ALFIE
***½
UK
The adventures of a
philandering Cockney playboy.
A fragmented, colourful and uneven tale of a potentially tedious
character, it's blessed with the infectious charm of Michael Caine in his
star-making performance. Surprisingly touching as it is, it proved an
international hit and one of the decade's most influential and
representative products.
dir: Lewis Gilbert
wr: Bill Naughton
cast: Michael Caine, Vivien Merchant, Shelley Winters,
Millicent Martin, Julia Foster, Jane Asher, Shirley Ann Field, Eleanor
Bron, Denholm Elliott
AU HASARD, BALTHAZAR
***
France
The life of a particularly unfortunate donkey.
Strange, austere, downbeat and depressing like many of its author's
works. This particular concept, however, only ever allowed for a short film
structure.
dir: Robert Bresson
cast: Anne Wiazemsky, François Lafarge, Walter Green
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
*****
Algeria/Italy
A semi-documentary reconstruction of the National Liberation Front's
revolt against the French government in Algiers in the mid-to-late 1950s.
It's a problematic movie, to be sure. A great amount of art
has gone into its impeccably convincing veneer of artlessness. Its
documentary techniques, along with the opportunity granted to you to
follow the narrative from both the FLN and French military perspectives
could very easily trick you into mistaking it for an objective account of
a complex, tumultuous conflict. If there is the most minuscule shred of a
leftist impulse in you, you won't be able to resist its message.
And I don't mean to sound as if I could. Pontecorvo's mastery
of the mournful journalist aesthetic and the unrelenting dramatic urgency
he musters up from the opening minutes won me over very quickly. And I am
convinced (as was the Pentagon in 2003) that its political power and
relevance is yet to wear off.
dir: Gillo Pontecorvo
wr: Gillo Pontecorvo, Franco Solinas
ph: Marcello Gati
ed: Mario Morra, Mario Serandrei
m: Ennio Morricone, Gillo Pontecorvo
cast: Brahim Hadjadj, Jean Martin, Yasef Saadi, Samia
Kerbash, Ugo Paletti, Fusia El Kader, Omar
BLOW-UP
***½
UK
Wherever Antonioni went, it seems, he discovered only malaise. For this
famously arty [non-]thriller, he points his lens at swinging London, with
hollow-eyed, charisma-bereft David Hemmings at its centre, playing an
arrogant photographer. The picture is full of naïve affectations and
observations as shallow as the glass-eyed caricatures Antonioni fills his
frame with. But there are some fantastically eerie and evocative stretches
once Hemmings realises he has inadvertently captured a murder in his
stills (which in themselves are hauntingly beautiful).
dir: Michelangelo Antonioni
ph: Carlo di Palma
cast: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave,
Sarah Miles, Jane
Birkin, Gillian Hills, Peter Bowles, Harry Hutchinson, John Castle CLOSELY OBSERVED TRAINS
****
Czechoslovakia
The wartime sexual frustrations
of a young and incompetent apprentice railway guard.
A wry, uneven but atmospheric black comedy. Very funny when
not depressing, and sometimes both at once.
dir: Jiri Menzel
cast: Vaclav Neckar, Jitka Bendova, Vladimir Valenta, Josef Somr
CUL-DE-SAC
***
UK
Two gangsters hide out in an
isolated belonging to a transvestite with an attractive wife.
A surreal black comedy. Despite memorable imagery and a
director clearly on his way up, it's generally dull when not irritating.
dir: Roman Polanski
cast: Lionel Stander, Donald Pleasence, Françoise Dorleac, Jack
MacGowran
DAISIES
**½
Czechoslovakia
Either a revelatory dadaist glimpse into Communist oppression or an
insufferable bit of psychedelic wankery. You decide.
dir: Vera Chytilová
cast: Ivana Karbanová, Jitka Cerhová
THE
FORTUNE COOKIE
***
USA
This sour comedy by Billy Wilder with formerly dependable co-writer I.A.L.
Diamond is bloated, bloodless and mired in misogyny in much the same way
that most of his late-career output was. Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau
teamed up for the first time as a TV cameraman injured during a football
game and his brother-in-law, a shyster lawyer bent on playing up the
injury to milk the insurance company. Matthau has a ball with his
monologues, but they get monotonous.
dir: Billy Wilder
wr: Billy Wilder, I.A.L. Diamond
cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Judi West, Ron Rich, Cliff
Osmond, Lurene Tuttle, Harry Holcombe, Les Tremayne, Marge Redmond
GAMBIT
****
USA
A Cockney con artist hires a
Eurasian dancer to help him steal a priceless piece of sculpture.
Light, stuffed with plot twists and thoroughly enjoyable from
beginning to end.
dir: Ronald Neame
cast: Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine, Herbert Lom, Roger C.
Carmel, Arnold Moss, John Abbott
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GEORGY GIRL
****
UK
An overweight British girl ends
up caring for her bitchy roommate's baby as she is pursued by her wealthy,
middle-aged and married employer.
A working class black comedy, groundbreaking in its day, beautifully
acted and generally convincing.
dir: Silvio Narizzano
cast: Lynn Redgrave, Charlotte Rampling, James Mason, Alan
Bates
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY
***½
USA
The violent, exaggerated and now legendary conclusion to Leone's 'Dollars'
trilogy. It's resolutely intended to be operatic, but mostly it just comes
off bloated and repetitive. It has iconic sequences, of course, but even
they're exhausting.
dir: Sergio Leone
cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
***
UK
Sir Thomas More experiences a
personal dilemma - whether to support the divorce of King Henry VIII or
the Church of England.
An intelligent, elegant and highly acclaimed reconstruction of events
based on the well-regarded play by Robert Bolt. Meticulously mounted,
superbly acted and all very proper and prestigious but without much room
for oxygen.
dir: Fred Zinnemann
cast: Paul Scofield, Wendy Hiller, Leo McKern, Robert Shaw,
Orson Welles, Susannah York, Nigel Davenport, John Hurt
MASCULIN, FÉMININ
***½
France/Sweden
Of Godard’s anti-narrative dissections of contemporary alienation and
consumerism this is probably the most successful and precisely targeted,
though it lacks the feeling and poetry of the best of his work as well as
the charm and energy of the best of his rip-offs.
wr/dir: Jean-Luc Godard
ph: Willy Kurant
cast: Jean-Pierre Léaud, Chantal Goya, Marlène Jobert, Michel
Debord, Catherine-Isabelle Duport, Eva-Britt Strandberg, Birger Malmsten
PERSONA
*****
Sweden
The nurse of an actress going
through a nervous breakdown gradually begins to crack down herself.
A complex, intriguing and haunting meditation on the female
psyche, with impeccable direction and performances.
wr/dir: Ingmar Bergman
cast: Liv Ullman, Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand
TOKYO
DRIFTER
***½
Japan
A cheeky, frequently bizarre yakuza flick that feels a lot like what
Quentin Tarantino would have watched while still a video store clerk.
dir: Seijun Suzuki
ph: Shigeyoshi Mine
cast: Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Hideaki Nitani, Ryuji
Kita, Tsuyoshi Yoshida, Hideaki Esumi, Tamio Kawaji, Eiji Go
THE
PORNOGRAPHERS
****
Japan
Shohei Imamura's nutty, increasingly surreal tale of the misadventures of
a Japanese maker of underground porn, his mistress (and landlady) and her
maladjusted offspring cleverly encapsulates his left-field take on the
sordid impulses chortling beneath the unassuming norms of Japanese
society. The shifting timeframes get a bit confusing, and at a running time of over two hours,
the movie goes on far too long,
but any time your attention starts waning, Imamura reclaims it with a typically
robust, beguiling setpiece.
dir: Shohei Imamura
wr: Shohei Imamura, Koji Numata
ph: Sinsaku Himeda
cast: Shoichi Ozawa, Sumiko Sakamoto, Masaomi Kondo, Keiko Sagawa,
Ganjiro Nakamura, Chocho Miyako
THE
SWORD OF DOOM
***½
Japan
Them wonderful folks at Criterion deemed the DVD edition of this
relatively little-seen samurai picture worthy of their prestigious stamp.
It follows (and half-tries to patch together into a coherent
plot) the dozens upon dozens of cold slayings committed by an unsmiling
masterless swordsman in feudal Japan. The crafting is highly
sophisticated: the (Tohoscope) compositions are elegant, the lighting
painterly and the cutting often imaginative. But the anti-hero, as
portrayed by blank-faced Tatsuya Nakadai, comes off as hollow rather than
mysterious and at several points throughout the film it becomes difficult
to care about what's going to happen next. Upon further viewings however,
I might be more patient with the earnest brooding that takes up at least
half the film's running time, knowing as I do now that it all eventually
builds up to a hallucinatory, enthralling final showdown.
dir: Kihachi Okamoto
ph: Hiroshi Murai
ed: Yoshitami Kuroiwa
cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Yuzo Kayama, Michiyo Aratama, Toshiro
Mifune, Yoko Naito, Tadao Nakamaru, Ichiro Nakaya, Ko Nishimura
THEY'RE A WEIRD MOB
**
Australia
Crude Aussie comedy revolving
around immigrant stereotypes. It holds minor interest though as a time
capsule and as a record of Powell and Pressburger's creative degeneration.
dir: Michael Powell
wr: Emeric Pressburger
cast: Walter Chiari, Claire Dunne, Chips Rafferty, Alida Chelli, Ed
Devereaux
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?
***½
USA
A high-pitched, uncompromising, overtly - and at times
awkwardly - theatrical adaptation of Edward Albee's Tony-award-winner. How
it proved so daring in its day is difficult to grasp today - unless
calling things 'goddamned' still excites you - though time hasn't dulled
the impact of the performances.
dir: Mike Nichols
ph: Haskell Wexler
cast: Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, George Segal, Sandy Dennis
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