BFI
The Devils: A Masterpiece ResurrectedSaturday, 17 March 2012
“The film is a series of very curious, strange and macabre unbelievable incidents,” said director Ken Russell of The Devils in 1971. "The point of the film really is the sinner who becomes a saint." The tribulations surrounding its release, still... Read more... |
Peter Cook Season, British Film InstituteSunday, 04 March 2012
The death of Peter Cook on 9 January 1995 was my JFK moment. I'll never forget what I was doing when I heard the news. I was driving from London to Granada Studios in Manchester to interview comedian Caroline Aherne. At the time she was married to... Read more... |
Carl Theodor Dreyer season, British Film InstituteSaturday, 03 March 2012
The chance to see all 14 of the great Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's full-length films and a selection of his shorts during the BFI’s season is unique. Conviction and mysticism are central to his films. Whether it’s the suffering principle of... Read more... |
DVD: MedeaTuesday, 06 December 2011
Among the many singularities of Pasolini’s films, the proportions of his narrative structure have to be the strangest. Here we, like the young Jason who grows before our eyes, get a six-minute introductory lecture from the hero's foster centaur... Read more... |
DVD: Worth the Risk?Tuesday, 01 November 2011
Risks are everywhere. Crossing the road, cycling, not handling food properly, leaving a car boot unlocked, grain pits, night-time darkness – they all bring risks. Thankfully, government agency The Central Office of Information helped make us aware... Read more... |
Days of HeavenFriday, 02 September 2011
Days of Heaven made Terrence Malick’s legend. Released four years after his relatively conventional lovers-on-the-run debut Badlands (1974), it gave a similar story transcendental themes and images of painterly gorgeousness. Then he directed nothing... Read more... |
French Cancan: Jean Renoir in the Moulin RougeSaturday, 30 July 2011
When Jean Renoir returned to France at the end of 1953 after 13 years of exile, he felt as if he were beginning his career from scratch. His Hollywood films were not highly regarded, and neither The River (1951) nor The Golden Coach (1953), shot in... Read more... |
Last Year in MarienbadSunday, 10 July 2011
It is resonantly famous, picking up plaudits from the off, with one Sight & Sound commentator claiming in 1962 that it was the "greatest film ever made", for which he'd been waiting "during the last 30 years". That now seems slightly hysterical... Read more... |
Cutter's WayFriday, 24 June 2011
Of all the curdled classics made during the neo-noir wave of the Seventies and early Eighties - including Klute, The Long Goodbye, Mean Streets, Chinatown, The Conversation, Night Moves, Farewell My Lovely, Taxi Driver, American Gigolo and The... Read more... |
DVD: London/Robinson in Space and Robinson in RuinsThursday, 16 June 2011
The first part of Patrick Keiller’s trilogy, an attempt to address the "problem of London", begins just before the 1992 re-election of John Major. It’s a pseudo documentary ostensibly narrated by an acquaintance of one Robinson, a part-time art... Read more... |
DVD: The Miners' HymnsTuesday, 14 June 2011
Bill Morrison’s film, mostly edited together from archive material, serves as an elegy to Britain's recent industrial past. The older footage has been handsomely restored, and often it’s only the clothes that give a sense of period. It focuses on... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Script Supervisor Angela AllenSaturday, 05 March 2011
The credits unfold against a backdrop of a tall, exotic plant, down whose length the camera slowly pans. The African Queen, in glorious Technicolor, based on a novel by CS Forrester, directed by John Huston, shot by Jack Cardiff, starring two of... Read more... |
