tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11466740284733451412024-03-04T21:35:09.960-08:00Time Out Film GuideSince the print version of the Time Out Film Guide has not yet been fully transferred to their website, the following are reviews of mine that appear in the guide but are not yet online elsewhere. They remain property of the TOFG and may not be reproduced without permission.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-3347219896173061422011-05-07T12:33:00.001-07:002019-05-14T22:37:37.506-07:00Fin<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-hDRVmctXCKvVEJa25GhTl31pQ6MEisZL8FHPpLa64ryLg1-uIhUhvtf0EJLBLwWCDyV_6CAJL38nk4C65zcB2YQOz4czPUL_MXPJA4rNrJZcPFoSiyplPkDR9n6iBG6rTtmUR4qr8bJ8/s1600/tofg.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604061027797882482" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-hDRVmctXCKvVEJa25GhTl31pQ6MEisZL8FHPpLa64ryLg1-uIhUhvtf0EJLBLwWCDyV_6CAJL38nk4C65zcB2YQOz4czPUL_MXPJA4rNrJZcPFoSiyplPkDR9n6iBG6rTtmUR4qr8bJ8/s400/tofg.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 197px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 128px;" /></a>Rumour strongly has it that after two or three years of hanging on by a thread, there will be no more print editions of the Time Out Film Guide. True that it had grown to a monstrous doorstop of a book, and true that the information could far more efficiently be stored, updated, and indexed online, but it is obviously a sad passing, for in various volumes of growing size it has been my bible since, aged 16, I received the second edition as a school prize (we got to choose our own books). So I am stuck with George Clooney's mug on the final edition, but its place by my TV will be forever assured until someone decides that books are OK after all. RIP (and many thanks to marvelous editor Johnny Pym for his kindness and encouragement over the last few years).tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-75652505951120102032011-05-07T12:04:00.000-07:002011-05-07T12:06:19.513-07:00Duelle (une quarantaine)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0dYb2K7nmOj63SKAUaYxpKNe-Hax3z_03Z6n9ByhTrNcrN6rjyAuGnB_V3eaKg0lf2QmB-mCVSLjvlunAf0ZAVEMxHWhZg7cOOXEhJ6g4DtfO0yXOeqO6yNbHrIHPhisnGZkIHiqiKZ_c/s1600/duelle.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 189px; height: 251px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0dYb2K7nmOj63SKAUaYxpKNe-Hax3z_03Z6n9ByhTrNcrN6rjyAuGnB_V3eaKg0lf2QmB-mCVSLjvlunAf0ZAVEMxHWhZg7cOOXEhJ6g4DtfO0yXOeqO6yNbHrIHPhisnGZkIHiqiKZ_c/s400/duelle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604052535589739666" border="0" /></a>(1976, Fr, 121min) <span style="font-style: italic;"><br />d</span> Jacques Rivette <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Stéphane Tchalgadjieff <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Eduardo de Gregorio, Marilù Parolini <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> William Lubtchansky <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Nicole Lubtchansky <span style="font-style: italic;">pd</span> Eric Simon <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Jean Wiener <span style="font-style: italic;">cast</span> Hermine Karaghuez, Juliet Berto, Bulle Ogier, Jean Babilée, Nicole Garcia, Claire Nadeau, Elizabeth Wiener <br /><br />Rivette’s aborted <span style="font-style: italic;">filles de feu</span> series concerned two rival goddesses descended to Earth, here in search of a magical jewel allowing them to stay beyond their allotted forty days. Ogier and Berto are radiant as the daughters of the Sun and Moon, interacting in mysterious fashion with a plucky brunette heroine and an enigmatic blonde, with the odd man out (Babilée, a dancer) shifting his character dependent upon which woman he is playing opposite. Conceived under the twin lights of Cocteau and diabolic noir <span style="font-style: italic;">The Seventh Victim</span>, in a fashion extreme even for Rivette, the skeletal plot and oblique, last-minute dialogue are a means to put his cast through a series of doubled/opposed combinations whilst enacting a meticulous mise-en-scène full of sinuous/sinister Ophuls tracks and cinematic allusions; the relentless exploration of filmic space extends to direct-sound piano improvisations from veteran Wiener, unobtrusive but incongruous in the background. Strange, obscure and infinitely self-reflexive, yet those with some sympathy will glide trembling through the movie mirror to an endlessly seductive twilight world of invented myth.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-9086253429255133302011-05-07T11:57:00.000-07:002011-05-07T12:04:08.629-07:00Noroît (une vengeance)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqF8oqqMlqolqbOE9YplTWCctFXwmpSAahqW0E4Tq_FVObiwVaPt_6v8F_FERGpm8kiKZ6wOcgKC7yANHT-i3v5NozdqCFtD6qdgHs8L7eKuWJ9G8K5lDGlFw5mw_ksrDvrBCbAOacd107/s1600/noroit6.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 212px; height: 115px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqF8oqqMlqolqbOE9YplTWCctFXwmpSAahqW0E4Tq_FVObiwVaPt_6v8F_FERGpm8kiKZ6wOcgKC7yANHT-i3v5NozdqCFtD6qdgHs8L7eKuWJ9G8K5lDGlFw5mw_ksrDvrBCbAOacd107/s400/noroit6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604051201965084962" border="0" /></a>(1976, Fr, 145min)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Jacques Rivette <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Stéphane Tchalgadjieff <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Eduardo di Gregorio, Marilù Parolini <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> William Lubtchansky <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Nicole Lubtchansky <span style="font-style: italic;">pd</span> Eric Simon <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Jean Cohen-Solal, Robert Cohen-Solal, Daniel Ponsard <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Geraldine Chaplin, Bernadette Lafont, Kika Markham, Babette Lamy, Elizabeth Lafont, Humbert Balsan, Larrio Ekson <br /><br />On the wild Brittany coastline, pale romantic Geraldine Chaplin cradles her (perhaps) dead brother, whilst skeletally intoning a poetical text vowing revenge on pirate queen Giulia (Lafont). They are, respectively, Moon and Sun goddesses engaged in a battle to the death (perhaps). Rivette’s <span style="font-style: italic;">filles de feu</span> tetralogy was built on genre, here the action/adventure pirate mode, from <span style="font-style: italic;">Moonfleet</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Anne of the Indies</span>. But genre is only a starting point, an excuse to explore movement (most of the cast are dancers) and music (provided by a terrific trio improvising on camera) and, as ever, play-acting, from Lafont resplendent in a purple leather pant-suit to frequent quotation from the other Tourneur, an accusatory play-within-a-film, and a fantastical midnight masque finale. Highly idiosyncratic, almost too privately-conceived to be satisfying, and as such a mystical, mythical and wondrous leap into uncharted territory.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-4553330181171062962011-05-07T11:53:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:55:39.732-07:00Berlin Alexanderplatz<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjukCoQ59TPqnSvFbuW7lAvSVXnFZX4hytQiCnFfVIkKnc2sZiopBl1tNE_UvmhQ0Eyme2kGQIzu7VcecEEi95q-ChK0110o3-C3xuNw27q_T0VBTAXmXQitUoLsNf-7FZJCcgySO8aLsnN/s1600/berlin_aplatz1931.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 189px; height: 288px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjukCoQ59TPqnSvFbuW7lAvSVXnFZX4hytQiCnFfVIkKnc2sZiopBl1tNE_UvmhQ0Eyme2kGQIzu7VcecEEi95q-ChK0110o3-C3xuNw27q_T0VBTAXmXQitUoLsNf-7FZJCcgySO8aLsnN/s400/berlin_aplatz1931.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604049833054050642" border="0" /></a>(1931, Ger, 90min, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Phil Jutzi <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Arnold Pressburger <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Alfred Döblin, Karl Heinz Martin, Hans Wilhelm <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Nicolas Farkas, Erich Giese <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Geza Pollatschik <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Allan Gray <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Heinrich George, Maria Bard, Margarete Schlegel, Bernhard Minetti, Gerhard Beinert, Albert Florath, Paul Westermeier, Oscar Höcker<br /><br /> Not without charm, but a self-defeatingly brief dash through Döblin’s book, notable mainly for the author’s involvement in the screenplay, extracting the slender narrative elements from a novel in which the story is purposely unimportant. It starts off like a 20s city-film with Franz Biberkopf (a too-appealing Heinrich George) riding a tram fresh out of jail, unaccustomed and queasy at the pace of modern life all around him. Unfortunately, apart from a handful of fascinating semi-documentary cutaways in and around the Alexanderplatz, and a glimpse of 1930’s German holidaymakers at the seaside, the film eschews anthropology and any effort to appropriate the novel’s collage style, broaching in only the most superficial ways the sociological problems facing an ex-con starting his life over again without fully understanding how (or if) he fits into the modern world into which he has been reborn.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-76479513562401135832011-05-07T11:50:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:51:29.782-07:00Black Magic (aka Cagliostro)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlez0vCrOuCC-4GNXdRTbdzeT_HRAcVEkt6nFnd6329Tl_dWHYPmcSviT61znsefeS-9LccKqvDCjMKt4M0rUjd1Nzf3pSJgkmrzz5G7rhfkKnB-RR4hwC6ubPd7NFnHWEu_uIj8Db1pCG/s1600/black+magic.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 181px; height: 249px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlez0vCrOuCC-4GNXdRTbdzeT_HRAcVEkt6nFnd6329Tl_dWHYPmcSviT61znsefeS-9LccKqvDCjMKt4M0rUjd1Nzf3pSJgkmrzz5G7rhfkKnB-RR4hwC6ubPd7NFnHWEu_uIj8Db1pCG/s400/black+magic.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604048747080050354" border="0" /></a>(1949, USA/It, 105min, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Gregory Ratoff, Orson Welles <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Gregory Ratoff, Edward Small <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Charles Bennett <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Ubaldo Arata, Anchise Brizzi, Otello Martelli <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Fred R. Feitshans Jnr, James C. McKay, Renzo Lucidi <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Jean d’Eubonne, Ottavio Scotti <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Paul Sawtell <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Orson Welles, Nancy Guild, Akim Tamiroff, Frank Latimore, Valentina Cortese, Margot Grahame, Stephan Bekassy, Charles Goldner, Berry Kroeger, Lee Kresel, Raymond Burr<br /><br /> Narrated by Dumas père to his fils (an unlikely and distracting Raymond Burr) this gears up to be a splendid romp through the capitals of eighteenth-century Europe, with gypsies and castles and magic, before getting bogged down in the intrigues of the Parisian court, a Marie-Antoinette lookalike and the nobleman who hung Cagliostro’s parents. Welles has a whale of a time with the title role, phony prestidigitator and genuine hypnotist with delusions of theism, and he oversaw great chunks of the picture while Ratoff hovered on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Sets and costumes are lavish, but despite some atmospherics and high-toned playing, it’s a largely two-dimensional affair, most notable for being the movie for which Welles forsook the <span style="font-style: italic;">Macbeth</span> editing suite, and for introducing him to the subsequently invaluable Tamiroff.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-82966596562679658232011-05-07T11:46:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:48:18.571-07:00The Constant Nymph<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHbvDdPuo8yd9h0DZRHqHkmlPNhly854T4mXnJkcz154Tpm5u5NcrE7qwrS_eVUelpV6EFW0LWtR4iHdZY2ZWi55OWM-nDGuufqLtmj2WzwrHSpC4MZnxQTQ9O7HI0vLIvT3is5NtmwO0I/s1600/constant+nymph.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 165px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHbvDdPuo8yd9h0DZRHqHkmlPNhly854T4mXnJkcz154Tpm5u5NcrE7qwrS_eVUelpV6EFW0LWtR4iHdZY2ZWi55OWM-nDGuufqLtmj2WzwrHSpC4MZnxQTQ9O7HI0vLIvT3is5NtmwO0I/s400/constant+nymph.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604047919317104018" border="0" /></a>(1943, USA, 112min, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Edmund Goulding <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Henry Blanke <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Kathryn Scola <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Tony Gaudio <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> David Weisbart <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Carl Jules Weyl <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Erich Wolfgang Korngold <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Charles Boyer, Joan Fontaine, Brenda Marshall, Alexis Smith, Charles Coburn, Dame May Witty, Peter Lorre, Jean Muir<br /><br /> Mainly of interest for Korngold’s attempt to elevate the general standard of music in films (and for its disappearance into a rights limbo almost since release) this has Boyer and Fontaine both on classic form, he brooding, free-willed and artistic, she simpering, mooning and sickly. The composer who will only rise to greatness once he learns to cry gets a splendid opportunity to do so by the end, while the spectre of <span style="font-style: italic;">Letter from an Unknown Woman</span> hovers close at hand. Various European settings stink of the Warners soundstage, and for all the debate about musical artistry and the lush symphonic poem that crowns the story, Korngold’s contribution never transcends traditional movie-music schmaltz, which sort of emotive nonsense Boyer so sensibly contemns for much of the film. The weepie mechanics are sound, however, and the supporting cast is top notch.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-21840114517392578772011-05-07T11:41:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:43:30.477-07:00Sanatorium pod klepsydra (The Hourglass Sanatorium)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQAEmC6SEvRhJS6GsJuBbPFs_yTJ-5AO8oblX1TXiIPM6Nekea7mxZo0YMoiwIPkSMzQ-fAriAMtZa5nV2N5t95otLzYEMJ6Di2DqDy2xFQrer5-yxCZX1Onjeea3sXQzCBlClu7VNWLNc/s1600/santaorium+pod+klepsydra.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 183px; height: 254px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQAEmC6SEvRhJS6GsJuBbPFs_yTJ-5AO8oblX1TXiIPM6Nekea7mxZo0YMoiwIPkSMzQ-fAriAMtZa5nV2N5t95otLzYEMJ6Di2DqDy2xFQrer5-yxCZX1Onjeea3sXQzCBlClu7VNWLNc/s400/santaorium+pod+klepsydra.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604046694975130050" border="0" /></a>(1973, Pol, 124min) <br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> d/sc </span>Wojciech Has <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Witold Sobocinski <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Janina Niedzwiecka <span style="font-style: italic;">pd</span> Andrzej Plocki, Jerzy Skarzynski <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Jerzy Maksymiuk <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Jan Nowicki, Tadeusz Kondrat, Irena Orska, Halina Kowalska, Gustaw Holoubek, Mieczyslaw Voit, Bozena Adamek. Ludwik Benoit, Janina Sokolowska<br /><br /> Making <span style="font-style: italic;">The Saragossa Manuscript</span> look positively straightforward by comparison, Has's Schulz adaptation is - literally? - a dream of a movie. Joseph son of Jacob, woken by a blind Charon-like conductor on an uncomfortably evocative train full of Jews, is visiting his father in a strange, magnificently decrepit sanatorium whose inmates are sustained by the slowing down of time. Pretty soon, Joseph sees his own self approaching the building, and conventional notions of time and space are out the window, in favour of a disconcerting picaresque through memory and fantasy. Cousin to that other mittel-European Joseph (K), his bewildering purgatory is replete with an invisible bureaucracy that arrests him for his dreams, copious skulls, cobwebs and semi-sentient clockwork mannequins of historical figures plus, this being 70s European art cinema, women who have trouble keeping their blouses closed. Surrealism mingles with arcane allegory and metaphor, underpinned by the horror of the Shoah and the passing of a particular form of Jewish European culture, and if its hallucinatory allusiveness may obstruct full understanding, it's still a stunning head-trip of a movie.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-35448260230848467882011-05-07T11:36:00.000-07:002012-11-11T03:01:06.551-08:00La ilusión viaja en tranvía (Illusion Travels by Streetcar)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizLjvnOqGp0S_3pTY5_MLerk1eHnJPjHJKKT2DzGWIeugXNHKHlolJtOXuTFzba6LyKnGevHPFMRMavQWuFfPNj485fHze8gepWj8HK784Og3JixYtHOLjcmIPJcwc2NAcfSr9gYZIsxmt/s1600/Ilusion-viaja-en-tranvia-La.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604045346513736562" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizLjvnOqGp0S_3pTY5_MLerk1eHnJPjHJKKT2DzGWIeugXNHKHlolJtOXuTFzba6LyKnGevHPFMRMavQWuFfPNj485fHze8gepWj8HK784Og3JixYtHOLjcmIPJcwc2NAcfSr9gYZIsxmt/s400/Ilusion-viaja-en-tranvia-La.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 248px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 182px;" /></a>(1954, Mex, 90min, b/w)<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Luis Buñuel <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Armando Orive Alba <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> José Revuelta, Mauricio de la Serna, Luis Alcoriza, Juan de la Cabada <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Raúl Martinez Solares <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Jorge Bustos <span style="font-style: italic;">pd</span> Edward Fitzgerald <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Luis Hernández Bréton <span style="font-style: italic;">cast</span> Carlos Navarro, Fernando Soto, Lilia Prado, Agustín Isunza, Guillermo Bravo Sosa, José Pidal, Javier de la Parra <br />
<br />
Buñuel’s fond picaresque has handsome “Curly” and portly Tarrajas requisition their beloved tram for one last ride before she’s consigned to the scrap heap. They are inundated with passengers whom they refuse to charge – one illusion is free socialized public transport. On their circuitous route back to the yard, Buñuel’s mockery encompasses oppression via capital and religion, and a drunken duke whose topper is unseated by a swaying pig snout. It's a deliberately inconsequential, gentle comedy, however, firmly on the side of the old-fashioned and of the working class, those whose obscure stories make up the fabric of a city. Designed to give them a moment onscreen more than to rail against their plight, it’s a mischievous, drunken wheeze cooked up during a delightfully ramshackle staging of Genesis, complete with beer-swilling Lucifer and sexy Eve.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-9540436395639357362011-05-07T11:32:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:45:46.312-07:00Liliom<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBS49Qd4a1MRFyBwU9yLdSvDOxkJlRqYl861ap4mPF7DrAglEV9CtskFTjDR8HOj7pNciT-NvFRAp7gpJ6V17A6SdNBnyGBO_19mM8dtF6Y3K-LH8msTibGqisU13889hpnQ6J1cuJ-bOX/s1600/Liliom.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 186px; height: 248px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBS49Qd4a1MRFyBwU9yLdSvDOxkJlRqYl861ap4mPF7DrAglEV9CtskFTjDR8HOj7pNciT-NvFRAp7gpJ6V17A6SdNBnyGBO_19mM8dtF6Y3K-LH8msTibGqisU13889hpnQ6J1cuJ-bOX/s400/Liliom.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604044236574223954" border="0" /></a>(1934, Fr, 118min, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Fritz Lang <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Erich Pommer <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Fritz Lang, Robert Liebmann <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Rudolph Maté, Louis Née <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> René Renoux <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Franz Waxman <span style="font-style: italic;">cast</span> Charles Boyer, Madeleine Ozeray, Florelle, Alcover, Henri Richard, Barencey, Maximilienne, Raoul Marco, Antonin Artaud<br /><br />Liliom is a carnival barker, charming on the merry-go-round, a lazy sponging hooligan otherwise. His redeeming feature is that he is a brutish young Charles Boyer, dancing on the balls of his feet, alternately glowering or child-like. Lang stopped in Paris long enough to direct the first Fox-Europa production for Pommer and it’s the lightest thing he did (and one of his favourites), with splendid carnival scenes and the feel of romantic comedy, but telling a cruel story of implacable Langian fate. Sadly, it takes far too long to get to the payoff (it’s from the same play as <span style="font-style: italic;">Carousel</span>), wherein Boyer ascends to heaven with two eerie conductors (Cocteau took them for <span style="font-style: italic;">Orphée</span>), gets a comically appropriate reception, and is shown a startling movie of his own inner thoughts. The film rests on Liliom’s appeal, but his loutish machismo (Boyer’s charisma notwithstanding) is more dated than masterful, and the sadistic conclusion espouses an attitude to domestic violence that no longer plays, even with allowances.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-24321424295022090802011-05-07T11:27:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:30:17.624-07:00Of Human Bondage<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnQd7snY1JlfGHJBm1Wg-7EtW3AIaxhM1sJutnFE2jWDhQGKQz5yAcAqvHR_xAlLkZ_073dyEmfKg_s4sGODOTut2wuD_rdf4aoeneDp9LogQarZTtVff6ECFCCm9u_evUol0XyfRDY_j/s1600/of-human-bondage.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnQd7snY1JlfGHJBm1Wg-7EtW3AIaxhM1sJutnFE2jWDhQGKQz5yAcAqvHR_xAlLkZ_073dyEmfKg_s4sGODOTut2wuD_rdf4aoeneDp9LogQarZTtVff6ECFCCm9u_evUol0XyfRDY_j/s400/of-human-bondage.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604043295597387026" border="0" /></a>(1934, USA, 83min, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> John Cromwell <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Pandro S. Berman <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Lester Cohen <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Henry W. Gerrard <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> William Morgan <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Carroll Clark, Van Nest Polgase <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Max Steiner <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Frances Dee, Kay Johnson, Reginald Denny, Alan Hale<br /><br /> Although abounding with such risqué material as unwedded cohabitation, single motherhood, prostitution and syphilis, this is a superficial trot through Maugham’s novel, enlivened only by a fiery Davis in her star-making turn as the slatternly shrew of a cockney waitress to whom Howard feels eternally bound because he once cared enough to ask her to marry him. Sympathy is guaranteed by his long face and buttoned-up exterior, concealing the sensitivity and melancholy of a failed artist, and the Englishman’s classically pointless shame, a clubfoot. Davis aside, Maugham’s cold-hearted cruelty is cripplingly underplayed and the final scene, pilfered from Sunrise, is radically misjudged in ham-fistedly replacing psychological resolution with a cacophony of car horns; by that time, however, Davis is out of the picture and along with her, any reason to care.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-58254983667095025742011-05-07T11:19:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:21:08.784-07:00The Pleasure Garden<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWAjcOAwkvl6c3c90xQM0HahPc6V_ELrn0nBhWginqYWcEsmYQvyIKcu2Tquixw0H1o2ppb2GL97xbRLggqUGLpQd9thamUg4uMlCYwCkk9BCDpb9n7wg4db6MXjslsF1RKEb-9g51dNlN/s1600/Pleasure+Garden.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 182px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWAjcOAwkvl6c3c90xQM0HahPc6V_ELrn0nBhWginqYWcEsmYQvyIKcu2Tquixw0H1o2ppb2GL97xbRLggqUGLpQd9thamUg4uMlCYwCkk9BCDpb9n7wg4db6MXjslsF1RKEb-9g51dNlN/s400/Pleasure+Garden.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604040924162372994" border="0" /></a>(1925, UK, 6,458 feet, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Alfred Hitchcock <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Michael Balcon, Erich Pommer <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Eliot Stannard <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Ludwig Reiber <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Lee Erwin <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Virginia Valli, Carmelita Geraghty, Miles Mander, John Stuart, Ferdinand Martini, Florence Helminger <br /><br />The Pleasure Garden is a London nightclub, but also an apt description of how chorus girl Jill takes life. Sexy theatrical goings-on fade with her into the background, however, as her straighter room-mate Patsy takes centre stage. The pleasure garden is certainly not Africa, where their fiancé and husband respectively go to work; illness is reported and Patsy heads off, only to find hubby being nursed by a native (of Polynesia, by the looks of her). Insanity descends in striking style. Balcon’s American import Valli was a big deal for Hitch’s debut and she comports herself well, even if Geraghty is much more fun. Over-emotionalism is largely kept at bay by a brisk pace, and whilst the style is still nascent, the story is built around doubles/opposites (sex, class, morality) and familiar touches already appear, from the peeping camera of the opening show, to a nicely callous drowning that ushers an atmospheric climax.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-53810764290664254502011-05-07T11:13:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:46:10.236-07:00Power of the Press<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirGCKbNAth6BDvslJDZX8Y7amfnHvktZLVpvhbEEs0L9m0NARaNk42jvEIpGBJDEhK7hX7Ty_A6CKut4zpxTtCbAmVLRscQ54Awo3q2N9YYM4J636C2wi3P-ShgBfqJpMWDHVlv-TaWhQ6/s1600/power-of-the-press-movie-poster-1943-1020684854.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 167px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirGCKbNAth6BDvslJDZX8Y7amfnHvktZLVpvhbEEs0L9m0NARaNk42jvEIpGBJDEhK7hX7Ty_A6CKut4zpxTtCbAmVLRscQ54Awo3q2N9YYM4J636C2wi3P-ShgBfqJpMWDHVlv-TaWhQ6/s400/power-of-the-press-movie-poster-1943-1020684854.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604039656979184098" border="0" /></a>(1943, US, 64min, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Lew Landers <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Leon Barsha <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Samuel Fuller <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> John Stumar <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Mel Thorsen <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Lionel Banks <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Paul Sawtell <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Guy Kibbee, Lee Tracy, Gloria Dickson, Otto Kruger, Victor Jory<br /><br />More fervently even than <span style="font-style: italic;">Park Row</span>, Fuller’s script makes an impassioned case for the ideals of honest American journalism in murky international times. A New York publisher is murdered, leaving his paper to an idealistic old small-town friend who, with the help of the bright plucky secretary and hardnosed managing editor, takes on the suavely dastardly co-owner. The latter’s motives beyond personal gain are a muddle of isolationism, general bigotry and even communism but the battle lines are as clearly drawn as in a punchy leader (truth and the little people vs manipulation, self-interest and anything that might aid the Nazis). Landers’ direction is occasionally eccentric and the repeated sermonising saps both character and vitality, but the impassioned moral outrage is invigorating.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-71311990537617874302011-05-07T11:04:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:07:05.072-07:00El rio y la muerte (The River and Death)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAyY8pAcUYoZeYZRp37CNH8wMDZORP31UkPa_2rCIY2gyegQ3eB3O2RRLAdSWBSP8P_5zBUtrWr9yEitrU0v879JYUFoKNJKpnWtEgEEhgK421qQ1H7yorKYalDDdK_rbWvnVGyWJrYXwB/s1600/elroylamuerte.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 183px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAyY8pAcUYoZeYZRp37CNH8wMDZORP31UkPa_2rCIY2gyegQ3eB3O2RRLAdSWBSP8P_5zBUtrWr9yEitrU0v879JYUFoKNJKpnWtEgEEhgK421qQ1H7yorKYalDDdK_rbWvnVGyWJrYXwB/s400/elroylamuerte.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604037024140009522" border="0" /></a>(1955, Mex, 91min, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Luis Buñuel <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Armando Orive Alba <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Luis Alcoriza, Luis Buñuel <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Raúl Martinez Solares <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Jorge Bustos <span style="font-style: italic;">pd</span> Gunther Gerszo <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Raúl Lavista <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Columba Domínguez, Miguel Torruco, Joaquín Cordero, Jaime Fernández, Victor Alcocer, Silvia Derbez, José Elías Moreno<br /><br />This sardonic folk tale was intended by the producers to illustrate how education can overcome violence. Buñuel was having none of it. Dr Gerardo, the nominal hero, is made to relate much of the film's flashback structure from the confines of an iron lung (suffering even a slap on the face!). The honor of a long-standing blood-feud in his home village rests now with him, but from the comfort of civilised Mexico City he disdains such macho barbarism; the village is a place where the priest carries a gun under his cassock and "there's no Sunday without a dead man". Buñuel revels in the morbidity, but also conjures a fond evocation of rural life; not only is Gerardo dishonouring his mother by refusing to fight, but when he makes it home as the cityboy milquetoast, it’s left to his rival, the rougher-edged Rudolfo, to prove himself the more noble man.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-50176215473690641212011-05-07T10:56:00.001-07:002011-05-07T11:11:38.748-07:00Sugata sanshirô (Judo Saga)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFsM_3mBfPzUQhbk1u44c74fZsTJ2MIEV-O1JZlwS36ByZes9s9fknQ_7GpWm3OxOHT4Dm1A8XUAMII-kHoFaG2WTHxwVQZCyy6me4GKPFSf8UX4EiZfxxZSPsVzm2jdOzomIrOkAbvVcR/s1600/sugatasanshiro.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 186px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFsM_3mBfPzUQhbk1u44c74fZsTJ2MIEV-O1JZlwS36ByZes9s9fknQ_7GpWm3OxOHT4Dm1A8XUAMII-kHoFaG2WTHxwVQZCyy6me4GKPFSf8UX4EiZfxxZSPsVzm2jdOzomIrOkAbvVcR/s400/sugatasanshiro.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604038491629483026" border="0" /></a>(1943, Jap, 80m, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d/sc</span> Kurosawa Akira <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Matsuzaki Keiji <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Mimura Akira <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Gotô Toshio, Kurosawa Akira <span style="font-style: italic;">ad </span>Tozuka<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Masao<span style="font-style: italic;"> m</span> Suzuki Seiichi <span style="font-style: italic;">cast</span> Fujita Susumu, Ôkôchi Denjirô, Todoroki Yukiko, Tsukigata Ryunosuke, Shimura Takashi, Hanai Ranko<br /><br />Box office success and a subsequent career of unparalleled international prestige amply justified Toho’s leapfrogging Kurosawa through the assistant ranks to helm his first feature. The tale of a judo student mastering his art and his self displays many familiar characteristics already in place, from the period setting to deft use of seasons and weather. It opens with an atmospheric moonlit confrontation of overwhelming odds and climaxes with a terrific duel on a wind-battered mountain pasture. In between, dynamic show fights are conducted like dances and result in violently broken bones and walls; a putative love affair is sweetly conducted (paired shots of outrageous visual innuendo aside) earning a nice psychological tension; and the bad guy is pointedly distinguished by his westerner's suit. The loss of seventeen minutes of negative during the war hardly seems to detract from the thoughtfully-crafted entertainment.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-11276487893037085942011-05-07T10:51:00.000-07:002013-05-19T19:30:43.184-07:00Tall Man Riding<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0FTBXXsLHnthFQF3AkM3JrHZY2lZEyzDLfhfvf5ILIaMkko1P4P3gaNr51acXa1LahOzWcCUg4lSFqoIT-fBGP_c33DXVSzl6NSDuorNNaL7fo4KJAMn0J3ZLua8FhOSNgM_w9pH5oz7F/s1600/TallManRidingTall.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604033885983152322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0FTBXXsLHnthFQF3AkM3JrHZY2lZEyzDLfhfvf5ILIaMkko1P4P3gaNr51acXa1LahOzWcCUg4lSFqoIT-fBGP_c33DXVSzl6NSDuorNNaL7fo4KJAMn0J3ZLua8FhOSNgM_w9pH5oz7F/s400/TallManRidingTall.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 400px; margin: 0 0 10px 10px; width: 155px;" /></a>(1955, US, 83min)<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Lesley Selander <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> David Weisbart <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Joseph Hoffman <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Wilfrid M. Cline <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Irene Morra <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Stanley Fleischer <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Paul Sawtell <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Randolph Scott, Peggy Castle, Dorothy Malone, William Ching, John Baragrey, Robert Barret, John Dehner, Paul Richards, Lane Chandler <br />
<br />
Scott is the Tall Man, riding for vengeance. What enhances the generic B-values of the picture, however, is how his righteousness is wrong-footed from the start, slowly starting to look like stiff-necked pride; likewise the old tale of trouble between ploughmen and cattlemen employs a gradual and natural shifting of sympathies. Scott doesn’t go in for Stewart-esque neuroses, but there are rumblings beneath the granite face as he starts to doubt the course of action he’s initiated. The men (fearsome patriarch, oily businessman) puff their chests out and it’s left to self-sufficient womenfolk Castle and Malone to get them out of trouble and tell it to 'em straight. Selander directs with efficient discretion, most notably in a strange shoot-out in a darkened cabin, to an overblown but not unappealing score; and a perfunctory happy ending belies the unusually textured morality of preceding events.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-49513496753576168592011-05-07T10:44:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:12:50.092-07:00Up! (aka Russ Meyer's Up!)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4uEsYu3p0Vd2WDIIZc3ggDHKv101sqgj-vM018ASvYSNOgbCmcpDrxmc8muWA9BVDZaSPgdB0pg212I1PQlcD3Z0LheBQvdnvMvgaZq6BR8B5dQ9Dxpip0CTtcTwvyu8ornP5CgzT60Tq/s1600/up.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 185px; height: 277px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4uEsYu3p0Vd2WDIIZc3ggDHKv101sqgj-vM018ASvYSNOgbCmcpDrxmc8muWA9BVDZaSPgdB0pg212I1PQlcD3Z0LheBQvdnvMvgaZq6BR8B5dQ9Dxpip0CTtcTwvyu8ornP5CgzT60Tq/s400/up.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5604038759521798274" border="0" /></a>(1976, USA, 80min)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d/p/ph/ed</span> Russ Meyer <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Michael Levesque <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> William Loose, Paul Ruhland <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Raven de la Croix, Janet Wood, Robert McLane, Larry Dean, Monty Bane, Bob Schott, Kitten Natividad, Linda Sue Ragsdale, Edward Schaaf, Mary Gavin, Marianne Marks<br /><br />Meyer’s penultimate feature is a cornucopia of his lunatic obsessions, with more blood and nudity than ever before, fantastically elongated prosthetic penises (in teasing glimpses), the magnificent Raven de la Croix doing her best Mae West impersonation, and a piranha-in-the-bathtub murder (the victim: a distinctively mustachioed Adolf "Schwarz"). Will the villain be Eva Braun Jr? Or perhaps hulking, axe-wielding backwards backwoodsman Rafe? What about sleazy Leonard Box? The action is frequently interrupted by joyous scenes of idyllic rural love-making, and regular recaps from the irrepressible Kitten Natividad as a leather-booted Greek chorus, the perfect hostess for such mythologically fetishistic excess. With a frolicsome pace, a consistently witty script from none other than Roger Ebert, a sense that Meyer has perfected his personal form, and just plain good film-making, it’s a masterpiece, of sorts.tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-91018294972285539332010-04-20T09:05:00.000-07:002012-11-11T03:02:43.409-08:00Filming Othello<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5l3IqtdiyqdlKkm0TMGVJbRU2aHsGHz1zqn1si_R9bj3DlpT8vRMskz4Ei2VuR9hl1w9QqmSlOGJY82c8Mhztxug1MfZaQ4pkzEBCsmAMCtttI16EiwcWYv70OEoAOxVldHycBO6i4vjY/s1600/orson6.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462252097476549490" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5l3IqtdiyqdlKkm0TMGVJbRU2aHsGHz1zqn1si_R9bj3DlpT8vRMskz4Ei2VuR9hl1w9QqmSlOGJY82c8Mhztxug1MfZaQ4pkzEBCsmAMCtttI16EiwcWYv70OEoAOxVldHycBO6i4vjY/s400/orson6.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 141px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 215px;" /></a>(1978, WGer, 84m)<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">d/sc/ed </span>Orson Welles <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Juergen Hellwig, Klaus Hellwig <span style="font-style: italic;">ph </span>Gary Graver <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Alberto Barberis, Angelo Francesco Lavagnino <span style="font-style: italic;">with </span>Orson Welles, Hilton Edwards, Michael MacLiammóir<br />
<br />
Presented as an informal living room chat about the convoluted production of the ’48-’52 movie, Welles’s final completed film continues his dependence on the essay form and the primacy of editing. It’s less tricksy than <span style="font-style: italic;">F For Fake</span> (though outrageous in its splicing of a lovey luncheon with Edwards and MacLiammóir with Welles’s questions, clearly shot quite separately). A disjointed series of notes, it takes in production history, musings on theme, character and imagery, critical commentary, and some plummy recitations; looming over a moviola, Welles is as congenial a host as ever, though at his most sparky with a real audience, in brief post-screening footage. More of a footnote than a coda, the film represents the conjurer’s (or out-of work film-maker’s) trick of pulling something out of nothing, touching in Welles’s enthusiasm, and poignant in its smallness of scale.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 78%;">© Time Out Film Guide</span>tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-41171388514442433432010-04-20T08:58:00.000-07:002010-07-02T02:19:29.047-07:00Another Sky<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoqKA55ZLUVnJnBj12JfZBu39W2ja8DmlvhF4HVTGDZl0wZ7UnqnAOY5OPbk6myXjJUOj8rjIh2k-RTpzXAdgTfoIb67XLnr45cUpSAKM6p7ny4N5W2lCcVRYEofhYM0RBOg2mA_eoUS3e/s1600/another+sky.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 237px; height: 178px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoqKA55ZLUVnJnBj12JfZBu39W2ja8DmlvhF4HVTGDZl0wZ7UnqnAOY5OPbk6myXjJUOj8rjIh2k-RTpzXAdgTfoIb67XLnr45cUpSAKM6p7ny4N5W2lCcVRYEofhYM0RBOg2mA_eoUS3e/s400/another+sky.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462251061716697650" border="0" /></a>(1954, UK, 86m, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d/sc</span> Gavin Lambert <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Aymer Maxwell <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Walter Lassally <span style="font-style: italic;">ed </span>Vera Campbell <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Victoria Grayson, Catherine Lacey, Taïeb, Ahmed ben Mohammed, Lee Montague, Alan Forbes<br /><br />The sole directorial effort of Gavin Lambert, co-founder of <span style="font-style: italic;">Sequence</span>, editor of <span style="font-style: italic;">Sight & Sound</span>, novelist, biographer, screenwriter and sometime lover of Nicholas Ray. It tells of Rose, a young buttoned-up Englishwoman in Marrakesh, companion to a rich eccentric, who finds herself overwhelmed by exoticism and a mad passion for oud-player Tayeb. The clipped, would-be poetic voiceover is rather dated, but wordless desert sequences are swathed in wind and music, market scenes are crowded with drums and chatter, and together with (feature debutant) Lasselly’s rich photography of arid days and sweltering nights, the film has an ethnographic power that effectively evokes the heady Otherness that so intoxicates Rose. Grayson is barely adequate, but her nervy demeanour helps ease the descent into mad romantic folly; not a great success, but fascinating, and would only have been more so if the protagonist had been, perhaps more naturally, a man. <br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">© Time Out Film Guide</span>tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-66572435321011446162010-04-20T08:54:00.000-07:002010-05-23T13:49:39.752-07:00Libeled Lady<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLSAe3BOsPGeQsjUNNjC1jbeF6cStQj9Bc77fFzMiCNeEVk3zODg28bo3sP3f6_7ksrNXijEspjmrQRv9iAduIpAM8DemYJmb0vDdUxtTLxc6Ab2hc8OrkF_B0wZcUYnQkFMXdFWmggb3/s1600/libeled_lady_1.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 179px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOLSAe3BOsPGeQsjUNNjC1jbeF6cStQj9Bc77fFzMiCNeEVk3zODg28bo3sP3f6_7ksrNXijEspjmrQRv9iAduIpAM8DemYJmb0vDdUxtTLxc6Ab2hc8OrkF_B0wZcUYnQkFMXdFWmggb3/s400/libeled_lady_1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462249525925326994" border="0" /></a>(1936, USA, 98m, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Jack Conway <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Lawrence Weingarten <span style="font-style: italic;">sc </span>Maurine Dallas Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers, George Openheimer <span style="font-style: italic;">ph </span>Norbert Brodine <span style="font-style: italic;">ed </span>Frederick Y. Smith <span style="font-style: italic;">ad </span>Cedric Gibbons <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> William Axt <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>William Powell, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Jean Harlow, Walter Connelly, Charley Grapewin, Cora Witherspoon, E.E. Clive<br /><br />Bullish newspaperman Tracy is compelled to hire back his slippery libel man (Powell) to bust a case brought by haughty “international playgirl” Loy (eyebrows on good form) and the reverse honeytrap he hatches, including a fake marriage using his own fiancée (Harlow), goes inevitably awry. Powell is in his smooth-talking element and Loy is luminous, even if restrained by her (underdeveloped) socio-economic distance; Tracy is best when reduced to s(t)olid second string and the raw deal handed Harlow’s character finally justifies her incessantly piggish indignation, even if it is gratingly one-note (not so her succession of ever-more fantastical outfits). The script is witty if not quite a firecracker and the ambiguous/antagonistic relationships aren’t sufficiently skewered, but a healthy irreverence towards marriage, a crazy set-up (and ending) and sheer star-power are quite enough for a basic good time.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">© Time Out Film Guide</span>tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-92100619765499522402010-04-20T08:48:00.001-07:002010-05-23T13:49:26.621-07:00Stereo<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTTxUaSouWzWbwrTM9Nu2n__eg-SZgrrTkf-amSKAINHHOfpfZ3qRwgIJbSSlwPJEHD0p03lXLTHLKFKTdn9l3A6ZiV3jqJIsS1RQjwlfOadqvtwsJjAVOLup6tZHcyQmuEf2UrGftUsSt/s1600/stereo.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 182px; height: 246px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTTxUaSouWzWbwrTM9Nu2n__eg-SZgrrTkf-amSKAINHHOfpfZ3qRwgIJbSSlwPJEHD0p03lXLTHLKFKTdn9l3A6ZiV3jqJIsS1RQjwlfOadqvtwsJjAVOLup6tZHcyQmuEf2UrGftUsSt/s400/stereo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462248032184998402" border="0" /></a>(1969, Can, 65m, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d/p/sc/ph/ed</span> David Cronenberg <span style="font-style: italic;">cast </span>Ronald Mlodzik, Jack Messinger, Iain Ewing, Clara Mayer, Paul Mulholland, Arlene Mlodzick, Glenn McCauley<br /><br />Somewhere in the north woods of Ontario the “Canadian Center for Erotic Research” is conducting group experiments into biochemically-induced telepathy – it’s Cronenberg’s debut (mini) feature. Unable to afford sound stock, he goes with a dryly academic voiceover, full of phrases like “experiential space continua” and “schizophonetic partition”; the distancing effect is compounded by the fact that the voiceover reports a period of experiment that took place prior to the “events” we see onscreen – for the unidentified subjects, much of the experience seems to involve being at a loose end in the lowering concrete complex of a Toronto University building (in medieval tights for some reason). Cronenberg wields the camera with an effective sci-fi eeriness, and although a watchable curiosity bubbling under with familiar physical/psychic/erotic obsessions, it remains a fatally disjointed, opaquely hermetic and largely unilluminating experiment.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">© Time Out Film Guide</span>tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-62241610261977315182009-05-07T21:12:00.000-07:002012-06-19T18:12:45.824-07:00Blast Of Silence<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulQpVrPLj1NV-K89wggY0owtpXAXBcIHhsnODpgTyKF57hJ1e8k7IyrvTuDf82z3PQX1Kx-ApyX0WjKXZ7A_SBIGE9tdNyB0bxMmYlQtcak-cfWvD5jKTefZIOWeiui4To3L37fo7X0RH/s1600-h/blast+of+silence.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333301762595298642" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjulQpVrPLj1NV-K89wggY0owtpXAXBcIHhsnODpgTyKF57hJ1e8k7IyrvTuDf82z3PQX1Kx-ApyX0WjKXZ7A_SBIGE9tdNyB0bxMmYlQtcak-cfWvD5jKTefZIOWeiui4To3L37fo7X0RH/s400/blast+of+silence.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 175px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 223px;" /></a>(1961, USA, 77m, b/w)<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Allen Baron <span style="font-style: italic;">p/ph</span> Merril S. Brody <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Allen Baron, Mel Davenport (Waldo Salt) <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Merril S. Brody, Peggy Lawson <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Charles Rosen <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Meyer Kupferman <span style="font-style: italic;">cast</span> Allen Baron, Molly McCarthy, Larry Tucker, Peter H. Clune, Danny Meehan, Charles Creasap, Lionel Stander<br />
<br />
Channeling Cassavetes’ side-walk style as much as the existential isolation of <span style="font-style: italic;">Pickpocket</span> (with strong echoes of Melville), Baron directs, scripts and stars (before disappearing into TV) as Frankie Bono, dour hitman with a George Scott schnoz on de Niro’s mug. The terrific abstract opening plays to a gutter-poetic second-person monologue as Bono is rebirthed from a stint in prison; he arrives in the city on a job where he is tempted from self-imposed isolation with bleak consequences, the downbeat atmosphere reinforced by terrific long takes of wintery New York in the wind and rain. The roughest no-budget edges are in the acting, though Baron is hypnotic and Tucker is unnerving as the soft-spoken, venal fatty who gets in his way. The unusual voiceover is awkward at times but, written and delivered by blacklistees Salt and Stander, mostly works to unsettling effect in conjuring a weird, internalized character of its own, at effective odds with the street-level realism.<br />
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<span style="font-size: 78%;">© Time Out Film Guide</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;">PS (19 June 2012)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/06/dvd-of-the-week-blast-of-silence.html" target="_blank">Richard Brody</a> has sharper eyes than I do (or than most people, for that matter) - he spotted that camera operator Erich Kollmar is he who had shot Cassavetes' <i>Shadows</i> a couple of years previously, which no doubt has something to do with the wonderfully street-level feel of the above.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 78%;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span>tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-13925865899867194972009-05-07T21:09:00.000-07:002009-09-30T00:12:10.555-07:00The Boy Who Turned Yellow<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iHMxdnIBHo9XwzTOhEA_gReK9JjYS_SevnTDRwNMS91MMrtLOsRW5zaWOrgMupew-IC3bZeIjpqtz-qP9Epzmy-DEja6j6k5DGRi7kbv5g-djSS3HZzfGZ3ccu2h6g4rQznyxFIW3w_q/s1600-h/Boy+Who+Turned+Yellow.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 152px; height: 254px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iHMxdnIBHo9XwzTOhEA_gReK9JjYS_SevnTDRwNMS91MMrtLOsRW5zaWOrgMupew-IC3bZeIjpqtz-qP9Epzmy-DEja6j6k5DGRi7kbv5g-djSS3HZzfGZ3ccu2h6g4rQznyxFIW3w_q/s400/Boy+Who+Turned+Yellow.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333301195980092402" border="0" /></a>(1972, UK, 55m)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Michael Powell <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Drummond Challis, Roger Cherrill, Emeric Pressburger <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Emeric Pressburger <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Christopher Challis <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Peter Boita <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Bernard Sarron <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Patrick Gowers, David Vorhaus <span style="font-style: italic;">cast</span> Mark Dightam, Robert Eddison, Helen Weir, Lem Kitaj (Dobbs), Brian Worth, Laurence Carter, Patrick McAlinney, Esmond Knight<br /><br />A charmingly nonsensical reunion and final collaboration for the Archers (and Challis), at the service of the Children’s Film Foundation. In fact, a whole tube train turns nicely yellow as schoolboy John is on his way home. That night, he’s visited by Nic (as in Electro-nic), a vision in yellow oilskin, skis and motorcycle helmet with flashing light, who arrives through the TV set (like an anarchic but still schoolmasterly Roger Livesey). They travel via electric waves to retrieve John’s lost mouse at the tower of London, where John’s sentenced to be beheaded after a neat fight on a spiral staircase. The beefeaters eat beef, Esmond Knight pops up as an avuncular doctor and all the children are frightfully well-spoken. Pressburger’s script celebrates history, Englishness and education, both at school and in front of the TV, and Powell contributes some endearing overplaying, cheerful undercranking and an overall sense of jolly good fun. The kids thought so too: it won the CFF “Chiffy” two years running!<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">© Time Out Film Guide</span>tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-69852629872777984252009-05-07T21:06:00.000-07:002010-04-01T19:56:25.735-07:00De Mayerling à Sarajevo (aka Sarajevo)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2eZU77P6VNASB9Sa5lrzHjJMl4uxxRU4x9OecmvR53ks9FsDiGYHSM6WWl1xN2O6dmP8OH6AQ4ArgWZlORxi3F61zgeLllR1hQa_Zujr6TafU96le_l94kfrLZkHWpmsgE1hHvmKN_ckF/s1600-h/De_Mayerling_a_Sarajevo.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 197px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2eZU77P6VNASB9Sa5lrzHjJMl4uxxRU4x9OecmvR53ks9FsDiGYHSM6WWl1xN2O6dmP8OH6AQ4ArgWZlORxi3F61zgeLllR1hQa_Zujr6TafU96le_l94kfrLZkHWpmsgE1hHvmKN_ckF/s400/De_Mayerling_a_Sarajevo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333300192355819090" border="0" /></a>(1940, Fr, 95m, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Max Ophüls <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Eugène Tucherer <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Carl Zuckmayer, Marcelle Maurette, Curt Alexandre <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Curt Courant, Otto Heller <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Myriam, Jean Oser <span style="font-style: italic;">pd</span> Jean d’Eaubonne <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Oscar Straus <span style="font-style: italic;">cast</span> Edwige Fieullère, John Lodge, Aimé Clariond, Jean Worms, Debucourt, Raymond Aimos, Gabrielle Dorziat, Gaston Dubosc<br /><br />The opening title assuring historical accuracy, followed by hordes of nameless mittel-European officiaries, bodes ill for this tale of the run-up to WWI, made in France in the run-up to Occupation. Heir thanks to his cousin’s suicide at Mayerling, Franz Ferdinand and his modern ideas are kept in check by the Emperor, but an undesirable marriage is cautiously permitted. The wider political climate remains disappointingly sketchy, sharing screen-space with the languid love affair between Lodge’s straight-backed but romantic Archduke and a charming Edwige Feuillère as his morganatic wife. Ophüls conjures a couple of dreamy Romantic moments, but the fire is stifled by a feeling of historical chess-pieces being maneuvered into place.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">© Time Out Film Guide</span>tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-82951141231826855482009-05-07T21:02:00.000-07:002009-10-23T19:40:02.683-07:00Docks Of New York<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0TxNN4pyruE9tdyVb9krFnzPcfINSzOeKp4e9zNA7aNk8HAHvBBqy3lASZXzVXLryxlXDSHWDVjY0E1IdkMOp_DlBVHVjqk1ExFS7Vl4MdiLP8CEZ6QEDKGR2GpBdV3DVAyVGo6cssfXl/s1600-h/docks+of+new+york.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; WIDTH: 152px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 239px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333299467498919570" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0TxNN4pyruE9tdyVb9krFnzPcfINSzOeKp4e9zNA7aNk8HAHvBBqy3lASZXzVXLryxlXDSHWDVjY0E1IdkMOp_DlBVHVjqk1ExFS7Vl4MdiLP8CEZ6QEDKGR2GpBdV3DVAyVGo6cssfXl/s400/docks+of+new+york.jpg" /></a>(1928, USA, 7202 feet [c.76m], b/w)<br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">d</span> Josef von Sternberg <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">p</span> J.G. Bachman <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">sc</span> Jules Furthman <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">ph</span> Harold Rosson <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">ed</span> Helen Lewis <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">ad</span> Hans Dreier <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">cast</span> George Bancroft, Betty Compson, Olga Baclanova, Clyde Cook, Mitchell Lewis, Gustav von Seyffertitz, George Irving<br /><br />With one night’s shore-leave, Bill the stoker rescues a suicide, marries her, and ships out in the morning. Sternberg’s last silent inspired Chaplin to claim that Hollywood had perfected its art (just as sound came along): the performances are vivid, and Sternberg’s skill with emotionally-loaded photography is unparalleled, but forget realism in character or setting – this is one of his enclosed fantasy worlds, the Bacchanalian dockside tavern filled with a Boschian sea of grotesques, resolutely outside normative moral codes; on the waterfront, all is shadows and fog; and the chiaroscuro stoker’s hole from which love redeems our hero is a fiery pit of hell. Bancroft’s eyes display wary intelligence behind his beefy exterior; Compson is simultaneously hard and vulnerable as a girl who’s had “too many good times”; and despite an excess of world-weary self-pity, bar-wench Baclanova slouches splendidly as the disillusioned embodiment of Compson’s future, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">pace</span> the guarded (and uncharacteristic) optimism with which Sternberg ends.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">© Time Out Film Guide</span>tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1146674028473345141.post-7638004734932744342009-05-07T20:56:00.001-07:002009-09-30T00:14:50.992-07:00Flamingo Road<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuOCVz3H1J67nK9FNfVUhsZj5MczL8fvaPjr_pMx3pVjdwdPVis96tm5cdXiSgIqNZYRxxk8M5R6VnX0dBaN8fnfFhc1YcduEfTtUveJntIC1kWen7Cw7MViPM3Z5ZHQHC87O5Tgd6FiKa/s1600-h/flamingo+road.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 151px; height: 230px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuOCVz3H1J67nK9FNfVUhsZj5MczL8fvaPjr_pMx3pVjdwdPVis96tm5cdXiSgIqNZYRxxk8M5R6VnX0dBaN8fnfFhc1YcduEfTtUveJntIC1kWen7Cw7MViPM3Z5ZHQHC87O5Tgd6FiKa/s400/flamingo+road.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5333298533031555154" border="0" /></a>(1949, USA, 94m, b/w)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">d</span> Michael Curtiz <span style="font-style: italic;">p</span> Jerry Wald, Michael Curtiz <span style="font-style: italic;">sc</span> Robert Wilder <span style="font-style: italic;">ph</span> Ted McCord <span style="font-style: italic;">ed</span> Folmer Blangsted <span style="font-style: italic;">ad</span> Leo K. Kuter <span style="font-style: italic;">m</span> Max Steiner <span style="font-style: italic;">cast</span> Joan Crawford, Sydney Greenstreet, Zachary Scott, David Brian, Gladys George, Virginia Huston, Fred Clark<br /><br />Flamingo Road is the wealthy avenue of achievement in a sleepy southern town where circus girl Crawford decides to put down roots. Her battle of wills with corpulent, corrupt sheriff Greenstreet ranges from the soda fountain to the senate and furs and jewels appear in due course. She marries into local politics, and a sophisticated intrigue threatens to emerge from broad-stroke class issues and amped-up melodrama; the dialogue has its moments, the camerawork is striking if occasionally fussy, and Curtiz keeps up the pace, but Scott is rather lost as Greenstreet’s puppet (until he starts to hate himself); the fat man embodies sweaty evil and leers into the camera; and Joan remains luminous, appropriately lived-in (though generously referred to as a “girl” throughout”), and tough as old boots.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;">© Time Out Film Guide</span>tom newthhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00883569375257663681noreply@blogger.com1