2023

[Dan Warburton]

Peter Fleischmann, La faille, 1975

Or is it 1974? Who cares, proof everlasting (for me at least) that the 70s was the best decade of the lot. Screw the oil crisis, just think of cinema and pop music ). This is a terrific film, shot in Greece - just after (presumably set during) the Regime of the Colonels - telling the story of a seemingly (ha, nothing is what it seems in this movie, as you'll see) innocent bloke arrested by the secret police and sent off to central HQ for interrogation. Our hero, or so you might be tempted to think, played by Ugo Tognazzi, is accompanied by two other agents, Michel (the mighty Piccoli) and Manager (Mario Adorf in one of his wildest appearances). Magnificently chilling screenplay by Jean-Claude Carrière (file this one alongside his other mighty paranoid thriller, Deray's Un papillon sur l'épaule), great performances and.. smashing scenery! Who said Kafkaesque police state nightmares can't happen in a Greek seaside resort? Only two critic reviews on IMDb, both in German (so I'm screwed) and three user reviews, one of which is typically stupid. How a great movie like this can fall off the radar is beyond me. Recommended without reservation.

[Dan Warburton]

Jean Eustache, Mes petites amoureuses, 1974

Rejoice! Delighted to see this again..A decent print at last - here's (slightly edited) what I wrote ten (gulp) years ago. The screenshot above wasn't in the old review and the image is no longer where it was, so here's a screenshot of the director's own (uncredited) cameo appearance, sitting on the bench.

Eustache's reputation rests solidly on La maman et la Putain, as well it should (though I do find people go over the top rather often when it comes to Eustache - I wonder if they would if he hadn't fired that fatal bullet into his heart in 1981), but this is worth checking out too. Nothing like La maman - though, like that film it's largely autobiographical in origin - Mes petites amoureuses is considerably less wordy (well any film compared to La maman is less wordy..) and filmed in glorious colour by the mighty Nestor Almendros. It tells the story of a boy - called Daniel, like Léaud's character in Le Père Noël a les yeux bleus - on the verge of adolescence, leaving his grandmother's house to move in with his mother and her partner (the father is not mentioned.. one can guess) in Narbonne. Eustache himself grew up in Pessac, just outside Bordeaux, but by the mid 70s it had been more or less swallowed up by the city, so he shot the grandmother scenes in Varzy in Burgundy. One review I came across online described it as a meeting of Proust and Bresson, and that nails it beautifully. Working with untrained actors, and very much along the lines Bresson suggested in his theoretical writings (I love how tracking shots end with several seconds of stillness once the character has moved out of the frame), he catches a sense of remembered childhood so perfectly. Louis Malle comes close in Le souffle au coeur and the later Au revoir les enfants, but the performances in those films, fine though they are, feel acted rather than lived. See what you think - this is glorious.

[Dan Warburton]

Jean Cocteau, Orphée, 1950

I'm with James on this one http://www.frenchfilms.org/review/orphee-1949.html , but (because I'm lazy as can be) here's a bit of Bradshaw in The Guardian that I also like: "There is something weirdly brilliant in the low-tech special effects: the back-projections, the film run in reverse, the mirror-surfaces that become rippling vertical pools: 'Mirrors are the doors through which Death comes; look long enough in a mirror and you will see Death at work.' This film wonders what might happen if Orpheus did in fact manage to get his loved one home, but that the not-looking rule was still in force." Maybe said it before, but without Cocteau I doubt we'd have had Rivette. Magic, in a word.

[Dan Warburton]

Gérard Blain, Pierre et Djemila, 1987

You can probably guess from the title alone that this another updated take on the Romeo and Juliet story, here the doomed love affair of a two teenagers in the industrial town of Roubaix, the girl (14) about to be sent back to the bled in Algeria for two years before being forced to marry one of her own against her will. Needless to say, it doesn't work out, and unlike in the Shakespeare there doesn't seem to be any prospect of reconciliation between the two local communities. The ending is bleak and distinctly Bressonian (hm, seem to be orbiting around Bresson quite a bit these days, I should go back and check him out again), and Blain fortunately avoids the all-too-frequent descent into mindless intercommunal violence that French directors just love to depict in any film made in or about les banlieues. Tempted to say "nice", but it isn't really; a decent restoration wouldn't go amiss one of these days though.

[Dan Warburton]

Luigi Comencini, Il gatto, 1977

Tognazzi again, this time in his more familiar role as black comedy star par excellence, here a sleazy landlord (love the curlers) trying hard with his sister (they hate each other) to evict all the tenants in his building so it can be knocked down for a high rise development and Ugo and sis can claim an insurance jackpot. Needless to say it doesn't work out for them, but at least they survive until the end of the film, unlike its eponymous feline hero, which meets a grisly death early on. Great fun!

[Dan Warburton]

Michael Snow, La région centrale, 1971

With some justification, one of the greatest experimental films, which explains its appearance on several "movies you must see before you die" lists (though as most of them also include Ferris Buehler's Day Off and Forrest Gump, I wouldn't place too much emphasis on that accolade). If you don't know how it was made, read this - saves me writing it out - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_R%C3%A9gion_Centrale . So glad I finally made time to see this properly (that said, the 1080 rip doesn't add much), and if I ever have the opportunity to do so again, I'd love to see it on a big screen. Dream on, Dan.. Only slight gripe, the "music" (see the link above) does get a bit tiresome after a while. But the grand finale, when the camera goes totally apeshit, is well worth waiting for.

[Dan Warburton]

Jean Epstein, Six et demi onze, 1927

http://www.acinemahistory.com/2019/03/s ... 12x11.html gives you a pretty good overview. Excellent!

[Dan Warburton]

Raoul Walsh, The Thief of Bagdad, 1924

The 2013 restoration is absolutely stunning, and I'll even put up with a Carl Davis score (most of the tunes are Rimski-Korsakov's, anyway). Hard not to giggle at times watching Fairbanks' antics (ooh, those sexy pajama pants!!), but here's the origin of all action heroes in cinema. Smashing special effects for the time too, and once more amazing sets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thief ... 1924_film) tells us it cost $1,135,654, which, my trusty internet informs me is the equivalent of $20m+ today.. peanuts compared to yr average superhero avatar crap. But I hope Douglas' flying carpet will still be flying when all the Marvels and DCs are long forgotten.

[Dan Warburton]

Wallace Worsley, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1923

I read somewhere this was the seventh (fifth, if I read Wiki right) adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel, and we're only talking 1923 (!). Only one of its predecessors actually ends up like the book (badly, well, for Esmerelda, because she gets hanged ), and this isn't it. I'm on a Lon Chaney roll right now, but, apart from the amazing makeup, which he took care of himself you will recall, he doesn't have to do much here except jump up and down, pull funny faces and pour molten lead on the plebs below. I wonder one day if we'll ever get an authentically young Quasimodo - he's only 19 in the book after all - but maybe there've been enough adaptations of this already. Hats off for the amazing sets.

[Dan Warburton]

George W. Hill, Tell It To The Marines, 1926

First film star chosen to be an honorary Marine, it says here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_It_t ... 1926_film) Plot's a bit daft towards the end, but Chaney's Sergeant O'Hara is a great role. Enjoyed myself.

[Dan Warburton]

Tom Forman, Shadows, 1922

Man of a thousand faces, indeed.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadows_(1922_film) A tad mawkish, but deserves a decent restoration nevertheless.

[Wombatz]

yeah the hunchback is amongst his weakest films. my favorite i think is the penalty. he who gets slapped beats chaplin at his own game (of transcending mawkish silent melodrama into some statement of the human condition), except it replaces comedy with evil noir. west of zanzibar is bonkers.

[Dan Warburton]

Erich von Stroheim, Foolish Wives, 1922

https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2016/cte ... heim-1922/ which refers to this too https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2022/01/f ... 76-review/
Again, as with Greed, one can only wonder what the film would have been liked had the director been given total artistic control and final cut. But there's still much to marvel at in the 143-minute cut, notably (of course) Stroheim's own performance as one of the great cads in cinema history, "Count" Sergei Karamzin. 4K digital restoration somebody for god's sake, so we can see that awesome lifesize replica of Monte Carlo. Fabulous stuff.

[Dan Warburton]

Quentin Dupieux, Fumer fait tousser, 2022

Can't resist quoting a couple of outraged IMDb user reviews: "If i want to torture someone, I would force them to watch this movie. Disgusting!" And "there's no intelligent insight into anything here, it's the writings of a deranged pervert let loose on society, who happens to have enough money to make terrible films." The only deranged pervert I can make out is the person who wrote the above, but, well, yeah, let's say that Dupieux is "an acquired taste". Personally, I can't wait for a daylong career retrospective at some cinema somewhere - can't think of anything I'd like to do more than spend the day with my deerskin coat on watching a serial killer tire, a rotten fish stuffed with drugs, a giant fly and the five members of the Tobacco Force. "A superhero movie for idiots" indeed. Talking of deranged perverts, seems John Waters liked it. That's good enough for me

[Dan Warburton]

Ken Loach, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, 2006

It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, though that's no longer a sign of any great distinction when you look at some of the other decidedly middling movies that have scooped up the prestigious award in recent years (Triangle of Sadness, Titane, The Tree of Life, Fahrenheit 9/11) presumably simply because of the "issues" they "address" rather than any notion of actual quality filmmaking (Malick perhaps excepted, grudgingly). I was surprised, watching this thing last night, how much it managed to rub me up the wrong way. Firstly, Loach, and Mike Leigh come to think of it, because they usually get lumped together simply aren't all that good as directors (compare the Dardennes, or Frears, or Alan Clarke). Their best work is in small scale family drama, which Leigh has by and large had the good sense to concentrate on, whereas Ken can't resist setting his sights on Bigger Issues of Socialist Struggle, from the Spanish Civil War (Land and Freedom), migrant Mexican workers in LA (Bread and Roses) and, inevitably Northern Ireland (Hidden Agenda and this one). (Watch out for Syrian refugees in the forthcoming Old Oak, due out in Cannes shortly..). It's a black and white world for Loach and his trusty screenwriter Paul Laverty, and we're left in no doubt who the good guys are and who the baddies are; I wasn't at all surprised to find the Black and Tans depicted from the get go as brutal, sadistic thugs, but in choosing to side with Damien and the Anti-Treaty IRA in the second half of the film (his line in the truly ridiculous church service scene when he storms out, saying "The Treaty does not express the will of the people; it shows the fear of the people", would seem to indicate that Loach and Laverty don't give a toss about democratically ratified legislation when it doesn't suit their own political agenda - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1922_Iris ... 80%20votes. Makes you wonder how much the director supports the Good Friday Agreement. Don't misunderstand me: I'm as much in favour of eventual Irish reunification as Loach is, I'm prepared to bet, but I'm fed up of films whose stupid and simplistic (Irish=good / British=evil) storylines fail to come to terms with the complexity of a problem that is literally centuries old. It might have been easier to take (though then again, I doubt it) if the script, acting and cinematography had been better, but they just weren't. Great filming? WTF, the action sequences look like someone's home movie ("hey mum, I've just discovered this really cool ZOOM button on my camcorder arf arf"). And where's the blood? Couldn't afford a few squibs, Ken? Or maybe when people get murdered by the Irish (who, of course, feel bad about killing unlike the brutal Brits) they don't bleed?

[Dan Warburton]

Dziga Vertov, Kino-Pravda 1-23, 1922-1925

https://vertov.filmmuseum.at/en/film_on ... troduction
Yes, I finally trawled through all 23 of them (standout being, not surprisingly, the Lenin eulogy, number 21, which is the only one that has some music stuck on it). A fascinating glimpse a century back in time indeed. Uneven, at times downright potty in its juxtaposition of stories, but certainly worth dipping into if you've got the time.

[Dan Warburton]

Jean-Daniel Pollet, La ligne de mire, 1959

https://www.lemonde.fr/cinema/article/2 ... _3476.html Stick it in DeepL. Shat on from a great height by the few people who saw it at the time, the director himself decided to remove it from circulation, but its exhumation and DVD release is cause for celebration in this household. Pollet's elliptical storyline, austere intercutting, repetition of images and dialogue still seems strikingly modern. OK, not as flashy as A bout de souffle or intricate as Muriel, but it certainly deserves a place at the table alongside other early and overlooked Nouvelle Vague outings (Moullet, Rozier et al.)

[Dan Warburton]

Don Siegel, Charley Varrick, 1973

MRS's circle puzzle (see elsewhere) led me back, via the mighty Joe Don Baker (awesome here as the contract killer Molly, complete with pipe), to this again. While Andy Robinson is pretty lousy (his place in cinema history nevertheless assured by playing the crazed Scorpio in Dirty Harry), Matthau's gumchewing laconically nonchalant antihero is a cool bit of casting. Needless to say, Lalo Schifrin's OST goes way over the top, but I'm not complaining.

[Dan Warburton]

Akira Kurosawa, Dersu Uzala, 1975

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2012/j ... -uzala-dvd Though I recognise his importance and influence, I'm no great fan of John Ford, as you probably know by now, but Kurosawa was and this shows it clearly. Of course, there was no way Ford would ever have ended up filming in eastern Siberia with a Russian as one of the heroes of his story, but he wouldn't have told the tale any better than Kurosawa. It deserved its box office success and, thanks to a helping hand or two from the likes of Lucas, Coppola and others, led to the director's great late works. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Dersu_Uzala_(1975_film)

[Dan Warburton]

Ken Russell, Tommy, 1975

After reading the Kevin Flanagan (editor) collection of essays on Russell, Reviewing England's Last Mannerist (2009), I couldn't resist another dip in the baked beans. See reviews passim Bon appétit!