Showing Soon: Oh What A Circus, Oh What A Show… April 30, 2010
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, Showing Soon , 3 commentsPark Circus Flex Their Home Entertainment Muscle…
Setting out with aims to be a leading international sales and distribution company, the Glasgow based Park Circus provide distributors, cinemas and film festivals with (and I quote):
“…knowledge, ideas, rights and prints to make screenings of classic films straightforward.
“We have a passion for what we do, invest in our film libraries and ensure our people’s knowledge is at the forefront of that for the industry. For our customers, we want our name to be synonymous with classic films.”
They’ve done a fine job thus far. Park Circus handle a number of extensive libraries, including the vast British holdings of ITV Studios Global Entertainment, they were one of the driving forces behind the superb Summer of British Film screenings a couple of years back, in fact screenings are organised at cinemas and festivals all over Europe.
In the past year or so, they’ve taken a courageous step and expanded into the frankly uncertain Home Entertainment market. Gently at first with a couple of documentaries (including Maximilian Schell’s Marlene) on DVD, then breaking into a trot with Henri-Georges Clouzot’s L’enfer (Inferno), Julien Temple’s Vigo - Passion For Life and Bille August’s Den goda viljan (The Best Intentions). That became something of a gallop when they gained the rights to a number of Charlie Chaplin films, licensed from French outfit mk2, that were previously part of the Warner catalogue.
On May 10 Park Circus release The Great Dictator (extras include: Chaplin Today: The Great Dictator documentary (26mins) • Behind The Scenes colour footage (25 mins) • Charlie The Barber (1919) deleted scene from Sunnyside (7 mins) • Photo Gallery • Chaplin Trailer Reel) and The Kid (Introduction by David Robinson (6 mins) • Chaplin Today: The Kid documentary (26 mins) • Scenes deleted for 1971 release (6 mins) • Recording the new score (1971) (2 mins) • Jackie Coogan dances (1920) (2 mins) • Nice and Friendly (1922) featuring Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Jackie Coogan and Chaplin (11 mins) • Photo Gallery • Chaplin Trailer Reel) not only on DVD but also in High Definition on Blu-ray.
You can see that those extra features replicate the previous Warner releases, and The Kid appears to be the same version cut for the 1971 theatrical re-release as before.
However, you ain’t seen nothing yet. In August, Park Circus adds two more from the Chaplin catalogue with the major difference that both The Gold Rush and Modern Times will be emerging in dual-format DVD/BD editions. The former includes both versions of The Gold Rush – the 1925 silent original, restored by Kevin Brownlow, and the digitally restored 1942 film (in 1942, Charles Chaplin took the 1925 original, composed and recorded a musical score for the film, added narration and re-edited). Other extras include: Introduction by David Robinson, Chaplin Today: Gold Rush, Chaplin Trailer Reel and Photo Gallery.
Modern Times includes the 1936 feature, which has now been restored in high definition, and the following extras: Chaplin Today: Modern Times, Introduction By David Robinson, Deleted Scenes, Chaplin Karaoke, Chaplin Trailer Reel, and Photo Gallery.
Incidentally, the rights to these Chaplin films have gone to Kinowelt in Germany, and to Criterion in the U.S. Though the Park Circus/Kinowelt releases should be identical (you can find screenshots from the Kinowelt Chaplin BDs at the redoubtable DVDBeaver), I’m sure Criterion will go to even further lengths in due course.
August also sees the release of another dual-format treat; Pandora And The Flying Dutchman which, thrillingly, also gets a theatrical re-release.
That press release in full:
A brand new theatrical trailer has been created for PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN ahead of the film’s re-release from Friday 14 May 2010.
Originally released in 1951, PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN is iconoclastic writer-producer-director Albert Lewin’s deliriously romantic and contemporary Technicolor™ visualisation of the often told legend of the sea, starring two of Hollywood’s most popular performers. Ava Gardner, in a thinly veiled portrait of herself, is Pandora, who falls hard for James Mason as Hendrik, a 17th-century seaman eternally condemned to sail the oceans.
The quintessential Lewin film, PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN was a production made independently of the Hollywood studios, and its original camera negative has been presumed lost for several decades.
Working from a nitrate separation positive and other sources, George Eastman House has supervised a painstaking 35mm restoration of the film, bringing back the rich palette of deep, sensuous colours utilised by renowned cinematographer Jack Cardiff.
Unavailable theatrically for many years and never available on Home Entertainment [in the UK], PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN will open from 14 May at BFI Southbank and Key Cities on brand new 35mm prints and in Digital Cinema format.
PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN has been restored by George Eastman House in cooperation with The Douris Corporation. Funding provided by The Film Foundation, the Rome Film Festival, and the Franco-American Cultural Fund, a partnership of the Directors Guild of America; Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique; the Motion Picture Association of America; and the Writers Guild of America, West.
Extras on this dual-format disc set appear to be a little thin, two separate theatrical trailers – the new, restored version and the original. But click here and you’ll see that new trailer and get a glimpse of the lush Technicolor wonders that await.
One of the most ravishing romances ever committed to celluloid, Lewin’s film is a genuine oddity: at once coolly literate, intensely passionate, and quite sensuously surreal. Transposing to 1930s Spain the old legend of a loner doomed to sail the seven seas forever unless he’s redeemed by a woman’s love, Lewin centres his film on the alluring Pandora (Ava Gardner), courted by a clutch of expats and locals but intrigued by the arrival of a mysterious yachtsman (James Mason) who drops anchor outside the village.
The film is as audaciously stylised and erudite as a Powell-Pressburger movie – unsurprising, perhaps, given the presence of actors like Sheila Sim and John Laurie, and the stunning Technicolor camerawork by Archers regular Jack Cardiff. His immaculately lit compositions, often evoking the delirious dreaminess of a Delvaux or De Chirico painting, are beautifully served by this recent restoration.
- Geoff Andrew
In September Park Circus release two more DVDs, Don McKellar’s Last Night, with McKellar himself, Sandra Oh, David Cronenberg, Roberta Maxwell and Robin Gammel, and David Hare’s unsettling Wetherby (Vanessa Redgrave, Ian Holm, Judi Dench and a memorable Tim McInnerny). Getting a dual-format release in September is Sean Mathias’ Bent (Lothaire Bluteau, Clive Owen, Brian Webber, Ian Mckellen, Mick Jagger).
Unlike the other DVD releases for this month, Bent features a number of good looking extras. The film has been restored in HD and the BD/DVD set contains: Theatrical Trailer, Interviews with Sean Mathias, Martin Sherman, Clive Owen, Lothaire Bluteau, Ian McKellen and Mick Jagger, On Set Footage and the Music Video for Streets of Berlin, performed by Mick Jagger.
From that standing start, Park Circus is quickly becoming a player in the Home Entertainment market. And with that library of film to delve into, hopefully both the will and the ability to secure the necessary rights, we can only imagine the riches that may come…
Showing Soon; BFI DVD and Blu-ray ‘Dual Format Editions’ March 11, 2010
Posted by John Hodson in : Showing Soon , 1 comment so farBFI to launch DVD and Blu-ray ‘Dual Format Editions’
The BFI has announced the introduction of ‘Dual Format Editions’, in which both the DVD and Blu-ray versions of selected releases – main features and extras alike – will sit side-by-side in what they say is a ‘competitively-priced single package’.
Dual Format Editions launch on April 26, at RRP £19.99, with two classics from the master of Japanese cinema, Yasujiro Ozu: Tokyo Story (1953) and Early Summer (1951). Over the next 12 months a total of 25 releases will be packaged in this way.
Sam Dunn, Head of BFI Video Publishing, said: “The idea behind Dual Format Editions is to provide film lovers with the ultimate win-win solution in a time of financial uncertainty and technological confusion. Not only does the price mean that the BFI’s quality Blu-rays are instantly more affordable, but the inclusion of both DVD and Blu-ray in a single package means that the DVD buyer is safeguarded against upgrades they may make in the future at no extra cost.”
Dunn opines that existing Blu-ray customers will benefit both from the lower price and from the inclusion of a DVD, which offers greater flexibility for viewing away from the home cinema environment.
Other titles lined up for the BFI Dual Format treatment this year are the Quay Brothers’ exquisite Institute Benjamenta (1995); Tony Garnett’s controversial Prostitute (1980); celebrated James Bond director Guy Hamilton’s long-lost The Party’s Over (1965) starring Oliver Reed; Gerry O’Hara’s swinging The Pleasure Girls (1965) starring Ian McShane and Klaus Kinski; a collection of acclaimed Hollywood director Tony Scott’s early films, including Loving Memory (1970); and Mike Sarne’s colourful Swinging Sixties masterpiece Joanna (1968).
Over the past 18 months the BFI has embraced the Blu-ray format and built a unique and exciting catalogue of High Definition releases. Providing a platform for both critically acclaimed and little-known films, the BFI Blu-ray range not only includes classics such as the beautifully presented Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Red Desert and Salò, but also showcases lesser-known, but equally arresting, works by unduly neglected filmmakers like Jeff Keen, Bill Douglas and Jane Arden.
Looking ahead, the BFI says it will continue to present a “rich and diverse selection of works on Blu-ray in order to provide viewers with the opportunity to experience and engage with film like never before”.
Square Eyes; Awesome Welles This Christmas… December 4, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Television, Film General, Square Eyes , 8 commentsCitizen Welles…
BBC FOUR IS TREATING US TO AN Orson Welles season over the Christmas holiday, featuring five of The Great Man’s best known films, a little screened BBC series from the ’50s, a welcome repeat of an excellent Arena ’80s documentary, and a brand new look at Welles’ post Hollywood career courtesy of leading ‘Wellesian’ Simon Callow.
A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.
Orson Welles
The schedule, as it stands now, is:
Friday, Dec.18, 19:30-19.45 - The Orson Welles Sketchbook; A series of talks by Orson Welles, illustrated by his own sketches. This is fascinating - the Beeb digging deep into its own archives for a series first aired in 1955 in six parts. I’ve never seen this so I’m grateful for this neat précis courtesy of IMDB: “This six-episode series, produced on a shoestring budget for the BBC, proves that above all else Orson Welles was a great storyteller. The camera cuts back and forth between close-ups of Welles and his charming sketches as he tells anecdotes ranging from the tragic (such as the case of a black U.S. serviceman who returned to the South after a tour in the Pacific, got into a dispute with a bus driver, and as a result was beaten blind by a policeman) to the hilarious (the varied reactions to the Mercury Theatre of the Air’s infamous radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds). This is as minimalist as television gets - just his drawings, his subtle facial expressions, and that wonderful, wry voice - and it’s riveting; a great showcase of Welles’s talent, wit, and charisma.”
What is a little odd is that, thus far, BBC4 only appear to be showing five of the six parts, if indeed that is what we’re getting. Detail so far is scant - let’s hope it isn’t just one or two of the ‘Sketchbooks’ repeated over.
Wednesday, Dec. 23, 00:10-00:25 - The Orson Welles Sketchbook; Series of talks by Orson Welles, illustrated by his own sketches.
Christmas Eve, Thursday, Dec. 24, 19.00-19:15 - The Orson Welles Sketchbook; Series of talks by Orson Welles, illustrated by his own sketches.
I have the terrible feeling that, because I am wearing a white beard and am sitting in the back of the theatre, you expect me to tell you the truth about something. These are the cheap seats, not Mount Sinai.
Orson Welles
Christmas Day, Friday, Dec. 25, 19.00-21:00 - Citizen Kane; Welles’ tour de force is weighed down by it consistently being voted the Best Film Ever Made, as if there could ever be such a thing. If you’re viewing for the first time, I can only beg you to view Orson Welles’s masterpiece as a piece of pure cinema and not an irrefutable icon that sits there 
begging to be shot at. Kane tells the story of newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane in a series of stylish and stylised flashbacks. A reporter is intrigued by the dying Kane’s last word - rosebud - and sets out to find a new angle on the life of one of the most powerful men in America. Nine Oscar nominations resulted in only one award for the wunderkind Welles - Best Screenplay - and was to serve as both a medal of honour and the millstone that would forever hang round his substantial neck. If you allow it, Welles astonishing, vibrant debut serves to dazzle still. Blindingly so.
Christmas Day, Friday, Dec. 25, 21:00-22:50 - Arena: The Orson Welles Story (Part 1); First of a fine two-part profile of Orson Welles, premiered on the BBC in 1982, looking at his life and career in theatre, radio and particularly film. With Jeanne Moreau, John Huston, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Wise, Charlton Heston, and a detailed interview with Welles himself. This part deals with his work up to Touch of Evil.
Christmas Day, Friday, Dec. 25, 22:50-24:00 - Journey Into Fear; A nightmarish tale of espionage and treachery in Istanbul, as an American arms dealer goes on the run from the Gestapo during the Second World War. Orson Welles, who acts the role of a corrupt chief of the Turkish secret police, wrote the script with co-star Joseph Cotten, and, while Mercury Theatre alumni Norman Foster is credited as director, it was Welles who oversaw the production, and also shared directorial responsibilities, dashing from the set of ‘Ambersons’ and back again. Adapted from a novel by Eric Ambler.
Boxing Day, Saturday, Dec. 26, 19.00-19:15 - The Orson Welles Sketchbook; Series of talks by Orson Welles, illustrated by his own sketches.
Boxing Day, Saturday, Dec. 26, 19.15-21:00 - The Third Man; Classic Graham Greene thriller set in a shattered and divided post-WW2 Vienna where American writer Holly Martin (Joseph Cotten) is invited by his friend Harry Lime (Welles), only to find that Lime is dead. However, all is not what it seems - a mysterious ‘third man’ was seen tending to the dying Lime. But who was he?
Carol Reed is the genius behind the camera on this occasion, Graham Greene wrote the screenplay, graciously allowing Welles to slip in the famous ‘cuckoo clock’ speech, obviously recognising a bloody good line when he hears it. Of all the films in this season, this is the one that bears the least imprimatur of the legendary producer, writer, director (and sherry salesman); but for all that, it’s one with which he is famously connected. It speaks volumes for Welles sheer star power, and Reed’s masterly handling of that star. Fabulously entertaining.
I do not suppose I shall be remembered for anything. But I don’t think about my work in those terms. It is just as vulgar to work for the sake of posterity as to work for the sake of money.
Orson Welles
Sunday, Dec. 27, 20.00-21:30 - The Magnificent Ambersons; Period drama telling the story of a wilful son of the proud Amberson family who destroys his mother’s hopes of marrying her first love - a recent widower. Refusing to move with the times, he not only causes his mother to suffer but also brings about his own financial ruin. Based on the novel by Booth Tarkington, and famously edited in Welles absence (he was in Rio filming a never to be completed documentary) by Robert Wise, who, at the studio’s insistence, hacked an hour or so from Orson’s original cut. What’s left is wonderful, what could have been is tantalisingly missing, though if they can find the missing scenes from Metropolis, who knows what may turn up one day? I’m an eternal optimist. Warners have been threatening to release the film in the US for a couple of years now in a special edition home video set, blaming a search for the ‘best elements’ on the delay. If it ends up in their benighted ‘Archive’, Orson will haunt the grounds of Burbank, rattling old film cans and intoning ‘pressed discs you bastaaaarrrrrds’ until those Brothers come to their senses.
Sunday, Dec. 27, 21.30-22:30 (repeated at 1.45am) - Orson Welles Over Europe; When Orson Welles went into self-imposed exile in Europe, he first found stardom with The Third Man and then immersed himself in challenging films, television, theatre and bullfighting. 
Simon Callow, author of two fantastic volumes of biography on Welles (we await the third), trails the complex actor-director in what promises to be an authoritative and entertaining new documentary. Ideal companion piece to the Arena documentary that follows.
Sunday, Dec. 27, 23.00-23:55 - Arena: The Orson Welles Story (Part 2); Second of the two-part profile of Orson Welles, looking at films including The Trial, Chimes at Midnight, The Immortal Story and F for Fake and discussing his many unfinished projects, including The Other Side of the Wind (which Peter Bogdanovich is currently completing on his one time house guest’s behalf) and Don Quixote.
Sunday, Dec. 27, 23.55-1:30 - The Stranger; In which a federal agent is assigned to track down an escaped Nazi war criminal, and eventually finds him in a small Connecticut village. Welles stars with Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young, yet another of his movies missing up to half an hour of footage (thought to have been destroyed) and said to be one of Orson’s least favourites - nevertheless, a very watchable noir-ish thriller.
Monday, Dec. 28, 1.30-1:45 - The Orson Welles Sketchbook; The last in the series of talks by Orson Welles, illustrated by his own sketches.
Watching Brief; Don’t Go ‘Round Tonight… October 30, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Horror, Film & DVD Reviews, British Film, Watching Brief , 2 commentsFor Hallowe’en, Watching Brief scorns the accusations of being a corny old hack, and serves up a smörgåsbord of seasonal horror film recommendations…
The Wolf Man (R1 DVD); Suspending belief in the existence of werewolves is small beer to imagining the towering Lon Chaney Jr. as the son of the diminutive Claude Rains, not to mention Universal’s all-purpose ‘mittel yurpean’ set of what is allegedly a picturesque Welsh village. We won’t even go into the variety of mid-Atlantic accents, the absence of anyone sounding remotely like Max Boyce replaced by a veritable Cook’s Tour of the English regions, or the fact that Larry Talbot’s 18 year stay in the Land of the Free has rubbed off all the traces of his ‘little Lord Fauntleboyo’ upbringing.
Nevertheless, this Curt Siodmak scripted telling of the werewolf legend makes Talbot’s lycanthrope into the ultimate tragic horror figure, and perhaps the most interesting of Universal’s unholy three; cursed to became half man, half wolf ‘when the wolfbane blooms and the moon is full and bright’, and to kill those that are nearest and dearest to him. Well, those nearest to him are certainly in big trouble.
The Wolf Man is a thinly veiled allegory on the beast that lurks within man; Talbot is hunky dory until he’s smitten by a gal, takes her into the woods (for a, ah, walk y’know) and gets bitten by Bela the gipsy (Bela Lugosi), who isn’t, puzzlingly, half man half wolf at the time, but all wolf. Thereafter, he’s in the grip of unimaginable forces, and driven to do heavens knows what to Gwen (Evelyn Ankers). Gasp.
There’s more than one way to skin a Hays Code…
Tightly written, and neatly directed by George Waggner, with iconic makeup by the real star of The Wolf Man, the great Jack Pierce. From this distance it’s also important to underline that the special effects added a real wow factor. The transfer from Universal, is excellent; they intend to do it all over again with a new special edition DVD set, they’re just waiting on the remake to get to our cinemas early next year. A toothsome prospect. I used to be a werewolf, but (altogether now), I’m alright nooooooow-ow-ow-ooowwwwww!
Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man (R1 DVD); Four years on from the incidents in The Wolf Man (only two years in filming terms), we discard the Great Big Book of Lycanthropic Legend, to bring poor, dead, hirsute Larry Talbot back to life. Open the casket, out with the wolfbane, a shaft of moonlight and pretty soon we’re all humming a snatch of the Creedence.
‘I see a bad moon risin’…
All semblance of anything that passes for logic goes out the window, as Larry seeks out Maleva (the always delightful Maria Ouspenskaya), and she has a solution to Mr Talbot’s problem. He wants to die, so let’s hit the high road to ‘Vasaria’ to find Baron Frankenstein, as he holds the secrets of life and death; who better? I mean, honestly.
‘I see trouble on the way…’
Slight impediment. Larry finds the Baron is now dead (obviously, not that much of a master of life and death), but needs to find his ‘Secret Diaries’, for within he’ll get the answers. As you would; ‘Dear Secret Diary, created a monster today, also found a way to kill werewolves, better than those rotten silver bullets (must nip down the patent office…)’
Before he does, Larry wakes the monster (Bela Lugosi), and, well, all hell breaks loose. Doctor Mannering (don’t ask) is mouthing the words of Frankenstein’s diaries like some remedial pupil in ‘Special School’, and mind bogglingly gasps: “I must see Frankenstein’s creation AT FULL POWER!” Uh, oh…
‘…don’t go ’round tonight, it’s bound to take your life…’
Poor Bela has no dialogue (ironically, the reason Lugosi turned down the James Whale original); preview audiences laughed at his Hungarian accent and all his lines were cut. Worse, the scene where the monster explains he’s nearly blind is excised, so his arms outstretched stagger looks plain daft, though it’s now the lazy, de rigueur method of impersonating said creature at fancy dress parties.
It’s deliriously loopy, but all the more lovable for it; you can imagine a young Mel Brooks watching, and taking notes. Universal’s transfer is, like many of their films from this era, quite super.
The Quatermass Xperiment (R2 DVD); seminal Hammer horror/sci-fi, from Nigel Kneale’s 1953 hit TV series, condensed for the big screen by Richard Landau and director Val Guest. It was Guest’s cunning plan to give the whole a kind of docu-drama feel, and weighing in at a lean 82 minutes (as opposed to the three hour TV production), the narrative fair gallops along. There isn’t a moment of wasted footage.
Hammer’s decision to place Americans as both the male and female leads (Margia Dean as ‘Judith Carroon’ and Brian Donlevy as ‘Professor Bernard Quatermass’) was purely commercial. Dean, it seems obvious, was post-dubbed for some reason, and as a result her performance suffers. But it’s Donlevy, slyly adding copious draughts of brandy to his flask of coffee during shooting, who usually comes in for most opprobrium - ‘over the hill’ and ‘wooden’ are two of more common, and more charitable, accusations. ‘Tom’ Kneale, it’s well known, was unhappy his quintessential English scientist had been replaced by an American tough (and usually bad) guy actor. In truth, as Guest opines on the DVD commentary track, he’s more than adequate, with his Quatermass driven, determined and no-nonsense - frankly, there’s not much screen time for anything else. Besides; I do like Donlevy, sober…or drunk. Allegedly.
While most other sci-fi (Kneale hated the term) films of the period of this kind - i.e. alien invasion - particularly Hollywood product, were simple allegories of the Cold War, Kneale’s piece could be read similarly, though the hugely influential British writer was far too complex for such a simplistic interpretation. Kneale was warning of hubris; when an arrogant, immature mankind reaches out into the unknown, he risks getting his fingers badly burnt.
It’s Richard Wordsworth’s doomed ‘Victor Carroon’ who commands the screen, the actor wordlessly conveying the nascent spaceman’s agony and sheer bloody terror as he transmogrifies into a planet threatening combination of species and lifeforms, with obvious comparisons to, and just as deadly as, the carrot from outer space that was The Thing From Another World. By the by, in his remake of the latter, John Carpenter, a huge Kneale fan, had his ‘Thing’ share a few more characteristics with Carroon than carrot…
The amiable Guest, who made his name with a series of easy going comedies, adapts to a genre that would set Hammer down a profitable path for two decades with effortless ease. He handles the screening of the spine-tingling mute cabin footage beautifully, the scene still oozing a squirming, chilly, menace half a century and more later. Much of the credit here must also go to composer James Bernard, making his film debut and the man whose scores would become Hammer signatures; here, as it does throughout the film, Bernard’s subtle yet ligature tight cue winds the tension.
Wonderful stuff, and the first in a trilogy of Hammer Quatermass (the ‘Xperiment’ of the title was to capitalise on the BBFC certification) films all of which, I simply could not resist watching again.
Incidentally, IMDB lists the OAR for The Quatermass Xperiment as 1.66:1, but also says:
“…This film was originally slated to be released in the United States by 20th Century Fox. However, to convince more exhibitors to install Cinemascope equipment, studio chief, Darryl F. Zanuck, pledged that all future 20th Century Fox releases would be in Cinemascope or a compatible anamorphic process. Since this Hammer production was shot in standard Academy, it had to be passed over. It was picked up and released through United Artists…”
The BFI can’t even confirm the AR; filmed during 1954 when the world was becoming wide, it’s more than possible that Guest had it shot in 1.66:1 but protected for 1.33:1. I gave it go for the first time at a ratio as close to 1.66:1 as I could. The credits are very tight, but thereafter it looks reasonable with no cut-off heads; However, I reverted to 1.33:1 the moment Dr. Brisco spots the slime trail at the zoo; wide, Brisco looks alarmed, but the trail, at the bottom of the screen, is out of shot.
On the whole, I think I prefer my ‘Xperiment’ in 1.33:1; I don’t think there’s any doubting it was framed thus. DDHE’s video transfer is quite good, nice and sharp with decent contrast. There’s a constant background hiss to the soundtrack, and sound levels vary, but it’s not unduly distracting. I hear MGM have prepped a HD version in the US and a Blu-ray presentation would be more than welcome, though the way catalogue releases are shaping up Stateside, I’m not about to hold my breath.
The Quatermass Experiment (R2 DVD); The 1953 television broadcast, or at least what remains of it. The first two parts are all that remain of the BBC’s gripping six-parter. Broadcast live, the initial brace of episodes were thankfully also captured on film; as you might expect, with three hours to play with, Kneale’s horrifying tale of the possible consequences of exploring the unknown has time to breathe. Thus, there are more characters (including a surprisingly sympathetic journalist) and greater characterisation (Quatermass comes across as far more conflicted, indeed desperate, about the havoc his British Rocket Group may have unwittingly wrought), it’s tremendously frustrating we have to leave the BBC dramatisation only a third of the way in.
It’s understandable Kneale was unhappy with Donlevy; his Quatermass is hardly as he envisaged and Reginald Tate plays him most effectively, but then again, he has time to characterise - watching the later Hammer production unfold, how the Manxman must have agonised over all that lost exposition.
The TV production seems to have the budget of half an episode of The Flowerpot Men, as we switch - live don’t forget - from a tiny sparse set to an even tinier and sparser part of the same studio. ‘So the comic strips were right’ says an awestruck onlooker at one point ‘they do wear those kinds of suits.’ Within eight years, the truth would out - spacemen did not in fact wear an odd mix of items fashioned after vintage diving gear, the lot bought wholesale by the Beeb costumers from the Portobello Road Army & Navy Stores…very disappointing!
Despite that, these tantalising snippets of The Quatermass Experiment transcend any problems; you can see why it left a nation spellbound, and Hammer films eager to get their chequebook out. Quatermass would not only provide a template for successive generations of film-makers, but would also enter the language to become a convenient shorthand for hyperbole prone hacks in search of a sensation seeking headline. Kneale’s creation entered the public consciousness to the extent that even those that have never seen the good professor in action have some idea what the dropping of his name entails. Bad things. Very bad things.
Picture quality is exactly as you would expect for 55-years-old TV, and some of the bugbears are part and parcel of the original production; no time to set things up ‘just so’, so the lighting sometimes causes unwanted lens flares, cues are missed and so on. Given all that, it’s not bad but it’s hardly the best example of vintage television preserved digitally, though probably it doesn’t differ much in this respect from the day it was first transmitted. Live TV folks, ’50s style. And it emptied pubs and churches the length and breadth of the land.
The mono sound is actually pretty good, Holst’s Mars hammered out effectively over those stylish main titles. The 2|entertain box set from which it hails, containing all three BBC productions - with the quite fabulous Quatermass And The Pit easily the stand-out - comes very highly recommended
Quatermass II (R1 DVD); Three years after the release of the first film, and Hammer again follows the Beeb’s lead. This time Kneale combines sci-fi and horror with a deep-seated paranoia. In The Quatermass Xperiment, Kneale warned of alien invasion from outer space. Here, it’s an enemy that’s already established and it’s happened even before the opening credits roll; the invaders have infiltrated society at the very highest echelons, both Government and the Police. The population isn’t aware that they are becoming zombie slave workers or, in one instance, being prepped as the main ingredient in a rather nasty inter-galactic bouillabaisse.
The original BBC script is adapted for the screen this time by Kneale himself with director Val Guest, and once again, the pace is relentless (even if the geography is suspect; Carlisle being a short ride, apparently, from Parliament Square). It feeds Cold War angst of an enemy within, the fears that enemy invasion could be insidious and covert, rather than the wholly overt threat of the first story. Of course, it also reads that you can’t trust anyone, even - or especially - our political masters. The alien landscape of the Shell Haven refinery in Essex proves the ideal location for the supposed manufacturing base for a ’synthetic food’; perhaps the most startling image in the whole film is of the bluff northern MP ‘Broadhead’ (Tom Chatto) covered in a skin-stripping slime, staggering, his smoking flesh boiling, down the ladder of one of the refinery’s huge, unearthly, domes.
This time, there is no doubt about the original aspect ratio; Anchor Bay’s R1 DVD is transferred open-matte, and zooms to 1.66:1 beautifully. The transfer is excellent and the sound mostly nigh on perfect, the chatter of the machine guns given a satisfying thud, and the screams of the ‘thing’ suitably vast and otherworldly. As he does on the DVD of the first film, Val Guest again features on an interesting commentary track, his age at the time of recording no impediment to recalling incidents on and off the set.
Quatermass & The Pit (R1 DVD); the last of the triumvirate of Hammer Quatermass films, and it takes a Scot to get closer to the heart of the English Prof. Bernard Quatermass. 12 years after their last stab at Nigel Keale’s creation, and nine after the Beeb broadcast the TV version of the same story, once again director Roy Ward Baker has to tell the story condensed from a three-hour original at a fair lick.
Kneale eschews the paranoia of the his ‘Q X’ and ‘Q II’ for a mix of ghosties, ghoulies, the paranormal and science - aliens not a million miles from those unseen propagators of planets in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001; A Space Odessey. Good to see James Donald and Barbara Shelley (who is weirdly erotic even here; it’s not just me surely?), but Julian Glover is a little young for the blustering warrior Colonel Breen I feel.
The story builds but, unlike the TV presentation, the genuine chills are few; it sorely misses a James Bernard score, Tristram Cary’s cues a little workaday. However the sound department - taking their cue from the broadcast series - works overtime to cover in this respect with aural effects that help to build tension. If I appear to be a little harsh on the film, I temper that by saying it’s a favourite. Honest. But simply, having now seen the original BBC presentation with André Morell, that towers above it. Yes; it really is that good.
The climax is exciting, and nicely achieved, though what the hell was James Donald thinking of? Madness… Anchor Bay’s R1 transfer is non-anamorphic, but hails from a clean print.
The Black Cat (R1 DVD); Not the Edward G. Ulmar horror, but the cornball 1941 version with Bela Lugosi lurking about in the shadows, while folks are bumped off in ‘the old dark house’ - Broderick Crawford and Anne Gwynne play the roles Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard did with far more aplomb over at Paramount, while Gale Sondergaard is, well, Gale Sondergaard. Crawford asks of Basil Rathbone at one point: ‘Who do you think you are - Sherlock Holmes?’
Lots of running around, secret passages and amusing business by Hugh Herbert; the kind of thing Universal chucked off in five minutes during the war years to keep folks minds off the fact that the world was going to hell in a handcart. Alan Ladd is bottom of the cast list, but was bumped higher on the posters as audiences were wowed by the simultaneous release of This Gun For Hire.
Perfect late night viewing from Universal (and another nice transfer) that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Man Made Monster (R1 DVD); Take one mad scientist (Lionel Atwill), add an unlikely premise (’electro-biology’), stir in a big, daft affable dupe (Lon Chaney Jr.), season with stock characters (the blonde, the investigative reporter), leave to simmer for about an hour - et voila! A typical Universal horror cheapie, and one that it notable for setting Chaney’s career down a path that both carved his name in movie history, and cursed him to a life on the undercard. It was off the back of Man Made Monster that Chaney got the part of Larry Talbot, another unwitting, doomed monster, one that simply refused to die.
Man Made Monster has Chaney’s ‘Dan McCormick’ able to absorb huge amounts of electricity, and doing so for some unexplained reason, it gives him superhuman strength and makes him the willing slave to Atwill’s ‘Dr Paul Rigas’, a man who is clearly several shillings short of a full leccy meter.
McCormick kills ‘Dr. John Lawrence’ (Samuel S. Hinds - oh no, not that nice Peter Bailey!), he’s then hoicked off to die in the electric chair. Not a good idea. Duly energised by being zapped, and zapped again and again (and again), a glowing McCormick goes on a rampage, carries away ‘June Lawrence’ (Anne Nagel) in true monster stylee, then meets his nemesis - barbed wire. Oh, watch it yourself…
Universal’s transfer is just pristine, with excellent contrast, there’s nary a mark and the mono soundtrack is spot on. There are English (HoH) and French subtitles.
Plague of The Zombies (R1 DVD); Following on from watching the Beeb’s excellent Quatermass & The Pit, I was in the mood for more André Morell. It was Mike Parkinson and Granada’s Cinema that first had me hiding behind the sofa at clips of this as a 10-year-old, and it’s always had a special place in my heart. 
I still think the nightmare sequence is one of the most chilling to be found in any Hammer film, indeed - even in a genre now dominated by tawdry horror pornography - any horror. And it is the reason, if I take a short cut through the cemetery, I scurry, occasionally glancing nervously over my shoulder, watching the newly dug earth for signs of movement. My flesh creeps just to think about it.
It’s neatly directed by John Gilling, who also helmed a number of other Hammers, notably The Pirates of Blood River, as well as the effective The Flesh & The Fiends and The Night Caller (not to mention a slew of Department S episodes). Morell’s ‘Good’ is nicely matched by John Carson’s ‘Evil’ squire, and full marks to Roy Ashton’s makeup, Les Bowie’s effects which combine with James Bernard’s score (there really is no substitute when it comes to Hammer) to culminate in a notable chiller. Even if the pay-off proves to be ever so slightly bananas.
Anchor Bay’s transfer is quite good; there’s some evident print damage in the first reel, but’s pretty strong thereafter and the mono soundtrack is more than adequate.
Cue maniacal Vincent Price laugh, a creaky coffin lid closing, end titles; happy All Hallows’ Eve…
You shouldn’t have interfered, Number 6. You’ll pay for this… September 29, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Television, Film & DVD Reviews , 5 commentsThe Prisoner comes to Blu-ray; well, most of it…
A couple of Christmases ago, in the 40th anniversary year of its first broadcast, Network produced a truly scrumptious gift for admirers of Patrick McGoohan’s enigmatic, emblematic, trail-blazing puzzle wrapped in a conundrum that is The Prisoner.
That boxed set, a digipak of DVDs, plus Andrew Pixley’s wonderful book of production notes, proved near nirvana not only for that army of obsessive fans of the TV series, but for those who simply, like myself, recall it as fascinating, unmissable, wonderfully crafted. And, let’s face if, downright screwy. In both picture and sound, it was The Prisoner as never - well, not by myself and I would guess by millions of fans worldwide - seen before. The series was accompanied by a host of wonderful bonus materials; interviews, features, photographs, commentaries, on and on. It couldn’t possibly get any better than this. Could it?
Well, now it has.
Network’s newly released The Prisoner on Blu-ray initiates a sheer sensory overload, every single one of those 2,073,600 high-definition, on-screen pixels smashes through your retina and into your occipital lobe as blindingly vibrant, new - no - better than new. Minute details can be picked out, Portmeirion never looked so lush, the costumes and production designs never looked so…so damned ’60s, while at the same time appearing to have been shot yesterday.
Happily, Network appear to have taken on board fans’ niggles over the first set - a handful of audio problems, incorrect credits and the like - and put right those wrongs. The audio (it’s transferred at 24fps so there is a scintilla of difference from PAL video’s 25fps) is not lossless, but the mono track packs a delightful punch, those lightening crashes and McGoohan’s incandescent desk thumping, wakening the sub-woofer from its slumber. The 5.1 track, for those that want it, is a distinct improvement over the abomination that was included with the previous set. It’s a thing of genuine, eye-popping, ear-caressing, beauty. Now, surely it can’t get any better than this. Can it?
The packaging eschews the digipak of the previous set and goes for a big black coffin of a box with, nestled in storage pockets inside, all six discs economically stashed within one translucent blue case, Pixley’s paperback novel sized ‘notes’ - exactly the same book as with the previous box - alongside it. Maybe they thought both in a small slipcase would appear to undervalue such a big release with an rrp of £59.99, or maybe they are simply anticipating a day when the book will no longer be included, and the 6-disc box will be sold alone. It’s quite pretty, but another storage nightmare. I think the box may have to go into storage (i.e. the loft).
I can’t say any better about the contents of The Prisoner on Blu-ray than point you at James Gray’s excellent DVD Times review, complete with screenshots and a full rundown of the plethora of extras, and you can see snatches of the HD content on YouTube here, here and here.
I must however point out a small problem. Several folks have reported problems playing (ironically) disc six of the set on their BD machines. When my box arrived, I thought I’d better check it out as a matter of priority on my Samsung BD-P1500, and sure enough, after whirring uselessly for a few seconds up popped a terse on-screen message - ‘This disc can not [sic] be played’ - and it was disdainfully spat out.
Disc six, being one of two DVDs of extra features in the set (the only extras in hi-definition I can find thus far are the on-set photographs), was quickly popped into my DVD player…and accepted without problem. Very odd; so only a couple of hours ago I contacted Network via email, and in just a few minutes received a reply that they were ‘looking into it’. Within the hour came this thorough reply from Production Assistant Tim Berry, to whom I’m very grateful:
Following my previous email, we have looked into the issue you raised with the final disc of the Prisoner blu-ray set and have a likely explanation for your problem. We suspect it may be because the final disc includes the PDF content for PC/Macs, and it appears that this may not be compatible with all BD players, depending on the manufacturer.
To put PDF content on a DVD we make the DVD into what is called a ‘hybrid’ so that it can contain both ‘DVD video’ and ‘DVD ROM’ content. As a blu-ray player is more computer based than it is DVD (using more codes, etc.), all blu-ray discs are effectively BD-ROMs, so players need to read both the ROM and video elements on a blu-ray disc in order for it to play. It would appear that some companies are manufacturing BD players that first try to read the ‘ROM’ content on any disc – whether blu-ray or DVD - as opposed to the video element of the disc first. With disc 6 of The Prisoner, your BD player appears to be trying to read the PDF files, which are only playable on PC/Macs and declaring the disc unreadable before attempting to read the DVD content.
We are unsure how many players would behave in this manner. Blu-ray technology is still in its infancy and some manufacturers are still working out how to make their players compatible with previous technology; we do know, however, that the PS3 and Sony350 are able to play these discs. We can only apologise for any convenience caused but I hope that this email goes some way towards answering your question.
…Blu-ray production is completely new territory for a lot of companies and inevitably, just as when DVD replaced VHS, there will always be an element of trial and error - both on the part of the distributors and the BD player manufacturers - in order for the technology to develop and improve.
While we at Network are aware of how a blu-ray disc is read, we had never been in any situation to made aware that some manufacturers may not have taken into account, when making a BD player compatible with previous technology, that it will need to read video elements first. The variety of players we used to make and check these discs worked were programmed to read them correctly, with no problems and it is the aim of manufacturers to ensure that DVDs can continue to be played on BD players. We put a lot of research into our release and it’s a problem that has never been brought to our attention up until now.
This is obviously an experience we will learn from for our future releases and I’d be surprised if the manufacture [sic] who made your BD player was not already aware of this flaw in their production also. It may be worth contacting them directly though, to make clear the specific problems this has caused you - they may even be able to offer you a suitable solution to this problem.
Fair enough, but, gentle reader, the plot thickens. Stap me for a fool, but it didn’t occur to me until tonight to try other ‘hybrid’ discs in the BD player to see if Network’s finger pointing holds water. 2|entertain’s ‘Doctor Who’ releases of Inferno and Genesis of The Daleks are hybrid discs and Network’s own Man In A Suitcase set also features discs containing PDF content. All booted up in the Samsung in a trice. I’m sighing - can’t you hear me sighing?
I’m reliably informed that disc six of The Prisoner set works fine in a Panasonic BD35, an unspecified Sanyo, but is also ejected from the budget Curtis machine - so it does appear to be some kind of player specific issue, an authoring problem, or possibly a bad batch of discs (or a combination of any of those) - oh dear, time for another email to Network.
Number 6, as always, is proving a tough nut to crack. Be seeing you.
Square Eyes; Bullets, Broads…and BBC 4 August 17, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Television, Film General, Crime / Noir / Thriller, Square Eyes , 8 commentsThe redoubtable BBC 4 is running a short film noir season this coming weekend with six movies shown Saturday and Sunday and no less than five screenings of a new hour long documentary presented by Matthew Sweet, The Rules of Film Noir.
All the offerings on display are from the genre’s golden period, all from Hollywood studios and featuring some of film noir’s finest…
Saturday August 22
19:30; Farewell My Lovely (aka Murder, My Sweet - 1944). Two years before Bogie’s indelible impersonation of Raymond Chandler’s crumpled detective in The Big Sleep, former crooner Dick Powell made a courageous career leap into the murky world of noir with his rather more battered and bruised version of Philip Marlowe. Private eye Marlowe is hired by ex-con Moose Malloy to find his girlfriend, embroiling the hard-boiled gumshoe in a plot which involves blackmail, murder, drugs, double cross… and delicious dollops of voice-over dialogue. Perhaps the most filmed of all Chandler’s stories (though sometimes heavily disguised; parts of the plot were even borrowed for a Bob Hope comedy vehicle), Powell and director Edward Dmytryk’s Farewell My Lovely boasts a grittiness only bettered by Dick Richards and Robert Mitchum 30 years later. Available on a rather nice R1 Warner DVD and a less impressive Universal disc in the UK.
21:00; The Rules of Film Noir. First showing of the new Elaine Pieper directed documentary. Also shown Sunday at 00.50, 0.3:35, 22:35, and Monday at 03:05. Through the lavish use of film archive and stylised graphics as punctuation, BBC Four’s one-hour documentary presents:“…an essential guide to one of the most influential movements in cinema history: dark, cynical Film Noir.” Let’s all hope it amounts to more than a little fluff.
22:00; The Lady from Shanghai (1947). Compelling and highly stylised (what else from director/writer Orson Welles?) tale of an Irish sailor who accompanies a beautiful woman and her husband on a sea cruise, and becomes a pawn in a game of murder. Includes labyrinthine plot twists and some breathtaking cinematography - particularly in the famous Hall of Mirrors scene. The cast includes Welles, as the sap Michael O’Hara, his then wife (but not for long) Rita Hayworth as the femme fatale, the wholly dependable Everett Sloane and William Alland is again uncredited as a reporter. Some read Welles own marital difficulties into a tale of deceptions and lies; it’s not impossible. Available in both R1 and R2 from Sony.
23:25; The Big Combo (1955). Stylish film noir about a police lieutenant (Cornel Wilde) who comes under pressure from a gang headed by a vicious thug (Richard Conte). He is helped by the gangster’s wife, jealous at her husband’s affair with another woman, who supplies him with information to help him close the net on his foe. Director Joseph H. Lewis hoped the Production Code would take less interest in a minor studio making Earl Holliman and Lee Van Cleef, as a pair of trigger men, not so obliquely gay. He guessed right. I think I’m right in saying the only DVD incarnations available have been chucked on to DVD by slapdash PD merchants now that the R1 Image version is OOP.
Sunday August 23
01:50; Force of Evil (1948). Dark, brooding and cerebral drama from writer/director Abraham Polonsky about two brothers caught up in crime and corruption. An ambitious lawyer (the superb, doomed John Garfield) in search of materialistic gain begins work for a New York criminal mastermind, who plans to take over New York’s illegal lottery. The attorney serves his boss faithfully until he realises his own brother will fall victim to the plan. But it seems he may now be too involved to escape the gangster’s violent ends. Martin Scorsese hails this as one of noir’s forgotten masterpieces, but certainly it’s not under-appreciated by film fans. Beautifully written, acted and directed with a fine David Raskin score, R1 and R2 have to make do with slightly underpar transfers from Lionsgate and Metrodome respectively.
21:00; Build My Gallows High (aka Out Of The Past - 1947). Quintessential American noir which tells a grim, complex tale of love and betrayal. A failed detective (Robert Mitchum) falls for the mistress (Jane Greer) of a mobster to whom he is heavily in debt. When she double-crosses him and returns to the mobster, the detective changes his identity and drops out of sight. But the gangster still wants his money back, and he and the woman plot to lure the detective into a vengeful scenario. Daniel Mainwaring wrote and literate and intelligent script from his own novel, Jacques Tourneur directs with aplomb, both Mitchum and Greer are on top form; also features Kirk Douglas and Rhonda Fleming. Warner delivered the DVD goods in R1, Universal, once again, had to make do with sloppy seconds in R2.
23:30; Stranger on The Third Floor (1940). Rarely screened Boris Ingster helmed psychological drama (for RKO) and touted by some as the first noir. The testimony of an ambitious reporter (John McGuire) helps to convict a young man (Elisha Cook Jr.) of murder, but the newspaper man has second thoughts about his contribution when he finds himself in the dock while a homicidal maniac is on the loose. Peter Lorre is top billed but while he has little to do, he does so effectively in this short (64 minutes) proto-noir. The only DVD out there appears to be a Spanish offering from Manga, but not having seen it, I can’t vouch for it.
The Bed Sitting Room June 4, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, British Film , 7 comments“How long is this shit going to go on for?” snapped a United Artists executive at director Richard Lester during a pre-release screening of his 1969 comedy The Bed Sitting Room. That’s not, I would venture, a good start for any movie…
UA fast-tracked The Bed Sitting Room into production with a million dollar budget held over from Lester’s previous project Up Against It, still-born after its unlucky screenwriter Joe Orton had his skull smashed in by his lover. They wanted Help! or at the very least A Hard Day’s Night, sans the songs and the moptops. They got ‘this shit’.
Actually what they got (eventually - UA didn’t know what the hell to do with it for months after completion) was a quirky, surreal, very British, absurdist satire with barbed gags that zing off the screen like honey coated pieces of shrapnel; you don’t necessarily have to be a mature denizen of this sceptred isle to fully appreciate The Bed Sitting Room - after all, the Philadelphian born Anglophile Lester made the most British of British films - but it helps.
The Bed Sitting Room is spine no. 001 in the BFI’s exciting Flipside line, a new label dedicated to “films that were overlooked, marginalised, or undervalued at the original time of release, or sit outside the established canon of recognised classics”. It certainly fits that bill.
Developed from the play by long-time collaberators John Antrobus and the unique talent that was Spike Milligna (the well known typing error), fans of The Goons but more particularly Milligan’s anarchic ‘Q’ TV shows will instantly hear his master’s off-kilter voice shot through Antrobus’s screenplay. The Bed Sitting Room was contemporaneously compared to the work of Samuel Beckett (”with better jokes”), but you’ll see the lineage that leads from Goonery to Python, with a dollop of home Cookery (that’s Peter Cook-ery, gentle reader…) chucked in for seasoning.
Focusing on a tiny group of survivors following the “nuclear misunderstanding” that was World War 3, all of two minutes and 28 seconds long “including signing the peace treaty”, we find a disparate cross-section of British society muddling through in a radiation ravaged landscape…and slowly mutating into a parrot (Arthur Lowe in full pompous mode), a wardrobe (the ever delightful Mona Washbourne), a dog (get down Dudley Moore!) plus, best of all, the eponymous bed sitting room (the eye-wateringly wonderful Ralph Richardson, as the unfortunate Lord Fortnum of Alamein).
Lord Fortnum of Alamein: “It’s the latest early warning hat, it gives you an extra four minutes in bed.”
The BBC: “I’ve never worn a hat in bed. I’ve been a Catholic person for a long time now and I wouldn’t know where to begin. Is this your car sir?”
Lord Fortnum of Alamein: “It is. I acquired it from Lord Snowden…”
The BBC: “…not THE Lord Snowden?”
Lord Fortnum of Alamein: “No, A Lord Snowden.”
The BBC: “Ah, yes, the woods are full of them.”
Milligan plays a post-apocalyptic postman, popping up to deliver, well, all manner of useless stuff, not least a custard pie in the kisser for the starving Michael Horden, a doctor who spends his day atop a mountain of shoes, sorting the footwear of the 40 million or so dead, and dreaming of Hovis. It’s Horden and especially Milligan’s characters that betray the film’s origins, first as a one-act play, then a longer stage piece. Both Antrobus and Milligan were said to be unhappy with The Bed Sitting Room’s translation to the big-screen, a fact with which both contemporary critics, and much to the suits at UA’s chagrin, audiences seemed to agree. As pacy as it can be, you can see that it would probably have had far more energy on stage, bringing the style much closer to black farce, ironically more Orton-esque.
As it stands, and accepting the flaws, it’s a heroic effort. How could it not be given the talent on show? Yes, it does seem a tad languorous at times, Lester having seemingly fallen in love with the quarry in Surrey that stands in for a blasted and scorched central London. Cinematographer David Watkin lingers on unfeasibly vast piles of crockery, false teeth, used lightbulbs. On Everests of stone, rivers of lord knows what, valleys of rusted automobiles that will never run again, and we play a guessing game of longshot or closeup (are those huge boulders or small stones..?) We see the dome of St Paul’s rising out of the muck, an Underground escalator hangs in mid-air, and doorways, indeed whole porches, stand in acres of solitude, waiting for the visitorial proprieties. Take a bow Assheton Gorton, the art director also responsible for painting an entire South-east London street red for Blow Up.
This is not, despite the premise, as full on bonkers as, say, Milligan’s delightfully nuts The Great McGonagall; director Lester had, after all, a terrific track record of transmogrifying a script that had a quirky nature into a commercial success, something that Milligan sometimes appeared to care less about…as long as it made him giggle. However, it does say something that Lester rode in on the project his star ascendant - it was to be nigh on five years before he made another movie.
On the plus side, Milligan and Antrobus let no-one, not one scintilla of contemporary British society - politics, religion, the health service, the military, the police, the class-system, the bigots, the concept of mutually assured destruction, the whole fact of ‘hanging on in quiet desperation’ being the English way - escape their often acid satire. Absolutely bristling with ideas, even if, it must be said, some of the ambition is unfulfilled, The Bed Sitting Room is as much a product of time and place as Help!, but with the extermination of millions, starvation, survival and atomic mutation on the menu, even this most surreal bill of fare, it’s certainly not quite as cuddly.
Watching it today, though we aren’t as absolutely positive that we will end our days as shadows on the pavement as we were 40 years ago (and hence the potency of the anti-nuclear message is ever so slightly diminished), The Bed Sitting Room seems only to increase in stature. Not only because this particular form of comedy - and no-one could whip up a melange of satire, surrealism, hoary old jokes and cream pie gags quite like Spike - seems to be a long dead art. But were that not the case, have we the 21st century equivalent to perform it? As much as I admire Sir Ian, could McKellen stand in for Richardson, Paul Merton for Milligan? How about Peter Cook; who could possibly fill his boots…no, I give up.
Police Inspector: I expect you may be wondering why I’ve invited you all here this afternoon. I’ve just come from an audience with Her Majesty, Mrs Ethel Shroake, and I’m empowered by her to tell you that, in the future, clouds of poisonous nuclear fog will no longer be necessary. Mutations will cease sine die and, furthermore, I’m the bringer of glad tidings. A team of surgeons at the Woolwich hospital have just accomplished the world’s first successful complete body transplant. The donor was the entire population of South Wales, and the new body is functioning normally. I, myself, saw it sit up in bed, wink, and ask for a glass of beer.
All in all, I think we’re in for a time of peace, prosperity and stability, when the earth will burgeon forth anew, the lion will lie down with the lamb, and the goat will give suck to the tiny bee.
At times of great national emergency, you’ll often find that a new leader tends to emerge. Here I am - so watch it.
Keep moving, everybody, that’s the spirit! Keep moving!
The cast, listed in the credits in order of height (naturally), is wholly excellent. Added to those mentioned above we have Frank Thornton as the living embodiment of the BBC, Harry Secombe as the seat of regional government (boyo), an 18-months pregnant Rita Tushingham, delivering a surprisingly pretty (and surprising) prose poem in praise of boyfriend Richard Warwick at the film’s mid-point, Roy Kinnear (heavily into rubber…), and Jimmy Edwards, who only needs 17s 6d to get him out of left luggage. The comic genius that was Marty Feldman makes his film debut in full nurses uniform, performs his own stunt (typically) as he makes a ‘Tarzan’ swing into a tree and fells it, and is given the best sight gag in the movie on his introduction. The eyes have it…
You will enjoy Ronnie Brody, the holocaust’s bemirrored transport chief, Henry Woolf, pedaling furiously to keep the Circle Line operational, Ronald Fraser is the whole British army, Jack Shepherd, as the underwater vicar (sounding for all the world like Ronnie Barker, mostly because he was revoiced by the versatile Mr B), Dandy Nichols (as Mrs Ethel Shroake of Leytonstone; otherwise HM The Queen. Sing: “God Save Mrs Ethel Shroake of 393a High Street Leytonstone…”) looks distinctly uncomfortable astride a horse, and Peter Cook, initially a police inspector to Dud’s barking sergeant, then revealed by Horden (”…That IS God - I recognise the voice…”) to be deified. Two years earlier, Cookie was the devil and now he’s the Lord God Almighty.
Well, we all know that REALLY don’t we?
The Disc
Some have found the BFI’s Blu-ray disc to have lip-sync problems; I can, happily, report none at all. Player related? Player/amp/connection related? Who knows - all this HD stuff is still uncharted territory for many. All I can say is that there are no problems here. The MGM sourced 1.85:1 (most probably the original ratio for at least U.S. screenings) transfer is excellent, sharp and more than reasonably detailed with no outstanding dirt or damage of note. Things do get a little less clear during the latter third when Lester uses heavy filters to give the impression of a nuclear sunset, but this is precisely how the film should look. Like previous BFI HD transfers, this is very film-like, very commendable. The uncompressed mono sound came over loud and clear on my system too; more than adequate.
The extras are not plentiful (apparently, apart from supporting the release - according to the BFI’s, and fellow FJ blogger, Michael Brooke - Lester declined to be involved per se in the production, hence no commentary, no new filmed interview), but they are utterly fascinating; previously unbroadcast interviews by Bernard Braden for his Now and Then TV show with Cook (30 minutes), Milligan (40 minutes) and Lester (17 minutes) in 1967 (hence the latter discussing How I Won The War and Cook puffing Bedazzled). These filmed interviews are beautifully preserved time capsules - I thought Milligan’s was particularly personally revealing. Had the disc contained the interviews alone, it would, in my humble opinion, still be well worth a purchase. There’s a trailer, in HD, in not quite as good condition as the main feature, but it’s nicely done and makes me want to watch the film all over again.
You’ll also find a handsome 28-page booklet inside the case with stills from the film, an essay by the aforementioned Mr Brooke, an April 1970 review of the movie by Russell Cambell, a write-up on Lester by Neil Sinyard, and some very much appreciated contextual notes on those Now and Then interviews. There are sub-titles for the hearing impaired in English and the whole is coded BD Region ‘B’.
So, a hit, a palpable hit for the new BFI Flipside line, The Bed Sitting Room belongs on the shelves of any fan of British cinema. Possibly the shelf in your bed sitting room - it’s also available on SD DVD for you luddites (I jest, before you send a hit man round…). For many different reasons, I loved it, I really did; I’m sure you will too.
Can I also commend to you clydefro’s take on the film and disc at DVD Times, which you will find here, and for actual screencaps of the film itself - capturing HD seems to be a black art I cannot master - see DVD Beaver here. Incidentally part of that ’support’ from Lester I mentioned earlier included taking part in a Q&A at a recent screening of The Bed Sitting Room at the NFT, and this BBC Podcast, in which, amongst other films, he discusses the movie. Download it while you can (*EDIT* - now removed by the Beeb; you missed it!) .
Keep moving! Keep moving everybody..!
Nothing Succeeds Like Cine-Excess..? May 31, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info , 5 commentsWhile across The Pond initiatives on the home video front seem to have largely stalled (the jury is still out on Warner’s nascent Archive programme though Sony have suddenly - and thrillingly - woken from their coma), it’s good to see that there’s plenty for UK film enthusiasts to enjoy. Even if the major studios here appear to have retreated to their bunkers and slammed the doors firmly shut*.
Smaller labels like Odeon and Network continue with a steady stream of catalogue titles, Optimum’s output appears undiminished (indeed, they have embraced Blu-ray wholeheartedly and have a number of high definition catalogue titles planned for the coming months), and the BFI have defied the recession with their exciting Flipside line**.
Now we have the new Cine-Excess label to look forward to. The press release from Roobarb’s Forum:
In what is believed to be the UK’s first ever cross commercial-academic film venture, Brunel University’s School of Arts Cult Film Archive, via its Cine-Excess project, has been given the rights to the archive of some of the 300 movies owned by the legendary B-movie producer and film director, Roger Corman. The university’s intention to “take trash seriously” in an academic respect and to release the films from the Corman archive on DVD has led to the university’s lecturer in Film and TV Studies and director of Cine-Excess, Xavier Mendik, seeking out the services of the prestigious London-based art film outlet, Nouveaux Pictures, as a joint distributor of its forthcoming titles.
The aim of the Nouveaux Pictures/Cine-Excess label is to bring the very best examples of cult cinema to both the commercial consumer and to the cult film studies educational sector. Extra features on the label’s releases will include university academics discussing the films, many of which have been, or are being remade in Hollywood, but may also have a “retro” appeal to new audiences and are of interest to film studies students.
The first DVD release from Nouveaux Pictures/Cine-Excess will be VIVA, the debut full-length feature by LA-based artist and filmmaker Anna Biller (The Hypnotist; A Visit From The Incubus). Future releases will include the Corman-directed NOT OF THIS EARTH and ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS and Ron Howard’s directorial debut feature, GRAND THEFT AUTO, along with such well-known cult cinema titles as SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE, BIG BAD MAMA, DEATH SPORT, THE CRY BABY KILLER starring Jack Nicholson, plus Dick Maas’ AMSTERDAMNED and a Special Edition of Dario Argento’s classic, SUSPIRIA.
VIVA (cert. 18) will be released on DVD (£15.99) by Nouveaux Pictures/Cine-Excess on 6th July 2009.
Sounds good!
*Yet another reissue of Audrey Hepburn’s most famous films doesn’t count, even if this is the 80th anniversary of her birth. And, yes, Paramount, I’m looking at you…
**Reviews of two of the first Flipside releases at DVD Times can be accessed by clicking the titles: Primitive London, London In The Raw.
C’est Magnifique - The Red Shoes Wows Cannes May 20, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, DVD News & Info, British Film , 4 commentsIn my previous post, I mentioned that Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger and (it would be churlish not to give him equal billing) Jack Cardiff’s The Red Shoes had been meticulously restored and was set for a special screening at the 62nd Cannes International Film Festival earlier this month.
The Guardian’s report accurately sums up the reception this eye-popping British masterpiece was accorded. Charlotte Higgins wrote:
…I had never seen The Red Shoes on the big screen, leave alone like this. The restoration is stupendous. Its director of photography, the late Jack Cardiff, was a stickler for colour – he even, according to the man sitting next to me at the screening, mixed his own house paint.
The colours of the restored Red Shoes absolutely leap from the screen. Moira Shearer is all icy skin, palely freckled. And then there is her hair, that miraculous sheet of red-gold fire. As she walks towards the Royal Opera House in an early scene, that vivid shade is visually echoed by a bunch of amber chrysanthemums from the flower market briefly seen at the front of the shot. Then, dramatically backlit during the extended, surrealistic scene in which she dances the ballet The Red Shoes, it suddenly flames a shocking scarlet.
There are a couple of scenes on the railway station at Monte Carlo, and the restoration shows us just how carefully they were made – a woman in a crimson coat here, a burst of purest blue delphiniums there. Dressed in a cloud of tulle in a shade somewhere between peacock and ocean green, Shearer mounts the steps of a Monte Carlo villa, the sky hotly Mediterranean, transformed into a kind of sea goddess. Imagine you possess a faded, tattered photograph of someone you love, and then, quite unexpectedly, you see them again, solid, living and breathing. That was what watching the restored Red Shoes felt like…
Be sure to watch the Thelma Schoonmaker interview video on that page linked above; fascinating stuff, and you get a few glimpses of the finished restoration.
The news piece at the Film Foundation website - here - also makes for interesting reading, especially the roster of just who was in involved in the project. Three cheers for the press… Also, check out ‘The Red Shoes’ shines anew from The Los Angeles Times in which Robert Gitt of UCLA fame appears, I’m sure inadvertently, to give a good kicking to the BFI, who provided the original elements from which his digital restoration was made:
…Not that restoring those colors to their original brilliance was easy. First, it turned out that every reel of the original negative, which had been stored in Great Britain, had been attacked by mold, causing what Gitt describes as “thousands of visible tiny cracks and fissures…”
By the way, at the bottom of that Film Foundation page, you’ll find a link to the Film Foundation’s lush Preservation Booklet on The Red Shoes in PDF format, presumably the same booklet handed round to the audience at Cannes, and containing some interesting notes from Martin Scorsese and Ian Christie (plus the confirmation that The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp is also on the slate for a similar full wash and brush up). Says Christie:
…Seen in full-scale projection, The Red Shoes is not only one of cinema’s great sensuous experiences, but a profound meditation on the power and the price of all-consuming spectacle. Beyond the intensity of its performances and the beauty of its images, it is this reflexive quality, shared with other masterpieces of the 1940s, that makes it a true classic, capable of being endlessly re-interpreted and rediscovered…
Incidentally, Scorsese, of course the driving force behind this as so many restoration projects, earned himself a standing ovation at Cannes for his impassioned pre-screening eulogy to Powell, Pressburger and The Red Shoes:
…passion drives every single, extraordinary moment of The Red Shoes, and it’s what makes the film’s glorious Technicolor images so forceful and moving, now restored to their full, shimmering beauty. The characters and their world are brought to life with the aching beauty they themselves long to create. The vivid reds and deep blues, the vibrant yellows and rich blacks, the lustrous fleshtones of the close-ups, some of them ecstatic and some agonizing, or both at once…so many moments, so many conflicting emotions, such a swirl of color and light and sound, all burned into my mind from that very first viewing, the first of many…
And the restoration will be seen all over the world. ITV Global Entertainment (who were, you may recall, Granada International, who merged with Carlton; oh, do keep up…) is said to have struck more than 20 international home entertainment licenses for the digital restoration of The Red Shoes since the Cannes screening. The licenses include: Atlantic Films AB (Scandinavia), Magna Pacific (Australia), Filmax (Spain) and (of course, being their own home entertainment division) ITV DVD (U.K.).
ITV Global Entertainment director of home entertainment & digital Steve Gallant said “We’re delighted to be announcing these new international deals for Michael Powell’s brilliant and lovingly restored The Red Shoes. This is part of our ongoing film restoration commitment, preserving our critically acclaimed and hugely popular library of landmark British film titles for a new generation of film lovers.”
ITV DVD is set to release the new restoration on both DVD and Blu-ray on June 29 in the U.K., though the BD of The Red Shoes looks to be, at least initially, a HMV exclusive; with Janus credited with helping the project, a Criterion ‘do-over’ can’t be far behind. Don’t forget to look out for digital screenings of The Red Shoes in the U.K. from this December.
Rule Britannia - Scorsese and Schoonmaker on British Cinema
While we’re on the subject of P&P and S&S, there’s excellent news from Screendaily.com on Scorsese and Schoonmaker’s long-gestating feature documentary about the history of British cinema:
…Speaking to ScreenDaily as he took a thee-day break from post-production on his new feature, Shutter Island, to attend tonight’s (May 20) Cannes Classics screening of The Red Shoes, Scorsese said: “As soon we finish mixing Shutter Island, which will be in August, Thelma and I are going to go back and take up where we were in the British documentary and hopefully construct a rough cut by the time I shoot my next picture.”
Scorsese is a passionate fan of many British films and he cites such movies as Basil Dearden’s The Blue Lamp, Guy Hamilton’s An Inspector Calls as well as work by Joseph Losey, Seth Holt, Ronald Neame and John Gilling as important early influences on him. He also acknowledges that his own approach to using voice-over in his own movies was directly influenced by Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets.“Kind Hearts and Coronets was a big favourite among my family and people who were watching television in the early 1950s. It’s a film that influences a great deal what I do with voice-over,” Scorsese added…
Two posts in a month; I’m in danger of becoming prolific…
Spend Sundays With James Bond… May 9, 2009
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, British Film , 1 comment so farIn celebration of the centenary of producer Albert R. ‘Cubby’ Broccoli, born April 5, 1909, a season of classic James Bond films have been digitally restored and are returning to UK cinemas distributed by classic film specialists, Park Circus.
During June, restored versions of four classic James Bond films, DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, GOLDFINGER and ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE, will be screening on consecutive Sundays at over 60 cinemas around the country.
The four classic films will be screened via the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network, enabling, say Park Circus, audiences ”to enjoy the outstanding picture quality and improved sound offered by this technologically advanced format”. The digital release is Lottery funded through the UK Film Council’s Prints and Advertising Fund.
The Bond films in the Broccoli centenary season have been digitally restored, as per the recent Blu-ray releases, frame by frame by Lowry Digital Images, the world’s leader in digital restoration and image enhancement. The process involves taking moving pictures that show signs of age and wear, removing the fading, dirt, scratches and other defects that occur over time, and returning them to their original condition. Park Circus were behind the nationwide digital screenings of Goldfinger a couple of years back; a spectacular experience.
Sunday 7 June: DR. NO
Sunday 14 June: FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE
Sunday 21 June: GOLDFINGER
Sunday 28 June: ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE
The following Picturehouse venues will be taking part in the screenings:
• Aberdeen - Belmont Picturehouse
• Bath - The Little Theatre Cinema
• Brighton - Duke of York’s Picturehouse
• Cambridge - Arts Picturehouse
• Exeter - Picturehouse
• Greenwich - Picturehouse
• Henley-on-Thames - Regal Picturehouse
• Liverpool - Picturehouse at FACT
• London - Clapham Picturehouse
• London - Gate Cinema Notting Hill
• London - Stratford Picturehouse
• Norwich - Cinema City
• Oxford - Phoenix Picturehouse
• Stratford-upon-Avon - Picturehouse
• York - City Screen Picturehouse
Plus the following selected cinemas:
• Belfast - QFT*
• Belper - Ritz*
• Bo’ness - Hippodrome
• Birmingham - Electric Cinema
• Bristol - Showcase Cinema De Lux
• Bristol - Watershed Cinema
• Cardiff - Chapter Cinema
• Cumbria - Graves Cumberland
• Cumbria - Workington Plaza
• Derby - Quad
• Derby - Showcase Cinema De Lux
• Dublin - Light House
• Dundee - Dundee Contemporary Arts
• Glasgow - Glasgow Film Theatre
• Inverness - Eden Court Theatre*
• Ipswich - Hollywood Film Theatre
• Leicester - Showcase Cinema De Lux
• London - Everyman Belsize Park
• London - The Lexi Cinema
• London - Phoenix Cinema East Finchley
• London - Screen on the Green
• Newbury - Corn Exchange
• Newcastle - Tyneside Cinema
• Prestatyn - Scala
• Reigate - Screen*
• Richmond - Curzon
• Sheffield - Showroom Cinema
• Somerset - Wells Film Centre
• Stirling - Macrobert
• Winchester - Screen
• Wolverhampton - Light House
* check venue for details of screenings, as they may vary from the above schedule.
CLASSICS AT CANNES…
More from Park Circus; the UK based outfit says that the beautiful restoration of the Powell/Pressburger classic THE RED SHOES and a new print of the groundbreaking thriller VICTIM have been selected to screen at the 62nd Cannes International Film Festival (May 13-24) as part of the Cannes Classics strand.
Academy Award-winning THE RED SHOES is widely considered to be one of the greatest films ever made. The film has been restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive in association with The British Film Institute, The Film Foundation, ITV Global Entertainment Ltd. (formerly Granada International), and Janus Films. Restoration funding was provided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, The Film Foundation, and the Louis B. Mayer Foundation. THE RED SHOES will be presented in the Debussy Theatre with Martin Scorsese, honorary President of Cannes Classics 2009, and Thelma Schoonmaker-Powell in attendance. The film is also scheduled for a limited UK theatrical release in December (as is THIS SPORTING LIFE in June and THE GODFATHER from September).
The sixth annual selection of Cannes Classics, a showcase for restored and rediscovered films, will also screen Jean-Luc Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU (1965), Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’AVVENTURA (1960), Luchino Visconti’s SENSO (1954) and Jacques Tati’s comedy favourite MONSIEUR HULOT’S HOLIDAY (1953).
Cannes Classics will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of US film-maker Joseph Losey, with screenings of ACCIDENT (1967) and a new print of DON GIOVANNI (1979).
Scorsese’s own World Cinema Foundation will present three films: Edward Yang’s A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY (1991), Shadi Abdei Salam’s AL-MOMIA (1969) and Emilio Gomez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann’s REDES (1936).
Also, in celebration of Columbia Pictures’ 85th anniversary, and as a tribute to composer Maurice Jarre, David Lean’s multi-award-winning classic LAWRENCE OF ARABIA will be screening at the Cinema On The Beach in Cannes.
Finally, Park Circus say it now has worldwide rights to screen movies in the Rohauer Film Collection, which includes the works of Buster Keaton, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks, as well as films such as Hitchcock’s JAMAICA INN the Joan Crawford classic SUDDEN FEAR and the recently restored PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN; could that presage a DVD release..?
According to the Film Foundation, ’Pandora’ was “…restored by George Eastman House, in cooperation with The Douris Corporation, at Cineric, Inc. in New York City. After an exhaustive worldwide search, no original negatives could be found. Working from separation master positives created in 1951, the film was restored photochemicallyusing the Cineric Single Pass System to re-register the color records and manufacture timed separation negatives. Sections of the film were scanned 4K resolution to perform digital dirt and scratch removal. Additionally, the soundtrack was fully restored by Audio Mechanics in Burbank, California. Funding was provided by The Film Foundation, the Franco-American Cultural Fund, and the Rome Film Festival.”