Overlooked in all the care

This is a Festival review of We All Want What's Best for Her

(Tots volem el millor per a ella) (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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19 August

This is a Festival review of We All Want What's Best for Her

(Tots volem el millor per a ella) (2013)

Chances to see during Cambridge Film Festival (#CamFF) 2014:

Presently, on Thursday 4 September at 6.15 p.m. (Screen 1), and on Friday 5 September at 1.00 p.m. (Screen 1) (please see the note on screenings below)


This film concerns itself with the sort of overlooked type of person who does not – or fails to – make a full recovery.

In a very polished way, which never feels like imitation, it seems closest to the frailty and fragility of Woody Allen’s Interiors (1978) (in particular, the pale, almost monochrome shades, into which the significant colour in the film erupts). Yet we are in an underlying family ambience that (not just because of the three daughters that all three films share) more closely resembles that of Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) (but with maybe a hint of Dorrie’s (Charlotte Rampling’s) less-manic moments of insecurity from Stardust Memories (1980) to heighten the sororial bitchiness of Hannah (Mia Farrow)).

We quickly learn that Eugenia (Geni) had had a serious road-traffic accident around a year before the start of the film, and we were immediately placed in her world in the opening shot, with no mise-en-scène, as she walks through a door on the left of the screen into a plush ante-room. She asks, and is told that she can go straight in to see the doctor – then we are in there with her, and looking at her, with a full view of the doctor kept back from us.

Maybe Geni (Nora Navas) is actually on time for the appointment (and, as one goes off, she reports to the doctor that she is using alarms on her phone to tell her where she should be), but what we notice most is that she seems too serene, almost over-eager to please : from what happens later, just with the long slow sweep past the city through the taxi’s window as she slumps, it is clear that she had been pretending, and that the doctor does not seem to have looked behind appearances. (So, if Geni says that ‘The important thing is the knee’, that is what the doctor hears and has noted.)

Yet we will see her family require Geni to pretend according to their pattern (at which point, we are sharply reminded of the subjective element in the title’s What’s Best For Her), and we also see how uneasily their encouraging phrases, which aim to re-frame her experience, fit on her lips. So, as she repeats her husband Dani’s (Pau Durà’s) words, we feel them become as dust, or meal, in her mouth :

All this is non-negotiable

I must make… an effort


Compared with Rust and Bone (2012), another (but very different) film about what happens after a trauma (to Marion Cotillard as Stéphanie), it is a bourgeois life in which Geni is living (typified by the flat, and its easy interiors and choice in art). However, in terms of what she is experiencing, looking interestedly at advertising in the surgery for a medication that seems to be an anti-depressant (Happiness is in the little things), her problems seem out of place and unwelcome there (and they are arguably greater than those of Stéphanie) :

Geni’s world / family seems to have a work ethic that does not begin to understand duvet days, and it is one whose pressures, although not always explicit, are inescapable. The assumption, which is everyone’s starting-point (both for themselves and on the others’ behalf), is that you can get back what you had. Which includes, as we hear when Geni’s more similar sister suggests a thoughtful, individual exercise at New Year (to round off the previous twelve months for everyone), not only that her father expects a return on the therapy that he has bought for Geni's sister, but also, in how the exercise gets subverted, greater disrespect for what therapy says, does and is for.

You do not need to have a notion of the recovery model in UK mental health to notice the number of times people say to Geni that 'You used to...’, and, at such times, there is something about Navas’ mouth that registers a barely visible disquiet. (At other times, we see her disassociate from that with which she simply cannot cope.) Navas is on screen almost without a break, and looking properly at what her look says pays dividends for feeling the richness and depth of how the film explores this situation.

In the event, when Geni is trying to follow up a lead for a job via someone known to her other sister (whom everyone must think of as mature and responsible), we and she have suddenly have Mariana, waving and laughing at Geni in the interview. Afterwards, though, Geni closes down all of Mariana’s (Valeria Bertuccelli’s) suggestions for renewing contact, but it is about feelings from the past that the rest of the film’s short internal timescale addresses.

This is a powerful film, sharply edited and clearly shot. It has a different trajectory and premise from the highly honest Chilean film Gloria (2013), but it, too, shows a person looking for what matters, and causing us to admire – but also fear for – her.


This is just one of six Catalan films (Camera Catalonia) that can be seen at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (@camfilmfest / #CamFF) - Thursday 28 August to Sunday 7 September (both inclusive). Three others are reviewed here, and What is Catalan cinema ? is also about the Catalan strand at the Festivals in 2012 and 2013...



Note on screenings :

NB The allocation of films between the three screens at Festival Central can always change (as can, if one is coming from a distance for a specific film, the programme as a whole) : if the audience for a film scheduled for Screen 3 (the smallest screen, around half the capacity of the largest, Screen 1) proves greater than expected, it may end up being swapped, so there could be a change in the exact time of the screening, too

In the programme (for which that is a link to the where the PDF file can be downloaded - printed copies are available at Festival Central and all good local outlets), some slots are also marked 'TBC', and popular screenings may be repeated : announcements are on Cambridge Film Festival 2014's (@camfilmfest's) web-site (please see link, above), as they are of alterations to the programme or the allocation between screens


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

The Catalan strand 2014 : Parts I and II

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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19 August (updated 20 August, 4 September)

The author of What is Catalan cinema ?, otherwise known as @THEAGENTAPSLEY (reviewer of films, amongst other things), is now at liberty to share four links to reviews of films in the Catalan strand of this year's Cambridge Film Festival (@CamFilmFest), or #CamFF 2014 - please find below !


But, if you require less detail, read these paragraphs, for there is a quiet, gentle theme that meanders through all of these films, in their different ways :

* A woman who nearly died in a road-traffic accident last year (We All Want What's Best For Her (Tots volem el millor per a ella)

* Some amateur actors who have been invited to act together the main roles of Othello in a film (Otel.lo)

* A restaurant on which unrelated people converge for what is – for reasons not truly given – its last evening (Tasting Menu (Menú degustació)), and


* A teenage male devotes his energies to chess, but does his behaviour indicate that he needs a psychological intervention - and can one reach him through chess... ? (Son of Cain (Fill de Caín))

Respectively, she is married, they are a couple, there are at least three couples, and, lastly, we have 'a nuclear family', but the theme is only incidental to the couples, which is how the past informs where we are – and, more importantly, what we expect from the present.

For good or ill, the connections, decisions, mistakes and suspicions of the past come into view, or are brought there, and shape the immediate connections, decisions, mistakes and suspicions…


Othello (Otel.lo) (2012)

Showing as follows :

Only one screening presently scheduled (please see below), at 1.00 p.m. (Screen 2) on Sunday 7 September

Tasting Menu (Menú degustació) (2013)

Showing as follows :

On Wednesday 3 September only at Festival Central (please see next paragraph) and for general admission only at 9.00 p.m. (Screen 2), because the screening at 11.00 a.m. (Screen 3) that day is a Big Scream screening* - a sold-out screening on the night

Also screening (as are some other Festival films) at Abbeygate Cinema, 4 Hatter Street, Bury St Edmunds IP33 1NZ (abbeygatecinema.co.uk) : Tuesday 2 September at 6.45 p.m.

We All Want What's Best For Her (Tots volem el millor per a ella) (2013)

Showing as follows :

On Thursday 4 September at 6.15 p.m. (Screen 1), and on Friday 5 September at 1.00 p.m. (Screen 1)


Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013)

Showing as follows :

On Friday 5 September at 7.50 p.m. (Screen 2)


Two more reviews to come... However, at least one (that of Fiction (Ficcion)) will not be until after the screening - on Saturday 6 September at 2.30 p.m. (Screen 3) - so you might like to read what TAKE ONE's (the Festival's in-house publication's) Rebecca Naughten has to say



Notes on screenings

NB The allocation of films between the three screens at Festival Central can always change (as can, if one is coming from a distance for a specific film, the programme as a whole) : if the audience for a film scheduled for Screen 3 (the smallest screen, around half the capacity of the largest, Screen 1) proves greater than expected, it may end up being swapped, so there could be a change in the exact time of the screening, too

In the programme (for which that is a link to the where the PDF file can be downloaded - printed copies are available at Festival Central and all good local outlets), some slots are also marked 'TBC', and popular screenings may be repeated : announcements are on Cambridge Film Festival 2014's (@camfilmfest's) web-site (please see link, above), as they are of alterations to the programme or the allocation between screens


End-notes

* The Arts Picturehouse's club exclusively for parents / carers accompanied by babies under one year old.


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

Gustav Metzger, Damien Hirst, and being a butcher

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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18 August

The cinematic reference is : White Heat – or White Star ?

BelstonNight Works booked @THEAGENTAPSLEY as a delegate to White Heat, the Symposium on Gustav Metzger. See you ? http://t.co/eOgB1wdfyn
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 10, 2014

At the end of it all, whatever the merits of Kettle’s Yard’s (@kettlesyard) Gustav Metzger retrospective Lift Off ! in Cambridge (which runs until 31 August 2014), is one just left with ideas of responsibility and redundancy, and with exhibits that could be reliably reproduced by anyone following the instructions / principles involved ?

Called in briefly at @kettlesyard for some of Gustav Metzger's traces of oscillating fibres, liquid crystal projections and a steam bubble !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 10, 2014

One wanted it to amount to more than The Science Museum in a gallery, but the overlap is really less than when, in his quest for understanding, Peter Diggs goes to look at Klein bottles in Amaryllis Night and Day (a novel by Russell Hoban*), and ends up meeting both the man who made them, and, much more, what they signify to him and his situation. Or, in another Hoban novel* (Angelica Lost and Found), an imaginary creature in the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto learns how, by travelling to a space of contradictory appearance, to become real and occupy human form – only to be haunted by art, and visit others with it, that unnervingly revisits that space.

Hoban (who died at 86 in December 2011) was full of life, and with an irrepressible interest in science and technology (as this writer touched upon in Russell Hoban at 80, a festschrift [http://hoban2005.co.uk/] from February 2005), so he could just as easily conceive of Jocasta as the organic computer Pythia, and invent interstellar voyaging by means of flickerdrive, which is based on the idea of what happens in all the spaces caused by the refresh-rate of the retinal image. This feels like a real meeting, a fusion of art and science.

The show at @kettlesyard is, as always free, and comprises : http://t.co/JOMKVXrcjx Plus, on site, one can usually enter Jim Ede's house
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) July 10, 2014

In comparison, Metzger – not always easy to understand when he speaks nowadays – may have been talking about meeting The Who, how they wanted to do a benefit gig for his colleagues and him (but their management refused), and ending up doing a liquid-crystal light-show for a gig of theirs at The Roundhouse. However, it was in some obscure context, never curatorially explained, of having to be at The Central Criminal Court (The Old Bailey), and there was never any suggestion here of cross-fertilization between art and science – he did his things, they did theirs (almost a transaction**)

Kettle's Yard in Cambridge pic.twitter.com/mlmyLqqhDh
— Ian Thompson (@ianthompson) August 24, 2014

A note on so-called auto-creative art :

Put a primed canvas on an easel, line up a prepared palette and a selection of graphite, pencils, rags, brushes, solvents, water-jars, lock the room, and wait to see what happens…

Or set a process off (it could be a computer, generating fractal- diagrams, or liquid crystals that are being heated on a slide in front of a projector), and see what happens.

Both outcomes are predictable within certain limits, i.e. that the canvas remains as it is, or another piece that looks like a fractal-diagram is generated and the heated crystals distort into patterns that are projected, but there is no auto-creation. If there were, the canvas would be painted on, and one would not know what to expect of the program or the set-up with the crystals :

The exact patterns generated are not known beforehand, but they have not caused the process that gave rise to them (even if they did, via a feedback loop, that loop’s effect would have been envisaged and pre-ordained).


The show Lift Off ! is stochastic processes and applied physics, and, although some of the exposures of fibres moved around on photographic paper may be striking, it is essentially an aleatory method that can be repeated over and over, and one could fill the room with the things, but they largely resist having an artistic content. Dancing Tubes could just as well belong in a Health and Safety Commission training video about the dangers of releasing compressed air without controls, and any lab could set it up.

The scientific method says that an experiment should be capable of being reproduced, and these works can be by just having the notion of what is to be achieved and setting it up, which may even produce refinements or improvements. The idea seems temptingly close to the approach of Damien Hirst (except that he was the one who did first cut – or have cut – in half a formaldehyde-treated cow (and a calf)) and exhibit it (them) as art), and yet so far away, with his being across the line in art.

Not indisputably so, though, with works displaying concepts such as What Goes Up Must Come Down (1994)*** and Loving in a World of Desire (1996) (using the same essential technology), or, perhaps, the less-skilled spin paintings) but in terms of a body of work that is recognized as artistic. The Plexiglass, table-tennis ball and hair-dryer of the former differ from similar museum displays of the principle of keeping a ball in the air by explicitly being – or appearing to be – ready-made items, such that the hair-dryer coincidentally has the right amount of upthrust to keep the ball in motion (though its current may, of course, have been safely adapated to achieve this effect, by trial and error with resistors or the like, behind the scenes).

Hirst’s huge ashtray Crematorium (1996) (not his only repository for cigarette-butts), Roni Horn’s huge glass pieces (opaque, red, black, and one at least resembling an ashtray ?), take the artist into the hands of a manufacturer who will produce what the artist seeks, but the vision makes it more than any old order from a glassworks. There is even more artistry in generating a fractal diagram and giving it a colour-scheme than in most of these exhibits of Metzger’s :

Though some would sniff at fractals as art, but not hesitate to embrace Duchamp’s Fountain [http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573] (Tate Modern (@Tate) exhibits a replica in 1964) – there, the mistake is as to the real work of the piece, which was Duchamp’s gall and iconoclasm in submitting it to an exhibition at The Society of Independent Artists, not the urinal itself. A Museum of Curiosities seems a better place for what Metzger gives us, alongside automata, counting-engines, and elaborate orreries.

He created, after all, a significant art show in and using materials found around a brand new laboratory in Swansea : if that influenced anybody, then we need to know how and why, and that should be at the heart of curation. Instead, the rather unhelpful assumption is of an unannounced starting-point, and hence of shutting off discussion, to the effect that any distinction between art and science is arbitrary : yet the fact is that anything that can be depicted as a continuum has no point where something ceases and another begins does not render it meaningless to ask the question*** and to set limits (e.g. abortion and the medico-legal test of how many weeks old a foetus is).

However, the one-day conference Art, science and social responsibility in 1960s’ Britain largely took tangents from Metzger, and shied off, much of the time, from stating clearly why we should care about him now, whatever his approach was 50+ years ago, and not just forget about it as a by-way : Metzger, sadly in a wheel-chair, was ‘in the room’ literally (the aptly Zen Lecture Theatre 0), but he was rarely the topic.


A brief summary report on the conference – to come…

The best part of @kettlesyard's Gustav Metzger conference White Heat ? Tangentially, it was getting to chat to Robert M. Young at lunch.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 5, 2014

As to auto-destructive art, the Conference seemed to have assumed that what Metzger did in 1960 with a large pane of glass, a larger piece of nylon stretched across it and applying hydrochloric acid that neither the set-up, not the outcome needed to be described : the Tate (@Tate) has has done it for us.

Again, it is to be noted that the description of auto-destruction is simply wrong : the nylon clearly did not destroy itself, Metzger destroyed it by painting acid on it, otherwise, if I kill someone with a gun, I could call it as meaningfully self-shooting syndrome.


End-notes

* Respectively, Bloomsbury, London, 2001 and 2010.

** The allusion is to the play Shopping and Fucking by Mark Ravenhill.

*** One of Zeno’s paradoxes starts with a grain of millet, and adds one, and then another : when does it become a pile ? Blurring boundaries because of the in-between ground is as much a fallacy as the law of the excluded middle (where anything that is not X must be Y, whereas it could be Z, in that middle ground), and it ignores the obvious fact that two grains are not a pile, 20,000 grains are. A chemistry experiment is not a piece of art, and a work by Watteau is not science.




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

PS, Mr Linklater

This is an after-thought to a review of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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18 August

This is an after-thought to a review of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood (2014)

The things remembered from (or known about) from childhood, which potentially made watching Boyhood (2014) seem like quite likely to be a self-revelatory experience, but which just are not there in your rather golden, cleaned-up States…


Thinking of, in an unordered list :

* Drug use amongst the earlier years when we follow Mason

* Jerking-off competitions

* Anything harder, pornographically, than models in a lingerie catalogue (although there is a nervous moment when some Internet footage was about to be watched)

* Peeing up the wall of the urinal (another form of competition)

* Bullying for being ‘a swot’ (sc. too academic)

* Sweat / body odour

* Peers showing each other their nascent pubic hair (as a film actor did whom I know)

* Guns and playing soldier

* Getting hurt in games (bruises, cuts, etc.)

* Childhood illnesses / vomiting

* Sneaking some of the parents’ booze

* Exploring each other sexually / one’s sexual organs (doctors and nurses), including siblings

* Embarrassment about being seen naked

* Facial hair and what to do with it – likewise coping with voice dropping

* Brighter kids getting their work copied / doing homework

* Awkward / embarrassment, and unwanted erections (hard-ons)

* Chemistry lessons – stealing magnesium ribbon to burn, and child tendencies to delinquency / immorality

* Fussy eating

* Masturbation / wet dreams / semen

* Being asked to perform in front of one’s parents friends (reading / singing)

* Tantrums – getting tired and stroppy

* Not just graffiti in a tunnel, but mucking around with paint at home

* Breaking things and pretending not to know about it

* Feeling awkward about one’s feelings / self-image / appearance

* Crushes on teachers, etc., etc.


Get the point, Mr Linklater ? Now, you didn’t have to cram all of these in, but the vast majority of them are not even suggested in this sunshiny world* – did you, for example, ever see Herr Haneke’s film The White Ribbon (2009) ?



End-notes

* Was the film shot with a bright filter, or has it been colour matched in that way ?



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

Almost Monty Python (Almost) Live

This is a review of Monty Python (Almost) Live

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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17 August

This is a review of Monty Python (Almost) Live

As Spamalot may have been (the writer does not know), another Eric-Idle-engineered piece, centred on big musical numbers (which, in the case of Monty Python (Almost) Live, were very impressive - with a talented cast of singer / dancers), this show was, for all that it offered, uneven.

No doubt some of the unevenness could have been levelled out by the editing of the Live show to be (Almost) Live, which seemed a marked advantage (as it does for, say, NT Live broadcasts, though others see these things differently).

From the start, we had the dubious benefit of a kangaroo (with an obviously human face) on stage, which eventually found its place later on (please see below). In the meantime, its locomotive human bobbed around, in an irritatingly jolly fashion, which seemed to sound the inappropriate note that the show was going to be cuddly, which, in places, it flatly contradicted, e.g. with the penis, vagina, arse* group of songs (can one seriously write that in a review ? yes, as this is Python…)
It was the same Idle with Michelangelo's Last Supper, where John Cleese was too strong, as when he is allowed to be (such as with that whack with the mammoth fish on the edge of the quay, The Fish-Slapping Dance, and one of Cleese or Idle robbed Idle of the strength of the lines about the 28 disciples, and the 3 Christs – along with Idle’s outclassed cheery quattordicicento painter guise, they plummeted, unable to compete with Cleese, as The Pope, blithely saying fucking.

In this early part of the show, some of the humour – in what seemed to be new material – just did not work, and, by definition, was not the best of Python (e.g. the tame misunderstanding of Oz Arena for the O2 Arena, dutifully delivered by Michael Palin), as one might expect the show to aim to be. ‘Every sperm is sacred’ (from The Meaning of Life (1983)) was a huge production number, with a great dance routine, although not quite to rival the energy and scope of the film, and it also had new lyrics (in places). Another big set-piece, ‘I like Chinese’, was similarly impressive, but – if it was Python – taxed this writer’s familiarity. It started seeming marginally racially offensive, only to turn out not to be*.
Wherever the philosophers’ song came from (with the Bruces as philosophy professors**), Palin seemed, as observed, the only one who had obviously learnt his lines (such as they were) : Eddie Izzard was probably brought on stage at this part, but he just seemed star struck, and contributed nothing other than his awe. Linked with footage of the German and Greek Philosophers’ Football-Match, and sensationally going back to the match as Socrates scores in the final seconds, it worked well as a combination, because of the sheer shared incongruity : when parts of original Python shows were given oxygen to thrive by a suitable setting, both were enhanced.

A re-enactment of the Crunchy Frog Sketch at the premises of the Whizzo Chocolate company had the visually and aurally coarse element of Terry Gilliam, as Superintendent Parrot, farting and retching, as his senior officer (Cleese as Inspector Praline) recalled what he had eaten from the assortment. By the time that sweetmeats such as the crunchy frog were reached, Terry Jones was reading impassively from the card, and, cracking up with Cleese, swallowed and lost losing the impact of Ah - now, that's our speciality (Spring Surprise) - covered with darkest creamy chocolate. When you pop it in your mouth steel bolts spring out and plunge straight through both cheeks.

Up until the interval, the show had been pretty good, and the choice of archive Python had been well made : The Fish-Slapping Dance is always a killer (however many times one has seen it), because of Cleese’s all-too-adept bludgeoning, and included amongst Gilliam’s wizardry were the teasingly postponed / interposed full frontal nudity, the pram that swallows people, and the Rodin ocarina.

However, one strange note sounded was by a caption flashed up that said ‘Munich 1972’ – the year of the Olympic massacre, most notably ?

* * * * *

Palin in Blackmail was smarmy, but the sketch did not have the bite and impetus of that in the t.v. series, and just felt a bit weak. Another piece of shrapnel on stage was what looked like Mike Meyers : no doubt that he was pleased to be there, but he had nothing to do, and added nothing.

Great moments of the second half (as far as they can be recalled) were :

* The Exploding Blue Danube, which (although it probably was not as clever as it looked) was very entertaining

* The Spanish Inquisition, kept together, again, by Palin – with his not inestimable, dogmatically precise zealot prelate (to give the Pythons their full complement, lines on introduction, such as One on't cross beams gone owt askew on't treddle, had been given to members of the cast)

* Moving into Idle opening a fridge, and doing his pink-suited number, ‘The Universe song’ (alias ‘The Galaxy song’)

* One Professor (Brian Cox) being rammed by another (in Stephen Hawking) and accused of being pedantic (for correcting the detail of the preceding song)

* The Dead Parrot Sketch linked up with The Cheese Shop Sketch and finishing with Do you fancy coming back to my place ? (from a little t.v. moment when Cleese, as a Police Inspector, meets another Python in the street) : Palin and Cleese on top form, trying to make each other corpse with ad libs, but Palin getting the upper hand by recalling where they are and telling Cleese 'Your next line is...' - very funny, and in the spirit of Pythons' four re-enactments for Amnesty International (The Secret Policeman's Ball) between 1976 and 1981, although, perhaps notably, Idle was never involved in them***

* Inevitably, ending with a lively, shimmering version of ‘Always look on the bright side of life’


A good way of spending a couple of hours, and an encouragement to dig out that huge boxed set of the t.v. series – and Just the Words, the nicely curated scripts in two volumes (which has provided information of the episodes above)…


Hesitations:

* Just how much it was Idle’s patent show and with his songs, when it could have celebrated Python more widely, than promoting purchase of the films on the flier, by incorporating clips from them (or were their copyright limitations ?)

* Would everyone have known who Carol Cleveland was ? She may have substituted for the original Connie Booth to Palin’s lumberjack, but she was never introduced. Although she did an admirable few other turns, she had always been the token glamour in the t.v. series (when the pepperpots, etc. could not be suitable sirens), so it was a shame that the team did not put the record straight by officially acknowledging who she was.


Reference material :

Blackmail - Episode Eighteen (recorded 10/9/1970, transmitted 27/10/70)

The Bruces - Episode Twenty-Two (recorded 25/9/1970, transmitted 24/11/1970)

The Cheese Shop Sketch - Episode Thirty-Three (recorded 7/1/1972, transmitted 30/11/72)

The Crunchy Frog Sketch - Episode Six (recorded 5/11/1969, transmitted 23/11/1969)

The Dead Parrot Sketch - Episode Nine (recorded 7/12/1969, transmitted 14/12/1969)

Exploding Blue Danube - Episode Twenty-Six (recorded 16/10/70, transmitted 22/12/1970)

The Fish-Slapping Dance - Episode Twenty-Eight (recorded 28/1/1972, transmitted 26/10/72)

I’m a Lumberjack - (Episode Nine (recorded 7/12/1969, transmitted 14/12/1969)

The Philosophers’ Football-Match - From Monty Pythons Fliegender Zirkus (made for German t.v.)

The Spanish Inquisition - Episode Fifteen (recorded 2/7/1970, transmitted 22/9/1070)



End-notes

* Is that taken from The Meaning of Life (1983) and – as only Idle could – ‘updated’ ? (It was an irritation that the text of this, and of the philosophers’ song, were not kept in front of the camera for long enough – perhaps a last-minute bid to protect the innocent ?) If it was, as other pieces / songs were not straight renditions (unlike those that were – insofar as those performing them could manage it – meant to be straight renditions), but had been modernized (one was not always sure why) :

After all, I’m a Lumberjack is just as offensive to the trans audience as it has ever been, but no changes had been introduced to the sacred text (except the tease, in the preceding Lion-Tamer sketch, that Mr Anchovy really wants to be a Systems Analyst). Palin was jeered as ‘disgusting’ by one in the choir (uncelestial), whereas another song (‘I like Chinese’) was cute in pretending to be, but not actually being, racist. In fact, the interjection that followed the sketch on t.v., from Cleese voicing over a letter from Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong (Mrs), had said Many of my best friends are lumberjacks and only a few of them are transvestites


** Which was the only connection with The Bruces, an insignificant piece, made no more or less significant.
*** It is understood that only Jones and Cleese took some role (of whatever kind) in all four shows, with Palin registering three, Chapman two, and Gilliam one. Apart from a brief cameo in the 1989 show by Palin and Cleese, there has been no engagement with any later Amnesty shows.



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

Manhood and Hawke

This is a review of Boyhood (2014)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

17 August

This is a review of Boyhood (2014)

Boyhood (2014) at @CamPicturehouse, which some say is a one-trick pony - but how high will the pony kick, and would one watch again... ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 16, 2014

One does not watch such a film for breathtaking cinematographic insights (though there are some nice outdoor locations, not least at the very end), but for character development, set somewhere recognizably real : in its own terms, exploring Mason Evans, Snr (Ethan Hawke), through the story of Mason Evans, Jnr (Ellar Coltrane), it does not disappoint at all, and there are three moments where one has a lump in one’s throat at how a character is being appreciated by another.

That amongst significant moments of behaviour where people have lost their way, and got into blaming or being jealous of each other, which is the contrast in life. At the heart of all this, though – for all that it is talked about – it is not the most remarkable thing about the film that it was shot, for three or four days per year, over the course of twelve years, although it does allow one to see both Lorelei Linklater (his daughter as Mason’s sister Sam(antha)) and Coltrane age, and their faces and features mature. No, it is principally that of the closeness between father and son, and how the former allows the latter to see things from an older perspective.

At one moment, towards the end, younger Mason asks what the point of it all is, and receives the totally honest answer that no one knows and everyone is pretending. For those who have seen Sam Rockwell in The Way Way Back (2013), he is the humorous and intelligent father / mentor that we all identify as being enriching, and, at the best of times, there is that quality in Hawke’s remarkably penetrating acting.

So much so that one almost feels that Linklater has to introduce a distance, by pausing when Hawke meets Charlie Sexton (credited as Jimmy ?*) and they have a child, otherwise Hawke will steal the film.

Other things, such as the invidious position of a stepchild, are probably better addressed by Steve Carell in The Way Way Back than here by Linklater, but the point of it all is the same : that of holding one’s children firm when they need it so that they can have the confidence and belief that they deserve. Patricia Arquette’s* courage in taking her family out of an unsuitable situation (and the strength that her friend gives her) remind of a little 30-minute gem from Cambridge Film Festival 2013 (#CamFF), Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just Before Losing Everything) (2013)…

Compared with the more fly-away Hawke’s, Arquette’s character roots herself in responsibility, and feels the challenges of life in providing for Sam and Mason. These words could almost have been written for one scene :

She'll take the painting in the hallway
The one she did in Jr. High

Words : Matthew Charles Rollings / Doug Crider

Suzy Bogguss seems to have made this meditative song, ‘Letting Go’, her own, and it has an obvious resonance with the unsettling feeling of impermanence and of relentless change, which sometimes feels too much for Arquette as a mother. Where we leave Mason, we feel that he will make mistakes, but that he has kept a regard for his parents and their nurture, and we are content for him to take the course and not to witness it further.

Boyhood (2014) is by no means a one-trick pony, @CamPicturehouse - knowing the trick doesn't matter, and it could easily be watched again...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 17, 2014

Linklater’s desire to make this film with an ageing cast is not, except as a feature film, a new departure, because the well-known Granada Television series Up (which has been broadcast on ITV and the BBC) has covered 49 years in following fourteen British children since the age of seven (in 1964), whereas Mason is six when we first see the shot of him that is used in the film’s promotion. (He may also already have known that he would make a follow-up to Before Sunrise with the older Julie Delpy and, again, Hawke.)

Just two minor, minor things that do not work : when Arquette is remarried, and we cut to a side-shot of her Compliance Officer husband, his face is making the wrong expression for the serious subject that he is addressing, and then we cut back. That and the father-and-son exchange about other Star Wars films, which felt very placed and stilted.

But with Hawke duetting with the harmonizing Sexton (on Hawke’s own songs), and the other ways that music is organic to the feel, one can keep all the tracks in Inside Llewyn Davis (2013) – this is the soundtrack to buy.


Click here for a PS to Mr Linklater - some of the things that made actual boyhood so difficult, but which you will find no mention of in this film






End-notes

* IMDb, as it sometimes can, lets down massively by not providing the names of the characters : it lists Arquette as ‘Mom’ !


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

@Film4's 100 Must-See Movies of the 21st Century - analysed (as a list)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

15 August

What is a must-see film ?


Film4.com (@Film4) has recently compiled a list of what it calls 100 Must-See Movies of the 21st Century*

As we assemble our fall schedule, get your cinema fix by debating this @Film4 list of the century's best films. http://t.co/Zj7aD4t2Eo
— Gregory Film Culture (@GregoryFilm) August 6, 2014

However, can it really be right that fourteen of them (which, after all, is around 1 in 7) were released in 2011 alone ? And, when some critics have hailed 2014 as an exceptionally strong year for cinema, is it justified that only Boyhood (2014) qualifies for inclusion ?

A survey last year, by Time Out Film (@TimeOutFilm), of The 100 best romantic movies was much more candid about how the selection had been carried out, which allowed your correspondent to analyse just how many (sc. how few) votes were needed for a film to appear in the top 10, let alone in the top 100 at all.

Analysis showed that, out of 101 respondents (from six categories), only 19 voted for Annie Hall (1977), but that voting still sufficed to secure it 4th place (not that it is not one of Woody Allen’s best films, of course). Much of the list’s pretence to authority (e.g. in the title of the list) then seemed to fall away ?



So how does this top 100 fare…

In decreasing order, starting with the highest-ranking year, one can see below, in every year since the turn of the century*, how many ‘top films’ – according to this list – were released (figures in bold face), with a cumulative percentage

Where the total number of films that has been selected in each year is equal, the number of films that featured in the top 50 (which is in parenthesis) has been used to determine the order of priority (otherwise they are left in date-order)



2011 – 14 (7) 14%

2013 – 12 (5) 26%

2001 – 9 (5) 35%

2000 – 8 (5) 43%

2004 – 7 (5) 50%

2002 – 7 (4) 57%

2009 – 7 (4) 64%

2003 – 7 (2) 71%

2008 – 7 (2) 78%

2005 – 5 (3) 83%

2006 – 5 (1) 88%

2007 – 4 (4) 92%

2010 – 4 (2) 96%

2012 – 3 (0) 99%

2014 – 1 (1) 100%



One can see quite clearly that 26% of films (slightly more than 1 in 4) were chosen from just two years (i.e. 2011 and 2013), and 50% from just five years (adding in 2000, 2001 and 2004). Is this why people have said that 2014 is a significant year for film, although there is only one film from this year – that they meant the year when films were in cinemas ?

Only 2010 significantly moves position, from 12th to equal 6th, on the basis of using the score for the top 50 instead (otherwise 2012 and 2014 swap places).


Top 20 by country (accounting for 12 countries), with a cumulative percentage

USA, as the country with the most films produced, is listed first, and, as it was the country of production of the top-listed film, 1 is given as the highest position scored (in parenthesis)

Where, for example, a film was a UK / US production (as with Gravity (2013), each country has been awarded one-half

Where the number of films is equal (1 or ½), the ordering is by the position in the list of the highest-ranked film (given by a figure in parenthesis)



Directors are noted who have two films in the top 100 (with the name, date and position of the films) : only Richard Linklater and Michael Haneke have two in the top 20

Joel and Ethan Coen are the only directors with two films in the list not to have one place in the top 20 (No Country For Old Men (2007) (at 25) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001) (at 69))

If the 300-film list had not been curtailed, how many more pairs (or trios) of directors might there have been... ?



United States - 8½ (1) 42.5%
3 : Paul Thomas Anderson, There Will Be Blood (2007)
[also 45 : Punch-Drunk Love (2002)]

5 : Richard Linklater, Boyhood (2014)
[also 17 : Before Sunset (2004)]

10 : David Fincher, Zodiac (2007)
[also 30 : The Social Network (2010)]

United Kingdom - 1½ (4) 50%
4 : Jonathan Glazer, Under the Skin (2013)
[also 41 : Sexy Beast (2000)]


France - 1½ (8) 57.5%
14 : Michael Haneke, Hidden (Caché) (2005)


Taiwan - 1 (2) 62.5%

China - 1 (6) 67.5%

Hungary - 1 (7) 72.5%

Japan - 1 (11) 77.5%

Spain - 1 (15) 82.5%

Germany - 1 (16) 87.5%
16 : Michael Haneke, The White Ribbon (2009)

Greece - 1 (18) 92.5%

Iran - 1 (19) 97.5%


Belgium - ½ (8) 100%



It has become clear that, when the introduction to the list says that it is ‘Drawn from 29 countries around the world’, although Mexico and Spain, which were co-producing countries of Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), could have added two to the total of 29 countries (but only one film), this has not been done in the list (as one establishes by having added all of the totals (below))



The rest of the top 50 (21 to 50) by country (which adds 10 countries, to make 22)


United States - 8½ (23)


France - 5 (28)


United Kingdom - 4½ (39)


Sweden - 2 (26)


Romania - 1 (22)

South Korea - 1 (24)

Thailand - 1 (27)

Russia - 1 (29)

Turkey - 1 (33)

Senegal - 1 (37)

Germany - 1 (47)

Australia - 1 (48)

Japan - 1 (49)


Mexico - ½ (21)

Spain - ½ (21)




Adding these totals gives the Top 50, together with a cumulative total


As above, where the number of films is equal (1 or ½), the ordering is by the position in the list of the highest-ranked film (given by a figure in parenthesis)


United States - 17 (1) 34%


France - 6½ (8) 47%


United Kingdom - 6 (4) 59%



Germany - 2 (16) 63%

Japan - 2 (11) 67%

Sweden - 2 (26) 71%


Spain - 1½ (15) 74%


Taiwan - 1 (2) 76%

China - 1 (6) 78%

Hungary - 1 (7) 80%

Greece - 1 (18) 82%

Iran - 1 (19) 84%

Romania - 1 (22) 86%

South Korea - 1 (24) 88%

Thailand - 1 (27) 90%

Russia - 1 (29) 92%

Turkey - 1 (33) 94%

Senegal - 1 (37) 96%

Australia - 1 (48) 98%


Belgium - ½ (8) 99%

Mexico - ½ (21) 100%



The cumulative total shows that the United States, the United Kingdom and France alone account for 59% of the top 50, with 41% (as calculated) spread between, and adding four further countries accounts for nearly 75% of the listing for 1–50

NB As co-producing countries, Belgium and Mexico would not have been counted by Film4 on this part of the list, nor, in the second part, would Ireland, South Africa or New Zealand (even though that entry is for three films)



The remainder of the top 100 (51 to 100) by country, with cumulative percentage


As before, where the number of films is equal (1 or ½), the ordering is by the position in the list of the highest-ranked film (given by a figure in parenthesis)


United States - 23 (53) 46%


United Kingdom - 16½ (54) 79%


Canada - 2 (56) 83%


Brazil - 1 (51) 85%

Italy - 1 (52) 87%

Argentina - 1 (61) 89%

Japan - 1 (71) 91%

South Korea - 1 (76) 93%

Denmark - 1 (94) 95%

France - 1 (98) 97%


New Zealand - ½ (53) 98%

South Africa - ½ (90) 99%

Ireland - ½ (95) 100%


The top three countries (USA, UK and Canada) account for 83% of the films in positions 51 to 100, and only ten other countries are accounted for in this part of the list



Nearly last, the full list (by adding the last two lists), with cumulative percentage


United States - 40 (1) 40%

United Kingdom - 22½ (4) 62.5%

France - 7½ (8) 70%

Japan - 3 (11) 73%


Germany - 2 (16) 75%

South Korea - 2 (24) 77%

Sweden - 2 (26) 79%

Canada - 2 (56) 81%


Spain - 1½ (15) 82.5%


Taiwan - 1 (2) 83.5%

China - 1 (6) 84.5%

Hungary - 1 (7) 85.5%

Greece - 1 (18) 86.5%

Iran - 1 (19) 87.5%

Romania - 1 (22) 88.5%

Thailand - 1 (27) 89.5%

Russia - 1 (29) 90.5%

Turkey - 1 (33) 91.5%

Senegal - 1 (37) 92.5%

Australia - 1 (48) 93.5%

Brazil - 1 (51) 94.5%

Italy - 1 (52) 95.5%

Argentina - 1 (61) 96.5%

Denmark - 1 (94) 97.5%


Belgium - ½ (8) 98%

Mexico - ½ (21) 98.5%

New Zealand - ½ (53) 99%

South Africa - ½ (90) 99.5%

Ireland - ½ (95) 100%



Where the single-country entries appear

The final study explores where the 30% (or fewer) of films that are not from the main countries represented come from : the listing above shows that there are sudden little runs, such as 48 / 51 / 52, 18 / 19 / 22 and 6 / 7 / 8 (that one includes where France’s top-rating film appears), where a country’s single film appears – other decades are dominated by the States and the United Kingdom’s productions, as listed below (with the number, in bold, of such films, and the films from other countries given, in italic and within square brackets, by placing)


0 – 10 6 : [2 / 6 / 7 / 8]

11 – 20 4 : [11 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 18 / 19]

21 – 30 3 : [21 / 22 / 24 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29]

31 – 40 4 : [31 / 33 / 34 / 35 / 36 / 37]

41 – 50 6 : [44 / 47 / 48 / 49]


51 – 60 6½ : [51 / 52 / 53 (with United States) / 56]

61 – 70 9 : [61]

71 – 80 8 : [71 / 76]

81 – 90 9½ : [90 (with United States)]

91 – 100 7½ : [95 (with United Kingdom) / 97 / 98]



Looked at quickly, there appear to be runs of films not from the United States or the United Kingdom within the Top 10, and the fifth decade (from 41 to 50), and those decades have more films that are not from those countries

After the sixth decade (which is similar), a pattern sets in of almost all films being from the United Kingdom or the States. e.g. an almost uninterrupted run from 57 (in the sixth decade) through the next two decades, 71 to 80 and 81 to 90, to 94 : seemingly, only 4 non-US, non-UK ‘must-see’ films in a run of 39 films

We must pass it over to others to calculate what that might signify by way of selectivity…



End-notes

* Even it was actually on 1 January 2001, because 2000 was the last year of the twentieth century...


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Raskolnikov sojourns in Shanghai

This is a review that couples The Lady from Shanghai (1948) with
Norte, the End of History (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

10 August

This is a review that couples The Lady from Shanghai (1948) with
Norte, the End of History (Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan) (2013)

* Contains spoilers *

As soon as someone dubs a film 'a slow-burner', patience is signalled : with Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, the film's inner beauty suffices.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 8, 2014

Compared with Norte, the End of History (Norte, hangganan ng kasaysayan) (2013), ‘slow burning’ is not a phrase by which one could still describe The Lady from Shanghai (1948)*. Certainly not as to overall plot or pace, though it does fall into three distinct parts of unequal length (set-up, court-scene, and symbolic hall of mirrors), the second of which is established by the purposeful, if leisurely, unfolding of the first – hence there is a smouldering sense, as if of a fuse.

A fuse implies (such is its purpose, although it may go out) that there will be a detonation, an explosion, which is delivered by the events that close on Michael (Mike) O’Hara at the end of the first part. This is the moment that we were (being temptingly) kept waiting to get back to, after what Mike (director and co-writer Orson Welles himself) told us at the opening, when a darkly lit craft had been coming in under the Golden Gate Bridge (in a film that plays with light and dark, not just in clothes).

Arguably, Norte never does more than burn through at a deliberately steady and slow rate, and, towards the end, balances fairly cowardly actions of restitution (because they risk nothing, even if they are done out of seeming guilt), with those that seem to make past actors guilty as a basis for wreaking vengeance on them (the equivalent of Fabian's earlier acts).

Style and embellishments apart, Norte, the End of History (2013) is a retelling of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, mashed up with Camus.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 7, 2014

Someone may very well behave in this way, but, until this point, the screenplay retains enough of the story of Crime and Punishment, complete with its unsympathetic and grasping money-lender, to tease us into believing that it wishes to engage with re-telling Dostoveksy’s novel. Yet, forgetting that the figure of Porphyry (the detective in the novel) has been omitted, the closest person to Sonya that we see is when Fabian has gone to Manila, and reluctantly (because of the affiliations of his group of friends) has something to do with the church : alone as a way of understanding him, beyond his contentious arguments and justifications, his struggle to say what he has done in La Paz before a group at the church is one of the few expressive moments in the whole film that is not characterized by flatness of affect.

In its way, Michael O’Hara’s tripping brogue, sometimes more convincing than at other times (perhaps to remind us that all cinema is a piece of blarney, a tale being told), is staggeringly cool in its tone, however hot his driving feelings for Elsa Bannister (Welles’ wife, Rita Haywood) may be. With sangfroid, he has us credit (because we see it) that Elsa’s husband Arthur, a trial lawyer on crutches, searches him out as he works (on his novel !) at the hiring hall for seafaring men, and, after begging him to serve on his yacht for a cruise, gets so drunk that Mike and his friends have to see him home – whereupon it is a fait accompli that Mike join the crew.

Noir, which the first part of the film unquestionably is, embraces such plot-styles with relish, asking us to place trust in unreliable narratives and in devices and developments that are more Gothic than Gothic** – although we do go along with what we see, to further the purpose of following the film, we know simultaneously that the logic and reality of the dream is behind all of this, and that we are not to press too hard on its fabric. The veneer of veracity is never more than thin, and amounts to carrying off absurdity with poise (or, if you will, gravitas).

Who knows how much of what has already been outlined is owed to Sherwood King’s novel, but the film has all the trappings of a shaggy-dog story ! Coupled with Mike’s pithy poetic monologue about sharks off the coast of Brazil, the grotesquery of both Bannister and his unexpectedly arriving grinning business partner George Grisby (Glenn Anders), and the corny demeanour of both men towards Bannister’s wife, and one can see Mike smiling his way through an evening of drinks as he tells it.

Superficially, Norte simply asks us to place our trust in it for no other reason than it appears a naturalistic account (which it is not) of the consequences of an injustice – when Fabian’s lawyer friends eventually discuss, at his instigation, the merits of an appeal against JR’s conviction, it is clear that weight has been given to a confession (whose reasons for being made we know), and an incident that connects him with the victim, over such factors as JR having the alibi that, at the time, he was at the place where he was (somehow) found and arrested.

In Mike’s case, Arthur Bannister – although the screenplay has been quietly laughing throughout at what Bannister’s status as a celebrated criminal lawyer means – is presented to us as his only option for being acquitted, but the patent tomfoolery in the court-room suggests otherwise. (Meanwhile, no one stops to ask on whose typewriter Mike's ‘confession’ was supposed to have been written, not least in relation to the particular question - in relation to what we see happen (even if partly as set up by Grisby) - of when and where Mike could have had access to one to do so…)

-> A typed and signed document becomes of great importance, but when - and even where - could it have been prepared in real time ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 4, 2014

In common with The Lady, we have murder, a judicial process (though, in Norte, we do not see any more than its artefacts and officers), and the question of innocence (in a conviction for acts that we know that the accused did not commit). Forgetting the question of justice per se, or of redemption (for which there is precious little evidence – in either film), we have in Fabian (as in Mike) a man who is jaundiced with life, but open to idealism. At any rate, we see the philosophizing with which his friends and he seem to entertain themselves, but which he – although they end up in laughter – seems to hold more dear, and (without such intellectualization) there are aspects of this make-up to Mike.

Both directors (Welles was uncredited at the time), in their ways, challenge us to look at the artefacts that they have brought into existence by the process of film-making, and towards the end not insignificantly so, with Welles’ mirror-scene and with the scenes that Lav Diaz gives us of the wreckage of a seeming coach-crash, followed by JR’s supine body levitating.

Yet, before then, the Gothic nature of Welles’ edifice was saying this all along. In Norte, we see this in the artfulness with which elements such as recurrent Christmas-lights, dogs and chickens, vegetables on a cart, and (returning to Christmas) JR’s inexhaustible production of three-dimensional five-pointed stars (which he not only brings when allowed out on release, but which litter the crash-scene) have been assembled.

Where Diaz may make a minor departure from Welles here (if not a new one) is in his disjunctive use of audio…

Maybe, @theskinnymag @MovieEvangelist - but composing views of a small pig with that recorded sound did little for @THEAGENTAPSLEY... ->
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 8, 2014

-> Likewise seeing Eliza, Sarah and young Joacquinwalk along accompanied by some unholy unidentified din, @theskinnymag @MovieEvangelist.
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 8, 2014

That apart, with two palpable fictions, one has to ask what function there is in following the form of Fabian's interactions, or even Michael O'Hara's wayward narration (though he enchants us more) :


Welles and his writing team seem to be trying to be too clever for their own good, with incrimination that does not stand up to examination (except with the dazzle of mirrors and reflections, though not intellectual reflection), and Diaz, if he assumes that we know the Dostoyevsky (maybe he does not care), only seems to want to play with our expectations of what he will do with the novel's bare bones.

The restoration of The Lady from Shanghai (1947) looks good, with all that shade, and white and dark clothes, but does it hold together ->
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 4, 2014

End-notes

* Not to be mistaken for The Lady from Shanghai (1947), whose title-character seems to have kleptomania (and whose IMDb entry persists on coming out at the top of a search on Google, with no placing for Welles in the first ten hits)…

Oops, got one's Ladies from Shanghai confused - the Welles is the 1948 one, not the one about a kleptomaniac !
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) August 5, 2014

Apparently, not our film’s original title, but, before it, Take This Woman and Black Irish.

** Here, Mike making eyes at the lady in the carriage and then happening to rescue her : she has no reason to be in the carriage, even, for where it stops under his control is where her car is garaged. Or a screenwriter in debt, pulling off the road to stop his car being repossessed, and, discovering a slumbering villa, entering the place, as Prince Charming, that will enslave him (Sunset Boulevard (1950)).




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