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June 2024 volume 34 issue 5 Richard Linklater Alice rohrwacher the fall guy black film bulletin £6. 50 The many faces of From Slacker to Hit Man. the big career interview | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
STARRING KOJI YAKUSHO mubi. com/perfectdays NOW STREAMING “Achingly lovely... advocates not just a new way of looking, but also a new way of living” THE OBSERVER “A film of profound gentleness... Koji Yakusho delivers a sublime central performance” LITTLE WHITE LIES “Rich and resonant... surrender to its intimate, contemplative rhythm” TOTAL FILM “R h a d resonan... urr de to it int at, c nt mpla ve r yt m” TOTAL FILM “Ac ingly vely... a vo tes not ju t n w w y f lo ing, b t als a n ay of li in ” THE OBSERVER “A fil of pr foun entl ne s... Ko Yak sho d liv rs a s bli c ntral p form nc ” LITTLE WHITE LIES | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
IN THIS ISSUE CONTENTS 56 36 RICHARD LINKLATER As Hit Man hits UK screens, the director talks to Hannah Mc Gill about the myth of the everyday assassin and looks back over the highlights of his career, from his Sundance breakthrough Slacker and his early battles for independence from studio control in the 1990s50 THE FALL GUY Director David Leitch and producer Kelly Mc Cormick, who have created a comic celebration of stunt performers, talk to Lou Thomas about stuntwork's lack of status and why, even in a CGI-dominated industry, nothing matches the real thing Alice Rohrwacher's Alice Rohrwacher's enchanting tale of tomb-enchanting tale of tomb-robbers and magic offers robbers and magic offers an insider's portrait of the an insider's portrait of the culture and landscape of culture and landscape of the central Italian region the central Italian region where she grew up. She where she grew up. She tells Lee Marshall why tells Lee Marshall why capitalism is destined to capitalism is destined to end up in a museum, while end up in a museum, while Josh O'Connor talks to Josh O'Connor talks to Arjun Sajip about what Arjun Sajip about what drew him to the film and drew him to the film and the joy of getting dirty the joy of getting dirty LA CHIMERA 27 BLACK FILM BULLETIN In this issue, June Givanni talks to Bridgerton star Adjoa Andoh, Joanna Abeyie assesses the climate for diversity and inclusion in the industry, and critics Leila Latif and Ellen E. Jones ask whether film and TV really can save the world | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
IN THIS ISSUECONTRIBUTORS HANNAH MCGILL is a writer, broadcaster and critic based in Scotland. She also teaches and lectures on film studies and film festival history. She was the artistic director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival from 2006 to 2010. LEE MARSHALL is a film critic, travel writer and cyclist based in Città della Pieve, between Rome and Florence. ANNABEL BAI JACKSON is a freelance writer based in London. She writes about films, books and visual culture. She also works as a curatorial fellow at the National Gallery, where she focuses on modern and contemporary art. ALSO IN THIS ISSUE Lou Thomas, Jonathan Romney, Nick Bradshaw, Anne Billson, Imogen Sara Smith, Kate Stables, Adam Nayman, Jessica Kiang, Henry K. Miller, Kim Newman, Guy Lodge, Ben Nicholson, Megan Feeney, Beatrice Loayza, Michael Brooke, Arjun Sajip and more JUNE 2024 6 EDITORIAL A tribute to a woman ahead of her time, Eleanor Coppola 9 OPENING SCENES · Opener: There's Still T omorrow · Editors' Choice · In Production: Agnieszka Holland's Franz Kafka biopic · In Conversation: Marie Amachoukeli on Àma Gloria · Festivals: CPH:DOX and Visions du Réel · AI Spy: Spotlighting artificial intelligence in film and TV · The Ballot of... Luna Carmoon · Mean Sheets: Anselmo Ballester's lurid poster for Rome, Open City and more 20 LETTERS 22 TALKIES · The Long T ake: Pamela Hutchinson celebrates the silent nostalgia of Robot Dreams · TV Eye: Andrew Male wishes music dramas would stick to the drama and leave the music alone · Flick Lit: Nicole Flattery on Abbas Kiarostami's Close-Up and other fictions that look through a scammer, darkly · The Magnificent '74: Jessica Kiang on the road movies that helped to define the greatest year of American movies ever 98 ENDINGS · The giant beast in Jacques T ourneur's Night of the Demon has taken its place in the hellscape of horror imagery REVIEWS 64 | FILMS · Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger · Hit Man · La chimera · Civil War · T wo Tickets to Greece · A House in Jerusalem · Y annick · There's Still T omorrow · Rosalie · Nezouh · Riddle of Fire · The Beast · Four Little Adults · Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg · Omen · Elaha · Challengers · Here · The F all Guy · The First Omen · Immaculate · Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire 80 | DVD & BLU-RAY · L'Amour fou · Raging Bull · Misunderstood · That Cold Day in the Park · Lost and Found: Quick Millions · The Lavender Hill Mob · Behind Convent Walls · Patrick · Dogfight · The Shape of Night · T wo films by Ozu Y asujirō 86 | WIDER SCREEN · Laura Staab on the fascinating moving-image work of Y oko Ono, as seen in a major retrospective exhibition in London 88 | BOOKS · Alex Ramon on Ellen E. Jones's writing on racial representation in film and television; Hannah Mc Gill on David Forrest's thought-provoking BFI Film Classic on Kes; and John Bleasdale on Roger Lewis's extravagantly entertaining doorstop about the enduring power of T aylor and Burton90 LINDSAY ANDERSON A 1989 interview with the director FROM THE ARCHIVE 96 THIS MONTH IN... 1984 John Huston's Under the V olcano on the cover, plus The King of Comedy | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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EDITORIAL Mike Williams @itsmikelike Eleanor is the film's sole voice of reason, surrounded by men in different stages of unravelling: Dennis Hopper, Martin Sheen, Sam Bottoms and, of course, Francis Ford Coppola himself Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, the 1991 documentary co-directed by Eleanor Coppola about the tortured production of Apocalypse Now, begins with her husband, Francis Ford Coppola, addressing the media at a Cannes press conference. It's 1979 and a three-hour work-in-progress has just been screened, the first and only time an unfinished film has been shown in competition at the festival. All that's visible against the black background are his bespectacled eyes and pallid forehead, the rest of the director disappearing into the darkness like an echo of Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz. Agitated and intense, he speaks with the same hubris as the unhinged US Army officer: “My film is not a movie,” says Coppola, staring out into the void. “My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Viet-nam. We were in the jungle, there were too many of us, we had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane. ” This journey into madness of cast and crew, this explosion of ego, genius and paranoia, was cap-tured in all its reeking grandeur by Eleanor who, along with daughter Sofia and sons Gian-Carlo and Roman, had travelled with Francis to the Phil-ippines to shoot footage for the studio's publicity department. That footage, at times intimate, other times captured in secret, is the soul of the film, gar-nished by co-directors F ax Bahr and George Hick-enlooper with talking heads. It's a Greek tragedy, with Francis as the fallen hero, riddled with pride and self-pity, playing God and almost destroying his own world. “A film director,” he says near the end, “is one of the last truly dictatorial posts left in a world getting more and more democratic. ” Eleanor is the film's sole voice of reason, sur-rounded by men in different stages of unravelling: Dennis Hopper, Martin Sheen, Sam Bottoms and, of course, Francis himself. “Everyone who has come out here to the Philippines seems to be going through something that is affecting them profoundly,” she says at one point, “changing their perspective about the world or themselves, while the same thing is happening to Willard [Sheen] in the course of the film. Something is definitely hap-pening to me, and to Francis. ” She is also the mooring that ultimately keeps Francis from disappearing over the edge, her prag-matic sense of duty in contrast to his anxiety of having plunged his Godfather fortune into a jungle nightmare. “I really support him as an artist,” she reasons, “and I feel that whatever the artist needs to do in order to get his artwork is okay. And I always felt confident, what's the worst that can happen, they take away your big house, they take away your cars, so what?” The children, as we know, all entered the family business. Gian-Carlo was an actor, killed at 22 in a speedboat accident. Roman is a writer and pro-ducer best known for working with his father and Wes Anderson. Sofia is the Oscar-winning director of Lost in Translation (2003). Cousins Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman are also in the movies, as are numerous uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces. Eleanor Coppola died in early April at the age of 87. A few days earlier I'd been reading a New Y orker profile of Sofia, published months before to pro-mote her latest film Priscilla. Something Eleanor said had stuck in my head, about her role in the family and the sacrifices to her career that she had to make to facilitate the creative ambitions of others. She and Francis met on the set of his debut fea-ture, Dementia 13, in 1962. As the piece states: “He was the director, she was the assistant art director, and she thought that they might work on films together for years to come. Instead, within a few months she found out she was pregnant with Gio. She and Fran-cis were married the following weekend, and Fran-cis, as Eleanor put it to me, 'made it very clear that my role was to be the wife and the mother'. ” Sofia then recalls her mother visiting the set of Priscilla, observing a scene in which Elvis is prepar-ing to go on tour, while his wife will stay home with their daughter. Eleanor tells the writer, “When Elvis said to Priscilla, 'Y ou have everything you need to be happy,' that's exactly what I was feeling at the time. I went to the psychiatrist and said, 'Why am I unhappy?' Not one single person said to me, 'Y ou are a creative person. '” For Hearts of Darkness alone she should be remem-bered as brave and, yes, creative. Her eye for detail and ear for conversation are what make the film the most compelling documentary about the making of a movie. And she leaves behind more than one film. Eighty hours of behind-the-scenes foot-age from Sofia's Marie Antoinette (2006) are being turned into a documentary. In 2016, at 80, her first feature, Paris Can W ait, was released, making her one of the oldest American women to make a directorial debut. In 2020, she released her second, Love Is Love Is Love, featuring Cybill Shepherd and Rosanna Arquette. Hearts of Darkness won several awards, including two Emmys. Apocalypse Now won two Oscars and the Palme d'Or. At the age of 85, Francis is back at Cannes this year with Megalopolis, an idea he first dreamed up during the filming of Apocalypse Now. Again, his own fortune is on the table; again, the production has been blighted; and again, the first reactions have been mixed. “This is exactly what happened with Apocalypse Now 40 years ago,” he told the Daily Beast, insisting that the film will “stand the test of time”. The hubris is still there along with the big ideas, a fitting closing act of a remarkable career made pos-sible by the sacrifices of his wife. Farewell, Eleanor, the heart of the Coppola dynasty ILLUSTRATION BY FERNANDO COBELLO; BYLINE ILLUSTRATION PETER ARKLE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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OPENING SCENES Y esterday's tomorrow Paola Cortellesi's hit comedy drama There's Still T omorrow borrows the language and settings of 1940s neorealism-but the themes of feminism and domestic violence remain dismayingly contemporary BY JONATHAN ROMNEY It is more than a little ironic that it took a highly commercial feminist film to outdo Barbie. Paola Cortellesi's There's Still T omorrow was the No. 1 attraction in Italian cinemas last year, grossing more than €36 million (£30 million) at the domestic box office following its release in October and chalking up 5. 4 million admissions-which is especially impres-sive for a film in black and white that imitates the style of post-World War II Italian neorealism. Esoteric as this might sound, There's Still T omorrow has all the ingredients for domestic multiplex appeal. It struck a chord with audiences not just because of its distinctive bravura style and its first-time director's established popular-ity as a TV comedian, star and co-writer of domestic comedy hits, including Don't Stop Me Now (2019) and the two Like a Cat on a Highway films (2017, 2019). The film's success is also very much to do with its accessible, emotionally involving and surprisingly entertaining treatment of tough subjects-domestic violence and traditional gender roles. Written by the director with regular collaborators Furio Andreotti and Giulia Calenda, Cortellesi's comedy-drama is set in Rome in 1946, the year that women were first given the vote in Italy. The director herself plays Delia, a woman who copes with the demands of family life while enduring brutal treatment from her domineering, violent husband Ivano (Valerio Mastandrea) by secretly dream-ing of possible escape. The film was shot partly on set at Cinecittà, partly on location in Rome's T estaccio district, resulting in a vivid recreation of a working-class community centred around a courtyard. Speaking in a video call, Cortellesi says, “What every single region in Italy had is that shared way of life-people living in tenements around an internal courtyard, people shouting across balconies, children play-ing outside, with all the good and bad aspects of that. Because obviously there was no privacy, gossip was rife, everybody knew about everybody else's lives. In the location where we shot, those houses are occupied, so they're a sort of time capsule of people still living that type of life. ” With its period detail, local dialect (some of it archaic, specifically of the period) and Davide Leone's evocative cinematography, There's Still T omorrow feels in many ways uncannily close to the golden age of Italian neorealist cinema, as practised by Roberto Rossellini, Vit-torio De Sica and Luchino Visconti. But Cortellesi insists, “I didn't want to ape a neorealist film-they're masterpieces, why do that? I wanted to adopt a certain type of language to treat a very contem-porary subject and make a contempo-rary film. ” Even so, she says, “Neorealism is part of our DNA as Italians-that ABOVE Paola Cortellesi in There's Still T omorrow9 OPENING SCENES | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
language is ingrained in our collective culture, it's the way we see the past. So when I heard the stories [about the past] from my grandparents, I would translate them in my mind into the visual language of neorealism. ” In fact, There's Still T omorrow is nei-ther strictly a forgery of neorealism nor a parody, and nor is it quite the kind of revisionist reappropriation of the sort that T odd Haynes performed on Doug-las Sirk in his Far from Heaven (2002). It's perhaps closer to Michel Hazanavicius's use of silent cinema in The Artist (2011), an irreverent emulation of a certain film language. In Cortellesi's case, the approach is precise but also flexible, able to accom-modate melodrama, broad comedy and anachronism (as in the opening credits, set to a number by US indie veterans The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion). Cortellesi also uses hyper-stylisation, as in the elegant but deeply unsettling scene in which Ivano assaults Delia, played out as a balletic dance duet. In fact, the director points out, her film's funny moments owe more to a slightly different cycle of films, the com-media all'italiana associated with direc-tors such as Mario Monicelli, Dino Risi and De Sica in his lighter mode. “ Com-media all'italiana is not the comedy genre per se-it is a way of treating subjects which can be very hard and very serious in a cynical, humorous register,” she says. “Humour is the ideal vehicle to usher the audience into a really tough subject with-out antagonising them. For instance, as in that scene of violence as choreography, which gives this sense of not witnessing just one moment, but conveying the idea of something happening cyclically. ” Neorealism famously made an impact -in Italy and internationally-because of its emphasis on ordinary people and stories from the street. Cortellesi says that it marked a decisive break both with the propaganda films of the Musso-lini era and the glossy lifestyle escapism of the ' Telefoni Bianchi ' ('white telephone') films of the 30s and 40s. “Neorealism was a slap in the face. All of a sudden, stories were about real people that the audiences could recognise and identify with,” she says. As There's Still T omorrow reminds us, many of those stories were about women. “When we see [Rossellini's] Rome, Open City [1945], and Anna Mag-nani just breaking through that screen, we see a relatable woman and a real woman: she belongs to that strange [Ital-ian] matriarchy, where women were very strong and could deal with the outside world in a very competent way. But then in Visconti's Bellissima [1951], she plays an exceedingly strong woman who still gets slapped around by her husband. Nevertheless, she is the protagonist of her story. So women are not restricted to being chambermaids or secondary char-acters, but can hold the screen and be the real protagonist of the movie. ” Delia-played by Cortellesi with a poignant, tender, comic touch-is, the director admits, the exact opposite of Magnani's toughness. But Magnani remains Cortellesi's reference point for women in the Italian cinema of the period, along with Giulietta Masina, who co-starred with her in Renato Cas-tellani's 1959 prison drama Caged (aka ... And the Wild, Wild W omen ). She also mentions Monica Vitti, comedy star Franca Valeri and Sophia Loren; for Cortellesi, Loren represents, among other things, a breakthrough for screen actresses in terms of being able to be both glamorous and comic. A favourite scene of Cortellesi's comes in Pane, amore e... (Dino Risi, 1955), which starred Loren and De Sica. “She's this perfect goddess, he smells her scent and asks, 'What sort of perfume do you use?' And in a perfect Neapolitan working-class accent, she goes, 'It's Lavanda Cannavale'-a really cheap brand. She owns up to the fact that it is exactly what it is. Without giving up on being beautiful and glamorous, she's able to deliver the punchline and steals the scene completely. ” While Cortellesi's film is set in a work-ing-class milieu, the oppression faced by Delia was not only a phenomenon in Italy. “It was all-pervasive that women were not supposed to voice their opin-ions. At the time, women belonging to the bourgeoisie, or even the nobility, had a subordinate role with respect to the men in the family. ” At the moment, the director says, the topic is very much in the spotlight, fol-lowing the death last November of a young woman named Giulia Cecchettin, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend -an event that galvanised national pro-tests and discussions. Recent reports have estimated that in Italy a femicide happens every 72 hours: by the time her film was released in Octo-ber, Cortellesi notes, 100 women had already been killed in the country that year. Because of the Cecchettin case, she says, Italians are currently very aware of the issue of gender-based violence; but her film “is also paying witness to all of the women that went before, and who were never acknowledged for what they went through”. A film that plays with the past, says Cortellesi, was the ideal way to do that. “I wanted to cast a light on what has changed and what has remained the same-and what has remained the same is the toxic mentality that, unfortunately, forces us to still be talking about these subjects. ” There's Still T omorrow is out now in UK cinemas and is reviewed on page 70. A season of films, 'Chasing the Real: Italian Neorealism' plays at BFI Southbank, London, throughout May and June BELOW Anna Magnani in Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951), with Walter Chiari and Tina Apicella (background)'Women were not supposed to voice their opinions. Women belonging to the bourgeoisie, or even the nobility, had a subordinate role with respect to the men in the family'10OPENING SCENES IMAGE: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
EDITORS' CHOICERecommendations from the Sight and Sound team FLATPACK FESTIVAL flatpackfestival. org. uk, 10-19 May, venues across Birmingham I'm always intrigued to see what Flatpack, which is committed to showing film in all shapes and sizes, has assembled for its annual festival. Think crafty cross-cultural invention with no manual rather than factory readymades. Alongside cine-inspired sound and art events, this year's slate includes a programme of classic Ukrainian animated shorts scored by experimental band Potreba Group; an audiovisual 'entertainment spa', which aims to “stimulate the brain by projecting patterns and colours directly into your eyeballs”; and 'regular' screenings of such gems as a 4K restoration of Bridgett M. Davis's 1996 comedy Naked Acts (pictured above), about a Black woman's challenging experiences on a low-budget indie shoot. Isabel Stevens, managing editor SNAPSHOT Twelve-month season running from May tapecollective. co. uk Grassroots UK distributor T ape Collective is running a season focusing on 'snapshots' of Black girlhood, such as Ayoka Chenzira's 1994 Brooklyn-based Bildungsroman Alma's Rainbow (1993), and Milisuthando (2023), Milisuthando Bongela's documentary-memoir about her childhood in apartheid South Africa. A highlight is the 10 May rerelease of Drylongso (1998, pictured above), the only feature film by artist Cauleen Smith. Lo-fi and scrapbooky, it mirrors the artistic searching of protagonist Pica, a young Oakland woman who takes Polaroids of Black men as “evidence of existence” while the threat of a “Westside slasher” looms. It pulses with saturated colours and 1990s hip-hop needle drops that set the warm tone for Smith's ambitious genre-blend. Katie Mc Cabe, reviews editor GASOLINE RAINBOW Streaming on Mubi from 31 May Brothers T urner Ross and Bill Ross IV follow 2020's Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets with a whirlwind road trip through Oregon, shot in their trademark docufiction style, where the narrative is planned but the dialogue is entirely improvised. As a five-strong gang of teenagers take to the road in a minivan -their chimeric coastal destination is a “party at the end of the world”-we get to know them intimately, including their musical tastes, which makes for an energisingly eclectic soundtrack. Most impressive is the cinematography (by the Ross brothers themselves), which is nimble enough to follow the teens in their wildest moments but finds oases of calm during the comedowns. Thomas Flew, editorial assistant THE PLOT THICKENS SERIES 5: DECODING JOHN FORD Available from 6 June I wouldn't ordinarily recommend a podcast I haven't listened to, but the consistent brilliance of the previous four series of TCM's The Plot Thickens lets me stick my neck out. Ben Mankiewicz returns, having hosted deep dives into Peter Bogdanovich, The Bonfire of the V anities (1990), Lucille Ball and Pam Grier, promising: “It hasn't been easy getting to the bottom of John Ford, but as you'll hear, it was worth the trip. ” Ford was a famously difficult man and visionary filmmaker, winning more Oscars than any other director while cultivating a reputation as a domineering drunk. The never-before-heard interviews with John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Henry Fonda, James Stewart and Ford himself are sure to be fascinating. Mike Williams, editor-in-chief PETER STRICKLAND: A CURZON COLLECTION Available to pre-order, £69. 99 A decade since The Duke of Burgundy (pictured above) and the appetite for Strickland's rich sensory cinema, steeped in filmic references and high-concept horror, only increases. This lavish Blu-ray box-set will do nicely to tide us over until his next project. Across six discs, it comprises his five features, beginning with Katalin V arga (2009), plus seven further hours of extras, including commentaries, interviews, deleted scenes and, most delectably, a collection of his short films and music videos, some newly restored, some previously unseen-all painstakingly sourced by the director via “old negatives or hard drives that were left in a friend's ex-spouse's apartment or in a lock-up garage after one of my colleagues fell in love with someone thousands of miles away”. When you're not gorging yourself on the films, admire the essays by the filmmaker himself, Sight and Sound contributor Anton Bitel and Romanian actress F atma Mohamed, who appears in every one of the films. All this and an enamel pin, so you'll know a fellow Stricklandite when you pass on the street. Pamela Hutchinson, Weekly Film Bulletin editor INCLINATIONS FILM CLUB CCA Glasgow, @inclinations_film_club Set up by Glasgow-based writer and filmmaker Rastko Novaković, the Inclinations Film Club, held at the CCA's cinema in the centre of the city, has been running for little more than a year but is already a beacon of exploratory, politically inflected programming, with post-screening discussions a key element. Recent highlights include Alain Cavalier's lacerating Libera Me (1993), inspiringly paired with James Kelman reading a selection of his own stories on film before joining a talk about Cavalier's film in person; a three-film tribute to Jean-Marie Straub and Jean-Luc Godard; Nurşen Bakir's rousing Those Roads of Fatsa (2021); and John Gianvito's Her Socialist Smile (2020), to name a few. There's a Scottish premiere of Angelo Madsen Minax's profoundly affecting family portrait North by Current (2021, pictured above) on 21 May; and on 11 June two exquisite films by Nina Danino, Solitude (2022) and Maria (2023), which focus, respectively, on Nico and Maria Callas. Inclinations is a model for what can be done on a shoestring budget in straitened times. Kieron Corless, associate editor 11 OPENING SCENES | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
I see Holland, I see Franz BY THOMAS FLEW Her refugee drama Green Border is coming to cinemas in June, having had a prize-winning Venice premiere last year, but Agnieszka Hol-land is already deep into production on her next feature, Franz, about the German-speak-ing Jewish writer Franz Kafka, played by new-comer Idan Weiss. During a weather-enforced break from filming in the writer's hometown of Prague, Holland spoke about the project by phone, beginning by distinguishing 'Franz' from 'Kafka': “'Kafka' is some kind of brand- after the fall of communism he became the pride of Prague and an important tourist attrac-tion-[whereas] Franz is a very special human being and artist. Both 'Kafka' and 'Franz' have been very strong inspirations for me since I was in high school. One of the reasons I dreamt of coming to Prague to study film was because it was Kafka's city. The paradox was inspiring for me-that a very neurotic, shy and fragile human being, who wrote these things which are still so relevant and can be interpreted in thousands of ways, was reduced to an attraction. ” In 1980, Holland adapted Kafka's The T rial for an episode of the long-running Polish TV series Television Theater (1953-). The experience was “extremely interesting, because I had to destroy [the novel] to build it up as something audiovisual”. Her process for recreating Kaf-ka's life as a film could be described in a similar way. Holland-who co-wrote Franz 's screen-play with her Charlatan (2020) collaborator Marek Epstein-describes the film's structure as “fragmentary, with several layers, including the contemporary layer of Kafka's reception. I think that it [would have been] just wrong to make a classical biography. ” These layers will also include partial recreations of some of Kafka's early short stories, but will avoid his later, more famous works. Given this narrative complexity, Holland expects to take longer in editing than normal-“The film will be made in the editing,” she says. It is unlikely, then, that Franz will be ready to premiere in this signifi-cant year for Kafka fans, the centenary of his death. WAVE OF SONG On the way from Sebastián Lelio ( Disobedi-ence, A Fantastic W oman ) is The W ave, a musical inspired by the feminist protests that began in Chile in 2018. He says: “I am fascinated by the idea of using the musical genre, with its aura of romance and splendour, to speak about the inspiring young feminist movement in Chile, mutual consent in the post-#Me T oo era and the political potential of the individual or col-lective voice. ” PETER'S ENDS Dustin Hoffman and Helen Hunt have joined Peter Greenaway's forthcoming, as-yet-untitled project, on which filming has com-menced in Italy. The film will centre around a man making plans for an “elegant and sensible” death. Greenaway said that the film asks “if death is necessary, and if it is, should we not be available to decide where and when?... If we truly are going to die, shouldn't we be involved in the decision-making?” ROBOT DETECTIVE Resurrection, the new film by Bi Gan ( Kaili Blues, 2015), has begun shooting. A presenta-tion at Chinese Cinema Con revealed that it will be a science-fiction film with a “bionic man” at its centre and elements of detective fiction in its plot. ABOVE Agnieszka Holland and Idan Weiss shooting her Kafka biopic IN PRODUCTION News in brief CINEMA RETURNS TO E17 Walthamstow will once again have a picturehouse, with operator PDJ Cinemas taking over what was, until last summer's permanent closure, the Empire. PDJ runs four other venues across England and will be naming its new location Forest Cinemas. Upgrades will include new digital equipment and screens and a themed bar dedicated to nearby Leytonstone's most famous son, Alfred Hitchcock. A MOVE FOR SUNDANCE? After more than 40 years in its host town of Park City, Utah, the Sundance Film Festival is opening itself up to relocation pitches. Any potential move would take place from 2027, with no offered locations having yet been revealed. Sundance confirmed that patron Robert Redford will be involved in the process and that a final host city will be revealed by early 2025. REANIMATORS The Seth Mac F arlane Foundation and Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation have collaborated to restore a collection of nine animated shorts dating from the 1920s to the 1940s (seven of which are by Betty Boop creators Max and Dave Fleischer). Included are Koko's Tattoo (1928), Greedy Humpty Dumpty (1936, pictured below) and The Three Bears, a 1939 T errytoon. CORNISH FILM GRANT Screen Cornwall has announced the first four recipients of its new Cornish-language feature film development line-up. All four projects will be supported to treatment stage. T wo will then go on to receive further funding to reach script stage. Callum Mitchell, assistant director on Bait (2019), was one of those awarded, for Lanow (Rising Tide), which focuses on a father and young son who are victims of the housing crisis. NEWS ANATOMY OF A FALL Greedy Humpty Dumpty (1936) 12OPENING SCENES IMAGE: @MARLENE FILM PRODUCTION, MICHAL UREŠ | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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IN CONVERSATION Q Y our family employed a nanny while you were growing up. What do you remember most about her? A She's still in my life, she still calls me 'daughter' all the time. It took a long time for me-too much time, actually-to understand or even ask myself who she is, where she came from, who her family were. Q The nanny-child relationship doesn't have an established social form in the way the nuclear family does. How did you tease out the boundaries of this relationship? A That was one of the questions of the movie. Y ou're paid for a job, but what happens when you move beyond its boundaries? Cléo and Gloria have a covert relationship in a way, one that can't be official: they don't talk about it, because others won't accept it. Q Can you talk about casting Louise Mauroy-Panzani and Ilça Moreno Zego, who had never acted before? A I asked the casting director [Christel Baras] to avoid agencies [for child actors]. She basically found Louise fighting with her little brother near our office and then asked her to audition. Louise was the first actor I met and I was very, very impressed by her. When I looked at her, I felt like she was 80 years old. She has an old soul; she seems to come from outer space. I met a lot of nannies from Morocco, Chile and Thailand, and they all had the same story: they had to leave their children to come to Western countries and raise the children of people with more money. And then I met Ilça, and it was her story too. I rewrote the movie with her backstory, her village and her language, Creole-I took Creole lessons for a year and a half. Q There's a very clear postcolonial reading of the film, about how the legacy of European colonialism informs Cléo and Gloria's relationship. How important was that broader political narrative?A That's funny, because it's always foreign countries where people ask me that directly. I'm never asked that in France, which is part of the problem. There's something taboo about it: we don't want to use the word postcolonialism, but yes, of course it's the result of colonialism. That was the point of the movie, to say that [this type of relationship between Cléo and Gloria] exists. Q How did you balance the intensity of Cléo's perspective with the film's documentary qualities? A I always shoot like that, trying to put my fiction into documentary sequences. I write a very simple structure, I go and meet people, and then I rewrite everything. I'm adjusting all the time between what [stories] I want to tell and what the actors bring to me. But the film is also based on sensations. The camera is so close to Cléo that you have to become her yourself: you feel like her, you eat like her, you love like her. We used a 50mm focal length, which I love because you can feel the texture and the movement. That was the whole point of the mise en scène : feel the world, don't just see it. Q Can you talk about the animated sequences that punctuate the film? A The sequences were painted on glass, frame by frame, by twelve painters. The technique was really scary-I couldn't see the results until the end-but it felt like I was at the beginning of cinema, like in its early days. I wrote these sequences to express the feelings that Cléo herself couldn't express: they are totally her subconscious. Q Y our previous directing work was with other people. What changed when you shifted away from that collaborative model? A When we were three directors [on 2014's Party Girl, with Claire Burger and Samuel Theis], there was no place for other collaborations with the DOP or editor. It was almost too much: we were monsters! But with Àma Gloria, I discovered for the first time what collaboration was, because I was alone. We were a very small team, but I had the luxury of choosing them. Q What films did you watch when you were a child? A My favourite movie when I was a kid was Mary Poppins [1964]. And when I was around ten, my favourites were James Ivory movies. I watched Maurice [1987] 200 or 300 times, maybe more. Q What can stories about children tell us about love or jealousy or pain that stories about adults can't? A There's something about the sincerity of feelings-something you can't fight against. Y ou're very humble when you see a child playing the main character. Àma Gloria is released in UK cinemas on 14 June ABOVE Louise Mauroy-Panzani and Ilça Moreno Zego in Àma Gloria MARIE AMACHOUKELI WRITER/DIRECTOR INTERVIEW BY ANNABEL BAI JACKSON The French-Georgian director brings out an astonishing performance from a six-year-old girl in family drama Àma Gloria In Marie Amachoukeli's bittersweet coming-of-age drama Àma Gloria, Cléo (an extraordinary six-year-old, Louise Mauroy-Panzani) leaves France to spend a sun-drenched summer in Cape Verde, where she visits her former nanny, Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego). Living in Gloria's hometown alongside her family, Cléo jealously discovers that she isn't the only child who Gloria cherishes. While the film is exquisitely tender and shot with an enthralling tactility, over a brisk 83 minutes, it's also awake to the social circumstances that have shaped the intricate, and somewhat taboo, love between its main characters. Amachoukeli, in her first solo feature, empathetically captures both the passions and politics of this unique bond. ABOVE Marie Amachoukeli 15 OPENING SCENESDIRECTOR PORTRAIT: NOEMIE GUILLAUMIN | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
FESTIVALS indelible damage of wars deeper back in time, as if to warn our belligerent present. Both festivals' main competition winners were cases in point. At CPH:DOX, the DOX:AWARD went to Alessandra Celesia's The Flats, a deftly attentive and empathetic portrait of besiegement and bruised survival among a ragtag cast of neighbours on Belfast's republican New Lodge estate. There, people live with the ghosts of terror, strife and sacrifice from Northern Ireland's T roubles as well as the persisting depredations of poverty and exclusion. At Vd R, Swiss director Nicole Vögele's The Landscape and the Fury took a formally more distanced, slow-burn approach to its Croatian-Bosnian borderlands, through which refugees from farther-flung wars now pass, over ground still etched with the traces of native conflict from three decades ago. Buried truths of the Bosnian war, and specifically life in Srebrenica, before and after the town's 1995 genocide, are also exhumed in Ado Hasanović's My Father's Diaries, probing a family's silences and traumas with the aid of a survivor's home videos and letters. The jury prize for Vd R's more experimental Burn-ing Lights competition went to Kamal Aljafari's A Fidai Film, a reclamation of the film and photo archives of the Pal-estine Research Centre, plundered by the Israeli army during the 1982 Leba-non war in an effort at cultural erasure, which the film countermands, replaying evidence of historical Palestinian lives and persecution dating back to the Brit-ish Mandate. In Anas Zawahri's My Memory Is Full of Ghosts, given a special mention by the Vd R international competition jury, the filmmaker returns to her broken home city of Homs in Syria. It mixes stark, plaintive long shots of bombed-out ruins with signs of tentatively resuming life and individuals' shell-shocked testimo-nies, not least her own. Reaching back further, Laurence Lévesque's elegantly measured Okurimono follows an expat Japanese woman, Noriko, back to her childhood home in Nagasaki, where a box of her late mother's letters, readings of which are arranged across the film, unfolds the secretly shared horror and shame of the city's hibakusha, or atomic What was striking was how many films bore testimony to scars and traumas, the indelible damage of wars deeper back in time, as if to warn our belligerent present Last spring, reporting on the documen-taries gathered at Copenhagen's ever-eclectic CPH:DOX, I remarked here on the darkening worldview, especially for young people and especially those seeing their futures mangled by Putin and his fellow autocrats, expressed in films such as Queendom, Motherland and Silent Sun of Russia. A year on and the world has become no more peaceable. The pulverisation of Gaza may be too raw or fraught for swift distillation, but it was an inevitable backdrop to the rolling acclaim for No Other Land, the portrait of Palestinian expulsions in the West Bank made by an Israeli-Palestinian collective, which, after winning Best Documentary at the Berlinale in February, continued to collect back-to-back audience awards at these two leading nonfiction festivals in March and April. However, what was striking this year at both the cosmopolitan CPH:DOX and Visions du Réel-an approachable and equally inquiring mid-scale gathering in the Swiss town of Nyon on the shore of Lake Geneva-was how many films bore testimony to scars and traumas, the LEFT Kamal Aljafari's A Fidai Film ABOVE RIGHT Juan Pablo Polanco Carranza and Cesar Alejandro Jaimes's Carropasajero CPH:DOX, Copenhagen Visions du Réel, Nyon With war dragging on in Europe and the Middle East, both these nonfiction festivals found themselves dealing with conflict and atrocity, from Nagasaki to Belfast, Srebrenica to Syria, and the ways that catastrophe casts its long shadow into the present BY NICK BRADSHAW 16OPENING SCENES | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Spotlighting artificial intelligence in film and TV BY THOMAS FLEW As Alex Garland's Civil W ar battles at the box office, its production company and distributor A24 is losing the PR war, having become embroiled in controversy over a series of posters reportedly created using generative AI. The artworks, which depict five US cities either in a state of destruction or being swarmed by armed forces, are photorealistic but lack geographical accuracy (such as Chicago's Marina City twin apartment towers being erroneously separated by the city's river). Further ire has been drawn from the fact that none of the images depict events or scenes shown in the film. An unnamed source has confirmed that the images are AI, but there has been no official response from A24. Netflix is facing allegations that it used AI-generated images in its true-crime documentary What Jennifer Did. The images, depicting the film's subject Jennifer Pan before she arranged to have her parents killed, are intended to show her fun and carefree side, but contain telltale signs of AI (producer Jeremy Grimaldi says the changes were down to Photoshop). Any use of AI or digital image manipulation is not disclosed in the film, raising ethical concerns about the creation of images within a documentary context. Also from Netflix comes the first ever AI reality series contestant. For Season 6 of The Circle-a reality show which sees contestants interacting via social media only-players were joined by 'Max', a chatbot-scripted player whose personal details were generated by an algorithm to have broad appeal; this included his age (26, which allowed it “to leverage life experience and maturity while still playing youthful”, per its own explanation) and profession (a veterinary intern). 'Max' only played for one episode, remaining undetected by the other players, who complimented him on being “so real”. AI SPY UNREAL CITY Detail from a poster for Alex Garland's Civil W arbomb survivors. Visits to other survivors and their families are interspersed with Noriko's task of packing, clearing and selling the now-vacant family home, which makes for a digni-fied and heartbreaking study of the irretriev-ability of the past. Sometimes the darkness filled the frame visually. From the Colombian/Venezuelan border, Juan Pablo Polanco Carranza and Cesar Alejandro Jaimes's Carropasajero con-jured a trancelike, incantatory odyssey from a bumpy, canopy-covered trip in a pickup truck through the La Guajira desert with several Wayúu people reversing their exile from their ancestral village, decades after a paramilitary massacre drove them out. Echoing time, con-fined and soaring spaces, weathered faces bur-nished in pools of light and the touch of skin on skin are the components of this communion with the past. Pedro Costa's influence could also be seen in the similarly slow rhythms and luminous photography of Inadelso Cossa's The Nights Still Smell of Gunpowder, a journey back to the filmmaker's grandmother's village and memories there of Mozambique's bloody post-independence civil war, which lasted from 1977 to 1992: the filmmakers linger, meditating on their project, in the silence of the nights. Like the Belfast-set The Flats (or Joshua Oppenhe-imer's The Act of Killing, 2012, with its use of re-enactments and reflexive elements being a touchstone for both films), Cossa's film is con-cerned less with litigating past conflict than with observing how past anguish continues to occlude the present. T wo other films recorded present-tense catastrophes as journeys through darkness, shooting their upheavals entirely at night. Nelson Makengo's Rising up at Night, which won Vd R's special jury award, records months of nights without light in Kinshasa, where interminable power cuts combine with unprecedented torrential rain to turn the city into an apocalyptic water-world. Local people's efforts at physical and democratic salvage play out by torchlight, in waist-high floodwaters, making a mockery of what the radio reports are drawn-out government negotiations for a giant hydropower station. In Night of Nights, at CPH:DOX, the early stages of China's Covid response are recorded as an extended social eclipse in a series of vignettes of human trial and anguish, and are as remarkable for their solidarity as for their access amid lockdown. The director, 'T ruman', finds patients, carers, doctors, sanitary workers, migrants, vagrants and eventually survivors young and old return-ing to their stations. There's little sign of help from the mighty Communist Party, but the focus here is as wide as you want it to be, from on-the-ground glimpses of individual battles to a panoramic portrait of humanity in one of its darkest moments. Finally, or conversely, at Visions du Réel two essay travelogues tried to peer out from our present worries into deeper time, widening both lens and timeframe to let in light. Vadim Jendreyko's The Song of Others: A Search for Europe worries at the resurgence of European nationalism and its menace to our wavering vows of enlightenment, wending from Hun-garian border fences to World War I bomb defusers deep in the fields of Flanders, a job for many generations to come. It finds signs and lessons in the rocks under Hitler's castle and by the Acropolis in Athens, where fisher-men's livelihoods have now been sold to Chi-nese investors; at Bosnia's national library in Sarajevo, where wanton cultural destruction and restoration take place on utterly differ-ent scales; and in Norway's Arctic sea waters, where another fisherman breathes freely as the film pulls back our blinkers. Sofie Benoot's more playful Apple Cider Vinegar, voiced by actor and former nature-doc narrator Siân Phillips, also looks, thinks and travels laterally, in this case from the alien incursion of the narrator's kidney stone to rock life in volcanic Cape Verde, California's San Andreas fault and the cliffs of Palestine, Y orkshire and Cornwall. T aking a lead from the many geologists she almost trips over, the narrator considers the fate of our planet- and the wildlife she still “keeps an eye on” by webcam-in geological time. Human impact looms like a meteor, she proposes-without ever mentioning the word Anthropocene-but the film practises a more whimsical and hope-ful outlook. It's attuned to coincidence and connection, porous to different outlooks and invites us to tread with greater wonder on the ground on which we stand. 17 OPENING SCENES | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
THE BALLOT OF... Each month we highlight a voter in our Greatest Films of All Time poll. Here the English screenwriter and director of Hoard, her first feature, which is out now, shares her choices Luna Carmoon I'm sure I will kick myself for many others, but I weirdly wrote and chose quite fast, and for that it's probably come from my deepest self, so here it is. BITTER RICE (GIUSEPPE DE SANTIS, 1949) This, for me, is simply a perfect film. It is simple in its storytelling. That's something which has been forgotten in the modern noise of moviemaking, of who can make the loudest, most innovative film of the year and all this bollocks. In its silent moments, with its characters who all float in these grey spaces, and with Silvana Mangano's performance, this film is timeless. I think how lucky I am to be alive and to have had the pleasure of watching this in my lifetime. WOMEN IN LOVE (KEN RUSSELL, 1969) How can you fucking NOT! It is, if not the best adaptation of all time, otherworldly and unearthly in its gorgeousness. W omen in Love is everything you could want a film to be; it's beastly and hysterical. If I had to choose between a last meal on earth or watching a movie, of course I would choose a movie, and this bloody one at that! OUT OF THE BLUE (DENNIS HOPPER, 1980) Collage moviemaking has lost its way; everything has to be defined, polished, perfected and intentional, nothing is allowed to breathe as funding is squandered, everything must be justified. We will never have another movie like Out of the Blue and for that I'm deeply melancholy. A world where these films had the space in which to breathe and be ugly and messy, like scrapbook cinema: I miss it so! RIP LINDA MANZ: a genius, a beauty, a rebel. ONE DEADLY SUMMER (JEAN BECKER, 1983) God, to see this film for the first time again as a teenager on a sweaty, hot summer day, to love every grey area and the condoning of revenge. Isabelle Adjani is entrancing; the movie encapsulates a livid, brutal summer that has been brewing in a stark, evil winter. I adore this film. I love the characters, the world, Thousands of women and men each year rewatch Practical Magic ; everyone who you talk to who loves it, they burst with passion for why they do all the bad and good that they rotate in, how generational trauma never heals and how sometimes to break the cycle you must be as violent as men. And, of course, it looks GORG!!! BREAKING THE WAVES (LARS VON TRIER, 1996) I think Lars is a genius, understated and misunderstood-he is messiah of the other world, he understands the numinous, both light and dark. His work... if ever five DVDs were to be chosen and sent into space to another world, one of his should be included. He understands the night time in us all, the darkness we harbour and, in that, the softness and the truth. Y ou can tell he's a warlock with words and can conjure the most unforgettable performances and scenes that will have ever been born on this planet. I could only dream of casting scenes like that wedding scene with [Stellan] Skarsgård and [Emily] Watson- what raw, ugly, honest, human beauty. AT CLOSE RANGE (JAMES FOLEY, 1985) This one is for teen me. Finding this film erupted something inside me, still remnants of the collage-making of film. It's brutal and beautiful. It's human and leaves you sore and sad. Again, one for the generational trauma guys and how breaking those cycles takes a violent form. There is not one scene or shot that's unintentional; it blisters like the end of summer sun. I get sweetly sad thinking about the first time I watched it and how it rocked my world. Mr [Sean] Penn and [Mary Stuart] Masterson's romance is what I cling to after. DEEP END (JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI, 1970) FUCKKKKK, Jerzyyyy is a genius. This film is absurdly sexy and wrong, and Diana Dors is a dirty minx, I love it. It encapsulates entirely how the 7)s and its filmmaking feels to me-no rules, it soars, it crashes with bloody skulls! I love Susan and Michael [Jane Asher and John Moulder-Brown], both grey in nature, and I condone none of it, but love it in all its messiness and sauciness. Ugh, just such a fucking fabulous film. It swims forever in my psyche. MADEMOISELLE (TONY RICHARDSON, 1966) This is a gem, an anomaly of Woodfall [Film Productions] and Richardson himself-him speaking barely any French but making this film entirely in that language is insane and breaks the formula of all the famous Woodfall [films], which I love and cherish. But in this film, like none of his or the others of that tree, is an alchemy of darkness and an undercurrent of something otherworldly. With hardly any dialogue, the story is told in silence and looks, as if the trees talk and nature gives us signs of the badness running inside Miss Moreau. I love wrong women with no reason -why should there always be one? We are the same as you and some of us are rotten. This film, to me, is full of black magic. THE OUTSIDERS (FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA, 1983) The skies, the bois, the blistering love for one another. Say no more. PRACTICAL MAGIC (GRIFFIN DUNNE, 1998) Thousands of women and men each year rewatch this movie; everyone who you talk to who loves it, they burst with passion for why they do. I've watched this film more than any other as a child and as an adult. I ruined the DVD cover from all its watches. It doesn't matter how many times I've seen it (could be three times a year, even), it feels fresh, like it is wiped from my brain each time I watch-how practical magic of it! “My blood, your blood. ”ABOVE Jane Asher and John Moulder Brown in Deep End (197)) BELOW Linda Manz in Out of the Blue (198))18OPENING SCENES | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
MEAN SHEETS The Rome-born painter Anselmo Ballester created lurid, pulpy posters that were bursting with the promise of sex or violence- even when the film wasn't On the W aterfront (1954) Salome (1953) The Man from Laramie (1955)BY THOMAS FLEW Anselmo Ballester (1897-1974) was a legend of Italian poster design who spent more than two thirds of his life working as a cartellonista (poster artist), creating more than 3,000 designs. Many of his most memorable pieces were local art for international features, including On the W aterfront (1954) and The Man from Laramie (1955), both designs which portend violence. As is expected of such a prolific artist, his style would change dramatically to suit the needs of each film; he was particularly admired for his glamorous posters for Rita Hayworth films (including for Salome, 1953). Yet his original poster for Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1946, pictured right) shows scant regard for the film's neorealist mode, focusing instead on its dramatic subject and using fiery reds and oranges to depict a heroic Aldo F abrizi facing up against the shadowy figure of a Nazi soldier. This quote from Ballester, featured in a 2016 exhibition of his artwork at the festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, indicates how seriously he took his craft: “The film poster artist must combine all the qualities of a painter, portrait artist, illustrator, decorator... and must possess a 'lavish palette' of colours and a fertile, preferably brilliant, imagination. With his work, he must succeed in capturing the interest of a special, cinema-going audience. ”19 OPENING SCENES | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
READERS' LETTERSGet in touch Email: sightandsound@bfi. org. uk T witter: @sightsoundmag By post: Sight and Sound, BFI, 21 Stephen Street, London, W1T 1LN David Thompson's complaint ('Orchestral manoeuvres in the dark', Sight and Sound, April) that Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) features a piece by Vivaldi at a date when his music was out of favour brings to mind Dickens's stout defence of an anachronism in his description of a stained-glass window at the end of Little Dorrit (1857). “As the window in St George's Church appropriately carried out the pervading spirit of the tale at its conclusion, Mr Dickens made refer-ence to it. He knew it was not as old as the date of the story, but did not consider that slight anachronism of any importance. ” Paul Colbeck, via email GABIN FEVERSAY IT AGAIN, SAM ROYAL SLASHDATE CRIME? STREAM PREJUDICEA TRIBUTE TO LOURDES PORTILLO CADDING ABOUT Malcolm Mc Dowell and Britt Ekland in Royal Flash (1975)Lourdes Portillo's The Devil Never Sleeps (1994) PICTURE PERFECT Celiné Sciamma's Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) I was pleased to see Sam Wigley recommending the 'Women in New Hollywood' season at The Garden Cinema in central London (Editor's Choice, S&S, May). Since becom-ing a member, I've been consistently impressed by its retrospective pro-gramme, which brings real depth and knowledge to each topic. I'm eagerly awaiting its 'New Central American Cinema' season this month, which brings rare screenings of Costa Rican, Nicaraguan and Panamanian films. Even more cheeringly, every screen-ing I go to seems to be sold out, or nearly-a far cry from my barren local cineplex. Hopefully, this points to a bright future for both bold repertory cinema and independent cinemas in general, and shows that people are still crying out for unique experiences. Alice Kitchen, W anstead, London The reprint of your 1973 interview with Richard Lester ('I don't find filmmaking fun', S&S, May) men-tions that his cherished Flashman project failed to get off the ground after a year's preparation. However, the recap of Lester's later career did not mention that he got George Mac-donald Fraser's novel to the screen in Royal Flash (1975). Sadly, it was ruined by the general release being heavily cut, reportedly to pair with a Burt Reynolds film. Sheer vandalism. Dave Hayward, Kenilworth Aside from Tim Collins's bizarre suggestion (Letters, S&S, May) that the music in Stanley Kubrick's films is overlooked ('The Blue Danube' in 2001? Beethoven's Ninth in A Clock-work Orange ?), I am in complete agree-ment that Barry Lyndon (1975) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) deserve the 4K treatment. The former, especially, is, in my eyes, one of the most beauti-fully composed films ever made. On a related note, it's been disap-pointing to see how few of the recent big releases have made it on to disc at all, let alone a 4K Blu-ray. Netflix is, of course, not in that business any more (a shame, I would have loved to add Bradley Cooper's Maestro to my collection), but must I really stay subscribed to Apple, Amazon, Disney, etc, in order to retain access to the best new films? It's infuriating (and infuriatingly expensive). Tim Harper, via email Delighted as I was to read Adam Scovell's appreciation of Jean Gabin's wonderful performance in Jacques Becker's T ouchez pas au grisbi (1954) (Endings, S&S, May), I was surprised to read the statement that after this film “Gabin would enter a fallow period in his career”, only becoming a great star again in the early 60s. On the contrary: it is generally agreed that Grisbi revitalised Gabin's career after years in the doldrums, to the extent that by the late 50s he was making four or five films a year, many of them major box-office suc-cesses. His range during this period was extraordinary, playing roles from lorry drivers to captains of industry, from Jean Valjean in Les Misérables (1958) to Simenon's Inspector Mai-gret in three films, and the depth, power and sensitivity of his perfor-mances are absolutely consistent. It's a pity that so few of his films from 1954 to 1959 are well-known outside France, with the exceptions of Grisbi and Renoir's French Cancan (1955), because for me at any rate, his work during this period fully equals that of his heyday in the 1930s. Howard Curtis, via email The film director Lourdes Portillo, who passed away on 20 April at home in San Francisco, had been a beloved friend of mine since the early 1990s. She took a chance on me right out of film school. I worked for her on The Devil Never Sleeps (1994) and then sev-eral other film and television projects. This started a lifetime friendship, even after I moved back to Mexico City and, then, San Miguel de Allende. As Maya Angelou wrote, “If you're going to live, leave a legacy. Make a mark on the world that can't be erased. ” Lourdes Portillo was an extraordinary human, contributing not one but myriad marks during her lifetime through filmmaking and social activism. She was an unconven-tional, artful talent-a chingona whose life will continue impacting others for many generations. Lourdes was born on 11 Novem-ber 1943 in Chihuahua, Mexico. When she was 13, she immigrated with her parents and four siblings to Los Angeles. The last three months were chal-lenging for her, but she was a warrior at her home in San Francisco and during our regular phone calls. Until the very end, she brought joy and laughter into this world. Soco Aguilar, via email It's been disappointing to see how few of the recent big releases have made it on to disc at all, let alone a 4K Blu-ray David Thompson's complaint brings to mind Dickens's stout defence of an anachronism in Little Dorrit20OPENING SCENES | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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Robot Dreams is a silent wonder, crammed with visual references celebrating classic films Pablo Berger's wistful, comic animation Robot Dreams is set in a very familiar place, a colourful version of 1980s Manhattan. Gridlock, graffiti and rollerskates-it's a milieu I recognise well from the movies of my childhood. And just like in those films, in which big city life was complicated by the occasional ghost, superhero or wide-eyed time traveller, there is a whimsical twist. The citizens of New Y ork are all anthropomorphised animals: elephants drive cabs and an octopus busks a drum solo on the subway platform. Our hero is a dog named Dog, and he has classic 80s hobbies: he plays Pong, he rents VHS cassettes from Kim's Video and, in a listless mood, he channel-surfs. Lonely and in desperate search of enter-tainment, Dog is nevertheless discerning. He skips straight past a sitcom with a clas-sic custard-pie-in-the-face gag, which gave me a little comic pause. Robot Dreams, you see, is a silent movie, or rather a dialogue-free film. Adapted from Sara Varon's word-less graphic novel of the same name, Robot Dreams is Berger's second foray into the techniques of silent cinema. In this scene, early in the film, Dog is hopping channels from the comfort of his sofa, positioned underneath a poster for Pierre Étaix's 1965 black-and-white homage to the silent era, Y oyo -too large to miss. So I thought I had an inkling where Berger was headed. But no. Berger's 2012 film Blancanieves was a ver-sion of the Snow White story that revelled in lush monochrome photography, the practice of early film techniques and the melodramatic mode. It was not a pastiche but an exercise in immersing both film-maker and viewer in the language of 1920s cinema. Robot Dreams swerves this brand of nostalgia entirely, reaching back into film history, but pointedly not as far back as the days of Chaplin and Keaton. When a housefront falls on Robot, we await a rerun of the precision stunt from Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928), but instead, his head bursts through the wall-it's only a flat, it's only a movie, it's only a dream. Just for the avoidance of doubt, when I talk about contemporary films such as Robot Dreams or, say, The Red T urtle (Michaël Dudok de Wit, 2016), All Is Lost Pamela Hutchinson @Pam Hutch dream of their reunion. Chaplin would rec-ognise this as a riff on his 'park, policeman and pretty girl' formula, in which the park is Coney Island, the policeman the un-cooperative municipal authorities and the pretty girl a beloved robot-lover or best friend, or maybe Dog hasn't decided yet? But Robot Dreams, animated in tooth-some pastels and primaries, is primarily a fantasy, not a physical comedy. Its most prominent, and avowedly T echnicolor, reference point is The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939), another tale of unlikely cross-species comradeship and other-worldly visions. But there are many, many more. I adored a Busby Berkeley-inspired sequence of a daisy chorus line, in which the multiplying flowers stamp and jump and circle Robot until they form them-selves into a portrait of his canine compan-ion's face, as seen from above, of course. There are nods to everything from Manhat-tan (Woody Allen, 1979)-do I even need to tell you that it is the bridge shot?-to the shower scene in Psycho (Alfred Hitch-cock, 1960), as Dog rinses off his trick-or-treating makeup on Halloween night. A snowman takes a trip in a bowling alley in a psychedelic scene straight out of The Big Lebowski (Coen brothers, 1998), and our pals spin around holding hands, captured in the circling reverse-POV shots from Saturday Night Fever (John Badham, 1977). These references are deliberate and joyous -and no talking is required. The film's musical motif is Earth, Wind & Fire's 'September', first heard on a port-able stereo as Dog and Robot rollerskate through Central Park on their first 'date', kicking off a montage sequence that takes in boating on the lake, chomping hotdogs from a cart, sightseeing and posing in a photo booth. I grinned, both at the movie and the memory of the power the montage sequence had over the movies I watched as a child. Just like all those more elevated cinematic citations in Robot Dreams, it's a reminder that all the best talkies, from any era, have these pockets of dialogue-free delights within-waking dreams that cel-ebrate the power of images that move. Pamela Hutchinson is a freelance critic and film historian There are nods to everything from Manhattan to the shower scene in Psycho. There's a psychedelic scene straight out of The Big Lebowski and a riff on shots from Saturday Night Fever(J. C. Chandor, 2011) or Blancanieves, as silent films, that is not a disavowal of their soundtracks, which are all very sophisti-cated. It's in the understanding that these films are exercises in visual narrative, tell-ing stories with every cinematic instru-ment except the spoken word, borrowed from literature. Dialogue-free cinema is what I mean, pictures without captions. And it's everywhere. Robot Dreams had already caught my attention with the fluency of its visual sto-rytelling when this throwaway moment seemed to slip a banana peel under the obvious allusions. The film is a platonic romance: Dog cures his loneliness by building a robotic friend from a mail-order kit. The new pals enjoy one fun-filled day out at the beach, but are separated when Robot catches a bad case of rust and is stranded on the sand. Dog cannot return to save his friend until the beach reopens in the summer, and all winter, the friends BELOW Dog and Robot in Pablo Berger's Robot Dreams 22 BYLINE ILLUSTRATIONS: PETER ARKLETALKIES The Long Take | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
This T own, like so many other band dramas, hits a bum note when it comes to the actual music Andrew Male @Andr6w Male There is a thrilling point, half way into the chaotic final episode of Steven Knight's This T own (BBC i Player), when it looks as if this overambitious drama about the formation of a post-punk ska band in 1980s Coventry is going to refuse to show us any actual performances from the band in question. Over the previous five episodes we've seen budding Birmingham poet and dreamer Dante Williams (the utterly charming Levi Brown) repeatedly threaten to form a band with his various friends and family members. But that central story and its concomitant banalities have been consistently sidelined by ludicrous sub-plots concerning Dante's cousin Bardon (Ben Rose) trying to free himself from the IRA activities of his bullying father Eamonn (Peter Mc Donald) and Dante's older brother Gregory (Jordan Bolger), a sergeant in the British Army working undercover for Special Branch. But in those secondary storylines, and through the series' penchant for narrative filibustering, This T own arrives at a curious truth: that band stories, when adapted for the screen, small or otherwise, are always far more interesting when they avoid the 'authentic' recreation of actual band activi-ties (songwriting, live performances, etc) and concern themselves with the related existential banalities of youth. If the budding band members in This T own had never made it to the stage, never played a single note, Knight's story would possibly contain more emotional veracity, acting as a representative tale for all the countless 80s teenagers (myself included) who wrote lyrics, endlessly revised band names, fruitlessly searched for a good drummer and never set foot on a real stage. Sadly, when This T own finally bites the bullet and gives Dante's band a name and allows them a debut gig at the Birming-ham club of unhinged gangland overlord Robbie Carmen (David Dawson), it louses everything up. Their name, Fuck the F actory, is embarrassingly dreadful while the one song they perform on stage, 'This T own', (written, in actuality, by post-punk producer Dan Carey and the poet Kae T empest) is a studio-produced con-fusion of ska and sprechgesang, which sounds more 2022 than 1982. This would all be fine if the band remained as a fantasy in Dante's head, or if the audience response was in keeping with how a 1980s Birming-ham crowd would truly respond to the first song by the first band of the night, but the song is met with rapturous applause and a stage invasion, which seems at odds with both the tenor of the times and the quality of the song. Plus, in its use of such tired rock platitudes, it denies Dante (and the series itself) the flawed complexity of its earlier episodes. It's inauthentic at the exact moment when authenticity matters. A similar problem wrecked another recent fictional tale of band life, Daisy Jones & The Six (2023, Prime Video). Adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber from the 2019 American novel of the same name by T aylor Jenkins Reid, this ten-part series concerned the rise and fall of a fic-tional 70 rock band loosely based on Fleet-wood Mac and centred around its lead singer and songwriter, the titular Jones. It's not a good show but a viewer might be willing to forgive Neustadter and Weber's reliance on rock-doc clichés (“And then one night, everything changed”, “We're gonna be the biggest fucking band in the world”) and the reduction of Jones to a series of patronising rock-chick banalities if the music were convincing. But it's not. Written by super-producer Blake Mills, with contributions by Marcus Mumford and Matt Sweeney, these songs never sound like anything more than what they are: bland 21st-century Nashville rock with sub-par lyrics. Whether celebrating 80s 2 tone or 70s soft rock, the whole conceit of these shows is undone when the quality of the songs (both sonically and lyrically) does not justify the audience response. If you don't believe in the band, you won't believe in the story. However, get that right and you can take an audience anywhere. Perhaps the best rock band TV drama of recent years was Danny Boyle's Sex Pis-tols miniseries Pistol (2022, Disney+). The show was famously branded by ex-Pistol John Lydon as a “middle class fantasy [that] bears little resemblance to the truth” and it's true that if you come to Pistol look-ing for absolute veracity you won't find it. Adapted from the autobiography of Pis-tols guitarist Steve Jones, Pistol is not about a quest for one single truth but a recogni-tion that punk was as much about perfor-mance and reinvention as it was about the authentic. Crucially, his main act of rein-vention is to reposition the women of punk -Jordan, Siouxsie, Chrissie Hynde, Helen Wellington-Lloyd (aka Helen of T roy), Vivienne Westwood-at the centre of the Pistols narrative, depicting them sympa-thetically and intelligently, but also empha-sising their uniqueness and, in many cases, their superiority. It is an act of reinterpretation that some might consider 'inauthentic' but it works. Stipulating no lip-syncing and insisting that the actors who played Lydon, Cook, Jones and Matlock developed their char-acters during band rehearsal time and played live on stage during all the filmed band performances, Boyle created a base-line of sonic authenticity against which he could reinvent the tired blokeish tru-isms of punk history. It's a rule that more rock dramas would do well to obey. Band stories are only ever believable when they sound true. Andrew Male is a freelance critic who lives in South London TV Eye Band stories on screen are always more interesting when they avoid the 'authentic' recreation of band activities -songwriting, live performance -and concern themselves with the existential banalities of youth 23ILLUSTRATION BY MARC DAVID SPENGLER | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Nicole Flattery @nicoleflattery Flick Lit We live in a time-perhaps because of social media, which allows, even encour-ages, a proliferation of selves; or because of sheer brazenness bred of desperation in our capitalist landscape-in which the fraudster occupies a central role. Patri-cia Highsmith's T om Ripley is back (on Netflix); The Tinder Swindler (2022) was on everyone's watchlist. The story of the fake German heiress Anna Delvey first dominated magazine newsstands and then became a television series (the over-stuffed and overlong Inventing Anna, 2022). If there has been a defining trend of this decade, it's the rise of, and enduring inter-est in, the role of the scammer. What's the appeal? Why do they have this hold on the collective imagination? We admire their stamina, enjoy their transgressions, puzzle over their motivations: they exist outside the boundaries of normal behaviour. I think that's partly why Abbas Kia-rostami's film Close-Up has only grown in reputation since it was released in 1990 (it appeared at No 17 in Sight and Sound 's 2022 Greatest Films of All Time poll, even in the wake of allegations of sexual and psy-chological abuse made against the direc-tor that year by fellow Iranian filmmaker Mania Akbari). The film tells of an every-man who commits a bizarre deception. Although the crime is largely innocent, it enacts an emotional toll. People, it turns out, don't like being lied to. The blending of fact and fiction and the instability of real-ity in the film now seem ahead of their time and hugely influential, not only on cinema but on literary genres such as autofiction. As Kiarostami has said, “We can never get close to the truth except through lying. ” Hossain Sabzian is a lover of cinema and, one day, as he's reading the screenplay of the film The Cyclist (1989) on the bus, a woman interrupts him. She tells him that her sons are a fan of this film made by the director Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Sabzian, in turn, tells her that he is in fact Makhmal-baf. From there follows a rolling, unstop-pable lie that Kiarostami eventually reads about in the newspaper and decides to recreate on film. Everyone in Close-Up -the guards, the journalist, the cinephile family Sabzein duped-are played by themselves. It lends everything an eerie layer, with the The blend of fact and fiction in Close-Up helped pave the way for modern autofiction tricks), who have the means and time to pursue it; on the other hand, that engage-ment with art is powerful, transformative, allows you to forget your circumstances. At the trial, when Sabzian speaks about the effect of cinema on his life, it's profound and moving. Why shouldn't this man play the role of director? In another, fairer life, he might have been one. Close-Up has an affecting ending: the real Makhmalbaf meets Sabzian (who is overcome with emotion) and they return to the home of the family he deceived. Kiarostami films the pair on a motorcycle, as the dialogue cuts in and out, suggesting the eternally elliptical nature of the truth. Close-Up, with its dissolution of reality and authorial tricks, reminds me of the work of writers such as Ben Lerner, Sheila Heti and Karl Ove Knausgård. In autofic-tion the author typically writes about his or her life, but not entirely truthfully, bending certain events, adding fictional flourishes, adopting, like Sabzian, a persona. But the book Close-Up most strongly brought to mind is one I think about often: the French writer Emmanuel Carrère's The Adversary (2000), which has often been imitated but never bettered. Carrère finds out about the crimes of Jean-Claude Romand, who murdered his wife and children in 1993, the same way Kiarostami found Sabzian: he opens the newspaper. What follows is Carrère pursuing Romand, on the surface a respectable doctor and family man, as he unravels his considerable web of lies. So far, so true crime. What gives The Adver-sary its real power are the parallels Carrère draws between himself and the murderer: both lie, exaggerate and hoodwink-but only Carrère gets paid for it. Both Kiarostami and Carrère seem fascinated by the idea of doubles, the lives you could have had if you were more or less fortunate. It could easily be you in the intimidating setting of a trial. Perhaps this is the enduring appeal of scammers: even if they fail, they still show us the multiplic-ity of our various selves, and how little the descriptors of our roles in life-worker, brother, son-ever align with how we feel. Nicole Flattery's novel 'Nothing Special' is published by Bloomsbury If there has been a defining trend of this decade, it's the rise of, and enduring interest in, the role of the scammer. We admire their stamina, enjoy their transgressions, puzzle over their motivations'actors' sometimes not wholly convincing in their 'roles', the result of the occasional faint smirk or leaden delivery. The film raises questions about art-making and who owns what story, and Sabzian is absolutely the star of the show, mesmerising and more than sympathetic. Throughout the trial Sabzian, with a quiet dignity, relates how being treated as a successful artist made him feel: “It was difficult enacting the role of director, but it gave me confidence and I gained the fam-ily's respect. ” The thrills are obvious: Sab-zian is fitfully out of work and separated from his wife. He and one of his two chil-dren live with his elderly mother. His world is small, enclosed. He's not the sort of man who gets to make art, which explains why he continues with the ruse, “That was why, when I woke up the next day, I still wanted to go back and play that role. It was very difficult but I still wanted to do it because of my love for the cinema and also because they respected me. So I went about the job very seriously. And I came to believe I really was a director. I was not acting any more. I was that new person. ” The film manages to hold two positions: that art is accessible only to the bourgeoi-sie (represented by the family Sabzian 24 TALKIES ILLUSTRATION BY BETH WALROND | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
While the gas crisis was not as detrimental to the country's morale as the protracted horror of the Vietnam War, or the disgrace of Watergate, energy instability added a new flavour of volatility to the mix Why the American road movie in 1974 had begun to run on empty Jessica Kiang @jessicakiang the magnificent '74 “Nobody loses all the time,” spits Benny (Warren Oates) in Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, before going on to prove incontrovertibly that some people do. By the time Peckinpah's mag- nificently fucked-up road movie premiered in August 1974, American motorists on the real-life road also knew how it felt to be on a losing streak. Since the previous October when Arab oil exports to the US had been embargoed, a chain reaction had occurred. Average gas prices rose 14 cents per gallon between 1973-74, to 53 cents-peaking in some places close to $1 at times. Queues and rationing at gas stations became com-monplace, while trucker strikes caused goods scarcities across the nation-not to mention that, in January, in a move designed to curb energy usage that must have seemed like yet another killjoy gambit by The Man, a national speed limit of just 55mph had been introduced. The symbi-otic, quasi-existential relationship between Americans and their cars was being tested as never before. But at the movies it was a different story -for a time. The road movie boom that started with Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Easy Rider (1969) was still going strong in 1973 with The Last Detail, Scarecrow and Badlands. And in 1974 it gave rise to two of the year's most auspicious first features. Steven Spielberg's The Sugarland Express (actually his second road movie after the excellent made-for-TV Duel in 1971) and Michael Cimino's Thunderbolt and Lightfoot are, as debuts, paradoxically the most pol-ished films in the genre of the year. But if they've aged well-aside from the homo-phobic tendencies of Thunderbolt, which are an attempt to either redress or reinforce the film's homoerotic undertones-both also feel faintly impersonal. The hallmarks of Spielberg's emotive, populist storytell-ing, and his preoccupation with broken families, are present in Sugarland, but in nascent form. And not till the final Mid-night Cowboy-esque moments of Cimino's gorgeous but derivative Thunderbolt does it hint at the more epic Greek-tragic canvas that would be the making of his career with The Deer Hunter (1978) and the break-ing of it with Heaven's Gate (1980). T aken as a pair, the films mark a transition between the truly subversive, troubling-to-the-main-stream road movie and the lighter, more domesticated late 70s/80s version. And yet 1974 started out with one of the bleakest iterations ever. The same week the truckers reached a settlement, there opened to little fanfare a tiny, grimy indie called-what else?-Road Movie. Directed by Joseph Strick, then best known for his well-received if quixotic adaptations of Ulysses (1967) and T ropic of Cancer (1970), Road Movie is a fascinating curio, as wilfully ugly in its portrayal of the joyless industrial landscapes of the mid-70s Midwest as it is nihilistic about the grasping relationships between its three leads. Starring Barry Bostwick and Robert Drivas as bud-dies who co-own an ill-fated refrigerated truck, it is most notable for a rivetingly unsavoury performance by Regina Baff as Janice, the prostitute/bad luck charm they pick up, abuse and cannot get rid of. One contemporary review by the legendarily caustic Judith Crist can best be described as 'livid', especially toward screenwriter Judith Rascoe, for a movie that “indicates at most that the vision of woman as whore and destroyer of men is not restricted to the male chauvinist pigs of filmdom”. Records are silent, sadly, on what Ms Crist thought of John Hough's Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, a scrappy pretext for some fine stunt driving, which gained hit status that even star Peter Fonda struggled to account for, and wherein the saving grace -Adam Roarke as introverted sidekick Deke-doesn't even get his name in the title. However, one hopes she'd have taken an equally dim view of threats hurled at Susan George's Mary, such as the logisti-cally baffling “I'll braid your tits!” But few 1974 films attracted as much feminist critique as Alfredo Garcia, largely due to its deeply strange rape scene, which, coming just three years after Straw Dogs, helped seal Peckinpah's then-reputation as an inveterate misogynist. (Also of note: the would-be-rapist biker is played by Kris Kristofferson, who was Ellen Burstyn's sensitive rancher lover in Martin Scorsese's quasi-road movie Alice Doesn't Live Here Any-more, released in December 1974. ) But if you read Oates's Benny as Peckinpah-and it's hard not to, given Oates is wearing the director's sunglasses throughout-Alfredo Garcia becomes a far more complex propo-sition, radioactive with self-loathing, but underpinned by the thwarted romanticism of a no-hoper guy in a clip-on tie who gains a head but loses his mind and never knows quite what to do with the overwhelm-ing tenderness he feels for the woman (a superbly self-possessed Isela Vega) he has loved and lost. Peckinpah was shooting in a state of post-divorce alcoholic devasta-tion, but the resulting film is clear-headed in crucial ways, locating the masochism in machismo, and filled with scorn for the seedily glamorised life-on-the-road nar-rative that even Peckinpah himself had indulged in (with The Getaway in 1972) but that 1974, bookended by Road Movie and Alfredo Garcia, saw thoroughly debunked. That cannot be attributed solely to the gas crisis, of course. But while not as det-rimental to the country's morale as the pro-tracted horror of the Vietnam War, or the disgrace of Watergate, energy instability added a new flavour of volatility to the mix. Because to hit America in the gas tank is to hit it in the solar plexus, and the same goes for the movies: almost as much as the west-ern, the road movie fed into a mythos of restless libertarian self-sufficiency so inte-gral to the national identity that it would have seemed that you couldn't put a price on it. But it turns out you could, and it was 14 cents on the gallon. Jessica Kiang is a Berlin-based freelance film critic BELOW Warren Oates as Benny in Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) 25 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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In this issue, Dr June Givanni talks to the actress Adjoa Andoh, Dr Joanna Abeyie assesses the climate for diversity and inclusion in the industry, and critics Leila Latif and Ellen E. Jones ask whether film and TV really can save the world THE BFB EDITORS: DR JUNE GIVANNI, JAN ASANTE, MELANIE HOYES. @BLKFILMBULLETIN T umultuous times, at times, necessi-tate a contemplative strategic pause: a moment to recalibrate, to rebal-ance the righting of wrongs or even to appreciate the manifestation of the extraordinary. In this spirit, we dedicate this first Black Film Bulletin of 2024 to extraordinary moments, mat-ters and mavericks. In a stunning achievement, our founding editor June Givanni began the year making history at the British Academy of Film and T elevision Arts awards, becoming one among too few women, and the first woman born of the African Caribbean diaspora, to receive the Bafta for Outstanding Brit-ish Contribution to Cinema. She was honoured on stage by Adjoa Andoh, the star of Net flix hits Bridgerton (2020-) and Queen Charlotte: A Bridger-ton Story (2023). Overleaf, Givanni and Andoh discuss history and drama, exploring the way films and television series can help to inform and impact people's understanding of the past. Meanwhile, having forged her own path cultivating talent, formerly as head of creative diversity at the BBC and now back at the helm of her company Blue Moon, Joanna Abeyie takes the temperature on a precarious climate for equity, diversity and inclu-sion and offers expert reflections on the road ahead. It continues to be a lamentable fact that despite making up 50 per cent of the population, women remain alarm-ingly underrepresented in the execu-tive echelons of the global film and TV industries. In 'Critics on Critics', the first in our series of sharp takes between intuitive minds, writers Leila Latif and Ellen E. Jones lean in on life and the noble aspirations behind Jones's book debut Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the W orld. BFB BULLETINBLACK FILMBELOW Adjoa Andoh (left) and June Givanni at the Baftas IMAGE: DIONNE WALKER27 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
ADJOA ANDOH: SWINGING THE LENSJune Givanni: Y our character Lady Danbury is central to both Bridgerton [2020-] and the Queen Charlotte [2023] historical drama series. How culturally significant was it to have these come out of the Shondaland development stable? Adjoa Andoh: I don't think there would have been that interest in 'swinging the lens' on the narrative in this way without someone like Shonda Rhimes [the creator of Grey's Anatomy, 2005-; and Scandal, 2012-18]. She's got a dramatic instinct that's curious to look at narratives in a fresh way. JG: Can you explain 'swinging the lens'? AA: In film terms, when you swing a lens, you change the camera lens because you want to have a slightly different perspective on whatever it is you're shooting. My production company is called Swinging the Lens because I want to literally imagine you're looking at something through a camera lens and then you swing it to somewhere else. I'm interested in [figuratively] swinging the lens on stories and the way we light them, dress them, locate and imagine them. So either we tell other people's stories, or we look at the same story through a different lens. It's what Shonda did when she read the Bridgerton novels, because there's no mention of race in any of them. She swung the lens of her eye on those books and went, “This is interesting. What if we told this Regency story, and we added in the head of the ton [high society in the era] who is the Queen; and added the fact that many historians believe Queen Charlotte had African heritage? What does that do to the story when we broaden the roll-call of characters and viewers?” While it's been an overwhelming success, some people are still pushing back hard against that. JG: In what way? AA: Well, it's very hard for people, if they think the world is shaped in a certain way, to cope with coming to understand there may be more nuance and complexity in that shape. Stories tell us who we are in time and space. They tell us the value society accords us, and they tell us how we are expected to flow through the world. People of all races have always been in this country. The 'great' in Great Britain has a lot to do with this nation's overseas adventurism and the benefits Britain acquired from the rest of the world, not least in terms of free labour, culture and raw materials. All of those things contributed to making Britain great and in the Regency era, Britain was in its pomp. Go to I was honoured to be presented with my recent Bafta Award by an actress whose work, ambition and passion in film, television and theatre I admire greatly and who I had the pleasure to interview recently BY JUNE GIVANNI RIGHT Adjoa Andoh as Lady Danbury in Bridgerton (2020-)28BLACK FILM BULLETIN | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
'There were a lot of Black artists coming through theatre, TV and film at that time who never received the recognition they deserved. That's why, in our era, Spike Lee just blew everyone's minds' ABOVE Leonie Forbes and Adjoa Andoh in Frances Anne-Solomon's What My Mother T old Me (1995) America or the West Indies and look historically at all those places: Virginia, Georgetown or Charlottesville. JG: I was born in Georgetown, Guyana. AA: Exactly! The George and the Charlotte they're talking about are our George and Charlotte. Look at the delicious irony of that. Charlotte came to Great Britain and brought the Christmas tree; not Albert. She brought that European tradition from her home in Germany. At the same time, here was a woman who was complained about for having “ugly thick lips”, “an ugly wide nose” and “a mulatto complexion”- features that were powdered down for portraits. Having all these places in the world that were oppressive to people of African heritage named after her speaks to life's complexity. When you start destabilising the history like that, it's hard for people. Some people may say, “This is woke history gone mad. ” I'd say, “History is great! It's the story of us all-so lets learn all of it. ” But our show is an entertainment, it's not a documentary. The Featheringtons are not wearing Regency colours-there is no psychedelic orange in a Regency colour palette, but theirs is a Regency cut. So drama has scope to play with form and say things in different ways. I would say the great cultural shift for me has been that people of colour for the first time see themselves in a historical romantic drama, where they are engaged in the central narratives of the story, and this audience can be entertained by it. That's not to say there aren't other stories to tell from this period about people of colour, but we are many stories and the breadth is important. JG: Indeed. Y ou mentioned your company earlier-please tell me about its role and ambition? AA: I set it up with my friend Juanne Fuller, who's also my publicist. I named the company Swinging the Lens because I wanted to be playful. As I mentioned, swinging a lens changes perspective. But it also sounds like 'swinging the lead'-a colloquialism meaning bunking off! As an actor I am conscious of how I have bunked off from a regular work life and how lucky I am to have a working life based around play. I also wanted the company's purpose to lead in its name -to tell the stories that are on the roads less trodden, narratively, the outlier or less viewed stories. The feature film we have in development at the moment, The Painter's Friend, based on the novel by Howard Cunnell, is about class, art, grief and dispossession. That covers a lot of people. It covers poverty, care-leavers, refugees, mental health, a lot of lives not generally in the centre of narratives; and it's funny and tender because all our stories contain complexity and richness. JG: As you've been speaking, I've felt something resonate back to Jesse, the rebellious character you played in Frances-Anne Solomon's What my Mother T old Me [1995], who came with a different perspective to her role and place in a powerful family. AA: Well, Frances-Anne was born to be a powerhouse. She was a beacon as a woman of colour director, producer, writer, coming out of BBC radio and TV drama where she was hugely impactful. What was interesting creatively in this film was that I played both the mother and the daughter. For us, the daughter was a collaborated version of Frances-Anne and me. It was her story imagined in a different way. And yet the elements of a young person trying to find their voice, or a mother trapped in a barren destructive marriage-these are universal stories. JG: It was great to see Adjoa the young actor in her early twenties in that film. What about working with another of my favourite people, the great Jamaican actress Leonie Forbes? AA: Miss Leonie was the gift of that job for me. I played the young mother in the past and she played that same mother in the present. I remember we had a scene on a boat and Miss Leonie was frightened of being on the water, so I sang 'Moon River' to her to distract her. When I hear that lovely song, I always think of Miss Leonie and this film. I loved how skilful she was, how wise, how absolutely electric she is on camera. I felt very honoured to work with her. But I also felt frustrated because Miss Leonie should have been an international superstar, with such skills and insights on theatre and on screen, and a hugely significant actor in broadcasting and radio-everything! There were a lot of Black artists coming through theatre, TV and film at that time who never received the recognition they deserved. But you have to be in the space on a regular basis and that demands the writing of a variety of stories that have a narrative that's interesting and meaningful. That's why, in our era, Spike Lee just blew everyone's minds with his work I love the fact that there are certain [trademark] Spike Lee shots, eg, the one where he put someone on the other end of the dolly and then he travels the dolly. I love his cinematography. I love the way he would light Black skin. That you have a range of colours. The humour. I loved Bill Lee's scores. There's a musical language to his stuff. Then when Wynton Marsalis came on; Stevie Wonder came on... Malcolm X [1992] is one of my all-time favourite films. Denzel should have got his Best Actor Oscar for that, not for playing a violent criminal Black man [in T raining Day, 2001]. Malcolm X is a work of absolute beauty and genius. Everything about that film is lovely. It was so epic and so playful! I do feel that Spike Lee has not been given all the flowers over the years, over the decades. If he was angry then, I can't imagine what he's feeling now. Did his bravura get punished? 29 BLACK FILM BULLETIN | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
African American actor, producer and showrunner Issa Rae's thoughts on the ever-changing television and film land-scape in a recent interview with Porter magazine provoked my own personal reflections on representation, account-ability and fairness in the UK TV and film industry. Rae referenced a number of Black equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) professionals in Hollywood who had moved on from their roles, coinci-dentally as V ariety announced news of my own departure from the role of head of creative diversity at the BBC. I loved my role at the BBC. It felt like I could-and indeed was-making head-way. I left with confidence that several key stakeholders and commissioners were committed to making programmes with, and for, diverse talent and audiences. So why did I leave? Unfortunately, loving a role and being committed to its purpose isn't always enough. A psychologically safe working environment is crucial in any role, and especially important when levelling the playing field for underserved talent and audiences, which requires huge amounts of empathy and compas-sion. It's not a role for the faint-hearted, and without that safety, it's incredibly troubling work. The list of reasons why these roles are challenging is pretty long, but signifi-cantly they can become untenable when autonomy, influence and decision-making is minimal to absent, when there is no sign of improvement and when the role is only created because, optically, 'it's the SPEAK-EASYON REPRESENTATION AND EQUITY IN THE UK TV AND FILM INDUSTRY SINCE 2020 Has 2024 seen the industry backtrack woefully on diversity? Dr Joanna Abeyie, MBE, former head of creative diversity at the BBC, offers sobering reflections on the current terrain BY JOANNA ABEYIE right thing to do'. These roles become even harder when not afforded sufficient resources to be effective and strategic. Essentially, if the role doesn't provide the EDI executive with the true ability to change anything, they are alone in their pursuit of making sustainable changes, which is almost certainly a shortcut to burn-out. The silence and lack of changed behaviour following the publicity about this pattern of resignations in the UK and US suggests complicity in allowing such crucial roles to become untenable for individuals, and calls into question the intention behind their creation. Without true commitment from leaders right at the top of the organisation and the effort to help EDI leads succeed, these roles are performative and set up to fail. ABOVE Dreaming Whilst Black (2023) OPPOSITE TOP Mangrove (2020), part of Steve Mc Queen's Small Axe anthology series OPPOSITE White Nanny, Black Child (2023) 30BLACK FILM BULLETIN | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Significantly, the Porter article points out the dwindling investment in earlier commitments to increase authentic Black stories on screen and the development of Black talent off screen. Rae states, “Y ou're seeing so many of these Black shows get cancelled, you're seeing so many execu-tives-especially on the EDI side-get canned. Y ou're seeing very clearly now that our stories are less of a priority. ” In May 2020, the murder of George Floyd accelerated, in knee-jerk fash-ion, the response to racial equity, with many organisations promising that their embrace of anti-racism was part of a movement and not merely a moment. Yet what impact have these promises had? Have we seen an increase in Black TV and film talent on and off screen that feels sufficient considering the grandiose commitments made four years ago? We have witnessed hit series like Sir Steve Mc Queen's Small Axe (2020), Adjani Salmon's Dreaming Whilst Black (2023-) and Candice Carty Williams's Champion (2023), and films like Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023), The Little Mermaid (2023) and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-V erse (2023) engage audiences from all backgrounds and showcase Black and global majority talent-but is that enough? At the Royal T elevision Society's 2023 event 'The Legacy of the Black Square', I was quite rightly taken to task-along-side colleagues from Channel 4 and Amazon-over the inequities Black and global majority talent on and off screen are facing, despite the promises made by industry giants that this would change. A report by management consultancy Mc Kinsey, Black Representation in Film and TV: The Challenges and Impact of Increasing Diversity, published only ten months after Floyd's murder, said of the US: “While a certain amount of progress has been made with on-screen talent in recent years, and although several entertainment companies are starting to make strides toward diversity and inclusion, our new analysis shows that inequity persists and is deeply entrenched across the film and TV ecosystem. ” The report underscores the complexity and scale of this challenge in the US, which mirrors in many ways the barriers to racial equity in the UK. With regard to what it calls a “system-level challenge”, it notes: “Tight-knit, interde-pendent networks dominate the land-scape; unlike in many other industries, a single company's efforts to change the racial dynamic inside its own four walls can do only so much for the entire ecosys-tem... real and lasting change in film and TV will require concerted action and the joint commitment of stakeholders across the industry ecosystem. ” Thinking back to 2020, in the after-math of the UK film and TV industry's pledges to increase racial equity, those commitments still struggled to make an impact on the number of Black and global majority talents being hired on or off screen. In fact, in 2021, Deadline 's article on the Creative Diversity Network Dia-mond-the online system used by UK channels to obtain consistent diversity data on programmes they commission -delivered damning data showing evi-dence that “diversity went into reverse in the British television industry last year”. It's true that the industry is operating in unstable times. Bectu, the union for crea-tive ambition, has outlined various recent factors it believes will result in deepening inequalities, including funding challenges at the BBC, redundancies at Channel 4, ITV's recruitment freeze, a significant decrease in advertising spending, stalled streamer subscriptions and the increased cost of film production. Its new report UK Film and TV Industry: A Sector in Crisis, states: “The current crisis is amplifying existing inequalities across the industry. Many respondents recounted concerns that there was a doubling down of nepo-tistic practices, with the little work that is available going directly to a small 'inner circle' of friends. We found that BAME respondents were less likely to have worked at all over the past three months than their white counterparts. ” The crisis facing our workers is a real one. Anecdotal evidence and qualitative research suggest quite a gloomy future for TV and film, but I am reassured that the winners at this year's Royal T elevision Society Awards included White Nanny, Black Child (2023), T op Boy (2011-2023), Fight the Power: How Hip Hop Changed the W orld (2023) and Black Ops (2023). While these wins do not alter the reality of the inequities facing Black and global major-ity talent, they do demonstrate that such stories and talent are valued by audiences in the UK and abroad, and can pro-duce award-winning programming that impacts audiences across generations. I am now working on an independent review for the Sir Lenny Henry Centre for Media Diversity into the BBC's £112 million commitment to diverse programming, which was launched fol-lowing Floyd's murder to provide the broadcaster with recommendations for it to continue its commitment to diverse programme-makers on and off screen. I would implore the industry to do the same: to encourage film, TV, media and entertainment organisations to review their own commitments independently, transparently and in consultation with Black and global majority talent. While we are facing tough financial times, our industry is resilient, and with sincerity, accountability and commit-ment we can maximise the resources we do have. With a renewed commitment to anti-racism, and with equity and a structure for accountability, we can once again start to rebuild efforts to level the playing field. Dr Joanna Abeyie, MBE, is the founding direc-tor of inclusive executive search and consultancy firm Blue Moon & Partners, co-secretariat of the creative diversity all-party parliamentary group and author of the forthcoming book 'Inclusion Needs Y ou'The murder of George Floyd accelerated the response to racial equity, with many organisations promising that their embrace of anti-racism was part of a movement not a moment. Y et what impact have these promises had? 31 BLACK FILM BULLETIN | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
JONES PORTRAIT: MARTINA LANGLeila Latif: How has the reaction to the book been so far? Ellen E. Jones: I anticipated it being more confrontational, but people seem to be on their best behaviour. I occasionally do interviews where it's obvious that the person understands the topic and we can develop the ideas in interesting ways, but sometimes it's clear they don't really know what I'm talking about. LL: I was surprised recently by the number of people who had never heard of 'magical negroes'. EEJ: That, or 'misogynoir'-I have to explain quite a lot. Many haven't encountered the idea that 'diversity' at a surface level might not be the end of the conversation; that all we need to do is give a few more opportunities to actors of colour and we're all good. Part of the reason I wrote the book is because a lot of people haven't encountered the idea that race is a social construct. People want to contain racism in the manageable form-the stereotypical racist in the antebellum South, or a National Front thug-and not contend with how it's embedded in systems we're benefiting from or complicit in. They can call themselves anti-racist very proudly, but that doesn't go any further than not saying the N-word. LL: Should language evolve? When, say, Michaela Coel spoke at the Edinburgh TV Festival in 2018, she purposefully didn't use buzz words because she thought people get numbed by them. Instead of 'racist ' she'd say 'thoughtlessness'. Or 'under-represented people' became 'misfits'. EEJ: I understand that, but we need the specific language. Y ou have to be able to describe the problem before you can solve it. Language that is both descriptive and communicates a base level of respect for other people is important. I do like to fight for it. I'm a journalist and language is important. LL: But it does seem through the dominance of African American cinema globally and American terminology, you risk buying into the framework of their specific oppressors. EEJ: I hear a lot of white people accusing anti-racist activists in the UK of thoughtlessly appropriating the context of racism in the US to our struggle here. What they really mean is that racism doesn't exist in the UK because it's not of the kind we see in American movies. There's obviously a distinction, but the history is significantly linked via colonialism. It may be different, but it still exists. LL: Britain does seem to have a less sophisticated understanding of it. Just after Cynthia Erivo was announced as vice-president of Rada earlier this year and an old clip emerged of her talking about feeling a bit freaked out when she was touring Sister Act in Sunderland, people in the UK criticised her for being elitist. It seemed nobody twigged the discomfort outside of diverse spaces that happens to queer Black women... EEJ: Yet it was immediately obvious to me. I've had the experience of growing up in London, which is very diverse and where my presence is more welcome. So going to places in my early twenties where they've never seen Black people before and stare at you is uncomfortable. I think so many of the people who accused her of being anti-regional just had no concept of that. Maybe the more cynical contingent were like: “Let me leap on this to further my agenda and shut down a Black woman talking about their experience. ” LL: So it's great that in 2024 Erivo is Rada's vice-president, and there are more Black films and TV... but this idea of, “We did it!” is frustrating. EEJ: Yes. “What more do you want?” I certainly see that in our industry, and I want people to get past thinking of diversity as something they do for other people as a charitable act, rather than seeing it as something they stand to benefit from. At a basic level, a more diverse film and TV industry means better films and television. It means more original films and television; it means a wider pool of talent. It means more thorough self-reflection in the art and more rigorous filmmaking. It allows them to exercise the empathy muscle just as those of us CRITICS ON CRITICSLEILA LATIF ELLEN E. JONESSeldom in the male-dominated sphere of cinema do the voices of women speak loudest, not least when those voices belong to women of colour. So to inaugurate our new BFB series in which critics excavate the minds of fellow critics, film journalist Leila Latif meets Ellen E. Jones, the author of Screen Deep: How Film and TV Can Solve Racism and Save the W orld32BLACK FILM BULLETIN | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
who've been historically marginalised do when we go to the cinema. That's the great power of film and television. When we start thinking about it as something that enriches everybody's experience and see there are also lots of commercial incentives to connect with different audience groups, you'll get rid of that attitude of 'one person in and we're done'. LL: Donald Glover has said Tina Fey told him he was hired on 30 Rock [2006-13] as part of that sort of box-ticking exercise. EEJ: That period in liberal American comedy was very complacent about race because Obama was in the White House and blackface was on 30 Rock numerous times. It's a great show but one of the things I wanted to do with the book is challenge people out of that complacency-reminding them there was blackface on television and other kinds of racism very recently and some of it continues to this day. Unless we look it in the boot-polished eye, we can't move on. LL: I agree, but I understand people's reluctance to sully memories of art they love. Even myself, with an icon like Sidney Poitier, I want to acknowledge respectability politics, but sometimes it feels like that's diminishing his legacy. EEJ: It's not Poitier's fault, it's the system's fault. People are put in positions where in order to get ahead and do something culturally important, they have to work within the system which is demeaning or oppressing other people. I want people to have more nuanced conversations because it's not just that blackface is in bad taste, but also that dehumanising and demeaning mass entertainment has a direct effect on Black people's rights. It leads to knee-jerk criminalisation of Black people; it affects the educational standards in communities of colour. This isn't just a matter of good taste, good comedy or opportunities for filmmakers of colour. It's about how we absorb and perpetuate these attitudes in real people's lives. LL: I thought American Fiction [2023] was so great at depicting how narrow the perception of Blackness still is, and how awards shows love art about people of colour suffering. EEJ: The only way in which Black people were depicted at all in a sort of awards-level film would be as slaves or servants... Hattie Mc Daniel or Chief Dan George or Anna May Wong, who respectively were essentially standing alone as movie stars of colour at a time when the roles available were so narrow. Yet what's magnificent about them in films like Gone with the Wind [1939] or Little Big Man [1970] is that you see the constraints put upon them by the writing and the genre conventions, but simultaneously you see their charisma and talent. They bring a sort of defiant humanity to it. LL: Director Barry Jenkins asked his Black friends and family about making The Underground Railroad [2021] and they all said, “Please don't!” I think Black audiences can differ from white audiences in what they want to see and reward. EEJ: It's the same for most journalists of colour. There's a reluctance to write about race at all in case you're stuck writing about it for the rest of your life-and you want to do other things too. But at the same time it's important and you care about it. I found writing this book fascinating, but behind every book or film about race or TV show about a person of colour, there's a lot of additional labour. Filmmakers and writers have to mediate how the film's going to play with white audiences, Black audiences, mixed audiences, liberals and conservatives. It's as T oni Morrison said: “The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. ” LL: A professor of African American studies recently shared his frustration about the assumption that Black writing and filmmaking is always autobiographical. EEJ: Y ou see that in music criticism as well. Grime was criminalised because if a young Black man tells a story about some criminal activity, [it's assumed] he must be talking from his own personal experience. Whereas if Johnny Cash tells a story about murdering a woman, he's obviously being creative. But I 'I understand people's reluctance to sully memories of art they love. Even myself, with an icon like Sidney Poitier, I want to acknowledge respectability politics, but sometimes it feels like that's diminishing his legacy' LEILA LATIF ABOVE Thuso Mbedu and Barry Jenkins shooting The Underground Railroad (2021)33 BLACK FILM BULLETIN | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
guess an anxiety in myself that I've had to overcome in writing the book and talking about the book is asking whether I, as a light-skinned, mixed-race person, had the experiences to talk about racism? There's cultural cachet which comes with being the oppressed group sometimes and people want to kind of muscle in on that, so that's a legitimate concern. But we really have to resist this conflation of being anti-racist with Blackness. It's everybody's problem to solve, particularly the white people benefiting from it. LL: There's always concern about taking a more worthy person's seat at the table. I've had a lot of privilege, but in journalism, imposter syndrome sets in when I'm positioned as the voice of the marginalised. EEJ: The important thing is to be aware of it. Director Ngozi Onwurah says something I really relate to in that she used to feel like the acceptable face of Blackness for the BBC. In contrast to if a big Black bloke with dreads was trying to pitch documentaries; she was a light-skinned, mixed-race woman and that gave her access. But it also allows the institution to say that they're doing something without too much change or discomfort. I grew up on a council estate, but I had various privileges. I go on about going to Cambridge University, not because I'm showing off but because I want people to know what I've had access to that got me to this position. Cambridge teaches you how to participate in this system. Y ou're learning a new language, and there's a confidence you acquire from seeing behind the curtain. LL: It's funny that you became adept at making these institutions feel comfortable with you, and then wrote a book that asks them to have uncomfortable conversations. EEJ: The deeper you get in the system, the more you realise quite how unjust it is. Working in national newspapers and seeing how many people there were the son of someone important, or how a lot of the hot young 'outsider' directors have parents in the film industry-we have to talk about class in conjunction with race to develop an understanding of oppressions other than the ones that directly affect us. LL: Even now, having succeeded in this industry-are there misconceptions about you? EEJ: I had a lovely childhood and an advantage in growing up in a multicultural place with people from all around the world and different class backgrounds. Part of the book addresses the misconception that if you grew up in a little village and went to a private school, you should feel sorry for someone like me. No. It's the other way around. I feel sorry for you. It's funny, we don't talk enough about that as film critics: how you bring in personal life experiences every time you view a film. There was a recent film where there was a gender divide in the reviews, and that dynamic seemed to me quite obvious. If you understand and appreciate it, it makes the film more interesting. But if I said that to any male critic, I think they'd be hugely offended. The problem is, for many of us, our whole identities are politicised. So every time I speak for women or for people of colour or for working-class people, that's seen as political, while a white middle-class man's personal experiences are seen as neutral. LL: When I hated Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri [2017], I felt the assumption was that it was because of my race, rather than that it fell apart in the third act. EEJ: Y our opinion gets de-legitimised because the opinion of a Black woman must be biased, even though there is no such thing as an unbiased opinion. The only thing we can do is to acknowledge our biases, be upfront about them, and then the reader or the audience can take it in that context and filter it through their own systems of truth. The next Black Film Bulletin will appear in our December issue. For additional BFB features, visit bfi. org. uk/articles/category/black-film-bulletin 'I want people to have more nuanced conversations- it's not just that blackface is in bad taste, but also that dehumanising and demeaning entertainment has a direct effect on Black people's rights' ELLEN E. JONES BELOW Vivien Leigh and Hattie Mc Daniel in Gone with the Wind (1939)34BLACK FILM BULLETIN IMAGE: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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As his blackly comic thriller Hit Man hits UK screens, Richard Linklater discusses the myth of the everyday assassin for hire and looks back over the highlights of his electrifying career, from his Sundance breakthrough Slacker and his early battles for independence from studio control in the 1990s WORDS BY HANNAH MCGILL. PHOTOGRAPHY BY HUGUES LAWSON-BODYRICHARD LINKLATER: In the grounds of the Louvre, Richard Linklater is being sanguine in the face of some intensely Parisian café service -the kind where they look at you as if you are complètement fou for thinking they might seat you at a table and serve you food. Delay is accepted with good cheer, rudeness with amusement. Equability and resilience have been elements of the Linklater brand ever since he began calling in friends and favours to make no-budget shorts in his hometown of Austin, T exas, in the early 80s. In 1985, he set up the Austin Film Society, partly as a means of extending his own film education; and then in 1990, with his second feature Slacker, he emerged as a hotly tipped Sundance star in his own right. Linklater has also had time to accustom himself to Parisian attitude, having been resident in the city for several months while he works on Nouvelle V ague, his French-language period piece about the making of À bout de souffle (1960) and the youthful personnel of the French New Wave. I remark that the French will either love him or hate him for this incursion into sacred territory. He acknowledges the daunting nature of the undertaking, but says he feels that he and his team have by now been “anointed” to make the film. F anny Ardant has dropped by the set; so has Catherine Deneuve, who lives nearby. The French New Wave was key to the development of Linklater's own cinephilia-“It's important to everybody,” he says with force -and just seeing his lookalike actors embody the young Godard, Seberg, Rohmer, Demy, Varda and T ruffaut is an evident thrill. “This film is a séance !” he says. “Not one of them is alive any more-but we brought them all back. ” Associated though he is with sometimes confronting levels of naturalism (the impact of seeing familiar characters age for real on screen is strangely intense, and you should watch the raw domestic arguments in Before Midnight with a long-term significant other only if you dare face what it might scratch up), Linklater also has an eye for a skilled impersonation. His previous showbiz period piece Me and Orson W elles (2008) centred on a justly celebrated channelling of Welles by Christian Mc Kay. Before Nouvelle V ague, however, comes Hit Man, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival last autumn and will now screen on Netflix, after its cinema release. Loosely based on a true story, Hit Man tells of affable community college philosophy lecturer Gary Johnson, played by Glen Powell, whose casual work advising the local police escalates into a hazardous undercover gig as a fake hitman. Gary elicits enough incriminating information from the would-be contractor; his police colleagues swoop in; Gary-ideally- melts away into the crowd. Gary takes to the performance element of the job like a natural, soon incorporating elaborate disguises and accents. But when he's approached by the ravishing Madison (Adria Arjona), the real Gary can't help wanting to help her for real-and not by killing her possessive husband as per her initial request. The solidity or otherwise of what we call the self is a theme that runs through many of Linklater's films, from the looping philosophical conversations of Slacker, through the coming-of-age lessons learned in the youth ensembles Dazed and Confused (1993) and Everybody W ants Some!! (2016), to the blown minds and scrambled identities of his rotoscope-animated projects W aking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006), 'We should all have sympathy for each other, no matter how badly someone acts. We love to condemn people-but what would you be if you'd been dealt the same hand? Some people are just more lucky than others' OPPOSITE Richard Linklater in Paris'I WANT TO TAKE YOU ON A CRAZY RIDE'37 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Hannah Mc Gill: What was the origin of Hit Man ? It wasn't a ten-or twenty-year project, but it was a long-term one... richard linklater: Like so many of my movies, yeah-years and years. It was a 2001 article by Skip Hollandsworth [in Texas Monthly ]. I called Skip-“What a fascinating story. ” I just had my eye on it forever. I love that character, Gary Johnson, so much-but I also love this notion that pop culture has bled into the real world and had real-life consequences. Everybody thinks they can have someone bumped off if they spend the money! I had read that one of the most famous hitman manuals was written by, like, a Southern Californian housewife, so I was already on to that, when I read Skip's article. And he said: “Yeah, there's no record of a hitman ever being real. ” Wait-I can't hire a hitman? People are always a little disappointed! Shouldn't that be good news? Look, if you're a gang, or you run a drug cartel, you have people working for you who can kill people. It's the notion of the private meeting, one to one, with someone who's not working for anyone, who's unaffiliated. Retail hitmen. That's the myth. I want to make that clear. There are drug killings, there are gangs, there's all that Good Fellas stuff-but the notion that it's available to the general public is just silly. People try, though. They do, all the time, and they end up in jail, and that's what makes the headlines. But having studied it all these years, I'd never seen an article about a hitman being arrested. Never even the police report with “We think this is a professional job. ” The darkest thought is that we all like the idea. Like anyone who pisses you off is only here because you're letting them be! Hit Man has coincided with a few other new titles about contract killing, including David Fincher's The Killer and Harmony Korine's Aggro Dr1ft, both of which were also at Venice. Y ou also reference within it a few celebrated ones, like Irving Lerner's Murder by Contract [1958] and George Armitage's beloved John Cusack-starrer Grosse Pointe Blank [1997]. But yours is set apart by the fact that it debunks its own central trope. Way back then, John [Cusack] really wanted me to direct that. I wasn't interested-I mean, [that character] is not a good guy!-but we've got it in our little montage. The good news is, it's a really safe time to be alive. It's a really safe world. My previous movie, Apollo 10 1/2 [2022]-for a long time its title was 'Portrait of a Free-Range Childhood', because it's about when kids could just be outside in the neighbourhood, playing, and parents not even know where they were. That era could come back if parents would allow it. We think we live in a much more dangerous world than we do. So that intrigued me on a cultural level. But Skip's article had a repetition to it-not much really happened. In a way there's a movie there. It's kind of fun, but it doesn't really have a third act-it's a character piece. I'd thought about it over the years and it didn't quite work. When Glen Powell called me over lockdown-the article had come up for option, and it floated his way, and I was like, “Yeah, I've been on that since you were in junior high!” It was fun to engage with an actor about it, who'd thought about it. And the more we talked about it, the more of a playful attitude we had. It was like, “Let's, you know... who cares?” When you make a film exactly historically accurate to the tee, no one gives you a certificate that says: “Y our Film Was Really Accurate”. It took Glen to jostle me and say, “What if we just use this as a basis?” I was kind of in the mood. Why not? It's a great character. Let's just own it. The article ends when Gary meets this young woman who's trying to solicit the murder of her husband, and he knows she just needs help. He doesn't want to see her in prison for the next twenty years, so he lets her off. The idea was: what if she got back in touch with him to say thank you and he doesn't come clean? And she's clearly attracted, and attractive? That's when our themes really kicked in: about identity and self and-can you change? I've thought about this a lot, and seen it in myself. If you go back to Before Sunset, there's a part where Ethan talks about us having set points [His character Jesse says, “We just have these innate set points; nothing much that happens to us changes our disposition. ”] That's what I really believed in, for years: that you could win the lottery, but six weeks later, you'd still be yourself. That you're stuck with yourself. But just in the last few years, I've read a lot about personality. I think it's become more of a notion, that it's of the times. There's something really exhilarating in that moment when Gary suddenly unveils a whole different way of being. Everybody has a fantasy of that. Could I really be someone else? We're good at accepting ourselves, but... what's that old joke, I think it's a Woody Allen line, about his one regret in life being that he wasn't someone else, with a slightly different personality? Y ou do read about willed personality change but it usually relates to a terminal diagnosis, or a head injury... And that takes you on to neurological disorders-how we're mind-wired, how that can change. ON HIT MANthe latter based on the 1997 novel by Philip K. Dick. The two monumental experiments in cinematic time for which Linklater has been most celebrated-the trilogy Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013), which track the relationship between Céline (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) from meet cute to midlife, and Boyhood (2014), which follows a family over 12 years-also mull on identity formation, free will and the nature of self. A further temporal experiment, Linklater's forthcoming version of the 1981 Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily W e Roll Along, will shoot over 20 years and unspool in reverse, taking its hero-played by Paul Mescal-from who he is to who he was. Even Linklater's chunkiest mainstream hit, the delightful middle-school comedy School of Rock (2003), begins with the assumption of a false identity, as Jack Black's hapless aspiring musician appropriates his friend's supply teaching job and unlocks a whole new life. It's not difficult to map Linklater's fascination with hustlers, fakers and forks in roads on to his own origin story and attitude to his art. The magnanimity for which he's known is also the adaptability of someone who forged his career without much institutional backing and with no nepotistic networks. T o the casual observer, he has looked like an insider ever since the time of Slacker -a status affirmed by the film's prominent inclusion in Spike, Mike, Slackers & Dykes, John Pierson's 1996 chronicle of the transformations wrought upon American independent cinema during the 1990s. Linklater's own experience, however, has always been that of an interloper. He's not from New Y ork or Los Angeles; not from money or arty origins; not even from film school. His identity as a T exan also remains key to his work and life. “I always get drawn back there,” he says. He remains closely involved in the case of convicted murderer Bernie Tiede, about whose complex history he made the 2011 film Bernie, and for whose release he continues to campaign. Linklater has also contributed a standalone film to the HBO documentary series God Save Texas, alongside films by Alex Stapleton and Iliana Stosa. His contribution examines the pipeline from the joyful teen sport scene he participated in and portrays in Everybody W ants Some!! to the local prison. This piece has been described, he says, as “a bit of a Rosetta Stone” for his own film work. This is said with a touch of self-consciousness, for while he's aware of his own contribution, elder statesman status still seems like an itchy fit for Linklater. Numerous times in our conversation, and despite a distinctly affable and open demeanour, he refers to himself as insecure or shy. T alking about his 30-year career, meanwhile, has become “kind of abstract. High points, low points, biographical signposts... at some point, it's like, is that even you?” Well, that's the question. 38 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Which Jesse is writing a novel about in Before Midnight-remember, I've just watched all of your films! Very much so! I can usually reference these things without anyone noticing -“Y ou touched on that. ” But yeah, these are the themes I'm interested in. The most frightening one I read-this looms for everybody, and it might be worse than a terminal diagnosis-is the little brain tumour that turns you into a gambling addict, or a paedophile; that changes your personality. So now I'm in the camp that [believes] we're not that fixed. We don't have that much control. I don't know if I believe in free will. We should all have sympathy for each other, no matter how badly someone acts. We love to condemn and judge and seek retribution against people-but what would you be if you'd been dealt the same hand? Some people are just more lucky than others. And there's wilful change. We all know that jerk as a kid who grew up to be OK. Something happens, and you're a fine adult. And then, conversely, some people get worse and worse and worse. I don't know where I fall on that spectrum, but I like to think you can get better. And changing or concealing your identity can be part of that. Like Wyatt Russell's Willoughby in Everybody W ants Some!!, who's a fraud in a way-he's passing himself off as a college kid even though he's thirty-but who uses it for good. He just turns everybody on to the cool Pink Floyd album [ Meddle, 1971], yeah. I like con men, people who aren't who they say they are. I like that in earlier centuries, before everything was computerised, you could really get away with that. My county in T exas, right outside of Austin, it's called Bastrop. It was founded because they were giving out land grants, and this grifter guy came along claiming to be a European baron, Baron Something de Bastrop. And they gave him all the land. It's still named after his fictional title. If you had the balls and the gumption to do it and get away with it... that's kind of the American way. We reward a con if it works. If it works, and we like you. I mean, T rump is the greatest con man. LEFT Glen Powell as Gary Johnson in Hit Man'My county in T exas is called Bastrop. It's named after the fictional title of this grifter guy who came along claiming to be a European baron. If you had the balls to do it and get away with it... that's kind of the American way' 39 RICHARD LINKLATER | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Likable, though? He is, actually... he has a certain charm. In the way the wrestler is, the bad guy-you love hating them, they willingly play the heel, they're just funny enough, they can deliver a line... I don't wanna talk about T rump. The tone you take in Hit Man is quite breezy, it's delightful-and that creates a space where you can allow these characters to do pretty bad things without losing our affection. Absolutely. That's called the power of cinema! For the gangster films and film noirs of the 30s, 40s, 50s, there was a moral code. Yes, you could do all of that, but Barbara Stanwyck was going to die at the end. That's long gone. Y ou can actually have people get away with it. Once we got going with this story, I had every film genre going round in my head, and it was really fun to play with those. That moral code, even though it's not really the thing any more-there's still a puritanical, maybe religious-based, order in all our brains that wants to see justice done. But my take was... give people some latitude. Everybody's got their thing. Behind every fortune, there's a crime, if you look back far enough. Every corporate CEO had to get started... And I see it in myself. Those first couple films-I was doing some illegal shit! [ Slacker was filmed without any shooting permits, for example. ] But it was for the greater cause, of me getting to do what I wanted in this world. And I kind of respect that, because the world is set up for you not to really achieve what you want. Y ou have to find a crack in the universe to achieve it. Especially if you don't come from privilege. It's the strivers who need to do that, and I see both Gary and Madison in that category. We don't know what kind of relationship she's coming out of; we know less about her than him, but she's clearly troubled. I thought it was interesting to go the screwball route, and say: “What if these people are totally meant for each other?” Then it becomes: “What's keeping them apart?” There's all this stuff. There's barely knowing who the other is... that's just funny to me. So that's how it became a mash-up of noir and screwball. When you're managing tone in that way, are you thinking commercially at all-where the film will fit in the market-or just about the story? I think just story. I was always thinking of a dark comic tone-a comedy that got scarily real at times. I wanted to take you on a crazy ride. And again: cinema can really do that. It can make you go to the edge of your seat, it can make the walls close in. I haven't done a lot of that-suspense-so it was fun to be in a story that had that element. Films are all about tone and perspective. This film is absolutely Gary's perspective. He tells you everything you need to know -even though he's not a completely reliable narrator, because of his lack of self-knowledge. The tell is right off the bat, when he says, “There I was, minding my own business... ” Y ou're not minding your own business! Y ou're setting up an operation to put a guy in prison! That's the opposite of minding your own business. So he's not the most reliable narrator, but he's doing the best he can-as much as any of us can be believed when we're talking about ourselves. The dark comic tone, I've been in before, primarily with Bernie. It's a sweet spot that's hard to hit and maintain-but that's in the acting. Y ou've often worked very closely with actors on script and character, as you did with Delpy and Hawke, and here you had a collaborator in Glen Powell, who has a screenplay credit. Yeah, it was a great thing. Our collaboration was an ongoing thing, and it took different forms. During the pandemic we were on the phone and on the laptop. Then we changed 'Cinema can make you go to the edge of your seat, it can make the walls close in. I haven't done a lot of that- suspense-so it was fun to be in a story that had that element' BELOW Adria Arjona and Glen Powell in Hit Man 40 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
roles and were actor/director, but we were both just grinding through every detail, the whole way. Was he someone you had always wanted to place in a lead role? I mean, I knew him as a teenager-but it was when he auditioned for Everybody W ants Some!! that I was like-“Wow, when did Glen become this?” He's got quick synapses, quick neural firing, and I love that in an actor. Because I do such talky movies, I need people who can deliver quickly and coherently and still be funny. There are some actors who are... not that fast. Then Adria came in, completed our little triangle, and jumped in in the same way-she joined us later, but it was just awesome, her voice, her brain. She had strong opinions: “I would never say that. ” She had it all worked out. My worst is an actor who just looks at you and goes, “I don't know, you wrote it. ” I need a little more. I like actors who come with something, and then you can redirect as necessary. Something your films bring out a lot, because of all the talking, is the idiosyncrasies of informal communication-the way people joke and tease, silly voices, in-jokes. When you're thinking of bigger themes, there's no room for that. But I want it all to be about that-specific, real-life details. Sometimes it's in the script, but a lot of it is just my process: I get actors together and build relationships and start seeing how their personalities spin. The script-every phase of it is super important, but it's a roadmap to get better, and to be more real. Y ou can't achieve that with actors just showing up, hitting their marks and saying their lines. And you were never pressured to work with better-known leads? No, we never were on the market in that way. Glen and I wrote it on spec alone, so we never had anyone in our ear. That's the advantage of being truly independent: you don't have anyone influencing you. We were low budget; the money was scraped together internationally. The industry always shrugged its shoulders at this project, quite honestly... But I can't really even begin to think about film like that. I've created a bubble for myself; I kind of feel like market forces don't really enter my film world. Netflix picked it up, which we're grateful for; they're very passionate about it. Every filmmaker would love a studio sitting there saying, “We're gonna put it in in 2,500 screens and spent $50 million on TV ads”-whatever they do. But that's a bit of a fantasy in today's world. It's kind of wonderful and harrowing with every film: your little baby that you gestated and incubated has plopped into the world, and you've got to deal with that world-and that world is changing all the time. I find that fascinating, but I try not to get too obsessed. This is the world we plopped into! And I can't complain: everyone will be able to see the film. Film culture can be a doom-and-gloom-focused thing, because it's always pressured, it's always in competition with other forms, and it's so vulnerable to technical innovation. It progresses so fast. But I've read too much film criticism. Y ou go back to any year, read the quotes, and it just sounds like the sky is falling. Jump back to 1951, when, I don't know, The Red Badge of Courage came out. Was the market a little soft? Did they have to cut it? Y ou don't know or care. Really doesn't matter. Y ou've got to think big picture, long term. Difficult market conditions can particularly exclude people without material privilege, though. Y ou're very often counted as someone who made it despite being 'self-taught'-does that not make the hustle harder? I don't know if I agree with that. There were four thousand submissions in the narrative category last year at Sundance -that sounds like a lot of access. Well, in the UK the conversation tends to be about who has independent wealth and who has to rely on vanishing public funding. American filmmakers...... know from birth there is no money. Right, that's when you go through official channels. I mean, I was that guy too; I applied for grants. And I started a grant programme in the later 90s [the Austin Film Society Grant, for T exas filmmakers], and we've given out millions of dollars. I'm a big one on public funding. It's just a partial bit, but it helps you. And it's good for filmmakers to apply-it makes you articulate your film. It matures you, for having to deal with other people in relation to your film. Even if you don't get the money, it pushes you; and if you do get the money-a lot of artists are out on a limb, in their personal lives, and it may be the first affirmation they've had. If a granting agency says, “Hey, here's a few thousand bucks, we like what you're doing,” you can take that to your friends and relatives and go, “They think I have talent-why don't you give me a little more money?” We didn't have any money, but I could get loans from family members... they believed in me just enough. The fact is, no one wanted me. I'm here because I crashed the party. I was never invited. That goes for my life in general. I was an unwanted kid, ask my mom! I did apply to film school-I just didn't get in. So I got the best lesson early: no one's gonna help you. That's how it should be: there's too many people who want to do this. So there's no easy path. And that emboldened me. That's the great thing about the arts-you're self-motivated. Y ou're your own toughest critic, your own best friend. I was so enjoying my twenties -being in a realm of something I was so committed to, so absolutely passionate about-I didn't give a fuck what anybody else thought about what I was doing. I knew what I was doing: I was making a bunch of shorts, teaching myself. I knew they weren't, like, good; I didn't bother entering them into festivals. I didn't need anyone to look at them and say, “Y ou have potential. ” I knew exactly what I was doing. Looking back, I'm amazed how systematic and patient I was-but that's my own neurological makeup, my ADHD fixed focus. The same thing that made me a mediocre student. 'The fact is, no one wanted me. I'm here because I crashed the party. I did apply to film school- I just didn't get in. So I got the best lesson early: no one's gonna help you' ABOVE Arjona and Powell with Linklater on the set of Hit Man 41 RICHARD LINKLATER | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
In your early learning about cinema, was your focus on watching films or amassing technical expertise? All of the above. I just read a Godard quote recently about his early twenties, watching a thousand films a year. He said, “The cinema screen was the wall we had to scale to escape from our lives. ” Exactly. The people who do this are the ones who are manifesting an alternative universe for themselves. That's what I was doing. I started a film society; I just created a bubble. There was no money involved. It runs on pure interest and passion-to this day. That's what the arts are-an alternative universe where this little thing you're doing is important. Isn't that all that matters? Every young filmmaker is insecure. “Is this going to happen for me?” Well, it's going take the world a lot longer than you think to discover just how great you are. It won't be at the rate you want. It'll be when you actually maybe are great, after a lot more work than you can possibly imagine. There's a pragmatism and resilience there that might be at odds with some artistic sensibilities! Yeah, I think you can be too sensitive. I'm plenty sensitive, but I put that in the right place. Y ou've got to have this other element. I realised early on, it requires a multiple personality-you can't just have one skill-set. Y ou have to be a bit of a hustler, a charmer, a bit of a manipulator. The best book I ever read about that was Elia Kazan's A Life [1976]. He talks about qualities he had that made him feel kind of phoney: he was something to everybody. But what is film but adapting- making it work with this person, convincing that person to trust you?Do you remember first realising that a film was directed by a person-that that was a job? Not really. I didn't fully understand it for a while. When I was a kid, the one famous director was Alfred Hitchcock, and I didn't know what he did. I knew it had something to do with these scary, thrilling kind of movies we'd watch on TV... but I didn't know. I always thought I was going to be a writer. By high school, I was writing plays and short stories, and I thought, “I wonder if I could write a movie?” I think seeing Annie Hall [1977], I was like, “Oh-Woody Allen wrote that. And he's in it, and he directed it. ” It started to all make sense a little bit. I saw Eraserhead [1977], that was another one, my senior year of high school. So it started occurring to me. And then my dad explained the auteur theory to me. He wasn't a cinephile, but he had vast knowledge, he was aware of stuff. So he had some notion of the American studio system versus the European auteur. And I thought: “That sounds pretty interesting. ” So I started watching everything. Subtitled movies, for the first time. Going to movies alone. Y ou know, these little leaps you take. The day it becomes not a social mission, but what you do. Go in the afternoon, buy tickets, sit alone. It felt weird the first time, and then then you realise: this is wonderful. And setting up the film society- what inspired that? This was the mid-80s, so film societies were all kind of dying, because of video. But I just wanted to see the movies. It was completely self-serving. I realised I could rent them for a hundred and something dollars, and I could get fifty people to pay two or three dollars... Did you do the projection yourself? Me, some roommates, whoever wanted to help out. They were 60mm prints. Have you never wanted to make a film about a film society? The film freak film! Well, I'm making that right now [with Nouvelle V ague ]. They were good years. Living in your cinema, showing films, watching films. I learned a lot. Y ou learn how to go find an audience. And I think it fit my personality. I was fundamentally shy; not that outgoing. But I could do it on behalf of a F assbinder series. I could do it on behalf of cinema. I didn't mind asking for favours. Cheating. Stealing. So you knew how to do all of that when it came to making your own films. Well, parallel to that I was making my own-I was making shorts, I made a Super 8 feature [ It's Impossible to Learn to BREAKING IN 42 FLYERS COURTESY OF AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
a speech, things like that. That's completely lost these days, of course. I think the mainstream back then was still a little more avant garde, indie-curious, and now they just can't afford to be. The regional divide you mention wasn't so apparent from outside the States. As a UK teenager getting into film, I would definitely have imagined that you and Jim Jarmusch and Hal Hartley were all of equal status and hanging out together. I was far away! Looking up to the Jim Jarmusches and Spike Lees going, “That's that world, and New Y ork loves them and the Cannes Film Festival loves them, and here I am in the boonies: we're the flyover no one thinks about. ” But I think it woke them up: cool, crazy ideas can come from anywhere. We became like indie music. We were like the indie band from a little town, like REM from Athens, Georgia. Music can come from anywhere; why can't film? We fit that niche. In fact, I was kind of thrown in at that moment with Nirvana, with Douglas Coupland's book [ Generation X, 1991] -we were the film exponent of that whole Gen X grunge thing. Y ou gotta give editors and writers something to make cultural trends out of, so we filled a niche. I, however, didn't fill a niche in terms of, “Do you want to go on TV and talk about... ?” I was like, “No. ” Because you were shy? Yeah. Just my personality. Plus, I was already into my next film. And I knew it was a momentary thing... I ran from it immediately. But you are still widely perceived as having been part of a significant generational moment. And that can help, and it was a great time. I hate to say the last good time, but there were still those opportunities. This is what never happens any more: an executive at Universal called me up. He had heard about this rock 'n' roll, teenage, riding-around movie I wanted to do. And he called me up and said, “This sounds like it could be a real movie. ” And I'm like, “Yeah, it is a real movie. ” So I thought I could sell that and get a budget to make it and that's what happened, rather quickly. Now, you get the call and they say, “Hey, do you want to direct Spider-Man 5 ?” They never ask, “What do you want to do next?” Y ou get, “Do you want to come join a franchise?” Or, “The next film you want to do, can it be a series?” No one's looking to make your next indie film. Maybe if you're genre; maybe A24 will do your horror. But the human, adult, relationship film? No. Dazed and Confused was a period film with a large ensemble cast and many music clearances- a major logistical step up. I knew it was going to cost at least a million dollars. But I thought I could get that, maybe, because Soderbergh had gotten a million to make sex, lies and videotape [1989]. There were deals to be had. And then I just got lucky, that a studio gave me $6 million, which is what it really cost. That was a low budget too for a studio, but I got the opportunity that Spike Lee got: let's give an indie a budget. Now studios just don't do that; they're out of that business. I hate when I talk to young filmmakers about what they need to do to get an indie made, because as a producer friend of mine says, the real answer is, be born twenty-five or thirty years earlier. It's similar talking to young film critics. Y ou could probably say it in every industry. Except maybe technology. The thing that's eating all of us is the only thing that's current... And was the experience on Dazed traumatic, or did you enjoy it? Both. Here I am thirty years later making a film, and if I have a little PTSD flashback, it's always to Dazed. That one was the fight. What were you fighting? It's not how it should be, and it never has been since, but there was Plow by Reading Books, 1988]. Making sure I made a separate feature in there. Did you feel when you made Slacker that you'd gone up a level? It was probably the biggest leap I ever took. It was still a no-budget film, but I'd made films privately up to then. With this one, I was asking people to give me their time-cast and crew. That's very hard, with no money. Y ou have to really manipulate and charm when you're not able to pay people. Man, are you dancing. It was tough. Yeah. But it was also: “Can I do this? Can I lead a group, can I articulate my ideas?” Especially as it was a film that was hard to describe. Did acting in it yourself help with that, or was that more of a necessity? It was a natural offshoot of the design of the movie, but I thought I'd be the first one in the pool. I had been in acting classes for all that time, too, and you do a lot of monologues. I liked the monologue, and I also saw actors of all kinds be able to do it-even not very professional actors could still hold court on one thing. It feels like improv, but of course, it's not: it's all really tightly structured. That film... no one really knew what it was except me. I was having a little private revolution. But we all believed. What did it feel like when it was not only accepted, but embraced? I've found myself in this same headspace since: “This is a film that may not work; maybe no one will understand it; it doesn't have a story; it doesn't have a recurring character. ” But I had such deep belief in the experience it would be watching it, I thought I could keep an audience. I come back to the power of cinema. I bet the whole thing there. And then when it... I say 'worked', it wasn't everyone's cup of tea, but people who knew cinema saw whatever was fresh about it. A lot of teachers showed it: here's a film that breaks every rule, and yet somehow works. And I had no faith because at that point, the indie world was truly a New Y ork phenomenon. I thought, “I'll make this film from T exas and because it doesn't have cowboys in it, no one will take this film seriously at all. ” I guess on an anthropological, social level, I was amazed that we would be accepted in places like New Y ork. I always had that little Southern chip on my shoulder: the left-behind, the lower class... I thought it just wouldn't be accepted in the official film world. And I was just amazed at how open they were. That's a real tribute to our business. So that was wild, to see it get picked up and become part of the cultural conversation -President Clinton quoting it in ABOVE & OPPOSITE Early flyers for the Austin Film Society, which Linklater founded in 1985'I hate when I talk to young filmmakers about what they need to do to get an indie made, because as a producer friend of mine says, the real answer is, be born twenty-five or thirty years earlier'43 RICHARD LINKLATER | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
something on that film... Let's start with my own lack of experience. That creates an insecurity and a paranoia. And I'm stepping out of the indie world, and I'm Mr Indie with a chip on my shoulder. I've seen this story, that you go Hollywood and they fuck up your movie, and I was determined for that not to happen-so I'm looking over my shoulder all the time. That's not a good way to be. And like I said, that leap from Slacker, from me and my friends getting somewhere together... now it's money people, executives, a huge crew, department heads, trucks. I would visit friends on movie sets and look around and go, “What the fuck is all this? Y ou don't need this. I just need a camera and I'm good, I don't need any of this. ” Then you make a period film and it's like... I kind of do need all this. But I'm still driving up to the first day on my own production, seeing all these trucks and people and I'm like, “Y ou better be ready, man. Y ou better be ready. ” But did you have the sense that the film was going to work artistically? Yeah, I was really excited. It's a bifurcated thing: I love the movie, but everything around it was volatile and precarious. And the culture is kind of gunning for you to fail. Even people in the studio-they see some dailies, and the rumour comes out that it's not working, that it's going to go straight to video... a lot of comments, a lot of studio notes. There was also a notion that like, “Here's this punk kid, now he's Mr Sellout”-the 90s were very sellout-averse! When the film dropped into the world, it was a studio production that was seen as an indie because they distributed it like an indie, which is sort of the worst of both worlds. Dazed has certainly passed into the lexicon, partly thanks to early glimpses of future megastars like Matthew Mc Conaughey and Ben Affleck. It doesn't seem, from the outside, like it flopped. It was what was called an industry hit. Everyone in the industry loved it. It's a misperception when people say, “No one saw it; it was a bomb. ” It wasn't. It made eight point something million, so that's an indie success-it just wasn't a studio success. It opened in 183 theatres, not a thousand. It didn't have ads... So, I learned a lesson there. Dazed never quit giving me lessons all the way down the line. Because I had an expectation. We had these great preview audiences, with everyone applauding, so you think, “This is the response!” And then the studio would look at it and be like, “It's a bunch of people nobody knows. Who's the audience for it?” I said, “Everyone who's been to high school!” But they were just so negative. I just went through the wringer with the bureaucracy. And again, I'm insecure. At that point I didn't even have final cut. So it hovers over you, that they could just say, “We're taking it off you and we're going to recut it to make it better. ” I don't think they ever actually threatened that... but the power dynamic hovers. So I was just determined to get out with my movie intact, and I did that. It's like in every boxing career... there's the title fight, but the real title fight was back here. There's the fight that makes or breaks you, and that was Dazed for me. If I can get through that, I can get through anything. And I did. And from then on it was like-“OK, I don't need that guy on my set, or yelling on the phone, I don't need that... I've really realised how to do it, how to take control of the whole thing and bring it completely under my personality and wants. ” And it's been like that ever since. So I've never had the same problems. But that was the one I just had to learn-I just got thrown in there. I was glad to survive. I still feel very close to the cast. I love them. But, you know, I came up short in my own ways. I set the bar very high for myself and I achieved in some areas and underachieved in others. Y ou know, with the women. If you read the script, I had much more... I kind of let the boys run away with it a bit. So after that, what I wanted to do was to bring my acting theories and this way I work to just two people. It was somewhere in the process. ABOVE Matthew Mc Conaughey, Joey Lauren Adams, Rory Cochrane and Deena Martin in Dazed and Confused (1993) 'In every boxing career... there's the title fight, but the real title fight was back here. There's the fight that makes or breaks you, and that was Dazed and Confused for me'44 IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Conversation became a clear focus- at least as important, in much of your work, as plot. Was this about developing philosophical ideas through your characters, or more about the dynamics of the conversations themselves? Conversation is my default, and I think we're all kind of philosophical. I was always like that: even among all my partying, I always found deeper things going on. That was just my own brain, and having good friends who aren't stupid. That whole thing of trying to figure out the world- I found a form for that, although it's a challenge to make it work cinematically. Slacker, Dazed... and Before Sunrise all take place over specific time periods. Y ou continued to restrict and expand narrative time, culminating in the unique project that was Boyhood ; you're at it again with Merrily W e Roll Along. Was this a conscious undertaking, or did it develop through the stories? It was just the way those stories played out in my head. I wasn't wedded to it- I had scripts that were more traditionally structured that I just hadn't made yet -but it happened enough times that it was like, “Y ou're the guy who does that!” So I started saying that one day I'd do a real-time movie, like Bergman's Winter Light [1963]. I was joking, but I ended up doing two in ten years, Tape [2001] and Before Sunset. And then it was like... “I think I'm good at that. I like that. ” The intensity of our engagement with Jesse and Céline, including the fact that they can each be exasperating, is what makes the Before... films so compelling-but it must have been a gamble. At the first rehearsal, when Julie and Ethan came in, it was like: “This film lives or dies with this, with the two of them. ” It was such a tightrope walk. On Dazed..., if something didn't work, I just cut it-I was shaping it constantly. But there was no shaping this material. It's got to all work, and it's got to work in long, long takes. The bar that they had to hit was so high, and yet it had to seem effortless. But I did what I always do: process the material through them. We rewrite and we find new things. So the actors might tell you, ON HIS LATER FILMS“I wrote that!”, but... I'm writing up to the day we're shooting. I want to wake up with a better idea this morning, based on what happened yesterday -it's a living, breathing thing all the way. And at the point of shooting, I want that to be maxed out: we explore everything, and the result of that is what we film. That's the methodology. It's really demanding; it's like, you're going to give everything of yourself to this film. We're going to reach a certain perfection that would be fine for most -and then we're going to keep going. We're going to keep rehearsing; we're going to know it better... I joke that it's like a Steely Dan song. Reach what you think is perfection, and then keep going. Put on another layer. Find something new. Bring in Michael Mc Donald. Steely Dan is an interesting analogy: incredibly skilled and knowledgeable musicians, striving to make something that communicates across the board... Yeah. It's all at the service of a catchy pop song. We're here to entertain. I want people to laugh with and be moved by Jesse and Céline, and to see themselves in them. I don't want to be boring. A lot of my films probably sound boring-a bunch of guys hanging out!-but I want to be the opposite of boring. BELOW Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke as Céline and Jesse in Before Sunrise (1995)'I want people to laugh with and be moved by Jesse and Céline. A lot of my films probably sound boring- a bunch of guys hanging out!-but I want to be the opposite of boring'45 RICHARD LINKLATER | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Something I love in your films is extended depictions of people having fun-whether it's Jesse and Céline, or the boys in Everybody W ants Some!! singing 'Rapper's Delight' in the car. It's the kind of thing that often gets consigned to montages... Before getting back to the real drama that means something! But you give it time. And that also applies to the rough stuff, the arguments, like the soul-scourging one in Before Midnight. That was the most fun to write, because it was like the greatest hits of every fight we'd been in, and we can go back and find the perfect rejoinder. What I kept saying to them was, “This fight is over, but you just have one more point. ” The fight-the whole film-also shows the audience the cost of what it's been so invested in, the real-life cost of Jesse and Céline's great love. ON BALANCING LIGHT AND DARKThe vast shift of becoming a parent is also a running theme. But you've dealt with the other side of that too, by making celebratory films for and about children. Can you talk about the appeal of doing something like School of Rock ? My daughter at the time was exactly that age. And it came to me-it was the first film I did that came to me. I was in a place of: “I've done OK, here's another leap to take. Can I come aboard something and have a good creative experience?” And that's exactly what happened. Jack Black, Mike White and I were like the Three Musketeers, trying to make a good movie, cool movie or whatever. I remember as a kid, the adults I liked were the ones who didn't pat you on the head and treat you like a baby. They treated you like an equal. That's what Jack does: treat them like contemporaries of his. And Jack is the most extraordinary performer I'll ever work with. So it was about that tone, that performance, and again, the idea of finding yourself. Y our A Scanner Darkly for me honours Philip K. Dick's tone in a way other adaptations of his work haven't. 'There have been good Philip K. Dick adaptations. But I wanted to capture the weirdness, the drugs. It's dark territory, for sure, but it was such a blessing to get to do it authentically'We leave it [in Before Sunset ] at that romantic moment, but then you go, “Oh, shit. ” He's not happily married, but he is married. And she's in a relationship too. One of our producers had moral problems with that. I said, “T rust me, everyone's pulling for them. The film has investment. ” But we couldn't treat it glibly. That's why it fades out, right? Because everything that happens from this point on has real-world consequences. And the perfect place to begin again is with those consequences: the kid. It's the San Andreas F ault under the relationship. It's always going to be there. Just the other night, Ethan Hawke told an audience that he wants to make a fourth one. Someone sent me that! I think we all just kind of say that. It's a routine question, once you've made three films, and we always say yes. We've missed our nine-year deadline, but you never know the future... That last one was so hard. It's hard to make a film about middle age. It's just not sexy. Y ou're older; you're kind of set in life... I made another film sort of about a long-term relationship drifting and coming back together-Where'd Y ou Go, Bernadette [2019]. It isn't romantic, fun, cinematic territory, but it's very real, especially to people of a certain age who've had to live it. So I felt it worth honouring. People are interested in getting together and in breaking up-but what about the middle bit: how you right the ship? No one makes films about that. BELOW Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood (2014) 46 IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVERICHARD LINKLATER | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
They always grab the idea and make it a serious movie. And there have been good ones. But I wanted to capture the weirdness, the drugs... it was all so personal. I got to know his kids, one daughter in particular. She gave me his own copy of A Scanner Darkly. And she said, “This was a real world. This was my dad, this was my mom, I knew these guys, we lived in that house... ” It's his most personal work. It's dark territory, for sure, but it was such a blessing to get to go there, and to do it authentically. A faithful adaptation- not to try to make it something else. Are you less attached to films where you didn't write the script yourself? No. I process the script the exact same way. Whether I've written it or co-written it or not written it, you find something, you find a new level. Some of them change more than others, but you always have to find what the story is, so I don't really see much difference. I think most directors would say that. It's not a put-down on screenwriters: it's just it's a directors' medium. TV is the great place for writers and actors, but films-you've got to barrel towards an ending. On TV, you can just string it out forever, but film has to tell tight stories. Everything has to make sense. Directing is problem-solving. If you look at the history of cinema, what's the background of the early directors? A lot of engineers. A lot of construction. Architecture. And that was my goal on Hit Man : it was an engineering feat, a lot of effort to get it tight. He's got this problem. Now he's also got that problem. How do you solve those in a satisfying way? Every film is a massive challenge that way. So you thought you'd simplify things by making a film in French? Every filmmaker should at one point make a film about making films. So, yeah, I'm making a French film from 1959. It's my same hanging-out vibe, but it's 1959. But it's also a depiction of somebody making their first film, which they can't explain to anybody; someone who's trying to do something different and driving everybody a little crazy... so I relate on a couple of levels. Y ou sometimes seem to be sticking up for people or groups who aren't at the fashionable end of the discourse- jocks in Everybody W ants Some!!, whiny white guys in the Before... films, French auteur directors... It's all going out of fashion! Film's going out of fashion! Every film, I've felt like I was getting away with something. Now I feel I'm getting away with something making a film at all. Yeah, the New Wave was kind of male. Point me to the industry that wasn't, in 1959. History is a horror show. Y ou can't go back and correct it; all you can do is deal with it. And women were never not there. They just never got top billing. Who could be nostalgic? Only a really conservative person. Y ou also seem to go against the grain by not being preoccupied with dark underbellies. Y our films often skew positive, or at least optimistic. What's your idea of dark? Scanner 's dark... Tape... Fast Food Nation [2006] is dark. There's plenty of darkness! But if I'm making one of my autobiographical films, those just aren't the stakes. That's not what happened. We've all seen phoney dark drama. I just wanted to document what it feels like to be alive-that's the bigger project here. What it was like to be in a certain place in time. Hit Man is released in UK cinemas on 24 May and on Netflix from 7 June. It is reviewed on page 66 ABOVE An animated Keanu Reeves in Linklater's Philip K. Dick adaptation A Scanner Darkly (2006)'Directing is problem-solving. What's the background of the early directors? A lot of engineers. A lot of construction. And that was my goal on Hit Man : it was an engineering feat, a lot of effort to get it tight ' | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
ON TEEN MOVIES “[With Dazed and Confused ] it was fun to be in a genre that I knew pretty well. There are a lot of good high-school movies. My favourite ones are really the edge movies, Over the Edge [)979, starring Matt Dillon, left], River's Edge [)986]. I like If.... [)968] a lot-the true way to end a teenage movie is complete apocalypse, whether it's imagined or real. Like in Over the Edge, they're fire-bombing the school-that's the ultimate teen thing. ” ( Sight and Sound, May )995)ON HIS FAVOURITE HITMAN MOVIE “It was weird being at Venice this year, because everyone was saying to me, 'So there's four hitman movies here this year!' [ The Killer, Aggro Dr1ft, Knox Goes Away ], and I was like, 'But... is mine a hitman movie? Am I not deconstructing this?' And I was pointing out: 'Isn't it interesting that ours is based on a real character, someone I knew, and it's a comedy; and the ones based on, like, comic books [David Fincher's The Killer ] are very dark and serious?' But, the one I do suggest is Murder by Contract [)958]. It's an Irving Lerner film-he was mainly an editor. My editor Sandra [Adair, who has cut all of Linklater's films since )993] worked with him actually, early in her career-she was his second assistant. He did this super-low budget in New Y ork, with Vince Edwards, who was in [Stanley Kubrick's )956 film] The Killing and in a bunch of TV shows, this good-looking, young man. Anyway, he's a hitman and... it's really funny. Not a comedy, no-I laugh because he's kind of this Übermensch who's above the common morality. It's Dostoevsky all over again. ” ON ORSON WELLESSCHOOL OF CINEMA ON ÉRIC ROHMER AND MARIE RIVIÈRE “I love that movie [ The Green Ray, )986]. Yeah! They catch the last ray of light... I saw the green ray once-a green flash. The end of that film is beautiful. I love that actress, Marie Rivière [left]. There's a later Rohmer film, A Winter's Tale [)992], where she shows up on a bus or something. With Rohmer I sometimes forget the exact plots, but I remember the feeling of all of them. But you see her and you think, “Oh, she's aged. ” It's kind of like [ Before Midnight, 20)3]: boom! Y ou get a nine-year jump and how people look different! They're the same, but they're different-like all of us. ( Sight and Sound, July 20)3) The director picks a hitman movie to die for and-over the years-outlines his admiration for Orson Welles, Marie Rivière and Éric Rohmer, and his penchant for teen movies with an edge 'The true way to end a teenage movie is complete apocalypse. Like in Over the Edge, they're fire-bombing the school-that's the ultimate teen thing'TOP LEFT Orson Welles and Suzanne Cloutier in Othello ()95)) TOP RIGHT Irving Lerner's Murder by Contract ()958) ABOVE Marie Riviére in Éric Rohmer's The Green Ray ()986) RIGHT Matt Dillon in his film debut, Over the Edge ()979)“He's the progenitor and the martyr [ of independent American filmmaking]. That's how the US looks at him, and I think he took on that role to a large degree. He was a guy out of time. He would have done so much better if he'd been working in the )980s and 90s, when he would have been like an Altman character who could have gotten funding worldwide for his little Shakespeare adaptations. It's heartbreaking when you see a masterpiece like his Othello [)95)], which I think is the greatest Shakespeare adaptation ever made, or Chimes at Midnight [)965], which is even more obscure. T o know that they were so neglected, and the way he financed them himself. What Welles was going up against in the )940s was still the full-blown studio system, which I love. I would like to have been Vincente Minnelli or Howard Hawks, making a film or two a year in the studio system. But Welles was too enlarged a talent to fit in. We know who had the great careers in and around the system: Wilder, Huston, all the Europeans that came over, like Lang. Y ou had to sublimate your own ego. Secretly you were making your film, but on the surface you had to appear to be a company man. Welles was bad at hiding his genius, which was a little too big and obvious and wilful. That scares studio heads. ” ( Sight and Sound, January 20)0)48 RICHARD LINKLATER IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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Maybe,” David Leitch says, “we're entering a new golden age of stunts. ” If this seems unexpected amid a blockbuster cinema landscape under threat from the rampant use of CGI and artifi-cial intelligence, keep in mind who's saying it: Leitch was once one of the most respected Hol-lywood stuntmen-he doubled for Brad Pitt in five films and Jean-Claude Van Damme in two-and his lengthening directorial CV includes John Wick (2014, co-directed with Chad Stahelski), the Charlize Theron Cold War thriller Atomic Blonde (2017), self-referential Marvel superhero comedy Deadpool 2 (2018) and 2022's Pitt-led hitman comedy Bullet Train. He's also just directed The Fall Guy, which provides a record-breaking car stunt and-along with his producer (and wife) Kelly Mc Cormick-he is a key figure in the campaign to get stunts recognised at the Oscars. Leitch is adamant that it's the human element that “makes the movie magic”: “Even when we look at big superhero movies, you see dozens of stunt perform-ers, whether in motion-capture suits, on wires or in green screen,” he says. “As CGI improves, so the stunt department has a different relationship with it. ” He may believe that stuntwork has a wonderful future, but The Fall Guy is thor-oughly grounded in the past. The TV series of the same name, which starred Lee Majors as a movie stuntman and part-time bounty hunter called Colt Seavers, ran on American TV network ABC from 1981 to 1986. The show was a touchstone for stuntmen from Leitch's generation, and he says that the film carries a lot of its DNA: “The fun, blue-collar, working-class hero, the underdog story-and the truck. ” He and Mc Cormick both love Richard Rush's The Stunt Man (1980), in which Peter O'T oole got a Best Actor nomination for playing an egomaniacal director pushing a stuntman to the edge. He also acknowledges that Burt Reyn-olds in Hooper (1978)-a comedy about an ageing stuntman, which emphasises the physical wear and tear and the camarade-rie that go with the job-exercised a “ton of influence”; for stuntmen, he says, it's “like Citizen Kane ”. The 2024 The Fall Guy is, for Leitch, “a celebration of all these practical big stunts that sometimes we now do in different ways”. The plot has Colt-played by Ryan Gosling-doubling for A-list action hero T om Ryder (Aaron T aylor-Johnson) until a horrifying on-set accident forces him to take an ignominious job as a valet. Some 18 months later, mendacious hotshot pro-ducer Gail Meyer (Hannah Waddingham) lures him out of retirement to work on bonkers alien-invasion/cowboy film Metal-storm by telling him his skills have specifi-cally been asked for by first-time director Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt)-who is also his ex-girlfriend. Having landed in Sydney, where the film is shooting, Colt is soon drawn into solving the mystery of Ryder's disappearance from the set, meanwhile getting his stunt mojo back and rekindling his relationship with Jody. One reference point for the funny, bick-ering affection that characterises Jody and Colt's relationship is George Armitage's hitman comedy Grosse Pointe Blank (1997). Jody's anger at Colt reaches a climax in an amusing scene in which she has him The F all Guy is a thrill-packed comic celebration of the work of stunt performers. Its director David Leitch and producer Kelly Mc Cormick talk about the film's origins, stuntwork's lack of status and recognition and why, even in a CGI-dominated industry, nothing quite matches the real thing BY LOU THOMAS repeatedly set on fire and thrown against a prop rock. Mc Cormick says, “The sequence is supposed to be like Minnie Driver at her radio show when she dresses down John Cusack coming back into town after being ghosted. That's our interpreta-tion of that, with our spin on it. ” Overt chemistry between the beauti-ful, bantering Gosling and Blunt not-withstanding, what many viewers will be most excited to see on screen will be the spectacular stunts. While filming a beach chase, Gosling's stunt double Logan Hol-laday broke the world record for the most cannon rolls in a car: he made eight and a half rolls, one and a half more than the previous record, set during the making of Casino Royale (2006). For the uninitiated, Leitch explains why it's called a 'cannon' roll: “It used to be we would use black powder, a log and a tube. Y ou would weld that into the inside of the car, and special effects guys would blow the cannon-that would punch a log through the bottom of the car, it would hit concrete and flip the car. Now it's more sophisticated. We use compressed air and a metal cylinder, so it's a hydraulic cylinder, compressed air and that metal pole goes into the ground. The car's going 35 miles an hour, you put a pole on the ground and it launches you. That's the cannon part. ” Holladay's stunt was made trickier by natural forces. The previous record roll took place on a hill-far easier to manage than a beach, where the sand changes daily. “The tide comes in, the tide comes out, it's organic material,” Mc Cormick says. In a prelude to the stunt in the fin-ished film, Colt complains to his boss and friend, stunt coordinator Dan T ucker (Winston Duke), that he'll have to post-pone because of the density of the sand. Leitch says, “The whole line is a joke Ryan came up with because he heard us talking about it all the time. The density of sand is a problem. ” That fitted right in with a script (by Drew Pearce, who co-wrote Leitch's 2019 Fast and Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw ) that is packed with stuntman insider jokes about everything from guns firing blanks to fake sword fights to actors claiming in interviews that they do their own stunts. The film also raises the issue of the lack of recognition for stunt performers at the Academy Awards-as Gosling and Blunt noted at this year's ceremony, when they presented a montage of stunt clips pro-duced by Leitch and Mc Cormick. Stunt performers haven't traditionally been given an award, though behind the scenes many in the industry have been working towards it. Mc Cormick says there's a lot of positiv-ity around the idea of stunt recognition, with efforts now beginning to reach “a pin-nacle”. It may be helpful to those lobbying OPPOSITE Ryan Gosling as Colt Seavers in The Fall Guy BELOW Emily Blunt as Jody Moreno and Gosling as Colt Seavers OVERLEAF (From left) Ryan Gosling, Aaron T aylor-Johnson, Ben Jenkin, Logan Holladay, Justin Eaton with director David Leitch on the set of The Fall Guy 51 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
the Academy that there is now a precedent for a new category: in February, it was announced that from 2026 an Oscar will be awarded for Best Casting. Mc Cormick says, “There could be a conversion if we follow the blueprints of casting directors and what they've just achieved. ” Pondering why stuntpeople historically haven't had official recognition, the pro-ducer says: “It's complicated. These guys are stoics. They don't really talk that much, they hide their faces and merge into a hero at any given time. There's also the false narrative that it's a technical skill. There's really such artistry to stunt performing. ” T o make it clear that stunt work is an artistic endeavour as well as a practical one, Chris O'Hara, stunt coordinator and second unit director on The Fall Guy, was given an additional credit as stunt designer. Even if the Academy agrees in principle to giving stunts their moment in the Oscar spotlight, there will be some thorny mat-ters of detail to sort out. Mc Cormick won-ders, “Who gets the award? How do you determine what the award would be? It's a really tricky question. ” There are ongoing talks with the Academy about the possibil-ity that any award should go to the head of the department, a co-ordinator and/or designer figure, as happens with hair and other areas of production, rather than to the individual performer. The campaign for this more prominent acknowledgement of the human efforts required to make action look and feel real has seemingly grown in part because of For Mc Cormick, Gail is “a great vil-lain”: “This film she's responsible for is so important to her, her career and her star, it gets a little messy around the edges as to what should have, could have, would've happened with regards to your moral code. ” Mc Cormick highlights diversity and gender issues in the film crew's struc-ture. “A woman getting her first opportu-nity to direct and make her dream come true, that needs to happen more: giving a female character agency. [The use of] Winston Duke as a head of department, as an African American,” she says. “Those are the things that we're trying to populate as conversations within the movie without commentary on hierarchy. ” The fall from a great height that begins the film, sending Colt to hospital and self-exile, happens because T om Ryder, the star, insists Colt does yet another take of a dangerous stunt-apparently to satisfy his own vanity. This fictional situation is the kind of thing that probably happens in Hollywood. But so is Ryder's talk of having a sacred bond with Colt and writ-ing him into his contract when he stars in new films. Aside from taking falls for stars they double for, stunt performers often teach and train them, and the relationship can yield genuine friendships, not unlike the one Quentin T arantino depicted in Once upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) between Rick Dalton (Leonardo Di Cap-rio) and Cliff Booth (Leitch's old pal Brad Pitt). “Aaron T aylor-Johnson's character was about toxic celebrity,” Mc Cormick says, “but that bond is really tight. ” The Fall Guy is out now in UK cinemas and is reviewed on page 79opposition to the creeping influence of AI in film production. A contributing factor in last year's strike by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of T elevision and Radio Artists (Sag-Aftra) was a pro-posal by the Alliance of Motion Picture and T elevision Producers (AMPTP) to use 'digital replicas' of extras. Union chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said that the the proposal was that “back-ground performers should be able to be scanned, get one day's pay, and their com-panies should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want. ” (The AMPTP said its proposal was only for reuse within the picture for which the actor was employed. ) Anxiety over ways AI might be abused finds an outlet in The Fall Guy, in which Colt is scanned and the nefarious way in which his likeness is reused plays an important part in the unfolding plot. Viewers seeing Waddingham's enor-mously entertaining portrayal of producer Gail-notable for her disdain for those lower down the food chain-and the acute depiction of film-set and wider industry hierarchies in The Fall Guy might wonder whether Leitch and his team are trying to make a point about how the system is set up to treat workers. “We even have this weird term, people are 'below the line', these people are 'above the line'. It's awful when you really think about it,” Leitch says. Within the film, the hierarchical tendency is exaggerated: “A lot of it is heightened in the sense that we needed strong villains to create heightened reality, but not all of it is. There's Hollywood truth in it. ” David Leitch on his favourite stunt performer, Jackie Chan “When I go to the well for inspiration, I go to Jackie Chan and his legacy of stunts. There's so many gags and sequences he's done that are amazing. He's a student of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. The thing that's so compelling about Jackie is that it's always defining his character. His stunts are practical and they're real. Y ou always saw it and he showed in the credits how he did it, sometimes the mistakes he made and how much it hurt. That was super-compelling to me and inspiring for me as a stunt man. Also, he's a stunt man turned director. He's an inspiration to me as a whole, but when you look at his action, it's always 'underdog-hero, overcoming impossible odds'. The sequences are laced with character-defining moments. Sometimes these big action movies just do action for spectacle, but Jackie doing it and allowing his characters to get beat up and overcome things was really just masterful. ”'Even when we look at big superhero movies, you see dozens of stunt performers... As CGI improves, so the stunt department has a different relationship with it' Lessons from the master52 THE FALL GUY | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Six sublime cinema stunts Three Ages (1923) Buster Keaton said that if he couldn't make a stunt work without cutting he'd throw it out, but when he mistimed a jump between buildings in Three Ages, he decided to expand the gag instead of dumping it. After failing to grab the ledge, Buster continues to fall, crashing through awnings and grabbing a drainpipe that swings him into a window, where he skids across the floor and down a firefighter's pole. When he finally sits down to catch his breath, the firetruck he's resting on starts up and drives away. What began in failure developed into a beautifully constructed and hilariously inventive comic sequence. Shot in the early hours of a Sunday morning with a camera fixed to his bonnet, Claude Lelouch's high-speed drive across Paris (below) feels stunningly modern; a precursor to our era of Go Pro and dashcams. We spend eight minutes on Lelouch's Mercedes as he weaves through the streets at top speed, only hearing the roar of his engine and the screech of his tyres, and flinching when he takes a blind corner or narrowly skirts another vehicle. The director jumped numerous red lights and his Wheels on Meals (1984) Jackie Chan's fight scenes are customarily imaginative, energetic and dazzlingly athletic, but his face-off against Benny 'The Jet' Urquidez in Wheels on Meals (above) took things to another level. The speed and intensity of the action is breathtaking. The two men move with the precision of dancers but the blows they land have a bruising impact; Urquidez, a karate world champion rather than an actor, wasn't adept at pulling his punches in the usual fashion. T o watch Chan and Urquidez go head-to-head is to witness a masterclass in martial arts, stuntwork and choreography, although the most memorable moment in the bout wasn't planned-Urquidez throwing a kick with such velocity he extinguishes a row of candles. Stunts have been a crucial part of cinema's allure since its earliest days. Philip Concannon chooses just a few of the boldest, most difficult and most stunning stunt sequences in film history Claude Lelouch's flouting of traffic laws sparked outrage in France, but Rendezvous stands as an exhilarating expression of liberationrendezvous (1976) flouting of traffic laws sparked outrage in France, but Rendezvous (aka C'était un rendez-vous ) stands as an exhilarating expression of liberation. 53IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Police Story 3: Super Cop (1992) The Police Story films were primarily showcases for Jackie Chan's acrobatic stunts, but the third instalment was stolen by Michelle Yeoh, returning to the screen after a five-year hiatus. As Chan fights henchmen on a train, Yeoh (below) races alongside on a motorbike, negotiating tricky terrain before speeding up a steep incline and leaping on to the roof of the moving train. In a film packed with wild action-Quentin T arantino said it has “the greatest stunts ever filmed in any movie”-Yeoh's daring feat was the standout moment and it made her a star. Not bad for someone who had never ridden a motorbike before being asked to make this jump. T aking advantage of a construction-related gap in Florida's Seven Mile Bridge, James Cameron delivered a blockbuster sequence for the ages in the first movie to cost $100 million. As Jamie Lee Curtis fights Tia Carrere in an out-of-control limousine, Arnold Schwarzenegger follows in a helicopter to rescue his wife before the car crashes. Curtis performed much of this sequence herself, climbing on to the limo's roof as it veers wildly, and we see her hanging from the helicopter at the end of the scene (right), but credit is also due to stuntwoman Donna Keegan. She's the woman we see in an amazing aerial shot being plucked from the limo just as it plunges into the sea. Mission: Impossible- Fallout (2018) T om Cruise's obsession with performing outrageous stunts has become the chief selling point of the Mission: Impossible franchise. The Halo (high altitude, low opening) jump in Fallout (above) necessitated more than a hundred rehearsal jumps, and there was just a brief window of fading daylight in which this footage had to be captured. The sequence is thrilling and visually spectacular, but like all of the best Mission: Impossible set-pieces, it's also driven by narrative and character, deepening the tension between Cruise's Ethan Hunt and Henry Cavill's Walker. Mind you, if you think Cruise's work is impressive, just consider the operator who had to do the same jump, but backwards, and while pulling focus on his helmet-mounted camera. True Lies (1994) Jamie Lee Curtis performed much of this sequence, climbing on to the limo's roof as it veers wildly, and hanging from the helicopter54 THE FALL GUY | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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ALICE IN WONDERLAND Alice Rohrwacher is delighted to discover I live just up the road from her, in the bor-derlands between Umbria, Lazio and T us-cany. Delighted-and relieved. “If you live here, you get this area,” she enthuses. Thinking about it afterwards, I real-ise that Rohrwacher's excitement wasn't just about having saved herself a lesson in Etruscan history or the afterlife of the feudal system in this intensely rural part of Italy. It had to do with how people read her films. The Italian director, whose arrestingly dreamlike, mystic, graceful latest work, La chimera, features a trainful of ghosts, an archaeologist-psychic who searches for tombs with a water diviner's rod and a red thread that seems to connect this terres-trial world with another, is often termed a 'magic realist', heir to the great Ermanno Olmi. But the better you know the area where Rohrwacher grew up-an area she returned to in 2013 from Berlin to live and bring up her daughter-the more her magic realism looks like anthropology. Rohrwacher leapt to global attention with her second feature, The W onders, which won the Cannes Grand Prix in 2014 (a runner-up prize which invariably means it was the Palme d'Or candidate for some on the jury). Though she dismisses the idea that it is straight autobiography, this story of four sisters growing up on a honey farm somewhere north of Viterbo, with a Flemish father and an Italian mother who fled their respective cities to live on and with the land, corresponds pretty closely with the bare facts of the direc-tor's upbringing. She grew up on a honey farm in Castel Giorgio, north of Viterbo, with a German father and Italian mother who were influenced by the 1970s ecologi-cal movement. She had one sister rather than three-Alba, today one of Italy's most fêted actors, who, in a neat generational switch, played the mother in The W onders. “The film is set in my family's world and the characters are inspired by my family,” Rohrwacher explains, “but the story is an invention. And my dad says the father isn't like him at all. ” Rohrwacher has absorbed a compli-cated, critical affection for rural Italy from her countercultural rural upbringing. From the cheesy TV show presented by Monica Bellucci's faded starlet in The W onders, with its crass trivialisation of rural legends, char-acters and produce, to the duped peasants of Rohrwacher's 2018 follow-up, Happy as Lazzaro, who are tricked by unscrupulous landowners into believing that sharecrop-ping still exists, to the genial yet essentially vulgar, money-obsessed tomb-robbers of La chimera, the three films of what she recognises to be a loose, unintended tril-ogy, all present a damaged, degraded arca-dia-albeit one in which moments of genu-ine magic and wonder can still be found. “I turned around one day and saw my footsteps had made a pattern,” Rohrwacher observes of the three films that followed Corpo celeste -an edgy com-ing-of-age tale that was her feature film debut in 2011. That pattern, she believes, has to do with “who objects belong to, who the land belongs to, who memory belongs to”. In La chimera, the objects are Etruscan grave goods buried under the land, which were once protected by collective cultural memory. The film is set in the 1980s, a decade when tomb-robbing increased exponentially in the region known to his-torians as Etruria-the heartland of the Etruscans, who dominated central Italy from the eighth to the third century BC. “Being a tombarolo [grave-robber] was more profitable back then than being a drug dealer,” Rohrwacher points out. “Something got broken in those years. Previously, even the domestic oven was a sacred object... then, somehow, the aura surrounding things disappeared. ” The film narrates the return of a shabby archaeologist-shaman, played by British actor Josh O'Connor, to a dilapidated tufa-built village, where he reconnects with the Alice Rohrwacher's enchanting tale of tomb-robbers and magic, La chimera, offers an insider's portrait of the culture and landscape of the region in central Italy where she grew up. She talks about the unifying power of film, the importance of valuing the past and why capitalism is destined to end up in a museum BY LEE MARSHALL 'When I was a child we were told not to go into the woods because that's where the tomb-robbers were. Y ou'd see these men outside bars in town, still all dirty from digging. I was terrified of them' OPPOSITE Alice Rohrwacher 57IMAGE: BRIGITTE LACOMBE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
posse of local twentysomethings he fell out with years before. They are the ones left behind by the exodus of their more talented or desperate peers to Rome or the industrial north. Hanging around in bars, doing the rounds of country fairs and dances, losing no chance to cross-dress-up for feasts of misrule like Carnival or Epiph-any, they reject the hardscrabble rural life of their elders. Money comes in-in the form of grubby, much-fingered lira notes -from a trade they're not even particularly good at: despoiling the Etruscan tombs that pepper the area and selling the vases and other grave goods they find to dealers in illicit antiquities. Asked about the genesis of the idea, Rohrwacher tells me that as a child she was surrounded by more or less embroi-dered stories that centred on the exploits of these tombaroli. “We were told not to go into the woods because that's where the tomb-robbers were,” she explains. “Y ou'd see these men sitting outside bars in town, still all dirty from digging. I was terrified of them. ” Not just because they were on the wrong side of the law, she explains, but because she saw them as “contaminated by their work, which was stealing things from dead souls”. Later, the director decided to “befriend them, which is something I try to do with anything that scares me, to work out why it scares me”. And over the course of vari-ous encounters, Rohrwacher realised that while the tombaroli liked to depict them-selves as romantic brigands, they were in fact “perfect products of a materialistic, capitalist society”, one that believes that “everything can be bought and sold”. Rohrwacher tells me that she often begins pursuing a sub-ject without knowing if it's going to end up as a film. With La chimera, she was sure of the 'where' of the story and also the 'when'. What she didn't yet have was a central character who could give a backbone to her mass of research. “I felt real compassion for the tombaroli who thought of themselves as outlaws when they were in fact slaves of the prevailing power system,” she says, “but to turn this into a film, I needed a guide. ” Arthur, O'Connor's character, was, the writer-director says, inspired by “all those young Romantics who came to Italy on the Grand T our and fell in love with a ruin or a fresco”. One of the last in a long line was D. H. Lawrence, whose post-humously published travelogue Etruscan Places (1932)-which praises the Etruscans as sensuous defenders of creativity, peace, gender equality and the life force against the unimaginative, militaristic, patriar-chal Romans-was also a strong influence on Rohrwacher. But in La chimera, Arthur is an anach-ronism, an inglese in a crumpled linen suit who lives in a shack outside the town walls, half hermit, half pariah, with myste-rious tomb-divining powers that drain his energy and cause him to fall into a trance. “He's a romantic hero in a world that no longer has anything romantic about it, so he's something of a ridiculous hero, one in whom grandeur and squalor are all mixed up,” Rohrwacher says. She had initially been thinking of making Arthur much older, but when she met O'Connor-who had written her a fan letter after seeing Happy as Lazzaro -she recalibrated the role. “I realised that Arthur could only be him,” she says. “Josh is an incredible person, a man out of time, there's something ageless about him. ” Arthur's love interests are twofold. One is a mysterious lost fiancée, Beniamina, played by Yile Vianello-the then-ado-lescent protagonist of Corpo celeste -who appears in a string of dream or trance sequences. The other is Italia, a cheerful but put-upon Portuguese single mother who is, in theory, studying opera-singing under the imperious Flora-a splendidly crabby Isabella Rossellini-but is in fact used as a skivvy by this faded aristocrat and her bevy of needy daughters. Stuck for an actress for the role, Rohrwacher remembered being blown away by Carol Duarte in Karïm Ainouz's The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão (2019). One Skype call later, she knew she had found her Italia. “Carol is a tightrope walker,” she says. “She is completely the character she plays. Y ou keep thinking she's going to fall and no, there she is, still on her feet. ” Alongside these working actors, the director has fielded a ragtag bunch of non-professionals, cast locally-a feature of all her films. “I see cinema as a great oppor-tunity to connect people who would never meet in real life,” Rohrwacher says, adding with a laugh: “It's even better if they start dating. No, but seriously-if I can make it so that my plumber, Gian Piero Capretto, who has an important part in the film, gets to hang out with Josh O'Connor, I'm bringing different worlds together, and that gives me a real buzz. ” The mix, she believes, works in both directions: “Profes-sional actors are forced to take a big step in the direction of the heart, and non-profes-sionals embrace the game of make-believe, which they're often ashamed of playing in real life. The pro actors are there to tell them, 'Don't worry: this is something grown-ups can do too. '” Actors recur in Rohrwacher's films- most notably her sister Alba, who has a small but vivid role in La chimera as a high-class fence who sells on the tomb-robbers' finds to rich collectors. But the director's longest-lasting professional relation-ships are with her Italian producer, Carlo Cresta-Dina, and her French cinematog-rapher, Hélène Louvart, who has shot all of the director's films. “By now Hélène and I have a kind of mystical rapport,” Rohrwacher explains of the partnership, “or to be more accurate, a philosophical one, in that we're always using a film as an excuse to search for something that lies beyond the film. Hélène is brilliant at using camera movement to get inside characters, her lens becomes an actor in its own right. ” T ogether with Louvart, the director decided to shoot La chimera on three different photographic film formats. For Rohrwacher, this was “not an aes-thetic choice, it came from the desire to embed the archaeology of cinema in a story about archaeology”. The history of cinema, she points out, is intimately con-nected with analogue film, but film today has become, like Etruscan grave goods in the 1980s, a sacred object that is losing its aura. “So we decided to conserve in La chimera all the great formats of the last century-painterly 35mm; narrative Super 16, which carries all those French New Wave associations; and an 'amateur' format, 16mm, in order to create this archaeological weave. ” Format is not the only way in which La chimera digs down through the strata of film history. There are sped-up Keystone Cops-style passages, stop-motion anima-tion sequences, characters addressing the camera like storytelling troubadors (there's a real troubadour, or cantastorie, too, played by a Calabrian folk singer), and bridging footage of swarming flocks of birds, allud-ing to the Etruscan practice of using the 'I wanted to make this a playful film, despite the seriousness of the theme-which is our relationship with what lies beyond, with those who have passed' 58 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
as she is of women's-think of the sensitive way in which, in The W onders, she intro-duces and develops the story of Martin, the silent German juvenile offender who is sent to work on the family's honey farm by social workers who still hew to the persistent myth that the countryside holds the cure to urban ills. However, the director also likes to upend and question gender stereotypes. In Happy as Lazzaro, the eponymous hero is an androgynous holy fool, alternately loved and derided by both men and women, while in La chi-mera, Alba's character Spartacus, hard as nails in a violent yellow trouser suit, is the film's only truly macho character. In scenes set against the background of Italy's 6 January Epiphany celebrations, when, as the director says, “until at least the end of the 1990s, men who were locked up in their prison of maleness would never-theless dress up as the Befana witch, or their own provocative interpretation of the Befana witch,” Rohrwacher was, she recounts, exploring her fascination with the way that “when straight men dress up as women, it makes you realise how they see women. ” Asked why she returned to her home town of Castel Giorgio, near Orvieto, after living in T urin, Portugal and Berlin, the director answers simply that she knew, at a certain point, that “This was the place I needed to be, maybe because living in the area that the Etruscans chose to live in is important to me. ” This is not just to do, with their “serene rapport with the after-life”, she explains, but also because it pro-vides a daily reminder that, if a good epoch like theirs can come to an end, so too can a messed-up one like ours. “Archaeology teaches us that civilisations die, that capital-ism will one day end up in a museum, that my life doesn't belong to me but is part of a stratification that will continue when I'm no longer around. And you know what?”- she says, with a rosy smile that not for the first time wrong-foots me-“I actually find that quite a comforting thought. ” La chimera is released in UK cinemas on 10 May and is reviewed on page 67patterns of birds in flight to predict future events-one of many things the Romans stole from them. “I wanted to make this a playful film,” Rohrwacher says, “despite the seriousness of the theme-which is our relationship with what lies beyond, with those who have passed. ” One thing that leaps out as the end credits roll is the sheer number of women in the film crew-by no means the norm in the Italian industry, outside the costume and make-up departments. In addition to Louvart, they include experienced editor Nelly Quettier and Rohrwacher's regular production designer Emita Frigato. “It's more a question of destiny than a rational decision,” Rohrwacher admits. “It's just that the most capable and incredible people I've met along the way have been women, so I try as much as possible to work with them. ” In her films, Rohrwacher is as supple and perceptive a narrator of men's stories ABOVE Josh O'Connor (front) with his band of tombaroli 59 LA CHIMERA | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
At one point in Alice Rohrwacher's La chimera, Josh O'Connor's brooding English grave-robber grips a makeshift divining rod with both hands and slowly, reverently, walks through the local T uscan wood, both actively seeking inspiration and submitting himself to its vagaries. It could almost be a metaphor for O'Connor's approach to role selection: it's hard to predict where he'll go next, or to discern what exactly attracts him to the parts he chooses, but he has a knack for striking gold-a gruff Y orkshire farmer in Francis Lee's indie drama God's Own Country (2017), Prince Charles in the third and fourth seasons of The Crown (2019-20), an American tennis pro slugging it out against his former best friend in Luca Guadagnino's deft, delirious Challengers. After seeing Happy as Lazzaro, O'Connor knew he wanted to work with Rohrwacher but was told by his agent, “Get in line. And good luck trying to get in touch with her-she lives on the side of a hill. ” F an letters he sent never reached her but after seeing G od's Own Country Rohrwacher contacted O'Connor and ended up reimagining the tombarolo role (originally intended for an older actor) around him. Over a drink at a bar in Soho, O'Connor describes how he was intrigued during their first meeting when Rohrwacher asked him: “'If we were to cut the world in half and take a cross-section of it, what would each generation have left behind?' The Greek temples, the Etruscan treasures, shells from the wars. Then plastic was invented. I'm not sure what the 60s would have left-maybe acid tabs? What are we leaving behind now-vapes and electric toothbrushes? The Etruscans buried themselves with their worldly possessions, and that's what they cherished. ” Arjun Sajip: Which other directors have received Josh O'Connor fan letters? Josh O'Connor: When I was 17, I read this book by Paul Auster called Mr. V ertigo [1994]. I still think someone somewhere should make a movie of it. As I was reading it, I was like, “Oh my goodness, if Tim Burton had his hands on this movie... ” So at 17 years old, I wrote a letter to Tim Burton saying, “Y ou should read this book and make it into a film. ” I was like, “There's a part for Helena Bonham Carter, there's a part for Johnny Depp. ” And then there was this one boy, the main boy-who could that be? How did you immerse yourself in the role of Arthur the tombarolo ? We'd just come out of lockdown. I was living in New Y ork, feeling very homesick, a little displaced. My grandmother had passed away and I was struggling with that, trying to comprehend how to exist in a world that is missing a part of itself. That's what Arthur's about. He's trying to understand how to feel the void, how to join his fiancée who passed away. In terms of learning the language, I was in New Y ork and spent three months with [the language training company] Berlitz. Y ou arrive at the DOWN AND DIRTY Josh O'Connor, the star of Alice Rohrwacher's La chimera, has established himself as one of the most sought-after young British actors, with a remarkable range of projects under his belt. Here he talks about what drew him and Rohrwacher together, what a role leaves behind, and the joy of getting filthy BY ARJUN SAJIP60 LA CHIMERA | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
● ACCATTONE PIER PAOLO PASOLINI, 1961 ● VAGABOND AGNÈS VARDA, 1985 (PICTURED ABOVE) “I'm really attached to these two works about characters who walk towards an inevitable destiny. Both films are like medieval miracle plays, in that the protagonists have no power to resist a fate that is already written. They work via a series of tableaux that are necessary stages. When I started to imagine Arthur, I wanted to convey the same feeling: Arthur is on a train of destiny: he descends, he rises, he descends again, he stops at the abandoned station where Italia lives... but then he follows the tracks towards his fate. This is stronger than the individual ego, the 'hero's journey' we've all become used to. My hero isn't in control of his story. It doesn't belong to him. ” ● JOURNEY TO ITALY ROBERTO ROSSELLINI, 1954 ● ROMA FEDERICO FELLINI, 1972 (ABOVE) “These are two cinematic classics, but also two great films about how the past and present interact. In each one there's a memorable scene that shows the ancient world gazing on the world of today. In La chimera, I quote the scene from Roma where the newly discovered frescos literally disappear as they look at us. But in my film it's nature that disappears, the birds that disappear. A bond between man and nature has been broken. ” ● RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK STEVEN SPIELBERG, 1981 (ABOVE) ● GO FOR IT (NATI CON LA CAMICIA) E. B. CLUCHER, 1983 “Both were very popular commercial films. I couldn't fail to nod in the direction of Spielberg's first Indiana Jones movie, which created the myth of 'heroic archaeology'. The second is simply a formulaic T erence Hill and Bud Spencer buddy caper, but we watched it as we were assembling the film because of the showdown scene where they're suddenly in the middle of the sea-which is what happens in La chimera, when they're all suddenly on Spartacus's boat. ”'What Alice is really interested in, and what I'm really interested in, is how our attitudes have changed over time. We can't find any evidence that Etruscans built homes to live in, but they built tombs. It's like they didn't build anything to live comfortably in, but they did build stuff to die comfortably in' studio and from 8am until 6pm you speak only Italian, and the tutor speaks to you only in Italian. Which was brilliant but hard. One of the big discoveries when I got to Italy was that when the plumbers, electricians and non-professional actors that Alice hires from her village were suddenly talking to me, I was like, “Lads, I don't know what you're saying. ” Even though I'd been speaking in Italian for three months. So then you pick up the dialect. It was such a joy. Several characters in the film, including Arthur, look remarkably Etruscan. Yeah. There's that early scene where I'm talking about that girl on the train, saying that she has a very Etruscan nose. I remember I did this movement [traces his finger from the middle of his forehead down to the tip of his nose ], and Alice said, “Josh, don't highlight your nose-it makes you look very Etruscan. It sounds like you're talking about yourself. ” But I did it anyway. Also, my costume, which deteriorates throughout the film, seemed like it was becoming part of the ground. I lost lots of weight and I grew a beard. I feel like I did become this Etruscan relic. Also, I was living in my camper van, so most of the time I stank. I was washing myself in Lake Bolsena. It was absolute bliss. People often misconstrue [this] as some sort of Method acting. It wasn't, it was like a fucking holiday. I loved it. It was an excuse to be dirty and filthy all the time. Did you meet any tombaroli ? It's so illegal I can't say who they are, but there are real tombaroli in the film. So there you go. See if you can figure out which ones! The tombaroli are normal people. What Alice is really interested in, and what I'm really interested in, is how our attitudes have changed over time. We can't find any evidence that Etruscans built homes to live in, but they built tombs. It's like they didn't build anything to live comfortably in, but they did build stuff to die comfortably in. And I always found that very interesting. For them, the afterlife, the stuff you can't see, held more importance than what we exist in now. We're so far from that today. Y ou've just worked with Rohrwacher and Guadagnino. Is there something that draws you to Italian filmmakers?Well, Luca is a fantastic director, Alice is a fantastic director, so in some ways it's just a coincidence. But I've always been a big fan of Italian film. Accattone [Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1961] and The Flowers of St. Francis [Roberto Rossellini, 1950] are two of my favourite movies. But also, it's the way the Italians make films. I sometimes wonder: what if we had an Alice Rohrwacher? She spends six months shooting, on film, with a huge cast of professional and non-professional actors and an entire crew she's got to keep available for half a year. That's expensive. And the Italian film industry backs her fully, time after time. I don't know if we would do that here or in America. Did you watch any films in preparation for La chimera and Challengers ? I rewatched Accattone for La chimera. I felt that the way Accattone holds himself was quite Arthur-esque, or vice versa. Alice sent me a homemade book with over 200 films to watch. At the time I was like, “I'm gonna watch every one,” but obviously I couldn't. I am making my way through them, though. There's all sorts in there. With Challengers, it was more straightforward; I knew what I was doing. The Social Network [2011] and Superbad [2007] were two films I drew on. But beyond that, nothing. The roles you take on are so diverse. Do you think there's a single thing that unites all your characters? I don't think so. People have asked me, “What are you trying to figure out about the fragile nature of masculinity?” And for a while I thought, “Oh, that's what's leading me to all these roles. I'm trying to figure out what the male problem is. ” But I don't think that's true. It's been really funny having La chimera and Challengers come out at the same time. These two roles could not be further apart. Though there are some similarities. I think they both have a bit of anger in them. The way I see characters, particularly after having played them, is like I leave a little bit with them at the end of each project, and a little bit of them stays with me. So I've got this collection of souls that I care very deeply about, but I can't really group them together. Challengers is out now in UK cinemas and is reviewed on page 77Cine archaeology Alice Rohrwarcher on six films that inspired La chimera. 'Maybe the only one that's missing,' she says, 'is Mario Monicelli's wonderful 1958 caper movie I soliti ignoti, which kept coming into my head as I was directing the tombaroli !' 61 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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88 BOOKS A lively, scrappy survey of race in film, Kes in BFI Classics and Roger Lewis's bold and bitchy study of Burton and T aylor 86 WIDER SCREEN Y oko Ono's moving-image work, which is on display in a major retrospective of her work in London, highlights her provocative, experimental sensibilities R V WSE IE 80 DVD & BLU-RAY L 'Amour fou, Raging Bull, Misunderstood, That Cold Day in the Park, Quick Millions, The Lavender Hill Mob, Patrick, Dogfight, Behind Convent W alls, I W as Born, But... and more 64 FILMS Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger, Hit Man, La chimera, Civil W ar, A House in Jerusalem, Rosalie, Nezouh, Riddle of Fire, The Beast, Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg, Omen, Challengers, Here, The Fall Guy and more | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
BOILING POINTE Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (1948)Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger UK/USA/FRANCE 2024 CERTIFICATE 12A 132M 55S DIRECTOR DAVID HINTON PRODUCERS MATTHEW WELLS NICK VARLEY CINEMATOGRAPHY RONAN KILLEEN EDITED BY MARGARIDA CARTAXO STUART DAVIDSON MUSIC ADRIAN JOHNSTON PRESENTED BY MARTIN SCORSESE SYNOPSIS A documentary celebrating the work of British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, renowned at their mid-century peak as The Archers. Narrated by Martin Scorsese, it mixes the duo's career history with Scorsese's own critical appreciation of the films, insights into their influence on his work, and testimony to his friendship with Powell in his later years. REVIEWED BY NICK BRADSHAW No filmography is an island, but the peak works of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger so tower over British cinema that they might constitute a loftier realm. For some years, too, they were shrouded in fog. Powell's critical shaming and shun-ning after his native industry's rejection of Peeping T om in 1960 is well-rehearsed, but by that decade many of the pair's joint glories, from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) to The Red Shoes (1948), had been recut then spurned, left to neglect and decay. Yet however tattered their form, their spirit would not stay corked. As Martin Scorsese recounts near the beginning of this heartfelt tribute and testimony, the films' very devaluation helped them reach new shores: at a time when Hollywood would not license its own wares to US television, leaving a gap filled by cheap imports, a very young and film-hungry Scorsese was peering at grubby, monochrome, recut scenes from Powell's co-directed The Thief of Bagdad (1940) and more on his family TV and recognising magic. The older Scorsese, patron saint of film restoration with his World Cinema Foundation-which would help resurrect Blimp and Red Shoes -has hardly been a lone polisher of the Powell and Press-burger lamp in the years since. Critics, scholars, curators-and Derek Jarman -began reviving and reclaiming the films in the 1970s; Gavin Millar presented a 1981 BBC Arena documentary, 'A Pretty British Affair', when the pair were made Bafta fellows; David Hinton marked the first volume of Powell's autobiography, A Life in Movies, in 1986 with a South Bank Show portrait, rich with Powell's play-fully staged recollections. Hinton has also directed this new film, which bor-rows footage freely from its forerunners; 64FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
When asked what drew him to Pressburger, Powell doesn't pause: 'It was a beautiful mind I responded to. ' He recalls his introduction to the free-thinking writer at a script meeting: 'I wasn't going to let him get away in a hurry. 'Q&A David Hinton DIRECTOR BY KATIE MCCABE Did you and Martin Scorsese ever differ in your interpretations of Powell and Pressburger's films and how you want to present them? When we started, Marty and Thelma [Schoonmaker, Scorsese's editor and Michael Powell's widow] were both occupied with Killers of the Flower Moon. We did a lot of initial work without them. But once they finished Killers, they turned their attention to the documentary. And it all became very intensely collaborative... I was friends with Michael, so we all have this incredibly personal involvement in it all. One of the first things they wanted to do was make the documentary a lot longer... They would be saying to me constantly, “Oh, we can't do this documentary without this clip from Gone to Earth [1950]”... A lot of it was me trying to stop the film becoming an uncontrollable length [ laughs ]. The film captures Powell's mischievous spirit; Pressburger seems more mysterious. What is your sense of him? Well, to caricature it... Michael's the showman, whereas Emeric was always much more the quiet one, I guess. More withdrawn. Nevertheless, Michael could never have made those films without Emeric. He deepens the storytelling... Emeric was the genius of story and structure. The documentary discusses Powell's Peeping T om [1960]. What's your relationship with that film? The main fascination for me about it is putting at the heart of the story an unforgivable character, then asking the audience to empathise... [Emeric Pressburger's 1966 novel] The Glass Pearls does exactly the same thing... The central character is a kind of Nazi war criminal. And here's Emeric, a Jew who has had to )ee from the Nazis, asking you to identify with, and sympathise with, this character. I see this quality in both Michael and Emeric, this radical compassion, where they are saying: “Y ou've got to try and understand even people who seem to be unforgivable. ”but though the title elides it, the film sits with Scorsese's own A Personal Jour-ney with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995) and My V oyage to Italy (1999) as another of his incisive first-person dis-quisitions on film history. Indeed, it's his most subjective yet, not only narrated by Scorsese direct to camera but laced with direct illustrations of Powell and Press-burger's in)uence on his own work as he recounts the progress of his relationship to Powell in particular, from fan to aco-lyte, mentee, friend, even matchmaker. The film is co-edited (along with Mar-garida Cartaxo and Stuart Davidson) by an uncredited Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese's longtime collaborator and Powell's widow. It's a movie-family affair and a eulogy: to the qualities, the convic-tions and passions that elevated Powell and Pressburger's cinema and raise us with it-love being the foremost. If the taciturn Pressburger is less vis-ible, his traces are evident in the movies, not least their bravura story conceits: ragtag Nazis in Canada showing their true colours in 49th Parallel (1941); war-time pilgrims finding succour in the Eng-lish landscape in A Canterbury Tale (1944); a comatose air force pilot caught between heaven and love in A Matter of Life and Death (1946). When asked what drew him to Pressburger, Powell doesn't pause: “It was a beautiful mind I responded to. ” He recalls his introduction to the free-think-ing writer at a script meeting: “I wasn't going to let him get away in a hurry. ” Even after their reluctant separation following Ill Met by Moonlight in 1957, admitting their ambitions had diverged, Pressburger was still crediting love for their art as the glue holding together their achieve-ments-they were “amateurs in a world of professionals”. Scorsese notes how A Matter of Life and Death 's “vision of renewal and love” (lead-ing to the even headier passion plays of Black Narcissus, 1947, and The Red Shoes ) jarred with post-war film noir cynicism, and posits a shift from wartime ideal-ism to peacetime realism as the cause of their fall from grace. The war had been the defining event for these filmmakers, giving their work depth and purpose: from defining who we fight in Contra-band (1940) and 49th Parallel, and how we fight in One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942), to the elucidations-in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and onwards - of higher values that needed defending. Pressburger called A Canterbury Tale and its follow-up, the storm-whipped Hebri-dean romance I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), episodes in their “crusade against materialism”; Scorsese concurs, noting their sermonising and spiritual-mystical qualities, not to mention the latter's sheer joy in losing yourself. (Scorsese recom-mends it for special date communion: “I know I'm not the only one to do that. ”) They took the name The Archers-a shared authorial credit even more curi-ous then than now-after their success with 49th Parallel, which won Pressburger a screenplay Oscar. I was reminded how, after the success of Nausicaä of the V alley of the Wind (1984), Miyazaki Hayao and T akahata Isao set up Studio Ghibli in Japan, another artist-led enterprise underwriting the independence of two risk-taking magicians and spirit-workers. Would The Archers have gone farther with a devoted producer like Ghibli's Suzuki T oshio at their back? For their golden years they had the confidence of their patron Arthur Rank-until he saw The Red Shoes ; after which they struggled to find benefactors in austere post-war Britain. But they still grew their stock company, in front of and behind the camera. Made in England devotes a sec-tion to Alfred Junge's feats of production design on, especially, the stairway to heaven in A Matter of Life and Death and the studio-staged Himalayas of Black Nar-cissus, though there's no mention of Hein Heckroth, Junge's fellow German émigré and successor on The Red Shoes onwards. In his Arena programme, Millar hailed “films which seemed bizarrely foreign in their imaginative flair and flavour”. In what England were they 'made'? We see Powell filming Age of Consent (1969) in Aus-tralia (there's no space for other late minor works), and he also filmed in Canada and his beloved Scotland. Clearly Powell and Pressburger's England was a centrifugal one: curious, generous, hybrid, meta-physical. Scorsese demurs at the sugges-tion they were English romantics: “I don't know what that means. ” In fact, in the South Bank Show Powell rejected the term romantic: like Blimp, he counts himself “honourable, puzzled, innocent”. (The immigrant Pressburger, in this analogy, brings the outsider affection of Blimp's sparring partner, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff. ) Scorsese runs a clip from his The Age of Innocence (1993), drawing on Blimp 's interrogation of idealism and the frustrated desire and regret of experience. “The longer I live, the stronger grows my sense of what the characters are feeling,” he says. “Growing up, growing old, and eventually having to let go. ” Until then, we can cling to these movie dreams. In UK cinemas now 65 FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
CLEANING UP Adria Arjona as Maddy, Glen Powell as Gary Hit Man CERTIFICATE 15 115M 5S DIRECTOR RICHARD LINKLATER PRODUCED BY RICHARD LINKLATER MIKE BLIZZARD MICHAEL COSTIGAN JASON BATEMAN GLEN POWELL SCREENPLAY RICHARD LINKLATER GLEN POWELL BASED ON AN ARTICLE BY SKIP HOLLANDSWORTH CINEMATOGRAPHY SHANE F. KELLY EDITOR SANDRA ADAIR PRODUCTION DESIGN BRUCE CURTIS MUSIC GRAHAM REYNOLDS COSTUME DESIGN JULIANA HOFFPAUIR CAST GLEN POWELL ADRIA ARJONA AUSTIN AMELIO SYNOPSIS Gary, a philosophy professor and tech enthusiast with a part-time gig for the police, is asked to stand in as a hitman on a sting operation. He turns out to be a natural and continues assuming elaborate 'assassin' identities to root out potential killers. But things go awry when Gary ends up falling for one of his marks. REVIEWED BY ADAM NAYMAN “All pie is good pie,” says Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), the hero-or is he?-of Richard Linklater's deceptively flaky new comedy. What this agreeable mantra, repeated at regular intervals across Hit Man's running time, fails to specify is that, regardless of flavour, the pie in question is probably laced with arsenic. Loosely based on a true story-like Linklater's Bernie (2011), with which it would make an instructive double bill- Hit Man is a screwball docudrama about a nerdy New Orleans philosophy profes-sor whose sideline as a police-surveillance tech mutates into a series of flamboyant masquerades impersonating contract killers. It's an unlikely job, but somebody's got to do it: after a more experienced and streetwise colleague is suspended, it falls to Gary to get into character and coax suspected would-be murderers into incriminating themselves on tape, after which he's free to traipse back to his civil-ian existence and spoon-feed Nietzsche to uncomprehending undergrads. In terms of tone, Hit Man takes its cues from its chipper, magnetically hand-some leading man, who also co-wrote the screenplay. Powell's conception of his character as a good-natured but self-con-scious cipher-one who's named his cats Id and Ego, and who harbours an itch to inhabit skin thicker and coarser than his own-fits perfectly with the movie's wider exploration of the construction of the self. Gary's undercover excursions to diners and skeet-shooting ranges in a series of absurd personas are, by and large, hilari-ous; the joke is less that the character dis-appears into his various disguises than that his essential nebbishness is always poking through. Imagine Peter Sellers subtly smudging his own chameleonic qualities, and you have some idea of what Powell is doing, and how skilfully. The reason Gary's marks can't see through the subterfuge is that they're mesmerised by their own murderous motivations. The procession of small-town folks contemplating paid assas-sination as a solution to their problems somehow evokes both Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu (1939)-everyone has their reasons-and Kurosawa Kiyoshi's Cure (1997), with its intimations of everyday bloodlust unleashed and absolved via a little bit of positive reinforcement. During a courtroom montage, Gary is referred to by defence lawyers as a preda-tor and an opportunist, and Linklater, who may be more interested in thought experiments than any other working film-maker, invites us to ponder the accuracy of those accusations. Ethical judgments notwithstanding, Gary is good at what he does; the only potential perp who really trips him up is Maddy (Adria Arjona), whose plan to terminate her abusive husband seems rooted in self-preservation, and who ends up falling for Gary's taciturn alter ego Ron after he convinces her to call the whole thing off. Maddy's belief that she's dating some kind of walking contradic-tion-a hitman with a heart of gold-is played for gentle (and erotic) farce, and while there are maybe one too many male-fantasy sequences here, Arjona makes it clear that the character is in touch with her own desires. The noirish tint of her plotline eventually darkens and, after a rollicking middle section, Hit Man becomes pressurised as a thriller-albeit one in which matters of life and death take a back seat to questions of identity. The last act features scenes unlike anything Linklater's filmed before, and his sense of control never wavers; he's so locked into the material-and the ideas rattling around inside it-that he can integrate whimsy and morbidity at a molecular level. The result is a movie whose surface charm belies a pervasive -and finally persuasive-sense of callous-ness, a quality not usually in Linklater's humanist repertoire but which gives this strange and multilayered confection a refreshingly bitter aftertaste. In UK cinemas from 24 May and on Netflix from 7 June 66FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
DIG DAY AFTERNOON Josh O'Connor (top) as Arthur La Chimera ITALY/FRANCE/SWITZERLAND 2023 CERTIFICATE 15 131M 25S DIRECTOR ALICE ROHRWACHER PRODUCED BY CARLO CRESTO-DINA PAOLO DEL BROCCO ALEXANDRA HENOCHSBERG PIERRE-FRANÇOIS PIET GREGORY GAJOS AMEL SOUDANI MICHELA PINI OLGA LAMONTANARA WRITTEN BY ALICE ROHRWACHER STORY ALICE ROHRWACHER PIETRO MARCELLO CARMELA COVINO SCREENPLAY COLLABORATORS CARMELA COVINO MARCO PETTENELLO STORY COLLABORATORS MAURIZIO BRAUCCI SABRINA CUSANO CINEMATOGRAPHY HÉLÈNE LOUVART EDITOR NELLY QUETTIER ART DIRECTION EMITA FRIGATO COSTUME DESIGN LOREDANA BUSCEMI CAST JOSH O'CONNOR CAROL DUARTE VINCENZO NEMOLATO SYNOPSIS T uscany, the 1980s. Arthur, an English archaeologist with a gift for locating ancient gravesites, rejoins his band of tombaroli (grave robbers) after a stint in prison. But as they resume plundering precious artefacts from Etruscan tombs, Arthur becomes increasingly disturbed by their actions, and by visions of his missing girlfriend. REVIEWED BY JESSICA KIANG Weeds grow through the cracks in every pavement in Alice Rohrwacher's way-ward, wondrous La chimera. They twine through the flagstones outside the crum-bling T uscan manor where Flora (Isabella Rossellini) awaits the return of a daughter who disappeared, imperiously ignoring the visiting chatter of her four others, who did not. They bunch between the sleepers of the railway tracks outside the abandoned Riparbella station house, trip-ping up the little kids who play on them. Just like the ragged life that bursts and floods the frames of Hélène Louvart's wild, windswept photography, the weeds of La chimera won't be tamed, reaching up into the sunlight from the cool, dark underground. Which is also, of course, where the dead live. Connecting the realm of the dead and the land of the living is Arthur (Josh O'Connor) a young Englishman in an increasingly grimy linen suit, who seems to have settled and sprouted here: a seed carried in on the breeze. It is the early 1980s and Arthur is rudely awoken from a train-lulled dream of his gone-girlfriend Beniamina, Flora's daughter, by the con-ductor asking for his ticket. He is return-ing to Flora's region after a stint in jail for grave-robbing. Arthur and his gang of local tombaroli have for some years made their living using Arthur's uncanny gift for dowsing to locate and plunder ancient Etruscan burial sites, fencing the booty to a shady dealer known as Spartaco. He immediately falls back into his old tombarolo habits. Though Rohrwacher sometimes films these raids in the knocka-bout fast-motion of a silent one-reeler, Arthur is worn-down and heartsick, as frayed as the cuffs of his suit. Despite the unqualified faith of his rapscallion gang, and the troubadour who sings songs about him like he's a folk hero, every new find seems to take more out of him, leav-ing him stubbly and scowling-imagine an antiheroic Indiana Jones as played by Elliott Gould and written by T. S. Eliot. (O'Connor performs one of the film's many miracles in making such an improb-able character feel real). Only in Flora's delighted presence does he relax and smile-“Arthur, my only friend!” she calls him-perhaps because, while he's lying to her about Beniamina's fate, he can lie to himself too. But it's also at Flora's that he meets Italia (Carol Duarte), Flora's “tone-deaf ” singing student, who is daffy and gorgeous in a Miranda July sort of way and who reminds Arthur of the pleasures of topside life, despite the down-ward lure of dreams in which Beniamina's red dress unravels and the dead ask him for all their stuff back. No description of what happens in La chimera can adequately convey what happens in La chimera, which feels like watching an occurrence of ancient magic from the point of view of the spell. Arthur's gradual awakening to the fact that his life-style is built on a desecration of the very things he loves gives the film its structure. But Rohrwacher's real story here-split-ting the difference between the earthiness of The W onders (2014) and the whimsical-ity of Happy as Lazzaro (2018)-is the story of the T uscan ground and the beautiful secrets that sleep beneath our feet. In a transcendent sequence-modelled on the catacombs scene in Fellini's Roma (1972)-Arthur makes his biggest find yet, buried incongruously in the shadow of a massive power plant. It is a long-forgotten shrine that has lain undisturbed in black-ness for millennia. Before Arthur and his raiders of the lost dark enter from above, Rohrwacher breaks a rule: she grants us a privileged look inside, at the silent grace of its white marble statue, at the votive offer-ings left by the pre-Christian devout and the brightly painted frescoes of animals that adorn the walls. The moment the gang breaks through, a rush of air steals the colour from the murals. Not even Arthur has seen what we have, though he implicitly understands the tragic paradox. So many inestimable treasures that we look upon with awe have lost half their beauty to the looking. Rohrwacher is fascinated by the ran-sacked archaeology of Arthur's psyche. He simultaneously worships history, preserv-ing a little cache of artefacts of no value to anyone but himself, while also destroying it for money. So perhaps the only perfectly ironic ending is for him to become a part of history: through the songs being sung about his exploits; through the way his story grows within the crevices of Italy's long, striated past; and through La chi-mera itself, a joyous, masterful work of folk magic that plays like a discovery dug up from the ground where it has been for cen-turies, waiting, in a rebellious reversal of that tragic shrine scene, to burst into full bloom before the gaze of living eyes. In UK einemas now 67 FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Civil War CERTIFICATE 15 108M 37S DIRECTOR ALEX GARLAND PRODUCERS ANDREW MACDONALD ALLON REICH GREGORY GOODMAN WRITTEN BY ALEX GARLAND CINEMATOGRAPHY ROB HARDY EDITOR JAKE ROBERTS PRODUCTION DESIGN CATY MAXEY MUSIC BEN SALISBURY GEOFF BARROW COSTUME DESIGN MEGHAN KASPERLIK CAST KIRSTEN DUNST WAGNER MOURA CAILEE SPAENY SYNOPSIS During a civil war between the US government and the rebel Western Forces, four photojournalists and writers drive from New Y ork to Washington, DC, witnessing atrocities and narrowly escaping death. After a rebel assault on the White House, one of the photojournalists is on hand to photograph the denouement. REVIEWED BY HENRY K. MILLER The idea that we are living in end times is the off-screen frame of reference for Alex Garland's new film, which promises the spectacle of apocalyptic violence, pro-vides it in horrific excess, then asks why we looked. There is a war raging between the US government, led by a president who speaks with the cadences of Donald T rump, and the rebel Western Forces, consisting of California and T exas, but we are given only the slightest hints as to its causes and progress, and no sense of whether it is just. The main characters do not take sides. Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (Wagner Moura) are a photojournalist and writer setting out from New Y ork to Washing-ton DC in the hope of interviewing the president; Sammy (Stephen Mc Kinley Henderson) and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) are an older writer and younger would-be photojournalist who tag along. Their press credentials enable them to move around freely (with some hair-raising exceptions), and it is often unclear where they are in relation to the front line. Both sides have uniformed armies in the field, but there are also militias whose loyalties are not spelled out. The film takes it for granted that wars deviate from their purported aims, just or otherwise, and that civil war entails petty, score-settling acts of brutal violence that have little or nothing to do with them. In the first scene of atrocity, Garland's dramatic focus is neither the militiaman nor the prisoners he is torturing, but the two photographers. Over the course of the film Jessie will learn from Lee- who calmly takes a snap-to disengage and put getting the shot above all else; conversely Lee's ability to take her own advice this is tested to its limit. There is an All About Eve (1950) quality to their relationship, which forms the film's cen-tral narrative and builds to an inevitable and satisfying end. Garland's interest in portraying the amoral ways of war photographers is matched if not exceeded by his interest in the implied consumers of the images they make, and by extension the consum-ers of violent fantasy images-the kind that fill films like Civil W ar. As a result, his film has a thrilling tendency to throw its audience off balance. In one scene, the militia the main foursome is following shoots a wounded soldier dead while he's in the act of surrender, cueing a gross, Full Metal Jacket-type needle drop with De La Soul's 'Say No Go'. The song con-tinues over a montage sequence in which Jessie finds the mettle to dissociate and photograph the militia machine-gunning its prisoners, photographer and subject framed just so, to make us aware our eyes are on her. This is not even the film's most dis-turbing moment: later, Jesse Plemons has a terrifying cameo as a government soldier overseeing the filling-in of a mass grave. Here again, what is significant is how the principal characters respond. For Jessie, as she admits, the danger is life-affirming. Garland's characters, as far back as his 1996 novel The Beach, are seekers of extreme experiences, often shaped by an environment not quite like our own, though not so unalike that we cannot see something of ourselves in them. Mostly this is communicated wordlessly. T owards the end, as the Western Forces converge on the White House in a stunningly realised battle sequence, Jessie and Joel exchange looks that express their exhilaration as a heli-copter gunship rains fire on the barri-cades. It seems wildly out of place to the rational mind, but are we the audience not exhilarated too? What, after all, is a 'stunningly realised' battle sequence meant to look and sound like? Perhaps like Apocalypse Now (1979), which was referred to in The Beach and sampled in Danny Boyle's film adapta-tion of 2000. Or like the combat footage described in J. G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition (1970), “satisfying low-thresh-old fantasies of violence and aggression”? Or like White House Down (2013), Roland Emmerich's blockbuster conspiracy thriller? The film ends, as it must, with soldiers storming the Oval Office, where Jessie gets the shot of a lifetime. Here Garland uses Suicide's 1979 song 'Dream Baby Dream', memorably deployed in Adam Curtis's Hyper Normalisation (2016) to soundtrack a montage of clips from 1990s blockbusters of American cities being blown up, all presaging 9/11. Garland is no more likely than Bal-lard to make an unequivocal political statement-this is part of the unsettling power of all his films-but with this Oval Office scene, concluding the best film he has directed, he makes us confront the violence we apparently dream about today, and shows us what's on the end of our fork. In UK cinemas now ALTERED STATES Kirsten Dunst as Lee68FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
A House in Jerusalem PALESTINE/UK/GERMANY/THE NETHERLANDS/TURKEY/EGYPT/ UNITED ARAB EMIRATES/QATAR/LEBANON 2022 DIRECTOR MUAYAD ALAYAN PRODUCERS RACHEL ROBEY MUAYAD ALAYAN DOROTHE BEINEMEIER HANNEKE NIENS GIORGOS KARNAVAS ALASTAIR CLARK RAMI ALAYAN ABEER SALMAN WRITTEN BY RAMI ALAYAN MUAYAD ALAYAN CINEMATOGRAPHY SEBASTIAN BOCK EDITOR RACHEL ERSKINE PRODUCTION DESIGN BASHAR HASSUNEH MUSIC ALEX SIMU COSTUME DESIGN HAMADA ATALLAH CAST JOHNNY HARRIS MILEY LOCKE SHEHERAZADE MAKHOUL FARRELL SYNOPSIS Widowed Michael takes his troubled young daughter Rebecca from Britain to Jerusalem to build a new life. In a house he's inherited, Rebecca glimpses another little girl, Rasha, who she comes to believe is a ghost of a former occupant-and begins to wonder how the house passed from Rasha's family to hers. REVIEWED BY KIM NEWMANAfter Rebecca (Miley Locke) survives a car crash in which her mother is killed, her grieving father (Johnny Harris) relocates with her from Britain to Jerusalem, where he has inherited a house. Muayad Alayan's quietly affecting supernatural story has the young protagonist explore two inter-twined mysteries raised by the presence of Rasha (Sheherazade Makhoul F arrell), a pale little girl only she can see, in her new home. The immediate puzzle, which all the adults around her know the answer to but don't want to talk about, is who lived in the mansion before 1948 and how it came to be the property of Rebecca's grandfa-ther. Secondary is the precise nature of the kind of ghost Rasha is-perhaps not the spirit of a dead person, but a shade frozen in girlhood by trauma. A fragmentary prologue and glimpses throughout find Rebecca in the immediate aftermath of the fatal crash, perhaps shucking her own griefstruck doppelganger. In its basic set-up-the friendship of two children who have suffered loss and are tentatively on either side of a living/ dead divide-A House in Jerusalem resem-bles the kind of 'fantastical friend' children's drama that used to be published by Puffin Books and serialised on British television: T om's Midnight Garden (televised in 1974 and 1989), Come Back Lucy (1978), Stig of the Dump (1981 and 2002), The Haunting of Cassie Palmer (1982), Earthfasts (1994). But of course, the barrier between this world and the afterlife isn't the only divide in this scenario, which gently leads British Rebecca through the realities of Israel's history as a nation and the displacement of the Palestinian people. Even though she's a spectre who can only be seen by other near-death survivors, Rasha-whose domain, Ring-like, is a dangerously uncov-ered well in the garden-is afraid of the 'men with guns' her lost family fled from. Simply asking questions on social media or using a search engine is enough to bring armed police to the house to question a 12-year-old, to the horror of her generally distracted and unhelpful father. Rebecca's stubborn sleuthing takes her to a significant puppet show and eventu-ally through a checkpoint to Bethlehem, where she finds a survivor of Rasha's childhood crafting dolls like the one the little girl stayed behind to retrieve. Souad F aress is impressive in a role that offers more meat than her recent run of 'mystic elders' in Dune: Part One (2021), The Sand-man (2022) and Game of Thrones (2016). The plot requires Rebecca to be a poor judge of how long it's been since 1948; but without getting bogged down in angry speechify-ing, A House in Jerusalem sets out historical and ongoing injustice as it delivers an emo-tional, subtly shivery spook tale. In UK cinemas from 31 May Calamy's effervescent Magalie is the film's only source of energy, and things flag when she's off screen TWO TICKETS TO GREECE PRE-OCCUPIED Miley Locke as Rebecca Two Tickets to Greece FRANCE/GREECE/BELGIUM 2021 DIRECTOR MARC FITOUSSI PRODUCED BY CAROLINE BONMARCHAND ISAAC SHARRY WRITTEN BY MARC FITOUSSI CINEMATOGRAPHY ANTOINE ROCH EDITOR CATHERINE SCHWARTZ ART DIRECTOR ANNA FALGUÈRES MUSIC MOCKY COSTUME DESIGN MARITÉ COUTARD CAST LAURE CALAMY KRISTIN SCOTT THOMAS OLIVIA CÔTE SYNOPSIS Long-estranged fortysomething friends, neurotic Blandine and eccentric Magalie, wind up on the wrong islands on a Greek holiday, due to Magalie's small-time scamming. Magalie's attempts to party, find hook-ups with surfers and wrangle a stay with her bohemian pal Bijou enrage Blandine and threaten to part them for good. REVIEWED BY KATE STABLESEnjoying a mid-career boom after her slow-burn success in Call My Agent (2015-20), the versatile Laure Calamy is, as Jonathan Romney pointed out last year in the Guard-ian, France's answer to Olivia Colman, a one-time comic actor now showing off formidable dramatic skills. As madcap Magalie, a fortysomething freeloader, she's the main attraction of Marc Fitoussi's ami-able if mechanical middlebrow comedy, squarely aimed at the kind of middle-aged audience once entranced by Luc Besson's diving-movie The Big Blue (1988). Y ou can hear the plot gears thudding like a Greek ferry as Magalie agrees to a free holiday in Amorgos ( The Big Blue 's idyllic location) with her long-estranged schoolfriend, recently divorced and soli-tary Blandine, to oblige Blandine's son. As teens, the Big Blue-crazed girls had dreamed of an Amorgos trip. But one of Magalie's scams sees the pair turned off the ferry on tiny, isolated Kerinos, where Magalie's crass attempts to procure surfer lovers for them appal Blandine. Throughout its leisurely two hours, the drama is largely powered by this odd-couple template, setting up predictable clashes between Oliva Côte's terminally nervous Blandine and the wily if warm-hearted Magalie. The long reach of teen-age events in midlife friendships is the only real point of interest. A lovely moment where Blandine sees a disco-dancing Magalie emerge from a terrace pillar as her adorable teen self can't compensate for tedious squabbles about adolescent betrayals. Fitoussi's script also can't rec-oncile its funny-ish comedy with sudden dramatic revelations about abuse and health scares that erupt uneasily and land unsteadily. It eschews screwball or physi-cal comedy (none of the warm slapstick of My Lover, My Donkey & I, 2020, which also paired Côte and Calamy) for lame jokes about Manon des sources (1986). Calamy can switch from comedy to heartfelt drama with ease. But her effer-vescent Magalie is the film's only source of energy, and things flag when she's off screen. Her long bickering scenes could have been trimmed to drive the story sooner to Mykonos, where Kristin Scott Thomas plays delightfully against type as a restless bohemian. Offering Blandine dope and restorative sex with her lover, she floats the film into Mamma Mia terri-tory. Her function is to deliver the film's well-intentioned if platitudinous mes-sage of middle-aged pluck to accompany Magalie's disco-themed philosophy. Life is hard, but on the dancefloor we can be carefree and embrace the moment. Cour-age, mon brave! In UK cinemas from 17 May ISLAND FLINGS Olivia Côte, Kristin Scott Thomas, Laure Calamy69 FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
One aspect of his huge talent is that Dupieux creates such beguilingly weird films without ever being silly YANNICK There's Still Tomorrow ITALY 2023 CERTIFICATE 15 117M 54S DIRECTOR PAOLA CORTELLESI PRODUCED BY MARIO GIANANI LORENZO GANGAROSSA STORY AND SCREENPLAY FURIO ANDREOTTI GIULIA CALENDA PAOLA CORTELLESI CINEMATOGRAPHY DAVIDE LEONE EDITING VALENTINA MARIANI PRODUCTION DESIGN PAOLA COMENCINI MUSIC LELE MARCHITELLI COSTUME DESIGN ALBERTO MORETTI CAST PAOLA CORTELLESI VALERIO MASTANDREA ROMANA MAGGIORA VERGANO SYNOPSIS Rome, 1946. Working-class housewife Delia struggles with her relentless workload, demanding family and violent husband. A well-off fiancé promises a better life for her daughter. An ex-beau moving north and a chance meeting with a US military policeman offer Delia a chance of escape. REVIEWED BY KATE STABLESIt's the slap that sets the tone, hard. A casual, early-morning smack across the face is received with preternatural calm by battered housewife Delia from her husband Ivano in the blackly comic melo-drama There's Still T omorrow. It announces the directorial debut of popular Italian actress and screenwriter Paola Cortel-lesi as a smart, audacious oddity, whose neorealist-styled monochrome dramedy about an impoverished housewife's every-day struggles in the Rome of 1946 carries unusual dramatic and political weight. An uncompromising look at women's post-war social oppression, it has proved wildly popular in Italy, becoming one of the coun-try's highest-grossing films ever. This satirical, historical look at mar-riage-Italian style-cleverly embeds hefty themes into a close-up look at Delia's hard-knock life. Cortellesi, who also stars, cap-tures Delia's determined stoicism and sass as she juggles work and ceaseless caring for her family (plus a groping, ghastly father-in-law). The camera follows her across dusty T rastevere in widescreen as she dashes to a handful of scrappy, under-paid jobs. But what makes the film pop is its genre mutability, sliding deftly from vio-lent misery to deadpan gags. Full of formal playfulness-the beatings are staged as darkly funny dance scenes, soundtracked by perky Italian retro love ballads like 'Nessuno'-it startles the viewer out of preconceptions. Other quirky needle-drops keep the film nicely off-balance: raw 90s blues dashing Delia to her jobs, Out-kast's 'B. O. B. ' cranking up a tense getaway. And as Delia schemes for a better life for her nearly engaged daughter Marcella, the story's stream of hopes and humiliations subverts our expectations. A masterfully tense lunch for Marcella's snobby potential in-laws elicits a shower of grim laughs, an over-familiar American military policeman offers risk as well as opportunity. Employing a period-perfect neorealist visual style (along with respectful nods to Bicycle Thieves, 1948, and Rome, Open City, 1945), the film keeps its fine central perfor-mances in the same serious register. Vale-rio Mastandrea's cruel loser of a husband excuses his violence shruggingly with “I did two wars!”, and Romana Maggiora Vergano's luminous Marcella brims with pity and contempt for her mother. All the while, Cortellesi makes Delia's thoughts race behind her dark, docile eyes, plan-ning to end her plight. Hidden in this bit-tersweet narrative is a tale of unexpected empowerment. For the film's big point is that the patriarchy isn't in the past. Through its dark satire of 1940s subjuga-tion, it also smartly spotlights the enduring issue of Italian domestic violence. Think of it as Delia's chance to slap back. In UK cinemas now PIECES OF A ROMAN Emanuela F anelli as Marisa, Paola Cortellesi as Delia Yannick FRANCE 2023 DIRECTOR QUENTIN DUPIEUX PRODUCED BY HUGO SÉLIGNAC MATHIEU VERHAEGHE THOMAS VERHAEGHE QUENTIN DUPIEUX WRITTEN BY QUENTIN DUPIEUX CINEMATOGRAPHY QUENTIN DUPIEUX EDITOR QUENTIN DUPIEUX PRODUCTION DESIGN JOAN LE BORU COSTUME DESIGN ELFIE CARLIER CAST RAPHAËL QUENARD PIO MARMAÏ BLANCHE GARDIN SYNOPSIS A disgruntled spectator named Y annick takes over the performance in a small theatre of a play about a ménage à trois. He pulls out a gun and holds audience and actors hostage while he rewrites the piece to his satisfaction. REVIEWED BY JOHN BLEASDALESome filmmakers are renowned for the painstaking length of the filmmaking pro-cess (Stanley Kubrick) or the extended intervals between films (T errence Malick); the French surrealist Quentin Dupieux has made speed his USP, zipping out two films in 2023 alone: Daaaaaali! and Ya n-nick, which premiered at the Venice and Locarno festivals, respectively. But despite his quick turnarounds, there is nothing facile in Dupieux's filmmaking, something underlined by the decision to award his forthcoming film The Second Act the open-ing slot at Cannes this year. Y annick is part of Dupieux's ongoing exploration of the role of the artist in soci-ety. Daaaaaali! took the artist-Salvador Dalí in that case-as its starting point; here, though, we have a disgruntled audi-ence member, the eponymous nightwatch-man (Raphaël Quenard) who stands up in the middle of a ménage à trois comedy to complain that the play is adding to his problems rather than distracting him from them. His complaint is dismissed by the actors and several members of the audi-ence, but then he pulls a gun, raising the stakes significantly, and sets about rewrit-ing the play. Part of the film's wry irony is the ways it reflects the interrupted play-it is a cham-ber piece with a small cast and an unset-tling situation at its heart. (And perhaps likely to be watched in sparsely attended auditoria). But there the similarities cease. First, Y annick does not stick around to test anyone's patience, clocking in at a buttock-friendly 67 minutes. And the performances here, unlike those in the play, are always convincing. Quenard is superb as the gun-wielding philistine, fulfilling an extreme version of a theatregoer's fantasy with a giggling psychotic edge. Pio Marmaï, Sébastien Chassagne and Blanche Gardin excel as the mediocre actors, caught in the middle of defending their art, fearing for their lives and realising Y annick might have a point. On the surface, Y annick is much more conventional than Dupieux's previous films, which are populated by giant flies (Mandibles, 2020), cigarette-themed super-heroes ( Smoking Causes Coughing, 2022) and the murderous rampage of a car tyre (Rubber, 2010). And as such, it could be a perfect entry point for the uninitiated. But Dupieux's film maintains a sharp meta-commentary on the divisions between audience and artist, middle and working class. One aspect of his huge talent is that Dupieux creates such beguilingly weird films without ever being silly. T ragedy stalks his comedy in Y annick, waiting for the moment when the laughter will stop. Streaming on Mubi now NOISES OFF Raphaël Quenard as Y annick 70FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Rosalie FRANCE/BELGIUM 2024 DIRECTOR STÉPHANIE DI GIUSTO PRODUCER ALAIN ATTAL SCREENPLAY/ ADAPTATION/DIALOGUE STÉPHANIE DI GIUSTO SANDRINE LE COUSTUMER BASED ON A TREATMENT BY SANDRINE LE COUSTUMER ALEXANDRA ECHKENAZI CINEMATOGRAPHY CHRISTOS VOUDOURIS EDITOR NASSIM GORDJI-TEHRANI PRODUCTION DESIGN LAURENT OTT MUSIC HANIA RANI COSTUME DESIGN MADELINE FONTAINE CAST NADIA TERESZKIEWICZ BENOÎT MAGIMEL BENJAMIN BIOLAY SYNOPSIS Northern France, the 1870s. Y oung Rosalie is married off to middle-aged publican Abel but keeps her hirsutism-the growth of hair on her body and face-a secret from him until their wedding night. Initially spurned, she works to gain the acceptance of her husband and her community. REVIEWED BY GUY LODGE The bearded lady got one big number in the 2017 smash The Greatest Showman, but not much more. For four minutes, Michael Gracey's gaudy P. T. Barnum musical gave the floor to Keala Settle's bewhiskered character to belt out some body-positive self-help platitudes, before turning its attention back to Hugh Jack-man's handsome, able-bodied ringmaster. Rosalie aims to do better by the frequently trivialised condition of hirsutism. The second film by French writer-director Stéphanie di Giusto carries itself with the noble authority of a historical biopic, though its protagonist is in fact an imag-ined composite of various female case studies from the 19th century. This allows Di Giusto to bend her narrative to fit a message of feminist empowerment that also doubles as an all-purpose paean to society's marginalised misfits. The result is affecting and attractively mounted, though the filmmaking itself never strays far outside the conventional. Not that Rosalie sets out to shock or dazzle. It is unassumingly built around a performance of sensitivity and warmth by Nadia T ereszkiewicz in the title role, with even co-star Benoît Magimel, a craggy asset as her quietly recessive husband, content to accept a dimmer spotlight. Conceived and crafted for maximum accessibility and audience sympathy, the film stood out against cooler or thornier competitors in last year's Un Certain Regard line-up at Cannes-it's the kind of French heritage drama that will play to just about anyone who isn't affronted by the sight of a beau-tiful woman with a fetchingly trimmed ginger beard. Perhaps there's even a the-matic point to the middle-of-the-road approach: in 1870s rural France, Rosalie may be vilified by conservative menfolk for her appearance, but this story places her squarely in the mainstream. At first glance, Rosalie doesn't seem like the kind of potential bride who'd require a dowry to secure men's interest. She's young and porcelain-pretty, with blonde curls piled atop a wide blue gaze, and dresses (thanks to her own sewing skills) like a society belle well above her working-class station. One would think she could set her sights higher than Abel (Magimel), a gruff, shy, middle-aged tavern owner who's mainly in it for said dowry-he has debts to settle with Barcelin (Benjamin Biolay), a local fac-tory owner with a fierce puritan hold on the community. Di Giusto teases the mystery of Rosalie's diminished social stock to a point that slightly undercuts her film's compassion: the eventual reveal of her fuzzy chest, as Abel undoes her primly fastened buttons by candlelight on their wedding night, is a little too lurid for comfort. Though Rosalie still carefully shaves her face to avoid others' gawping, she's accepted her body hair as the way she was made; the film's coyness around showing it feels an almost prud-ish misstep. But the film relaxes, and so does Rosa-lie-even as her husband remains wary, and her marriage unconsummated. Busi-ness picks up at the tavern, with custom-ers drawn to the new barmaid's beauty and cheer, and she grows comfortable bantering with them, ultimately betting one that she can grow a full beard in a month. It's a seemingly rash admission, but her thinking behind it is pragmatic, even self-sacrificing: she doesn't mind becoming a local freak attraction if it brings in more punters. The twist, in a perhaps optimistic interpretation of the era's values, is that the bearded Rosalie is widely embraced by the community for her confidence and courage; it's up to Barcelin, a somewhat one-dimensional villain standing in for an entire culture of Christian patriarchy, to start a backlash. Di Giusto's script, co-written with Sandrine Le Coustumer, turns some-what schematic in its pitting of Rosalie's free, unorthodox femininity against the censure of Society At Large. Secondary characterisation-particularly of Rosalie's fairweather friends-is kept vague, all the better to serve the plot. But T ereszkie-wicz, who has something of the younger Marion Cotillard's guarded vulnerability, resists such mechanics, making Rosalie more than just a poster girl for living one's truth. She gives her a perverse, self-serv-ing streak of sensual curiosity that con-trasts credibly with her dreams of socially approved womanhood, and motherhood. Rosalie wants to be accepted, but not to become invisible, as wives in this com-munity are supposed to do: she'd rather be looked at than stared at, but either is better than nothing. In UK cinemas from 7 June LOVE IS IN THE HAIR Nadia T ereszkiewicz as Rosalie, Benoît Magimel as Abel71 FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
THREE MORE SYRIAN DRAMAS BY PHILIP CONCANNON THE DUPES (1972) Three Palestinian refugees try to cross the border into Kuwait in T ewfik Saleh's nerve-shredding thriller: few films have ever communicated the brutal intensity of the desert sun so effectively. Every moment spent inside this metal truck is agonising, while flashbacks skilfully contextualise each man's reasons for making such a desperate choice. Clouzot's masterpiece The W ages of Fear (1953) is often cited in discussions of this film, and The Dupes fully merits being in such exalted company. DREAMS OF THE CITY (1984) Mohamed Malas drew on his own memories with this portrait of a child and his widowed mother moving to Damascus to live with his taciturn and violent grandfather. The 1950s were a decade of political turbulence in Syria, and Malas shows the impact on ordinary people-dividing families, turning neighbours against each other. It is also a beautiful record of life in Damascus before it was changed beyond recognition by the civil war. THE NIGHTS OF THE JACKAL (1989) Abu Kamel tyrannises over his family, but at night he is helpless, tormented by jackals whose howls can only be silenced by his wife's whistle. Set on the eve of the Six-Day War, Abdellatif Abdelhamid's allegorical tale suggests a country crumbling in the face of external threats. Syria's leadership is represented by a foolish and short-sighted patriarch, who only realises the error of his ways in the film's brilliant closing scene. Nezouh UK/SYRIA/LEBANON/FRANCE/QATAR/USA 2022 DIRECTOR SOUDADE KAADAN PRODUCED BY SOUDADE KAADAN YU-FAI SUEN MARC BORDURE WRITTEN BY SOUDADE KAADAN CINEMATOGRAPHY HÉLÈNE LOUVART BURAK KANBIR EDITED BY SOUDADE KAADAN NELLY QUETTIER PRODUCTION DESIGN OSMAN ÖZCAN MUSIC ROB LANE ROB MANNING COSTUME DESIGN SELIN SÖZEN CAST KINDA ALLOUSH SAMER AL MASRI NIZAR ALANI HALA ZEIN SYNOPSIS Damascus, Syria. Fourteen-year-old Zeina lives with her parents in the besieged city. She and her mother Hala want to leave, as their neighbours have done, but-even as their flat is wrecked by shelling-father Motaz insists they stay put. Meanwhile, Zenia connects with a neighbour, a boy named Amer. REVIEWED BY JONATHAN ROMNEY “What?” a character exclaims in a self-referential moment in Nezouh. “A film in Syria where no one dies?” Death and jeopardy may be ever present on the horizon, and outside the walls of heroine Zeina's battle-ravaged Damascus apart-ment. But the bet taken by Soudade Kaadan's film is that an account of life under siege in Syria can be about matters other than death-hope, love, teenage reverie, the comedy of everyday family life. Nezouh sets out to be a gentler, dreamier, more upbeat film about the experience of life during conflict and the prospect of displacement: nezouh, an opening title explains, means “displacement of soul, water and people”, but the word and the prospect are anathema to Zeina's father Motaz, who won't countenance his family leaving town. Kaadan's second feature, following The Day I Lost My Shadow in 2018, Nezouh offers a very different image of the Syrian conflict from, say, Philippe Van Leeuw's claustrophobic siege drama Insyriated (2017) or the urgent reportage shot by Waad al-Kateab in the 2019 documentary For Sama, depicting brutal everyday conditions in Aleppo. T old from the perspective of a teen-age girl with ordinary teenage dreams, and touched with elements of fantasy and magic realism, Nezouh is essentially a Y oung Adult version of life under fire, and a certain pre-ciousness is baked into the package. A prominent element is routine family conflict, depicted either comically or as emotionally tense melodrama. Zeina and her mother Hala want to leave town, as most of their neighbours have. Zeina's older sisters are already gone-one is in Europe, the other uncontactable, perhaps in danger, somewhere beyond the city-which it may be possible to leave through a rumoured tunnel. Motaz, however, insists on staying put: even when their home has holes blown in its walls and roof, he attempts to maintain a safe nest through desultory measures like hanging up sheets, his attitude summed up by his insistence, “I'm a mechanic-I'll fix it!” A bullish hulk of an actor, Samer Al Masri gives a lively, affecting performance, playing Motaz to sometimes clown-ish effect as an ambivalent figure. On one hand, Motaz is a responsible man determined to support his family, making dangerous sorties into the city for supplies; on the other, he's a blustering, heavy-handed patriarch, a fool who insists on keeping up appearances while the world literally crumbles: when a family of neighbours wave to them across the ruins, Motaz's first thought is to shout to Hala to cover her hair. Hala and Zeina, meanwhile, are allies, sharing the same dreams of escape-an aspect brought home when they find a moment of freedom dancing to the same pop song but in separate rooms. They later become allies in a courageous journey into the outside world, as finally-after a long sec-tion restricted to the flat and its rooftop-the action opens up, with mother and daughter fleeing through a ghostly devastated city (one of the film's T urkish locations). Nezouh is also the story of emergent teenage love, in the burgeoning tenderness between Zeina and neighbour boy Amer, a budding war correspondent who proves a tech-savvy helper to the family. The coming-of-age element comes to the fore in an overtly erotic moment: a close-up of the teenagers' lips as they eat juicy red berries. Undeniably a beautifully crafted film, this UK/Syrian/ French/Qatari co-production is an example of eminently commercial, somewhat soft-edged international art cinema. Kaadan's co-editor is Nelly Quettier (a collaborator with Leos Carax, Claire Denis and Ursula Meier), while one of two credited cinematographers is Hélène Louvart, who has recently worked with directors including Eliza Hittman, Karim Aïnouz and Alice Rohrwacher. The visual austerity you might expect of the setting is offset by intense lumi-nescence, with sheaves of blazing daylight and plentiful lens flare, while wide angles open up the enclosure of the flat. Kaadan also favours sometimes jarring dream images: Zeina skimming stones in the sky as if on water, and a moment when she falls through her roof in slow-motion rapture, drifting through an imaginary night sky studded with constellations. The gently lyrical score by Rob Lane and Rob Manning, using jangling North African string instruments, is a little over-insistent on signalling moments of sublimity. An alert, exuberant, sometimes mischievous performance by young lead Hala Zein anchors the film when it threatens to veer off into the over-rhetorical ether. In UK cinemas now SPACE IN THE HOLE Nizar Alani as Amer, Hala Zein as Zeina72FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Riddle of Fire USA 2023 12A 114M 35S DIRECTOR WESTON RAZOOLI PRODUCERS SOHRAB MIRMONT DAVID AL ATRAKCHI WESTON RAZOOLI LIO TIPTON WRITTEN BY WESTON RAZOOLI CINEMATOGRAPHY JAKE L. MITCHELL EDITOR ANAXIA PRODUCTION DESIGN MEG CABELL MUSIC FOG CRAG RECORDS LOST CASCADES RUNE REALMS HOLE DWELLER FOGWEAVER BORG COSTUME DESIGN ANAXIA CAST LIO TIPTON CHARLES HALFORD SKYLER PETERS SYNOPSIS Wyoming, the present. Having stolen a valuable new video game, a group of friends are unable to play it on their parents' television, setting them off on a quest to retrieve a pie and, later, a rare, speckled egg. REVIEWED BY ADAM NAYMAN There's a wry conceptual joke at the heart of Riddle of Fire: in an old-fashioned quest narrative that's centred on mischievous pre-teens, who've styled themselves as knights of the realm-and which fetish-ises its grainy 16mm celluloid textures as a seal of retro authenticity-the holy grail is a vintage video game console, procured by our heroes at great risk from an iso-lated warehouse. Not only that, but for all of their agile, swashbuckling facility with dirt-bikes and paintball guns, the would-be gamers-brothers Hazel (Charlie Stover) and Jodie (Skyler Peters), and their pal Alice (Phoebe Ferro), an insepa-rable trio known as the Three Immortal Reptiles-can't sort out the parental protection software on Hazel and Jodie's smart TV, a block rendering their new acquisition useless. The game's failure to launch, and the very fairytale-ish request by the boys' mother to fetch her a blueberry pie in exchange for the password, becomes the catalyst for a series of surreal, free-wheeling adventures across the very dusty (and fictional) Ribbon, Wyoming. It's a space that, as imagined by rookie writer-director Weston Razooli, is at once recognisably drab and enchanted around the edges, where newcomers are suspicious, and the local bakery is just a short pedal from the ominously named F aery Castle Mountain. “Where the fuck are we?” queries a Reptile at one point, drawing attention to both the scrambled geography and the sweetly profane sensibility at the heart of Riddle 's project. When the film premiered last year at Cannes, reviewers couldn't help but notice the correspond-ences between Razooli's work and cer-tain enduring tween entertainments of the 1980s, like the Steven Spielberg-pro-duced cult classic The Goonies (1985) and Rob Reiner's Stand by Me (1986). Another, more resonant touchstone might be the 1989 fan film Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, which was shot in the Missis-sippi Delta on a shoestring by a trio of prepubescent auteurs trying to collapse the distance between Hollywood block-busters and home movies, one lo-fi set piece at a time. Razooli isn't a kid, but he's clearly chas-ing the exhilaration of youthful point-and-shoot filmmaking, and his debut is at its best when it gives itself over to the rhythms of playtime. (The opening paintball raid is a goofy tour de force). More importantly, the filmmaker-who majored in graphic design and cites the films of Miyazaki Hayao as an influence -stops short of putting everything on screen in cosy scare quotes. Instead, the pendulum swings the other way, in the direction of simple-and sincere-nar-rative and dramatic archetypes which, as deployed, function just well enough to get the film (and the Reptiles) from one end of the storyline to another. Over the course of their journey, which grows in danger and intrigue, we meet huntsmen, trolls and even witches, all of whom are exactly as magical as they appear to be -belief and its various virtues and discon-tents being probably the closest thing the script has to an explicit theme. As a calling card for future work, Riddle of Fire is likely to earn its maker plenty of attention: it's beautifully designed and executed and carried over its scattered rough patches by a soundtrack that's heavy on medieval stringed instruments and moody new wave synthesisers. The craftsmanship is such that it renders the film susceptible to more self-indulgence than is strictly necessary; having created an immersive, intriguing low-budget fan-tasy world, Razooli indulges in his fair share of downtime, to the point that the Reptiles' saga bumps up against the two-hour mark, which is simply too long for a movie whose pleasures are so slender. The distended running time comes perilously close to exposing the inexperi-ence of Razooli's young actors, who are better with one-liners than expository monologues (Peters' often-mumbled dialogue comes with subtitles, which somehow miraculously never feels like a joke at his expense). There's a definite mileage-may-vary aspect to the whimsy here, but Riddle of Fire deserves credit for creating and sustaining its tone from beginning to end, and for at least consid-ering the possibility of purity at a moment when so much entertainment-including and especially stories aimed at younger demographics-suffers from potent and compulsory irony poisoning. Riddle of Fire is many things, but it's never sarcastic or mean-spirited; it follows the road paved by its good intentions to somewhere better than expected. In UK cinemas from 7 June BREEZY RIDERS Skyler Peters as Jodie, Charlie Stover as Hazel, Phoebe Ferro as Alice, Lorelei Olivia Mote as Petal73 FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
The Beast FRANCE/CANADA/SWITZERLAND 2022 DIRECTOR BERTRAND BONELLO PRODUCERS JUSTIN TAURAND BERTRAND BONELLO SCREENPLAY/ ADAPTATION/DIALOGUE BERTRAND BONELLO BASED ON A TREATMENT BY BERTRAND BONELLO BENJAMIN CHARBIT GUILLAUME BRÉAUD LOOSELY BASED ON THE BEAST IN THE JUNGLE BY HENRY JAMES CINEMATOGRAPHY JOSÉE DESHAIES EDITOR ANITA ROTH PRODUCTION DESIGN KATIA WYSZKOP MUSIC BERTRAND BONELLO ANNA BONELLO COSTUME DESIGN PAULINE JACQUARD CAST LÉA SEYDOUX GEORGE MACKAY GUSLAGIE MALANDA SYNOPSIS Paris, 2044. In a society run by AI, Gabrielle Monnier agrees to undergo a DNA 'purification' treatment to rid herself of work-hindering human 'affect'. The process triggers visions of her past lives, which unfold in belle é poque Paris before the Great Flood of 1910 and in 2014 Los Angeles. In each timeline, Gabrielle meets and finds herself powerfully drawn to a man named Louis. REVIEWED BY KIERON CORLESS “I would sum up my fear about the future in one word: boring,” J. G. Ballard once drily remarked, an idea that French director Bertrand Bonello riffs on to mixed effect in his new film The Beast, a dystopian genre-hopping sci-fi cum melodrama. The film's main segment (there are three) is set in Paris in 2044 and, topically, envisions a world in which, following some unspecified catastrophe, AI now reigns over a control society where even the prospect of another catastrophe happening has been banished. Human emotion is a threat overcome by means of a purification process that involves confront-ing past lives and traumas, leaving a pacified subject rewarded with fulfilling employment at a time when jobs of any kind are scarce. Bonello's rendering of this era is counter-intuitive but intriguing-no screens, internet, cars or social media; in this world, relation-ships are disembodied and isolation is the norm. The past's lingering impact in the present, hinted at during the futuristic treatment, has been a recurrent and resonant Bonello theme, but in terms of narrative scale and conceptual scaffolding The Beast is his most ambitious film to date. It's loosely based on Henry James's 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, about a man whose premonition of some terrible event stalls his life. Bonello switches the narrative focus to a female character, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux), whose tragic love affair with Louis (George Mackay) is dwelt on during the purification process and plays out in dif-ferent ways in the (future) present and in past lives in 1910 and 2014. Gabrielle's dilemma during purifica-tion is whether to resist what Ballard called “subur-banisation of the soul” by clinging on to her fears, to everything that makes her unique and alive, or opting for safety and potentially losing the man she loves. The long opening section is set in 1910 and takes place mainly in a belle époque art salon; it's perhaps the most impactful of the three segments, despite being essentially a two-handed conversation (quite a bit of dialogue lifted from the James novella); it's also the only one shot on 35mm, which gives it a soft, sensual feel. The married Gabrielle and Louis meet and are drawn to each other, but she confides her fear of falling in love. We learn that Paris is flooded (a real catastrophe that year), setting up an unexpected twist to their visit to her husband's doll factory. (Dolls are one of several recurring motifs, linking to AI robots in 2044, one of whom is incarnated eerily by Guslagie Malanda-so memorable in 2022's Saint Omer. ) A shift to LA in 2014 ushers in the film's weakest segment. Gabrielle is now a French model/actress struggling to find work and get a social toehold in the city. soon descends into a poorly executed, sub-Lynchian woman-in-peril thriller. The Louis char-acter, now an incel cliché, feels fundamentally short-changed: it's hard to believe that the suave suitor refused in 1910 somehow leads to this. Bonello's films have always been characterised by conceptual and formal boldness, and a desire to scratch away at deep-seated anxieties and neuroses, as in Coma (2022) and Nocturama (2016). The Beast is no exception, and Bonello's unwillingness to join the dots is laudable, but it does occasionally seem as if there are just too many ideas here, giving an air of rare-fied fuzziness. The recurring motifs-dolls, pigeons, a clairvoyant and others-can feel inert and muted rather than productively charged. F atally, there's a lack of chemistry between the two protagonists, despite nuanced, committed perfor-mances by both actors. As The Beast drifts languidly by for well over two hours you can't help feeling that there's less here than meets the eye, although the ster-ling production design and soundtrack make it never less than watchable. There's a real gut-punch of an ending, thanks to the sheer jolting force of passion mustered by Seydoux. That's followed by something altogether unique where you'd expect the credits to be-a fitting way to round off a film preoccupied with disconnection and the waning of affect; but by then my engagement with the characters and material had long gone missing in those acres of time and space. In UK cinemas from 31 May Q&A Bertrand Bonello DIRECTOR BY JORDAN CRONK What made you finally want to make a film about the future? It's the future, but it's also the present. It's tomorrow. I think I made a mistake setting the film in 2044. It should probably be 2027. I didn't realise when I started writing the script that the AI themes would be so contemporary. I liked the idea of trying science fiction for the first time, but a science fiction that's almost familiar. Sci-fi is usually either hyper-technological, or post-apocalyptic. I wanted to find another way. This is mostly just the world as we know it, except that behaviour has changed. At what point did you decide to set the contemporary portion of the film in Los Angeles? It came from the Louis character's story in that section, and the videos he shoots while stalking Gabrielle. I won't say that we don't have incels in France, but these kinds of videos, at least for me, do not work in French. It's a very American phenomenon, like only America could create this character, which is in fact based on the American mass murderer Elliot Rodger. So for me this part of the film had to be set in LA. When I saw the film in Venice it had a QR code in place of the credits, which I thought might be a temporary thing, but I've heard that's how it's continued to show? Yes, it's definitive. If you scan the code there's an eight-minute credit sequence, as well as one cut scene. For me a credit sequence is part of a film, so I thought it would be perfect-since things end with Gabrielle crying and Louis showing no emotion-to conclude the film with something equally emotionless: a QR code. It somehow becomes even more lonely for the viewer in that moment. OLD FLAMES Léa Seydoux as Gabrielle, George Mac Kay as Louis74FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
She had the smile of a woman who'd will you to skinny-dip then run off with your clothes CATCHING FIRE: THE STORY OF ANITA PALLENBERG Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg USA 2023 DIRECTORS ALEXIS BLOOM SVETLANA ZILL PRODUCED BY CHARLIE CORWIN ALEXIS BLOOM SVETLANA ZILL CINEMATOGRAPHY LUCA CIUTI CATHERINE DERRY NICK HIGGINS WILL PUGH AXEL SCHNEPPAT EDITORS HANNAH VANDERLAN ADAM EVANS MUSIC WILL BATES VOICE CAST SCARLETT JOHANSSON SYNOPSIS A documentary exploring the life of actress, model and 1960s fashion icon Anita Pallenberg. Through interviews with family members, home movies, photographs, and words from an unpublished autobiography, the film covers her early film career, romantic relationships with Rolling Stones Brian Jones and Keith Richards, drug addiction and late-in-life return to acting. REVIEWED BY KATIE MCCABECatching Fire -a documentary that enters the tricky terrain of 'historical reclamation' of an under-recognised woman-is drawn from the actress Anita Pallenberg's unpub-lished memoir, which she said she would never write, but which was found a)er her death. She was partner to Brian Jones and later Keith Richards, and obituaries in 2017 led with her 'vital role' as a muse to the Rolling Stones, inspiring their aesthetic (big furs, paisley-patterned ka)ans, floppy hats) and hit songs. Catching Fire shows her as a 60s thought leader, connecting the Stones to what Marianne F aithfull called the “wayward jeunesse dorée ”. Scarlett Johansson voices Anita's words, a distracting choice, especially when we hear her real pan-European accent. The film skims over Pallenberg's childhood in German-occupied Rome and years in New Y ork's downtown scene (“Ginsberg collected pubic hair from famous people-he didn't ask me”) but has welcome insight on her early film career. There are clips of her beatnik femme fatale in Performance (1970), and her lead role in Volker Schlöndorff 's downbeat thriller Degree of Murder (1967)-Jones was so jealous of her new gig he tore up the script and insisted on doing the score. The bulk of the film, though, takes Pallenberg's per-spective on life with Richards, with whom she spent a decade and had three children. Directors Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill make liberal use of 8mm home movies, which capture some of Pallenberg's mis-chievous power-she had the smile of a woman who'd will you to skinny-dip then run off with your clothes. They also bring a lysergic playfulness to the footage: Pallen-berg's headscarf, blown away by the wind, morphs into a seagull. We watch as hedonism crashes against convention; Richards and Pallenberg cling to a debauched freedom, but it's Pallen-berg who is expected to relent. Her career is le) in the contrails as she facilitates Rich-ard's lawless creativity, running a “castle of dissolute men” while struggling with motherhood and drug addiction. Anita's son Marlon Richards approached the directors with her manuscript (an echo of Poly Styrene: I am a Cliché, 2020, which was narrated by Poly Styrene's daughter Celeste Bell). On camera, he is generous with memories of an at times destructive childhood, giving a view of his mother that is never villainous or hagiographic. A 110-minute documentary cannot reclaim a life, but Catching Fire gives us Anita Pallenberg in long form. In UK cinemas from 17 May THE LIGHTER SIDE Anita Pallenberg Four Little Adults FINLAND/SWEDEN/NORWAY 2023 DIRECTOR SELMA VILHUNEN PRODUCERS VENLA HELLSTEDT ELLI TOIVONIEMI SCREENPLAY SELMA VILHUNEN CINEMATOGRAPHY JUICE HUHTALA EDITOR ANTTI REIKKO PRODUCTION DESIGN SATTVA-HANNA TOIVIAINEN MUSIC SARAH ASSBRING JACOB HAAGE COSTUME DESIGN KAROLIINA KOISO-KANTTILA CAST ALMA PÖYSTI EERO MILONOFF OONA AIROLA SYNOPSIS Juulia, a progressive Finnish MP married to priest Matias, learns he is having an affair with a woman named Enni. T o avoid separation, she proposes polyamory. Matias and Enni continue their relationship; Juulia meets a new, non-binary partner, Miska. Complications intensify when Enni becomes pregnant. REVIEWED BY LOU THOMAS Having tackled familial dysfunction in her fiction feature debut Little Wing (2016) and romantic woe in her follow-up Stupid Y oung Heart (2018), Finnish writer-director Selma Vilhunen appears to blend the two themes in her engaging polyamory drama Four Little Adults. It's October in Helsinki when we're invited into the bedroom of not quite mid-dle-aged couple Juulia (Alma Pöysti) and Matias (Eero Milonoff), who are having passionate sex-enthusiastically inhaling a bottle of poppers to enhance their enjoy-ment. The morning a)er, they have break-fast with pre-teen son Milo and prepare for work: Juulia is a rising political star in the Equality Party, Matias a well-liked local parish priest. Later, we see Matias discussing a secret trip to Stockholm with his lover of 18 months, Enni (Oona Airola) -but Juulia soon finds out. The expected tearful confrontation follows, but when Juulia sits down with Matias and Enni together, she suggests an open marriage and hands the pair a guide to polyamory. If Juulia's magnanimous response to such repeated infidelity seems too good to be true, Pöysti's careful performance keeps plausibility from disappearing com-pletely. When Juulia takes a new lover -non-binary nurse and drag performer Miska (Pietu Wikström)-Matias's hypo-critical outrage seems a more recognisable emotional reaction. It's enough for his mother, the film's key proxy for the societal status quo, to voice more open dissent at their new lifestyle: she confronts Juulia at a dinner party, hoping the couple will soon “grow up” and return to monogamy. An uneasy truce soon settles-until Enni becomes pregnant with Matias's baby. Vilhunen has spoken about her admi-ration for the films of Ingmar Bergman, particularly Fanny and Alexander (1982), and the themes she's exploring here are primo Bergman territory: a mature piece stuffed with thorny relationship dilemmas, pre-occupied with sex, and populated by well-heeled, intelligent characters in safe, comfortable surroundings. But Four Little Adults lacks the psychological weight of Bergman at his best. One never senses that any of the characters will be anything other than all right in the end: extreme emotional devastation is not the name of Vilhunen's game. She doesn't sensationalise the poly-amorous life. And though one might feel Vilhunen could have approached the cen-tral premise-swirling as it does around a priest and a politician-a little more quiz-zically, the film should be commended for its even-handed, considered approach to exploring relationship choices outside the monogamous mainstream. In UK cinemas from 7 June MULTIPLE CHOICE Eero Milonoff as Matias, Alma Pöysti as Juulia 75 FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Elaha GERMANY 2023 CERTIFICATE 15 110M 35S DIRECTOR MILENA ABOYAN PRODUCERS EMINA SMAJIC JANINA SARA HENNEMANN MATTHIAS GREVING SCREENPLAY MILENA ABOYAN CONSTANTIN HATZ CINEMATOGRAPHY CHRISTOPHER BEHRMANN EDITOR ELIAS BEN ENGELHARDT PRODUCTION DESIGN NORA BALMER CHRISTINA MAMMES MUSIC KILIAN OSER COSTUME DESIGN LARA SCHERPINSKI PAULINA IMMIG CAST BAYAN LAYLA DERYA DURMAZ NAZMI KIRIK SYNOPSIS Elaha is the 22-year-old daughter of Kurdish immigrants to Germany. Engaged to a young man of the same community, she worries that her secret-that she is not a virgin-will make her marriage a non-starter, providing an obstacle to the life she's not sure she wants in the first place. REVIEWED BY MEGAN FEENEYThe opening sequence of this first fea-ture by Kurdish-German writer-director Milena Aboyan says a lot with a little; a microcosm of the film's themes and of Aboyan's promise. At a wedding celebra-tion, Elaha (Syrian-born Bayan Layla, in an impressive debut) dances joyously with her fiancé Nasim (Armin Wahedi Yeganeh). A camera joins the cheering community encircling the couple. Elaha dances, as they say, like no one is watching-until her sister, an emissary for their mother's dis-approval, pulls her away. Mother (Derya Durmaz) admonishes Elaha in Kurdish, “Can you hold back a little?” A subtle tight-ening of facial muscles encapsulates Layla's performance of Elaha as on the verge but holding back, caught between being an obedient daughter and becoming an inde-pendent-minded woman. The camera then tracks Elaha into the bathroom, where her friends sneak a ciga-rette and speak in lexicons they've absorbed more fully than their parents: Western femi-nism as well as German. They laughingly debate whether the bride has a baby bump under the red ribbon that's meant to sym-bolise virginity. They tease Elaha about her own upcoming wedding and dubious 'purity', about which she is cagey, even with them. The clunky exposition hints at Ela-ha's dilemma, as does a shot that precedes this opening sequence: a close-up of Elaha, distraught, looking directly to camera-an arthouse cliché that signifies a rejection of objectification, a claiming of agency. Bride-to-be Elaha is expected to wear the symbolic red ribbon, and to back it up with real blood on her nuptial bedsheets. Mother insists on it, as does Nasim, even violently so in one scene. Unknown to them, Elaha has had sexual experiences, and has enjoyed them without shame. Still, she is not inclined to fight the system; instead, she sets out to game it, research-ing hymen reconstruction surgery (pro-hibitively expensive) and finally buying an over-the-counter kit-essentially a blood capsule to be released upon intercourse. Aboyan strains a little to universalise Elaha's situation, perhaps keen to avoid accusations of posing stereotypes of Middle Eastern misogyny against West-ern 'enlightenment'. She has one of Elaha's friends declare that “the fucking patriar-chy” wants to control women's vaginas, no matter their country of origin. Aboyan's filmmaking combines occa-sional clumsiness with moments of self-assurance. A final indelible scene turns out to be the look-to-camera beginning. That could suggest that Elaha's trajectory towards independence might never be fully realised; still, I was left hopeful that both the character and her creator will keep endeavouring to express their truths. In UK cinemas now Baloji's projects exude energy, and here it can be found in everything from the immersive cinematography to the pulsating soundtrack OMEN GOOD AS NEW Bayan Layla as Elaha Omen BELGIUM/THE NETHERLANDS/FRANCE/DR OF CONGO/GERMANY/ SOUTH AFRICA 2023 CERTIFICATE 15 91M 34S DIRECTOR BALOJI PRODUCER BENOÎT ROLAND SCREENPLAY BALOJI CINEMATOGRAPHY JOACHIM PHILIPPE EDITORS BRUNO TRACQ BERTRAND CONARD ART DIRECTOR EVE MARTIN COSTUME DESIGN ELKE HOSTE BALOJI CAST MARC ZINGA YVES-MARINA GNAHOUA MARCEL OTETE KABEYA SYNOPSIS The Belgian-Congolese Koffi returns to the country of his birth to introduce his European fiancée to his estranged family. After an unfortunate accident, deep-seated accusations of devilry and witchcraft resurface. Koffi's story is then interlaced with other perspectives to interrogate the role of traditional mysticism in modern Congolese life. REVIEWED BY BEN NICHOLSON The long fingers of spiritual custom act as a constricting force in Baloji's dynamic and dreamy feature debut Omen. The rapper has been making shorts for several years and his first feature carries the signature of those earlier works-from pointed social commentary to elusive narrative struc-tures and propulsive rhythmic editing and music. Anyone entranced by his much-lauded 2019 short Zombies can rest assured that Baloji's transition to the longer form has done little to blunt his artistic edge. Even before Koffi (Marc Zinga) and his white fiancée Alice (Lucie Debay) travel from Belgium to the Democratic Republic of Congo to meet Koffi's family, they know that his traditionalist mother Mujila (Yves-Marina Gnahoua) will refuse to welcome them inside her house, a fact that seems to induce an epileptic seizure in her son. But it is only once they actually arrive in DRC that the clutches of antique belief systems, and how such systems can be employed to divide or control, become clear. First, it transpires that the birthmark on Koffi's face has seen him maligned as zabolo -'devil-marked'-since birth. Then an innocuous nosebleed is misconstrued as witchcraft and a distressing ritual is conducted as punishment under the unwavering gaze of his own mother. As the film progresses, both Koffi and his more liberal-minded sister T shala (Eliane Umuhire from the 2021 sci-fi musical Nep-tune Frost ) find themselves submitting to practices and philosophies that they feel are archaic but from which they cannot divorce themselves. In Omen 's most heart-breaking scenes, revelations of the family history provide not just context for Mujila's own situation but profound pathos. The film is divided into four chapters, named for different characters: Koffi, Paco (Marcel Otete Kabeya)-a young boy who heads a local gang-T shala and, finally, Mujila. Paco's storyline feels less enmeshed with the others literally and the-matically, but offers the perfect injection of more dynamic and fantastic elements. For instance, Paco's wrestling for power with another local gang is embellished with a fabulous sequence depicting a mythic woodland-dwelling witch who takes his sister, and another scene in which the gang high-tails it through the city streets. Baloji's projects exude energy, and here it can be found in everything from Joachim Philippe's immersive cinematography to Liesa Van der Aa's pulsating soundtrack. F ar from ever feeling like style over substance, though, Omen blends com-plicated relationships, complex societal issues and spikey political allusions with verve and swagger. In UK cinemas now NOW YOU SEER ME Mordecaï Kamangu as Simba76FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
THREE MORE TENNIS MATCHES IN THE MOVIES BY PHILIP CONCANNON HARD, FAST AND BEAUTIFUL (1951) “From the very moment you were born, I knew you were different. ” Hard, Fast and Beautiful stars Claire T revor as the controlling mother determined to see her daughter become a champion, but succeeding only in destroying their relationship. Ida Lupino's expressive mise en scène accentuates the tension between characters. The tennis court can be an unforgiving place, never more so than in this film's desolate final shot. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (1951) Hitchcock turns tennis into a sustained exercise in ticking-clock suspense, as F arley Granger desperately tries to end a match as quickly as possible- increasingly sharp cuts and tight close-ups emphasise his growing anxiety. Earlier, the director gives us one of his most memorable shots: amid a sea of spectators' heads rhythmically following the ball from left to right, Robert Walker's unnerving gaze stays fixed on Granger. PLAYERS (1979) Producer Robert Evans united two of his passions -tennis and Ali Mac Graw -in Players, but Mac Graw's dithering between rich guy Maximilian Schell and tennis hustler Dean Paul Martin is less compelling than Martin's match against Guillermo Vilas. Players was filmed at Wimbledon during the 1978 championship, and the Centre Court footage is fascinating. A critical flop, the film stands as one of the more convincing big-screen depictions of the sport. Challengers CERTIFICATE 15 131M 17S DIRECTOR LUCA GUADAGNINO PRODUCERS AMY PASCAL LUCA GUADAGNINO ZENDAYA RACHEL O'CONNOR WRITTEN BY JUSTIN KURITZKES CINEMATOGRAPHY SAYOMBHU MUKDEEPROM EDITOR MARCO COSTA PRODUCTION DESIGN MERISSA LOMBARDO MUSIC TRENT REZNOR ATTICUS ROSS COSTUME DESIGN JONATHAN ANDERSON CAST ZENDAYA JOSH O'CONNOR MIKE FAIST SYNOPSIS T ashi Duncan, the wife and coach of star tennis player Art Donaldson, enters him into a second-tier tournament to boost his confidence. The final match-against Patrick Zweig, Art's former doubles partner and T ashi's ex-unfolds as we jump back in time and see the origins of their love triangle and the tensions that still fuel it. REVIEWED BY BEATRICE LOAYZA Challengers, Luca Guadagnino's latest, runs a reliable play: there's a love triangle that's gleefully unsubtle about the sexual tensions between its rival suitors; then, there's a match-a sweaty, audibly suggestive, ball-busting match- which extends throughout the length of the film, its stakes growing as we plunge into the backgrounds of its players. This frisky formula captivates, but it also gives the Italian director, known for his extravagant style, parameters within which to focus his ideas about sex and eroticism. Guadagni-no's two most recent films-Suspiria (2018), a turgid remake of the giallo classic, and Bones and All (2022), a teen-cannibal romance with lacklustre bids at soulfulness-disappointed because they felt bloated, sloppy, full of big swings that reg-istered like shots in the dark. Now, confined to the dimen-sions of the court and the struggles of a magnetic menage à trois, Guadagnino has returned to form, summoning the potent yearnings of his finest work, Call Me by Y our Name (2017), and placing them in a major key. Challengers is a hot and heavy drama, but it's also full of breezy wit and bizarre, borderline uncanny touches that, if they don't always work, at least keep you on your toes, entertained. The film opens on the match. On one side, there's Art Donaldson (Mike F aist), a tennis star flush with endorse-ment deals, but suffering from a lousy season; on the other, there's Patrick Zweig (Josh O'Connor), a puckish minor-league player. Smack-dab between them, watching from the front row, is T ashi Duncan (Zendaya), Art's wife and coach, looking unusually disturbed as Patrick, the underdog, takes the lead in the first set. Mirroring the ricocheting of the ball, the narrative zips back and forth between the ongoing match and extended flashbacks which create a history of the trio's 15-year relationship. T ashi, whom the boys first meet when they're high-school besties and doubles partners, is a teenage tennis prodigy on her way to becoming the next Serena Williams-a dream cut short by a knee injury. Still, it's T ashi's drive and hunger that motor the plot well beyond her individual career. I've never been particularly impressed by Zendaya as a performer until now-but here there's a confidence in her eyes that makes her a natural puppetmaster; lanky and youthful, she gives off an almost cosmic form of endurance. When we see T ashi play tennis, cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom depicts her as an exceptional force; unlike Patrick and Art when they play, the camera looks at her head on, using an intimidatingly direct frontal shot that emphasises the concentration in her gaze, the power in each one of her strikes. This force of will serves as a kind of aphrodisiac. The night they first meet, it's T ashi's coy smile, and a few waves of her hand, that instigate a hotel-room make-out session in which the guys briefly act on their mutual attraction. Patrick and Art compete for her affections, on court and off, and eventually fall out. T ashi's ferocity makes her sexually compatible with Patrick, a rogue presence who runs hot, but mixing fire with fire spells ruin for their short-lived relationship; T ashi eventually hooks up with the more even-tempered Art, shaping him into an athletic sensation. T ennis, in case it wasn't obvious, represents desire, and it's in this erotic vacuum that Guadagnino, with a nimble script written by Justin Kuritzkes, unleashes the film's games, a hodgepodge of backstabbing, cuckolding, smack-talking and scheming that maintains the charged momentum of the match itself, the film's framing device. There are quieter moments of delicacy and tenderness, usually courtesy of Art, whom F aist gives a palpable vulnerability. But when the score hits, with bracing electronic tracks by Atticus Ross and T rent Reznor, we're thrown back into a game mode that is simultaneously dead serious and playfully con-scious of its own ridiculousness. This ethos bathes every charged encounter between factions, be it Art spotting T ashi and Patrick looking close in the corner of a lobby; or Art and Patrick, hardly covered with towels, playing mind games in a sauna. Several moments, especially as the match heads into its dizzying final set, seem to break with reality: a windstorm intensifies as T ashi argues violently with Patrick to the point of arousal; and in the final minutes of the match, the tension breaks into a frenzied, orgasmic first-person shot from the perspective of the tennis ball. This is the absurd but fundamentally human character of competitive sport, in which one must bend backwards, suspend reason, to win what is ultimately a fleeting objective. The same might be said of good sex. In UK cinemas now NO RACKET REQUIRED Mike F aist as Art, Zendaya as T ashi77 FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Here BELGIUM 2023 DIRECTOR BAS DEVOS PRODUCER MARC GOYENS WRITTEN BY BAS DEVOS CINEMATOGRAPHY GRIMM VANDEKERCKHOVE EDITOR DIETER DIEPENDAELE PRODUCTION DESIGN ŠPELA TUŠAR MUSIC BRECHT AMEEL COSTUME DESIGN MANON BLOM CAST STEFAN GOTA LIYO GONG CEDRIC LUVUEZO SYNOPSIS Stefan, a newly unemployed construction worker living in Brussels, prepares to return to his native Romania. He empties his fridge, makes soup out of leftovers and hands out portions to friends. A chance encounter with Chinese botanist Shuxiu leads to greater appreciation of a natural world that Stefan had previously barely noticed. REVIEWED BY MICHAEL BROOKE In 2011, Paul F arley and Michael Sym-mons Roberts published Edgelands, a poetic hymn to the mundane and the overlooked, in particular to things found in those frequently uncharted liminal spaces that lie between more clearly defined urban and rural areas. Bas Devos' fourth feature does something similar to equally enthralling effect, not least by contrasting the macro and the micro, with recurring shots of buildings under construction giving way to screen-filling close-ups of plants that are smaller than a fingernail. The synopsis of the film hints at romance, but Romanian construction worker Stefan (Stefan Gota) and Chi-nese botanist Shuxiu (Liyo Gong) don't meet until the halfway mark, with the film abruptly ending after a hint that they may both be inclined to take things further. Although Devos occasionally acknowledges narrative convention (even giving the pair a stereotypical 'meet-cute' moment), their relationship serves mainly to foreground the topics that he is most interested in. After four features, his style is instantly recognisable. Invariably framing in the squarish aspect ratio of 1. 37:1 (once ubiquitous, now eccentric), the camera alternates between contemplative stasis and measured tracking shots following the films' protagonists-as in the not dissimilar work of Béla T arr and Alan Clarke, how they walk (or ride a bicycle, or sit in a car or metro train, or respond to a sudden change in the weather, or simply eat) turns out to be as eloquent as any-thing they say. Devos typically gives us a few seconds to acclimatise ourselves to a particular space before it's sullied by people, and cinematographer Grimm Vandekerck-hove constantly alights on unexpectedly engrossing details-an early shot of water droplets hitting a spreading puddle in the corner of a building site is later mirrored by images of rain in more natural envi-ronments. But this is never indulged to excess; despite the abiding impression of leisurely contemplation, closer inspection reveals that editor Dieter Diependaele keeps things comparatively brisk. Devos's first two films, Violet (2014) and Hellhole (2019), depicted people in a state of PTSD (over a friend's random murder and the 2016 Brussels terrorist attacks, respectively), while the more benign Ghost Tropic (also 2019) followed a middle-aged Muslim woman oversleeping her metro stop and returning home largely on foot, encountering fellow night owls en route. Though Ghost Tropic 's premise unavoid-ably hints at menace, it's a remarkably sweet-natured, wistful film whose abid-ing themes of loss, missed opportunities and generational divisions grow organi-cally out of the situation rather than being self-consciously shoehorned in. Here was made by essentially the same team-Vandekerckhove, Diependaele, costume designer Manon Blom, com-poser Brecht Ameel-but while it's simi-larly low-key in treatment, in content it's closer to something like W. G. Sebald's 1995 novel The Rings of Saturn in its sugges-tion that there are entire universes close at hand for those who take the trouble to look for them. Or invent them; one scene involves students presenting concepts of imaginary plants adapted for survival in otherwise unpropitious settings. Stefan's journey begins when he makes soup out of fridge leftovers, leading him to discover communal gardens and lush greenery directly adjoining his former workplace. Meanwhile, Shuxiu's obses-sive interest in moss recalls the recurring motif of lichen in Patrick Keiller's Robinson in Ruins (2010)-Devos shares Keiller's ability to tease out tiny, oddly resonant details from material so outwardly famil-iar that we rarely give it more than a pass-ing glance. As in Ghost Tropic, the focus is on immi-grants, who only speak French when it's a convenient mutual second language. English subtitles don't kick in until the five-minute mark; until then, we appreci-ate the sound of the multilingual conver-sations between Stefan and his colleagues without worrying overmuch about their content, much as we eavesdrop on the forest's non-human inhabitants later on -or listen to Shuxiu's confessional mono-logue about how she frequently forgets the names of things, an occupational hazard when one routinely has to process radically different languages. Boris Debackere has designed the intricate, layered sounds of all Devos's features to date, and there's plenty to tease the ear even when the film is at its most visually static-although there are also beautiful reveries, most memorably when Stefan guilelessly nods off during a chat with his sister and dreams about a wondrously sun-dappled, rain-showered forest that proves more accessible in real-ity than he might at first have imagined. In short, Here is the cinematic equivalent of moss and lichen; one might barely give it a second glance if playing in the background, but it offers unforeseen pleasures for those minded to look a little more closely. In UK cinemas from 7 June BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS Liyo Gong as Shuxiu, Stefan Gota as Stefan78FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Reviews in brief THE FIRST OMEN The First Omen is impressively paced, doling out shocks at unexpected (and effective) intervals while leaving the character-based scenes room to breathe. It helps that [Nell Tiger] Free is such a striking and resourceful performer, to the point that she sells a quasi-homage to Andrzej Zulawski's Possession (1981)-merely the most obvious example of a scene that shouldn't work and does in a movie that's never quite great yet consistently better than it has to be. Adam Nayman IMMACULATE Andrew Lobel's screenplay reimagines Rosemary's Baby (1968) as a giallo in a convent: black gloves are worn, a theme from Bruno Nicolai's score for Emilio Miraglia's The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972) is repurposed, acts of torture and murder mount, and a confused Cecilia [Sydney Sweeney] starts to wonder just what she is carrying inside her. For all its looking back... Immaculate explores a topic that could not be more incendiary in present-day America, in the wake of the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade. Anton Bitel GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE Godzilla x Kong takes mass destruction much less seriously [than Godzilla Minus One], with Godzilla napping between fights by curling up in the Colosseum and the crucial Godzilla/Kong rematch levelling the pyramids. Besides the long-armed, mean-spirited Skar King, the film produces an anti-Godzilla in Shimo, a saurian titan whose ice breath counters Godzilla's now-pink-tinged atomic blast.... This spectacle fully embraces the toddler-tantrum-on-a-colossal-scale aesthetic and is winning because of rather than despite its essential goofiness. Kim Newman Read these reviews in full, and more, on our website: www. bfi. org. uk/sight-and-sound The Fall Guy CERTIFICATE 12A 126M 17S DIRECTOR DAVID LEITCH PRODUCED BY KELLY MCCORMICK DAVID LEITCH RYAN GOSLING GUYMON CASADY WRITTEN BY DREW PEARCE BASED ON THE TELEVISION SERIES CREATED BY GLEN A. LARSON CINEMATOGRAPHY JONATHAN SELA EDITOR ELÍSABET RONALDSDÓTTIR PRODUCTION DESIGN DAVID SCHEUNEMANN MUSIC DOMINIC LEWIS COSTUME DESIGN SARAH EVELYN CAST RYAN GOSLING EMILY BLUNT HANNAH WADDINGHAM SYNOPSIS Recovering from injury, Hollywood stuntman Colt Seavers is summoned to Australia, where science-fiction movie Metalstorm is being directed by his ex-girlfriend Jody Moreno. After performing in the film's action sequences, Colt agrees to play detective and locate lead actor T om Ryder, who has gone missing. REVIEWED BY JONATHAN ROMNEY In 1980, Richard Rush's The Stunt Man offered a self-reflexive comic exposé of the fakery as well as the real stakes involved in Hollywood action cinema, its hero taking death-defying tumbles for a megalomaniac director. The digital age was on the way; today, audi-ences are only too savvy about the illusions that have become a wearying staple of blockbuster language. David Leitch's genially flip The Fall Guy sets out to high-light the trickery, acknowledge that VFX has diluted the art of the thrill, and yet revive the faith, dazzling us with action sequences that look life-threateningly real. The ur-text is the TV series The Fall Guy (1981-86), in which Lee Majors played Colt Seavers, a movie stuntman who doubled as part-time law enforcer. Its country-styled theme song praised the unsung artists who stand in for supposedly intrepid stars: “I'm the unknown stuntman that makes Eastwood look so fine. ” Here, Leitch-himself a former stunt artist and coordi-nator-celebrates the bravery, ingenuity and resilience of the people who routinely take the blows, or choreo-graph them. At the start, a long travelling shot follows Ryan Gosling's Colt Seavers around a film set, right up to the long drop that lands him in hospital. En route, he banters with T om Ryder, the narcissistic star who transparently lies about doing his own stunts: Leitch previously mocked such blowhards as writer and lead actor of the 2005 spoof Confessions of an Action Star (a. k. a. Sledge: the Untold Story ). Following his Brad Pitt vehicle Bullet Train (2022), Leitch has come up with something comparably know-ing and jazzy, but much more likeable, not least because of the romantic pairing of Gosling and Emily Blunt. On TV, Colt had an admiring female sidekick called Jody, also a stunt performer; here, Jody has acquired big-time agency (and I don't mean CAA) as a seasoned camera op directing her first movie, Metalstorm. At the start, she and the besotted Colt are an item, but after his injury, he shuns her; his motivation in joining Met-alstorm 's crew, and searching for its awol star, is to win back Jody's love. Action apart, The Fall Guy functions wittily as a meta-romcom in which both participants are well aware of the genre's codes. None too happy to find her unreli-able ex working on her set, Jody tells him the plot of her sci-fi romance between a space cowboy and an alien princess, which is really their story. Blunt delivers this routine with delicious ambiguity as both a rebuking cri de coeur and a sly public humiliation of Colt. Romcom tropes are worked through to bracingly tart effect: overt Notting Hill (1999) references, elegantly choreo-graphed split-screen à la Rock and Doris in Pillow Talk (1959), Colt found sobbing to a T aylor Swift song. The action sequences are similarly canny, includ-ing an apartment-wrecking fight between Colt and a sword-wielding female assailant that recalls Burt Kwouk's ambushes of Peter Sellers' Clouseau; a mani-festly CGI-flared nightclub fight, with Colt hallucinat-ing flying sparks, is set up with a nod to the Dumbo (1941) 'Pink Elephants' sequence. But Leitch doesn't always make the most of his action: a terrific car-and-truck chase is grievously diluted by cuts away to Jody. Drew Pearce's script sometimes tries too hard for in-jokey effect, and the humour often works better when it lets the viewer just pick up on it. The familiar warning not to believe what we see gets an up-to-the-minute update: facial scanning (so heatedly contested in the recent actors' strike) and deepfakes are key to the Chandleresque investigation. The film finally shows its hand with an end-credits making-of sequence in which Gosling is undeniably (at least, one hopes undeniably) performing his own feats, with the aid, of course, of an expert stunt crew. The film's leads are nothing if not jovially game. Gos-ling does a nonchalant variation on the comic register he developed in Shane Black's similarly pitched The Nice Guys (2016). Here he transitions from strutting cool cat of the opening to humbled and heartbroken doofus out for redemption. Blunt matches him nicely, playing Jody hard-edged and inaccessible on set, then slipping into wryly quizzical mode as she flirt-taunts Colt. Hannah Waddingham also gives good value as a pushy, braying English producer: a slick-suited nightmare cross between Jerry Bruckheimer and Janet Street-Porter. They all bring characterful flesh-and-blood mischief to what could otherwise have been a calculated mirror game of reality and illusion. In UK cinemas now UP CLOSE AND DANGEROUS Ryan Gosling as Colt Seavers, Emily Blunt as Jody Moreno 79 FILMS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Some readers will need no introduction to Jacques Rivette's L 'Amour fou (1969) and will care very little what I have to say about this latest release. After the negative of the 35mm film was burned in a warehouse fire in 1973, a scratchy 35mm copy with burned-on subtitles has intermittently appeared at festivals, but until now the film has never had a general release or been available for home view-ing. As such, it's something of a cinephile unicorn-the missing number on the nouvelle vague bingo card. For those audi-ences, any opportunity to see it is not to be missed, details be damned. Others, though, will know little about Rivette's third feature (following Paris nous appartient, 1961, and The Nun, 1966). Most will associate Rivette's name with his nearly-13-hour magnum opus Out 1 (1971) or his playful fantasy Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974), which Jona-than Romney has described as “the only genuine cult film of the nouvelle vague ”, or perhaps with his work as a critic for the Cahiers du cinéma, writing thoughtful, morally inflected criticism that has led to frequent comparisons with Eric Rohmer. Hopefully that will change with the release of Radiance Films' limited edition Blu-ray, which brings to a wider audience the immaculate 4K restoration of the film that opened the 2023 Cannes Fes-tival. Assembled under the supervision of cinematographer Caroline Champe-tier from materials kept at Les Archives du Film and in Éclair-Preservation, the 252-minute film combines the robust intellectualism and languorous pacing of Out 1 with the impish charm of Céline and Julie. Like both, it is semi-improvised and highly self-reflexive, blurring the line between life and art through a series of mise en abymes. The plot, inasmuch as there is one, turns around preparations for a staging of Jean Racine's 17th-century tragedy Andromaque, directed by Sébastian (Jean-Pierre Kalfon), who also takes the lead-ing role of Pyrrhus. His wife, Claire-a febrile, fluttery figure played by Rivette's regular leading lady Bulle Ogier-was set to star opposite him as his spurned lover Hermione, but very early on she leaves L'Amour fou Jacques Rivette's slow-burning, involuted, relentlessly self-referential masterpiece, widely regarded as one of the high points of the French New Wave, has mostly been seen in mutilated form. This new release reveals it in its full, meta glory REVIEWED BY CATHERINE WHEATLEY the production; Sébastian fills the vacant role with his cool ex-wife Marta. Claire's reasons for quitting are unclear, but she seems perturbed by Sébastian's overbear-ing direction as well as by the presence of a documentary film crew, under the direction of real-life filmmaker André S. Labarthe. As opening night draws closer and the production takes shape, Claire, kicking her heels in the bohemian apart-ment she shares with her husband, starts to come apart. Structurally, the film resembles the enormous matryoshka doll that Claire purchases on a whim, housing seem-ingly endless versions of itself inside. Rivette intercuts the sinuous 35mm foot-age of the world beyond the theatre shot by his cinematographer, Alain Levant, with sequences from the more restive 16mm camera of Labarthe's director of photography Étienne Becker, pushing up close as it records rehearsals. As detailed in a typically astute video essay by Cris-tina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin included in the disc extras, Labarthe's film has an uncanny status, existing both outside the frame and within it. Likewise, as Sébastian, a director starring in his own work and given to pronouncements such as “TV has dispelled the myth of the director”, Jean-Pierre Kalfon was given carte blanche to stage the diegetic play as he wished. An early example of what we now call 'slow cinema', Rivette's film plays on the ambiguities in the French word répétition, which translates into English as both repetition and rehearsal. In the white-washed, blank space of the theatre, the cast work late into the night: restaging scenes, correcting line deliveries, trying Structurally, the film resembles the enormous matryoshka doll that Claire purchases on a whim, housing seemingly endless versions of itself inside80DVD & BLU-RAY | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
The presence that most dominates the film, though-ironically or aptly, depend-ing on whether we take Sébastian's state-ments at face value-is that of its absent director. Rivette's films feel very much of an era blessed with the likes of T ruffaut, Godard and Varda, and yet absolutely distinct. A sensitively curated set of extras with this release includes images of Riv-ette's notes on the film as well as a charm-ing feature-length documentary about his work, with contributions from Kalfon and Labarthe, as well as Rivette's biog-rapher Antoine de Baecque and mentee Sylvie Pierre, the only woman to write for Cahiers during its earliest incarnation and a figure who deserves rediscovery in her own right. It's what she calls Rivette's “moral intelligence” that separates his work, L 'Amour fou most of all, from that of his better known peers. out blocking. At home, Claire listlessly listens to tapes of her replacement and records herself saying the same dialogue. For Sébastian, repetition leads to revela-tion, each iteration revealing a different aspect of the play. For his wife, it is at best tedious and at worst a form of madness. The audience-internal and external- oscillate between the two positions as they adjust to the unique rhythms of cast and crew's lives, which are of course the rhythms of labour and ennui alike. Yet amid the torpor are surreal surprises: abrupt glimpses of the women Claire jeal-ously probes Sébastian about; the direc-tor's disappearance from set; and around the film's three-hour mark, the central couple's strange, inevitable descent into collective hysteria that threatens to tip into violence, the mad love of the film's title. Throughout, Sébastian-a would-be REPEAT SHOWING Jean-Pierre Kalfon as Sébastian, Bulle Ogier as Clairejazz drummer-and his sound designer rely on the percussive, one-note beat of bongos and claves (there's a Ph D thesis begging to be written on the role of race and cultural appropriation in L 'Amour fou ) to lend an undercurrent of tension to the most seemingly innocuous scenes. With Nehru-collared pyjama shirts and a penchant for seducing his actresses (even as he proclaims undying love for his wife), Sébastian could easily have been a parody of the pretentious 60s auteur. But Kalfon plays him with enough vulnerabil-ity for the dissolution of his relationship to Claire to strike us as tragic rather than triumphal. He finds an equal in Ogier, whose doll-faced neurotic bears a strik-ing resemblance to Catherine Deneuve's anti-heroine in Repulsion (1965). Ogier has declared L 'Amour fou the favourite of all her films. It's not hard to see why. Jacques Rivette; France 1969; Radiance Films; Region B Blu-ray; b&w; in French with English subtitles; Certificate 15; 252 minutes; 1. 85:1. Extras: feature-length documentary by Robert Fisher; interview with restoration supervisor Caroline Champetier; video essay by Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin; booklet. 81 DVD & BLU-RAY | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
RAGING BULL Martin Scorsese; US 1980; Criterion; region-free 4K UHD & Region B Blu-ray dual format, 2 discs; b&w; English SDH; Certificate 18; 129 minutes; 1. 85:1. Extras: audio commentaries by Scorsese and other cast and crew members; new video essays by critics Geoffrey O'Brien and Sheila O'Malley; 2004 making-of documentary Fight Night ; 1981 TV interview with Cathy Moriarty and Vikki La Motta; 1990 Jake La Motta interview and 2004 documentary on his boxing legacy; trailer; booklet. REVIEWED BY HANNAH MCGILL Martin Scorsese's magisterial, harrowing portrait of professional, domestic and psychological violence looks as stunning as one would hope in this new, director-approved 4K digital restoration. Given Scorsese's passion for preservation being what it is, we know that we're seeing the film in the best version possible, and there is joy in that-even if its brutality only hits harder the crisper it looks and sounds. Raging Bull 's visual combination of elegance and rawness- deliberately evocative, as cinematographer Michael Chapman notes in his commentary, of the ambulance-chasing tableaux of the 1940s press photographer Weegee-remains riveting, as do Thelma Schoonmaker's razor-sharp editing and performances that have passed into legend. Lead Robert De Niro provided the pyrotechnics, playing the middleweight boxing champion Jake La Motta as a mess of a man who uses all his charm to manipulate and all his intelligence to diminish and abuse his wife. But while De Niro, whether lean and handsome in La Motta's prime or bloated in his mid-life decline, remains impossible to look away from, the work of co-stars Cathy Moriarty and Joe Pesci seems to have grown with time. Pesci, a one-time child actor who'd been drifting away from the business until Paul Schrader and Mardik Martin's script came his way, plays La Motta's brother Joey as the heart of the story, a man torn between love and professional commitment to his brother and frustration at Jake's selfishness and volatility. Is Joey also, as Jake suspects, in love with his sister-in-law Vickie, played with such an aching combination of resignation and moxie by the 17-year-old Moriarty? That is one of the questions the film dangles, placing us in Jake's point of view as his mounting paranoia spotlights every look that passes her way. Extras are voluminous and interesting, although a slightly peculiar facet of the whole package is its de-emphasis of La Motta's violence towards his wife, which was drawn from real life. La Motta, during his lifetime, also admitted to having committed rape. “I don't think he was any worse than a lot of people,” De Niro says in Fight Night, a 2004 documentary included here. “The worst thing he did was throw a fight. T o me he was a very empathetic character. ” Thank goodness for Sheila O'Malley, whose typically lively and insightful video essay provides welcome engagement with the real Vikki La Motta as a traumatised and defiant victim of La Motta's relentless brutality, rather than a blank canvas for his lust and rage. Disc: The film is presented in both 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray, with 2. 0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. T errific commentaries include not only Scorsese, Schoonmaker and Chapman but also music supervisor Robbie Robertson, casting director Cis Corman and producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff. Various behind-the-scenes documentaries cover the background of the project. MISUNDERSTOOD Luigi Comencini; Italy 1966; Radiance Films; Region AB Blu-ray; in Italian, with English subtitles: Certificate 15; 104 minutes; 1:85:1. Extras: interview with co-screenwriter Piero De Bernardi and director's daughter Cristina Comencini; interview with critic Michel Ciment; visual essay by David Cairns; trailer; booklet. REVIEWED BY KAT ELLINGER Although filmmaker Luigi Comencini hasn't enjoyed an international profile in recent decades, at least compared to some of his fellow school of commedia all'italiana alumni-names such as Dino Risi, Ettore Scola and Mario Monicelli spring to mind-his Bread, Love and Dreams (1953) played a pivotal part in establishing 'rosy neorealism', immediate precursor to commedia all'italiana-a transition genre from the naturalism of neorealism to the stark, often satire-soaked fantasy of 1960s Italian comedy; after which Comencini built up a solid reputation over the next decades directing both comic and dramatic films. Despite his domestic status as a maestro of post-war cinema, many of Comencini's films have remained relatively obscure in the English-speaking world, making this new restoration and release of his 1966 film Misunderstood a vital one. Misunderstood centres on a lonely pre-teen boy, Andrew (named Andrea in the Italian cut, and played by Stefano Colagrande), struggling with the recent loss of his mother, his new responsibilities towards his sickly younger brother Miles/ Milo (Simone Giannozzi), as well as alienation from his emotionally distant diplomat father (Anthony Quayle). While the film is heavily focused on the theme of childhood innocence -summer-holiday childhood antics in and around an exquisite villa in Florence are captured beautifully by cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi -the film showcases the director's proclivity for a specifically Italian, bitter-sweet type of filmmaking, which tends to avoid sentimental Hollywood-style cliché. Disc: The film is packaged with a handful of valuable extras, most notably a warm chat between the film's co-scriptwriter Piero De Bernardi and the director's daughter Cristina Comencini (a filmmaker in her own right) about many aspects of the production: it's mentioned that this was one of Comencini's favourites among his own films. THAT COLD DAY IN THE PARK Robert Altman; US/Canada, 1969; Arrow Video; Region B Blu-ray, 2 discs; English SDH; Certificate 15; 107 minutes; 1. 85:1. Extras: longer pre-release cut; audio commentary by critic Samm Deighan; interview with David Thompson, author of Altman on Altman ; video essay on Vancouver locations; production footage; music and effects track; trailer; gallery; booklet. REVIEWED BY MICHAEL BROOKE After nearly two decades of apprenticeship, first in Kansas City-based industrial documentary, then in episodic television ( Whirlybirds, 1958-59; Bonanza, 1960-61, et al), with two comparatively anonymous fiction features ( The Delinquents, 1957, and Countdown, 1967) along the way, Robert Altman finally made an unmistakable film d'Altman. That Cold Day in the Park is a deeply unsettling psychodrama that occasionally hints at a gender-inverted response to William Wyler's The Collector (1965). Sandy Dennis plays the profoundly repressed (culturally, socially, sexually) thirtysomething Frances, who impulsively takes pity on a young man (Michael Burns) who she spots being drenched by torrential rain, offering him shelter in her well-appointed apartment. But the relationship is off-kilter from the start: he appears to be mute (his secret isn't revealed to us for a good 40 minutes, and Frances remains oblivious until the film's nearly over), while her concern for his well-being seems more fetishistic than affectionate, especially in the considerably darker later stages. Altman's stylistic signature, hard to discern in previous work, is unmistakable here: languorous, occasionally woozy zooms into the defocused distance, eavesdropping on what initially sounds like throwaway background dialogue, and a refusal to give troubled characters an easy way out. It's little surprise that the film flopped at the time, but it makes for an enthralling rediscovery now. Disc: Arrow's new edition advances handily on Eureka's 2016 Blu-ray, recycling its lengthy appreciation by David Thompson but also offering both a release version of the film and a slightly extended pre-release cut; a critical commentary by Samm Deighan; mostly silent but still fascinating on-set footage; and a formidably well-researched video essay by Kier-La Janisse on the film's physical and psychological geography. A 44-page booklet features contributions from Brad Stevens on Altman's early work, Anna Bogutskaya on the film itself and James Flower on the pre-release cut. There's also the strangely compelling option to watch the film exclusively with its music and sound effects track. 82DVD & BLU-RAY | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
LOST AND FOUND The prototypes of the movie gangster -Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (1931), James Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931), Paul Muni in Scarface (1932)-are not thinkers. Driven by raw aggression, they are monstrous infants, their explo-sive violence a personal release of rage or animal spirits as much as a necessity of their milieu. Beside these operatic tales of beer and blood, Rowland Brown's Quick Millions (1931) is a revelation of cool, inso-lent wit, decades ahead of its time in both its casual, deadpan style and its assump-tion that there is little daylight between capitalism and crime. A fascinating figure wreathed in murky legend, Brown was the first Hollywood screenwriter of the sound era to direct his own scripts, almost a decade before Pres-ton Sturges. He had only three directing credits (the others are Hell's Highway in 1932 and Blood Money in 1933)-whether his career faltered because he struck a pro-ducer or because of his habit of walking off films is unclear. He trailed rumours of an underworld background and mob ties, which may have been clever brand-ing. He made his name with his script for The Doorway to Hell (1930), which gave Cagney his first gangster role, and later wrote the Cagney vehicle Angels with Dirty Faces (1938). Quick Millions has the radical freshness of certain directing debuts, the product of someone who doesn't know what you're not supposed to do. This film's antihero is a thinker, with a penchant for aphorisms like “The brain is just a big muscle” and “Racketeering is just getting what the other guy's got, in a nice way. ” Played by Spencer T racy, Bugs Raymond is an affable but ruthless opportunist who leverages a trucking union and protection racket into control of an unnamed city through scheming and organisation rather than bombs or tommy-guns. T racy's plain, unvarnished naturalism perfectly suits Brown's anti-dramatic style. Plot takes a back seat to scenes where hoodlums get their shoes shined or sit around smoking and singing the blues, an elevation of interstitial 'dead time' that looks ahead to Jacques Becker's T ouchez pas au grisbi (1954), which shows us gangsters brushing their teeth and playing tunes on the jukebox. Brown's pacing is at once leisurely and staccato: he will pause the action to watch Bugs trying and failing for several minutes to tie a white tie, but he also cuts off scenes without ceremony. He does not build up to big moments, and climaxes are drily underplayed. The effect is profoundly unsentimental; things just happen. “He was the first to write visually for talking pictures, which at the time was still mostly filmed theatre,” the director's brother Sam said. “Rowland didn't write in dramatic terms. He did not care about structure, he only wrote bits of scenes, little pieces of throwaway business that accumulated and gave you a character. ” (A long interview with Sam Brown is the basis for a chapter in Philippe Garnier's delightful book Scoundrels & Spitballers: W riters and Hollywood in the 1930s -1996; English translation 2020-one of the few primary sources on Rowland Brown. ) These bits of business are what stay with you from the film: the thick pall of cigar smoke that hangs over a table as a crowd of bigwigs rises, surprised by a stick-up; or the moment when one of Bugs's henchmen, preparing to go out for the evening, opens a drawer and picks out a gun to go with his outfit. There is a penthouse shindig during which Bugs steps into the kitchen to purchase a hot diamond ring, after watching George Raft cut loose with a sinuous, rubber-legged soft-shoe dance. As Jimmy, Bugs's right-hand man, Raft is mostly ornamen-tal; Brown knew how to make the most of his striking presence-the dapper suits, patent-leather hair and smudgily hooded eyes-without requiring him to act. When Jimmy carries out a hit for a rival (a scene framed with minimalist flair from under a table), Bugs is disappointed but doesn't make a fuss about it; he just has Jimmy rubbed out, in a chillingly casual scene at a gas station in the rain. The small role of the killer is played by ex-con and future screenwriter Robert T asker. T asker and his writing partner John Bright were both members of the Com-munist Party (Bright would later be blacklisted), and Sam Brown said of Rowland, “At the time we had commu-nist ideas, my brother and I. ” Not only does Bugs Raymond argue that rack-eteering is just free enterprise, a district attorney in the film, lecturing a group of craven businessmen, veers into a diatribe on banks' complicity in crime and income tax evasion, bemoaning “a society based on wealth instead of intellectual attain-ment”. Quick Millions links Depression-era disillusionment with the financial system to a prescient awareness of the sophistica-tion of organised crime. On its release, the film was critically admired but sank at the box office, and like many productions of the Fox Film Corporation before its 1935 merger with Darryl Zanuck's T wentieth Century Pictures, it largely disappeared from view until recent years, when it has been restored and revived by the Museum of Modern Art and streamed in the United States on the Criterion Channel. Bugs finally meets his match when he sets his sights on an upper-class woman (Marguerite Churchill), perhaps the only person in the film smarter than he is, who smilingly calls him “a parasite, giving nothing and taking all”. His power comes from knowing how to exploit human weaknesses, but he is blind to his own; his belief in grabbing what you want becomes delusional folly. He is no tragic hero, just a cog in a system, as disposable as a cigarette flicked out a window. If this movie feels so fresh after 93 years, it's because it has a heart of ice. Quick Millions Part of the first wave of gangster flicks, Rowland Brown's 1931 tale about a trucker who muscles his way to controlling a whole city is set apart from its contemporaries by cool wit, attention to the details of hoods' lives, and a sharp critique of the way capitalism intersects with crime Rowland Brown, US 1931 BY IMOGEN SARA SMITH SCENES WITH A MOLL Spencer T racy as Bugs Raymond, Sally Eilers as Daisy De Lisle83 DVD & BLU-RAY | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
PATRICK Richard Franklin; Australia )978; Powerhouse/Indicator; 4K UHD or region-free Blu-ray; English SDH; Certificate )5; ))3 minutes; ). 85:); SDH; Extras: Re-dubbed US theatrical cut (97 minutes); Italian-language version with Goblin score ()02 minutes); audio commentary by Franklin and screenwriter Everett de Roche; on-set interview with Franklin; 200) on-stage interview with Franklin; interview with producer Antony I. Ginnare (2009); cast and crew interview outtakes from Not Quite Hollywood (2008); appreciation by critic Stephen Morgan; trailers; French title sequence comparison; galleries; booklet. REVIEWED BY KATE STABLES “Everyone else was talking about cultural integrity. I had none. Still don't. ” Keen to achieve the international sales denied to his ribald 'ocker' sex comedy The True Story of Eskimo Nell ()975), Australian new wave director Richard Franklin deliberately created a “mid Pacific” feel for this confident psychokinetic-themed shocker. One of the first Ozploitation films, its Carrie-style telekinesis scares enliven the lightly gothic story of a young bed-bound paralysed psychopath (an unnervingly unblinking Robert Thompson) who becomes infatuated with naive English nurse Kathy (Susan Penhaligon). It's full of cheerful Hitchcock steals (Franklin admits in the commentary that the film logo, the Victorian clinic building, and the staircase shots were all lifted from Psycho, and he went on to direct Psycho II in )983), but still manifests an energetic, raw-edged originality. Patrick's fiendish interventions (including bursting cabinets and phantom typewriting) required US SFX specialist Conrad Rothman, whose no-nonsense mechanical effects included faking the spooky near-drowning of Kathy's boyfriend by releasing a submerged dustbin under the actor. Thankfully, the relentless scare-procession of Everett de Roche's screenplay is spattered with dark, irreverent comedy (like the matron bemoaning the “lesbians, nymphomaniacs, enema-specialists” keen to be employed at the clinic). There's also a self-referential irony, but one which doesn't wink at the viewer or undermine the film's efficient suspense. Cranked up by the intense playing of Robert Helpmann's Dr Roget, keen to experiment on Patrick (“One hundred and sixty pounds of limp meat, hanging from a comatose brain”) and by Julia Blake's hissing euthanasia-enthusiast matron, the film is usefully grounded by Penhaligon's gentle naturalistic performance. She gives Kathy's romantic struggles and her mounting fear of Patrick's antics a plaintive quality that stops the scenes of flying plant pots and murderous mind-control getting too camp. Despite being redubbed for the US market (this version is included in the release), the film was a big overseas success, even spawning an unauthorised Italian sequel Patrick Still Lives ()980). But as film historian Stephen Morgan notes in the extras, it didn't gain cult status in Australia until the millennium, yet another victim of the 'cultural cringe'. Disc: A popping transfer, with a fat package of alternate versions and interview extras. The interviews are a tad repetitive, but full of fascinating titbits-such as the elderly Helpmann's insistence that his ballet career meant that he could easily lift Thompson, which resulted in him suffering a broken back on set. THE LAVENDER HILL MOB Charles Crichton; UK )95); Studio Canal; 4K UHD & Region B Blu-ray dual format, 2 discs; b&w; English SDH: Certificate U; 8) minutes; ). 37:). Extras: commentary by film historian Jeremy Arnold; Q&A with Paul Merton; introduction by Martin Scorsese; Stanley Holloway tribute; academic Benedict Morrison on The Lavender Hill Mob ; )988 interview with Crichton; Mavis Nicholson interview with writer T. E. B. Clarke; stills gallery; trailer. REVIEWED BY PHILIP KEMP Directed and scripted by studio regulars Charles Crichton and T. E. B. ('Tibby') Clarke, who had collaborated on Hue and Cry ()947) and Passpost to Pimlico ()949), The Lavender Hill Mob was enthusiastically received and soon became one of the best-loved Ealing comedies. It still is; most of the extras on this disc consist of various people (including Martin Scorsese) telling us how much they love it. Mob in many ways plays out like a parody of The Blue Lamp ()950), which Clarke also scripted. Where Lamp virtually offers a tribute to the Met, in Mob the cops are constantly tripping over themselves. This culminates in a car-chase scene in which three speeding cop-cars and a sports-car collide: the sports-car's radio is emitting a lively account of 'Old Macdonald Had a F arm', and when all the cars' aerials twist together 'Old Macdonald' sounds over every police radio in London. The Met, it seems, far from being offended, quite enjoyed being sent up like this. Alec Guinness's performance displays something of the versatility he'd shown playing all eight of the D'Ascoynes (one female) in Robert Hamer's masterly Kind Hearts and Coronets ()949). We first meet him relaxing contentedly in Rio de Janeiro (as Georges Auric's mock-Hispanic score tells us), beamingly dispensing wads of cash and clearly adored by the locals-not least by a beautiful young woman called Chiquita (Audrey Hepburn in her fourth screen role). From here we're into a long flashback: Guinness's Holland is a downtrodden bank clerk with a humble role escorting bullion vans; his multiple chins and sad speech defect ('w' for 'r') bespeak his drab existence. But when he meets Pendlebury (Stanley Holloway) and their larcenous plot starts to germinate, Holland's eyes light up and a joyously wicked grin emerges-though for the benefit of his bosses he maintains his dreary aspect. Disc: An impeccable 4K restoration. Most of the numerous extras, enjoyable though they are, don't add much; but Tibby Clarke's account of how he came to script the film is well worth hearing. BEHIND CONVENT WALLS Walerian Borowczyk; Italy )978; Arrow Video; Region B Blu-ray; in Italian with English subtitles or English with SDH; Certificate )8; ). 66:); Extras: commentary by critic Justine Smith; appreciation by Virginie Sélavy; Brief von Paris ()975), short documentary by Borowczyk; trailer; booklet. REVIEWED BY DAVID THOMPSON When the highly respected former animator Walerian Borowczyk made the overtly erotic features Immoral Tales ()973) and The Beast ()975), critics may have been dismayed but cinemas were full. Behind Convent W alls ()979), shot in Italy, came about when a prestigious project scripted by Alberto Moravia to star Monica Vitti fell through, and Borowczyk developed an alternative idea based on an anecdote he found in Stendhal's Promenades dans Rome about a scandal in a convent. Behind Convent W alls, like many of Borowczyk's films, uses satire and subversion to explore his antagonism towards repressive authority, his fervent anticlericalism and his belief in the liberating qualities of a wilder sexual freedom, especially for women. At the same time, it's one of his lightest, most fluid films. He collaborated with cinematographer Luciano T ovoli (best known for his work for Antonioni, Argento and Barbet Schroeder) in using natural light and floating handheld camerawork to give the film an airy grace and subtle beauty. Within their cloistered existence, the nuns are lovingly observed enjoying their own obsessions and indulgences. In the film's most notorious sequence, one masturbates with a wooden dildo painted with a bearded face resembling the usual depiction of Christ. Another-played by Borowczyk's wife, Ligia Branice- further confuses religious ecstasy with sexual passion when penetrated by a man for the first time. These gestures of desire and revolt culminate in a strange series of deaths, which both the stern abbess and a visiting bishop are powerless to prevent. As Moravia observed, the film's tone and worldview are closer to Boccaccio than Stendhal, with more than an echo of Pasolini's 'T rilogy of Life' ()97)-74). It is 'nunsploitation', but Borowczyk's film belongs to the high end of the genre, along with Black Narcissus ()947), The Devils ()97)) and Benedetta (202)). DISC: A very beautiful 2K restoration, far superior to any previous releases. The commentaries are well informed and persuasively enthusiastic. Brief von Paris is a fascinating montage of life on Paris streets, shot hand-held by the director with an abstract soundtrack created from the noises of the city. 84DVD & BLU-RAY | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
T wo films by Ozu Y asujirō I WAS BORN, BUT... THERE WAS A FATHER Ozu Y asujiro; Japan 1932/1942; BFI; Region B Blu-ray; b&w; silent/in Japanese with English subtitles; Certificate U; 91/93 mins; 1. 33:1/1. 37:1. Extras: audio commentaries by film historian Adrian Martin; booklet. REVIEWED BY PHILIP KEMP At the outset of his career Ozu Y asujirō was prolific, making 35 features from 1927 to 1937, nearly all of them silent-like other Japanese directors, he delayed adopting sound until the mid 3)s. But from then to the end of World War II he directed only three features; and There W as A Father gives a strong hint why. The silent I W as Born, But.... (pictured above) is the third of Ozu's But... comedies, after I Graduated, But... (1929) and I Flunked, But... (193)). Subtitled 'A Picture-Book for Adults', it offers a satirical picture of the Japanese obsession with hierarchy. T wo small boys move with their parents to a town where their father Y oshii (Saitō T atsuo) has a new job. After a skirmish with the local bully, the boys skip school; their father orders them to attend class, but with the help of a friendly sake delivery lad they vanquish the bully and become leaders of the gang. Their father, they boast, is the best. But at his new employer's house they see footage of him clowning to ingratiate himself with the boss. Ashamed, they shun their dad; their mother must effect a reconciliation. There W as a Father also centres on parental relationships, but could scarcely be more different-scant humour, plenty of didacticism. Y oung Ryohei adores his father Horikawa (Ryū Chishū), but the man's social conscience obliges them to live apart for most of the boy's upbringing and early manhood. Unusually for Ozu, Father takes place over a long period-some 15 years. But here emerges the mature Ozu style: low shooting angles, cuts from one fixed-camera shot to the next. Thanks to Shochiku's recent restoration, we now get the whole film-15 minutes of cuts made by US administration censors, removing all reference to Japan's involvement in World War II, are here restored. Disc: Adrian Martin's voiceover commentaries are a pleasure, packed with detail and animated by evident love for Ozu's films. The booklet has informative essays by Bryony Dixon, T ony Rayns and Ed Hughes, composer of the score for I W as Born. DOGFIGHT Nancy Savoca; US 1991; Criterion; Region B Blu-ray; English SDH; Certificate 15; 94 minutes; 1. 85:1. Extras: commentary by Savoca and producer Richard Guay; new interview with Savoca and actor Lili T aylor by filmmaker Mary Harron; new interviews with cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, production designer Lester Cohen, script supervisor Mary Cybulski, music supervisor Jeff Kimball, supervising sound editor Tim Squyres, editor John Tintori; trailer; booklet. REVIEWED BY HANNAH MCGILL A heartless dating stunt produces unintended consequences in this gentle, well-made and subtly subversive period drama, based on scriptwriter Bob Comfort's own experiences as a young soldier shipping out to Vietnam, and whipped into feminist shape by director Nancy Savoca and star Lili T aylor. River Phoenix plays Eddie Birdlake, a young Marine on his way to the war-but the 'dogfight' of the title has nothing to do with combat. Rather, it names the cruel dare whereby Birdlake and his friends undertake to find the least attractive women they can to bring on a night out before they deploy. Birdlake meets and invites T aylor's dowdy waitress and would-be folk singer Rose, who is naturally devastated when one of the other girls present-a prostitute who has accepted the gig in exchange for payment- reveals the true nature of the event. (In one of the script's many neat asides, Rose's bid for aggrieved solidarity with the other woman is batted back: “At least I got fifty bucks!”) If it's hardly surprising that Birdlake's values will be challenged by his encounter with the bright, guileless and hopeful Rose, the process whereby he grows to respect her is rendered both persuasive and touching by Phoenix and T aylor's lively chemistry and intelligent performances. Phoenix creates a character groping towards self-knowledge-“I don't apologise, ever, and I came all the fuck way back here to apologise, and I don't understand that!”-while T aylor's Rose reacts to her attempted humiliation with both defiance and grace. The war to which Birdlake and his friends are about to offer up their own youthful beauty, meanwhile, is foreshadowed in the cruelty of the dogfight. Disc: Shot by Bob Bukowski in candy shades, with compositions that call to mind Norman Rockwell and Edward Hopper, the film looks lovely in a new 2K digital restoration. Satisfying extras include an excellent discussion between Savoca, T aylor and Mary Harron, who cast T aylor in I Shot Andy W arhol after seeing her in Dogfight. The three discuss, among other things, the awkward matter of approaching actresses to play 'ugly' (“All of us are candidates for the dogfight!” Savoca says, while T aylor notes that “It's so narrow, what's considered acceptable by the patriarchy”); T aylor and Savoca's development of the initially thinly written character of Rose; and the challenge for Phoenix of playing a man so far from himself, having taken the role in the hope of breaking his pattern of playing “sensitive boys”. THE SHAPE OF NIGHT Nakamura Noboru; Japan 1964; Region AB Blu-ray; in Japanese with English subtitles; Certificate 18; 1)6 minutes; 2. 35:1. Extras: T om Mes video essay on Shochiku studios in the 196)s; Nakamura Y oshio on his father Nakamura Noboru and on baseball; trailer; booklet. REVIEWED BY MICHAEL BROOKE In bald synopsis, this is a familiar melodrama. F actory girl turned sex worker Y oshie (Kuwano Miyuki) finds herself reluctantly trapped in a triangle involving two men: her pimp Eiji (Hiro Mikijiro) and her white-collar regular client Fujii (Sonoi Keisuke), who has fallen for her while harbouring the usual fantasy about rescuing a damsel in distress. But while it lacks in broad-brush narrative surprise (albeit with a couple of unexpected twists), it compensates with eye-catching treatment that recalls Douglas Sirk's 195)s T echnicolor melodramas and anticipates Wong Kar Wai's neon-drenched 199)s nocturnal peregrinations. Much of the film is set after dark, with a few calculatedly incongruous daylight set pieces, such as Y oshie's poignant encounter with a former factory colleague turned blissfully married housewife. Although a lifelong Shochiku contract man, Nakamura Noboru (1913-81) was fascinated by the work of younger contemporaries like Ōshima Nagisa (whose regular editor Uraoka Keiichi cut this film) and The Shape of Night feels like the work of a much younger man than its fiftysomething director, not least in its hyperstylised and occasionally confrontational treatment of themes still being treated more circumspectly in the West. There's little here that's viscerally graphic, but while a yakuza gang rape lacks explicit visual detail, not much is left to the imagination. Disc: Picture and sound are superb. On-disc extras include Major Changes, in which critic T om Mes explores how Shochiku gingerly navigated the eddying currents of the 196)s, flirting with cutting-edge directors like Ōshima and softcore sex films before finding a more congenial niche with the long-running T ora-san comedy series. Nakamura's now octogenarian son Y oshio provides more personal context, exploring his ancestral background in kabuki theatre before offering an affectionate portrait of his long-deceased father. The limited edition exclusive booklet is equally worthwhile, with Chuck Stephens' critical essay on the film and its antecedents paralleled with cinematographer T oichiro Narushima's reminiscences about shooting it. 85 DVD & BLU-RAY | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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OPPOSITE Y oko Ono with Glass Hammer from her 'Half-a-Wind Show', Lisson Gallery, London, 1967Simple but mesmeric, these films attune us to elemental movements that otherwise escape our perception... Ono often deployed film as an instrument of discovery, a tool for casting light on minor realities BY LAURA STAAB It starts with a wish upon a tree. Before the entrance to 'Y oko Ono: Music of the Mind', visitors are invited to write a dream on a palm-sized paper tag-hang it from a branch, hope that it will grow. This is one iteration of Ono's Wish Tree, an instal-lation series she has planted around the world since 1996. Over the course of the T ate Modern retrospective, audiences are encouraged to scribble again-thoughts about freedom, feelings about mothers- and to draw, to hammer and to walk over artworks. Ono likes us to participate. Among all the excitement of that novel interaction, the moving image might constitute a chance for participants to become passive spectators: take a pause, if not a seat, and let people of the past do the doing for a moment. Yet with film, as well, Ono wanted to activate audiences. Contemporaries concerned with this or that sociopolitical issue in the 1960s and the 70s wanted to raise consciousness, but Ono was best when she wanted, at a fundamental level, to transform it. Born in T okyo in 1933, the multimedia artist came of age in Japan during World War II. Both negative portraits of Ono as the weird wife of John Lennon and favourable portraits of her as the feminist artist behind Cut Piece (1964) have tended to eclipse these beginnings, but recent reappraisal of Ono's work emphasises this time in Japan in addition to her later life in London and New Y ork. Ono came from wealth, with a banker for a father, but that was not enough to escape the ruinous effects of war. On the cusp of adolescence, she was surrounded by destruction. Whether dreamily or desperately, she says she would look away from the bombed cityscape towards the sky instead. Child-like reasoning surmised that the skies, at least, would not collapse into rubble. Once the war was over, Ono completed her high-school studies at an elite institu-tion, Gakushūin, and went on to read philosophy at a T okyo university. T wo terms in, she left for New Y ork, where she enrolled at Sarah Lawrence College and married an avant-garde composer. By the mid-1960s, she was part of an emergent experimental scene that prized performa-tive, conceptual art. Ono first tried her hand at filmmaking under the umbrella of Fluxus. George Maciunas, a found-ing member of the loose collective, had acquired a camera that could record 2,000 frames per second. Ono was inspired to turn it on two quick acts: the strike of a match and the blink of an eye. What usually passes in a flash is captured in infin-itesimal detail, then slowed to last four to five minutes in Fluxfilm No. 14, Match and Fluxfilm No. 15, Eyeblink (both 1966)- the first two films in the T ate exhibition. Simple but mesmeric, these microscopic films attune us to elemental, essential movements that otherwise escape our per-ception. No sign of life is too small in the wake of war. Nothing is taken for granted. Six years before Ono's Fluxus experi-ments, Maya Deren deduced that film could be, in its manipulation of time, “an instrument of discovery rather than of cre-ativity”. She used an example of a bird in flight, but “the hitherto unseen sequence” of “small movements” she notes in her writings applies as much to Ono's match and blink. Ono often deployed film as an instrument of discovery, a tool for casting light on minor realities: how, for instance, our bottoms look when we walk. Elaborating on another brief Fluxfilm from 1966, Ono's first feature Bottoms (1967) assembles some 200 close-ups of naked buttocks, shifting from side to side as nameless owners take their turn to walk on the spot. On the soundtrack, people ponder the project. Reactions range from bemused to scandalised-and the British Board of Film Classification banned the film. Since then, however, it has earned deserving comparison to Eadweard Muybridge's serial photos: to watch Bottoms is to see that it is more a rev-elatory study of anatomical motion than a cheeky instance of liberated sensibility. When American producers wanted a remake in pink and a sequel with breasts, Ono declined to feminise the film. Bottoms bounces, Ono says, to “a basic energy”. Projected on to a wall in a room that orbits around Ono's momentous arrival in London and infamous marriage to Lennon, Bottoms contends with a lot for audience attention. Nic Knowland's Bed Peace (1969)-about the newlyweds' bed-ins, already an easy sell-tempts the viewer with its comfortable bean bags; a bench before a film of monochrome rep-etition does not quite do the same. Else-where, two 25-minute documentaries fea-turing Ono-Jōnouchi Motoharu's Shelter Plan (1964) and Nagano Chiaki's Some Y oung People (1964)-play without bench or bean bag for viewers. As is often the case with headline exhibitions, bang-for-buck logic risks overwhelming audiences and obscures the finer details of an artist among clamouring content and noise. Not everything is included, mind you. A retrospective of almost 60 years of the multimedia artist's fascinating, eclectic output includes a collection of moving-image work that showcases her provocative intelligence, radical optimism and experimental sensibilities In 1964, Ono published Six Film Scripts. 'Rape, or Chase' is the fifth of those short proposals, and imagines a feature in which a man would “chase a girl on a street with a camera”. Collaborating on filmmaking from the late 1960s to the early 70s, Ono and Lennon realised that script with Rape (1969). For 77 gruelling minutes, the point-of-view camera (oper-ated by Nic Knowland) follows an unwit-ting woman through Highgate Cemetery and nearby streets. In an exhibition that otherwise commemorates Ono's time in London, this film does not feature at all. Just past Bottoms and the swinging 60s room, Fly (1970) and Freedom (1970) are projected one after another on a continu-ous loop in a black-box space. That space makes evident how prominent sound is in each work, whether it is Ono's squeaky vocals or Lennon's electric distortions. Both films focus on women's bodies in states of undress: an actress billed as Virginia Lust in Fly and Ono in Freedom. Although the titles suggest liberation, the films frustrate freedom and flight. Ono cannot undo the clasp of her magenta-pink bra in Freedom and Lust is far from a poster girl for emancipation in Fly. That ambiguous title refers, in the end, not to an action but to an insect. Filmed at first in close-up, the fly crawls across anony-mous flesh, exploring crevices and con-tours. Gradually, the camera's distance from the body increases. Lust lies inert, now dotted with flies. What started as an odd comedy of a little fly on an adventure transforms into another film: the motion-less body and the multiplication of the fly reek of death and decay. Ono screened Fly at Cannes in 1971, and reflected on the relationship between art and the world in writing for the film festival. In line with a cultural moment in which the mass dissemination and democratisation of information felt pos-sible and utopian, Ono wrote “total com-munication equals peace”. Yet that new media dream fades away in Fly, Freedom, and Rape. Cynicism is introduced in these works with Lennon. Film is now an instrument of provocation. The exhibition ends with recent foot-age of Ono as avant-garde superstar at Sydney Opera House, and with scrawling about ourselves. My Mommy Is Beautiful, a sentimental series Ono began in 1997, invites visitors to write about their moth-ers. Is this-celebrity and a retreat into individualised femininity-the zenith of Ono's achievements? 'Music of the Mind' might have ended in the penultimate area, where a monitor shows the skies above the London galleries. SKY TV, an iteration of a piece Ono imagined in 1966, is like the best of her work. Radically opti-mistic and open to whatever discoveries technology and the world might offer, it mobilises an uncomplicated concept and a universalising gesture. According to the live feed on the television, the skies are still there for us, for now. 'Y oko Ono: Music of the Mind' is at T ate Modern, London, until 1 September'A basic energy': Y oko Ono at the T ate Modern 87 WIDER SCREENImage: © Clay Perry / Artwork © Yoko Ono | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
The book's subtitle might suggest an ironic approach, but Screen Deep 'is powered by an... unabashed belief in the world-changing power of screen-storytelling' ABOVE Dorothy Dandridge and John Justin in Island in the Sun (1957)Screen Deep: How film and TV can solve racism and save the world AUTHOR ELLEN E. JONES PAGES 384 PUBLISHER FABER ISBN 9780571369423 REVIEWED BY ALEX RAMON “T o start a conversation” about racial rep-resentation and the ways in which screen storytelling can reinforce or challenge societal racism is Ellen E. Jones's stated aim with Screen Deep. Yet Jones's book doesn't so much start a conversation as participate in one that's been at the fore-front of cultural and critical discourse for around a decade. Combining aspects of star and genre study, cinema history and industry critique alongside readings of a range of TV and film productions, Screen Deep is best taken as a synthesis of some of those debates. Its 14 chapters range widely across topics from costume drama casting to post-9/11 Muslim representa-tion, from race in relation to superhero franchises and sitcoms to Black horror, from the falls from grace of Bill Cosby and Will Smith to the “whiteness” of work by Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola. The book's subtitle might suggest an ironic approach, but as Jones asserts, Screen Deep “is powered by an earnest, whole-hearted, unabashed belief in the world-changing power of screen-storytelling”. The book's thematic chapter structure and overriding concern with representa-tional justice initially appear to position it as a sister to So Mayer's great Political Animals: The New Feminist Cinema (2015) -albeit one that's restricted to “English language” (read: primarily US and UK) work in a way that Mayer's study emphat-ically wasn't. In tone and style, though, Screen Deep is closer to popular contem-porary film writing such as Anna Boguts-kaya's Unlikeable Female Characters (2023), in which Bogutskaya reassured readers that “no one should need a film studies degree to read this book”. Jones similarly adopts a breezy, accessible idiom here. Much more journalistic than scholarly, the approach makes for a clear, engaging read, but also results in arguments that would sometimes benefit from a theoreti-cal framework or from more engagement with other critical voices (as opposed to quoting John Cleese or Laurence Fox tweets) to flesh out ideas. With a glossary of terms included and chapters broken into titled sections, the book seems to be aimed at students just starting to grapple with issues of screen culture and race, and at general read-ers. Jones opens by sounding a personal note, establishing her own position as a mixed-race “Hackney girl” born in 1983, and reflecting on the cultural landscape in which she came of age. Jones's perspective on this period is refreshingly nuanced: she notes the cultural diversity remit of Channel 4, which helped broaden out screen storytelling from exclusively white perspectives and influenced other broad-casters to diversify, but also acknowl-edges the gaps and limitations in terms of non-white representation at the time. The study then turns the clock further back, sketching a brief history of race and racism in silent era and Golden Age Hol-lywood, inevitably referencing the impact of Birth of a Nation (1915), the compro-mised careers of Paul Robeson and Anna May Wong and the significance of Sidney Poitier. From there it leaps forward to the controversies around contemporary cos-tume drama; issues of 'colour blind' versus 'colour conscious' casting are lucidly high-lighted via examples including Bridgerton (2020-) and Armando Iannucci's The Per-sonal History of David Copperfield (2019). Since Jones's judgements on individ-ual works seldom stray far from current critical orthodoxies-a welcome critique of The White Lotus (2021-) is one excep-tion-the most illuminating chapters in Screen Deep are those in which she suc-ceeds in putting a variety of films and shows into dialogue. Particularly strong in this regard is a chapter exploring crime drama in British and American contexts, encompassing Kidulthood (2006), T op Boy (2011-2013; 2019-2023), Widows (2018) and Clemency (2019), among many others. An ambitious chapter titled 'The First Black Woman in Space' explores links between a diverse range of work directed by and/ or centring women of colour-from W elcome II the Terrordome (1995) to I May Destroy Y ou (2020) to Till (2022)-in a way that is fresh and compelling. Other chapters are less cohesive and some take more well-trodden paths. 'Love Conquers All', a chapter on depictions of interracial relationships in mainstream romances and buddy movies, starts con-fidently with an insightful reading of Island in the Sun (1957) but gets tangled in digressions and includes at least one headscratcher of a claim: “Hollywood had always been fairly comfortable depicting interracial relationships-provided, of course, there was a white guy involved somewhere, getting his rocks off. ” The chapter on blackface and its variants, though fairly sharp on more contempo-rary manifestations, feels over-extended when addressing familiar 1970s British culprits. This is particularly problematic when other key texts-the 'social problem' pictures of Basil Dearden, the pioneer-ing films of Horace Ové, the output of the Black filmmaking collectives of the 1980s-go entirely unmentioned in the book and would surely be more reward-ing objects of attention. Despite such omissions, there's still a sense that, overall, Screen Deep tries to cover rather too much, leading to several sections that only scratch the surface. The chapter on Muslim representation, for instance, tends towards the predictable in its reference points and conclusions, finally becoming an effusive tribute to the exceptional greatness of Riz Ahmed. It's redeemed, though, by the inclusion of a fine interview with the director Aleem Khan, discussing his influences and the development of After Love (2020). This is one of three interviews-the others are with Shola Amoo, the director of The Last Tree (2019), and the actress, writer and director Leah Purcell-which are among the book's strongest inclusions. A skilled interviewer, Jones establishes a good rapport with each of the filmmak-ers, who all bring fresh, sometimes sub-versive perspectives to the central issues, compensating for those moments when Screen Deep doesn't quite go deep enough. 88BOOKS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
Kes (1969) may be the most widely rec-ognised film in the oeuvre of its direc-tor, Ken Loach, its love affair between schoolboy Billy Caspar and the kestrel he befriends and trains supplying one of British cinema's most totemic pairings. As David Forrest points out in this busy but sleekly written monograph, Kes's role as a reference point in, for instance, the Danny Boyle-directed opening cer-emony of the London 2012 Olympics affirms it as “a pervasive marker of North-ern English identity”. The pairing of boy and bird, of course, came not from Loach but from screen-writer Barry Hines and his 1968 source novel A Kestrel for a Knave, the ubiquity of which on UK secondary school reading lists in the decades since its publication has further reinforced Kes's familiarity as a cultural object. Forrest, the author of a previous book on Hines, forcefully rejects the perception of Kes as first and foremost a Loach creation. In sacking Loach as auteur, Forrest also dispenses with Kes the film as a closed and final text: his anal-ysis takes in parts of the novel that were never used, scenes that were cut or never filmed-a palimpsest of potential and rejected Keses. This can be discombobu-lating-does it matter, for instance, that Hines wrote a nicer Mrs Caspar than the one we see in the film, given that the one in the film is the one we have?-and side-lines Loach and producer T ony Garnett too much in favour of Hines. Absenting Loach also permits slightly dubious ref-erence to Kes as “working class cinema made by working class people”, a claim that requires some unpacking when you consider that its director went to gram-mar school and studied law at Oxford. People of course tend to write these mon-ographs about films they love, and For-rest wishes above all to praise and defend Kes; but when class is so central to both film and production story, Loach's per-sonal positioning merits closer analysis. But the hinterland of production detail that Forrest has accessed in his research is packed with interest, from financing, casting and technical decisions to the daring promotional approach that suc-cessfully urged UK journalists to cam-paign for a wider release for Kes. Forrest's writing is always warmly engaging and his insights into the film thought-provok-ing and profound. His challenge to the idea that Kes is a depressing or defeatist story rings with conviction, and his gath-ering of testimonies from its worldwide fanbase winningly extends his idea of the film both issuing from and belonging to a community. We just can't let go of Richard Burton and Elizabeth T aylor. As every pop star aspires to be as big as The Beatles so every power couple must dream of the infamy of the battling Burtons. They've been dramatised, on film, television and the stage. Numerous biographies have been published, as well as Burton's diaries, which boosted his reputation as a writer even as they laid bare-with all those single-word entries, “booze”- the waste. So what more can be said? Roger Lewis argues much more, and his gar-gantuan epic Erotic V agrancy resembles the 1963 film on which the pair fell in love: Cleopatra. Just like that glorious melange of Hollywood, Rome, ancient history and la dolce vita, Lewis's book is lavish, over the top and took an age to produce-13 years in all. Anyone expecting conventional biography should look elsewhere because this is less objective documentary and more a participatory re-enactment. Burton was the “Angry (not so) Y oung Man”; T aylor the friend of Lassie and Pie (the horse in National V elvet, 1944). He was the pock-marked son of a Welsh miner; she was Hollywood's child bride and most agile divorcee. Their doubly adulterous affair broke the mores of the day-the book's title comes from the Vati-can's condemnation of the couple-and should have meant career suicide. In fact, the pair went supernova, creating a body of work, from the celebrated Who's Afraid of Virginia W oolf ? (1966) to the camp glories of Joseph Losey's Boom! (1968). Lewis breaks with biographical tradition and rates the films highly, arguing vehe-mently for lesser seen oddities like Stair-case (1969) and The Driver's Seat (1974). Burton, T aylor and Lewis make for a deliriously entertaining throuple. It's this clash of verbosity and yelling matches, vulgarity and grandeur that describes not just the Burtons, but Lewis's own obvious enjoyment. Only Lewis-the author of the wonderful, bonkers The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (1994)-would dare speculate about the sound his sub-jects make on achieving orgasm: T aylor mews, Burton barks. And the language... Savour the delicious description of Bur-ton's voice: “Like seawater washing over a scallop shell. ” Lewis includes sections in which he takes apart his previous biog-raphers for taking the stories at surface value, revealing multiple contradictions, and makes a point of delivering a day-by-day description of the making of Cleopatra to show he can write conventional biog-raphy-he just doesn't want to. And thank god. Because in the end, this is the epic treatment Burton and T aylor deserve. It is the film they should have starred in -bold, bitchy and bloody-minded. It is their masterpiece. Kes AUTHOR DAVID FORREST PUBLISHER BFI FILM CLASSICS PAGES 112 ISBN 9781839025648 REVIEWED BY HANNAH MCGILL erotic vagrancy: everything about richard burton and elizabeth taylor AUTHOR ROGER LEWIS PUBLISHER HACHETTE UK PAGES 660 ISBN 9780857381729 REVIEWED BY JOHN BLEASDALEThis is the epic treatment Richard Burton and Elizabeth T aylor deserve. It is the film they should have starred in-bold, bitchy and bloody-minded EROTIC VAGRANCY: EVERYTHING ABOUT RICHARD BURTON AND ELIZABETH TAYLOR 89 BOOKS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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LINDSAY ANDERSON: I have done hardly anything for television before Glory! Glory!, except for one play, what they call a television play, The Old Crowd [1978], from a script by Alan Bennett. I had a very good time working on that with Alan, but it was received with great hostility by almost all the critics and I was labelled “the only man who had ever made Alan Bennett unfunny”. I think that was because we really went out on a limb and made a film which was satirical and a bit surreal, in places a kind of homage to Buñuel, and that isn't at all the kind of thing people expect to see on television. It was really gratifying that it created such a stir and was so disliked, though when it was shown again recently nobody took any notice of it at all. The only result, unfortunately, was that I wasn't invited to do anything else for television in Britain. So when this invitation arrived from America I was particularly intrigued, because the script had a kind of satirical energy and edge to it which seemed unusual for television, and quite close to many contemporary issues, I am happy to say, notably in its satirical view of TV evangelism. The Canadian writer Stan Daniels, who is experienced and very good-he has worked on The Mary Tyler Moore Show-did a script which was more intelligent and hard-hitting than you might expect. The reason, I think, is that Glory! Glory! has been taken on by Home Box Office, American cable, rather than a network, and HBO are anxious to produce the kind of work that can't be seen on network. They are happy that we should be a bit trenchant or outrageous, and there has never been any suggestion that the edge of the film should be blunted. I had been going to do The Admirable Crichton in the West End, but my negotiations with the producer fell through. So I was at a loose end when this offer arrived out of the blue. It had to be undertaken quite soon, so there wasn't any of that tiresome business of In 1989, as he prepared to shoot the American TV film Glory! Glory! for HBO, his last feature, maverick British director Lindsay Anderson took time out to look back over a distinguished career, which is being showcased at BFI Southbank in London until the end of May SIGHT AND SOUND, SPRING 1989. INTERVIEW BY GERALD PRATLEY'I HAVE NEVER FEL T ACCEPTED AS A DIRECTOR' having to work for ages on the script and argue over it with the producers or the sponsors. I thought, “Well, it's time I had a go. Maybe it's time I sold out!” I haven't sold out yet, and I'm getting tired of being labelled as someone of great and rather boring integrity-so let's have a go. And that's how I got into it, and came to T oronto to film it. I understand that HBO wanted you to shoot this three-and-a-quarter-hour film in 35 days, which on the face of it seems an impossibility. How did you cope with that? I didn't have any preconceived plan; in fact, I was extremely doubtful that I would be able to do it. The only wise precaution I took was to ask [cinematographer] Mike F ash to join me. I worked with him on Britannia Hospital [1982] and The Whales of August [1987], and he has now emigrated to America and has also done a lot of work in T oronto. He knows people here, he 'I was at a loose end when this offer arrived from HBO. I thought, “Well, maybe it's time I sold out!” I'm getting tired of being labelled as someone of great and rather boring integrity- so let's have a go' OPPOSITE Lindsay Anderson ALL IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVEFROM THE ARCHIVE91 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
knows technicians, he was able to pick a very good crew, and I insisted that he should be the cameraman. If they hadn't got Mike, I might well not have done it, because I would never have been able to shoot in 35 days. I am not a very slow director, but I'm not a lightning director either. However, I was very lucky: our unit was extremely good; we had an excellent first assistant and on the floor the organisation was first class. There is a great admiration in North America for British films which are said to be made for television, whereas the American made-for-TV film only has a reputation for cutting corners. In Britain, Channel 4 has helped to finance films and then has the right to show them, either before or after their cinema screenings. But the films have not exactly been made for television -they have been made for Channel 4, if you like, and that is a different thing. Though if you take My Beautiful Laundrette [1985], the interesting thing is that it was made for television and was shown in cinemas really quite by chance and at first somewhat to the alarm of the director, Stephen Frears, because he said, “Well, I only made it for television. ” I think the real difference is the kind of subject liable to be financed by Channel 4, which leads to some of the new British films being a bit lacking in the ambition one associates with a cinema film. There is a certain restriction of imagination or idea, rather than the feeling that if you make a film financed by television you have to restrict it in terms of technique or style. Glory! Glory! is somewhat different. Plainly, although the spread of the story is quite great, it's not possible in 35 days to give it the kind of wit you would have in a movie. If we were making it as a movie, we would certainly have had at least a week or ten days in T exas to shoot some locations. Here we have had one day shooting at Y ork University and that has been our exteriors. My approach to it has been completely pragmatic-to get the script on to film as inventively and expressively as possible. When you take on a subject like this, I don't think you indulge too much in theory. How far did the schedule force you into different procedures from those you followed on The Whales of August ? If we had been making The Whales of August for television, I imagine it would have been done on a four-week budget, and it wouldn't have been shot in Maine but in a studio with a few exteriors. It would have been a different kind of film and it would have been much diminished. I think the fact that we were making a movie creates a psychological difference. I know that some of the American technicians on The Whales of August expected us to shoot it like a television movie. They just expected us to give it an overall lighting and then go in to shoot all the sequences. But, of course, we didn't. We shot it with the care that goes with making a movie. But that is true of this film also, and how you have to look at it, if you like, is that the restrictions or economies are present in the script. I've had the producer say to me once or twice, “Oh, it looks a bit claustrophobic,” and I have to say to her, “Well, since you gave me one day to shoot exteriors, and since we never had a particularly convincing exterior location for the headquarters of this evangelist movement, what more do you expect?” But, of course, the trouble is that the better the film turns out, the more they begin to judge it as though it was Gone with the Wind. I have to repeat “35 days” and, of course, they forget about that. When you are filming overseas, do you keep in touch with what is going on in the world, or in the film world? Is that important to you? It's absolutely unimportant: I don't keep in touch. Occasionally I look at the British papers on a newsstand and I even think of buying one. But when I look at them, I see they are just the same trendy, devitalised rubbish as when I left. When you leave home, and you are away even for a month, you somehow expect great changes to have taken place, and it's so dispiriting to read the Guardian or the Independent or the Times and to see that nothing has changed. It's nice just not to have one's nose rubbed in it every day of the week. As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing to keep in touch with, and it's a nice change to see only the Canadian papers, which contain practically nothing, and indeed to be cut off from all the media nonsense. How important is it for you to know what other filmmakers are doing? Not important at all! It's interesting on a personal level to read that my friend Karel Reisz may be directing a script by Arthur Miller in America. But I have to admit that as one gets older one is less interested in other people's work, and I don't really go to see films much. I often feel that I would like to see something, but the business of getting to a cinema and going in and seeing it is so tiresome. Somehow, I do think that after a certain length of time one begins to feel one has seen everything already. It's rare to get stimulus from anything that is being made contemporarily. And that's because one is more concerned with what one is doing oneself: when you are making a film, that's the only film that really exists. If I go and see a movie while I am making a film, I often feel I'm watching the wrong movie. So, maybe when I get back and have had a bit of a rest, I might venture out and see something. On the other hand, I might stay at home and put my video library in order. Do you rent films on video? I've hired two or three films to have a look at here. At home, I don't think I have ever hired a video. I enjoy recording films on video from the current television programmes-the classic films, that is. But going to see films in the cinema is generally rather a gruesome experience. I have the impression that they are a bit better in Canada, but in Britain cinemas are depressing places to visit. The exhibition side of the industry is quite largely responsible for the wholesale decline of British cinema, which is just symptomatic of the whole national spirit. But I mustn't go on saying things like that, because it makes me unpopular! 'I have to admit that as one gets older one is less interested in other people's work, and I don't really go to see films much. After a certain length of time one begins to feel one has seen everything already' OPPOSITE Malcolm Mc Dowell in If.... (1968) BELOW Lindsay Anderson on the set of If....92 FROM THE ARCHIVE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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THE ORIGINAL ISSUE PUBLISHED IN SIGHT AND SOUND, SPRING 1989 INTERVIEW BY GERALD PRATLEYY ou started doing documentaries, you have directed features, you have filmed plays, a rock concert, commercials, you even did a music video, you've worked in the theatre, and now you have done television in the American sense, what they call a miniseries. Looking at all this, you must feel a certain amount of satisfaction? I am more conscious of the fact that critics, journalists and producers find it difficult to pigeonhole one if one has done such a variety of things and in different styles. The essence of media success, as you know, is to be pigeonholed, and if I am put in any slot it is as a result of If.... [1968], O Lucky Man! [1973] and Britannia Hospital [1982] as a difficult, ironic, satirical and not exactly popular commentator on the ways of the world. That means I have never felt precisely accepted as a contemporary director, chiefly because people don't quite know how to define what I do or what I have done. None of that matters a great deal, except that with a reputation for being difficult, which actually means being demanding, one finds oneself not the first choice on many people's lists. It may be significant that the last two things I have done have been in America. Not characteristically American, not Hollywood productions, but not British either. I don't think I would ever have been invited in Britain to direct something like Glory! Glory!. It has been a stimulating experience, an extremely exhausting one, and I am looking forward to completing it. What will happen next-I haven't the slightest idea. I'm surprised, however, that I have made as many films as I have. I never thought that I was particularly difficult and I've always had a feeling that I could do many different kinds of films, but I can see how I certainly have typed or seemed to type myself. I also realise, looking back on things, that I have always been lacking in career dynamics. That's due to a certain laziness that is within me. I'm not lazy when I'm actually working, but I'm like many people who are very obsessive when they work. When they have finished a job they become extremely lazy and don't want to do anything, because they remember how awful it was. Really, considering the kinds of demands I have made and the kinds of films I have managed to complete, I think it is quite extraordinary that I have made as many as I have. I count them up sometimes-I can't remember how many there are-and I'm certainly pleased, after a rather choosy career, to end up with an American miniseries. At least it shows that I have had it in me to make, I hope, a popular film. I've always thought the films I've made are going to be popular, but they almost never turn out to be. This one, which I've had great doubts about, I've been told by one or two people is going to be popular. So I hope they are right: it would be a good way to bring an erratic career to an end. Journalists and critics seem to expect every filmmaker to make two a year. But in fact, while needing, if you like, to make films of a certain personal quality, I have also very much enjoyed working in the theatre. Film people hardly acknowledge the existence of the theatre. They don't go to it, they know very little about it, so that side of my career is generally not at all marked by film writers. I only wish that some of the productions I have done could have been recorded. It's sad that experiences and achievements of that kind vanish into thin air, and we are left with the often extremely inaccurate accounts of writers and critics. However, there they are-they have mostly gone, but they have represented a considerable part of my life and one I am proud of. The retrospective 'O Dreamland! Lindsay Anderson's Dark British Cinema' runs at BFI Southbank, London, until the end of May 'NO ART IS WORTH MUCH WHICH DOESN'T AIM TO CHANGE THE WORLD': THE LIFE OF LINDSAY ANDERSON Lindsay Anderson was born in Bangalore on 17 April 1923, the son of a Scottish military officer and his wife. He was educated at Cheltenham College, an experience that would be given subversive expression in his 1968 masterpiece If.... Anderson became lifelong friends with Gavin Lambert at the school, sharing a passion for cinema that would bear fruit at Oxford University where the duo co-founded the influential film magazine Sequence. Anderson later wrote for Sight and Sound (which Lambert was editor of from 1949-56) and the New Statesman, purveying trenchant views on what he saw as a parochial and class-bound British cinema. From the late 40s Anderson also made documentaries that focused on lives underrepresented in cinema; in 1955 he won an Oscar for Thursday's Children about the education of deaf children. In 1956 Anderson coined the term 'Free Cinema' to denote a new kind of British cinema by the likes of Karel Reisz, T ony Richardson and Lorenza Mazzetti, a forerunner of social realism often exploring non-metropolitan and working-class lives. This would include his feature debut This Sporting Life (1963), about an emotionally inarticulate working-class rugby player (Richard Harris). Anderson made the striking short White Bus in 1967, but it was If.... (1968), starring Malcolm Mc Dowell as a schoolboy leading a revolution in a private school, that really chimed with the mood of the times, placing Anderson in the front rank of directors internationally. This was the first in a loose trilogy of savage satires starring Mc Dowell as the same character, followed by O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982). Anderson often worked with playwright David Storey; their most significant collaboration was In Celebration (1975). Anderson also directed an ill-fated documentary about Wham! on tour in China. The Whales of August (1987), starring Lillian Gish and Bette Davis, was his last major work. He died on 30 August 1994. 'I'm not lazy when I'm working, but I'm like many people who are very obsessive when they work. When they have finished a job they become lazy and don't want to do anything, because they remember how awful it was' OPPOSITE Richard Harris in This Sporting Life (1963) ABOVE Bette Davis and Lillian Gish in The Whales of August (1987)95 FROM THE ARCHIVE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
THIS MONTH IN... 1984 Always a pleasure when browsing through the Sight and Sound archive to chance upon a piece by acclaimed novelist, screenwriter and critic Gilbert Adair, who died in 2011. T o mark his involvement as co-writer on Chilean maestro Raúl Ruiz's latest venture, The T erritory, Adair gives us “an interim report”, a useful film-by-film guide to, and reflection on, Ruiz's hugely prolific career thus far (the productivity of which never let up thereafter). Responding to critic Jonathan Rosenbaum's remark that “Ruiz can simply do no wrong”, Adair writes, “I know what he means. There now exists a Ruiz-effect, a Ruiz-system, a Ruiz-myth. As an artist, he has become subject to what could be described as the Law of Increasing Returns, to the point where, were he to append his signature to a frying-pan, let's say, it would oblige us to revise our perception both of the utensil itself and of Ruiz's career-and perhaps of the world. ” COVER Another literary adaptation, of Malcolm Lowry's 1947 novel Under the V olcano, directed by John Huston and starring Albert Finney, took pride of place on the cover. It was reviewed, not altogether favourably, by John Pym. “Once or twice, Under the V olcano edges towards deeper mysteries... But for the most part, sad to report and despite Finney's valiant efforts, the book has remained-as everyone must surely have known-an unbreachable rampart. ” Huston would recover his sure footing with two further literary adaptations, right after this one, at the end of his career, both of which met with critical acclaim: Prizzi's Honor (1985) and particularly his magnificent swansong The Dead (1987), based on James Joyce's short story. A 12-month subscription to Sight and Sound includes full access to the 92-year archive of the magazine. Visit bfi. org. uk/ sight-and-sound/magazine/subscriptions INSIDE STORY Following the deaths of two giants of British cinema, Paul Rotha and Thorold Dickinson (pictured, right), documentary filmmaker Edgar Anstey drew on his own relationships with the duo to write a moving tribute. “For their contemporaries they represented the two principal sources of information on film, not only as a work of art but as an instrument of social analysis and indeed of social change. For many of us it was under the auspices of Paul and Thorold that the great Soviet films with their optimistic social realism paraded alongside the sombre German dramas of the alienated individual, each precisely composed image taking its place in a symphony for the eye. ”REVIEWS METHOD ACTING ELSEWHERE IN THE ISSUE · Reviews of Maurice Pialat's À nos amours and John Cassavetes' Love Streams. · An interview with Viktor Shklovsky, the father of Russian formalism and an exceptional screenwriter and film theorist. · An interview with actress Peggy Ashcroft about her love affair with India. · Reports from Cannes, “with its continually perplexing selection procedures”, include a look at newcomer Lars von T rier's first feature The Element of a Crime. De Niro's work can be electrifyingly authentic but also inexpressive. His shadowy renderings deliver not the essence but the style of personality EL SUR John Pym was hugely impressed by Víctor Erice's El sur (The South ). “The melancholy observation is... subtly and beautifully achieved and with a precise attention to pace... Erice, as he proved in The Spirit of the Beehive, is a man capable of intense sympathies. Here he sympathises, without a shred of sentimentality, with all his characters: they have been through things which, like all life's deepest hurts, are beyond words. ” SWANN IN LOVE Jill Forbes undertook a superb analysis of Volker Schlöndorff 's failure, despite his immense talents, to get anywhere close to the spirit of Proust's novel. “With Coup de Grace, The Tin Drum, Y oung Törless, Schlöndorff proved himself not just a great adaptor of novels, but a great filmmaker. And each was, in its way, a period piece, so that there is no... reason why Swann in Love should have proved intractable. But each was also rooted in a particular cultural experience, whereas the present film probably suffers from a deliberate internationalism in the selection of cast and crew. ” AND THE SHIP SAILS ON Fellini's latest, about a group of lovers, statesmen, singers and musicologists on board a ship sailing to the Adriatic, left Julian Jebb underwhelmed. “This is a sadly tired film from a great master. There is not enough invention and no substance whatsoever except on the purely pictorial level. In fact it looks as if Fellini, who has always worked well before with fantastic and elaborate decor, is here swamped by his designer, Dante Ferretti. ”Hal Hinson's 'Some notes on Method actors' is a brilliant polemical survey of the phenomenon, positing Robert De Niro (pictured in 1982's The King of Comedy, above) in particular as the devitalised end-point of a powerful tendency within screen acting. “De Niro... has carried screen realism, at one end of the spectrum, to its apparent limits-to the cusp of autism. But his behaviourism has become a sleight of hand; it's a ruse... his work as an actor can be frighteningly, electrifyingly authentic but, at the same time, inexpressive. De Niro's shadowy renderings deliver not the essence but the style of personality. ”96 IMAGES: BFI NATIONAL ARCHIVE | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
EDITORIAL ENQUIRIES 21 Stephen Street London W1T 1LN 020 7255 1444 bfi. org. uk/sightandsound sightandsound@bfi. org. uk SUBSCRIPTIONS 020 8955 7070 sightandsound@ abacusemedia. com Annual subscription rates: UK £50, Eire and ROW £75 15% discount for BFI members NEXT ISSUE Digital edition available from 17 June On UK newsstands from 20 June SOCIAL MEDIA F acebook: Sight Soundmag T witter: @Sight Soundmag Instagram: @sightsoundmagazine VOLUME 34 ISSUE 5 ISSN 0037-4806 USPS 496-040 Sight and Sound is a member of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (which regulates the UK's magazine and newspaper industry). We abide by the Editors' Code of Practice and are committed to upholding the highest standards of journalism. If you think that we have not met those standards and want to make a complaint please contact mike. williams@bfi. org. uk. If we are unable to resolve your complaint, or if you would like more information about IPSO or the Editors' Code, contact IPSO on 0300 123 2220 or visit www. ipso. co. uk Sight and Sound (ISSN No: 0037-4806) is published monthly except Jul/Aug and Jan/Feb combined issues by British Film Institute, London UK and is distributed in the USA by e PG, 18 Central Blvd, S Hackensack NJ 07606. Periodicals postage paid at So Hackensack NJ. Postmaster: send address changes to Sight and Sound, c/o 18 Central Blvd, S Hackensack NJ 07606 Copyright © BFI, 2024. The views and opinions expressed in the pages of this magazine and on its website are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of the BFI or its employees. The contents of this magazine may not be used or reproduced without the written permission of the Publisher. The BFI is a charity, (registration number 287780), registered at 21 Stephen St, London, W1T 1LNEDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Mike Williams MANAGING EDITOR Isabel Stevens ASSOCIATE EDITOR Kieron Corless REVIEWS EDITOR Katie Mc Cabe EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Thomas Flew WEEKLY FILM BULLETIN EDITOR Pamela Hutchinson BFI DIGITAL EDITOR Henry Barnes BFI DIGITAL FEATURES EDITOR Sam Wigley CHIEF SUB-EDITOR Jamie Mc Leish SUB-EDITORS Robert Hanks Liz T ray CREDITS SUPERVISOR Patrick F ahy CREDITS ASSOCIATES Kevin Lyons James Piers T aylor ART DIRECTOR Leo Field ASSISTANT DESIGNER Bruna Osthoff 2021 REDESIGN Pentagram PUBLISHING PUBLISHING COORDINATOR Ryan Swindlehurst ADVERTISING ENQUIRIES Media Shed Tim Porter 0203 137 2406 timp@media-shed. co. uk Seymour 020 7429 4000 info@seymour. co. uk MMS Ltd info@mmslondon. co. uk ORIGINATION Rhapsody COLOUR REPRODUCTION Dawkins Colour PRINTER Walstead Group TYPEFACES Plaak / 205TF Big Caslon / Font Bureau Caslon Ionic / Commercial T ype NEWSSTAND AND BOOKSHOP DISTRIBUTION | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
ENDINGS BY ANNE BILLSON Dr John Holden (Dana Andrews), an American psychologist, will die at 10 o'clock unless he can return a strip of parchment, inscribed with a runic curse, to the man who gave it to him. This is a warlock named Julian Karswell (Niall Mac Ginnis), who has hypnotised Joanna (Peggy Cummins), Holden's love interest, into joining him on the boat train to Southampton. He is not at all happy to see Holden join them in their compartment. Karwell's motive for kidnapping Joanna is never clarified, but it's impor-tant she is present for the climax of Jacques T ourneur's Night of the Demon. More than romantic interest, she has provided a vital counterpoint to Hold-en's bullheaded scepticism. Thanks to Cummins' delivery of lines such as “Please don't treat me like a mental patient who has to be humored. I also majored in psychology,” she comes across not as a superstitious flake but the voice of reason. The novelist Christopher Fowler wrote, “Ghost stories are implicit, horror stories explicit. ” Part of Night of the Demon 's enduring power is that it combines attributes of both, the con-flict between two incompatible dis-ciplines adding to the tension as the story hurtles towards its conclusion. We have already seen in the film's opening with Joanna's uncle what hap-pens when time runs out for some-one who has been cursed: a gigantic fire demon materialises and kills them. It's often said that Night of the Demon is ruined by the demon, turning it into a monster movie instead of the psycho-logical thriller envisaged by T ourneur, whose 1942 film Cat People (and other work for RKO producer Val Lewton) downplayed explicit horror in favour of suggestion and atmosphere. Screen-writer Charles Bennett, veteran of half a dozen Alfred Hitchcock films, tried (unsuccessfully) to have his credit removed but, pace his sterling work on this and other films, one might ques-tion the judgement of someone who considered the casting of Mac Ginnis a mistake. The Irish actor's remarkably nuanced performance as Karswell-at once affable, sinister, vindictive, fright-ened-doesn't just permeate the film, but grounds it in recognisable psycho-logical reality. Critics have blamed the unambigu-ousness of the monster on American producer Hal E. Chester, who brought in Cy Endfield, fugitive from the Hol-lywood blacklist, to work on Bennett's screenplay. But as T ony Earnshaw points out in his book Beating the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon (2005), the demon was present at each stage of the script's evolution, so was hardly foisted on T ourneur at the last second. Beside, showing the supernatural as real from the outset doesn't kill the sus-pense, but redirects it, turning Holden's psychological journey from sceptic to believer into the engine of the story. And Chester seems to have known what he was doing in terms of what we now refer to as branding; the demon, with its Godzilla-like scale, roiling smoke and batlike chittering, has taken its rightful place in the hellscape of clas-sic horror imagery. Night of the Demon was adapted from M. R. James's short story 'Casting the Runes' (1911), which ends with Karswell catching the boat to France, unaware the runes have been passed back to him. We later learn he died in a freak accident, struck on the head by falling masonry. This sort of reported event doesn't lend itself well to the screen, so the script condenses time and place into a scenario more befitting a thriller. As the clock ticks down, Holden's attempts to return the runes are repeatedly thwarted until he manages to slip them into the warlock's coat pocket when the train stops at a station. Karswell dis-covers them almost immediately, but the parchment flutters out of his grasp. He chases it down the train corridor and on to the track, where it combusts in front of him. His fate is sealed. The familiar smoke and chittering signal the approach of the demon and, as express trains thunder past, the colossal beast picks him up and swats him with its mighty claw before dropping his smok-ing corpse on the railway line. Despite the entity being as tall as a skyscraper, it seems no one other than Karswell actually saw it. Observers conclude that the dead man must have been hit and dragged along by a train. Holden approaches the corpse, but changes his mind and returns to where Joanna is waiting for him. “Maybe it's better not to know,” he says as they walk away. Know what? That demons are real? T oo late. The film has already con-vinced us they are-even if not everyone can see them. Night of the Demon (1957) The giant demon that appears before the death of the sinister warlock at the close of Jacques T ourneur's film has taken its place in the hellscape of classic horror imagery FROM TOP Niall Mac Ginnis, the monster and Peggy Cummins and Dana Andrews in the final scenes of the film Showing the supernatural as real from the outset doesn't kill the suspense, but redirects it, turning Holden's psychological journey from sceptic to believer into the engine of the story 98 | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |
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GOSEEAMOVIE A CINEMA TICKET EVERY WEEK + ALL THE MOVIES YOU CAN STREAM ONLY £18. 99 A MONTHMONKEY MANDEV PATEL PERFECT DAYSWIM WENDERS LOVE LIES BLEEDINGROSE GLASS | sfx.issue.379.june.2024.pdf |