ANTOINE
ET COLETTE
***
France
François Truffaut revisits Antoine Doinel and discovers him well into his
young adulthood, working at a records factory and falling in love for the
first time. It's fun catching up with Doinel, though his first
almost-romance is a relatively generic one.
The film was the first chapter in yet another one of those compendiums of
films by master directors that were popular during this period - this one
was sold internationally as "Love at Twenty"
wr/dir: François Truffaut
cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Marie-France Pisier, Patrick Auffay, Rosy
Varte, François Darbon
CAPE FEAR
***
USA
The family of a small-town
lawyer is stalked by a criminal he helped put away.
A generally well-handled thriller. More tasteful and restrained than
its famous 1991 remake of the same title.
dir: J. Lee-Thompson
cast: Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Polly Bergen, Martin Balsam,
Lori Martin, Telly Savalas
LA
COMMARE SECCA
*****
Italy
Opening his first film with some of the most effortlessly evocative
imagery since Orson Welles' debut, Bernardo Bertolucci appears to have
wasted no time in asserting that genius sense for tone and atmosphere that
marked his earlier and most enduring films.
In this breezy, bracing whodunnit, several lowlifes are
interrogated by an invisible commissioner in relation to the dead body of
a prostitute discovered in a city park at dawn. As the suspects/witnesses
recount their alibis Rashomon-style, you get a strong feel for their
variously relaxed though discontented lives lived at society's edges.
Bertolucci's as-yet-unmarred maverick spirit permeates the
picture, as does an affecting sense of mourning over the young woman's
cruelly casual death.
dir: Bernardo Bertolucci
wr: Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergio Citti, Pier Paolo Pasolini
ph: Giovanni Narzisi
ed: Nino Baragli
m: Piero Piccioni, Carlo Rustichelli
cast: Carlotta Barilli, Lorenza Benedetti, Clorinda Celani, Vincenzo
Ciccora, Alvaro D'Ercole, Giancarlo De Rosa, Gabriella Giorgelli
DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
***½
USA
A young couple with a bright
future succumbs to alcoholism.
All's well to start with - a sharp comedy, finding all concerned in top
form. Then things turn preachy and earnest, and although the performances
hold up, most of the moralising doesn't.
dir: Blake Edwards
cast: Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Charles Bickford, Jack
Klugman, Alan Hewitt, Debbie Megowan, Jack Albertson
DR. NO
****½
USA
James Bond investigates
terrorism in Jamaica.
Ah, Mr. Bond! At last we meet. The ideal way to kick-start a classic
action series. A perfectly cast, expertly staged package.
dir: Terence Young
cast: Sean Connery, Ursula Andress, Jack Lord, Joseph
Wiseman, John Kitzmiller, Bernard Lee, Lois Maxwell, Eunice Gayson
THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL
*****
Mexico
Guests at a bourgeois dinner
party inexplicably cannot bring themselves to leave the drawing room at
the end of the night - nobody from the outside can bring themselves to
come in. Chaos ensues.
A terrific concept delivered into the right hands. Buñuel has a ball with
it.
dir: Luis Buñuel
wr: Luis Buñuel, Luis Alcoriza
cast: Silvia Pinal, Enrique Rambal, Jacqueline Andere, Jose
Baviera, Augusto Benedico, Claudio Brook
IVAN'S CHILDHOOD
*****
USSR
Andrei
Tarkovsky’s first picture, and probably his most accessible in that amid
his usual digressions, you can make out a plot. It revolves around
12-year-old Ivan’s disturbing plight to avenge his family, all of whom
were killed by the Nazis. But Tarkovsky isn’t merely aiming for the
unproductive kind of gut impact that you get from pitying orphans. He’s
more interested in how war can produce a scarred, fractured soul, which - common sense
tells you - should instead be a cheery, healthy child.
The film begins with
one of several lyrical dream sequences of a warm, lazy childhood, which
gets crudely interrupted to reveal the real world as its bleak but equally
dream-like obverse. There aren’t any battle scenes. There are only
lonely, stunted soldiers, who go about their orders in a detached,
pragmatic fashion, and haunt the woods looking confused about whether
they’ll ever earn the heroism that was promised to them.
There are those of us
who don’t share Tarkovsky’s belief in Paradise and redemption. But you
watch his young protagonist suffer through so much that you abandon all
skepticism. You hope the kid has made it into heaven by the end. And since
Tarkovsky’s vision of heaven looks a lot like one of Ivan’s lyrical
dream sequences, you hope that this one doesn’t get interrupted.
dir: Andrei Tarkovsky
ph: Vadim Yusov
cast: Kolya Burlaiev, Valentin Zubkov, E. Zharikov, S. Krylov
LA
JETÉE
*****
France
A 30-minute series of primarily still images (there's one brief, barely
perceptible bit of movement) detailing the onset of a nuclear war, which
kills the majority of people and forces the few that remain to live under
ground and dream of recovering the world as they remember it, even
devising ways to time-travel.
The images themselves are eerily beautiful and expertly
composed. Writer-director Chris Marker populates them sparsely, then
frames his solitary, lonely-looking figures in a way which makes them seem
to stand in for something much more universal. He carefully considers when
to have the sky occupy a vast portion of the screen, when to keep his
distance and when to move in for a close-up.
As the audience used to moving pictures we are prone to
invest these images with movement and moreover, in drawing the links
between them, with a meaning all the more poignant for seeming to have
come up with it ourselves. We take on a more active role than we are
generally accustomed to. Marker is well aware of this and the potential
for a big, visceral impact this technique carries. He doesn't betray us.
He takes on hefty topics - death, the apocalypse, humanity - but does it
with taste, tact and sensitivity. He has an exceptionally strong authorial
voice but rather than using it to glorify his own position and direct our
thinking, he throws his - as well as our own - observations back to us to
open up our thinking.
When the hero successfully time-travels to his pre-war home
and speaks of what it's like to finally behold "real children, real
birds, real cats, real graves," it's as touching for the joy he
exudes as it is for the misery it evokes of the thousands of people
trapped in the post-War caves. In prizing the past over the future
(Marker's concept of which is a lot more striking and convincing than just
about any other filmmaker's), the hero hints at big things about how we
tend to romanticise in memory something we once took for granted before we
were rapidly deprived of it. This is the sort of thing that turns the film
into a kind of revelation. It isn't just an empty experiment with a punchy
concept. It's richly resonant, humane filmmaking - one of the great pieces
of science fiction.
wr/dir: Chris Marker
ph: Jean Chiabaut, Chris Marker
ed: Jean Ravel
cast: Davos Hanich, Hélène Chatelain, Jacques Ledoux, Jean
Négroni
JULES ET JIM
*****
France
A fresh, exuberant, hugely influential account of a pre- and post-war
ménage-à-trois between two students (one French, one German) and the
stunning, the incomparable Jeanne Moreau.
Truffaut seems eager to employ every imaginable cinematic trick at his
disposal - there's everything here from freeze frames to jumpcuts to newsreel footage.
His passion for his craft is palpable, and it's infectious.
dir: François Truffaut
wr: Jean Gruault, François Truffaut
ph: Raoul Coutard
ed: Claudine Bouché
m: Georges Delerue
cast: Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre
A KIND OF LOVING
***½
UK
A young working-class couple is
forced to marry when the girl becomes pregnant.
Moody, mature and perceptive kitchen-sink drama, the kind that
Schlesinger popularised the year before with "Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning". Detailed, starkly photographed and exceptionally
well acted, but largely monotonous. There's no relief from the characters' gray
misery.
dir: John Schlesinger
ph: Denys N. Coop
cast: Alan Bates, June Ritchie, Thora Hird, Bert Palmer, Gwen
Nelson
KNIFE IN THE WATER
***½
Poland
A lot of people have fallen hard
for this stark, lean, low budget character study, Polanski's debut.
It's about a middle-class couple who pick up a young hitch-hiker and then
take him along for a weekend of boating. A mine-is-bigger-than-yours
battle of egos ensues between the two men. Just about every line of
dialogue subtly references a bunch of psychoanalytical theories. The
loose, jazzy score practically belies the strong and constant suggestion
of impending violence (thanks largely to a lot of clever framing and
camera positioning). This suggestion barely materialises in the end.
dir: Roman Polanski
wr: Roman Polanski, Jerzy Skolimowski, Jakub Golberg
ph: Jerzy Lipman
m: Krzysztof Komeda
cast: Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz
LAWRENCE IN ARABIA
*****
UK
The life of Arab adventurer T.E.
Lawrence.
A spectacular cinema experience, with an essentially vague and hollow central
protagonist rendered hypnotic by O'Toole's star-making
turn. The second half is
perhaps less impressive than the first, but most of the sweep and grandeur
holds over.
dir: David Lean
ph: Freddie Young
m: Maurice Jarre
cast: Peter O'Toole, Omar Sharif, Arthur Kennedy, Jack
Hawkins, Donald Wolfit, Claude Rains, Alec Guinness, Anthony
Quayle, Anthony Quinn, José Ferrer
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LOLITA
***½
USA/UK
A middle-aged English professor
falls in love with a 15 year old girl.
A fascinating filming of the controversial novel, discreetly pushing
early 60s permissiveness, but certainly disadvantaged by the lack thereof
as well as a somewhat baffling flashback structure.
dir: Stanley Kubrick
cast: James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, Peter
Sellers, Marianne Stone
THE
LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER
****½
UK
Teen alienation and apathy had been glamourised in movies at least since
the heyday of Jimmy Dean, but this British New-Wave entry by Tony
Richardson took to the topic with a stark, kitchen-sink approach. The
acute pessimism of the ending remains provocative and sobering. And Tom
Courtenay's lead performance is unnervingly unaffected.
dir: Tony Richardson
wr: Alan Sillitoe
ph: Walter Lassally
cast: Tom Courtenay, Michael Redgrave, Avis Bunnage,
Alec McCowen, James Bolam, Joe Robinson, Dervis Word, Topsy Jane, Julia
Foster
LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
***
USA
A day in the life of a
dysfunctional family in Connecticut in the 1910s.
A turgid, hysterical O'Neill adaptation. The actors' mannered theatrics
come off as merely alienating off-stage.
dir: Sidney Lumet
cast: Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards Jr.,
Dean Stockwell, Jeanne Barr
MAMMA
ROMA
****
Italy
Pasolini's contribution to the striking number of great Italian films
about irrepressible big-city prostitutes. With typical gusto Anna Magnani
plays the titular one here as she battles to provide for a bright future
for her delinquent son. Magnani, of course, tends to ensure a picture's
watchability as soon as she takes on the lead role, yet as a consequence
of this, the director of said picture is forced to take on the added
challenge of insuring his doesn't turn out to be just another Anna Magnani
movie. Pasolini succeeds in this - particularly in the way he portrays the
malnourished outskirts of Rome, with the richness and sensuality that
marks his best work. He also did well to cast the radiant Silvana Corsini
as the son's love interest.
wr/dir: Pier Paolo Pasolini
ph: Tonino Delli Colli
cast: Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofalo, Franco Citti, Silvana
Corsini, Luisa Loiano, Paolo Volponi, Luciano Gonini, Vittorio La
Paglia, Piero Morgia
THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE
****
USA
A noble lawyer is aided by a
tough gunman in civilizing the West.
A lovely nostalgia-driven Western. Predictable and very obviously recycled,
but that's part of its charm.
dir: John Ford
cast: James Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin, Edmond
O'Brien, Andy Devine, Jeanette Nolan, Lee Van Cleef, John Carradine
MONDO CANE
***½
Italy
A notorious 'Shockumentary'
compendium of
scenes of odd,
eccentric and often - well, shocking behaviour from around the world. Some of them
are real, some of them are staged. It gets difficult to distinguish which
is which, and it's also nowhere near as much fun (albeit, sick) as just
going along for the ride and taking it all at face value.
dir: Franco Prosperi, Paolo Cavara, Gualtiero Jacopetti
THE MUSIC MAN
**½
A con-man captivates a small
town in Iowa with the concept of a marching band.
A cheese-packed, dreary-coloured, reportedly faithful adaptation of a
stage hit with mostly bland songs that have managed to ingrain themselves
into the American mentality.
dir: Morton Da Costa
cast: Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, Hermione
Gingold, Paul Ford, The Buffalo Bills, Pert Kelton, Timmy Everett, Susan
Luckey, Ron Howard
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
***½
USA
A Korean war hero returns as a
brainwashed political assassin.
Icy, proficiently handled political paranoia, in many ways ahead of its
time, but without a lot of dramatic power. It's much better regarded by
others though.
dir: John Frankenheimer
cast: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, James Gregory,
Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, John McGiver
RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY
***½
USA
A pair of aging gunfighters
escort a shipment of gold from a mining town back to the bank.
A simple, elegiac Western, beautifully shot and exceptionally acted by two
legends who seem touchingly aware that this one may very well be their
last.
dir: Sam Peckinpah
ph: Lucien Ballard
cast: Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott, Edgar Buchanan,
Mariette Hartley, James Drury
SALVATORE
GIULIANO
****
Italy
Francesco Rosi's international breakthrough was this biopic of famed
Sicilian bandit-gangster Salvatore Giuliano, in which he's barely seen on
screen other than as a corpse. In the soon to be popularised political
semidocumentary style and with customary visual flair, Rosi builds a near-abstract portrait of
Giuliano through the environment and zeitgeist that gave rise to him and
then wiped him when he became an inconvenience. The temperament and murky
ideals of Giuliano come to stand for those of Sicily.
The plot jumps back and forth in
time in a baffling pattern with few signposts. The intention is to throw
you into the dense, enveloping quagmire that is a gangster's life in
Sicily rather than to order and sanitise said life into an easy
chronology.
dir: Francesco Rosi
ph: Gianni Di Venanzo
cast: Salvo Randone, Frank Wolff, Federico Zardi, Pietro
Cammarata, Fernando Cicero, Sennuccio Bennelli
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
**½
USA
A Southern small-town lawyer
defends a black man accused of rape.
Formula prestige and a ponderous pace drain a literary classic of its
charm and feeling.
dir: Robert Mulligan
cast: Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Philip Alford, John Megna, Frank
Overton, Rosemary Murphy
THE TRIAL
*****
France/Italy/West
Germany/Yugoslavia
Bank clerk Josef K is arrested
one morning without being informed of his crime.
In adapting Kafka's masterpiece, Welles came closer than any other
filmmaker in recreating the feel of a nightmare, employing elaborate,
breathtaking sets, stark photography and a haunting score.
wr/dir: Orson Welles
ph: Edmond Richard
ed: Yvonne Martin, Frederick Mueller, Orson Welles
m: Jean Ledrut
ad: Jean Mandaroux
cast: Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles, Romy Schneider, Akim
Tamiroff, Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, Arnoldo Foà, Willam Kearns,
Jess Hahn, William Chappell, Susanne Flon, Madeleine Robinson
VIVRE SA
VIE
*****
France
When people call
this Godard’s first “mature” picture – and they do – they mean
to say that this is his first picture where the protagonist isn’t
patched together from references to a string of Hollywood pictures. Anna
Karina’s Nana – if you can’t tell by the name, she’s a prostitute
– behaves and evolves in ways very similar to real human beings. She’s
not particularly likable, she’s barely pleasant, but based on everything
that’s selfish, impulsive and unpleasant about you – and the fact that
you maybe have your own excuse for these things – you can relate to her.
This is the first time
Godard allows Karina to act all on her own. She does a slightly more
glamourous variation on what Isabelle Huppert would perfect some decades
later: she draws you in with a look that hints at big things happening
inside her head but tells you very little – if at all – about them at
the one time.
In terms of technique, Godard is still toying with you – he doesn’t
let you see Karina’s face until about 15 minutes in even though she’s
present on screen the entire time, he does his usual funny things with dumping in
and pulling out the score – but he knows he’s got an anchor in Karina's
face to pull you back in whenever he feels like it. He keeps you so engrossed
that no matter how much you may want to object to the way he’s treating
you, you never quite get around to it. You’re like a puppy dog and
he’s like a half-mean kid you’re innately attached to.
The picture unfolds in
twelve ‘tableaux’ – each comes with its own novelistic set of
titles. It’s presented in crisp, unfussy monochrome with patient,
unfussy cutting, which balances against the melodramatic nature of the
plot and makes its impact more direct and intimate.
wr/dir: Jean-Luc Godard
ph: Raoul Coutard
ed: Agnès Guillemot
m: Michel Legrand
cast: Anna Karina, Saddy Rebbot, André S. Labarthe,
Guylaine Schlumberger
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?
***½
USA
An aged actress, a former child
star, terrorizes her sister, a wheelchair-bound movie star.
A camp classic. The stars disintegrate majestically amid baroque,
claustrophobic scenery. There's a compulsive fascination to it all.
dir: Robert Aldrich
cast: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Anna Lee
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