Once Upon a Time in the West / C'era Una Volta Il West (1969 Sergio Leone)

Written by Leone and Sergio Donati; story by Bertolucci, Argento & Leone!

Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Jason Robards, Gabriele Ferzetti (OHMSS).

Photography Tonino Delli Colli, Techniscope.

Many images could be framed, framing (use of full width) great, high key on the actors, interior lighting great.

It's an opera: Ennio Morricone. Pure cinema.

Amazing sound effects (opening scene, where train guy dies and we hear the sea), great scenes. The look of Cardinale when she's (not) looking at herself in the mirror for the second time.

Even Bronson is quite likeable, but he doesn't project any love interest at all, so I don't really buy the love triangle aspect to it.

The Sorrow and the Pity / Le Chagrin et la Pitié (1969 Marcel Ophüls)

(The son of Max.) French experience of World War Two told in fascinating detail by cross-section of society, including farmer/resistance who wouldn't take revenge on traitor; endemic racism and anti-Britishness; French pilots who dangerously hedge-bombed close to target accurately; normal life in Paris; horrendous trials both before and after Liberation. The truly unpleasant stories are in the last of its four hours. Ophüls a quietly determined interviewer.

Anthony Eden surprising with fluent French and urbane non-judgmental attitude. Quietly gathers force through build-up of detail.

Watched on consecutive Sundays.

Thunderball (1965 Terence Young)

As Q was asleep. With Adolfo Celi, Claudine Auger, Luciana Paluzzi, even Philip Stone is in it!

Ph. Ted Moore, Panavision. Music John Barry.

'Sean was most relaxed when Terence directed him' (Ken Adam). Watched all the extras too. Sounds like filming was a lot of fun!

Hijacking of bomber still ace.

The wipe dissolves make it look really old-fashioned.

The Lives of Others / Das Lebender der Anderen (2006 Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)

Ulrich Mühe has one of those remarkable faces that changes in minute registers and manages to express some quiet, complex emotions. He lived to see the film win the Foreign Language BAFTA and Oscar, and to receive Best Actor at the German Film Awards, but died of stomach cancer aged 54. He also starred in several Michael Haneke films including Funny Games (1997).

Ulrich Tukur is also very good as his slimy boss. You can see that it is the kind of uplifting film that does seem to win foreign film awards,

Barry Lyndon (1975 Stanley Kubrick)

And so to the now rated BARRY LYNDON which was not at all boring, as I and the dogs found last time when Q. was in Tenegrief (actually the dogs were asleep, but this could have been down to boredom).

The cast is interesting, from the greatly undervalued Leonard Rossiter (a scared officer, below) to the familiar reliability of Hardy Krüger, with Murray Melvin slyly watchable as Rev. Runt. Philip Stone - The Shining's eternal barman - features briefly, and Barry's young stepson Dominic Savage wrote and directed TV's Freefall earlier this year.

Michael Hordern's ironic voiceover and the formal and deliberate structure of the film beautifully balance the 18th Century setting and wry turn of events.

(Kubrick) "I first came across the Handel theme [Sarabande] played on a guitar, and strangely enough it made me think of Ennio Morricone."

(It can't have been this rendition - it's too recent - but this is a beautiful version.) Leonard Rosenman at one point dramatically orchestrates it on timpani alone, and effectively uses other music like the Irish melodies early on.

Now the cinematography, at no. 16 in the ASC's Best Shot Films 1950 - 1997, as much I think for Kubrick's technical skills as to those of the photographer alone. (What is Psycho doing at no. 15, by the way? Apart from this, John L. Russell has no notable credits, just a welter of B movies. It wouldn't surprise me at all to hear that Hitch chose all the lenses and compositions. In fact my only complaint about Psycho is that it isn't shot by Hitch's regular Robert Burks.) This is I think one of the best shot films of all time. John Alcott took over from Unsworth after six months on 2001 (no. 3 in the list), then photographed A Clockwork Orange. For this film he

"studied the lighting effects achieved in the paintings of the Dutch masters but they seemed a bit flat [also not quite the right period?] so we decided to light more from the side... an awful lot of diffusion was being used in cinema at the time".

 (Kubrick again) "I have always tried to light my films to emulate natural light."

Thus daylight was used as much as possible, or diffused light (Alcott lighting through windows with mini Brutes through plastic material):

"If you shoot towards the window you get a very beautiful and realistic flare effect."

For the much discussed candlelit scenes, Kubrick found a 50mm Zeiss f. 0.7 lens, 100% faster than any other existing lens, developed by NASA. It was adapted by Cinema Products Corp, on an old Mitchell BNC with a projector lens adapter to give a 35.5mm length. President Ed Di Giuliu recalls:

"He wanted to preserve the natural patina and feeling of these old castles at night as they actually were. The addition of any fill light would have added an artificiality to the scene."

The equipment produced a very short depth of focus, no problem for NASA when shooting at infinity focus, but rather more problematic shooting candlelit actors. These scenes are still extraordinarily beautiful and haven't been surpassed. The slow 10-1 zooms out (on an Arriflex 35BL, whatever that is) are also most distinctive.

(Alcott) "That old bit that says you cut because the sun's gone in doesn't go any more." (Noticeable in scene where Barry buys son a horse.)

 More 4's print is correctly at the peculiar ratio of 1.59:1.

Smultrönstallet / Wild Strawberries (1957 Ingmar Bergman)

As engaging as the last time I saw it, and definitely one of the director's most accessible films, shot with hard light (particularly in that over-exposed opening dream) by Gunnar Fischer (singled out in 'Making Pictures: A Decade of European Cinematography').

Is there a twinkle in the housekeeper's eye when she asks "if there's anything you need..."

Silent legend Victor Sjöström, an influence on Bergman, is excellent as the aging doctor who feels he is already dead (and accordingly, so does his son).

I am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth (2005 Vincenta Ferraz)

And a documentary about Soy Cuba ('a Siberian mammoth found in the Caribbean sand') reveals the dominance of Urusevsky, who sounds like the driving force from many stories ("move this waterfall ... we'll wait three days until there are clouds in the sky") though as the film ultimately bombed* and disappeared, he and Kalatozov never recovered (Urusevsky shot only two more films and died at 66). Scorsese and Coppola rescued it in the nineties.

*The Cubans thought the tempo of the film was not Cuban; there was too much American decadence for the Soviets.

There's also a nice understatement about "we had to shoot some of the scenes more than once..." Indeed.

P.S. Infra red film used to get those incredible skies!

Bande a Part (1964 Jean-Luc Godard)

Godard's Jules et Jim is as light and funny as a souffle. For example, Odile's kiss "with tongue" (a diffident Anna Karina), and the mucking about of Arthur Clause Brasseur, diving through the back window of his car - later on we hear the roof doesn't work any longer) and Franz (Sami Frey, in gangster hat and raincoat). All three still going strong.

It's also innovative, the editing going on to the opening titles is amazing. There are experiments with sound, such as the minute's silence, and trademark moments where the music (Michel Legrand - why "For the last time"?) doesn't fit the scene properly.

And those throwaway touches of intrigue at the end (the aunt isb't dead; the money's in the kennel) and 'Franz and Odete's next adventure will be in Technicolor and CinemaScope'... delightful.

Doctor in Clover (1967 Ralph Thomas)

Leslie Phillips ('Ding dong!'), James Robertson Justice, Shirley Anne Field, Joan Sims, Arthur Haynes (funny as difficult patient), Elizabeth Ercy, usual people who turn up in films of this era.

Clever title you see, contains 'Love' or 'Lover', very clever?!? Poor even by Pinewood standards: they could have been doing something more interesting than fire extinguisher gags in 1967. Eric Steward's photography if anything is getting worse.

Soy Cuba saved my life! *

* Not actually true. Claims made on blog may be false as well as true.

Near the beginning of Mikhail Kalatozov's eye-popping SOY CUBA (1964), the camera watches models parade, glides Spider-man like down a wall, circulates a pool party and then, still in the same take, goes underwater swimming for Christ's sake!

Sergei Urusevsky's constantly moving (roving is possibly a better word) camera, steadier than a Steadicam, yet performing unbelieveable traverses of height and obstacle, is fascinating: in one almost throwaway shot he walks us through a top storey cigar factory (where the revolutionary flag is unfurled) and then blithely continues out of the window, and floats way out over a funeral procession from the air, making Luciano Tovoli's famous trick shot in The Passenger look positively insipid in comparison (indeed, in an online review of the same pair's The Letter Never Sent (1959) there's reference to another such brain-defying stunt; The Cranes Are Flying (1957), their initial collaboration, is also highly rated).

These long takes of constant movement, the very wide angles, black skies, sound effects and Carlos Fariñas' unfamiliar score give this an almost hallucinatory quality, but the combination of powerful cinematic technique and revolutionary propaganda make this distinctly Soviet.

See also review I am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth

Doctor in Distress (1963 Ralph Thomas)

Dirk Bogarde, James Robertson Justice, Samantha Eggar, Mylene Demongeot.
Briefly: Dennis Price, Leo McKern, Fenella Fielding, Frank Finlay, Reginald Beckwith, Richard Briers, Ronnie Corbett (one line).

YES, just goes to prove that '63 not a vintage year. Once we get over the shock of two leads calling each other Lancelot and Simon, there's nothing but unfunny and perplexing situations. Rank at its poorest.

Hot Enough for June (1964 Ralph Thomas)

Dirk Bogarde, Robert Morley, Leo McKern, the rather good-looking Sylva Koscina.

Terrible BBC2 print looks like video, 14x9. Pinewood-set Czechoslovakia.

Sylva's credits include the sexy L'Assoluto Naturale 1969, looks good but not on DVD (though is avilable through iOffer), with Laurence Harvey and music by Morricone.
Then Hornet's Nest (70) Rock Hudson Italy war film, A Lovely Way to Die (68) Kirk Douglas, Eli Wallach, Casanova & Co (77) Tony Curtis, Lisa and the Devil (74) Mario Bava, Boccaccio (72), Deadlier than the Male (67).

The Shooting Party (1985 Alan Bridges)

James Mason, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Gordon Jackson, Cheryl Campbell (from Pennies from Heaven to Funland), Judi Bowker.

Ph. Fred Tammes

Since You Went Away (1944 John Cromwell)

Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones, Shirley Temple, Monty Woolley, Joseph Cotten, Robert Walker, Hattie McDaniel.

Despite length and subject matter doesn't hit the mark like Best Years.. Perhaps Selznick shouldn't have written it too. Gloriously dark photography from Lee Garmes and Stanley Cortez. Music Max Steiner.

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975 Peter Weir)

Rachel Roberts, Helen Morse, Anne-Louise Lambert

Wonderful sun-drenched Eastmancolor photography by Russell Boyd: the interiors are great too.

Maurice (1987 James Ivory)

James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves, Denholm Elliott, Simon Callow, Billie Whitelaw, Barry Foster, Judy Parfitt, Phoebe Nicholls, Ben Kingsley.

Sadly not as great as the other Merchant Ivory E.M. Forsters, perhaps beacuse Ruth Prawer Jhabvala didn't write it.

Ph Pierre Lhomme.

The Black Swan (1942 Henry King)

This immediately set me on a tangent about the Spanish Main, which was the wealthy Spanish territories of Central America and included Mexico, Florida and northern South America (bearing in mind Mexico used to include California, until the Yanks nicked it in 1848), attracting pirates such as Henry Morgan, who really did become Governor of Jamaica (a colourful story worth reading up). He's Laird Cregar in Leon Shamroy's most colourful adventure, and George Sanders is most improbably in red wig and whiskers. Maureen O'Hara looks like she could have been a bit of a bitch. There's room for a proper pirate film, surely? (Polanski's looks worth checking.)

Fire Down Below (1957 Robert Parrish)

Jack Lemmon, Robert Mitchum (partnership doesn't work), Rita Hayworth, Edric Connor (was Trinidadian), Bernard Lee, Bonar Colleano

Ph. by Desmond Dickinson (shot mainly UK films since 1927 incl. Hamlet, Importance of Being Earnest) in CinemaScope, though BBC shows cropped print.

I was musing that the 'fire down below' was further south than the heart, as suggested by theme song, but then there's a real fire down below. Not wholly successful story but quite diverting, interesting cast.

The Round-Up / Szegénylegények / The Hopeless Ones (1966 Miklós Jancsó)

Photographed by Tamás Somló in Agascope.

A man tries to flee in a vast, open plain from where women bearing food have appeared. The soldiers don't race after him, but then horses appear from either side of the camera and round him up.

I always thought it was Janscó, so that's a salutary lesson. Also, after all these years, the scene with the naked woman isn't at all yummy, so that's another.

Solaris (1972 Andrei Tarkovsky)

His least favourite. I certainly was an avid film watcher at the age of 14. It's certainly a very interesting film. Is the planet representative of the brain, the sea the mind? It's certainly about memory. Those early shots of the scene around the lake are shot with his customary love of nature. the ending has a nice twist. And there's that great line about 'happy people don't ponder the big questions of life'.

Yadim Yuso shot his early films; Donatos Banionis and Jüri Jàrvet good as Kris kelvin and Dr. Snaut.