Fitzcarraldo (1982 Werner Herzog)

Opera and Amazon?? In common with other H. films throws intriguing ideas and bewitching imagery, such as 'the bit of creation God left unfinished'. The elder Indians for whom the evryday is an illusion and reality lies in dreams. The steamer, halfway up the hill, and knowing we're really watching Indians do this. Always the humour (the whole task seems pointless, as he sells his boat and invests in a mobile opera; after the successful traverse, the Indians let the steamer go, into the rapids; the pig.)

Great to see Claudia Cardinale. Miguel Enrique Bohorquez ('you are the cleverest drunk who ever staggered across this earth') also memorable, as is Popul Vuh's music and Thomas Mauch's photography. Kinski kept making me think of Aistair Sim and Tom Barley! 

If ... (1969 Lindsay Anderson)

"Run in the corridors!"

A real pleasure to see this again. It made me probably as angry as I was on 8th April 1979 to see the behaviour of the prefects, who are to all intents running the school. (In the final massacre, the Establishment fights back.)

Despite watching a 4x3 TV print (the aspect ratio is supposed to be 1.66:1) it shows Miroslav Ondricek's brick-coloured hue; he's assisted by an 'A' team of Chris Menges and Michael Seresin!

Brideshead director Charles Sturridge is one of the odious oiks.

Malcolm McDowell, Arthur Lowe.

Written by David Sherwin.

Le Samourai (1967 Jean-Pierre Melville)

"Whereas the colours in L'aine des Ferchaux are very warm, I wanted very cold colours for le Samourai. With this in mind I carried out a series of conclusive experiments, which I carried even further in Army of Shadows, and further still in Le Cercle Rouge (1970). My dream is to make a colour film in black and white, in which there is only one tiny detail to remind us that we really are watching a film in colour [did Spielburg ever read this??]. I think we took a small step forward in a form of expression - cinema in colour - that has become dangerous." ["Melville on Melville", Rui Nogueira 1971.]

Not the monster that is L'Armée des Ombres, but satisfyingly Bressonian and beautifully lit on Melville's own sets that burned down during filming. Thematically closer to Bob le Flambeur (loyalty, police adversary, fatalism).

Presumably the influence on Ghost Dog, the Way of the Samurai; John Woo is a big fan also. Compares interestingly to This Gun for Hire (Alan Ladd 1942).

"I sometimes read (I am thinking of the reviews after le Samourai and L'Armée des Ombres came out) 'Melville is being Bressonian'. I'm sorry, but it is Bresson who has always been Melvillian." (Nogueira.)

So I stand corrected!

Beautifully photographed by Henri Decae: his first films were for Melville and he shot early Chabrol, Truffaut and Malle, and so is a hugely important figure in French cinema.

Alain Delon, François Perier, Nathalie Delon, Cathy Rosier (pianist)

Hanging Up (2000 Diane Keaton)

Meg Ryan, Walter Matthau, Diane Keaton, Lisa Kudrow, Adam Artkin (son of Alan)

scr Delia and Nora Ephron.
Ph. Howard Atherton

Walter great in last film, but Ryan stand-out as nervy, highly strung daughter / carer.

I'm not convinced that Diane's a good director

Dark Passage (1947 Delmer Daves)

Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett, Agnes Moorehead

Ph. Sid Hickox
Music Franz Waxman

Intriguing opening POV and camera in barrel. Might have been interesting to show different actor with Bogart's voice? (Would need excellent lip syncing.)

The Duchess (2008 Saul Dibb)

Keira Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, Charlotte Rampling, Dominic Cooper, Hayley Atwell (Fear of Fanny, Mansfield Park, Ruby in the Smoke), Simon McBurney (Prime Minister Fox), Aidan Mcardle (Sheridan) - the latter two parts are underwritten - they are her friends.

Ph Gyula Pados

Fiennes kept slightly reminding me of Leonard Rossiter and I wished it was him.
Film is OK but a bit 'so what?'
Photography is modern and flat.

Domestic Disturbance (2001 Harold Becker)

John Travlota, Vince Vaughan, Steve Buscemi
ph Michael Seresin

Unremarkable thriller in which T's son has witnessed V murdering B, but no one believes him.

L'Armée des Ombres (1969 Jean-Pierre Melville & scr)

I was completely blown away. How do the French manage to make these precise, economical films that without any sentimentality manage to be so moving? There's a highly cinematic use of dramatic irony and mournful Eastmancolor cinematography (Pierre Lhomme) that delivers the tough, brave exploits of Lino Ventura, Jean Pierre Cassel, Simone Signoret and the other Resistance members - the early execution scene is worthy of Hitchcock.

Amidst the cool development and performances it manages to be totally involving, exciting and heart-rending, marking Melville as a top-class and brutally honest auteur. It went straight into my Top 100 from this single viewing.

Afterthought: And what WW2 movie did Britain produce in this year? The Battle of Britain!

Also in cast: Paul Menrisse, Christian Barbier

Addtl. ph. Walter Wottitz
Music Eric Demarsan (wrote Belle and Sebastian in 1965!)

V For Vendetta (2005 James McTeigue)

Well. The problem here is you have a guy in a mask who can't emote (Hugo Weaving) and a girl who doesn't do much (Natalie Portman). Whose idea was it to muffle his voice realistically? Stupid. Very faithful to the graphic novel, lacks humour. Good supporting cast (John Hurt, Stephen Rea, Stephen Fry, Rupert Graves, Roger Allam, Eddie Marsan). Alan Moore's name completely absent, even as original author.

The Way to the Stars (1945 Anthony Asquith)

One of a number of terrific WW2 films we've steered through, and deserves immense praise for its proud, hard script (Rattigan; poems by John Pudney) and direction (Asquith), such as a camera finding a lighter that should have gone airborne with its owner, a pan up revealing that it isn't he. Trevor Howard in his 'debut' (actually the Way Ahead) and Michael Redgrave are so frightfully good that we rather miss them, though there's a bounteous supporting cast including Bonar Colleano (doing a Tarantino), Basil Radford (that handsome scar a WW1 trophy) and "I'll thank you" Joyce Carey as the wicked aunt. The scene where Johnny Mills kisses Renee Asherson goodbye through Rosamund John is delightful, particularly the look on the latter's face.

Derick Williams rather overlights the actors, but the second unit comprises not just Jack Hildyard but Guy Green as well.

A certain kind of quintessential British film: stiff upper-lipped, patriotic, unsentimental, cynical, witty and  off-handedly literate. Do we need the war to make films this good?

If.... (1969 Lindsay Anderson)

 A real pleasure to see this again. It made me probably just as angry as I was on the 8th April 1979 to see the behaviour of the prefects, who are to all intents running the school. (In the final massacre, the Establishment fights back.)

Despite watching a 4x3 print which doesn't seem cropped (the format is 1.66:1) Miroslav Ondricek gives things a brick-coloured hue, and he's assisted by Chris Menges and Michael Seresin! Brideshead director Charles Sturridge is one of the odious oiks.

Jeder Für Sich und Gott Gegen Alle / The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (1974 Werner Herzog)

Sweet, elemental, intelligent, mysterious, funny. Bruno S is unforgettable. You start wondering if everyone else is stupid. Both the scribe ('an excellent report!') and the foppish host look familiar.

After all, his answer to the logical problem is perfect.

There's a slight look of simple, scruffy cunning that Jack Nicholson might have borrowed.

The original title is better - "Every Man for Himself, and God Against them All" - having a cheerful ironic fatalism that's far more suitable.

Hopefully all you'd have to say to a fellow fan of the film would be 'escaping apples' for them to smile. Who says the Germans have no sense of humour?

It's now almost a week since I watched it, and it keeps on coming.

Cries and Whispers / Viskningar Och Rop (1972 Ingmar Bergman)

Hurry up and die, already! Fade to red. The images are a joy to behold.

Emotionally bleak, simple yet concentrated study of a family group of unsympathetic characters that seem specific to Bergman (or, perhaps, to Sweden?) Doesn't reverberate much beyond the viewing.

Apocalypse Now - Redux (2001 Francis Ford Coppola)

At three and a quarter hours, I'd glad we'd started it the night before (with a 1964 Armagnac). I'm not convinced the political discussion in the plantation scene adds anything, though the lighting here is astonishing, as is most of Storaro's incredible smoky colourings. As usual, the film goes a bit flat at the end of the journey but at least Sam Bottoms' tripped out surfer Lance survives (ironically, he died four days later of a brain tumour, at 53). It's still an astonishing experience.

Where though is the original ending that I saw at the cinema on January 27th (and February 9th) 1980 (the 153 minute version)? Apparently Coppola had to destroy the Kurtz camp set and filmed its demolition, but it logically fits into the story as an air strike has been ordered. The sight of those big stone faces in the flames is mesmerizing. It's here, and it's amazing.

Underground / Podzemelje: Bila Jednum Jedna Zmelja / Once Upon a Time There was a Country (1995 Emir Kusturica)

I was glad I'd started the first hour of this long but remarkable film, in which the shocking image of a goose pecking an injured tiger (perhaps metaphorical?) burns into the mind. (Shortly after, an elephant steals Blacky's shoes, and he calls it a 'fat horse'.) I started to get a bit bored in the long wedding scene, and was resisting the Delicatessen / Gilliam underground plot thing, though it's clearly allegorical, and the tunnels to other cities was very Catch-22, but you cannot help but be caught up in the epic tale, whether the shifting relationships between Lazar Ristovski, Miki Manojlovic and Mirjana Jokovic, or the disastrous political turmoil of the Balkans that I then had to research (an extremely complicated and bloody story). 

It's mad, funny, sprawling, surreal, intelligent and has a monumental ending. The slightly insane-making gypsy music is absolutely infectious.

I was not too surprised to read that Kusturica challenged an ultra-nationalist leader to a duel in Belgrade in 1993 (he declined). Vilko Filac also shot Time of the Gypsies. Difficult to think of another film that so vibrates with life.

The Tenant (1976 Roman Polanski)

 Despite some groovy camerawork (Sven Nykvist) a load of silly, meaningless and unattractive jibble.

Bob Le Flambeur (1956 Jean-Pierre Melville)

You couldn't stop me smiling throughout Bob le Flambeur. It begins with that 5AM city feeling I like and we're plunged into the 1950s Montmartre atmosphere in which Roger Duchesne's Bob inhabits. (A pre-war star with a shady war-time record.) When asked if he's following the game with a visit to the restaurant, he says he's going home to sleep, but when his flic mate picks him up, he says he's going to the restaurant. Like Casablanca's Rick he's a man of dubious past, but integrity. It's a film noir with deadpan attitude and a beautiful ending, and there's even the casino at Deauville to admire.

Henri Decae also shot Le Samourai and Les 400 Coups and the location feel and American attitude no doubt influenced the New Wave.

Straw Dogs (1972 Sam Peckinpah)

In Peckinpah’s Cornish western, there’s a suggestion the co-writer/director may not be taking things too seriously. During the course of the Siege of Trencher’s Farm, the odious rat catcher (Jim Norton) is seen riding a kid’s tricycle. One of his fellow thugs chases him with it, threatening to wrap it round his neck. The next shot shows them racing each other, both on tricycles, amidst the mayhem. I can’t think of any other slapstick moments in Peckinpah’s other violent set pieces. And later, Hoffman despatches the rat catcher with what looks suspiciously like a golf swing. Perhaps it would have been more fitting to the latter’s profession if he’d been the one to succumb to the trap.

With neat irony, Hoffman’s maths professor has picked the wrong fight in protecting David Warner, who has just (albeit accidentally) killed village strumpet Sally Thomsett (who I suspect of killing the cat). At the moment when he fears his wife Susan George will switch sides to old beau Charlie (Del Henney), he specifically becomes his rival, striking her, then pulling her by the hair, both of which Charlie has inflicted on her prior to the bizarre rape turned love scene turned gang rape. So whilst there’s audience pleasure in seeing the bad guys wiped out, are we also to acknowledge this as an anti-violence statement?

One thing’s for sure: this mismatched couple isn’t going to make it.

Along with those mentioned above, Ken Hutchison is also impressive as the ‘bad’ rapist, in a uniformly excellent cast.

Interesting to see the name of Tony Lawson as one of the editors. There’s occasional time jump editing in this that figures strongly in his work for Nic Roeg (from Bad Timing onwards), and also in Peckinpah’s later Cross of Iron, which along with Barry Lyndon Lawson also edited. And, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I love John Coquillon’s grey skies!

117m 16 secs submitted to BBFC = 113 m Video

Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959 Alain Resnais)

I should have seen it by now, really. Of course I can clearly see where Marienbad came from - it's in the opening horrific montage where she says she remembers and he says she does not. That weird first shot: the bodies seem covered in sand (it's ash), then water. The editing that then was so different (though the Cahiers crowd link it to Eisenstein); the many shots of her running to meet her lover; the current lover jump cut to the dead German; a low shot of a house for no reason (yet). Tracking shots through Hiroshima: fascinating to see it then at all. That strange feeling of a city very late at night. The light reflecting off the water (Sacha Vierny). The modernity (they are both married). Memory, forgetting. Forgetting love, forgetting Hiroshima. The first days of love. I think I was expecting something explosive. It is a very big film.

To Rohmer, Resnais is a 'cubist'. Interesting, as Guernica is one of his early shorts.

Breaking the Waves (1996 Lars Von Trier)

Having a hard job summarising feelings for this film. Emily Watson's performance is extraordinary. It's a sneaky movie really, because her (mentally unstable?) actions do ultimately save him (ironically he's getting much better). Clearly a lot to do with faith (the church, her talking to god), with playful (miracle) ending of bells suddenly ringing. Robby Muller's landscape vistas for chapter headings memorable. (Strangely on Film4 only in 16x9, though it's 2.35:1).