Re: Set designs. There’s certainly an acknowledged nod to Eisenstein in Jarman’s journals, plus another debt to Lang’s Metropolis (he also references The Emerald City too, although its harder to see that one apart from scale). Actually, the monumental clinicism of these towering edifices is certainly one of the most visually arresting aspects of The Devils (my own favourite being the lofty Index Library with the huge red crucifix on the back of the swininging doors, summing up the odd tone of the film – campy satire v. occasional clericism).
I was one of the fortunate few to have attended the ‘restoration’ screening at the National Film Theatre, London in 2004. The sheer aesthetic impact of this film cannot be underestimated plus of course the reinsertion of two key sequences helped even-out the plot logic: the crazed nuns defiling the wooden effegy of Christ crucified (culmination of the orgy) and the continuation of the latter scene of Sister Jeanne and the charred tibia, which in the cut versions stops short of her (now) masturbating with the bone, thus prolonging her frustrated lust.
I’m sure a representative from Warner Bros. was present at this screening – the only to date in England I think – and gave some sort of affirmative nod after the screen as to a full restoration and re-issue, but how times change…
Although I found the film derivative and flabbily overlong, it did have a certain ‘boys own’ bravura quality in places, especially the climatic massacre. Actually this sequence reminded me of Visconti’s The Damned with its Night of the Long Knives sequence and blood-red hues throughout. As I said, derivative.
You can also see the cut scenes in the excellent documentary, Hell on Earth, shown on UK Channel 4 a few years ago, plus a few other snippets that weren’t reinstated in the film (naked nuns cavorting in the abbey (of course!) and a bawdy pantomine being staged in the town square by travelling players (mimicking the events in the abbey) all the while Grandier is crawling his way to the stake in the foreground).
I understand UK Sky Arts have bought the rights to the documentary as part of a package set for screening in the future; so in the absence of the film itself, thats a good place to catch-up with the censorship history of this film.
I don’t think QT is a patch on Visconti, but his borrowings know no limits.
Actually, if anyone saw the daft BBC comedy Allo’ Allo’ twenty years about the French Resistance (complete with knowingly hammy ’ foreign’ accents, pantomime Nazis, bumbling German soliders, oh-so posh English airmen and generally ludicrous situations) I think you’ll find that a more effective and strangely subversive take on the war than this missed opportunity.
The print screened at the NFT in London was a new digital print with the extra scenes added-in. To my knowledge it has only played at a couple more venues in the world since this ‘premiere’ and is now probably lost in some sort of Warners legal-limbo. Any other screenings are likely to be either the original UK version as cut or the even more heavily censored US version (shorn of about four more minutes worth of footage – the story goes that the head of Warners had an aversion to the sight of pubic hair, so trimmed it off the screen wherever he could!). Both are 2.35:1 to my knowledge.
The extra scenes in question have long lost their original soundtrack, so the editor Michael Bradsell reinterpolated snatches of music and sounds from elsewhere in the film over the top of them (to some effect – the so-called Rape of Christ sequence used most of the music from the earlier ‘wedding’ scene where the nuns respond to the news that Grandier has married).
Although strictly made for BBC Television, Ken Russell’s various Monitor films, including Song of Summer (Delius), Elgar, Isadora (Duncan), The Debussy Film, Always on a Sunday (Henri Rousseau), Dante’s Inferno (Rossetti), etc are almost all visual knock-outs and manage to get under the skin of the creative process with relative economy and precision (albeit through Russell’s usually idiosyncratic eye).
You can buy a box-set of some of these from BBC DVD in America (Region 1 only). Well worth it.
I notice Eclipse DVD are releasing a triple box-set in October, comprising Man Is Not a Bird, Love Affair and Innocence Unprotected:
http://www.criterion.com/boxsets/668
Having enjoyed SM and WR: Mysteries of the Organism, I’m looking forward to viewing these earlier works and seeing if I can trace the kernel of the freewheeling spirit of the later films. It’s a shame Makavejev couldn’t progress it further beyond SM, but I suppose that film was something of a last gasp of that short period of cinematic head-on colisions between sexual liberation, political tracts and pyscho-trippiness, all laced together through an idiosyncratic directorial style. Of course, what is more was the budgets made available for these films by American studios (largely unthinkable since the mid to late seventies) e.g. Roeg’s Performance, Fellini Satyricon, Russell’s The Devils, Holy Mountain, etc. (none directly related but strange biggish budget bedfellows nevertheless).
This film is also probably the first of Jarmans to start showing his anger against the perceived decline of England – political, social and it’s cultural health – a furious thread that would continue for the rest of career.
This would develop more fully in The Last of England (most explicitly against the years of Margaret Thatcher), The Garden, Blue and War Requiem and certainly in his writings and later paintings.
Of course, like many English directors despairing at the state of their country, the diatribes are frequently sweetened by that English habit of nostalgic yearnings for a more lyrical, never-never land (reference Michael Powell for something of a kindred spirit), in this film represented by the figure of Queen Elizabeth I and a certain pastoral softness.
I’d have to add some London sites:
- Odeon Leicester Square, for its towering black granite deco facade, large circle & stalls and its surviving Compton organ (still used for occasional screenings). I believe there’s also a safety curtain with 1930s motifs, but not used. A ‘proper’ cinema and probably the only surving super cinema of any size in active use in the UK
- Curzon Mayfair, probably London’s most sedate art-house with a good sized screen and fantastic 60s textured wall mouldings (HR Giger springs to mind – a weird combination if viewing Merchant Ivory (the favoured kind of film here))
- Odeon Marble Arch (bit of a cheat, but my favourite) for its former incarnation as a single screen cinema of the most glorious magnitude – 70mm heaven on a vast screen (nearly 80 feet wide; depth of curvature about 17 feet), a large circle & stalls and all resembling Blofeld’s lair (a huge sixties cavern with textured wall panels blending seamlessly into the curved screen; intermissions always a highlight with concealed primary colour lighting playing in sequence as the vast screen was revealed by the parting curtains (or tabs as I think they are called)). Alas it was converted into a five screen mini-plex in 1997
- Prince Charles, London, for being the antithesis of the above cinemas: grungy, dark and nicely seedy (formerly a sex cinema but now a very well priced repertory venue screening cultish and recent releases)
Sunday, Bloody Sunday is my favourite largely because of it quiet precision and insight. You can almost smell the early seventies in this multi-textured depiction of middle class life in London, so clear and confident is this film in its subject matter.
I think Glenda Jackson’s career is now unfairly overlooked – a little like this film – but this ranks as one of her most finely judged performances, full of barely contained frustration and compromise.
Another Schlesinger gem is the short documentary film, Terminus, about Waterloo station. If you can find it, savour it, for its verite point-of-view and depiction of the small details in people’s lives (interesting companion piece to SBS).
I’m not a big fan of punk, so not too sure of what is out there, but you might want to check out a few films about The Sex Pistols:
- The Filth and the Fury (2000, documentary film about the band framed against British society at the time – probably the most interesting on this list)
- The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle (1979, a weird mix of concert, documentary, animation and comedy; a bit hit and miss from what I remember, although worth a glance for the perverse sight of British character actress Irene Handl sharing a scene with Sid Vicious)
- Sid and Nancy (1986, fictionalisation about the downward spiral of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen)
There’s also Breaking Glass, which I’ve not seen (1980, but not Sex Pistols), so not sure how punk it is.
Having just seen Broken Embraces, I was a little disappointed by this film and was interested in other people’s views. To me, despite an undeniably mature film-making style, this film is just not the sum of its parts. A few problems:
- The usual Almodovarian multi-layering and time-shifts reveal little more than a thin treatment on what it means to be an auteur and creator of one’s work (Peeping Tom – a reference point here – did it so much more effectively and at half the length). In short a long journey travelled not very far.
- The device of Ernesto Junior filming key action using his video camera hardly rises above being just that: a rather obvious device to provide dramatic revelation and character tension (also a poorly developed character)
- Somewhat self indulgent (not only straying into the now expected nods to Hitchcock and, in this one, Michael Powell ) but referencing your own work (most explicitly the Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown revisited at length in the latter stages of this one)
- Overlong (the sub plot concerning drugs seemed somewhat extraneous) and lacking the ‘spark’ of earlier films. Maybe they too were just as thin, but they had a verve, pace and kinkiness sorely lacking in this film
Having said that it’s a well crafted film, confidently performed by the regular Almodovar repertory company; but some of the splinters of disappointment I found in Bad Education (similar inward focus on film-making) and Volver seem to be on more obvious display in this film.
In 1996 the Odeon Leicester Square, London mounted a special screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm in honour of its cinematographer, Freddie Young. I was lucky enough to get tickets – I think all 2000 seats sold out – not only to see this epic on a very large screen in 70mm and six track sound, but also for Young – then very elderly – to make a short speech afterwards remarking on his work on the film (the occasion was capped by the appearance of the eulogy-ridden television series, This is Your Life to honour Young before whisking him off to a television studio).
I was starting to bemoan the gradual decline in the number of decent art-houses in London, but then when making this list, realised we still have some gems (limited to the city centre here):
- Various Curzon cinemas: Mayfair, Soho, Chelsea (excellent sized cinema) and Renior
- BFI Southbank (National Film Theatre)
- ICA
- French Institute
Although a word for two major losses: The Lumiere in St Martins Lane (probably the best) and the Odeon Haymarket (with it’s funky honeycombe ceiling), now a hotel gym (I think) and a nightclub respectively.
Repost of comment from another thread, but pertinent to this one:
In 1996 the Odeon Leicester Square, London (where the film was premiered) mounted a special screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm in honour of its cinematographer, Freddie Young, who was in attendance. I was lucky enough to get tickets – I think all 2000 seats sold out – not only to see this epic on a very large screen in 70mm, but also for Young – then very elderly – to make a short speech afterwards remarking on his work on the film (the occasion was capped by the surprise appearance of the eulogy-ridden television series, This is Your Life to honour Young before whisking him off to a television studio). Before the overture, the house organist played excerpts from the score on the Compton organ.
I wish I’d had the chance to see the restored version in 1989 when it was showcased at the Odeon Marble Arch, London on a screen 80 feet wide – just made for 70mm epics. The story has it that David Lean objected to this cinemas original curved screen – depth of curvature about 17 feet – distorting the desert horizon so he personaly paid for a somewhat flatter screen to be installed to ensure a more level horizon (about £30,000 then).
Curzon are marking their 75th anniversary with a number of screenings, across their London cinemas, as follows:
L’Atalante, La Ronde, Viva Maria, The Red Shoes, The Trojan Woman, A Room With a View, The Magic Box, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Gigi, Love Streams, Jubilee, Vagabond, The Chess Players, Cinema Paradiso and Floating Weeds.
A weird selection, but most well worth tracking down if in London during September.
Still off-topic (sorry): That performance of Two Towers sounds bad, but no such trouble at the ’Arch which was a dream to behold for film presentation, with the curved screen engulfing your vision (long before IMAX and the like). I understand the building was built-up around the screen with an incredible attention to detail: acoustic fibre glass panelling in the auditorium backed by rouched material for sound absorbtion, speakers in the ceiling (opening of Star Wars, anyone?), etc. Whoever designed that, had a real love for cinema.
As mentioned, I didn’t get a chance to see Lawrence there, but some of its presentations were legendary amoung 70mm fans – Star Wars in DP150 and A Bridge Too Far which commenced with the overture in Acamedy Ratio with the masking then pulling back to reveal the vast 70mm screen as the film began, clearing each credit as it went. Match that modern multiplexes!
I think ratings are little more than marketing tools for film companies and just add to the widespread notion that film is no more than a purely consumerist activity (even to the extent of cutting down films to achieve a desired rating e.g. PG13 to register those fabled popcorn sales).
In the UK a film’s certificate is invariably accompanied by a short synopsis (I think the BBFC actually call it Consumer Advice!) advising of the reason for a particular rating category. That the distribution company (Artificial Eye, a normally decent independent distributor) for a film such as Antichrist should find it necessary to print the advise – Contains strong real sex, bloody violence and self-mutilation – in bold, large letters on its posters (possibly as large as the names of the actors) is an indication of the crass and craven levels the film going experience can be reduced to, insofar as a film (which may well include all of those things and should we care if people are indeed going to see it for those reasons?) is pigeon-holed in such a venal manner e.g. perceived as only being composed of gradable quantities of sex, violence or ‘bad’ language.
I guess it works as a marketing tool – akin to the Parental Guidance stickers on CDs – or else companies wouldn’t pursue it, but it speaks volumes about attitudes to sexuality and social behaviour in mainly English speaking societies (probably most extreme in the US).
Picking up a couple of threads in this post, surely most film elicits a sexual reaction in the viewer regardless of context – most simply put: ‘would I want to have sex with that person in that situation?’ The answer may well be no, but we pose it at some level nevertheless. It’s post-puberty, adult human nature – the same reaction we have to every adult we meet, whether we care to admit it or not (it happens so quickly as part of a much larger, socially diverse ‘checklist’ of assessments and assumptions we make); of course we have layers of social code and conduct to avoid, dispense or negate it.
I also think the notion of ‘extreme’ in these films needs refining. What’s extreme anyway? I think in these films you can split it a different way: consensual sex or non-consensual sex, rather than extreme or not extreme (‘eye of the beholder’ and all that). In all these films the more troubling scenes are to do with a lack of consent, reference most of Salo, the rape in Irreversible, the strip sequence in Sweet Movie, etc. Is that what makes them ‘extreme’? If we have to use that word, then yes, I’d say so. It causes concern because the people have no-to-little choice in the matter. The same films also contain consensual sex which might also be considered ‘extreme’ e.g. explicit or more fetishist, but to me is less troubling because the characters involved choose to be in that situation. Whether, for example, you consider the sight of consensual penetration ‘extreme’ depends on you as an individual and your social norms (accepted or otherwise). Of course that’s not say to say that some people wouldn’t be aroused by the non-consensual elements also, but that’s a minority experience cutting against our collective norms and rules – more for a psychologist to elaborate on, rather than me trying to understand it!
Would some people cite films such as Nine Songs, Short Bus or Intimacy as ‘extreme’? I suppose so because they contain non-simulated sex, but are they troubling? No. The people involved all chose to be in those situations and you, as viewer, to watch it. Are they arousing? Yes, they can be, but again depending on the individual and the social set-up in which they are viewing. What’s ‘extreme’ in the USA might not be so in Japan. In Europe, we have narrower shades of this: films passed for adults-only in Ireland routinely get passed for general audiences in France, a couple of hundred miles away. Crudely put: the same mix of sexual reactions, but different social norms.
In answer to the original post, the common thread here is the films cited depict sexual victims and are thus ‘extreme’ because the element of choice is removed and thus leaves the viewer disturbed, instead ‘feeling’ for the characters as one previous poster put it (I suppose the same argument applies to other ‘extreme’ but not obviously sexual films e.g. depictions of animal cruelty, again lack of consent).
I think ‘extreme’ is an unfocused, misused and rather overworked word. In the UK it’s certainly commercially misued with Tartan Video’s Extreme Asia series of Japanese horror DVDs, for example. Althogh would people subscribe so readily for an ‘aberrant’ series I wonder?
Josh, Yes I interpreted you were making that kind of point in the original post, it was more to clarify some of the later posts, although I think we pretty much have 57 varities of the same response here and are broadly in agreement.
Star! is actually of the better ‘road show’ musicals from the late 60s (70mm spectaculars of usually inordinate length). Sure it’s safe and not especially revealing of Lawrence’s life, but it’s played with gusto and has some very effectively mounted musical numbers – and I suppose that sums up Wise’s strengths in terms of being something a genre renaissance man: skilled, proficient but with no authorial vision to speak of (instead an ability to turn out usually polished and respectable films – not to be dismissed), but then again that’s true of most directors. It’s hard to discern a consistent vision in the work of many so-called auteur. I love many David Lean films, but again it’s his skill as a craftsman of varied genre that shines through, not a distinct style as such – the intelligent epic is as near as I can get, but can you level that at Ryan’s Daughter? (try tracing Brief Encounter through to Lawrence of Arabia).
For anyone in the UK around March-time each year, the Pictureville Cinema at the Museum of the Moving Image, Bradford, mounts an excellent Widescreen Weekend. Details of this, and previous, years below.
Rota’s score is superb: a jewellery box of tinkling harpsichord, murmuring glass bottles and faux German high opera. This man just got better and better with age (witness Satyricon – does anyone know where to track that one down on CD?).
For an all-too-brief period in the 1940s, I’ll strike out and say England and more specifically the films to have emerged from J Arthur Rank under the Independent Producers banner, witness: The Archers – The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, I Know Where I’m Going, Black Narcissus, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; Cineguild – Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Brief Encounter; Olivier – Henry V, Hamlet, etc. All resolutely British in character and the nearest we’ve come to a national cinema but hardly displaying the ‘little island’ mentality that beset much future production. Add-in some of the output from London Films and Ealing Studios (again bankrolled by Rank) – Kind Hearts and Coronets, Whisky Galore! et al – from this period, and you have a short but rich harvest (and an important stream of Criterion films too).
Other than the above, I’d plump for post-war Italian cinema through to the seventies (not sure where I’d cinematically go after that, probably on tour!)
Ken Russell's "The Devils" almost 3 years ago
Re: Set designs. There’s certainly an acknowledged nod to Eisenstein in Jarman’s journals, plus another debt to Lang’s Metropolis (he also references The Emerald City too, although its harder to see that one apart from scale). Actually, the monumental clinicism of these towering edifices is certainly one of the most visually arresting aspects of The Devils (my own favourite being the lofty Index Library with the huge red crucifix on the back of the swininging doors, summing up the odd tone of the film – campy satire v. occasional clericism).
I was one of the fortunate few to have attended the ‘restoration’ screening at the National Film Theatre, London in 2004. The sheer aesthetic impact of this film cannot be underestimated plus of course the reinsertion of two key sequences helped even-out the plot logic: the crazed nuns defiling the wooden effegy of Christ crucified (culmination of the orgy) and the continuation of the latter scene of Sister Jeanne and the charred tibia, which in the cut versions stops short of her (now) masturbating with the bone, thus prolonging her frustrated lust.
I’m sure a representative from Warner Bros. was present at this screening – the only to date in England I think – and gave some sort of affirmative nod after the screen as to a full restoration and re-issue, but how times change…
Go to Comment
Reactions to Inglourious basterds almost 3 years ago
Although I found the film derivative and flabbily overlong, it did have a certain ‘boys own’ bravura quality in places, especially the climatic massacre. Actually this sequence reminded me of Visconti’s The Damned with its Night of the Long Knives sequence and blood-red hues throughout. As I said, derivative.
Go to Comment
Ken Russell's "The Devils" almost 3 years ago
You can also see the cut scenes in the excellent documentary, Hell on Earth, shown on UK Channel 4 a few years ago, plus a few other snippets that weren’t reinstated in the film (naked nuns cavorting in the abbey (of course!) and a bawdy pantomine being staged in the town square by travelling players (mimicking the events in the abbey) all the while Grandier is crawling his way to the stake in the foreground).
I understand UK Sky Arts have bought the rights to the documentary as part of a package set for screening in the future; so in the absence of the film itself, thats a good place to catch-up with the censorship history of this film.
Go to Comment
Reactions to Inglourious basterds almost 3 years ago
I don’t think QT is a patch on Visconti, but his borrowings know no limits.
Actually, if anyone saw the daft BBC comedy Allo’ Allo’ twenty years about the French Resistance (complete with knowingly hammy ’ foreign’ accents, pantomime Nazis, bumbling German soliders, oh-so posh English airmen and generally ludicrous situations) I think you’ll find that a more effective and strangely subversive take on the war than this missed opportunity.
Go to Comment
Ken Russell's "The Devils" almost 3 years ago
The print screened at the NFT in London was a new digital print with the extra scenes added-in. To my knowledge it has only played at a couple more venues in the world since this ‘premiere’ and is now probably lost in some sort of Warners legal-limbo. Any other screenings are likely to be either the original UK version as cut or the even more heavily censored US version (shorn of about four more minutes worth of footage – the story goes that the head of Warners had an aversion to the sight of pubic hair, so trimmed it off the screen wherever he could!). Both are 2.35:1 to my knowledge.
The extra scenes in question have long lost their original soundtrack, so the editor Michael Bradsell reinterpolated snatches of music and sounds from elsewhere in the film over the top of them (to some effect – the so-called Rape of Christ sequence used most of the music from the earlier ‘wedding’ scene where the nuns respond to the news that Grandier has married).
Go to Comment
Great films about artists.. almost 3 years ago
Although strictly made for BBC Television, Ken Russell’s various Monitor films, including Song of Summer (Delius), Elgar, Isadora (Duncan), The Debussy Film, Always on a Sunday (Henri Rousseau), Dante’s Inferno (Rossetti), etc are almost all visual knock-outs and manage to get under the skin of the creative process with relative economy and precision (albeit through Russell’s usually idiosyncratic eye).
You can buy a box-set of some of these from BBC DVD in America (Region 1 only). Well worth it.
Go to Comment
Sweet Movie! almost 3 years ago
I notice Eclipse DVD are releasing a triple box-set in October, comprising Man Is Not a Bird, Love Affair and Innocence Unprotected:
http://www.criterion.com/boxsets/668
Having enjoyed SM and WR: Mysteries of the Organism, I’m looking forward to viewing these earlier works and seeing if I can trace the kernel of the freewheeling spirit of the later films. It’s a shame Makavejev couldn’t progress it further beyond SM, but I suppose that film was something of a last gasp of that short period of cinematic head-on colisions between sexual liberation, political tracts and pyscho-trippiness, all laced together through an idiosyncratic directorial style. Of course, what is more was the budgets made available for these films by American studios (largely unthinkable since the mid to late seventies) e.g. Roeg’s Performance, Fellini Satyricon, Russell’s The Devils, Holy Mountain, etc. (none directly related but strange biggish budget bedfellows nevertheless).
Go to Comment
Thoughts on Jubilee almost 3 years ago
This film is also probably the first of Jarmans to start showing his anger against the perceived decline of England – political, social and it’s cultural health – a furious thread that would continue for the rest of career.
This would develop more fully in The Last of England (most explicitly against the years of Margaret Thatcher), The Garden, Blue and War Requiem and certainly in his writings and later paintings.Of course, like many English directors despairing at the state of their country, the diatribes are frequently sweetened by that English habit of nostalgic yearnings for a more lyrical, never-never land (reference Michael Powell for something of a kindred spirit), in this film represented by the figure of Queen Elizabeth I and a certain pastoral softness.
Go to Comment
Favorite Theaters/Movie Houses almost 3 years ago
I’d have to add some London sites:
- Odeon Leicester Square, for its towering black granite deco facade, large circle & stalls and its surviving Compton organ (still used for occasional screenings). I believe there’s also a safety curtain with 1930s motifs, but not used. A ‘proper’ cinema and probably the only surving super cinema of any size in active use in the UK
- Curzon Mayfair, probably London’s most sedate art-house with a good sized screen and fantastic 60s textured wall mouldings (HR Giger springs to mind – a weird combination if viewing Merchant Ivory (the favoured kind of film here))
- Odeon Marble Arch (bit of a cheat, but my favourite) for its former incarnation as a single screen cinema of the most glorious magnitude – 70mm heaven on a vast screen (nearly 80 feet wide; depth of curvature about 17 feet), a large circle & stalls and all resembling Blofeld’s lair (a huge sixties cavern with textured wall panels blending seamlessly into the curved screen; intermissions always a highlight with concealed primary colour lighting playing in sequence as the vast screen was revealed by the parting curtains (or tabs as I think they are called)). Alas it was converted into a five screen mini-plex in 1997
- Prince Charles, London, for being the antithesis of the above cinemas: grungy, dark and nicely seedy (formerly a sex cinema but now a very well priced repertory venue screening cultish and recent releases)
Go to Comment
Sweet Movie! almost 3 years ago
The DVD set is called Free Radical, which sounds pretty spot-on.
Go to Comment
Sweet Movie! almost 3 years ago
The DVD set is called Free Radical, which sounds pretty spot-on.
Go to Comment
Films by John Schlesinger... almost 3 years ago
Sunday, Bloody Sunday is my favourite largely because of it quiet precision and insight. You can almost smell the early seventies in this multi-textured depiction of middle class life in London, so clear and confident is this film in its subject matter.
I think Glenda Jackson’s career is now unfairly overlooked – a little like this film – but this ranks as one of her most finely judged performances, full of barely contained frustration and compromise.
Another Schlesinger gem is the short documentary film, Terminus, about Waterloo station. If you can find it, savour it, for its verite point-of-view and depiction of the small details in people’s lives (interesting companion piece to SBS).
Go to Comment
Thoughts on Jubilee almost 3 years ago
I’m not a big fan of punk, so not too sure of what is out there, but you might want to check out a few films about The Sex Pistols:
- The Filth and the Fury (2000, documentary film about the band framed against British society at the time – probably the most interesting on this list)
- The Great Rock n’ Roll Swindle (1979, a weird mix of concert, documentary, animation and comedy; a bit hit and miss from what I remember, although worth a glance for the perverse sight of British character actress Irene Handl sharing a scene with Sid Vicious)
- Sid and Nancy (1986, fictionalisation about the downward spiral of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen)
There’s also Breaking Glass, which I’ve not seen (1980, but not Sex Pistols), so not sure how punk it is.
Go to Comment
Reaction to Broken Embraces almost 3 years ago
Having just seen Broken Embraces, I was a little disappointed by this film and was interested in other people’s views. To me, despite an undeniably mature film-making style, this film is just not the sum of its parts. A few problems:
- The usual Almodovarian multi-layering and time-shifts reveal little more than a thin treatment on what it means to be an auteur and creator of one’s work (Peeping Tom – a reference point here – did it so much more effectively and at half the length). In short a long journey travelled not very far.
- The device of Ernesto Junior filming key action using his video camera hardly rises above being just that: a rather obvious device to provide dramatic revelation and character tension (also a poorly developed character)
- Somewhat self indulgent (not only straying into the now expected nods to Hitchcock and, in this one, Michael Powell ) but referencing your own work (most explicitly the Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown revisited at length in the latter stages of this one)
- Overlong (the sub plot concerning drugs seemed somewhat extraneous) and lacking the ‘spark’ of earlier films. Maybe they too were just as thin, but they had a verve, pace and kinkiness sorely lacking in this film
Having said that it’s a well crafted film, confidently performed by the regular Almodovar repertory company; but some of the splinters of disappointment I found in Bad Education (similar inward focus on film-making) and Volver seem to be on more obvious display in this film.
Any thoughts?
Go to Comment
Best of Camp/Kitsch? almost 3 years ago
If you like your ham sliced thick, check out Robert Aldrich’s The Legend of Lylah Clare
Go to Comment
What is your most memorable film going experience? (Only one per post please!) almost 3 years ago
In 1996 the Odeon Leicester Square, London mounted a special screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm in honour of its cinematographer, Freddie Young. I was lucky enough to get tickets – I think all 2000 seats sold out – not only to see this epic on a very large screen in 70mm and six track sound, but also for Young – then very elderly – to make a short speech afterwards remarking on his work on the film (the occasion was capped by the appearance of the eulogy-ridden television series, This is Your Life to honour Young before whisking him off to a television studio).
Go to Comment
What are your favorite "art houses" around the country? almost 3 years ago
I was starting to bemoan the gradual decline in the number of decent art-houses in London, but then when making this list, realised we still have some gems (limited to the city centre here):
- Various Curzon cinemas: Mayfair, Soho, Chelsea (excellent sized cinema) and Renior
- BFI Southbank (National Film Theatre)
- ICA
- French Institute
Although a word for two major losses: The Lumiere in St Martins Lane (probably the best) and the Odeon Haymarket (with it’s funky honeycombe ceiling), now a hotel gym (I think) and a nightclub respectively.
Go to Comment
movies that shake you to the core almost 3 years ago
Ken Russell’s The Devils. An aesthetic and political kick in the crotch. Hunt it down.
Go to Comment
"Lawrence of Arabia" in 70 mm over 2 years ago
Repost of comment from another thread, but pertinent to this one:
In 1996 the Odeon Leicester Square, London (where the film was premiered) mounted a special screening of Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm in honour of its cinematographer, Freddie Young, who was in attendance. I was lucky enough to get tickets – I think all 2000 seats sold out – not only to see this epic on a very large screen in 70mm, but also for Young – then very elderly – to make a short speech afterwards remarking on his work on the film (the occasion was capped by the surprise appearance of the eulogy-ridden television series, This is Your Life to honour Young before whisking him off to a television studio). Before the overture, the house organist played excerpts from the score on the Compton organ.
I wish I’d had the chance to see the restored version in 1989 when it was showcased at the Odeon Marble Arch, London on a screen 80 feet wide – just made for 70mm epics. The story has it that David Lean objected to this cinemas original curved screen – depth of curvature about 17 feet – distorting the desert horizon so he personaly paid for a somewhat flatter screen to be installed to ensure a more level horizon (about £30,000 then).
Go to Comment
Screening in London? over 2 years ago
Curzon are marking their 75th anniversary with a number of screenings, across their London cinemas, as follows:
L’Atalante, La Ronde, Viva Maria, The Red Shoes, The Trojan Woman, A Room With a View, The Magic Box, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Gigi, Love Streams, Jubilee, Vagabond, The Chess Players, Cinema Paradiso and Floating Weeds.
A weird selection, but most well worth tracking down if in London during September.
Go to Comment
"Lawrence of Arabia" in 70 mm over 2 years ago
Still off-topic (sorry): That performance of Two Towers sounds bad, but no such trouble at the ’Arch which was a dream to behold for film presentation, with the curved screen engulfing your vision (long before IMAX and the like). I understand the building was built-up around the screen with an incredible attention to detail: acoustic fibre glass panelling in the auditorium backed by rouched material for sound absorbtion, speakers in the ceiling (opening of Star Wars, anyone?), etc. Whoever designed that, had a real love for cinema.
As mentioned, I didn’t get a chance to see Lawrence there, but some of its presentations were legendary amoung 70mm fans – Star Wars in DP150 and A Bridge Too Far which commenced with the overture in Acamedy Ratio with the masking then pulling back to reveal the vast 70mm screen as the film began, clearing each credit as it went. Match that modern multiplexes!
Go to Comment
Screening in London? over 2 years ago
Sound version from 1959.
Go to Comment
Censorship over 2 years ago
I think ratings are little more than marketing tools for film companies and just add to the widespread notion that film is no more than a purely consumerist activity (even to the extent of cutting down films to achieve a desired rating e.g. PG13 to register those fabled popcorn sales).
In the UK a film’s certificate is invariably accompanied by a short synopsis (I think the BBFC actually call it Consumer Advice!) advising of the reason for a particular rating category. That the distribution company (Artificial Eye, a normally decent independent distributor) for a film such as Antichrist should find it necessary to print the advise – Contains strong real sex, bloody violence and self-mutilation – in bold, large letters on its posters (possibly as large as the names of the actors) is an indication of the crass and craven levels the film going experience can be reduced to, insofar as a film (which may well include all of those things and should we care if people are indeed going to see it for those reasons?) is pigeon-holed in such a venal manner e.g. perceived as only being composed of gradable quantities of sex, violence or ‘bad’ language.
I guess it works as a marketing tool – akin to the Parental Guidance stickers on CDs – or else companies wouldn’t pursue it, but it speaks volumes about attitudes to sexuality and social behaviour in mainly English speaking societies (probably most extreme in the US).
Go to Comment
Sexuality in Extreme Films over 2 years ago
Picking up a couple of threads in this post, surely most film elicits a sexual reaction in the viewer regardless of context – most simply put: ‘would I want to have sex with that person in that situation?’ The answer may well be no, but we pose it at some level nevertheless. It’s post-puberty, adult human nature – the same reaction we have to every adult we meet, whether we care to admit it or not (it happens so quickly as part of a much larger, socially diverse ‘checklist’ of assessments and assumptions we make); of course we have layers of social code and conduct to avoid, dispense or negate it.
I also think the notion of ‘extreme’ in these films needs refining. What’s extreme anyway? I think in these films you can split it a different way: consensual sex or non-consensual sex, rather than extreme or not extreme (‘eye of the beholder’ and all that). In all these films the more troubling scenes are to do with a lack of consent, reference most of Salo, the rape in Irreversible, the strip sequence in Sweet Movie, etc. Is that what makes them ‘extreme’? If we have to use that word, then yes, I’d say so. It causes concern because the people have no-to-little choice in the matter. The same films also contain consensual sex which might also be considered ‘extreme’ e.g. explicit or more fetishist, but to me is less troubling because the characters involved choose to be in that situation. Whether, for example, you consider the sight of consensual penetration ‘extreme’ depends on you as an individual and your social norms (accepted or otherwise). Of course that’s not say to say that some people wouldn’t be aroused by the non-consensual elements also, but that’s a minority experience cutting against our collective norms and rules – more for a psychologist to elaborate on, rather than me trying to understand it!
Would some people cite films such as Nine Songs, Short Bus or Intimacy as ‘extreme’? I suppose so because they contain non-simulated sex, but are they troubling? No. The people involved all chose to be in those situations and you, as viewer, to watch it. Are they arousing? Yes, they can be, but again depending on the individual and the social set-up in which they are viewing. What’s ‘extreme’ in the USA might not be so in Japan. In Europe, we have narrower shades of this: films passed for adults-only in Ireland routinely get passed for general audiences in France, a couple of hundred miles away. Crudely put: the same mix of sexual reactions, but different social norms.
In answer to the original post, the common thread here is the films cited depict sexual victims and are thus ‘extreme’ because the element of choice is removed and thus leaves the viewer disturbed, instead ‘feeling’ for the characters as one previous poster put it (I suppose the same argument applies to other ‘extreme’ but not obviously sexual films e.g. depictions of animal cruelty, again lack of consent).
Go to Comment
Sexuality in Extreme Films over 2 years ago
I think ‘extreme’ is an unfocused, misused and rather overworked word. In the UK it’s certainly commercially misued with Tartan Video’s Extreme Asia series of Japanese horror DVDs, for example. Althogh would people subscribe so readily for an ‘aberrant’ series I wonder?
Go to Comment
Sexuality in Extreme Films over 2 years ago
Josh, Yes I interpreted you were making that kind of point in the original post, it was more to clarify some of the later posts, although I think we pretty much have 57 varities of the same response here and are broadly in agreement.
Go to Comment
Robert Wise over 2 years ago
Star! is actually of the better ‘road show’ musicals from the late 60s (70mm spectaculars of usually inordinate length). Sure it’s safe and not especially revealing of Lawrence’s life, but it’s played with gusto and has some very effectively mounted musical numbers – and I suppose that sums up Wise’s strengths in terms of being something a genre renaissance man: skilled, proficient but with no authorial vision to speak of (instead an ability to turn out usually polished and respectable films – not to be dismissed), but then again that’s true of most directors. It’s hard to discern a consistent vision in the work of many so-called auteur. I love many David Lean films, but again it’s his skill as a craftsman of varied genre that shines through, not a distinct style as such – the intelligent epic is as near as I can get, but can you level that at Ryan’s Daughter? (try tracing Brief Encounter through to Lawrence of Arabia).
Go to Comment
"Lawrence of Arabia" in 70 mm over 2 years ago
For anyone in the UK around March-time each year, the Pictureville Cinema at the Museum of the Moving Image, Bradford, mounts an excellent Widescreen Weekend. Details of this, and previous, years below.
http://www.in70mm.com/widescreen_weekend/index.htm
I definately intend to visit during the 2010 season, but no idea what’s planned at this point.
Go to Comment
Fellini-Casanova over 2 years ago
Rota’s score is superb: a jewellery box of tinkling harpsichord, murmuring glass bottles and faux German high opera. This man just got better and better with age (witness Satyricon – does anyone know where to track that one down on CD?).
Go to Comment
What's your favorite country (by cinematical standards) over 2 years ago
For an all-too-brief period in the 1940s, I’ll strike out and say England and more specifically the films to have emerged from J Arthur Rank under the Independent Producers banner, witness: The Archers – The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, I Know Where I’m Going, Black Narcissus, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp; Cineguild – Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Brief Encounter; Olivier – Henry V, Hamlet, etc. All resolutely British in character and the nearest we’ve come to a national cinema but hardly displaying the ‘little island’ mentality that beset much future production. Add-in some of the output from London Films and Ealing Studios (again bankrolled by Rank) – Kind Hearts and Coronets, Whisky Galore! et al – from this period, and you have a short but rich harvest (and an important stream of Criterion films too).
Other than the above, I’d plump for post-war Italian cinema through to the seventies (not sure where I’d cinematically go after that, probably on tour!)
Go to Comment