Archive for the ‘Directors’ Category

It’s David Lean’s centenary this year and although the anniversary itself was in March, the BFI are celebrating with a jamboree of revivals and retrospectives. What better time to consider his career?

But then I realised I had nothing new to say. The standard critical line on Sir David is that the early films were wonderful, the later work bloated and self-important; “when a director dies, he becomes a cameraman”, as Pauline Kael had it. Oh, I can refine it slightly (my rule of thumb is: ignore Lean’s colour films, although I’ve a fondness for Summer Madness) and I can mount a spirited defence of Ryan’s Daughter (horribly miscast, madly overblown yet brilliantly written by Robert Bolt, and concluded beautifully). Those aside, my opinions are entirely orthodox.

What I’m more interested in is what those opinions say about the critical caste. Because for most folks, it’s the later Lean they love. To use a personal example: my Dad loves Bridge on the River Kwai. Doctor Zhivago might be his favourite film. I’ve watched both with him and in both cases there were two different films playing: I couldn’t see the stirring masterpieces he was watching, he couldn’t see the pomposity that irritated me.

This division between popular taste and critical values is most regularly glimpsed in the foul reviews most Hollywood films attract in the daily press but these are bad examples: it’s surely inevitable that a film aimed at teenagers will attract a frosty response from the curmudgeons who write movie reviews. Lean is a much better case study; the enduring popularity of his ‘big’ films exposes the gulf between mainstream opinion and the critics.

It’s worth pondering why there can be such divergence between those who write about films and those who are content just to enjoy them. My suspicion is that the two sides watch films in different ways. When you’re obliged to write even a short review of a film, you have to consider how you’re going to fill the blank page that’s waiting for you after the end credits. Saying that it was ‘cool’ or it ‘sucked’ won’t cut the mustard: you need to explain why.

Inevitably, this means you’re more aware of your relationship to what’s on screen. Far from taking you out of a film, I find it makes the experience much more intense. But it means you’re more aware of empty spectacle and sensation, hallmarks of the later work of David Lean.

Of course, that’s only my opinion. It’s not holy writ. No need to get steamed up about it if you don’t agree. That’s the point of criticism: it’s subjective. Crucially, however, criticism explains how it reached its conclusions. When you start having to do that, you start thinking a lot harder about what you’re watching and you’ll be judging movies by a different standard.

Having concentrated on division, let us end with harmony. For this is the centenary of that great director David Lean. Not that we need excuses to revisit Brief Encounter, Great Expectations or Oliver Twist, one of the greatest of all films. But it’s an ideal prompt to watch lesser-known work like The Passionate Friends or Madeleine. They remind us how wonderful movies can be – and on that, I hope we can all agree.

The 26th of May is something of a red-letter day in the DVD release calendar. Whether this is because of a conjunction of the planets in the far-distant heavens or some sinister international conspiracy of art-house DVD labels, I don’t know. But whatever the reason, there’s a whole bunch of films released that day which are surely of interest to the discerning sort of person who shops at MovieMail.

For instance, Masters of Cinema release Akasen Chitai + Yokihi, their final double bill of late-period Mizoguchi films (any chance of some early ones, gents?) The BFI drop four films. First, the long-awaited (by me, at least) release of A Cottage on Dartmoor. Then there’s A Walk With Love and Death, a John Huston project rescued from limbo and happily restored to polite society.

You can – and frankly should – also get your hands on Lubitsch’s final masterpiece, the droll delight that is Cluny Brown. And then there’s another long-awaited (by me etc etc) British film, Radio On. Last year’s Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days – harrowing, outstanding – is made available by the good folk at Artificial Eye, while Tartan give us Chan-Wook Park’s I’m a Cyborg (But That’s OK.) And I haven’t mentioned collections gathering work by Paul Verhoeven and Andrzej Wajda. Nor things like Bandit Queen. Phew!

If that were everything, it would be a good week indeed. But there’s more. Right at the bottom of the page is what might be the pick of the litter: They Made Me A Fugitive. Not, perhaps, the most celebrated title but one that really does deserve to be better know. Even if it were not a good film (which, incidentally, it is), it would be of interest because it’s directed by Alberto Cavalcanti.

As the name might suggest, Cavalcanti wasn’t from round these parts. Born in Brazil, he arrived in Blighty after a spell in France working with the likes of Renoir. He threw his lot in with the documentary movement – he supervised Night Mail – before being headhunted by Ealing Studios to work for them. His most widely seen work is Dead of Night – he handled the linking scenes and the best story (Michael Redgrave and his dummy) but it’s Went the Day Well that is the masterpiece.

I included Went The Day Well on my ‘alternative’ list of best British films last year but frankly, it deserves to be hovering near the more orthodox accounts of our national cinema too. (Incidentally, I wanted to include Radio On on that list but it wasn’t available on DVD at the time of writing. Now that it is, it can take the place of The Offence.) It’s an astoundingly brutal film considering it’s supposed to be a wartime morale booster and it made me a Cavalcanti devotee.

They Made Me a Fugitive isn’t quite as brutal, or rather, its brutality manifests itself in different ways. It doesn’t have the same inexorable forward momentum as Went The Day Well; the pace is just a little more relaxed. But more even than its predecessor, it has contempt for the politeness of British cinema and little hypocrisies of society. It’s an unflinching film: women are beaten, drugs are smuggled (at least I assume it’s drugs, not actually sherbet, as the gang-leader claims). The police aren’t infallible.

And for a film made in 1947, it offers a very unflattering portrait of the home-coming heroes. Trevor Howard is the titular ‘Me’: Clem Morgan, ex-RAF, ex-POW and finding it hard to adjust to life on civvie street. He drinks too much; he misses the excitement – so he gets involved with the titular ‘They’: some nasty black-marketeers.

But Clem isn’t totally without scruple, which rubs the headman Narcy (Griffith Jones) up the wrong way. Narcy’s also taken a shine to Clem’s lady-friend, so when a copper gets killed during one of their raids, Narcy frames Clem and lets him face the music – breaking rocks on Dartmoor – leaving Narcy free to make his moves. Naturally Clem escapes, and revenge is high on the agenda.

What’s most remarkable about They Made Me A Fugitive is just how close it is to the contemporary American crime films that would subsequently become known as Film Noir. We often talk of British Noir – Brighton Rock, Odd Man Out and the like – but while they share certain common elements with the American films, their concerns are ultimately different. They Made Me A Fugitive is the real thing, something that’s in sympathy with the aims and ambitions of the very best Noir. It could have been produced by RKO or Monogram.

Except, had it been made in America, I dare say the production code might have had a few suggestions to make about the film. I can’t imagine they’d be too happy about the grim vignette in which Clem shelters with a woman who begs him to kill her alcoholic husband. And they’d have probably exploded when they saw the conclusion, which openly laughs at the conventions of the happy ending. To say more is to spoil it but it’s safe to say that you won’t predict the ultimate resolution.

As an outsider, Cavalcanti saw a different Britain than the natives. Coming from the documentary tradition, he was interested in telling the truth as he saw it. This is a very squalid Britain, sordid and grim. Indeed, I can’t think of another film from that era – or even for another a couple of decades – that showed this country in such a bad light; it paints a very different portrait of austerity Britain than we’re used to.

It’s a tough picture, pretty much the diametric opposite of the film that made Trevor Howard’s name, Brief Encounter. It’s enough to confirm Cavalcanti as a major filmmaker, one deserving of much more attention than he currently receives. I’ve seen very little of his work (which spanned three continents, at least) but even if the rest is bobbins, he made at least two bona-fide masterpieces.

I don’t doubt that there’ll be a shed load of titles in your shopping basket on May 26th but if you’ve got room for one more, then it’s only £7.99. It’s not much to see a master at work.

As Daniel Day Lewis collected his Oscar last month, there was one name absent from his roll call of thank-yous. Not a major omission by any standards, but maybe it would have been appropriate for the newly anointed Best Actor to acknowledge the spectre that hovers above There Will Be Blood, the film for which he won: actor-writer-director John Huston.

Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed Day Lewis to such award winning effect, claimed to have watched Huston’s film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre repeatedly during the writing and shooting of his own epic of greed and madness. This influence can be felt in the deep, clean lines and precision of Anderson’s film, a much more disciplined affair than his previous work.

There’s no dialogue in There Will Be Blood for ten minutes but when the lead character starts to talk, you notice another manifestation of John Huston. The rich, expansive voice that flows out of Day Lewis’ character Daniel Plainview is modelled after Huston’s own baritone and, while there’s much more to the performance than mere ventriloquism, it’s a smart touch. It suggests a link to another movie where power is equated to the control of precious liquids: Chinatown, where Huston’s Noah Cross monopolises water rights. Cross would surely admire the cut of Daniel Plainview’s jib.

Huston was a charming man by all accounts. Watch him in interviews and you can see exactly why he was such a smash with the ladies. There’s a twinkle in his eye and mischief on his mind. One of the reasons Noah Cross is such a demonic villain is that Huston is so seductive. Yet there was surely more to him than that, as each of his five ex-wives would no doubt be happy to tell you.

Your mother warned you about very charming men with a twinkle in their eyes for a reason; they’ve got the skills to get you to do what they want, whether it’s to your advantage or not. Which takes us back to the robber-baron Daniel Plainview, a man who’s similarity to Huston goes further than the voice. Like Plainview, Huston was an adventurer, a chancer. Like Plainview, Huston had a dark side beneath the veneer.

Huston was, of course, a filmmaker but his life was more interesting than anything he directed. I’m just looking at the brief biography in a reference book and even the bare facts sound colourful: “b. Aug 5, 1906 Nevada, Mo., a town that family legend claims was won by his grandfather in a poker game.” [My italics] A poker game! A TOWN! You don’t get that level of detail about, say, Norman Wisdom.

From there, we discover Huston worked the vaudeville circuit, became a boxer, an actor, a (Mexican) cavalry officer, a reporter and finally in Hollywood. If he’d been born a couple of decades earlier, you fancy he might have wound up prospecting for oil himself, just like Plainview. There’s probably some inflation and exaggeration – the source seems to be Huston’s own autobiography – but even if he was lying, he was lying with more flair than most fibbers.

Somehow, he became regarded as a great director but his reputation needs to be gently adjusted downwards. There’s not much consistency in his work. He made some very good films (The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Wise Blood – all, significantly, from respectable literary sources) but he made some absolute stinkers.

Now, in any long career, there are bound to be a few misfires but Huston’s cock-ups are in a class by themselves. It’s inexplicable that he even agreed to direct them. Annie, for instance. Yes, Annie: little orphan Annie. The original red-headed step child – “the sun’ll come up to-morrow” – that Annie. Whatever persuaded him even to take it on? Probably the same imp of the perverse that suggested he undertake Escape to Victory. What was he thinking? “Here’s a film worthy of my talents: Sylvester Stallone and members of Ipswich Town Football Club giving the Nazis what for.”

Filmmaking seems to have been a way for him to indulge his wanderlust and give him the chance to have fun. Sometimes the audience shared the fun too: The African Queen is one of his most beloved films, although it’s rumoured he only made it because he wanted to go on safari and bag an elephant (an accusation made in the novel/ film White Hunter, Black Heart). Best of all is Beat The Devil, one of the very greatest films ever made. The original script was abandoned and they essentially made a new one up as they went along (Truman Capote came along for the ride: it shows.)

Huston may have had a high old time making all these but the legacy is wildly inconsistent. He seemed to have trusted to luck and hoped for happy accidents. But his luck was extremely variable – how else to explain The Bible…In The Beginning? What I’d like to see (or hear about) are the bits surrounding the filming of his movies – they’re surely more hair-raising than the bits between ‘action’ and ‘cut’.

There’s a lot to enjoy in Huston’s filmography. In addition to the above, The List of Adrian Messenger is an entertaining romp that plays like a pilot episode for The Avengers. Better still is The Man Who Would Be King, one of the greatest of adventure films. If he’d made nothing else but Beat the Devil and The Man Who Would Be King, he’d deserve his reputation as a great director. Unfortunately, he made lots and lots of other films which take the shine off his achievement.

But I think he was a major figure, not so much for his work but for who he was: he was one of the broadest characters to have worked in film, a dangerous man for sure, with depth and shading that must have made him hard to live with. It’s that life that we should study: a good biography is overdue. It would make exciting reading and, perhaps, a pretty good movie. I know just the man to star…

I was recently tasked with reviewing a new box set which gathers up the thrillers Alfred Hitchcock made in the 1930s, and which also throws in a few of his silents for good measure. This wasn’t difficult, as I’m extremely fond of this period in the master’s career. He would make objectively ‘better’ films but personally, I’ll take the ‘minor’ Young and Innocent or even the inexplicably reviled Jamaica Inn over the ‘masterpiece’ Shadow of a Doubt or the inexplicably praised Strangers on a Train any day of the week.

I like to think that, after God knows how long watching and considering Hitchcock, I have a fair understanding of his work: the motifs and mannerisms that he liked and the sorts of themes he liked to explore. I can survey his entire career from my digital vantage point, spotting similarities between The Pleasure Garden (his first film, an Anglo-German production he made in Germany in 1926, where he was exposed to the expressionist touches that significantly coloured his own conception of cinema) and Family Plot (his last, made in 1976).

And yet, I wonder if this bird-eye view explains the director as well as it might. Looked at like this, it flattens the career out, making it seem smoother than it undoubtedly was. A few inches separates The Pleasure Garden from Family Plot on my shelves but fifty years separated their creation: a lot remained constant but an awful lot more changed.

A few years ago, I watched Hitchcock’s films from the original The Man Who Knew Too Much to The Lady Vanishes in sequence. It wasn’t planned, it just worked out that way and it was a fascinating experience. You get a much better sense of the director’s personality seeing them that way, watching him experimenting, developing ideas and learning from his mistakes.

Most of all, watching them in sequence showed me how they related to the era in which they were made. With the exception of Young and Innocent, the films from The Man… to The Lady… concern nefarious ‘foreign powers’ threatening British interests. This element gets more urgent as the films progress and when you think of what else was happening at that time, you realise why. Contemporary audiences would surely assume any sneaky ‘foreign power’ with worrying military objectives had a swastika on its flag.

The Lady Vanishes, as has been noted elsewhere, is especially overt, a parable warning against appeasement. Indeed, one of its best jokes assumes audiences came early to watch the newsreel; British cinema’s greatest double act, Messrs Charters and Caldicott, are introduced worrying about England and the threat she faces … not of imminent war, of course, but something far more important – defeat in the cricket.

Of course, one of the measures of a great film (or any work of art, for that matter) is that it works irrespective of context. I think it’s more interesting as a piece of social history. Sometimes, a film can capture a feeling you won’t find in history books concerned with facts.

Consider Powell & Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death (AMOLAD). It’s a beautiful film, a glorious fantasy. But this lush Technicolor dream preserves something of the popular mood of its time. ‘Heaven’ is a monochrome place, staffed with bureaucrats and contemptuous of individuals; although it’s been largely forgotten today, that was how many saw Britain under Atlee, as it struggled to build the Heaven of Socialism (see also: A Private Function).

We don’t need to know any of this stuff, any more than we need to know the circumstances that lead Shakespeare to write Macbeth (which is almost as good as AMOLAD.) But since we try to restore movies as closely to their original versions, why don’t we sometimes try to reconstruct how audiences might have approached it? It might help us find new ways of seeing.

After all, it doesn’t make AMOLAD any less glorious or diminish The Lady Vanishes if we know this stuff: the little rascals will always find new ways to delight you. They haven’t let me down yet.

One of the great ironies of DVD is how marginal figures from film history often get the deluxe bells-and-whistles treatment while more illustrious titles get dumped in shoddy barebones editions. It’s a thought that occurred to me as I perused the new Mario Bava set (coming soon to region two). (Volume 1 is already available.)

I suppose Bava is best described as a ‘cult’ director. He’s most famous for low-budget horror movies but he also turned out Viking films, sword and sandal ‘epics’, science fiction, spaghetti westerns – even a sex farce. Basically, he spent his career making whatever Italian producers thought they could sell. No wonder the critics ignored him during his career.

But all that makes him sound like a hack, which he certainly wasn’t. Bava bought something to those films that makes them more memorable than many more prestigious projects. He came to directing late, after a long career as a cameraman and special effects artist (special effects artists often make useful directors, but that’s another subject for another time). He used this technical expertise not just to transcend his minuscule budgets but to make his films look like nothing else out there.

A good place to start is his official debut The Mask of Satan / Black Sunday (all Bava’s films are blessed with a multitude of titles). It boasts some of the most beautiful black and white photography there’s ever been, all looming shadows and suggestive darkness. After I first saw it, I rushed to discover all I could about Bava: I was devastated to learn he only made one further black and white film. I’d hoped for a career’s worth of monochrome beauty.

Yet, if anything, his colour films are even more spectacular. Bava’s use of colour is up there with Michael Powell, Vincent Minnelli or Sergai Paradjanov. They’re psychedelic kaleidoscopes, where colour is used to reflect emotions and to heighten atmosphere.

And what atmosphere! These are films far more about mood or ambience than plot or character. He loved to track his camera around derelict castles or decaying mansions. Events which other directors might have shown in a couple of shots are extended into full scale set-pieces, such as when a corpse digs itself out of the grave in Mask of the Demon, or a child plays on a swing in Kill Baby, Kill! (The other thing about the English-language titles is that they are almost all universally awful.)

Bava was an unpretentious man, who disparaged talk of ‘artistry’ but there’s much more to his films than technical mastery. His films are far more savage than other films of the period and not just with their censor-baiting whippings and brandings. Bava’s world is a dark place, full of twisted eroticism and outright sadism. Good never defeats evil outright, and sometimes not at all. It’s a sharp contrast to the home counties morality of Hammer films which supposedly inspired Bava.

Despite his considerable achievements, I doubt Bava will ever really leave the cult ghetto. Even his admirers have to admit that his films can be an acquired taste, one that involves a certain tolerance for dodgy plotting and (occasionally) sluggish pacing. He’s perhaps best regarded as an Italian Edgar G Ulmer, another director who was obliged to make bricks without straw. Bava never made anything quite as blistering as Ulmer’s Detour but this essential set shows us how close he came.

A month or so back, appalled by the profoundly conservative ‘Summer of British Film’, I wrote a piece championing the films that had slipped through the cracks: British masterpieces that were just as good as (and in some cases better than) the establishment history. You’ll find it here.

It climaxed with a rousing exhortation to readers to respond with their own favourites. It seems only fair that I respond to those of you who took me at my word. As you’d expect from the MovieMail customer, the responses are intelligent, informed and well argued. Although I was disappointed that there weren’t any outraged Dam Busters fans braying for my scalp or calling my patriotism into question.

Anyway, to the results. There obviously was a little confusion: I quite agree with those writers who said that The Lady Vanishes, Peeping Tom and Listen To Britain are deeply wonderful films. And we’re in good company, since the people who compiled the various lists I was reacting against included all three. That’s why I didn’t feature them.

For the most part, however, the responses were just what I wanted. I’ve never seen It Always Rains on Sunday but it was a popular recommendation and, after a brief consultation with my elderly copy of Halliwell’s Film Guide, I realise it’s imperative I catch up with it as soon as possible, not least because it’s directed by Robert Hamer – a great director in anyone’s language.

I’ll also keep an eye out for three films with animal related titles: The Goose Steps Out (with Will Hay), Bronco Bullfrog and Tawny Pipit. I’ve not heard of any of them, so I don’t know what to expect but – hey – I trust your judgement.

A couple of people nominated films by the great Cavalcanti: Dead of Night and They Made Me a Fugitive (probably the film I most want to see). Does this mean a Cavalcanti revival is on the cards? Shall we get a petition up to demand a Cavalcanti season at the NFT? I was also pleased to see Val Guest getting a lot of love, with Jigsaw copping a couple of mentions. He’s one of those directors who deserves to be better known. Not an auteur, perhaps, but a craftsman who made some solid films: even The Boys in Blue is better than any film featuring Cannon and Ball has any right to be.

There were a couple of films I desperately wanted to include on the original list but couldn’t because they weren’t available, so I’ll mention them here. Chiefly, Deep End, which was one of the many excellent suggestions by Frank Flood. Man, that’s some kind of masterpiece and its absence from DVD is both baffling and annoying. I also wanted to included Death Line (which turns out to be on DVD after all). If you haven’t seen it and have a strong-ish stomach, get it now. Both of these are great movies that show how cosmetic ‘swinging London’ really was, revelling in the filth and the decay. Significantly, both were directed by foreign-born directors.

A thank you to all who joined in, especially to Lawrence Freiesleben, who instantly gets into my good books by mentioning Fritz Lang’s Moonfleet (yeah, I know it’s not British but I think we’ve already established I have a fairly elastic interpretation of ‘rules’), which is one of my faves. So is Night of the Demon, come to that. Oh, and A Canterbury Tale, which I love. I hope you enjoy House of Whipcord.

As I mentioned in the original article, I love British film and I’m upset to see it served so badly by its official guardians. I want to keep this debate alive in future posts, so keep those neglected gems coming and let’s show what British cinema is really made of…

Given that relations between Britain and Russia hover somewhere distantly below freezing point at the moment, I wonder how the Russians received Eastern Promises. It’s fair to say that this (ostensibly British) thriller doesn’t show its Russian villains in an entirely positive light. I wouldn’t want to be the projectionist who shows it to Vladimir Putin. No doubt the Foreign Office is praying he prefers to unwind from a hard day imposing his iron will on the people with a nice musical.

But while the diplomats might be appalled, the more humble filmgoer will be thrilled. Eastern Promises – newly arrived on DVD – is an authentically great film. The plot is simple: a young girl dies during childbirth. Her midwife, Anna, (Naomi Watts) finds her diary, written in Russian, and wants to know more. The trail takes Anna to the Trans-Siberia restaurant which, although she doesn’t realise it yet, is a front for an odious Russian gangster Semyon (Armin Mueller-Stahl), his odious son Kirrill (Vincent Cassel) and their factotum Nikolai (Viggo Mortenson). Peril ensues.

What makes the film so interesting is that it represents a confrontation between two different aesthetics of filmmaking. It was written by Steve Knight; he’s a social-realist. He wrote the estimable Dirty Pretty Things, a concerned film that sought to illuminate the lives of illegal immigrants in London. Eastern Promises could be said to spring from similar motives, to understand the stories behind the headlines, to look at who the ‘new Britons’ are.

But the film was directed by David Cronenberg. He’s a surrealist and the good, honest virtues of social realism aren’t what get him going. He’s interested in the hermetic world of the Russian gangster, in codes of behaviour, in tattoos. He’s not terribly interested in plot – indeed that seems to disappear altogether in the second half – so much as what it enables him to explore.

The tension between these two visions drives the film. I consider myself lucky that I don’t know how accurate a depiction of Russian gangsterdom Eastern Promises but I’m guessing Knight did his research and the film touches on pertinent issues such as sex trafficking (see also: Lilya 4-Ever). Only, Cronenberg is less interested in the victims of this crime than he is in the sexuality of the animals that enslave them.

The results are arguably better than if either side had been allowed to go it alone. Knight’s vision stimulates Cronenberg’s imagination; Cronenberg’s oblique approach brings a texture to the material a more straightforward reading might have missed. This isn’t a London we’re used to seeing on screen and yet to me, it was a more truthful portrait because of that.

Of course, foreign directors are often the best placed to show the natives what Britain is really like. What Eastern Promises reminded me of most was the work of Jerzy Skolimowski, especially his film Deep End which showed the flip-side of Swinging London. Upon checking the cast list at the end of the film, I got a happy surprise – Skolimowski is credited as actor. He plays Anna’s Russian uncle and it would be nice to think the casting was an act of homage.

The film also benefits immeasurably from Viggo Mortenson. It’s a tremendously brave performance and not simply because of the memorable steam bath scene, where he fights two killers in the buff. He’s sufficiently confident in the script, his director and his own abilities to play a very shadowy, ambiguous character whose motives are resolved late in the day and who leaves the film on an oblique note.

Of course, we mustn’t overlook the memorable steam bath scene, where he fights two killers in the buff. It’s the finest fight in many a year and looks authentically painful: staged on a hard, slippery floor with no padding for the lead actor. Unplanned guest appearances by ‘little Viggo’ were surely the least of his worries.

What with this and A History of Violence, Cronenberg and Mortenson are shaping up to be the most interesting director-star team in contemporary cinema. I confess I wasn’t keen on A History of Violence. It had its merits but it was schematic and perhaps too academic. Eastern Promises is a looser film, less interested in testing a thesis than in lifting up some rocks and studying the discoveries, no matter how vile. The Kremlin might not like it but the results are compelling