I’ve generally had a much happier experience as a professional than Andrew and Paul seem to have done, but that’s because I’ve never had a job where I have to cover new releases on a weekly basis. I can well imagine how soul-destroying that must be, and indeed vividly recall a conversation with a very high-profile UK critic who actually left his job on a national newspaper as a reaction to watching A NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY. The way he described the experience to me made it sound almost epiphanic – it was “why am I watching this dreck in the first place, and why do I then have to spend time writing about it when virtually none of my readers will be the slightest bit interested in going to see it? And why are film critics expected to cover everything when theatre, music and art critics get to pick and choose?”.
So I’m very lucky in that I do get to pick and choose – I typically review one or two theatrical releases and eight DVD releases in each monthly issue of Sight & Sound. The editors of each section know my taste and existing knowledge, and because I’ve been writing for them for years (my first piece was in mid-2002, I started writing regularly from late 2004 and haven’t missed an issue since early 2006), we now have an almost intuitive rapport. The number of films they’ve given me to review that I ended up actively despising is tiny, and even if I’m disappointed the chances are that I’ll have plenty to write about because it’ll be squarely within one of my areas of expertise. It’s also very rare indeed that I have to turn something around in 24 or even 48 hours – one week is tight for me, with two to three weeks much more common, and in some cases I’ve even had several months (I often catch the very first press show, which might be ages before the eventual release). One major advantage of this is that I get much more time to do background research – for instance, if the film is based on a novel or play, I generally try to read it or any equivalent texts (historical material, for instance), and I also try to watch at least two or three related films. (This in itself can be useful – I used a commission to review grungy low-budget British horror film WILDERNESS as an excuse to catch up with half a dozen post-2000 genre entries that I’d missed).
The major downside is that the pay is pitiful when set against the amount of work involved – even a 1,300 word lead review only nets a fee in the high double figures (probably the equivalent of US$100 or thereabouts), and a capsule DVD review is nearer $30, so this works out at an hourly rate that’s probably nudging or even lower than minimum wage when you consider the amount of viewing/reading/writing involved. (It doesn’t help that I generally pay my own research expenses). Which is why this is more of a freelance hobby on top of my main day job – but because the calibre of films I cover is much higher than that which the average weekly critic gets subjected to, I really don’t mind. And because I generally specialise in ultra-niche titles (central and eastern Europe, documentaries, unclassifiably culty stuff, films from countries off the usual beaten track such as Uruguay or Tajikistan) I’m generally immune to the blandishments of PR companies – no-one seriously expects these films to be huge hits, so they’re usually grateful that they’re getting (hopefully) intelligent coverage in the first place.
And I’m also very conscious of my responsibilities – for instance, I reviewed virtually all the recent Polish films released in Britain by The Polish Connection initiative, and was very aware that my pieces probably amounted to the most substantial English-language coverage that they were likely to get, since they generally bypassed the national press (and even if they did mention them, they rarely got much more than 50-100 words) and didn’t seem to attract much online attention either, at least not in English. I certainly wasn’t blind to their shortcomings (none of these titles was anywhere close to a masterpiece, and I certainly won’t be slitting my wrists if I never have to sit through another Polish romantic comedy), but I did feel a strong sense of responsibility to treat them fairly and accurately. This is partly because I’m not that keen on glib put-downs anyway (which are hard to sustain across typically 600-800 words), but mostly because my main day job involves a lot of research into historical reviews published by Sight & Sound (and its former partner the Monthly Film Bulletin), and am very conscious that some hypothetical researcher several decades hence might well be looking up my pieces for the same reason. So if I’ve failed to give an honest account of the film, so that someone who hasn’t seen it and who might not get the chance to see it will at least get a reasonable impression of what it was like, then as far as I’m concerned I’ve failed full stop.
I think much of his work is underrated, because the vagaries of international distribution means that a disproportionate amount of attention is paid to what I call his international metaphysical period – THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE and the THREE COLOURS trilogy. And while the merits of these films are considerable, I don’t think they’re necessarily superior to his 1970s and 1980s films.
In fact, in several respects I find them less interesting, though this may betray the fact that I first became aware of Kieslowski in the 1980s, when he was regarded (entirely reasonably) as one of the most brilliantly astute anatomists of the political, cultural and spiritual malaise afflicting his native country. He’s also amassed a substantial body of work as a documentarist – the vast bulk of his output from 1966-81 was non-fiction, and even if he’d never made a commercial feature film his place in Polish film history would be secure even if few outside Poland would ever have heard of him.
Talking of which, I’ve recently been exploring the work of Kieslowski’s long-term friend, fellow student and occasional colleague Marcel Lozinski, whose work is very very similar in a great many respects (even to the point of nudging the metaphysical at times), though unlike Kieslowski he never made the leap into fiction, so he’s probably doomed to remain a footnote in even Polish film histories. But Kieslowski fans should definitely check out HOW TO LIVE (1977), WITNESSES (1987), 89MM FROM EUROPE (1993), ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN (1995) and his most recent, POSTE RESTANTE (2008).
In my native Britain, we’ve always tended to take television more seriously, largely because the best TV is generally superior to the best British filmmaking – certainly, the calibre of writing is often much higher (Britain has a dearth of really gifted screenwriters, and many of the best of those were foreigners like Emeric Pressburger), and it’s much less commercially driven.
And while it’s not generally recognised as an auteur-driven medium, one of Britain’s greatest directors, Alan Clarke, worked almost exclusively in television, and his three features (SCUM, BILLY THE KID AND THE GREEN BAIZE VAMPIRE, RITA SUE & BOB TOO) have nothing like the power of his best small-screen productions (PENDA’S FEN, MADE IN BRITAIN, ELEPHANT, THE FIRM). And while Ken Russell is much better known, his television work is in no way inferior to his feature films, and in many respects his great BBC period (1959-70) is rather more creatively fertile than the 1970s – Russell himself said that he often preferred making films for television, because smaller budgets and crews generally led to greater artistic freedom. (The new BBC America box set provides a good overview of his 1960s television work). Stephen Frears and Ken Loach have also produced outstanding work on the small screen – in fact, there’s a strong case for saying that Loach’s CATHY COME HOME is more important than any of his features, certainly in terms of its public impact and lasting after-effects.
Actually, statistically it’s far more likely to be terrible – I always thought Krzysztof Kieslowski hit the nail on the head when he referred to British television as being the “least stupid” he’d come across. And even that’s arguably not true any more – in the last 10-15 years, the best US TV has massively raised its game: certainly, there’s nothing on my side of the Atlantic that’s anywhere close to the quality of, say, THE WIRE or MAD MEN.
My advice to anyone who wants to make a splash as a critic is to find a niche that’s currently underexplored or even unexplored and focus on that. If you choose wisely, and if you’re any good, you’d be amazed how quickly your reputation spreads – and this comes from repeated personal experience.
With a subject like Tarantino or Star Wars, you’re going to have to come up with a staggeringly original take at this stage in the game to make any worthwhile impact, but there are tens of thousands of other films out there which have barely been discussed in English – but which might well be available on DVD with English subtitles. And in those cases, writing anything halfway intelligent in English will automatically constitute a worthwhile addition to film scholarship.
The other great thing about focusing on niches (central European cinema in my case) is the relative absence of advance hype. In most cases, I barely have more than the faintest idea of what I’m about to see when I put the DVD in the player, and I may well know next to nothing about the people who made it. So I’m far more likely to be pleasantly surprised than otherwise – especially given the fact that the film probably has something going for it if its distributors decided it was worth adding English subtitles.
Have you actually approached Sight & Sound? Because I’ve seen loads of new faces in the reviews section since I started, including someone I myself recommended – and she’s not Oxbridge educated. (Neither am I, for that matter). The challenge, of course, is getting repeated and regular commissions, but there are no significant barriers to getting that first foot in the door that I’m aware of.
I have to say I’m somewhat baffled by some of Steve’s complaints. For starters, it is NOT illegal, “technically” or otherwise, to own a multi-region player, and neither is it illegal to import a foreign DVD. Secondly, it’s unbelievably easy to go multi-region in Britain – a huge number of players are either multi-region from the start or can be easily modified (often by a remote control hack), and you don’t have to pay through the nose either: my last player cost a grand total of £50 (some three years ago) and plays everything I’ve thrown at it. In theory, some older televisions might baulk at handling NTSC video signals, but in my experience they generally have to be ancient: most modern sets should have no problem whatsoever. Certainly, it is far, far easier to go multi-region in PAL-using countries (i.e. Europe) than it is in NTSC-using ones (i.e. the US/Japan).
The reason Criterion doesn’t release its films in Britain (aside from licensing its masters – for instance, Masters of Cinema’s F FOR FAKE has the same core transfer as the Criterion) is because it generally doesn’t license the distribution rights outside North America. There’s no reason why they couldn’t, but it would cost them more (they’d have to pay an upfront fee to the rightsholder for each additional territory), and they’d almost certainly reason that hardcore fans would import anyway, so there’d be no advantage.
And the reason you can’t buy imported Criterions over the counter in Britain is to do with the 1984 Video Recordings Act, which doesn’t apply in France (or indeed anywhere else). Basically, with only a few exceptions (documentaries and music titles, generally), ALL video recordings, regardless of format, have to be approved by the British Board of Film Classification, which pretty much prevents imports from being sold in the UK. But since it’s generally much cheaper to order them online from abroad (bricks-and-mortar retailers add a hefty premium), it’s not a major problem.
I also strongly disagree that Masters of Cinema and the BFI are the only outstanding arthouse labels in the UK – just off the top of my head, there’s Artificial Eye, Axiom, Mr Bongo, Optimum, Second Run, Second Sight and Soda Pictures, most of whom are very reliable indeed (Mr Bongo got off to a dreadful start, but has significantly raised its game since). In fact, so healthy is the British arthouse DVD sector at the moment that I find I’m importing less and less from the US – probably just as well given the current exchange rate, but the slowdown was months before the credit crunch.
“No TV has the option, or the budget to do anything, or the time to do anything truly great or artistic.”
So you don’t rate BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, DAS BOOT, DEKALOG, FANNY AND ALEXANDER or HEIMAT?
Mind you, DEKALOG had an unbelievably tight schedule and something like a 2:1 shooting ratio, but that still rather gives the lie to the fact that it’s impossible to create great art within a television context.
I was enormously impressed by the two films that I’ve seen – STILL LIFE and 24 CITY – not least because they manage that tricky combination of torn-from-the-headlines subject-matter, acute awareness of the wider social-political-cultural context, and exceptionally personal, instantly recognisable aesthetic approach. I’ll definitely catch up on his earlier work when I get a chance.
I thought it was one of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve had in a cinema in the last decade or so, though I was lucky enough to see it only a few weeks after returning from a honeymoon in St Petersburg (complete with not just a trip to the Hermitage but a cover-to-cover read of two hefty books about Russian history and culture) at a preview screening with an illuminating introduction by Ian Christie that tipped me off in advance about several key things to look out for.
I think it’s pretty pointless tackling the film without a fairly solid knowledge of the last three centuries of Russian history – as with most of Andrzej Wajda’s historical films, it’s clear that Alexander Sokurov’s target audience is primarily well-educated Russians (specifically St Petersburgers) like himself, and anyone who doesn’t fit that description has to do some prior homework in order to get much out of the film. Even relatively well known aspects of Russian history like the last days of the Romanov dynasty aren’t signposted especially obviously: Sokurov’s never been one to spoonfeed.
As for the character of Custine, I got the impression that he was meant to be annoying – as one of the key themes of the film is the way Russia has long been straddling the Europe/Asia divide, and its pretensions to be seen as ‘European’ (expressed not least through the city of St Petersburg itself, which many Russians regard with suspicion because of its origins as an artificial creation through which Peter the Great wanted to cement cultural ties between Europe and Russia). Accordingly, Russia cosies up to characters like Custine, only to be belittled and patronised in return – and that’s a microcosm of a fair chunk of Russian history in itself. I certainly get the impression that a fair number of Russian viewers would be asking “why are we wasting time with this guy?” – and, by extension, wondering why Russia is bothering with Europe when it’s quite capable of standing on its own feet.
But I’m not sure whether there’s any value in arguing whether RUSSIAN ARK is “cinema” or not, because the simple fact is that it wouldn’t work in any other medium: to me, it’s a lot closer to “cinema” than, say, a pedestrian literary adaptation. It’s not a viable stage production, because the action unfolds at specific times in specific locations, so the audience would have to be where the camera is throughout. And the primary reason for the lack of cutting is that Sokurov wanted to encapsulate three centuries of history in a single take – something so insanely ambitious that I’m amazed he even got the chance to attempt it, let alone pull it off. That final sequence in particular, with the ballroom scene followed by that riveting track into the mist-shrouded Neva river, is one of my indelible cinematic memories of recent years.
Polish poster art is just staggering – I’ve always had the impression that they deliberately went out of their way to make their posters look as unlike their US/Western European counterparts as possible.
There are also stronger overlaps between Polish poster art and cinema than mere poster designs – Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica started out in poster design (Lenica in particular is regarded as a giant in the field) before switching to animation and, in Borowczyk’s case, live action. And the Quay Brothers cite an exhibition of Polish poster art the week when they started at the Philadelphia College of Art as one of the most profound and long-lasting influences on their whole filmic philosophy. (At their suggestion, I included mini biographies of some of the best Polish poster artists in the booklet that accompanied their recent short film DVD compilation).
It’s highly unlikely that Norstein will get the Criterion treatment, as the rights to his films – and Soyuzmultfilm’s output in general – is held by Films By Jove, which distributes them in the US themselves. And in general they do a pretty good job – my only significant beef is that the subtitles are both yellow and non-removable, which isn’t too bad with TALE OF TALES (which has very very little spoken content), but wreaks havoc on THE FOX AND THE HARE, where most of the salient artwork occupies the bottom quarter of the screen. But aside from that the source prints are excellent.
As for Lotte Reiniger, the BFI has just (as in last month) released a two-disc collection of her fairytale films, and is preparing a similar survey of her music films. And I believe she made THE first animated feature film – does anything predate THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (1923-6)?
But if I’m not much mistaken, Criterion has never shown much (or any?) interest in animated shorts, so I’m not sure why people think they’d be the best company to handle this material – I’d be much more inclined to favour a specialist with a strong track record in animation, like the BFI (UK), NFB (Canada), Chalet Films (France) or PWA (Poland).
Ken Russell – a flat-out genius in the 1960s, a dazzling provocateur in the 1970s, visibly struggling in the 1980s… and pretty much everything he’s made since about 1990 has been borderline unwatchable. I gleefully tuned into his A KITTEN FOR HITLER after hearing that he deliberately set out to make the most offensive film ever made, and it was pitiful on more levels than I care to count.
As for Godard, I suspect most people dissing his “late” period (actually about three-quarters of his career, since this is generally dated from the late 1960s) probably haven’t seen much of it – or at least nowhere near enough to reach a particularly informed opinion. The fact that you have to really make an effort to see a lot of post-1970 Godard rather rams this home!
Good news – it looks as though the funding is in place on Jan Svankmajer’s latest feature SURVIVING LIFE, and it’s already started production. Thanks to the amount of animation involved, it’s likely to take about a year, with a premiere at some point in 2010.
As far as I’m aware, it’s a “psychoanalytical comedy” about a man unable to reconcile his double life, one taking place in reality and the other in his dreams. But as with all Svankmajer projects, I suspect mere verbal description will be utterly, utterly inadequate when set against the work itself.
The slightly less good news is that Svankmajer says that this will almost certainly be his last film.
The vast majority of Criterion releases used to be region-free, though from the start they were occasionally compelled to region-code them (this is particularly true of their Japanese and major studio titles like ARMAGEDDON). However, at some point in the last few years – 2006 or thereabouts – they seem to have adopted a policy of region-coding ALL their releases: I honestly can’t think of a recent Criterion release that’s region-free. And the same seems to be true of their Blu-Rays – sadly, as I’m in Region B.
I’ve no idea why they adopted this policy (which would seem to fly in the face of common sense, given that Criterion doesn’t own the vast majority of its catalogue, at least in terms of permanent representation of the underlying rights), but my guess is that it’s because they’ve spent a fortune on brand new HD restorations, and are quite keen to recoup some of that investment by licensing said transfers elsewhere – for instance, Masters of Cinema’s F FOR FAKE is based on the Criterion transfer. And it’s much easier to negotiate a good price if you can demonstrate that you’ve taken steps to ensure that your own sales are largely restricted to your own territory.
Do you mean actual Surrealist films, or films that are “surreal” in the sense of being a bit weird?
BRAZIL fits the second category but not the first, for instance.
But if you’re after the first, Luis Buñuel and Jan Svankmajer were/are card-carrying activists in the Surrealist movement (as were Germaine Dulac and Man Ray, though they were less significant as filmmakers), and Jean Cocteau had strong connections. David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Wojciech J. Has, Fernando Arrabal and the Quay Brothers work along very similar philosophical lines.
I’m a writer, film historian and occasional DVD producer/contributor who’s likely to be somewhere between London (work) and the south coast of England (home) at any given moment. My current professional interests are British film and television history (for my main day job at the BFI) and central/eastern European cinema (for most of my freelance commissions and DVD productions), but I’ve spent nearly twenty years working in the independent/arthouse sector in some capacity: exhibition, distribution, criticism and even production – the latter disastrously, but I’m glad I did it!
I found this site courtesy of a random email a couple of days ago which alleged that I’d signed up to its mailing list. I don’t remember this at all, but the email’s large still from W.R. MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM suggested that it might be worth following the link, and I’ve been pretty impressed so far.
I suspect this is because the major studios are (usually) free to release their product anywhere, as they own the worldwide rights. Criterion doesn’t, and HD transfers are expensive, so there’s a strong business case for region-coding and licensing their masters elsewhere.
It works both ways, though – the BFI’s RED DESERT Blu-ray is coded for Region B at the insistence of the rightsholder, presumably because they’re quite keen to license the HD rights to an American distributor.
VIDEODROME is a good illustration of why I think BRAZIL doesn’t qualify as a Surrealist film – the latter spends much of the time delving into its central character’s dreams, but never at the expense of narrative logic: you always know exactly where you are and what’s going on, which certainly wouldn’t be the case with a true Surrealist film.
By contrast, VIDEODROME really does pull the rug out from under your expectations, following its own instincts even at the risk of total incomprehensibility – so it’s much closer to the work of Bunuel and Svankmajer (i.e. actual practising Surrealists).
I suppose Ken Russell doesn’t count in this thread, because he is very briefly represented on a Criterion disc (one of his early BBC shorts is on Teshigahara’s ANTONIO GAUDI), but many of his best films are either not available at all or only in substandard editions.
THE DEVILS is probably the most obvious example (but that’s Warner-owned, and I know of at least one other distributor who’s tried and failed to sub-license the rights), and the same applies to LISZTOMANIA, but there’s also THE MUSIC LOVERS (unavailable), SAVAGE MESSIAH (unavailable) and MAHLER (poor-quality R2 edition). SAVAGE MESSIAH would be the most obvious Criterion-worthy title, not least because Russell himself rates it as one of his best films.
“More Guy Madden. His films are a perfect match for Criterion.”
Guy Maddin’s films are actually exceptionally well served on DVD, so I’m not sure what the point of reissuing them on Criterion would be.
Certainly, there’s nothing obviously wrong with the Kino and Zeitgeist editions of the early films (aside from CAREFUL, and even that isn’t too bad, the transfers are excellent, as are the extras, which usually include a Maddin commentary), and while the MGM edition of THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD isn’t great, the British edition on Soda Pictures is sensational – throwing in not just a commentary and three shorts but also the whole of COWARDS BEND THE KNEE.
Two other British labels that have impressed me very much in the last few months are Axiom Films and Second Sight. Axiom’s Wim Wenders series is an absolute model of how to do this sort of thing – director-approved transfers, intelligent interviews and useful booklets. Second Sight’s catalogue ranges from barebones (but otherwise good) discs of things like BURNT BY THE SUN to lavish restorations of things like Joseph Losey’s DON GIOVANNI and Ron Fricke’s BARAKA (their first Blu-ray), though their crown jewels at the moment are probably their Max Ophuls releases, crammed to the gunwales with analytical extras.
“And if you’re adventurous there are PWA: Polskie Wydawnictwo Audiowizualne and RUSCICO labels that release Polish and Russian films, two areas largely underrepresented on DVD. "
I think PWA is truly magnificent – to the point where I blind-buy literally everything they release (and I’ve never done this before with any other label), but you should be warned that their stuff is niche-market in the extreme, consisting pretty much exclusively of documentaries and animation. But don’t let that put you off: their catalogue contains some of the most extraordinary films I’ve come across in a long, long time (and their definition of “documentary” and indeed “animation” is gratifyingly wide). I think all the discs are region-free PAL, and they’re 100% English-friendly – even the typically hefty booklets are bilingual in Polish and English. They’re also unbelievably cheap for what you get – a two or three-disc set with a 40-to-60-page booket will probably only set you back $13/€10/£9, and that’s RRP!
Ruscico’s catalogue consists of a decent survey of (mostly) mainstream Soviet films, concentrating on the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Presentation is generally very good (bar a few transfer niggles and other peculiarities, such as their habit of splitting long films over two discs), English subtitles are typically excellent, and cover the extras as well as the main feature. They release in both PAL and NTSC, but the originals are PAL and I’ve heard bad things about their NTSC conversions.
There are two rough equivalents of Ruscico in the Czech Republic and Hungary – Filmexport Home Video has a terrific catalogue of 80-plus (mostly) pre-New Wave Czech films stretching back to the 1920s, generally presented in excellent transfers with English subtitles on the main feature (though sadly not the often copious extras). Fantasy Film’s Hungarian Film Classics series is barebones, and not every release has English subtitles (and avoid PACSIRTA, which claims to have English subs but doesn’t), but those that do are well worth exploring – especially given the absurdly low prices. Again, we’re generally talking region-free PAL across the board.
Another label that’s well worth exploring is the German Edition Filmmuseum, whose catalogue of restorations is also extremely English-friendly (subtitles on extras as well as main features) – I haven’t seen as many of their discs as I’d like, but their presentation of Erich von Stroheim’s debut BLIND HUSBANDS is pretty much exemplary.
“Artificial Eye has the largest breadth and variety of any label I can think of – far more than Criterion "
Personally, I think Artificial Eye has many of the same limitations as Criterion – their catalogue is magnificent if your tastes largely revolve around mainstream European arthouse releases, and their presentation is generally excellent, but both labels are very weak when it comes to silent films, shorts, documentaries (especially classic documentaries), animation and the avant-garde. In those categories, I’d say the BFI is fairly unbeatable at the moment.
I spent a very pleasant few weeks last year watching virtually Andrzej Munk’s entire output, starting with his nakedly Stalinist propaganda piece DESTINATION NOWA HUTA! (1951) and ending with PASSENGER (1961), left famously unfinished after Munk was killed in a car crash while driving home from the set.
Munk has a legendary reputation in Poland (Roman Polanski reveres him, as do many others), but he’s been rather neglected elsewhere. Part of the problem is that most of his films are documentaries, and therefore relatively inaccessible (since 2007, they’ve been made available with English subtitles, but you still have to import the DVDs from Poland), but even the features need a fair amount of context to appreciate.
For instance, black comedies about World War II are ten a penny these days, but it took real courage to make EROICA (1957) in Poland (i.e. the country that suffered the most during the war, at least proportionally), only a dozen years after the war ended – though Joseph Heller was writing CATCH-22 at the time, it wouldn’t be published for several more years. Similarly, his first fiction feature MAN ON THE TRACKS (1956) consists of a RASHOMON-style investigation of an apparent act of sabotage by a disaffected railway worker, and works perfectly well on its own terms, but some knowledge of the political context (scapegoating and rigged inquiries were common practice in so-called People’s Poland, and not often discussed quite so blatantly) is essential for full understanding.
Other outstanding titles include BAD LUCK (1959), another black comedy about a man who has the misfortune both to live through 1930s/40s Poland and to be spectacularly unlucky at every turn, and the brilliant short A WALK IN THE OLD TOWN OF WARSAW (1958), in which a precocious young music student takes a stroll through the Polish capital, her mind turning everything she hears into the basis of a musical composition (courtesy of the pioneering electronic composer Andrzej Markowski).
And then there’s PASSENGER, probably Munk’s best known film, and the one that seemed to herald a radical new direction for both him and Polish cinema in general. Polish films had tackled the Holocaust as early as 1948 (Wanda Jakubowska’s THE LAST STOP), but PASSENGER broke a significant taboo by telling a story from the perspective of one of the guards, not a prisoner – and an attractive female guard at that. Unfortunately, the framing story in which she encounters one of her former prisoners on a luxury cruise was one of the sequences that Munk never shot (the “finished” film tells this through stills), but in many ways its incompleteness adds to its ambiguity. (Equally sadly, his 1960 Polish TV adaptation of the same story seems to have been broadcast live, and was never recorded).
It’s impossible to know how Munk would have developed from here. Although older than Andrzej Wajda, he seemed more open to experimentation and innovation, and would probably have felt right at home competing with the more daring work of his younger colleagues Roman Polanski (who worked with Munk on BAD LUCK) and Jerzy Skolimowski. One of the fascinating things about watching Munk’s work in chronological order is seeing how he cunningly subverted the various restrictions placed on him (fully half his creative career was spent at a time when Socialist Realism was rigidly imposed on all films), and when the post-1956 thaw came he went further than anyone else – brilliant though Wajda’s KANAL undoubtedly is, it’s a much more conventionally patriotic piece next to the fascinatingly complex and ambiguous EROICA, which almost dared its audience to laugh.
I’m very fond of my local, the Ritz in Worthing (south coast of England) – comfortable seats, nice big screen, excellent sound and very reasonable prices. The only problem is that the programming rarely coincides with my own tastes, so I only go there once or twice a year.
But my favourite all-round cinemas are the Curzon Soho in central London and the Riverside in west London, both of which have superb technical facilities AND intelligent programming. The Riverside in particular is THE place to see Academy ratio films – the screen is enormous, thanks to the ultra-steep seating rake.
Nostalgically, I also have to mention the Everyman and Scala – both still trading under those names, but the Everyman is now an upmarket luxury venue under totally new management and the Scala is a nightclub. But in their heyday (the 1980s/early 1990s) they were wonderfully eclectic repertory houses, showing different double and triple bills every day and programmed by people who were genuinely fanatical about cinema in general and film history’s weirder bywaters in particular.
It’s no exaggeration to say that those two cinemas provided the bulk of my film education, and while I earned an absolute pittance when I actually worked at the Everyman, the value of everything else I got out of the experience was incalculable. (It’s one of the reasons I never bothered studying film academically – when you’ve spent six years sharing an office with one of the best film programmers in the business, you really don’t need much else!)
“I still lament the departed Scala Cinema in London, shut down by Stanley Kubrick in 1993, because of an illegal showing of “A Clockwork Orange”- when he was still alive and when he still kept a ban on it- in the UK only. Yes, the cinema were stupid to screen a film that was banned, but Warners and Kubrick could have come to an agreement out of court. (The film was advertised as a “rare mechanical and fruity treat’). Instead, the Scala had do a “droog in the dock” fundraiser, which didn’t reach its target. Sad days. The venue is now a very successful nightclub and music venue.”
Sorry, Andrew, but much of this is somewhat questionable in the factual accuracy department – though as the “Stanley Kubrick closed the Scala” rumour found its way into at least one book I suppose it’s a canard that’s doomed to be recycled for all eternity.
Trust me on this: the Scala would have closed permanently at some point in 1993-4 for any number of reasons that had nothing to do with Stanley Kubrick – that was a year that devastated the independent cinema sector, closing the Electric, nearly closing the Everyman (I was on the latter’s board of directors at the time, and remember this vividly!) and threatening the livelihoods of umpteen small distributors: I hear the bailiffs were on their way to Tartan when THE LAST SEDUCTION opened to rave reviews and saved its bacon.
As for the Scala’s many, many problems, the ‘Clockwork Orange’ saga was very small potatoes compared with, say:
- the bankruptcy of parent company Palace Pictures in late 1992;
- the Prince Charles cinema creaming off many of the Scala’s moneyspinners and showing them at prices the Scala couldn’t match;
- the impending renewal of its operating licence (and the near-certainty it would fail the compulsory inspection);
- the threatened redevelopment of the entire area to create a high-speed rail link (thus deterring desperately-needed investors);
- the increasing unpleasantness of King’s Cross, especially after dark (thus deterring new audiences);
- a significant chunk of the Scala’s core trash/sleaze repertory was no longer available in 35mm, as it would go straight to video;
- existing 35mm prints of core repertory were falling apart and not being replaced;
- video was making significant inroads into the former rep audience, not least because it was significantly cheaper (and at least you could hear the dialogue: the Scala’s sound was legendarily atrocious!).
Warner Bros sued the Scala for straightforward breach of copyright, and since it was an open and shut case (the mere fact that the cinema had to advertise it as a “surprise film” made it clear that they knew that it was an illicit screening) they didn’t have a leg to stand on. But the fine was lower than expected (pretty close to the minimum, I think), and one positive side-effect of the row is that it gave the cinema a veritable shedload of publicity at a time when it desperately needed some. None of which did any good – but, as I said, it was pretty much doomed regardless.
I’ve only seen LA VIE DE JESUS, and that very recently (when the Masters of Cinema DVD came out, in fact), but that impressed me enough to trigger a mental note to track down the others when I get a moment. The Bresson comparison seems spot on – it would make a perfect (if somewhat wrist-slittingly depressing) double bill with MOUCHETTE.
CRASH is hands down one of the worst films I’ve seen in the last few years, and why it wasn’t laughed off the screen instead of garlanded with Oscars I have no idea. (US CRASH-haters will be cheered to hear that it was greeted with far more scepticism on my side of the Atlantic)
Here in Britain, we have a long-running drama series called CASUALTY (think ER but on a much lower budget) which makes its various moral/didactic points (several per episode) so bludgeoningly obviously that they might as well stick an animated wagging finger in the corner of the screen. CRASH was like that, but with far less excuse – I don’t know why they didn’t just call it RACISM IS BAD, M’KAY? instead of nicking the title of a far superior David Cronenberg film (and indeed J.G. Ballard novel).
Film critics over 3 years ago
I’ve generally had a much happier experience as a professional than Andrew and Paul seem to have done, but that’s because I’ve never had a job where I have to cover new releases on a weekly basis. I can well imagine how soul-destroying that must be, and indeed vividly recall a conversation with a very high-profile UK critic who actually left his job on a national newspaper as a reaction to watching A NIGHT AT THE ROXBURY. The way he described the experience to me made it sound almost epiphanic – it was “why am I watching this dreck in the first place, and why do I then have to spend time writing about it when virtually none of my readers will be the slightest bit interested in going to see it? And why are film critics expected to cover everything when theatre, music and art critics get to pick and choose?”.
So I’m very lucky in that I do get to pick and choose – I typically review one or two theatrical releases and eight DVD releases in each monthly issue of Sight & Sound. The editors of each section know my taste and existing knowledge, and because I’ve been writing for them for years (my first piece was in mid-2002, I started writing regularly from late 2004 and haven’t missed an issue since early 2006), we now have an almost intuitive rapport. The number of films they’ve given me to review that I ended up actively despising is tiny, and even if I’m disappointed the chances are that I’ll have plenty to write about because it’ll be squarely within one of my areas of expertise. It’s also very rare indeed that I have to turn something around in 24 or even 48 hours – one week is tight for me, with two to three weeks much more common, and in some cases I’ve even had several months (I often catch the very first press show, which might be ages before the eventual release). One major advantage of this is that I get much more time to do background research – for instance, if the film is based on a novel or play, I generally try to read it or any equivalent texts (historical material, for instance), and I also try to watch at least two or three related films. (This in itself can be useful – I used a commission to review grungy low-budget British horror film WILDERNESS as an excuse to catch up with half a dozen post-2000 genre entries that I’d missed).
The major downside is that the pay is pitiful when set against the amount of work involved – even a 1,300 word lead review only nets a fee in the high double figures (probably the equivalent of US$100 or thereabouts), and a capsule DVD review is nearer $30, so this works out at an hourly rate that’s probably nudging or even lower than minimum wage when you consider the amount of viewing/reading/writing involved. (It doesn’t help that I generally pay my own research expenses). Which is why this is more of a freelance hobby on top of my main day job – but because the calibre of films I cover is much higher than that which the average weekly critic gets subjected to, I really don’t mind. And because I generally specialise in ultra-niche titles (central and eastern Europe, documentaries, unclassifiably culty stuff, films from countries off the usual beaten track such as Uruguay or Tajikistan) I’m generally immune to the blandishments of PR companies – no-one seriously expects these films to be huge hits, so they’re usually grateful that they’re getting (hopefully) intelligent coverage in the first place.
And I’m also very conscious of my responsibilities – for instance, I reviewed virtually all the recent Polish films released in Britain by The Polish Connection initiative, and was very aware that my pieces probably amounted to the most substantial English-language coverage that they were likely to get, since they generally bypassed the national press (and even if they did mention them, they rarely got much more than 50-100 words) and didn’t seem to attract much online attention either, at least not in English. I certainly wasn’t blind to their shortcomings (none of these titles was anywhere close to a masterpiece, and I certainly won’t be slitting my wrists if I never have to sit through another Polish romantic comedy), but I did feel a strong sense of responsibility to treat them fairly and accurately. This is partly because I’m not that keen on glib put-downs anyway (which are hard to sustain across typically 600-800 words), but mostly because my main day job involves a lot of research into historical reviews published by Sight & Sound (and its former partner the Monthly Film Bulletin), and am very conscious that some hypothetical researcher several decades hence might well be looking up my pieces for the same reason. So if I’ve failed to give an honest account of the film, so that someone who hasn’t seen it and who might not get the chance to see it will at least get a reasonable impression of what it was like, then as far as I’m concerned I’ve failed full stop.
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Is Krzysztof Kieslowski Underrated? over 3 years ago
I think much of his work is underrated, because the vagaries of international distribution means that a disproportionate amount of attention is paid to what I call his international metaphysical period – THE DOUBLE LIFE OF VERONIQUE and the THREE COLOURS trilogy. And while the merits of these films are considerable, I don’t think they’re necessarily superior to his 1970s and 1980s films.
In fact, in several respects I find them less interesting, though this may betray the fact that I first became aware of Kieslowski in the 1980s, when he was regarded (entirely reasonably) as one of the most brilliantly astute anatomists of the political, cultural and spiritual malaise afflicting his native country. He’s also amassed a substantial body of work as a documentarist – the vast bulk of his output from 1966-81 was non-fiction, and even if he’d never made a commercial feature film his place in Polish film history would be secure even if few outside Poland would ever have heard of him.
Talking of which, I’ve recently been exploring the work of Kieslowski’s long-term friend, fellow student and occasional colleague Marcel Lozinski, whose work is very very similar in a great many respects (even to the point of nudging the metaphysical at times), though unlike Kieslowski he never made the leap into fiction, so he’s probably doomed to remain a footnote in even Polish film histories. But Kieslowski fans should definitely check out HOW TO LIVE (1977), WITNESSES (1987), 89MM FROM EUROPE (1993), ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN (1995) and his most recent, POSTE RESTANTE (2008).
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Television... a query. over 3 years ago
In my native Britain, we’ve always tended to take television more seriously, largely because the best TV is generally superior to the best British filmmaking – certainly, the calibre of writing is often much higher (Britain has a dearth of really gifted screenwriters, and many of the best of those were foreigners like Emeric Pressburger), and it’s much less commercially driven.
And while it’s not generally recognised as an auteur-driven medium, one of Britain’s greatest directors, Alan Clarke, worked almost exclusively in television, and his three features (SCUM, BILLY THE KID AND THE GREEN BAIZE VAMPIRE, RITA SUE & BOB TOO) have nothing like the power of his best small-screen productions (PENDA’S FEN, MADE IN BRITAIN, ELEPHANT, THE FIRM). And while Ken Russell is much better known, his television work is in no way inferior to his feature films, and in many respects his great BBC period (1959-70) is rather more creatively fertile than the 1970s – Russell himself said that he often preferred making films for television, because smaller budgets and crews generally led to greater artistic freedom. (The new BBC America box set provides a good overview of his 1960s television work). Stephen Frears and Ken Loach have also produced outstanding work on the small screen – in fact, there’s a strong case for saying that Loach’s CATHY COME HOME is more important than any of his features, certainly in terms of its public impact and lasting after-effects.
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Television... a query. over 3 years ago
Actually, statistically it’s far more likely to be terrible – I always thought Krzysztof Kieslowski hit the nail on the head when he referred to British television as being the “least stupid” he’d come across. And even that’s arguably not true any more – in the last 10-15 years, the best US TV has massively raised its game: certainly, there’s nothing on my side of the Atlantic that’s anywhere close to the quality of, say, THE WIRE or MAD MEN.
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Film critics over 3 years ago
My advice to anyone who wants to make a splash as a critic is to find a niche that’s currently underexplored or even unexplored and focus on that. If you choose wisely, and if you’re any good, you’d be amazed how quickly your reputation spreads – and this comes from repeated personal experience.
With a subject like Tarantino or Star Wars, you’re going to have to come up with a staggeringly original take at this stage in the game to make any worthwhile impact, but there are tens of thousands of other films out there which have barely been discussed in English – but which might well be available on DVD with English subtitles. And in those cases, writing anything halfway intelligent in English will automatically constitute a worthwhile addition to film scholarship.
The other great thing about focusing on niches (central European cinema in my case) is the relative absence of advance hype. In most cases, I barely have more than the faintest idea of what I’m about to see when I put the DVD in the player, and I may well know next to nothing about the people who made it. So I’m far more likely to be pleasantly surprised than otherwise – especially given the fact that the film probably has something going for it if its distributors decided it was worth adding English subtitles.
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Film critics over 3 years ago
Have you actually approached Sight & Sound? Because I’ve seen loads of new faces in the reviews section since I started, including someone I myself recommended – and she’s not Oxbridge educated. (Neither am I, for that matter). The challenge, of course, is getting repeated and regular commissions, but there are no significant barriers to getting that first foot in the door that I’m aware of.
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A PLEA FROM SOMEONE ACROSS THE POND over 3 years ago
I have to say I’m somewhat baffled by some of Steve’s complaints. For starters, it is NOT illegal, “technically” or otherwise, to own a multi-region player, and neither is it illegal to import a foreign DVD. Secondly, it’s unbelievably easy to go multi-region in Britain – a huge number of players are either multi-region from the start or can be easily modified (often by a remote control hack), and you don’t have to pay through the nose either: my last player cost a grand total of £50 (some three years ago) and plays everything I’ve thrown at it. In theory, some older televisions might baulk at handling NTSC video signals, but in my experience they generally have to be ancient: most modern sets should have no problem whatsoever. Certainly, it is far, far easier to go multi-region in PAL-using countries (i.e. Europe) than it is in NTSC-using ones (i.e. the US/Japan).
The reason Criterion doesn’t release its films in Britain (aside from licensing its masters – for instance, Masters of Cinema’s F FOR FAKE has the same core transfer as the Criterion) is because it generally doesn’t license the distribution rights outside North America. There’s no reason why they couldn’t, but it would cost them more (they’d have to pay an upfront fee to the rightsholder for each additional territory), and they’d almost certainly reason that hardcore fans would import anyway, so there’d be no advantage.
And the reason you can’t buy imported Criterions over the counter in Britain is to do with the 1984 Video Recordings Act, which doesn’t apply in France (or indeed anywhere else). Basically, with only a few exceptions (documentaries and music titles, generally), ALL video recordings, regardless of format, have to be approved by the British Board of Film Classification, which pretty much prevents imports from being sold in the UK. But since it’s generally much cheaper to order them online from abroad (bricks-and-mortar retailers add a hefty premium), it’s not a major problem.
I also strongly disagree that Masters of Cinema and the BFI are the only outstanding arthouse labels in the UK – just off the top of my head, there’s Artificial Eye, Axiom, Mr Bongo, Optimum, Second Run, Second Sight and Soda Pictures, most of whom are very reliable indeed (Mr Bongo got off to a dreadful start, but has significantly raised its game since). In fact, so healthy is the British arthouse DVD sector at the moment that I find I’m importing less and less from the US – probably just as well given the current exchange rate, but the slowdown was months before the credit crunch.
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Are T.V. serials cinematographic at all? over 3 years ago
“No TV has the option, or the budget to do anything, or the time to do anything truly great or artistic.”
So you don’t rate BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ, DAS BOOT, DEKALOG, FANNY AND ALEXANDER or HEIMAT?
Mind you, DEKALOG had an unbelievably tight schedule and something like a 2:1 shooting ratio, but that still rather gives the lie to the fact that it’s impossible to create great art within a television context.
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Television... a query. over 3 years ago
“i especially despise all reality shows,”
I don’t – THE APPRENTICE (UK version: I’ve never seen the US original) and MAESTRO were two of the televisual treats of last year.
Then again, I try not to make sweeping dismissals of entire genres and formats as a general rule.
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the best young film makers over 3 years ago
I was enormously impressed by the two films that I’ve seen – STILL LIFE and 24 CITY – not least because they manage that tricky combination of torn-from-the-headlines subject-matter, acute awareness of the wider social-political-cultural context, and exceptionally personal, instantly recognisable aesthetic approach. I’ll definitely catch up on his earlier work when I get a chance.
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Russian Ark, is it cinema or just a long, dull home movie? over 3 years ago
I thought it was one of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve had in a cinema in the last decade or so, though I was lucky enough to see it only a few weeks after returning from a honeymoon in St Petersburg (complete with not just a trip to the Hermitage but a cover-to-cover read of two hefty books about Russian history and culture) at a preview screening with an illuminating introduction by Ian Christie that tipped me off in advance about several key things to look out for.
I think it’s pretty pointless tackling the film without a fairly solid knowledge of the last three centuries of Russian history – as with most of Andrzej Wajda’s historical films, it’s clear that Alexander Sokurov’s target audience is primarily well-educated Russians (specifically St Petersburgers) like himself, and anyone who doesn’t fit that description has to do some prior homework in order to get much out of the film. Even relatively well known aspects of Russian history like the last days of the Romanov dynasty aren’t signposted especially obviously: Sokurov’s never been one to spoonfeed.
As for the character of Custine, I got the impression that he was meant to be annoying – as one of the key themes of the film is the way Russia has long been straddling the Europe/Asia divide, and its pretensions to be seen as ‘European’ (expressed not least through the city of St Petersburg itself, which many Russians regard with suspicion because of its origins as an artificial creation through which Peter the Great wanted to cement cultural ties between Europe and Russia). Accordingly, Russia cosies up to characters like Custine, only to be belittled and patronised in return – and that’s a microcosm of a fair chunk of Russian history in itself. I certainly get the impression that a fair number of Russian viewers would be asking “why are we wasting time with this guy?” – and, by extension, wondering why Russia is bothering with Europe when it’s quite capable of standing on its own feet.
But I’m not sure whether there’s any value in arguing whether RUSSIAN ARK is “cinema” or not, because the simple fact is that it wouldn’t work in any other medium: to me, it’s a lot closer to “cinema” than, say, a pedestrian literary adaptation. It’s not a viable stage production, because the action unfolds at specific times in specific locations, so the audience would have to be where the camera is throughout. And the primary reason for the lack of cutting is that Sokurov wanted to encapsulate three centuries of history in a single take – something so insanely ambitious that I’m amazed he even got the chance to attempt it, let alone pull it off. That final sequence in particular, with the ballroom scene followed by that riveting track into the mist-shrouded Neva river, is one of my indelible cinematic memories of recent years.
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Polish Film Posters over 3 years ago
Polish poster art is just staggering – I’ve always had the impression that they deliberately went out of their way to make their posters look as unlike their US/Western European counterparts as possible.
There are also stronger overlaps between Polish poster art and cinema than mere poster designs – Walerian Borowczyk and Jan Lenica started out in poster design (Lenica in particular is regarded as a giant in the field) before switching to animation and, in Borowczyk’s case, live action. And the Quay Brothers cite an exhibition of Polish poster art the week when they started at the Philadelphia College of Art as one of the most profound and long-lasting influences on their whole filmic philosophy. (At their suggestion, I included mini biographies of some of the best Polish poster artists in the booklet that accompanied their recent short film DVD compilation).
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YURI NORSTEIN - MASTER IN ANIMATION over 3 years ago
It’s highly unlikely that Norstein will get the Criterion treatment, as the rights to his films – and Soyuzmultfilm’s output in general – is held by Films By Jove, which distributes them in the US themselves. And in general they do a pretty good job – my only significant beef is that the subtitles are both yellow and non-removable, which isn’t too bad with TALE OF TALES (which has very very little spoken content), but wreaks havoc on THE FOX AND THE HARE, where most of the salient artwork occupies the bottom quarter of the screen. But aside from that the source prints are excellent.
As for Lotte Reiniger, the BFI has just (as in last month) released a two-disc collection of her fairytale films, and is preparing a similar survey of her music films. And I believe she made THE first animated feature film – does anything predate THE ADVENTURES OF PRINCE ACHMED (1923-6)?
But if I’m not much mistaken, Criterion has never shown much (or any?) interest in animated shorts, so I’m not sure why people think they’d be the best company to handle this material – I’d be much more inclined to favour a specialist with a strong track record in animation, like the BFI (UK), NFB (Canada), Chalet Films (France) or PWA (Poland).
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Who do you think had it and lost it? When? and Why? over 3 years ago
Ken Russell – a flat-out genius in the 1960s, a dazzling provocateur in the 1970s, visibly struggling in the 1980s… and pretty much everything he’s made since about 1990 has been borderline unwatchable. I gleefully tuned into his A KITTEN FOR HITLER after hearing that he deliberately set out to make the most offensive film ever made, and it was pitiful on more levels than I care to count.
As for Godard, I suspect most people dissing his “late” period (actually about three-quarters of his career, since this is generally dated from the late 1960s) probably haven’t seen much of it – or at least nowhere near enough to reach a particularly informed opinion. The fact that you have to really make an effort to see a lot of post-1970 Godard rather rams this home!
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Surviving Life over 3 years ago
Good news – it looks as though the funding is in place on Jan Svankmajer’s latest feature SURVIVING LIFE, and it’s already started production. Thanks to the amount of animation involved, it’s likely to take about a year, with a premiere at some point in 2010.
As far as I’m aware, it’s a “psychoanalytical comedy” about a man unable to reconcile his double life, one taking place in reality and the other in his dreams. But as with all Svankmajer projects, I suspect mere verbal description will be utterly, utterly inadequate when set against the work itself.
The slightly less good news is that Svankmajer says that this will almost certainly be his last film.
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Region over 3 years ago
The vast majority of Criterion releases used to be region-free, though from the start they were occasionally compelled to region-code them (this is particularly true of their Japanese and major studio titles like ARMAGEDDON). However, at some point in the last few years – 2006 or thereabouts – they seem to have adopted a policy of region-coding ALL their releases: I honestly can’t think of a recent Criterion release that’s region-free. And the same seems to be true of their Blu-Rays – sadly, as I’m in Region B.
I’ve no idea why they adopted this policy (which would seem to fly in the face of common sense, given that Criterion doesn’t own the vast majority of its catalogue, at least in terms of permanent representation of the underlying rights), but my guess is that it’s because they’ve spent a fortune on brand new HD restorations, and are quite keen to recoup some of that investment by licensing said transfers elsewhere – for instance, Masters of Cinema’s F FOR FAKE is based on the Criterion transfer. And it’s much easier to negotiate a good price if you can demonstrate that you’ve taken steps to ensure that your own sales are largely restricted to your own territory.
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Surreal over 3 years ago
Do you mean actual Surrealist films, or films that are “surreal” in the sense of being a bit weird?
BRAZIL fits the second category but not the first, for instance.
But if you’re after the first, Luis Buñuel and Jan Svankmajer were/are card-carrying activists in the Surrealist movement (as were Germaine Dulac and Man Ray, though they were less significant as filmmakers), and Jean Cocteau had strong connections. David Lynch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Wojciech J. Has, Fernando Arrabal and the Quay Brothers work along very similar philosophical lines.
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New to The Auteurs? You Belong Here over 3 years ago
I’m a writer, film historian and occasional DVD producer/contributor who’s likely to be somewhere between London (work) and the south coast of England (home) at any given moment. My current professional interests are British film and television history (for my main day job at the BFI) and central/eastern European cinema (for most of my freelance commissions and DVD productions), but I’ve spent nearly twenty years working in the independent/arthouse sector in some capacity: exhibition, distribution, criticism and even production – the latter disastrously, but I’m glad I did it!
I found this site courtesy of a random email a couple of days ago which alleged that I’d signed up to its mailing list. I don’t remember this at all, but the email’s large still from W.R. MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM suggested that it might be worth following the link, and I’ve been pretty impressed so far.
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Region over 3 years ago
I suspect this is because the major studios are (usually) free to release their product anywhere, as they own the worldwide rights. Criterion doesn’t, and HD transfers are expensive, so there’s a strong business case for region-coding and licensing their masters elsewhere.
It works both ways, though – the BFI’s RED DESERT Blu-ray is coded for Region B at the insistence of the rightsholder, presumably because they’re quite keen to license the HD rights to an American distributor.
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Surreal over 3 years ago
VIDEODROME is a good illustration of why I think BRAZIL doesn’t qualify as a Surrealist film – the latter spends much of the time delving into its central character’s dreams, but never at the expense of narrative logic: you always know exactly where you are and what’s going on, which certainly wouldn’t be the case with a true Surrealist film.
By contrast, VIDEODROME really does pull the rug out from under your expectations, following its own instincts even at the risk of total incomprehensibility – so it’s much closer to the work of Bunuel and Svankmajer (i.e. actual practising Surrealists).
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WHICH DIRECTORS...NOT...CURRENTLY REPRESENTED IN THE CRITERION COLLECTION DO YOU WANT TO SEE INCLUDED? over 3 years ago
I suppose Ken Russell doesn’t count in this thread, because he is very briefly represented on a Criterion disc (one of his early BBC shorts is on Teshigahara’s ANTONIO GAUDI), but many of his best films are either not available at all or only in substandard editions.
THE DEVILS is probably the most obvious example (but that’s Warner-owned, and I know of at least one other distributor who’s tried and failed to sub-license the rights), and the same applies to LISZTOMANIA, but there’s also THE MUSIC LOVERS (unavailable), SAVAGE MESSIAH (unavailable) and MAHLER (poor-quality R2 edition). SAVAGE MESSIAH would be the most obvious Criterion-worthy title, not least because Russell himself rates it as one of his best films.
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WHICH DIRECTORS...NOT...CURRENTLY REPRESENTED IN THE CRITERION COLLECTION DO YOU WANT TO SEE INCLUDED? over 3 years ago
“More Guy Madden. His films are a perfect match for Criterion.”
Guy Maddin’s films are actually exceptionally well served on DVD, so I’m not sure what the point of reissuing them on Criterion would be.
Certainly, there’s nothing obviously wrong with the Kino and Zeitgeist editions of the early films (aside from CAREFUL, and even that isn’t too bad, the transfers are excellent, as are the extras, which usually include a Maddin commentary), and while the MGM edition of THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD isn’t great, the British edition on Soda Pictures is sensational – throwing in not just a commentary and three shorts but also the whole of COWARDS BEND THE KNEE.
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Region Free DVD's over 3 years ago
Two other British labels that have impressed me very much in the last few months are Axiom Films and Second Sight. Axiom’s Wim Wenders series is an absolute model of how to do this sort of thing – director-approved transfers, intelligent interviews and useful booklets. Second Sight’s catalogue ranges from barebones (but otherwise good) discs of things like BURNT BY THE SUN to lavish restorations of things like Joseph Losey’s DON GIOVANNI and Ron Fricke’s BARAKA (their first Blu-ray), though their crown jewels at the moment are probably their Max Ophuls releases, crammed to the gunwales with analytical extras.
“And if you’re adventurous there are PWA: Polskie Wydawnictwo Audiowizualne and RUSCICO labels that release Polish and Russian films, two areas largely underrepresented on DVD. "
I think PWA is truly magnificent – to the point where I blind-buy literally everything they release (and I’ve never done this before with any other label), but you should be warned that their stuff is niche-market in the extreme, consisting pretty much exclusively of documentaries and animation. But don’t let that put you off: their catalogue contains some of the most extraordinary films I’ve come across in a long, long time (and their definition of “documentary” and indeed “animation” is gratifyingly wide). I think all the discs are region-free PAL, and they’re 100% English-friendly – even the typically hefty booklets are bilingual in Polish and English. They’re also unbelievably cheap for what you get – a two or three-disc set with a 40-to-60-page booket will probably only set you back $13/€10/£9, and that’s RRP!
Ruscico’s catalogue consists of a decent survey of (mostly) mainstream Soviet films, concentrating on the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Presentation is generally very good (bar a few transfer niggles and other peculiarities, such as their habit of splitting long films over two discs), English subtitles are typically excellent, and cover the extras as well as the main feature. They release in both PAL and NTSC, but the originals are PAL and I’ve heard bad things about their NTSC conversions.
There are two rough equivalents of Ruscico in the Czech Republic and Hungary – Filmexport Home Video has a terrific catalogue of 80-plus (mostly) pre-New Wave Czech films stretching back to the 1920s, generally presented in excellent transfers with English subtitles on the main feature (though sadly not the often copious extras). Fantasy Film’s Hungarian Film Classics series is barebones, and not every release has English subtitles (and avoid PACSIRTA, which claims to have English subs but doesn’t), but those that do are well worth exploring – especially given the absurdly low prices. Again, we’re generally talking region-free PAL across the board.
Another label that’s well worth exploring is the German Edition Filmmuseum, whose catalogue of restorations is also extremely English-friendly (subtitles on extras as well as main features) – I haven’t seen as many of their discs as I’d like, but their presentation of Erich von Stroheim’s debut BLIND HUSBANDS is pretty much exemplary.
“Artificial Eye has the largest breadth and variety of any label I can think of – far more than Criterion "
Personally, I think Artificial Eye has many of the same limitations as Criterion – their catalogue is magnificent if your tastes largely revolve around mainstream European arthouse releases, and their presentation is generally excellent, but both labels are very weak when it comes to silent films, shorts, documentaries (especially classic documentaries), animation and the avant-garde. In those categories, I’d say the BFI is fairly unbeatable at the moment.
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Guilty/ Not Guilty over 3 years ago
Nicolas Roeg’s EUREKA ends with a protracted courtroom scene, but unfortunately it’s the worst bit of an otherwise brilliant film.
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How Big Is Your DVD Collection? over 3 years ago
Thousands. But only thirty Blu-rays.
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Andrzej Munk over 3 years ago
I spent a very pleasant few weeks last year watching virtually Andrzej Munk’s entire output, starting with his nakedly Stalinist propaganda piece DESTINATION NOWA HUTA! (1951) and ending with PASSENGER (1961), left famously unfinished after Munk was killed in a car crash while driving home from the set.
Munk has a legendary reputation in Poland (Roman Polanski reveres him, as do many others), but he’s been rather neglected elsewhere. Part of the problem is that most of his films are documentaries, and therefore relatively inaccessible (since 2007, they’ve been made available with English subtitles, but you still have to import the DVDs from Poland), but even the features need a fair amount of context to appreciate.
For instance, black comedies about World War II are ten a penny these days, but it took real courage to make EROICA (1957) in Poland (i.e. the country that suffered the most during the war, at least proportionally), only a dozen years after the war ended – though Joseph Heller was writing CATCH-22 at the time, it wouldn’t be published for several more years. Similarly, his first fiction feature MAN ON THE TRACKS (1956) consists of a RASHOMON-style investigation of an apparent act of sabotage by a disaffected railway worker, and works perfectly well on its own terms, but some knowledge of the political context (scapegoating and rigged inquiries were common practice in so-called People’s Poland, and not often discussed quite so blatantly) is essential for full understanding.
Other outstanding titles include BAD LUCK (1959), another black comedy about a man who has the misfortune both to live through 1930s/40s Poland and to be spectacularly unlucky at every turn, and the brilliant short A WALK IN THE OLD TOWN OF WARSAW (1958), in which a precocious young music student takes a stroll through the Polish capital, her mind turning everything she hears into the basis of a musical composition (courtesy of the pioneering electronic composer Andrzej Markowski).
And then there’s PASSENGER, probably Munk’s best known film, and the one that seemed to herald a radical new direction for both him and Polish cinema in general. Polish films had tackled the Holocaust as early as 1948 (Wanda Jakubowska’s THE LAST STOP), but PASSENGER broke a significant taboo by telling a story from the perspective of one of the guards, not a prisoner – and an attractive female guard at that. Unfortunately, the framing story in which she encounters one of her former prisoners on a luxury cruise was one of the sequences that Munk never shot (the “finished” film tells this through stills), but in many ways its incompleteness adds to its ambiguity. (Equally sadly, his 1960 Polish TV adaptation of the same story seems to have been broadcast live, and was never recorded).
It’s impossible to know how Munk would have developed from here. Although older than Andrzej Wajda, he seemed more open to experimentation and innovation, and would probably have felt right at home competing with the more daring work of his younger colleagues Roman Polanski (who worked with Munk on BAD LUCK) and Jerzy Skolimowski. One of the fascinating things about watching Munk’s work in chronological order is seeing how he cunningly subverted the various restrictions placed on him (fully half his creative career was spent at a time when Socialist Realism was rigidly imposed on all films), and when the post-1956 thaw came he went further than anyone else – brilliant though Wajda’s KANAL undoubtedly is, it’s a much more conventionally patriotic piece next to the fascinatingly complex and ambiguous EROICA, which almost dared its audience to laugh.
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Favorite Theaters/Movie Houses over 3 years ago
I’m very fond of my local, the Ritz in Worthing (south coast of England) – comfortable seats, nice big screen, excellent sound and very reasonable prices. The only problem is that the programming rarely coincides with my own tastes, so I only go there once or twice a year.
But my favourite all-round cinemas are the Curzon Soho in central London and the Riverside in west London, both of which have superb technical facilities AND intelligent programming. The Riverside in particular is THE place to see Academy ratio films – the screen is enormous, thanks to the ultra-steep seating rake.
Nostalgically, I also have to mention the Everyman and Scala – both still trading under those names, but the Everyman is now an upmarket luxury venue under totally new management and the Scala is a nightclub. But in their heyday (the 1980s/early 1990s) they were wonderfully eclectic repertory houses, showing different double and triple bills every day and programmed by people who were genuinely fanatical about cinema in general and film history’s weirder bywaters in particular.
It’s no exaggeration to say that those two cinemas provided the bulk of my film education, and while I earned an absolute pittance when I actually worked at the Everyman, the value of everything else I got out of the experience was incalculable. (It’s one of the reasons I never bothered studying film academically – when you’ve spent six years sharing an office with one of the best film programmers in the business, you really don’t need much else!)
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Favorite Theaters/Movie Houses over 3 years ago
“I still lament the departed Scala Cinema in London, shut down by Stanley Kubrick in 1993, because of an illegal showing of “A Clockwork Orange”- when he was still alive and when he still kept a ban on it- in the UK only. Yes, the cinema were stupid to screen a film that was banned, but Warners and Kubrick could have come to an agreement out of court. (The film was advertised as a “rare mechanical and fruity treat’). Instead, the Scala had do a “droog in the dock” fundraiser, which didn’t reach its target. Sad days. The venue is now a very successful nightclub and music venue.”
Sorry, Andrew, but much of this is somewhat questionable in the factual accuracy department – though as the “Stanley Kubrick closed the Scala” rumour found its way into at least one book I suppose it’s a canard that’s doomed to be recycled for all eternity.
Trust me on this: the Scala would have closed permanently at some point in 1993-4 for any number of reasons that had nothing to do with Stanley Kubrick – that was a year that devastated the independent cinema sector, closing the Electric, nearly closing the Everyman (I was on the latter’s board of directors at the time, and remember this vividly!) and threatening the livelihoods of umpteen small distributors: I hear the bailiffs were on their way to Tartan when THE LAST SEDUCTION opened to rave reviews and saved its bacon.
As for the Scala’s many, many problems, the ‘Clockwork Orange’ saga was very small potatoes compared with, say:
- the bankruptcy of parent company Palace Pictures in late 1992;
- the Prince Charles cinema creaming off many of the Scala’s moneyspinners and showing them at prices the Scala couldn’t match;
- the impending renewal of its operating licence (and the near-certainty it would fail the compulsory inspection);
- the threatened redevelopment of the entire area to create a high-speed rail link (thus deterring desperately-needed investors);
- the increasing unpleasantness of King’s Cross, especially after dark (thus deterring new audiences);
- a significant chunk of the Scala’s core trash/sleaze repertory was no longer available in 35mm, as it would go straight to video;
- existing 35mm prints of core repertory were falling apart and not being replaced;
- video was making significant inroads into the former rep audience, not least because it was significantly cheaper (and at least you could hear the dialogue: the Scala’s sound was legendarily atrocious!).
Warner Bros sued the Scala for straightforward breach of copyright, and since it was an open and shut case (the mere fact that the cinema had to advertise it as a “surprise film” made it clear that they knew that it was an illicit screening) they didn’t have a leg to stand on. But the fine was lower than expected (pretty close to the minimum, I think), and one positive side-effect of the row is that it gave the cinema a veritable shedload of publicity at a time when it desperately needed some. None of which did any good – but, as I said, it was pretty much doomed regardless.
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BRUNO DUMONT over 3 years ago
I’ve only seen LA VIE DE JESUS, and that very recently (when the Masters of Cinema DVD came out, in fact), but that impressed me enough to trigger a mental note to track down the others when I get a moment. The Bresson comparison seems spot on – it would make a perfect (if somewhat wrist-slittingly depressing) double bill with MOUCHETTE.
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What films do you always catch shit for for not liking? over 3 years ago
CRASH is hands down one of the worst films I’ve seen in the last few years, and why it wasn’t laughed off the screen instead of garlanded with Oscars I have no idea. (US CRASH-haters will be cheered to hear that it was greeted with far more scepticism on my side of the Atlantic)
Here in Britain, we have a long-running drama series called CASUALTY (think ER but on a much lower budget) which makes its various moral/didactic points (several per episode) so bludgeoningly obviously that they might as well stick an animated wagging finger in the corner of the screen. CRASH was like that, but with far less excuse – I don’t know why they didn’t just call it RACISM IS BAD, M’KAY? instead of nicking the title of a far superior David Cronenberg film (and indeed J.G. Ballard novel).
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