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.