Sherwood (2022 Writer James Graham)

Populated with so many well known actors, it's actually a bit distracting.

Interesting subject matter. A murder (by crossbow - Sherwood - get it?) occurs in an old Nottinghamshire mining town which in the 1980s was rare in that most of the miners carried on working. Only one, played by Alun Armstrong, held out for the striking NUM. But also had us thinking about Southcliffe, with which is shares certain similarities.

Investigating this is local DCI David Morrissey, joined from the Met by failing but useful detective Robert Glenister (good; played by his son Tom in flashbacks).

Lesley Manville is the victim's wife, her sister is Clare Rushbrook and her husband Kevin Doyle (Downton, Happy Valley). The Sparrow family of drug dealers and archery hire are played by Lorraine Ashbourne (Alma's Not Normal, Bridgerton), Philip Jackson and Perry Fitzpatrick. Clare Holman is Morrissey's wife. Joanne Froggat's just married to Bally Gill, whose Dad, train driver Adeel Akhtar lives next door.

James Graham wrote Brexit: The Uncivil War. Directed (in what seems to be the BBC tradition) by Lewis Arnold and Ben A Williams (three each).

Akhtar going off the rails in the forest is one highlight. But ultimately we felt a bit unfulfilled, having learned nothing really about the behaviour of the killer, but rather we'd had something of a history lesson about the conflicts within mining communities. (We subsequently heard Graham in interview and he certainly is very articulate and passionate about politics and his subject matter.)

McDonald & Dodds - A Billion Beats (2022 writer Robert Murphy)

From a Robert Drummond story, directed by Isher Sahota.

F1 driver dies at pit stop change. Watkins & Gouveia investigate in what seems a barely credible story. Paul McGann, Daisy Bevan, Bluey Robinson, Ben Batt.

Amused to learn there really is a 'Quiet Street' in Bath, the location of the bookshop (in reality antiques).

Stopped reviewing these after this. They're really not very good.

Not Another Bloody Wedding Video (2018 a Nick's Film Jottings production)

Quite fun to see, obviously, but terribly edited (by me) - boring footage, montages that only half work - needs a serious re-edit by my wife - someone who knows what she's doing.

The Monkees sequence at the end holds up.

This Is Us - Season 4 (2019 Dan Fogelman)

The opening episode, 'Strangers', in fantastic. Who is this female soldier from Afghanistan? Who is this young black man who has a child? And this blind guy with a little white dog? It's fabulous.

The side-effects of Randall's therapy are devastating. (Pamela Adlon is the therapist.) Great bit of misdirection when Rebecca gets lost - only we're seeing a flash forward to another time.

Lyric Ross's day out in Philadelphia. (Her new boyfriend is Asante Blackk.)

Edited (in rotation as usual) by Howard Leder, Julia Grove and Lai-San Ho (and Susan Vaill). The transitions from past to present are done so artfully (a door closing / another opening). Brilliant stuff between Kevin and Nicky, who at times appears as Jack.

Good Will Hunting (1997 Gus Van Sant)

We were reminded to watch it by This Is Us - it features in the story of a couple who never saw the ending, and make up their own versions.

It's a very wise screenplay from such young writers. A wonderful film.

Usefully jotted here and here. Apparently, Kevin Smith brought the screenplay to the attention of the infamous Harvey Weinstein and it was Miramax who made the film.

The Edge of Love (2008 John Maybury)

Oh... The Jacket. That's where we know him from, and offers the connection to Emma Hickox. He was also known for a film about Francis Bacon (Love is the Devil), and thus has a penchant for (a) weird subject matter (b) historical drama (c) gay cinema (his early work was music videos for the likes of Marc Almond and Boy George).

This exposes Dylan Thomas (who Q fittingly describes as the Destroyer) who seemed entirely unlikable, though the film's really about the relationship between his wife Sienna Miller, and a former lover of his, Keira Knightley, who is also courted by soldier Cillian Murphy (it's 1942 Britain).

Dylan's played by Matthew Rhys, and his unlikableness, and the strange behaviour of his wife, make it hard to swallow. It's written by Sharman Macdonald, from an idea by Rebekah Gilbertson, who both should have known better.

The direction is frequently pretentious, using all manner of reflections and upside-down shots. These screen shots are symptomatic:

Pop video

Scramble jamble

Emma's notable contributions are some Jacket-like furious war sequences and a shimmery, dissolve-heavy love scene, perhaps influenced by her mum. Jonathan Freeman's photography (Hollywoodland, Rome, Boardwalk Empire) and Angelo Badalamenti's score are other assets.

X / The Man With the X-Ray Eyes (1963 Roger Corman)

Experimental doctor Ray Milland takes serum which makes him see under the layers of things, but at the same time gives a sort of triple-coloured, triple-duplicated image of things, giving the film a trippy effect which was no doubt of interest to drug experimenters (thus one experiment leads to others). It's a bit crap really, though the story following his accidental murder of a colleague, leading him to becomes first a fairground act, then a faith healer, is not uninteresting. Shot with the director's usual economy, most of the budget going to Milland, photographed by Floyd Crosby, music by Les Baxter with lots of theremin. Has quite an ending when in a religious tent he claims to see a mystical centre of the Universe, then plucks his own eyes out. Corman posits that the film's theme was echoed in 2001!

Scripted by Ray Russell and Robert Dillon. Don Rickles is the con man, Diana Van Der Vlis, Harold Stone and John Hoyt as medical colleagues.

Eagle vs Shark (2007 Taika Waititi & scr)

Very quirky but sweet, Loren Horsley (who developed the story with Waititi) falls for a nerdish habitual liar (Jermain Clement) who has a difficult relationship with his family and a score to settle with former school bully. Complete with animated stop motion scenes.

Taika has directed three of New Zealand's top grossing films - Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Boy and What We Do in the Shadows. He's making Marvel films now, unfortunately.

Horsely's easy-going tenacity is most engaging. Good music too by The Phoenix Foundation.

Hombre (1966 released 1967 Martin Ritt)

Begins on sepia photos of Native Indians - the Apache are at the heart of the story. Then an amazing silent scene featuring horses, which 'Indian' Paul Newman helps to catch. It turns out he's white but been raised by the Apache, which puts him out of favour with fellow passengers he's forced to travel with...

They are:

Shifty fraudster Fredric March and his lady Barbara Rush
Coarse roughneck Richard Boone
Tough boarding house lady Diane Cilento
Nice Mexican Martin Balsam
Young married couple Peter Lazer and Margaret Blye

...until, of course, they need him when they're held up. Bad guys are Cameron Mitchell, Frank Silvera, Skip Ward. Newman's stillness is well to the fore here.

It's beautifully shot in deep focus by Jimmy Wong Howe, who also collaborated with the director on Hud. Good story by Elmore Leonard, adapted by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, in its characters and the critique of white oppression of Indians. Good score from David Rose. Edited by Frank Bracht.

20th Century Fox.

Avanti (1972 Billy Wilder & co-scr)

This is certainly one film Mr Camp might have viewed before making the terrible Love & Gelato. This is how to write a film, this is how to direct a film (lots of long takes, I noticed this time, our fourteenth viewing).

It was Billy's birthday.

"Could I have a couple of noodles - for colour?"

Cameron: "I was watching your airplane-landing shots and they suddenly looked very familiar to me. Then I realized - I bought those landing-gear shots from a film house, and one of those stock shots appears at the beginning of Jerry Maguire. So, like it or not, you are in my movie."
Billy: "I beautified one of your pictures."

Great blocking, even

The music:

A Tazza E' Cafe. G Capaldo, V Fassone

La Luna Don Backy & Detto Mariano

Palcoscenico (E Bonagura, A Giannini, S, Bruni

Senza Fine Gino Paoli

Core 'Ngrato Sergio Bruni

Un'ora sola ti vorrei Carlo Bruni 

Editor Ralph Winters on Juliet's horse and buggy ride round Ishchia:

"The little horse and carriage pass an open bar where people are sitting outside the bar having a drink. As the camera pans cross this group, there is a lady nursing a baby at the very end of the pan, the gag being that everyone is having a drink in the warm summer sunshine, even the baby.

Do you believe that I cut away from the shot before the camera finished its pan past the end of the shot, missing the gag completely? Well, I did. Billy just about fainted. "Raulf!" he shouted. "How could you do that? You cut off the joke!"

Ralph Winters 'Some Cutting Remarks'.

Love & Gelato (2022 Brandon Camp & scr)

As its title suggests, a terrible film. An annoyingly mousy young woman (Marie-France Arcilla), who clearly doesn't need the glasses she wears sometimes, comes to Rome to experience Life, seems to get most out of pasta and pastries. Some young men, yawn, opera etc. The bits of Rome we see are strictly for postcard buyers.

Acting and direction terrible.

McDonald & Dodds - Belvedere (2022 Robert Quinn, writer Robert Murphy)

Tala Gouveia is too much - she always looks like she doesn't believe the person she's talking to. It's too one-note. Jason Watkins is her partner. With Lily Sacofski, Claire Skinner (again, rather one note writing). It was Sian Phillips playing the 100 year old - she in fact is only 89. With Alan Davies (playing a sort of Prof Higgins), Cathryn Tyldesley, Holly Aird, and Caoimhe (pronounced 'kee-va' or 'kwee-va') O'Malley as the dead woman. We enjoyed sneaky story. Some of the editing (change of shot on same person talking) seemed clumsy.

Ali & Ava (2021 Clio Barnard & scr)

Begins like Fat City - grabbed shots of urban life - makes me think how influential that film was. A teacher ('classroom assistant' she would correct me) with a messy, extended family, meets a benevolent landlord and they like each other. The problems are that he's married but separated, and she has a protective and violent son Callum who wasn't aware that his late father was a brute - leading to Ali's great line to the mother "Why do you let Callum keep those boots?"

These two are perfectly acted by Claire Rushbrook and the very wonderful Adeel Akhtar, who has one of the most expressive faces in 21st Century cinema.

I personally would have suggested that the normally reliable (Pieces of Her, Judy, National Treasure) Ole Bratt Birkeland open his aperture a tad, as it's rather gloomy; the editor is Maya Maffioli (Rocks). There's a good thing going on with his house / rap music versus her country / folk.

Rest of cast: Ellora Torchia, Shaun Thomas, Natalie Gavin, Mona Goodwin, Krupa Pattani.

It's good, of course. Clio has since made the six parter The Essex Serpent, with Claire Danes and Tom Hiddlestone.

Hustle (2022 Jeremiah Zagar)

The definitive basketball film, though you wouldn't know that from the title. It is soon evident why there are three editors working on this - for the record, Tom Costain, Kelko Deguchi and Brian Robinson. Adam Sandler is the coach, Queen Latifah his wife, Juancho Hernangomez the discovery and Ben Foster as the vile manager (Leave No Trace, Hell or High Water). With Kenny Smith, Jordan Hull, Robert Duvall.

DP Zak Mulligan.

What can I say? It's all very impressive, I'm sure. Best moment: the daughter suggests staging a live basketball challenge and it goes viral. Oh, and the champ's rest day - his beloved daughter from Spain is there in the hotel pool - he leaps straight in to greet her.

Diagnosis (2017 Eva Riley & scr)

Another intimate and vividly sketched portrait of a woman in crisis, with a knockout performance by Charlotte Spencer (Sanditon, Misbehaviour, Baghdad Central, Wild Bill).

Made for the BBC and the National Film and Television School. DP Steven Cameron Ferguson in an odd 1.5:1 ratio, editor Abolfazl Talooni. It's on Vimeo.

This one's 19 minutes. Am now a serious Eva Riley fan.

How I Won the War (1967 Richard Lester)

You remember how the end credits of The Knack look like acid? Well, I think Dick had definitely been experimenting when he made this, two years later. It's - exhausting. And clever. And almost works. But fails. And you know those delicious bits in The Knack, where Charles Wood writes these great bits of mad, quotidian dialogue, viz "I'm on me last left leg"? Well it's almost like the whole of this film is written in that style - Lennon barely has anything intelligent to say. Though the central idea - a platoon ordered to create a cricket pitch in the desert - is great.

The references to real allied military failures - Dunkirk, Dieppe, El Alamein, Arnhem - don't quite work, and the subsequent colouring of members of the platoon doesn't work at all. It sort of gets into its much-needed serious mode towards the end - a real battle in which most of the remaining soldiers are killed - it needed more of that, more serious Wood stuff (I mean he's great at writing military satires like The Charge of the Light Brigade but I'm sure later work like Tumbledown is more serious).

A spirited cast helps - Michael Crawford, Roy Kinnear, Michael Hordern (stuff about 'the wily Pathan'), John Lennon, Jack MacGowran, Lee Montague, Jack Hedley, Karl Michael Vogler (German officer), Robert Hardy, Sheila Hancock. It was edited by John Victor Smith and photographed by David Watkin. Based on Patrick Ryan's novel.

Like the Laurence of Arabia send-up music in desert scenes, the ending is, I feel, a Bridge on the River Kwai pastiche. There are lots of visually clever and funny moments. So a real mixed bag.

Though loved the joke between the two actors at the end. "What are you up to next?" "Oh there's a new Vietnam thing happening."

Almost You (1984 Adam Brooks)

An underlooked film, written by Mark Horowitz from Brooks' idea. Who is Adam Brooks, by the way? And who is Brooke Adams? You see - that's... Are they the same person, flipped? It's my theory that they are.

Anyway, Griffin Dunne seems like he's not getting on very well with his wife, who wants to go to California and spend time with family. When she has an accident, he becomes attracted to her therapist, Karen Young, who in turn is experiencing dissatisfaction with actor Marty Watt. (None of these people exist, except Griffin Dunne of course. They are all the product of Nick's rather unsteady Sunday morning. A ripple, a wave, a shimmer.)

Yuh. And then the Watt character goes for a job at Dunne's and ends up being invited for dinner, cue awkward moments. Very awkward, as it turns out, when the therapist stays the night...

Lives are messy, or they can be. Some people have messy kitchens, other people have very clean and orderly kitchens (but messy bedrooms). The film was photographed, and edited. 

The apartment's in Gramercy, the play no doubt takes place off Broadway - let's say Greenwich Village. The clothing factory is in the Garment District, if there is one. That guy from Cronenburg is in it.

Joyride (2013 Eva Riley & scr)

Charlotte Randle, Adam Flint. Another good teenage performance.

A very distraught woman takes her son to a cliff edge to dispose of (presumably) some man's possessions. It's ten minutes.

Vivid and immersive.

Patriot (2015 Eva Riley & scr)

Halle Kidd, Rafael Constantin, Michael Elkin, Ray James.

Excellent short film produced by the National Film and Television School. Cannes Palme D'Or Short Film nominee

A girl from a troublingly racist family has her own encounter with a young Gypsy lad. Powerful and perfectly controlled.

Riley's debut feature was Perfect 10.

Chivalry (2022 Steve Coogan, Sarah Solemani)

Directed by Marta Cunningham. DP Andy Strahorn, editors Mark Keady, Richard Ketteridge.

There's a ridiculous episode where everyone panders to the needs of the stand-in for a sex scene - I would have just fired him (he's late to set, for one thing). I mean I know where they're going, sort of attacking the We've Got To Be So Careful mood of the times, but that was just ridiculous. So, only a partially successful attempt to puncture the #MeToo movement.

Luckily the story of an indie film maker Sarah Solemani and producer Coogan gets more interesting, particularly when it involves foul-mouthed and acidic exec producer Wanda Sykes (Monster-in-Law, Bad Moms).

6 x 30m for Channel 4.

Dead Calm (1989 Phillip Noyce)

An efficiently made thriller starring Nicole Kidman, Sam O'Neill and Billy Zane. 

Charles Williams' novel* was originally to be filmed by Orson Welles as The Deep, who according to Barbara Leaming  had begun work on it in the Bahamas when in 1973 the lead Laurence Harvey suddenly died and the project was abandoned. In fact (obviously Peter Bogdanovich's is the source to believe), it was filmed 1967-69 in Yugoslavia, and was never completed because of difficulties with cast and budget. It also featured Jeanne Moreau, Oja Kodar and Michael Bryant. Some of the footage can be seen here.

Anyway, back to this version, in which writer Terry Hayes has slimmed the five characters in the book down to three. It has some good tense writing, cross-cutting Kidman vs. Zane with O'Neill's terrible problems on the abandoned boat, but there are some really dumb plot moments. For example, Kidman has it in her power to kill Zane twice, but doesn't, cueing the obligatory 'I'm not really dead' ending. Also she consents to sleep with him rather quickly. At times it seems like an ad for her bum. The dog is used well though.

Well photographed on the Barrier Reef by Dean Semler (spent the whole film trying to remember what his Oscar was for - Dances with Wolves in 1991). Rather well edited by Richard Francis-Bruce, whose credits include the Witches of Eastwick, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, The Shawshank Redemption  and The Green Mile.

She is indeed piloting the boat herself

* Itself based on the fascinating and terrifying true story of Julian Harvey and Terry Jo Duperrault, told here.

Inside No. 9 (2022 Reece Shearsmith, Steve Pemberton)

Season seven, can you believe.

Twisty episodes. Sophie Okenedo in episode in which writers appear to be writing one another's stories. The Wise Old Owl - dark stuff. Kid / Nap = Daisy Haggard and Danny Mays.

Mind-bending, dark, funny. They evoke a sort of hideous laughter.

Ten Percent (2022)

Written by John Morton, Ella Road, Keith Akushie, Cat Clarke, Bryce Hart, Abigail Wilson.

A superfluous remake of Dix Pour Cent, with rather too much of the 'Yes. No. Exactly.' type of dialogue from W1A, on which Morton was a writer (and Twenty Twelve).

With Jack Davenport, Lydia Leonard, Maggie Steed (who steals the show), Prasanna Puwanarajah, Hiftu Quasem, Fola Evans-Akingbola, Harry Tevalwyn, Natasha Little, Rebecca Humphries, Tim McInnerny. And Chelsea Crisp as the new American boss.

With guest stars Dominic West, Clémence Poesy, Jim Broadbent, Helena Bonham Carter, Kelly Macdonald, Olivia Williams, Himesh Patel, David Harewood, David and Jessica Oleyowo, that guy from the political thing again.

The Strange Woman (1946 Edgar G Ulmer)

And so once again I find myself reaching for that indispensable volume, 'Who the Devil Made It?' by Peter Bogdanovich, for the lowdown on B movie king Ulmer's low budget independent movie, which paints Hedy Lamarr as a worse woman than Scarlett O'Hara. Well, the first thing I read was that it was an A picture. Ulmer says "Beautiful picture. It nearly got Hedy Lamarr an Academy nomination. It's the only picture where she ever had to act. A beautiful picture - very difficult, very beautiful." Lamarr was acting as executive producer - she got Ulmer involved. (Let's not forget, Ulmer was one of the team who made People on Sunday in Berlin - Billy Wilder's first film.)

Well, it may have had a bigger budget than some of Ulmer's, but let's just say it feels economical. Bangor, Maine, 1820s. A wild child with an alcoholic father grows up as a beauty, marries the elder post office owner, then brazenly begins flirting with his son. She makes him kill her father, then completely rejects him. Then George Sanders comes along...

I found it quite funny. I'm not sure myself it's a great performance from Lamarr - she comes across like some scheming bitch in Dallas or the like. It feels quite risqué for its time. It seems overly underscored, though moves on well. Lucien Andriot shot it. IMDB reports Douglas Sirk directed the opening but I don't know the source for that - it's not in 'Sirk on Sirk' as far as I can see, though he did work with producer Hunt Stromberg, so it's possible, I guess.

I don't want to start getting too scriptural, but the title comes from an early version of Proverbs V - 'the lips of the strange woman drip honey and her mouth is as smooth as oil' - more recent versions update 'strange' to 'immoral' or plain 'adulterous'. And it continues 'But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death, Her steps lay hold of hell', which is kind of the end of the film. It was written by Herb Meadow (the film, not the Bible) from Ben Ames Williams' novel, and (again according to IMDB, uncredited) Hunt Stromberg and Ulmer himself.

With Louis Hayward (the son), Gene Lockhart (the father), Hillary Brooke, Rhys Williams, Alan Napier.

The Gentle Gunman (1952 Basil Dearden)

An interesting film which seems to explore sides of the Irish question - in particular it's framed by a couple of ? friends who represent the Irish and British points of view (Joseph Tomelty and Gilbert Harding). Then as the action moves from London to Ireland, it's about the internal divisions, the IRA versus the peace-abiding citizens. So John Mills has turned his back on violence, but isn't a snitch, neither, whilst younger brother Dirk Bogarde is still a little confused. It's a good plot, well filmed by Dearden (making the most of desolate Irish locations - or wherever it is) and photographed by Gordon Dines; written by Roger MacDougall from his own play.

With Robert Beatty (the scary Shinto), Elizabeth Sellars (The Barefoot Contessa), Molly Fagan, Eddie Byrne, Jack MacGowran.

Great scene with kids playing round suitcase with bomb in Underground. Another scene involving the bombing of a truck also uses children suspensefully. The ending could have been wildly different - and quite powerful - if the two freed men (who've just popped into the pub for a quick one) arrive too late and find Mills has been unfairly executed.

It's unfortunate that Mills and Bogarde are unable to deliver a convincing Irish accent between them. A late Ealing film.

The Hotel New Hampshire (1984 Tony Richardson & scr)

Richardson, let us not forget, made some excellent films in the sixties such as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Tom Jones, but it's the tricks from the latter (speeded up footage, rather rough overdubs) that don't work so well here - in fact some of it is downright crudely put together.

The John Irving adaptation has memorable characters and situations and is certainly quirky, but it at times is unexpectedly moving (after Jodie's rape and she says to Lowe 'Just another Halloween, kid'). Loved the moment before that when Lowe goes to summon help, and is introduced to a most angry black man, Dorsey Wright, who refreshingly (though underwritten) becomes a part of the family.

Still don't understand why Jodie is still into the bastard Chip (Matthew Modine, who does also play the Viennese alter ego). She gives a splendid performance. With Rob Lowe, Beau Bridges, Jennie Dundas, Seth Green, Joely Richardson (good), Wallace Shawn, Wilford Brimley, Paul McCrane, Nastassia Kinski, Amanda Plummer.

Some of it - situations, characters, dialogue, plot - seem very Garpy, in other words, Irvingy.

Shot by David Watkin. Edited by Robert K Lambert. Music by Jacques Offenbach. The hotel is The Tasouusac in Quebec, and still looks exactly the same.

Jodie: "She fainted while diaphragming herself."

Outside Providence (1999 Michael Corrente & co-scr)

Written with Peter and Bobby Farrelly, and based on the former's novel, this is a refreshing seventies set comedy-romance, starring Shawn Hatosy (been in tons of things we haven't seen, except Alpha Dog) and Amy Smart (been in tons of things we haven't seen). And Alec Baldwin.

The boy gets into trouble with his stoned pals and is sent to a prep school, where he mixes with other stoners, and meets the boy-meets-girl girl.

I have to say I found the romance angle refreshing (they don't even have sex, or if they do, it's off camera), and laughed out loud at a few things, such as the stoner friend Jon Abraham who drives the wheelchair-bound brother behind his van to expedite paper round, and Jack Ferver being sick on Hatosy's arm.

Good soundtrack of seventies rock standards. The lighting's rather blue. Feels autobiographical.

George Wendt is far left

Gabriel Mann is not James Spader.

Weirdly, Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) gets another mention - we just saw some of it featured in The Outsiders.

And what was the great sign? Something like, "Three Fingered Steve's Fireworks Emporium"!

My Name is Leon (2022 Lynette Linton)

Kit de Waal novel, adapted by Shola Amoo, (who also did The Last Tree) stars Cole Martin, Monica Dolan (great as always), Malachi Kirby (Boiling Point), Olivia Williams, Poppy Lee Friar, Shobna Gulati, Leemore Marrett Jr., Chris Eccleston, Lenny Henry (exec producer).

Linton is often very close in on Cole. Story is set in Birmingham in early eighties and features Handsworth-type riots and police racism. And allotments.

Lots of good music includes Marvyn Gaye's 'What's Going On' as the boy finds his 'people'. Good.

Rumble Fish (1983 Francis Ford Coppola & co-scr)

Made back-to-back with The Outsiders, from the same novelist S.E. Hinton (who in this one cameos as a prostitute) - she co-wrote. Both films were made in Oklahoma. Matt Dillon takes the lead, with Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane, Dennis Hopper, Diana Scarwid (stoned teacher, Inside Moves), Vincent Spano, Nicolas Cage, Chris Penn, Larry Fishburne, Tom Waits, Sofia Coppola (Lane's sister, billed as 'Domino').

It comes across like an Orson Welles film for the eighties, Touch of Evil in tone (though in later, night city sequences, Fellini). It's a staggering film in which you can frequently preserve the image as art. But the sound design by Richard Beggs is also amazing, e.g. the scene where they frequent the lively black area of town and there's a moment where the sound is replaced by different sound - I think the sound of the family home.

The style threatens to submerge the story, which is quite slim. But sequences like the fight to flickering lights and birds are outstanding.

The (outstanding) photographer is Stephen Burum (not a single award or nomination). Editor Barry Malkin. Percussive score courtesy Stewart Copeland.

Symbolic clocks run throughout the picture - time is running out?

In this amazing interview, Diane reveals she debuted on stage aged six in Medea - in Greek!

There's even a touch of Soy Cuba to it, though it can't have been on Coppola's radar as it was not shown in the US until 1992 (Telluride). He and Scorsese helped to revive it.

So, it's exhaustingly beautiful, and slightly annoying, but unquestionably a remarkable film.

Stalag 17 (1953 Billy Wilder & co-scr)

A strange film. What kind of man is Sefton? He's out for what he can get, but in his defence, 'The first week I was in this joint, somebody stole my Red Cross Package, my blanket and my left shoe' - love the left shoe - writers take note. It's a tough and quite grim storyline mashed up with a broad comedy (Robert Strauss and Harvey Lembeck dancing together, the former thinking he's Betty Grable). It works, though, as the whole thing is underpinned by Billy's tough humour and his great construction and direction, as we slowly uncover who is the traitor in their midst.

William Holden, Don Taylor (the lieutenant), Otto Preminger, Richard Erdman, Peter Graves, Neville Brand (the one with the temper), Sig Ruman, Robinson Stone (the flute player).

Co-written with Edwin Blum, based on the play by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski, from which several cast members repeated their roles. It was photographed by Ernest Laszlo and scored by Franz Waxman. Doane Harrison is the supervising editor, George Tomasini cut it. Paramount.

It's funny:

"One Führer is enough!"

Kirk Douglas turned it down; Holden won the Oscar.

I was fascinated to learn (via 'Billy Wilder in Hollywood', Maurice Zolotow 1987) that Paramount wanted to release the film in Germany, and requested that the identity of the Nazi spy in their midst should be changed to that of a Polish POW who had sold out to the Nazis. Wilder wrote back expressing his outrage, talking of his background in Galicia (then Poland), the deaths of his family in Auschwitz and his support for the Polish Resistance, and demanding an apology. He didn't get one, so Billy severed his relationship with Paramount immediately (and drove through the studio gates for the last time in his Jaguar - love that detail).