Archive for the ‘Film Industry’ Category

This column rarely covers contemporary film, preferring instead to concentrate on the old, the neglected and the forgotten. When I have the whole of film history to play with, why write about recent films, which have, in any case, usually been generously covered elsewhere?

But there’s more than that. Bluntly, I don’t find modern film very inspiring. In fact, I’ll go further – I sometimes wonder if cinema is still a living artform for me or if I’m only interested in its past. Indeed, sometimes I wonder if I even still like movies.

Oh, I know I’m not the only one to lament the state of Hollywood. But I find little sustenance in the ‘prestigious’ independent sector either. Indeed, many of the most acclaimed films of recent years strike me as severely deficient.

This isn’t the space to rehearse the arguments against those films, nor to challenge their (sincere) admirers. But too often, when I think about the state of movies today, I get pessimistic (because I can’t see much changing, can you?). Then I get despondent, worrying that the great days are over and that film has ridden into the last sunset.

The trouble with that line of thought is that I keep seeing excellent new films. They might not be the same ones that my brother-and-sister critics choose to eulogise but they exist and in sufficient numbers to keep tempting me into the picture palaces.

Take Post Mortem, newly released on DVD and very nearly essential. It’s a brilliantly uneasy Chilean film about life at the very beginning of Pincochet’s dictatorship. A marginal subject, you might think, but director Pablo Larraín (who made Tony Manero, itself one of the better films of the past decade) makes it compelling; its tone reminded me of something by Luis Buñuel.

You want another? There’s a film called The Silence. It’s being sold as another Euro-crime flick (Steig Larsson, The Killing, blah blah blah) but it deserves to stand on its own considerable merits. It’s a film about murder but also about loneliness, loss and isolation. It’s a tough film, extremely harrowing in parts, but consistently gripping. It’s the first film by director Baran bo Odar; if he can do something this good with his debut, how good is he going to be now he’s got this experience under his belt?

There are two reasons why I mention these films. The first is to spread the word about films I love. If you’re looking to make new discoveries, you could do worse. Just think how smug you’ll feel when Pablo Larraín lifts the Palme d’Or or Baran bo Odar makes a commercial breakthrough (and if I was a gambling man, I’d say both were worth a modest flutter); you’ll be able to tell your film buff friends, ‘of course, I liked them before they were famous.’

The second is more personal. It’s crucial to remind myself that good films – great films indeed – are still being made. And while it’s getting harder to find worthwhile films, it is always, without fail, worth the effort.

I have no doubt that I shall hate the overwhelming majority of new releases this year. I have equally no doubt that I will see films that remind me why I love the medium. I can’t wait to tell you about them.

So. Farewell then Ken Russell, senescent enfant terrible of the British film industry. He will be missed; although I was never much of a fan of his film work, he himself was terrific value, a cheerfully vulgar antidote to the insufferable self-congratulatory politeness of the British film establishment.

While he was hardly cut off in his prime, it’s hard not to rue the timing of his demise. In March, the BFI finally releases the long-awaited DVD of The Devils; it’s a shame the old goat won’t be around to savour the reaction.

There’s no-one in British film history like Ken Russell. British films are supposed to be restrained and tasteful. Even when they get down and dirty, it’s usually for respectable, political reasons (to lay bare the miseries of the lower orders and so forth). Ken Russell stuck two fingers up at all that.

For many years, his films were regarded as something of an aberration in British film, an indication of how standards in British film had plummeted in the early 1970s – a sort-of cultural equivalent of the malaise that gripped Britain during Heath’s Britain.

The official line had it that, after the ‘swinging sixties’, British film collapsed twice in the 1970s – first symbolically, when Ken Russell and his ilk were calling the shots and then (at least partly in consequence) literally; about half way through the decade, the American studios pulled out of the UK, leaving British film in the hands of exploitation merchants who steered it into the gutter – until the clean-cut likes of Chariots Of Fire, with their crinolines and well-pressed blazers, made cinemas safe for ‘nice’ people again.

And yet, start watching the films made in this country during the 1970s and a different story emerges. Dig into British film of this decade and you’ll uncover any number of good, very good and authentically great films made during this supposedly stagnant period.

Don’t Look Now, Gumshoe and O Lucky Man! suggested new horizons for British film. The Wicker Man, Death Line and Sir Henry at Rawlinson End skewer British self-image. In this context, Russell looks not like an anomaly but part of an authentic movement.

Part of the reason this decade has been so traduced is that it has been hard to see the films. With the rise of DVD, however, many neglected titles are finally getting their due. The BFI have released Radio On, Winstanley and Bill Douglas’s Trilogy; their essential Flipside imprint has revived forgotten titles like Little Malcolm, Requiem for a Village and the remarkable Deep End.

There is more. Later this year sees the publication of Offbeat, edited by Julian Upton (of this parish). It looks at overlooked British films from the 1960s onward but it is the surveys of the 1970s that are most interesting, shining a spotlight on genuinely great (if somewhat sleazy) films like The Squeeze, Sitting Target and The Black Panther.

The revival of The Devils, then, comes at a time when the films of this reviled decade are finally getting something like the acclaim they deserve. They might not have made an impact on original release but British film of the 1970s looks, in hindsight, like a time of great experimentation and excitement. Something of a golden age, then – albeit a slightly shabby one.

Here’s a funny thing. Orthodox wisdom has it that DVD is on its uppers. We are told that ‘physical media’ (which is to say shiny silver discs, be they DVD or Blu-ray) will be replaced by internet streaming. DVD will collapse, the futurologists assure us, just as surely as compact discs.

The trouble with this thesis is that no one seems to have told the DVD labels. Rather than winding down their lists or becoming ever more timid, the smaller British DVD manufacturers have given us a year that shows the format in rude health.

Take Masters of Cinema. This year alone, they’ve given us some essential Fritz Lang (the criminally underrated Indian Epic films), early Antonioni, amazing Japanese films (get Harakiri now) and welcome contemporary fare (Colossal Youth). They’re also in the process of expanding their coverage of Hollywood films, starting with a definitive release of Touch of Evil.

And it’s not just MoC: the venerable BFI have been spoiling us rotten. Do you start with their Ozu releases? The first part of their Complete Humphrey Jennings? Their on-going Flipside series (including the long-awaited Deep End)? Švankmajer’s Alice or a collection of films about British folk traditions? Possibly most exciting is The Soviet Influence from Turksib to Night Mail, a scholarly-but-unpretentious exploration of cinematic inspiration that uses the DVD medium brilliantly.

Second Run have a much lower profile amongst DVD labels but are arguably the most important; no label works harder to nurture the obscure and the overlooked. For example: although well regarded in its native Hungary, Szindbád was all-but unknown internationally until Second Run released it this year, causing minds to blow and preconceptions to be reordered.

I don’t think it’s too much to say the UK DVD market is the most exciting in the world. We might not have any single label with the reach and resources of the American Criterion Collection (still the world-beaters of DVD production) but we’ve got a cluster of companies that punch far above their weight.

It’s not just ‘art film’ labels that are flourishing: few releases brought me as much pleasure this year as Cobra Woman and the Charlie Chan sets (all from Odeon). Shameless go from strength to strength (I especially recommend Don’t Torture a Duckling) while Japanese specialists Third Window released Confessions. And I haven’t mention crackerjack releases from Artificial Eye, Second Sight, Exposure Cinema, Arrow….

Of course, you might think this emphasis on ‘labels’ is misleading: what matters is the film, not who puts it out, right? But I think the strong identity these smaller labels have developed is important. Unlike the big boys, their releases are carefully curated. Experience shows we can trust their judgement so we’re more likely try things they put out, even if we’re otherwise unfamiliar with them. I’d say that’s why the UK market is so interesting right now.

There’s one thing missing from this round up – the viewer. If these labels are happy to supply, it’s because they know there is demand, that there is a loyal audience who care about interesting films and want to see them presented well. I would submit that, as long as that holds true, we shouldn’t be in such a hurry to bid au revoir to DVD.

It’s said that pub landlords hated the Quatermass TV serial back in the 1950s. When the BBC first broadcast his adventures in those pre-iPlayer days, hostelries would empty as drinkers hurried home to catch the latest instalment, leaving no-one for barmen to pull pints for.

Professor Bernard Quatermass was the first great icon of British television. The creation of writer Nigel Kneale (himself the first great British TV dramatist), Quatermass has influenced the entire science fiction genre, from Doctor Who to John Carpenter and beyond. Perhaps more importantly, he keeps finding fans in each successive generation: the first three film adaptations have just been re-released, and since they’re on DVD you can enjoy them in your own time – no need to hurry your drinking.

In Kneale’s world, Quatermass was the head of the ‘British Rocket Group’ (oh, for the days when spacecraft boasted a Union Jack on their nose cones!). His position led him to encounter the dregs of the universe: Starting with BBC series The Quatermass Experiment in 1953 and continuing in Quatermass II (1955) and Quatermass and the Pit (1959), the professor battled with extraterrestrial invasion and, perhaps even worse, intransigent civil service bureaucracy.

Intrigued by the character’s TV success, a small film studio called Hammer Films chanced their arm with a film adaptation of the first story (which they audaciously renamed The Quatermass Xperiment to emphasise its shocking content and capitalise on the decision of the then British Board of Film Censors to award it an X certificate). It was a huge hit in 1955, establishing Hammer as the serious film-biz players they would remain for the next two decades.

Hammer eventually filmed all three serials (Quatermass 2 came in 1957, while his adventures In the Pit had to wait until 1967) and it’s these versions which are most familiar to modern viewers. All three are stories of alien invasion, in which the (largely unseen) enemy first possesses and then transforms their earthling victims so they lose their fundamental humanity.

This being the 1950s there are subtexts galore. We can view the aliens as a manifestation of the existential threat of communism, although this is a very reductive interpretation. Nigel Kneale was a more acute writer than that: the main tension in the film is not between mankind and the aliens but between this planet’s inhabitants – Quatermass is appalled how his inventions are co-opted by the military, who plan to use them to slaughter their enemies.

As with all successes, Quatermass inspired imitations. Hammer’s own (tremendously entertaining) X: The Unknown was even set to feature Quatermass until Kneale – unhappy at the Studio’s use of American tough-guy actor Brian Donlevy in the role in The Quatermass Xperiment – protested. It didn’t dissuade him from letting Hammer make The Abominable Snowman, adapted from another of his teleplays. Maybe the best of the Kneale / Hammer films, it concerns the hunt for the yeti and the terrible consequences for those who find it.

This boom was short lived. Soon after, Hammer discovered tacky Gothic Horror and changed course: apart from one-off efforts like Quatermass and the Pit and The Damned, Hammer steered clear of science fiction.

This is a shame, because they were amongst the best films the company made: mature, sophisticated and still thought-provoking.

It’s often said that Hollywood produces too many sequels. Certainly, the studios seem incapable of getting through a month without itching to return to past glories.
This year, for instance, brought forth the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film. The first (and by some way best) in that series was released in 2003: that’s four films in eight years. But consider this: in the eleven years between 1931 and 1942, Fox studios produced no fewer than twenty-three Charlie Chan films. In sequels, as in so much else, modern Hollywood is but a pale shadow of its forebears.

Chan was by no means unique. Successful series of the 1930s and 40s included Boston Blackie, Sherlock Holmes, The Dead End Kids, Tarzan, Mr Moto, The Whistler and The Thin Man. And that’s just for starters: those years are filled with film series built out of multiple entries, cheap programme fillers for the most part, produced with a frequency that’s bewildering to today’s eyes.

Most of these series are little known today, which is a shame. Watching the Charlie Chan films, recently re-released in two splendid box sets, I was reminded how entertaining they were. True, this is production line cinema. But it’s a production line staffed by skilled artisans.

Indeed, since these series were often the studio’s bread-and butter (it’s said Fox studios wouldn’t have survived the thirties without Charlie Chan), they were usually entrusted to reliable craftsmen. The two directors behind most of Fox’s Chan films, H. Bruce Humberstone and Harry Lachman, handle things adroitly; each would be far better known if they hadn’t worked on ‘production line’ films like this. (See also Roy William Neill, who made Universal’s Sherlock Holmes films much better than they have any right to be.)

As I watched these films, I couldn’t help wondering about how they were perceived on first release. Were they ‘event’ pictures, with audiences queuing around the block for each new instalment? Or were they taken for granted, drawing audiences through familiarity and force of habit?

Such questions make us realise just how much the cinema going experience has changed – these films date from a time when people went to the pictures without knowing what was playing. It’s easy to mythologise that era as a ‘golden age’ based on the number of great films that were produced but audiences then were essentially indiscriminate: the reason that producers made sequels was the same then as it is now. A tried and tested format gives a brand recognition, adding a slight edge at the box-office – something that was even more important in an age of routine cinema going.

I nearly wrote that the old-style movie series died with television, when viewers could enjoy recurrent characters on a weekly basis. Then I realised it wasn’t true: the movie series is still with us, albeit looking very different.

The most obvious example is James Bond but there are others. The Fast and the Furious keeps throwing out follow-ups; the Saw series has become a Halloween staple and I’ve lost track of how many Final Destination films there have been (I’d guess about 208. Am I right, sir?)

Perhaps future generations will watch them as I watch films from long ago. I hope they enjoy them as much as I enjoy the honourable Chan.

The bald facts are these: no one sees everything. How could they? On average, there are (roughly) ten new films released into cinemas every seven days. Then there’s ‘Direct To DVD’ titles: let’s be conservative and say there are ten of them each week.
If you are prepared to sacrifice your money, your social life and – frankly – your sanity keeping abreast of all these, you’ll basically be watching three films a day. And you’ll still be missing out on festival films which don’t get a regular release. Oh, and I’m sure you don’t need reminding that there’s an awful lot of ‘old’ films to catch up on too. So no. No one sees everything.

Indeed, it can be an amusing parlour game for film buffs to nominate the most celebrated films they haven’t seen. For many years, I took perverse pride in boasting that I had seen not a single film directed by Woody Allen. That has changed but I’m aware that there are still horrible gaps in my viewing history, and not just the contemporary films that hold no interest for me.

I’m weak on Italian neo-realism (this includes the universally lauded The Bicycle Thieves) and huge swathes of Asian film. I’ve seen only one film directed by Yasujiro Ozu (and it wasn’t Tokyo Story) and not a single one by John Cassavetes. (I have, however, seen every Carry On… film at least twice *.)

Here’s the thing. There has never been a better time to watch films. There are DVDs for every niche. Whole new vistas have now opened for us: you can track the tributaries of the French New Wave or soak up Brazilian horror movies (Coffin Joe, if you want to know). Every interest is catered for.

But in these days of near endless choice, how do we decide what to watch? In ye olden dayes, it was easy to gain a broad film education, sampling genres and movements, the bulk of which were always tantalisingly out of reach. Now, however, we can follow our nose and – should we wish it – become experts in our chosen fields.

The consequence of this, of course, is that the stack of unwatched films grows ever larger: if we dedicate ourselves to one aspect of cinema, then we necessarily ignore others. And this has wider implications. There is a greater temptation to remain within our comfort zones, to concentrate on those things we already know we like at the expense of the unknown and the unfamiliar.

The big question is how much guilt we should feel about this. Should we be doing our damnedest to catch up on the films that are agreed, by consensus, to be essential or resign ourselves to the fact that, well, there are just some important movies we’ll never watch?

It’s surely harder to get a handle on film history now than it ever was before. It was always a given that no one could see everything but it was possible to develop a comprehensive understanding of the medium; those days are long gone. It’s basically impossible to see anything other than a fraction of the whole. I’m thrilled at the possibilities but I can’t help feeling just a little sad about all the films I’ll never see.

* I don’t consider Carry On Columbus as part of the series. And even if it is, there’s no way on earth I’m ever sitting through it again.

The bald facts run something like this: even after four decades of equal opportunities legislation, of recruitment drives and culture shifts, the movie business remains immune to the concept of gender parity. Of the many thousands of movies that get released each year, a mere seven percent are directed by women.

Indeed, this very column functions as proof of the parlous state of female filmmaking: would I be writing about women directors if they weren’t rare enough to be worthy of comment?

With that in mind, let’s move from the general to the specific. After all, my interest in this topic was prompted by two recent releases from that increasingly essential label Second Run.

The first is Daisies, directed by Vera Chytilová. It’s a classic of the Czech New Wave and the subject of much critical pontification over the tears. But no matter how much you’ve read about it, it’s something else to see it in action – a plotless, oestrogen-drenched riot in which two young women decide to turn the world upside down for 75 minutes. It is utterly ace.

Ann Turner’s film Celia is ace too, albeit for different reasons. It’s most easily described as a coming-of-age tale but there’s so much more to it than that. There are fairy tale monsters and real life equivalents; there are also communists, rabbits and death. Most of all, there is Celia herself, one of the most remarkable children in the movies: a little girl with a highly developed imagination and some alarming tendencies.

There are precious few points of comparison between the two (beyond their quality, of course) but here’s one: both have a way of seeing the world that is fresh and unfamiliar. The emphasis their directors give, the framing of their shots and the way they cut reflect a compelling perspective on the world. We might, to customise a key term of feminist film theory, call it ‘the female gaze.’

This strikes me as one of the best arguments for supporting and fostering female directors: women bring different angles to their films. Recent movies like Sofia Coppola’s Lost In Translation, Lexi Alexanders Green Street and Julie Delpy’s Two Days In Paris reflect concerns not found in films directed by men. At a time when many of us think cinema is stuck in a holding pattern, new ways of seeing should not simply be encouraged but cherished.

Let’s not pretend women automatically make great films. We should be in no doubt that if equality were achieved, ladies would churn out as much dross as the boys. It could be argued that the high quality of female filmmaking is because only the truly exceptional are able to attract funding in a film culture that is at best indifferent and at worst openly hostile to women directors.

At Cannes this year, Jane Campion exhorted women to ‘put on their coats of armour’ and make movies. Certainly, this is something of a banner year for female directors: Campion has her Keats biopic Bright Star, Andrea Arnold follows her outstanding debut – the Cannes Jury Prize winner Red Road – with Fish Tank and Kathryn Bigelow (who, let’s not forget, gave us both Near Dark and Strange Days) releases The Hurt Locker.

We owe them our support. Not because they are women but because they are great filmmakers. We need many more like them.

It’s the nature of the movies that the backroom boys seldom get the credit they deserve from the wider media. Film might be a collaborative medium but some collaborators are more prominent than others; it’s these public faces – the actors, the director – that soak up the acclaim, often at the expense of vital-but-obscure colleagues.
So when a cameraman gets eulogised by the press, you know he was something special. And special Jack Cardiff most certainly was. He was (arguably) the greatest ever colour cinematographer; it’s a measure of his achievement that it wasn’t just the film buff faithful who mourned him.

Rather than offer a tribute of my own, I’ll recommend you watch Black Narcissus again or Under Capricorn or… take your pick. I’m inclined to think that words can’t do justice to the achievements of such a visual artist. Instead, let us consider the profession that he mastered.

Of course, it must be acknowledged that whatever contributions a cameraman makes, they do not operate in a vacuum. Cinematography cultists often overlook the vital role played by other technicians, especially the production designer and editor. Their contributions are, however, more discreet, sometimes invisible; cameramen, by contrast, are all about what’s on screen.

The minimum responsibility of a Director of Photography (DoP) is lighting the picture but can also encompass designing camera moves or even compositions (many directors are less pictorially minded than is commonly supposed.) The best of them have styles so characteristic, it’s like signing their name on every frame. This delicate balance of craft and art is explored in the excellent documentary Visions of Light, a celebration of the cinematographer’s trade.

In the earliest days of cinema, the greatest challenge was getting an image to register on film. Lighting was done by the sun; artificial lights were nowhere near powerful enough. As the equipment evolved, so cameramen were able to create more elaborate images on film – ‘painting with light’, as later master John Alton had it. DoPs were constantly pushing their kit as hard as it would go. For Der Letze Mann, Karl Freund invented cranes, dollies and harnesses so that the camera could dance about the set.

The toys improved: film stocks got faster, lenses got wider and cameramen started playing with all sorts of new tricks. James Wong Howe, for instance, developed the ‘deep focus’ techniques that Greg Toland would use so successfully on Citizen Kane, the most influential job of photography there’s ever been.

In cinematography, technology has always facilitated art. The revolution of the French New Wave was enabled by smaller cameras which allowed Raoul Coutard, the movement’s great cameraman, to escape the studio and shoot on location, creating a new filmic style.

We’re in the middle of another revolution right now, as celluloid is subsumed by digital. Digital is still in its infancy but it’s already produced its first genius: Anthony Dod Mantle, who won a deserved Oscar for Slumdog Millionaire. His work doesn’t try to replicate the analogue experience but rather, creates images that could only be produced digitally.

Radical changes are surely afoot, new techniques will be developed and new adepts emerge. Whether any will prove worthy of comparison to Jack Cardiff, however, remains to be seen.

You may have heard already that next month sees the welcome DVD release of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s Winstanley. It’s not the best known of films but it’s a significant and worthwhile release. Made, essentially, as a community project, it’s one of the most vivid recreations of the past that I know of. It’s not perfect: although I admire it tremendously, I admit I find it sometimes frustrating: the ambition of the filmmakers outstrips their resources by some distance, but it remains a singular – maybe even unique – vision.

It isn’t just set in the civil wars, it feels as though it could have been made then. It’s populated not with ‘characters’ but with authentic people and it deals with their concerns, not those of our age. This astonishing verisimilitude was, I imagine, the work of its co-director Andrew Mollo. The rest I’ll attribute to his partner in crime Kevin Brownlow. It is he that is our subject today.

It’s only when you cast an eye over the breadth of Brownlow’s achievements, as I did before I started writing this, that you realise how extensive they are. He started as a film enthusiast, scouring junk shops for battered prints that no-one else was interested in. From there, he developed ambitions to become a director and started shooting his first film at some terrifyingly young age.

Needing a military adviser, he discovered the even younger Mollo, who offered robust criticism of the footage Brownlow had shot. So, they started again from scratch, with Mollo sharing the director’s chair. The resultant film was It Happened Here, a portrait of life in Nazi-occupied Britain. Quite apart from its considerable merits as a film, it is a remarkable achievement from a technical point of view – filmed over a period of years for virtually no money.

For that alone, Brownlow & Mollo should be heroes in the world of independent production. That their film was also so good – a stark, uncomfortable picture of compromise and collaboration – should only add to our admiration. It should have presaged a lengthy run of features. As it happened they made only one more film (Winstanley) before going their separate ways.

Here’s where it gets really interesting: Brownlow developed into perhaps the greatest living film historian. No one has done more to champion the silent film era (in his wonderful book The Parade’s Gone By, in his equally wonderful TV series Hollywood); his restoration of Abel Gance’s Napoléon re-wrote film history and his definitive life of David Lean is a model for film biographers to follow.

For all that, it’s one of the great tragedies of cinema that he never made more feature films. Nothing, I think, redounds on the British film industry as badly as its failure to make better use of Brownlow & Mollo’s remarkable talents. Grateful though I am to Brownlow the historian, every time I see the two films he co-directed, I find myself wondering what might have been if they’d been created in a culture that appreciated visionaries.

Kevin Brownlow is my hero. As a film historian, he’s not only had a disproportionate influence on the films I watch, he’s also shown me what it means to be passionate about the medium: I’m not sure that there is anyone who loves film more.

It’s not often that we raise a glass to state-funded cultural commissariats on this page but this year is the 75th birthday of the British Film Institute (BFI to its friends) and the now-venerable organisation is encouraging us to join in the celebrations.

Founded in 1933 – the year in which, Wikipedia tells me, Kim Novak and Michael Caine were born, King Kong was released and the chocolate chip cookie was invented – the BFI has encouraged successive governments to value film as highly as they do more established art forms and provided inspiration to similar organisations around the world.

Over the years, it’s got a lot of people hot under the collar. Some critics wanted to know whether the initials actually stood for ‘British Films Ignored’ – domestic product was either neglected or patronised, especially if it didn’t conform to current fashions.

The Institute also gained a not-entirely-unfair reputation for pretension over the years, the sort of place where everyone wore black polo-neck sweaters and talked about structuralism over filtered coffee. These eggheads were frequently attacked for elitism, most notably by Raymond Durgnat, this country’s greatest writer on cinema and a tireless warrior against the sort of cant that passed for film criticism back in the day.

It couldn’t last. The short version is that New Labour wanted the BFI to be more accessible to The Taxpayer, whose largesse funded it. The black polo neck sweaters were consigned to the back of the wardrobe and the bloodletting began. The biggest casualty was the BFI’s production arm. Over the years they supported some of Britain’s most innovative directors – Terence Davies, Peter Greenaway, Bill Douglas, Derek Jarman, Chris Petit and Kevin Brownlow. Not all the films were good but they were seldom less than interesting. Trouble is, ‘interesting’ didn’t cut it for the government. They wanted ‘accessibility’, which for them, meant a crackdown on la-di-da arthouse stuff that no-one wanted to see. And to make sure they got the picture, Alan Parker – a vigorous hammerer of intellectuals – was installed as chairman of the BFI. A discreet veil should be draped over the painful period of readjustment that followed.

The main thing we should celebrate this year is that we still have a BFI and that it still has responsibilities which haven’t been appropriated by the UK Film Council. Indeed, there’s a renewed confidence about the organisation, with a commitment to education and some ambitious projects, like Screenonline, which show it in rude health. The DVD label is flourishing: they’ve owned 2008 with releases like Land of Promise and Cluny Brown.

It was inevitable that the BFI had to change. It could be a hermetic organisation, speaking only to itself and failing in its basic responsibilities to promote cinema as an art form. The transition has been abrupt and the new order has its critics, who have attacked it as anti-intellectual. Certainly, the new regime sometimes has difficulty distinguishing between ‘popular’ and ‘populist’. It’s a distinction they must learn if the BFI is to have any relevance in the future.

But let’s not spoil the party. Happy birthday, BFI. You look good for your age.