tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16202529039296412702024-03-19T00:29:01.401-07:00ithankyouIthankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.comBlogger941125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-83048952497900721912024-03-04T12:11:00.000-08:002024-03-04T12:11:36.776-08:00Love is in the air… Christopher Strong (1933)/ Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), BFI Dorothy Arzner Season
I’m not sure if I watched this film looking for Dorothy
Arzner but found her anyway in yet another film in which heteronormative
behaviour is gently challenged. In both these films, there is a direct
challenge to the sanctity of marriage with the wanderings of the heart
illustrating the soulful complexities that can work against relationships
forged by societal expectation and rigidly “Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-63510441136041024542024-03-02T07:21:00.000-08:002024-03-04T07:51:28.155-08:00Both sides now… Dance, Girl, Dance (1940)/Working Girls (1931), BFI Dorothy Arzner Season
And why do you want to dance?
Why do you want to live?!
This season has been a joy and the pleasure has been in
unpicking the Arzner-Angle from each film all of the things that, as Lucy
Bolton, noted cinematic historian, make Dance, Girl Dance, and the
director’s other films unique and such a beacon for modern film criticism.
Arzner’s ability to remain effectively independent Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-77745926389974365852024-02-16T10:48:00.000-08:002024-02-16T11:09:44.977-08:00Getting it Back: The Story of Cymande (2022), BFI Blu-ray and on general release
You don’t really think about the great era of black
British music. We weren’t allowed one to be honest…
Craig Charles
There’s some music that’s just bigger than music and
you think to yourself, why isn’t this band huge?
Jim James, My Morning Jacket
I love the way Tim Mackenzie-Smith’s documentary begins, as
various talking heads from the last few decades of music Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-12901892255958209792024-02-07T12:17:00.000-08:002024-02-08T02:19:49.321-08:00Dorothy and Clara go filming. Get Your Man (1927) with Meg Morley/The Wild Party (1929)
She was too tough for Hollywood most of her movies
were hits which Hollywood loves but she didn’t modify her looks or ways or
manner and as a woman directing movies she was looked on by most as a freak and
as that kind of woman she was accepted less and less.
George Cukor on Arzner’s eventual departure from
Hollywood
Before we get to Clara we had an entertaining and revelatory
Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-38447495905146183772024-02-03T05:42:00.000-08:002024-02-03T11:03:18.432-08:00Vic-Tok… The Story of Victorian Film, BFI talk with Bryony Dixon
We can only strive to realize, in some dim measure,
the fascination which those pictured ribbons of celluloid will exercise upon
the eyes and minds of future Londoners – let us say, at some remote epoch, when
the throne of Great Britain will be occupied by a monarch of whom we can form
no conception, under social conditions which may differ widely from those
existing at the Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-61778488538155778012024-02-02T09:42:00.000-08:002024-02-02T13:09:59.012-08:00Rare Mary… Heart o' the Hills (1919), Kennington Bioscope with Colin Sell
I remember [Pickford] telling me that she couldn't
bear the way [D. W. Griffith] directed adolescent girls. She said, "Oh, he
directed them so they ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. And I
would not do that sort of thing..." She already saw that naturalism was
terribly important, even more than Griffith did.
Kevin Brownlow
For the first time since the Pandemic, it Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-36389598976292892452024-01-28T10:07:00.000-08:002024-01-28T10:37:54.836-08:00Sideshow shocker… The Show (1927), Tod Browning
"… one of the most bizarre productions to emerge
from silent cinema."
Alfred Eaker, Tod Browning Retrospective (2016)
The recent release of Criterion’s Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers set
spurred me into finally catching up with this feature which reunites the winning
team from The Big Parade, Renée Adorée and John Gilbert. The Show
is not on the set and was released just before The Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-53256326536388421262024-01-27T10:36:00.000-08:002024-01-27T11:06:21.528-08:00Masters of cinema… Pandora’s Box (1929), Eureka Blu-ray Box Set
Brooks reminds me of the scene in “Citizen Kane” where
Everett Sloane, as Kane’s aging business manager, recalls a girl in a white
dress whom he saw in his youth when he was crossing over to Jersey on a ferry.
They never met or spoke. “I only saw her for one second,” he says, “and she
didn’t see me at all—but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t
thought of that girl.”
Kenneth Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-19848762582756038592024-01-25T11:35:00.000-08:002024-01-25T11:49:50.724-08:00High hopes… Stranded (1927), Edward Lorusso Kickstarter
I’m a sucker for a film about film and whilst many might
think of Show People I go back to Eleanor Boardman in Souls for Sale
(1923) and also the lost film Merton of the Movies (1924) the source
novel for which, by Harry Leon Wilson, thankfully survives along with a few
plates showing the film’s stars, Glenn Hunter and Viola Dana (born Virginia
Flugrath). The novel allows your mind to runIthankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-39089095723103525092024-01-21T11:02:00.000-08:002024-01-22T10:32:11.558-08:00 Southbank a go-go! Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), BFI Scala Season/SCALA!!! Blu-ray out now!
I will never gush about Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!...
But I think it’s the least objectionable of Meyer’s films…
Danny Peary, Cult Movies 3 (1988)
You don’t have to believe it honey, just act it! Now let’s
move.
Varla, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
John Waters described this film as not just the greatest
film ever made but also the greatest film that will ever be made and Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-26449353527984692232024-01-04T05:17:00.000-08:002024-01-22T03:44:58.589-08:00X-rated... SCALA!!! (2023), BFI and on general release
Imagine a world without digital media, a world in which a
few people may have had VHS, Betamax or Video2000 video recorders and in which,
if you wanted to see a specific film after it’s general release had concluded,
you had to wait and hope that it would turn up on TV. What if very few
of the films you liked or had heard about from books, or the niche-cultural NME,
Time Out or Sight and Sound,Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-70972820903708849482023-12-31T07:28:00.000-08:002024-01-03T00:59:23.163-08:00Art for art’s sake… The Age of Consent (1969), BFI, Cinema Unbound, Film on Film
“… to see a painter sit down and paint a girl, this could
be exciting, but I had the hardest time explaining to my scriptwriter that this
didn't excite me at all. What interested me was the problem of Creation and the
fact that this creation in the case of the painter was very physical. He will
have to struggle, to fight, even more strongly than he will move away from
reality.” Michael Powell
Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-54285180908177346282023-12-27T09:49:00.000-08:002023-12-29T02:42:00.004-08:002023 - The Year in SilentsTime keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'Into the future...
We’ve had yet another big tick of the clock and, as Steve Miller (and his Band) implied, we need to establish exactly
how it happened, at least in terms of the silent screenings I witnessed. So,
here in no particular order, is the breakdown of twelve outstanding moments
from the year they called 2023…
Game of thrones… Die Nibelungen:
Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-26054058317349621092023-12-24T01:21:00.000-08:002023-12-24T01:35:22.366-08:00Seasonal spirits… Ghost Stories for Christmas Volume 2, BFI Blu-ray Set
Hallo, below there, look out…
Amidst the sweet excitement of Christmas Eve, the BBC
aimed to catch those of us still half believing in Father Christmas and turn
our febrile imaginations towards the dark side of supernatural possibilities.
This was rarely done more effectively than in the adaptation of Charles
Dickens’ The Signalman, a brief but impactful drama featuring DenholmIthankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-40892115364896282302023-12-22T11:44:00.000-08:002023-12-22T11:45:47.932-08:00The Chaplin Touch… A Woman of Paris (1923), BFI with Mark Fuller, Cinema Unbound
Hollywood had been taught a new and sophisticated
attitude to sexual relations by, of all people, Charlie Chaplin in a Woman of
Paris…
Michael Powell, A Life in Movies
There was a moment when Edna Purviance’s character Marie St
Clair, is being visited by her former love Jean Millet (Carl Miller) to discuss
his painting her portrait. She’s seemingly done well for herself but as one of
Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-5128543477571235332023-12-20T08:12:00.000-08:002023-12-20T08:29:16.066-08:00Composing film… The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), BFI, Cinema Unbound, Film on Film
There was no script… we simply followed the score.
Michael Powell, Ecran (1979)
This is a spectacular, complex and unusual film from an extraordinary set of film
makers, one that crosses boundaries and responded to the formality of opera and
ballet with something like the improvisational techniques of silent film. The
director, Michael Powell, was always at pains to Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-21836968382163363622023-12-12T11:38:00.000-08:002023-12-13T01:55:14.630-08:00Red hair spells danger... Peeping Tom (1960), BFI Restoration, Cinema Unbound
This screening showcased a sparkling digital screening of the BFI's new 4k restoration of
Michael Powell’s controversial big budget masterwork and it was followed by a discussion panel involving Archer’s expert Ian Christie, filmmaker
Carol Morley and fashion designer John Foley, hosted by Doesn’t Exist
magazine’s editor, Victor Fraga. Two shibboleths were dismantled, the first by
Ian andIthankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-330646329228562562023-12-03T08:32:00.000-08:002023-12-03T08:35:22.691-08:00On Chesil Beach… The Small Back Room (1949), BFI, Cinema Unbound
What I really want sir is a bit of expert guessing and
some expert advice on how to handle it when we get our hand on one…
This is another one of those films that just has to be seen
on the big screen and the BFI’s restoration-in-progress digital 4k presentation
brought home every nuance and, especially, bead of sweat on David Farrar’s brow
as he battled alcohol addiction in his Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-15159780716898359832023-12-02T05:57:00.000-08:002023-12-03T05:55:58.177-08:00Myth makers? The Battle of the River Plate (1956), BFI, Cinema UnboundIan Hunter and Anthony Quinn
Why do British filmmakers revert so often to the War
for inspiration, ten years after its end, and what need in their audience do
these films, probably the most consistently popular output of British studios,
satisfy?
John Gilbert, Sight and Sound, winter ’56-‘57
Well, Mr Gilbert, they were still making war films ten
years later when I was a boy, and we Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-82647901484974459712023-11-26T10:42:00.000-08:002023-11-26T10:48:27.020-08:00The Archers’ final shot… Ill Met by Moonlight (1957), BFI, Cinema Unbound, film on film
Though they would work together again, this was the last
film Powell and Pressburger made through their Archers production company and
as with the first of their collaborations it was a war story shot in black and white.
Much had changed in the intervening 18 years and, unusually for the pair, this
was not an original story but one based on the memoires of W Stanley Moss who
was indeed involvedIthankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-25990134012220528942023-11-25T04:02:00.000-08:002023-11-26T11:32:26.276-08:00Wild at heart… Gone to Earth (1950), BFI, Cinema Unbound, film on film
For me making Gone to Earth was as happy an experience as
a return to childhood…
Michael Powell, though Kentish to his core, also had
forebears in Worcestershire and Wales and in the second volume of his
autobiography, A Million Dollar Movie, he wonders why the myths of these
past generations are more potent than our own childhood memories at least when
concerning his ability to recreate the Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-48900410271241428112023-11-21T12:54:00.000-08:002023-11-22T01:27:07.561-08:00Peeping Emeric… Miracle in Soho (1957), BFI, Cinema Unbound
“The more I saw of the district the more extraordinary
it began to appear to me… I soon realised that, as with most places in the
world today, the unusual events and happenings in life were taken for granted…”
Emeric Pressburger
I was all ready to go with the angle that, by some act of
cinematic synchronicity, both Powell and Pressburger turned to the subject of Soho when,Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-60254298735010918522023-11-19T11:21:00.000-08:002023-11-20T13:16:26.251-08:00The caped crusader… The Elusive Pimpernel (1950), BFI, Cinema Unbound
I had agreed to do it, but my heart remained unconvinced…
I hate remakes!
Michael Powell
In her informative, and witty introduction, the BFI’s Bryony
Dixon explained the troubled gestation of a film most of those involved weren’t
that keen to make. The story had been very successfully filmed by Alexander
Korda in 1933 and by Samuel Goldwyn were keen on a Technicolor remakeIthankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-78909772182626367222023-11-19T07:49:00.000-08:002023-11-19T08:15:03.133-08:00The shock of the old… Short Sharp Shocks Volume 3, BFI Flipside 47“Dead letters, sir. Doesn’t that sound like dead men?”
The BFI’s ongoing mission to explore strange old worlds
continues with another splendid set of shocking shorts for the Flipside series.
What we have here are two Blu-ray discs of strangeness and charm ranging from
Orson Welles in Ireland to Dexter Fletcher’s junkie dreams via a very
disturbing slice of “found-footage” horror. As a Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1620252903929641270.post-46829428666502486072023-11-13T13:23:00.000-08:002023-11-14T02:16:28.405-08:00Pilgrims’ Progress… A Canterbury Tale (1944), BFI, Cinema Unbound
We’re off on the Road to Canterbury but when it comes to
Powell and Pressburger we’ve been on the Pilgrims’ Way since the start of October.
Few BFI seasons have generated such a sustained fear of missing out than this
one, probably due to the length of the season, the amount of rare and restored
film but mostly, the chance to see some of my favourite films as nature
intended, films on film or Ithankyouhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02086320524288957830noreply@blogger.com1