Stalker

Tarkovsky's Stalker may have been based on Arkady & Boris Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic, or on part of it. However, it is not a cinematic adaptation of it. 

Orlando reviewed

Tilda Swinton's performance, in its nuanced directness, was central for Sally Potter to realize her vision, her interpretation, of Virginia Woolf's novel into cinema.

In this masterly classic of British cinema, Tilda Swinton plays the four hundred year old, or so, Orlando. By the end of the story, she has become free of all the encumbrances of gender, class, property, history, particularly depicted in that scene when she returns, with her young daughter, riding a motorcycle with a sidecar, to their ancestral stately home, a rather palatial residence by the Thames, serenely mingling, and watching, the usual throng of tourists, no-one commenting, or even seeing, the uncanny resemblance of the woman standing beside them with the portrait of her as young Orlando on the wall, a painting of her when she was still a young man in the 17^th century. As the character says, talking to us, the viewers: “Same person, different sex. That's all”.

By returning to the nest where her (his) career began, she is now free to fly out of that nest, which is, ultimately, a nest of vipers. Illuminating is the scene where, having recently become a woman, she endures the disdain of a gathering of enlightened 18^th century poets, including Alexander Pope, who all conclude that a woman needs the guiding hand of a father, or a husband, all questioning her presence in the salon on her own.

In Sally Potter's interpretation of the central character of the novel, the film opens with young Orlando reading, and writing poetry under an oak tree, preparing himself to the forthcoming visit of the old Queen Elizabeth I (sublimely portrayed by Quentin Crisp). After, briefly, becoming her lover, the Queen grants Orlando the deeds of the ancestral stately home, on one condition: that he shall not grow old. This is how we get to see him, now a woman, on the same field in the closing scene, daydreaming under that same oak tree, her daughter running around, a video camera replacing the quill that the younger Orlando used to write his poem The Oak Tree, all those centuries past, and recently accepted by a rather obnoxious publisher (upon rewriting it, of course), whilst an angel (Jimmy Sommerville) appears floating above the trees (we see, in the features section of the Blu-ray disc, how this was achieved), falsetto singing, the future shining for them as a tear slowly runs down her face.

She no longer looks directly at the camera, confiding in us, the audience, as she did in the opening scene. There no longer need for that.

The episode where Orlando fells madly in love with Princess Sasha (Charlotte Valandrey), the daughter of the Russian Ambassador (Viktor Stepanov), during the great frost of the beginning of the 18^th century (these scenes were filmed in Russia), much to the chagrin of the aristocratic young lady to whom he is betrothed. This scene sets the pace and the mood for the rest of the story, as we see over and over Orlando defying the social conventions of the time as she follows her own path, her own heart.

The other scene that Sally Potter sets up to show Orlando's nature is when we see him worrying for the fate of a rebel attacking the city in Central Asia, where he has been posted as an ambassador by the king (while in the novel this city is indicated as being Constantinople, in the film the actual location is not specified), taking no notice when he is told that it does not matter, that the fallen soldier is not a man, but the enemy.

Further adventures follow, where, Orlando, becoming a woman after a long sleep, returns to England, taking hold of her ancestral home, and its delights, until it is finally taken away from her as she is legally dead, and, on top of that, by being a woman, she can no longer hold the deeds of the property.

Upon meeting the loquacious and idealist Shelmerdine (Billy Zane), she has a daughter, and but she refuses to go with him to America, where the future lies, by simply asking him “when this future is going to come”.By doing so, she liberates herself, and her daughter, from all the ties entrapping her to the zeitgeist.

“Same person, different sex. That is all”.

This Blu-ray release contains a series of documentaries on how the film was made, plus an interview to Sally Potter, which would be of interest to cinephiles. Particularly enlightening is the section that narrates the ins and outs of filming in Russia, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Orlando Blu-ray disc is already on sale in Britain, courtesy of Artificial Eye.

Sally Potter’s dazzling adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s classic novel is the tale of the apparently immortal Orlando, who begins an epic quest for love and freedom in the court of Elizabeth I as a man and completes the search 400 years later as a woman. This journey takes Orlando from the frozen river Thames and central Asia, where he changes sex, through to romantic love and loss in the Victorian age, motherhood and war in the twentieth Century, until finally arriving in the present moment. Tilda Swinton leads an outstanding international cast in this enchanting, witty, visually stunning and brilliantly original story of self-discovery, romance and adventure.

Special Features

• Documentaries ‘Orlando Goes to Russia’, ‘Orlando in Uzbekistan’
• and ‘Jimmy Was An Angel’
• Selected scene commentary by Sally Potter
• Interview with Sally Potter
• Venice Film Festival press conference
• Theatrical trailer
• Stills galleries

Falling autumn leaves...

Autumn leaves slowly falling on a deserted path; graves, trees silently contemplating a solitary figure, Anna Schmidt (Allida Valli), as she walks towards the camera, towards the man waiting on the side, Holly Martins (Joseph cotton) who nonchalantly lays back on a cart, after having been dropped by Major Calloway (Trevor Howard) from the funeral of Harry Lime (Orson Welles). Anna walks past the man, who does no longer exist. With her out of the frame, Holly Martin lights a cigarette.

Autumn leaves still falling, slowly, slowly...

One of the saddest scenes of cinema, that, the closing one from Carol Reed's “The Third Man” (1949), undoubtedly one of the masterpieces of all times.

Last Year in Marienbad – The eroticism of the Baroque

Alain Resnais' Last Year in Marienbad, a celebration of the eroticism of not only the Baroque, but also of the baroque. An homage to uncertainty in an age where we demand and worship absolute certainty and closure (that awful word) not only from our cinema - how boring, but also in our lives and in the public realm.

An absolutely masterly cinematography, a camera that loves to caress with its lens the exuberance of this dismal baroque hotel where the film is set, while its microphone loves the narrator's words as he describes it, a man who built a story around a woman whom he claims he met the previous year at Marienbad, in that hotel, a story which may be true, or not. A woman character which may be real, or the product of a febrile imagination – the narrator's voice gets more and more feverish as the film progresses. A narrative time that may be true, or itself being an imaginary time, as past and present merges. Where is the one? Or the other? Or are they set in a completely different time, as the mere existence of the narration hints?

A mysterious woman, a shady character, with cold and implacable eyes, setting games to his fellow guests, games that he always win, as Resnais does with his film. But does he? Or Resnais?

Last Year in Marienbad, first released in 1961, has been lauded as one of the cinematic classic masterpieces of all times. I watched it again, leisurely, last night, I have to say that it still felt as fresh and intriguing when I first saw it as a young man in the 60s.

I am not going to write any more about it, as many words have already been spent analysing and over-analysing it in uncountable books, magazines and Film Studies courses, over the years.

I will just say: Just go, lay back, and enjoy it. A very rewarding experience.

Those images! That camera! Those gardens!

Unforgettable.

Last Year in Marienbad will be released in Britain on Friday 8th July 2011 by the BFI, on the same day that, by a happy coincidence, that Jean-Luc Godard's “Film Socialisme” is.

Directed by Alain Resnais

Cast: Delphine Seyrig, Giorgio Albertazzi, Sacha Pitoëff

France-Italy 1961 | 94 mins | Cert U

For exhibiting cinemas click here. 

Jean-Luc Godard's Film Socialisme: Quo Vadis Europa

Godard is one of those artists who have the ability of always finding another card in their sleeves when we think that their game is already finished.

Whoever said that he was spent as a film maker was wrong.

Film Socialisme is the proof.

This is a film like no other I have seen. It is a film of ideas that, for once, befits such a genre. A film which is in constant movement.

To embark in Film Socialisme is not only to embark in a cruise along the Mediterranean, as it is to embark in an intellectual and cinematographic cruise through a landscape of ideas and powerful images on a sea of “things” that defines Europe.

A film that questions Europe like no other, hence the second part is titled:

QUO VADIS           EUROPA.

Translated as

Our Europe.

A film which could only have been shot by an European.

“To be or not to be”.

A Godard film.

A riotous visual, textual, auditive and intellectual tapestry of inventiveness and boundaries redrawing. Whilst Hollywood studios dabble with technological advancements such as 3D, Godard stretches the medium of cinema itself.

DES CHOSES COMME ÇA

A luxury cruise ships sails from Algiers for a journey along the Mediterranean coast. On board, revellers embark in a series of conversations inspired by the ports that the ship docks in her travel: Racism, blacks, Jews (“The invention of cinema, the invention of Hollywood, is due to them”), French collaboration with the Nazis during the occupation in WW2, the stolen Spanish gold, Palestine (“Access Denied”). We have Alain Badiou, a French philosopher, an American singer, Patti Smith, a photographer, and a young girl with her thoughts, her brother, her father, on board

The ship is constantly moving, we see the sea at all times as it scurries along, the white crests filling our vision, meandering, the sound of the breaking waves filling our ears, her passengers wandering and wondering aboard; the ship being an enclosed world by itself, where conversations are entwined with the kitsch of such cruises, the passengers being like spectators of a vastly moving world passing though its ports as the cruiser docks along the coast in its voyage: Egypt, Haifa, Odessa, Hellas, Napoli, Barcelona. The sea is constantly there, in the background, in the foreground as the waves gently break under our eyes, yet it is also not only a human sea that populates it, a sea of breaking waves as they come out of a mass celebrated on board or on the disco floor, and, most importantly, a sea of “things” (“Des Choses”) that Film Socialisme travels through. The wind, the metaphorical and the actual wind always whistling in the background, as the sound of the sea is, or the sound of traffic (a sea of cars), a reminder of the forces that shape our destiny?

“La vida es bella...”

Which takes us to the donkey and the llama tied to a pump in a petrol station against the backdrop of an idyllic sky located somewhere in the South (le Midi) of France, the Balzac reading girl, the red car of a female journalist and her camerawoman, and, yes, the constant sound of traffic never leaving us, the vision of a sea of cars always flowing in the background.

QUO VADIS           EUROPA

“Ideas divide, dreams bring us closer”.

A dialogue between the girl and her younger brother (there is a fascinating scene where the boy is drinking from a cup with a straw, as if he were playing the saxophone, while we hear a saxo solo in the background) and the parents on the values over which French society was built after the 1789 Revolution: Egalité, Fraternité, Liberté. A dialogue that produces responses such as “Shit!” when his father starts talking about Equality. We are in the Martin family domain. The boy is as much interested in knowing if his sister is wearing a string as in such a concept as Egalité, or wondering if the kids should stand for the election instead of mum and dad (hence the interest of the journalist and her camerawoman).

“No longer thirsty the mouth closes”.

The film finalizes with a return to the Mediterranean cruise, exploring the lands where our humanity,

HUMANITÉ

was generated, the lands of myths, true or false, this theme of a dialogue between the elders and the youngsters constantly present as we accompany Godard and his camera people to places such as the Odessa steps where Eiseinsten filmed the famous scene in “Battleship Potemkin”, or we delve into the prize paid by Napoli (“Freedom doesn't come cheap”) as was liberated by the American GIs during WW2, or we witness by viewing archive footage the savagery of the Spanish civil war. The skilful use of archive imagery, written text and the dissonant soundtrack keeping Film Socialisme without a closure.

NO COMMENT

Godard says.

Visually striking and complex, Film Socialisme imagery moves from the hyper realism of the waves to the shadowy backdrops of the dialogue and non linear broken discourses that defines it with the interpolation of text in big CAPITAL letters and fragmented pieces of soundtracks and imagery such as archive footage of Egypt, Napoli, Barcelona, and clips from Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin in the chapter on Odessa, while the kitsch (or luxurious atmosphere as the travel agents would say in their marketing literature) of such an environment finds depicted by the use of heavily edited video footage, giving Film Socialisme the feeling of a constantly broken cinema reel, yet in constant flux. Godard's view is that of an Europe (“What is Europe? A German musician, an Italian singer, A French writer”) which is in constant movement, broken, where its apparent present calm and tranquillity betrays not only the heavy price paid for it (“Freedom doesn't come cheap”), but also the inner fractures underlying it, as we see not only on the conversation about the Spanish gold stolen by Stalin during the civil war and references to the tragedy of war (“Democracy and tragedy were born in Athens”), but a constant dialogue between the inquisitive young (“Egalité? Merde!”) and the elders. The film has a completely dissonant and radical structure, as far away as it would be possible from mainstream and Hollywood movies: definitely Film Socialisme is not a “movie”, is something uniquely different, almost impossible to grasp in just one viewing, not even if we were such polyglots able to deal with this multilingual, complex and striking work of cinematic art.

Film Socialisme certainly is not the cinematic equivalent of fast food. It cannot be consumed, it needs to be tasted and properly digested. Slowly.

We do not necessarily have to agree with Godard's vision of Europe (“Corrupted by suffering, humiliated by liberty”) to take Film Socialisme in. We may only be able to say

NO COMMENT

Read the English translation of the dialogue.

Film Socialisme will be released in the UK on Friday 8th July, 2011

Film Socialisme
a film by Jean-Luc Godard

A symphony in three movements

THINGS SUCH AS:

A Mediterranean cruise. Numerous conversations, in numerous languages, between the passengers, almost all of whom are on holiday...

OUR EUROPE

At night, a sister and her younger brother have summoned their parents to appear before the court of their childhood. The children demand serious explanations of the themes of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.

OUR HUMANITIES

Visits to six sites of true or false myths: Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Naples and Barcelona.

Official Selection UN CERTAIN REGARD, CANNES FILM FESTIVAL 2010

Switzerland/France 2010 - 102 mins – HD - Certificate: tbc

Produced by Ruth Waldburger and Alain Sarde

Cast: Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Jean-Marc Stehlé, Patti Smith, Alain Badiou, Robert Maloubier, Nadège Beausson-Diagne, Élisabeth Vitali, Eye Haidara, Quentin Grosset, Olga Riazanova

Read an article on Film Socialisme by Andrea Picard in Cinema Scope

Read an article by Amy Taubin in Film Comment

View Q&A in Arte: 2010, l'année Godard

Translated interview with Godard in Les Inrockuptibles published during the Cannes Film Festival

Read Lucian Robinson's blog entry on the recent furore over Godard's Oscar award.

Film Socialisme is distributed by New Wave Films.

What War May Bring: Elegiac! Exuberant! Exhilarating!

Veteran French film maker Claude Lelouch's song to life, just loved it!

While Ces amours-là may be his latest offering, it could well be his first, as it lays and clarifies - while not being really autobiographical, Lelouch confesses that he made it with fragments of reality, of memories, of life he has either witnessed or been a protagonist, such as the kiss filmed in the last scene - the foundations of many of his films such as that 1966 classic Un Homme et Une Femme. What War May Bring is an homage not only to 50 years of making romantic films, but to cinema itself and, last but not least, to people's endurance to the harshness and tribulations of war.

A Fellinesque aura to it, Ces amours-là is a story across three generations of a family, with a war thrown into it. As such, it is not really a war film, but war plays a big part in it, those scenes being both spectacular, humorous in parts, but always with a very tender eye cast on them. It charts the turbulent story of Ilva Lemoine (Audrey Dana), daughter of an Italian porn actress and prostitute and a cinematographer killed in the trenches of WW1, a woman whose only sin was to fall too easily in love, and to survive, in a war torn Europe. We first see her in the dock accused of murder, her pianist turned attorney and Auschwitz survivor's (Laurent Couson) spirited defence leading to her acquittal.

We then see her with a law student (Raphaël), her first and last lover, while going to plead to a cabaret owner turned German officer (Samuel Labarthe) in the Paris of 1942 for the life of her stepfather (Dominique Pinon, of Micmacs, Alien: Resurrection, The City of Lost Children, Delicatessen), a projectionist at the Eden Palace who has been condemned to be shot the following day at dawn together with 19 others as a reprisal for the murder of two SS officers in a Metro station. What she did not know is, by doing so, she actually condemned him to death anyway, as the Resistance thought he had grassed on them after his miraculous release.

After the Allies enter into Paris, in a storyline reminiscent of the Truffaut of Jules et Jim, she fell for two American GIs, Bob (Jacky Ido), a black former boxer who saved the live of Jim Singer (Gilles Lemaire) as they were parachuted into Normandy. Jim is a rich boy, heir to the Singer fortune, turned war photographer. When working as a usherette in the cinema, she was confronted by a vindictive mob accusing her of being a collaborator, being saved in the subsequent melee by Bob and Jim. She attempts to rebuild her life, moving to America with Jim, but the guilt about Bob's death in the Eastern European front leads to its failure.

Ces amours-là ends as it began, two generations of the family, an elderly Ilva (veteran and marvellous actress Anouk Aimée) and her daughter, a brilliant lawyer herself, watching Ilva's son direct the first film score he has composed, the two strands of the family, music and the law being reproduced. If anything, the film could be criticized by glossing over the darker side of guilt.

Lelouch has been, is, the eternal optimist of French cinema, Ces amours-là is no exception. It is an exuberant, exhilarating and elegiac homage to the romance of cinema, to music, to our capacity to endure tragedy, with a Fellinesque touch to it. A very Gallic affair, indeed.

Director: Claude Lelouch
Writers: Claude Lelouch, Pierre Uytterhoeven
Cast: Audrey Dana, Dominique Pinon, Jacky Ido, Gilles Lemaire, Samuel Labarthe, Raphaël, Anouk Aimée,


DVD & Blu-ray to be released in the UK on May 2nd, 2011

To buy or order at Amazon please click HERE


Distributed by Revolver Entertainment

The earliest films ever shot?

The earliest films ever shot?

The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas (19 October 1862, Besançon, France – 10 April 1954, Lyon) and Louis Jean (5 October 1864, Besançon, France – 6 June 1948, Bandol), were among the earliest filmmakers in history. (Appropriately, "lumière" translates as "light" in English.)


The Lumière brothers were born in Besançon, France, in 1862 and 1864, and moved to Lyon in 1870, where both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon.Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him: Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a manager. Louis had made some improvements to the still-photograph process, the most notable being the dry-plate process, which was a major step towards moving images.


It was not until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. They patented a number of significant processes leading up to their film camera - most notably film perforations (originally implemented by Emile Reynaud) as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. The cinématographe itself was patented on 13 February 1895 and the first footage ever to be recorded using it was recorded on March 19, 1895. This first film shows workers leaving the Lumière factory.


The Lumières held their first private screening of projected motion pictures in 1895. Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.

From Wikipedia

Jirí Menzel’s Closely Guarded Trains revisited

I first saw Closely Guarded Trains when it was still fresh out of Czechoslovakia (when it still existed as a nation), back in the late 60s, in Cinema Arte in Viña del Mar, Chile. The irony of its humour impressed me as a young man, and continued to do so in later years as I watched it either in the box or when shown at Hull Screen sometimes in the 80s, if I remember well. I would have suspected that I would have grown tired of it by now (as I am sure it may well be the case for those of you who have been through film school or film studies courses). However, I found out that this is not the case,

I think that Closely Guarded Trains is as fresh and pertinent as it was then, back in the 60s.

This film, being a classic of European New Wave cinema, had had many studies, books and articles dedicated to it, so I will not dwell on it. I will only say that this parody, with a sting attached, where a small railway station in war time German occupied Czechoslovakia acts as a mirror for the whole country, produced during the Communist period (the Prague Spring) and primarily made as a covert criticism of Communist officialdom and their propaganda machine, has a message that can be translated in contemporary English as: “We are in it all together”.

Merry Christmas, Mr Cameron. Merry Christmas, Mr Clegg.

Closely Guarded Trains: Czechoslovakia, 1966, 93 mins.
Director: Jirí Menzel
Writers: Bohumil Hrabal (novel), Bohumil Hrabal (screenplay)
Cast: Václav Neckár, Josef Somr, Vlastimil Brodský

Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW

What was the camera model that James Stewart was using in Hitchcock's iconic film Rear Window?

The Andromeda Strain (USA 1971)

Director: Robert Wise, based on the novel by Michael Crichton
Cast: Arthur Hill, David Wayne, James Olson, Kate Reid, Paula Kelly

When I first saw this film, in the big screen, during the early 70s, it left a deep impression on me. I re-watched it again last night (a video recording going wrong), and all its potency and tension remained there, nearly 40 years later. I watched every single minute of The Andromeda Strain on the edge of my seat, although I still remembered the story line, it is that powerful, gripping, and pertinent today.

The film (and the novel I guess, although I have not read it) plays with the paranoia and the sense of cynicism regarding the secret state, the government and the cold war that permeated the American cultural life on those years: the Vietnam war was already on its last legs, the bombing of Cambodia (eventually leading to the Khmer Rouge victory in 1975), the flower revolution was on the wane and being replaced by that cynicism.

Nuclear armament (Dr Strangelove) here has been replaced by germ warfare, as a NASA recovery team in the Nevada desert search for a returning satellite, finding instead a small town deserted, all its inhabitants dead. They quickly follow that fate. The state machinery went into overdrive, on the name of “national security”, the area is cordoned off, a nuclear bombwas proposed to be dropped off on it to obliterate any sign of the epidemic, and a germ warfare team is quickly assembled. There are scenes here of armed soldiers waiting as military personnel collect the medical and scientific members of that team: the wife of one of those scientists attempts to phone her father, a Senator, to find that the communication was cut off for “national security reasons”, in other word, her being virtually ‘incommunicado’. The secret state is in action. The satellite was eventually recovered by two scientists wearing space-like suits, together with two survivors: a baby and an old man, a wino.

The race to find out what killed the population of this small town began ( what is the common link between the baby and the old man?), leading to the suspicion that what the satellite brought from space was not an extra terrestrial germ, but an experimental virus like form designed for germ warfare by the American military and its scientists. An experiment that went wrong – as usually these things go.

The film is able to sustain that tension all the way through, with humorous scenes thrown in and it dwells into the cracks appearing in that scientific team working in a secret research and containment laboratory buried deep in the Nevada desert, its entrance hidden behind an innocuous Department of Agriculture farm façade. Its subject is as relevant nowadays as it was then.

Regrettably, Robert Wise had to throw in the chase so ubiquitous on blockbusters, even then, the stage for the all American hero to shine, this time persecuted not by Russian or Al Qaida villains, but by laser guns. The ending of The Andromeda Strain has a too moralistic and closed ending. It would have worked better without it, leaving just a question mark behind... I suspect that, after all these years, my mind blanked out that ending, and just left the question mark.

10 Rillington Place

Last night I re-watched Richard Fleischer's 10 Rillington Place, a film which I first saw in the late 70s at the then called Hull Library Theatre. It is one of those films that, when seen, remains ingrained in the mind, at least it did so in mine. Fortunately, it was shown on TV many years ago and had the foresight of videotaping it. Unfortunately, the video tape is now finished, broken.

For those of you who haven't seen it, it follows a real life serial murder case in London during the 40s and 50s, which resulted in the wrong man having been convicted and hanged. Richard Attenborough, what a fine actor he is, was absolutely brilliant as the sinister John Reginald Christie, the serial killer, who we first see in action one dark night in 1944, during the last stages of the war, sweet talking to a young woman for then to proceed to murder her by gas and strangulation. Rape is not shown, but it effect is even more devastating by having been left out. We presume that the young woman may have gone to him after the sweet Mr Christie offered her to get rid of the unwanted child she was carrying, a common occurrence during the war. We see another woman foot sticking out of the ground in his back yard when Christie is burying her body.

The action then moves forward to 1949, during post war austerity, when a young couple, Timothy Evans and his wife Beryl rent the flat on the top of his house in 10 Rillington Place.Timothy Evans, who is unable to read and write and who is, apparently, mentally deficient, young John Hurt's performance conveying the nuances of the character with deep conviction, is involved in constant rows with Beryl, a young and charming Judy Geeson playing the part,  after she discloses that she is expecting another baby. Money is short, we know that they had to move downwards from a river front flat, so row after row ensue.

Sweet talking John Christie convinces Beryl that he can help her to get rid of the baby. Murder and rape follows. Timothy is talked over by Christie, and runs away as he believed that Beryl's death, which he believed was caused by an abortion gone wrong, will be pinned on him. Geraldine, the older baby, is left behind as he also believed that a couple known to Christie was going to take care of her. Of course, that couple did not exist, and the child is also strangulated

To cut the story short, Timothy Evans, his conscience bugging him, gives himself up in Cardiff. Christie manipulated the facts and his testimony during the trial in such a way that Evans is found guilty of the murders, and he is executed. Many years later, as Christie, after murdering his own wife as she knows too much, is forced to sell the house as money dried up - no one wants to rent a flat in a house where murders happened, is caught as the new West Indian owners of 10 Rillington Place discovered the bodies of some of his murder victims behind a panel.

Christie is finally arrested and hanged. We know little of what made him to commit those murders, one after the other, apart from hints of repressed sexuality behind that smooth talk and sweet face of a gentleman. The film is even more blood curling because of that, because of us knowing very little of his background, apart from the disclosure during the trial that he had several convictions for petty crimes and violence. We also know that, as a soldier, he was gassed during WWI.

It made me for years to look with suspicion at people in the street, including my own neighbours.

10 Rillington Place is based on a book by Ludovic Kennedy.

WERNER HERZOG'S BAD LIEUTENANT PORT OF CALL: NEW ORLEANS

A kind of review

I was facing a film maker who does not only know how to tell a story, but also who knows how to tell that story beautifully. From the first scene of Port of Call: New Orleans I knew I was viewing something special: a cinematic jewel.

Herzog moves with complete fluidity and mastery of his medium from the darkest of dark film noir, exploring not only the inner recesses of human consciousness, but also the underbelly of an American Dream where broken glass lays underneath the streets paved with gold, to comedy and parody. A parody of the main character, the bad cop, the bad lieutenant, a deeply hero stumbling from shot to shot of whatever he can get, some times farcically. This film is also a parody of its genre, of noir thrillers: telling is not only the language of its characters, but also the scene where the bad cop asks to shoot again at a baddy already dead because he can see his soul dancing.

Post Katrina New Orleans is portrayed in all its luscious rusting decadence and dereliction, the cinematography being superb in conveying a feeling of impending doom, the film being a visual feast, pure and playful visual poetry. I can tell that not only Werner Herzog but also Nicolas Cage had loads of fun crafting Bad Lieutenant, regardless of the opinions of reviewers and the dons of film studies. Nicolas Cage’s performance as the bad cop is just magnificent in his portrayal of not only an obsessed man, a walking receptacle of drugs coming out of his eyeballs, but also in the mannerisms of a character played by Harvey Keitel in the original Abel Ferrara’s  movie.

And I have done it, I have done what Herzog thought what we would do, refer his take on the character to that of the earlier film. The word has spoken, damnation on me!

Au Hasard Balthazar

Director/writer: Robert Bresson France/Sweden 1966 95 mins

Cast: Anne Wiazemsky, Walter Green, François Lafarge, Jean-Claude Guilbert, Philippe Asselin, Pierre Klossowski, Nathalie Jogaut.

If there is one sentence that could define Robert Bresson’s approach to cinema making, I think that would be on the lines of: The complexity of simplicity.

Au Hasard Balthazar falls clearly under this category. At first glance, it sounds simple, too simple for sophisticated tastes, awaking attitudes such as Oh no, I’ll fall asleep with this film. This is not the case at all. As with other Bresson’s works, it held my undiminished attention from the first frame of a stone wall until the last shot. It is the life story of a donkey, since he was a foal until his death as an abused old animal, downtrodden with smuggled goods and shot after his handlers abandoned him. The foal was formally baptized Balthazar, with a proper Catholic ritual, by and surrounded by adorable and loving children. However, this picture was not to be. It is also a story of betrayal and redemption, a story of fate. One of those children, Marie (Anne Wiazemsky) loved him dearly since she was a little girl, but also betrays him as she grew up and got mixed with a gang of youths in the village, shadowy young people inhabiting in that land located between society and complete amorality.

The film follows the parallel lives of Marie and Balthazar with stark camera work, black and white photography streamlined down to the minimum, the language being sparse like biblical sentences. However, while the donkey accepts mostly with grace and humility the cruelties and brutalities inflicted upon him as he was passed from owner to owner like a yo-yo, with flashes of rebellion here and there, but always with s flourish of his long ears; Marie betrays him and goes on in doing so not only him, but also her childhood sweet heart, Jacques. Balthazar’s life tragically ends, in a twist of fate, just when he had a chance to live his last few years in peace, after having worked all his life as, well, a donkey. His reward being kick after kick. He accepts his death with saintly tranquillity and dignity, his eyes open until the last moment taking in the world around him, Marie having disappeared in despair.

Au Hasard Balthazar has been interpreted as a Christian parable, an exemplary life led by the donkey, taking everything that came onto him, the kicks and the kisses, with humility and grace until his death. Marie, to some extent, leads a similar life, in sharp contrast with the lives of most of the surrounding humans around them, following a complete different path, a path of cruelty, selfishness and brutality.

Bresson’s eye is always sharp as steel in its dissection of human frailties; however, it is never unkind. Au Hasard Balthazar is no different in this respect as we despair watching Marie’s attitude when she sees Balthazar being beaten by her lover, but we learn the conflict in her hearth when she failed to intervene; we vent our anger to Gerard and his gang, but we also learn to see the world through their eyes.

Au Hasard Balthazar, a classic of cinema by one of its masters.

A search through the IMDb website revealed a few interesting facts. Anne Wiazemsky, the lead actress, the daughter of a Russian count and granddaughter of the French writer François Mauriac, did pursue, unusually for Bresson’s actors, a career in cinema and TV until 1988, having worked under Jean-Luc Godard – to whom she married, and Pier-Paolo Pasolini, and others. She is also a writer, having collaborated in L’Irreguliere, on which the film Coco Before Chanel was based. Pierre Klossowski, the miller in the film, was the painter Balthus older brother, himself being an artist and writer. He also appeared in Raoul Ruiz' films.

Spring Symphony

Director/writer: Peter Schamoni
West Germany 1983 103 mins
Cast: Nastassja Kinski, Rolf Hoppe, Herbert Grönemeyer, Anja-Christine Preussler.

Peter Schamoni’s 1983 film Spring Symphony (Frühlingssinfonie) should clearly fall into the category of Masters and Classics of Cinema, although I believe that it passed largely unnoticed in Britain. A young Nastassja Kinski plays the part of teenager Clara Wieck, brilliantly conveying the childishness and coquetry of a 15 year old girl, whilst expressing the strength of character and resolution of a young woman aware of her talent and sure of her path; while Anja-Christine Preussler  is excellent as the bossy child that Clara (it drew a laugh from me) must have been, yet still demanding to be told a bedtime story as any other little girl would have done.

The film charts the story of the talented young pianist Clara Wieck, nurtured from a very early age by her stern father Friedrich Wieck - impeccably played by Rolf Hoppe, a piano dealer and teacher, to storm the stages of Europe at practically any cost during the early part of the 19th century, following the revolution in music brought by Beethoven, Schubert, and many other musicians. Regrettably for him, the Romantic composer Robert Schumann (a plausible Herbert Grönemeyer) enters into the picture, dislocating the inexorable path he had traced for Clara to follow, and breaking the very close relationship between daughter and father had – some people would argue to have been too close for comfort, although no sexual abuse is hinted at.

Spring Symphony explores the tormented romance between the brilliant Robert Schumann and the equally brilliant Clara, a relationship that finally led to the rupture of the filial bonds between her and her father, a disappointed and stubborn man who refused to give ground to the love between the two young people, a man who had spent most of his financial and emotional resources on furthering her career. On this respect, whatever his motives were, it could be said that he actually financially and emotionally exploited her.

The film also hints at the clash which was to come between two talented and strong willed musicians, particularly in the last scene when Schumann’s gorgeous Spring Symphony was premiered under the conduction of Felix Mendelssohn.

The Leipzig of the early 19th century has been convincingly portrayed, while the camera work stunningly conveys not only the beauty of Nastassja Kinski, but also her very European sensuality.

Spring Symphony is a must to be seen by all lovers of classical music. It certainly reconnected me with Schumann’s works, a composed who I have, somewhat, neglected. Paganini is another composer that was brought back into the forefront of my mind.

Whale Rider

Once upon a time there was a little girl who had a dream: she wanted to be an actor. One day, some people came to her school and asked her funny questions, such as if she was a swimmer, if she could swim with her eyes open, and so on. The girl, Keisha Castle-Hughes, was cast and delivered a stunning performance as Paikea, the heroin of Whale Rider. Keisha's career as an actor was launched. It is a pity we don't see much of her in some of the films she has been in since then: Am I guilty of failing to notice her participation in other films since then?

Whale Rider, when I first saw in 2002, cast an spell on me. That spell is still with me, it did not only survive a second viewing of the film, but was reinforced by it (I picked up a DVD for only £3 at HMV Hull). I regard it as one of the great films of the past decade: tender and yet not sentimental, funny without being a comedy, casting an eye on Maori society without being a documentary, depicting a conflict between tradition and modernity without moralizing. Critics called it spellbinding when it was released in 2002, I agree with that comment.

The heroin of the film, 11 year old Paikea (Keisha Castle-Hughes), is the grand daughter of Koro, a Maori chief, the last descendant of a long line of chiefs which can be traced to the mythical Paikea - who came to New Zealand riding a whale. She, as being the first born, should have been destined to be the next leader of Koro's people. Yet, because she is a girl, Koro rejects her, in spite of his paternal love for her. The legend of the mythical Paikea cast an spell on her, and she is determined to repeat his legendary feast, against the odds of her grandfather rejection and herself being a girl. Yet, she succeeds after rescuing a stranded pod of beached whales by riding their leader, as her mythical ancestor once did. I was encouraging her to do so. It is that kind of film.

It is a poetical and beautifully shot film, I strongly recommend it if you haven't seen it yet. Keisha Castle-Hughes gave a formidable performance in this film, and I hope she has done well in her successive movies.

Funny Games

No, I had not watched Haneke's Funny Games before. And, yes, I think that it is not so much a feature film as a cinematic essay on feature films, audiences' complicity and the commodification of violence in contemporary cinema. As such, it works as a feature film, but also as a running meta-commentary on the feature film.

I am not going to write any more, as much has been said, and written, about this film