Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 264: Thu Sep 26

Chinatown (Polanski, 1974): Castle Cinema, 7.30pm

This is a Cine Real screening and enjoyment is guaranteed thanks to the pair that put together their presentations. Cine Real is one of the only film clubs in the UK to exclusively play films in their original 16mm format. Cine Real is a non-profit organisation which aims to unite film makers and enthusiasts in their appreciation of classic film. The film also screens on Septmeber 22nd - you can find all the details here.

Time Out review:
'The hard-boiled private eye coolly strolls a few steps ahead of the audience. The slapstick detective gets everything wrong and then pratfalls first over the finish line anyway. Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is neither - instead he's a hard-boiled private eye who gets everything wrong. Jake snaps tabloid-ready photos of an adulterous love nest that's no such thing. He spies a distressed young woman through a window and mistakes her for a hostage. He finds bifocals in a pond and calls them Exhibit A of marital murder, only the glasses don't belong to the victim and the wife hasn't killed anyone. Yet when he confronts ostensible black widow Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) with the spectacular evidence, the cigarette between his teeth lends his voice an authoritative Bogie hiss. Throughout, Gittes sexes up mediocre snooping with blithe arrogance and sarcastic machismo. It's the actor's default mode, sure, but in 1974 it hadn't yet calcified into Schtickolson, and in 1974 a director (Roman Polanski), a screenwriter (Robert Towne) and a producer (Robert Evans) could decide to beat a genre senseless and dump it in the wilds of Greek tragedy. 'You see, Mr Gits,' depravity incarnate Noah Cross (John Huston) famously explains, 'most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything.' As is Chinatown. The last gunshot here is the sound of the gate slamming on the Paramount lot of Evans' halcyon reign, and as the camera rears back to catch Jake's expression, the dolly lists and shivers - an almost imperceptible sob of grief and recognition, but not a tear is shed.'
Jessica Winter

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 263: Wed Sep 25

The Exterminating Angel (Bunuel, 1962): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm

This is the UK premiere of the restoration via Radiance Films of this Luis Bunuek classic.

Chicago Reader review:
Luis Buñuel's 1962 film takes an old Mexican proverb—"After 24 hours, corpses and guests smell bad"—and turns it into a marvelous satire on the life of the bourgeoisie. Augusto Benedico gives a sumptuous party, but when the guests try to leave, they discover they're unable to step across the threshold of the music room. They stay on for days, finally reduced to eating a stray sheep that wanders providentially through the house; and when at last they escape and go to church to celebrate their deliverance, the whole thing starts again. Essential viewing. With Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, and Jacqueline Andere.
Don Druker

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 262: Tue Sep 24

Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid (Peckinpah, 1973):  BFI Southbank, NFT1, 7.30pm

This film screens as part of the Restored strand at BFI Southbank. The film was restored in 4K in 2024 by The Criterion Collection from the original 35mm camera negative and the original magnetic tracks and the restoration was supervised by Paul Seydor and Roger Spottiswoode. Tonight's presentation will be introduced by Jason Wood, BFI executive director of public programmes & audiences.

This movie, one of my all-time favourites, was one of the films central to my developing a passion for cinema. As is now widely known director Sam Peckinpah had the film taken away from him soon after completion and his work was substantially re-edited in order that the studio could put out a truncated 105-minute version which they thought would prove more popular in cinemas.

Peckinpah arranged for his original cut to be stolen and hidden away and it was this version, which was found after his death and released in 1988, which will be shown tonight. The beginning and end are radically different and scenes integral to the understanding of the relationship of the two main characters are included in the director's 0final cut.

I saw the film at the Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester and that experience, plus reading Richard Combs's article on the then restoration in the September 1989 issue of the Monthly Film Bulletin, had a major impact on me.

Time Out review:
Restored and reassembled, this is the full and harmonious movie that Sam Peckinpah wanted to be remembered by before the butchers at MGM got their hands on it. Starting with a framing sequence from 1909 which shows James Coburn's aged Garrett being gunned down by the same men who hired him to get Billy the Kid back in 1881, the additional 15 minutes introduce the menacing figure of Barry Sullivan's Boss Chisum, a frolicsome brothel scene ('Last time Billy was here it took four to get him up and five to get him down again'), some engaging Wild West cameos, and a less obtrusive use of Bob Dylan's soundtrack. All in all the film is more playful, more balanced, and very much an elegy for the old ways of the West, rather than a meandering bloodthirsty battle between Kristofferson's preposterously likeable outlaw and Coburn's ambivalent survivor, Garrett. Like Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it both records and condemns the passage of time and the advent of progress; and there is a sombre, mournful quality which places the film very high up in the league of great Westerns. Steve Grant 

Here is an extract on YouTube with commentary on one of the most famous scenes.

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 261: Mon Sep 23

Went the Day Well? (Cavalcanti, 1942): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 6.20pm

Alberto Cavalcanti’s brilliant and often brutal thriller about a rural English village’s fightback against Nazi fifth columnists is part of the excellent Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here. This screening is from a 35mm nitrate print.

Chicago Reader review:
Produced in 1942 at the Ealing Studios, this British drama was conceived as anti-Nazi propaganda but has since been recognized as a brutal, crafty thriller and a vivid portrait of ordinary Britons in World War II. A company of royal engineers arrives at the tiny village of Bramley End to prepare the residents for a possible invasion, but the local vicar’s sharp-witted daughter (Valerie Taylor) begins to suspect that the tight-lipped soldiers are actually German spies. The screenplay was inspired by Graham Greene’s short story “The Lieutenant Died Last,” and though most of the plot has been grafted onto his minimal tale, the movie seizes on and amplifies his central moral concern, as an assortment of simple, kindly folk must suddenly decide whether they’re willing to die—and, even worse, kill—for their country.
JR Jones

Here (and above) us the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 260: Sun Sep 22

The Mind Benders (Dearden, 1963): BFI Southbank, NFT3, 6pm

This fascinating Basil Dearden Cold War-era thriller (which also screens on October 2nd) is is part of the excellent Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here.

BFI introduction:
Most often associated with his issue-driven ‘social problem’ films, the prolific Basil Dearden’s work – made with producer Michael Relph – in fact ranged far more widely. Continuing his move away from matinee-idol roles, Bogarde plays a scientist who undergoes a series of dangerous sensory-deprivation experiments that leave him susceptible to brainwashing. A fascinating fusion of domestic drama with Cold War-era paranoia.
James Bell

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 259: Sat Sep 21

The Damned (Losey, 1962): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm

This fascinating Joseph Losey film (which also screens on October 4th) is is part of the excellent Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Joseph Losey’s black-and-white SF thriller, made in 1962 during his pre-Pinter British period, begins as a sort of love story—MacDonald Carey is an American businessman who shows interest in Shirley Anne Field and as a consequence gets beaten up by teddy boys led by Oliver Reed—then gradually turns into an antinuclear parable about radioactive children sequestered from humanity in an underground cave. Originally titled The Damned, the film was mangled by distributors but later restored for TV; more than an interesting curiosity, it’s one of Losey’s best English efforts, and Viveca Lindfors contributes a striking part as an eccentric sculptress.
Jonathan Rosenbaum

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 258: Fri Sep 20

Yield to the Night (Thompson, 1956): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6pm

This impressive, downbeat but very affecting film (which also screens on September 28th) is is part of the excellent Martin Scorsese's Hidden gems of British Cinema season at BFI Southbank. Details here

BFI introduction:
J Lee Thompson’s Palme d’Or-nominated feature gave Dors the chance to shake off the ‘blonde bombshell’ label and demonstrate her acting talent. In this melodrama exploring themes of class and infidelity, she shed the glamour to turn in an incredibly moving performance as a condemned woman recalling the events that led to her sentence. Yvonne Mitchell gives excellent support as a sympathetic warder.
Josephine Botting

Here (and above) is an extract.