with a vivid colour palette and featuring large-scale, exquisitely staged battle scenes, this adaptation of Abdoulaye Mamani’s eponymous novel is set in 1898 and details defiant Queen Sarraounia’s resistance to invading French colonial forces. So disrupted was the film’s initial distribution in France – allegedly a result of political interference – that figures such as Bertrand Tavernier, Constantin Costa-Gavras, Ousmane Sembène and Souleymane Cissé petitioned a protest.

Here (and above) is the trailer.