Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 297: Fri Nov 2

Les Visiteurs du Soir (Carne, 1942): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 8.30pm

This 35mm screening is part of the Fantastique: The Dream Worlds of French Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Fulll details here. The film is also being shown on October 28th. Full details here.

Chicago reader review:
An eerie and often beautiful medieval fantasy parable about the devil sending two messengers to earth to break up a court romance, directed by Marcel Carne during the French occupation from a script coauthored by Jacques Prevert (1942). An obscure antifascist message may have been intended, but it doesn't come across with much clarity; more sustaining are the film's memorable look and atmosphere, and the capacity of the messengers to freeze the action into tableaux that anticipate by nearly 20 years images in Last Year at Marienbad. Also known as The Devil's Envoys. With Jules Berry (The Crime of Monsieur Lange), Arletty, Alain Cuny, Fernand Ledoux, and Marie Dea.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 296: Thu Nov 1

The Wings of the Dove (Softley, 1997): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.35pm

Director Iain Softley and writer Hossein Amini will be at the Prince Charles for a Q&A after the 35mm screening of this movie.

The film is the subject of an excellent BFI Modern Classics monograph by Robin Wood. More here.

Time Out review:
Kate Croy (Helena Bonham Carter) loves Merton (Linus Roache), a comparatively impoverished, 'progressive' journalist, but the aunt on whom she depends (Charlotte Rampling) prefers a wealthier suitor and forbids them to meet. Reluctant to lose either her lover or her allowance, Kate takes advantage of her blossoming friendship with visiting American heiress Milly (Alison Elliott), travelling with her to Venice and, unknown to her aunt, inviting her 'friend' Merton to join them. But things get still more complicated when it looks like Milly is starting to fall for Merton herself. For the early London scenes, Hossein Amini's adaptation of Henry James' novel (updated to 1910) seems merely an imaginatively designed Edwardian costumer about frustrated love. In Venice, however, it soon becomes noticeably more interesting, with Kate's motives and methods turning increasingly murky as she appears to drive Merton into Milly's arms. The familiar Jamesian conflict of American innocence and Old World intrigue emerges, darker and crueller than a conventional romantic triangle, and a palpable sense of anguish, guilt and confusion takes hold. The performances are sensitive and sturdy, most impressively so in a beautifully judged sex scene (between Merton and Kate) that is authentically despairing.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 295: Wed Oct 31

Vampir Cuadecuc (Portabella, 1970): Close-Up Cinema, 8.15pm

There's very little in cinema quite like this movie. Here's the Close-Up Cinema introduction:
Made in Spain during General Franco’s rule, Pere Portabella’s extraordinary Vampir Cuadecuc was filmed on the set of Jess Franco’s shocker El Conde Dracula, starring Christopher Lee, Herbert Lomand the exquisite Soledad Miranda. Filmed in stark, heavily grained black and white, this atmospheric and experimental "making of" documentary transforms the myth of the vampire into a powerful metaphor for bloodthirsty fascism epitomised by Franco and tyrants like him, a witty allegory with Dracula as the dictator who feeds on his people, yet whose demise is certain. Dispensing almost entirely with dialogue, Portabella relies on an abstract, fabulously idiosyncratic soundscape created by renowned Catalan artist and musician Carles Santos for its unearthly effect. Banned after completion, Vampir Cuadecuc remains a provocative, subversive and surreal experience. The film will be introduced by Stanley Schtinter.

In a 2011 issue of Sight & Sound there's an appraisal of Pere Portabella's oeuvre by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum in which he counts tonight's film as his favourite work by the Catalan filmmaker. The movie itself consists of a black and white film of Jesus Franco's "very conventional colour movie Count Dracula (1970), starring Christopher Lee," writes Rosenbaum. "The material is submitted to a great deal of processing in visual textures and accompanied by a kind of musique concrete by Carlos Santos, consisting of such elements as jet planes, drills, operatic arias, kitschy muzak and sinister electronic drones."

Rosenbaum first saw Vampir Cuadecuc at the Cannes Film Festival in 1971 and reckoned it the highlight of that year's crop. "Vampir was my favorite of all the films I saw at Cannes that year. I returned to it several times, and described it afterwards in the Village Voice  as 'at once the most original movie at the festival and the most sophisticated in its audacious modernism', says Rosenbaum in this essay on his website.

Here (and above) is an extract.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 294: Tue Oct 30

Halloween (Carpenter, 1978): Prince Charles Cinema, 9pm

The 40th anniversary series of screenings (starting on October 26th) of this groundbreaking horror classic at the Prince Charles Cinema is part of Horroctober season at the cinema. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
John Carpenter's 1978 tour de force, perhaps the most widely imitated film of the 70s. As a homicidal maniac stalks the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois, Carpenter displays an almost perfect understanding of the mechanics of classical suspense; his style draws equally (and intelligently) from both Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock. Though the film seems conscious of no significance beyond its own stylistic dexterity, its buried themes of sexual transgression and punishment appear to have touched something deep in the soul of the American teenager. The film, in its duplicitous way, makes a powerful plea for the comfort and security of puritanism.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 293: Mon Oct 29

What's Up Doc? (Bogdanovich, 1972): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6.15pm

This 35mm presentation is part of the Comedy Genius season at BFI Southbank. Full details of the season can be found here.

Chicago Reader review:
Peter Bogdanovich's bright 1972 screwball comedy, patterned after Bringing Up Baby and decked out with lots of references to silent slapstick, plants dim musicologist Ryan O'Neal and freewheeling kook Barbra Streisand in San Francisco and then piles on the comic complications, with assistance from Madeline Kahn, Austin Pendleton, John Hillerman, Randy Quaid, and Kenneth Mars. Much of the slapstick is deftly executed, but there is one unfortunate undertone—ordinary, unassuming workers tend to be the fall guys more often than the pompous rich (a factor that distinguishes this comedy from most of Bogdanovich's classic sources), although O'Neal's character, who stays at the Hilton, certainly has his share of pratfalls. Streisand sings a fabulous version of “You're the Top” behind the credits, and the busy script by Buck Henry, Robert Benton, and David Newman keeps things moving, but the spirit of pastiche keeps this romp from truly rivaling its sources.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

The great trailer is above. This is Eunice Burns.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 292: Sun Oct 28

The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973): Prince Charles Cinema, 6.05pm

This 35mm screening of the director's cut will be followed by a Skype Q&A with William Friedkin.

Time Out review:

A re-release with an impeccable digital soundtrack and ten minutes of extra footage, including the notorious 'spider walk' (which lasts about 3 seconds) and a longer coda with corny banter between the cop and Father Dyer. As any aficionado will tell you, this is not a 'director's cut' in any real sense (William Friedkin's version was released in 1973), but it's probably closer to how writer/producer Blatty might have edited the film. As well as new subliminal demon imagery, it also includes a scene between Chris and Regan's first doctor, and an expanded role for Max von Sydow's Father Merrin, most notably a key speech about why the demon has picked on this little girl: to make us despair for humanity. In other words it's now more than ever a faithful Catholic treatise on Evil, even if the film's shock effects remain at least half the story. Either way it's rigged, but it certainly puts you through an emotional grinder.
Tom Charity

 

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2018 - Day 291: Sat Oct 27

La Nuit Fantastique (L'Herbier, 1942): BFI Southbank, 1.30pm

This 35mm screening is part of the Fantastique: The Dream Worlds of French Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Fulll details here. The film is also being shown on October 29th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Made during the French Occupation, this 1942 feature by Marcel L'Herbier is a whimsical yet brittle nocturnal fantasy that consists mainly of a nerdy Parisian student's expressionistic, romantic dream about pursuing an imaginary beauty. It's the first film scripted by Louis Chavance, editor of L'Atalante and writer of the corrosive Le corbeau, and it oddly evokes both The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Eyes Wide Shut in its troubled moods and dreamlike studio settings (e.g., a formal ball at the Louvre, complete with magic show and trapdoors). Its illogical drift seems to convey the creepy collective unconscious of the occupation, so indelibly that even the happy ending turns out to be deeply disturbing.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is an extract.