Showing posts with label The Cinema Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Cinema Museum. Show all posts

Wednesday, 29 January 2020

'Notched' 9.5mm at Kennington Bioscope - always something to learn at The Cinema Museum !

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 January

Some Tweets about a 9.5mm programme, introduced by Kevin Brownlow for Kennington Bioscope, at The Cinema Museum




Being open to inter-titled / sur-titled / sub-titled cinema :






The main matter :







[...]


'We have the technology' :






 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Sunday, 23 June 2019

A 'French Sundae' with Jon Davies at The Cinema Museum : La haine (1995)

A 'French Sundae' at The Cinema Museum with Jon Davies : La haine (1995)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

23 June

Tweets in response to a 'French Sundae'
at The Cinema Museum with Jon Davies : La haine (1995)










If, in the first act, you have hung a pistol on the wall, then, in the following one, it should be fired ~ Anton Chekhov


Jean-Paul Belmondo in À bout de souffle (1960)




 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Tuesday, 30 April 2019

Kennington Bioscope Silent Comedy Weekend at The Cinema Museum - 27 and 28 April

A report on the Kennington Bioscope Silent Comedy Weekend (27-28 April 2019)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

28 April
A report from Sunday afternoon at The Cinema Museum on the
Kennington Bioscope Silent Comedy Weekend (27-28 April 2019)





Other Tweets :






 Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Saturday, 4 February 2017

Flashback : Louis Malle and Zazie dans le Métro [originally appeared for New Empress Magazine]

This review of Zazie dans le Métro (1960) first appeared for New Empress Magazine

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
An edited version of this review of Zazie dans le Métro (1960) appeared as an on-line Flashback item for New Empress Magazine* [in February 2012]



Thanks to John Davies and his event at The Cinema Museum (@CinemaMuseum), I now know a bit about the directorial career of Louis Malle (including some clips), and have seen Zazie.

 As the book Malle on Malle (one in a series by Faber in which someone in the film business, in this case Philip French, has conversations with a director about the films then made) gives a synopsis, although I think that there are mistakes of detail, I shall not give my own, not least also because the film – probably like the book that it realizes – defies meaningful summary.

 Zazie was released in 1960, and so is exactly contemporary with Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom, a film so badly received that it virtually destroyed his career. Both film-makers were saying something new and true, but Malle, although also controversial and with a delight in addressing taboos, did not seem, here, to have ambushed his future film-making.

The film, like its title character (Catherine Demongeot), has enormous energy (Zazie’s wakeful activity is coupled with the capacity to sleep through Armageddon), and filming this novel may have appealed to Malle because of that very vivacity (and undaunted irreverence), as well as because it had been thought impossible: nothing better than a challenge for Malle !

 Zazie has few illusions, though she is, naturally, entranced by blue jeans and by the idea of the Métro (which is closed, because of a strike, until the very end – French says that she enjoys her ride, but I believe that she was still asleep). She starts the film by decrying, in no uncertain terms, the taxi that Uncle Gabriel (her mother’s brother, played by Philippe Noiret) has waiting for them – not just because, in true slapstick fashion, it’s full to the brink with other hopeful passengers – and tries to run off into the Métro.

She knows what she wants, and she doesn’t want to be fussed over by Gabriel or his landlord, taking in her stride her mother’s leaving her in his care so that she can go off for the duration with her lover. (Somehow, Zazie doesn’t appear to have been to Paris before, perhaps accounted for by the lover’s newness.) In search of a good time, she courts danger with impunity, treating everything as a game, and she partly has the freedom for her adventures courtesy of falsely implicating the landlord (a scene cleverly mirrored later, when the mysterious Trescallion tells the same gathered company stories about her).

The exuberance of the film, fuelled by Zazie even when asleep on the hoof (leaning on a car’s wing) and throwing bombs at Trescallion in a car-chase, no doubt mirrors that of the novel. The overall impact is crazy and, although Malle said that it went off the rails in the last third, it is almost impossible to know where that happened. The scenes up the Eiffel Tower are truly vertiginous, with access that may have been usual at that time or special to the film.

 The scenes on the streets of Paris are, if one stops to think of it, reminiscent of the Keystone Kops, but Malle reclaims that insane energy in a way that makes it seem wholly new, wholly unnerving. That feeds into the final onslaught in the restaurant, where, without explanation, it is the waiters against the diners, and no holds are barred… (but Zazie sleeps).


End-notes :

 * Now no longer with us...


Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
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Monday, 6 February 2012

Bucking fizzy

More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

7 February

That's what it feels like sometimes, especially when you receive a grand e-mail, called Tankard Oil Delivery Confirmation (304503), and you truly wanted to know about delivery no. 304506, which Amanda Holden had placed. (All that when trying to place a reverse-charge call to the phallus below which Kafka's remains are allegedly interred.)

In Stretham, such matters are viewed more casually, and with an element of abandon, and many have a Gaol Scar from their encounters with liquefied fuel (a matter that they lightly brush off if anyone is foolish enough to remark on it).

'The brain,' Oscar Wilde used to quip, 'is a remarkable organ: some day, I must acquire one of my own!'. A strict Freudian, before his day, but then he came from Coward Isle, he mixed with 'the aisle crowd'*, and he rode low in his sidecar (get my meaning?!).

On another note, it can be said that his social drew from all manner of artists, and that anyone, if they chose, could have a cordial sew, or seek where Carol Dew is to be found. All too often, though, he laid an escrow upon jollity, and a drunken soldier would caw vainly in the night in search - ahead of his time - of Kafka.

So, from Elephant and Castle, head pretty much in any direction - you're bound to have a good time, and might even find The Cinema Museum!



End-notes

* Indeed, it is said that he would never enjoy cheese unless he could eat it with oat-cakes.


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