Showing Soon; A BFI Special… July 4, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, DVD News & Info, Showing Soon , add a commentShowing Soon has been in stasis, mutely twiddling his thumbs while the rest of the world fizzed and zoomed around him; then, shrugging off the stifling torpor and with one mighty bound - he was free!
Time to play catch-up; first with a focus on BFI releases of the recent past, present and near future:
In the musty back catalogue world of classic film, frankly not a huge amount of import has been stirring as the larger studios seem to consign niche titles to the back burner, on both sides of The Pond. Their output shrinking as the effects of the ‘credit crunch’ combine with the hike in world oil prices (engineered by speculators, gentle reader, or ‘bastards’ as we are wont to call them…) sending The Suits into a tailspin.
But the plucky BFI, displaying all the obdurate grit, determination and sheer suicidal benightedness that make Britons great (or incredibly stupid; only time will tell…), ploughs on regardless to the delight of movies fans most everywhere…
Chris Petit’s cult classic Radio On (1979), released on DVD in May by the BFI, is ‘one of the most striking feature debuts in British cinema – a haunting blend of edgy mystery story and existential road movie, crammed with eerie evocations of English landscape and weather’:
Stunningly photographed in monochrome by Wim Wenders’ assistant cameraman Martin Schäfer, Radio On is driven by a startling new wave soundtrack featuring David Bowie, Kraftwerk, Lene Lovich, Ian Dury, Wreckless Eric, Robert Fripp and Devo, and reveals an early screen performance by Sting.
Following a young London DJ (David Beames) on the road to Bristol to investigate the mysterious death of his brother, Radio On offers a unique, compelling and even mythic vision of a late 1970s England, stalled between failed hopes of cultural and social change and the imminent upheavals of Thatcherism.
Previously Film Editor at Time Out magazine, Chris Petit interested the BFI Production Board and Wim Wenders in backing his first feature despite having no previous filmmaking experience. He went on to make more films during the 80s and in recent years has worked in collaboration with psychogeographer Iain Sinclair. His most recent film was Ideal Love (2006). Chris has also published several novels and regularly reviews books for The Guardian.
Extras
• New filmed interview with Chris Petit and producer Keith Griffiths
• radio on (remix) (Petit, 1998, 24 mins): a digital video essay – with radical disruption of the original soundtrack by Wire’s Bruce Gilbert
• Original trailer
• Illustrated 28-page booklet with contributions from Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, John Patterson, Ian Penman, Chris Petit, Sukhdev Sandhu, Jason Wood and Rudy Wurlitzer; director biography and credits
You can read the DVD Times review here.
One of the very last silent films to be made in Britain before the talkies revolutionised cinema, A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929) is a virtuoso piece of film-making, a final passionate cry in defence of an art form soon to be obsolete. Restored from film materials preserved in the BFI National Archive, this little-known gem was released on DVD for the first time in the UK in May by the BFI, and presented here with a specially commissioned score by Stephen Horne.
Directed by Anthony Asquith (better known for The Browning Version and The Way to the Stars) A Cottage on Dartmoor is an embroiled melodrama, a tale of love and revenge, set on the bleak landscape of Dartmoor.
In a small-town hairdressing salon, a young barber, Joe (Uno Henning) is trying to court Sally, the beautiful manicurist (Nora Baring) and asks her out. She rejects him in favour of the security offered by an older, wealthier farmer. In a jealous rage Joe slashes the farmer with a razor and is sent to Dartmoor prison for attempted murder. He escapes over the moors to find Sally, who does not know if he has come to kill her or ask her forgiveness, and it’s at this point that the film begins. The rest of the story is told in flashback.
Overlooked by critics more eager to heap praise upon his contemporary, Hitchcock, (who made Blackmail during the same year), Asquith’s films display the same skill in inventive story-telling and technical artistry. Steeped in the work of the Soviet avant-garde and German expressionism, Asquith adopts these styles whilst instilling the film with a particularly British sensibility.
Extras
• Insight (1960) – Study of Anthony Asquith at work featuring on set footage and interviews
• Rush Hour – Comedy film from the BFI National Archive about Britain’s workers coping with the transport system during the War (Asquith, 1941)
• Fully illustrated booklet including essays by Bryony Dixon and Geoffrey Macnab
Intriguingly, the BFI press release adds:‘More films by Anthony Asquith will be released by the BFI in the future.’ A Cottage on Dartmoor has been reviewed at DVD Times here.
Combining elegance and wit, Lubitsch’s last film, Cluny Brown, set in 1938 London, is one of his most engaging romantic comedies. In partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment and Hollywood Classics, the BFI made it available on DVD for the first time on 26 May.
Jennifer Jones and Charles Boyer team up as the plumber’s niece (later housemaid) and the intellectual Czech refugee, who throw English society into disarray with their disregard for conventions.
This charming satire, aided by a wonderful script taking in snobbery upstairs, downstairs and in the middle classes, is given a jolly run around by a cast comprising most of Hollywood’s British stalwarts from Sir C. Aubrey Smith and Peter Lawford to Sara Allgood and Una O’Connor.
Extras
• Original trailer
• Illustrated booklet with original publicity photos, film review by A.H Weiler of the New York Times from 1946, a director biography by Thomas Elsaesser; cast and credit details
• Dolby Digital mono audio (320 kbps)
You can read the DVD Times review of Cluny Brown here.
A ‘lost’ late 60s’ cult classic by John Huston (The African Queen, The Misfits, The Night of the Iguana), A Walk with Love and Death stars his daughter Anjelica Huston aged 17, in her first acting role
‘In the 14th Century, England and France were engaged in a war that would last a hundred years. Claudia and Heron were born after the war began, and would die before it ended…’
With this brief prologue begins John Huston’s A Walk with Love and Death, a story of a student, Heron (Assi Dayan), who leaves Paris to walk to the sea but encounters Claudia (Anjelica Huston), a young noblewoman with whom he falls in love and pledges to protect after her home is destroyed in a peasant revolt.
Filmed in 1968, (the same year as Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet) Huston’s tale of young lovers adrift in France during the Middle Ages owes more to the spirit of the late 1960s in its questioning of authority and insistence on love, not war.
Based on Hans Koningsberger’s novel of the same name it stars a 17-year-old Anjelica Huston in her first acting role and features a wonderful score by Georges Delerue with one of his most haunting love themes.
Special features
• Walking with Love and Death (1968): Behind-the-scenes footage of Huston on set, directing the actors
• Illustrated booklet with an original essay by Hans Koningsberger on the filming of his book (from Film Quarterly, Spring 1969); a review from Monthly Film Bulletin, February 1977; cast and credits
• Dolby Digital mono audio (320 kbps)
Mike Sutton’s DVD Times review of the disc is here.
In June the BFI released the Bill Douglas Trilogy; My Childhood, My Ain Folk, My Way Home:
Three of the most compelling films about childhood and adolescence ever made – released for the first time on DVD
Bill Douglas’s award-winning films – My Childhood, My Ain Folk and My Way Home – which the BFI releases together in a two-disc DVD set with special features, are three of the most compelling and critically acclaimed films about childhood ever made.
The narrative is largely autobiographical, following Jamie (played with heart-breaking conviction by Stephen Archibald) as he grows up in a poverty-stricken mining village in post-war Scotland. In these brutal surroundings, and subject to hardship and rejection, Jamie learns to fend for himself. We see him grow from child to adolescent – angry and bewildered, but playful, creative and affectionate.
In My Childhood (1972), eight-year old Jamie lives with his granny and elder brother in a Scots mining village in 1945. With his mother in a mental home, and his father absent, he is subject to the hardships of poverty. In My Ain Folk (1973), Jamie is sent to live with his paternal grandmother and uncle; a life full of silence and rejection. My Way Home (1978) sees Jamie’s ultimate victory over his circumstances; after a spell in foster care, and a homeless shelter, he is conscripted into the RAF, where he embarks on a redemptive friendship with Robert, which allows him to emerge from his ineffectual adolescence to pursue his artistic ambition.
Watching the Trilogy is far from a depressing experience. This is cinematic poetry: Douglas contracted his subject matter to the barest essentials – dialogue is kept to a minimum, and fields, slag heaps and cobbled streets are shot in bleak monochrome. Yet with its unexpected humour and warmth, the Trilogy brims with clear-eyed humanity, and affection for an ultimately triumphant young boy.
Special features
• Bill Douglas: Intent on Getting the Image (2006, 63 mins), a new documentary about Bill Douglas’s life and work
• Come Dancing (1970, 15 mins), Douglas’s remarkable, rarely-seen student short
• Rare archive interview with Bill Douglas (4 mins)
• Illustrated booklet containing newly commissioned essays, notes and credits
This super set is reviewed at DVD Times here.
Restored by the BFI National Archive and released on DVD for the first time with commentary by Terence Davies, The Terence Davies Trilogy (Children, Madonna and Child, and Death and Transfiguration) comes to DVD at the end of this month.
While at Coventry Drama School in the early 1970s, Terence Davies wrote the script for Children which he directed in 1976. He subsequently took up a place at The National Film School and with the support of the BFI Production Board, made his graduation film Madonna and Child (1980). Three years later, also part-funded by the BFI, he completed the Trilogy with Death and Transfiguration.
Restored by the BFI National Archive who worked closely with Terence himself, the films are preserved by the BFI and are now released on DVD for the first time alongside The Long Day Closes (1992).
Before Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes confirmed Terence Davies’ status as one of the cinematic masters of our day; these three early shorts reveal a filmmaker of great promise.
In stark black and white, Davies excavates the life of his fictional alter ego, Robert Tucker, in a narrative that slips between childhood, middle age and death, shaping the raw materials of his own life into a rich tapestry of experiences and impressions.
Over the course of these three films, we witness the emergence of Davies’ singular talent and style, the refinement of his technique, and a director growing in confidence, soon to become fêted as British cinema’s greatest film poet.
Special features
• Full feature commentary by Terence Davies
• Filmed interview with Terence Davies by Geoff Andrew
• 10-page illustrated booklet including essays by Derek Jarman and Distant Voices, Still Lives producer Jennifer Howarth on Terence Davies at Film School
The BFI will release Terence Davies’ new film Of Time and the City in cinemas nationwide on 31 October and on DVD in 2009. The BFI DVD Distant Voices, Still Lives is out now.
Released on DVD for the first time, Terence Davies’ follow-up to Distant Voices, Still Lives, The Long Day Closes, extends his autobiographical memoirs into the ’50s
Following his prize-winning debut feature film Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988), in 1992 Terence Davies made The Long Day Closes, now released by the BFI on DVD for the first time, alongside The Terence Davies Trilogy.
Terence Davies’ lyrical hymn to childhood revisits the same territory as Distant Voices, Still Lives, this time focusing on his own memories of growing up in a working-class Catholic family in Liverpool.
Eleven-year-old Bud (a heartbreaking performance from Leigh McCormack) finds escape from the greyness of ’50s Britain through trips to the cinema and in the warmth of family life. But as he gets older, the agonies of the adult world; the casual cruelty of bullying, the tyranny of school and the dread of religion, begin to invade his life.
Time and memory blend and blur through Davies’ fluid camerawork; slow tracking shots, pans and dreamlike dissolves combine to create the world of Bud’s imagination and the lost paradise of his childhood.
Special features
• Full feature commentary with Terence Davies and Director of Photography Mick Coulter (Sense and Sensibility, Love Actually)
• On-set interview with production designer Christopher Hobbs (Velvet Goldmine, Orlando)
• Previously unseen behind-the-scenes footage of Terence Davies directing
• 18-page illustrated booklet with essays, director biography and credits
• Fully uncompressed PCM stereo audio
Black Five, to be released July 21, is three films by Paul Barnes that celebrate and regret the final days of steam on the railways – preserved by the BFI National Archive and newly re-mastered for DVD release to mark the 40th anniversary of the end of steam in Britain.
In 1968, enginemen faced the last months of steam haulage on Britain’s mainline railways. For those who worked on the Black 5 locomotive the inevitable progress to diesels and electrics prompted mixed feelings.
Black Five (1968) directed by Paul Barnes, records their reminiscences as they faced this great change in their lives – of craftsmanship, camaraderie, and of the ‘personality’ of these great machines. The workers’ comments are an elegy to a time gone by, to skills no longer needed, and they make a poignant background to the beautifully filmed images of the heavy iron beasts trundling their way to the end of the line.
Black Five is filmed around Carnforth station in Lancashire, a location which had been the setting for the archetypal railway romance, David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945) over 20 years earlier.
The DVD also contains two other short films by Paul Barnes. The Painter and the Engines (1967) follows painter David Shepherd’s race against time to record on canvas the magic and romance of steam during the locomotives’ last weeks at South London’s Nine Elms sheds. King George V (1970) charts the history of the celebrated locomotive, which was taken out of service in 1965 but offered a length of siding at Bulmers of Hereford to continue running, in steam.
Special features
• Illustrated booklet containing newly commissioned essays and notes
At the end of July, the BFI release Jacques Demy’s 1967 ’scope musical Les Demoiselles de Rochefort as a two-disc SE.
An effervescent and captivating celebration of life, Jacques Demy’s much-loved musical stars Gene Kelly, Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac
Following the huge success of Les Parapulies de Cherbourg (1964), Jacques Demy went on to make Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, a large scale tribute to the Hollywood musical featuring screen legend Gene Kelly. Released in the UK on DVD for the first time by the BFI, the 1996 restoration is presented in a 2-disc set that also features an hour long documentary by Agnès Varda and other special extras.
Jacques Demy was one of the most distinctive directors to emerge from the French New Wave in the late ’50s and early ’60s. The films he made up until his untimely death in 1990 constitute one of the most extraordinary bodies of work of that era, much of which was screened in a career retrospective at BFI Southbank last November.
Les Demoiselles de Rochefort centres on twin sisters Delphine and Solange (played by real life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac). Tired of their humdrum existence in the picturesque seaside town of Rochefort, they dream of leaving to find success and romance in Paris, just as a carnival and an American composer (Gene Kelly) hit town.
The superb ensemble cast also features Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli, Jacques Perrin, George Chakiris and Grover Dale.
With a plot of pure Shakespearean farce, witty dialogue and lyrics by Demy and a magnificent jazz score by three-times Academy Award winner Michel Legrand, this has to be one of the most joyously ebullient movies ever.
Special features
• Les Demoiselles ont eu 25 ans (Agnès Varda, 1993, 64 mins) – documentary mixing on-set footage, home movies and footage from the 25th Anniversary celebrations in Rochefort
• Extracts from the Guardian Interview in which Catherine Deneuve talks about working with Jacques Demy and his influence on her career
• Audio extracts from Gene Kelly’s Guardian Lecture on the Hollywood Musical
• Illustrated booklet containing original publicity photos and production stills
• Fully uncompressed PCM stereo audio
On August 18, the BFI releases a brace of films by Jean Cocteau; first, the 1946 classic La Belle et la bête:
Visionary filmmaker and poet Jean Cocteau responded to the terrors and creative constraints of occupied France with this elaborately realized take on the classic fairy tale BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Suggested by his longtime collaborator and muse, French actor Jean Marais, the cinematic version of the fable first penned by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont became Cocteau’s most celebrated film. Cocteau renders the story of a gentlehearted beast in love with a simple and beautiful girl in the style of the luminous paintings of Dutch master Vermeer.
From the quaint and humorous scenes of Beauty’s happy home to the ominous surreal spectacle of the Beast’s enchanted estate, Cocteau transforms the simple tale of tragic love into a surreal vision of death, desire, and beauty. Marais is chilling as the lonely and tormented beast, projecting a wounded love for the glacial yet endearing Beauty (Josette Day), whose simple request for a rose from her father brings tragedy crashing down on her whole family. Cocteau expands upon the cinematic inventiveness first seen in his masterpiece Belle et la bête with mirrors made of water, living statues, and candelabras fashioned from living arms, transforming a children’s fable into a complex and radiant cinematic classic.
The second Cocteau release is 1950’s Orphée:
Cocteau’s luminous adaptation of the famous Greek myth, set in post-occupation Paris, remains one of the most stunning achievements of the auteur’s career. Orphée (Jean Marais) is a successful Parisian poet, whom–despite popular acclaim–feels isolated and uninspired. When his wife Eurydice (Marie Dea) is stricken down by leather-clad bikers, he pursues them into the underworld, where he falls into a romantic entanglement with the dark-haired beauty Death (Casares). Stunning cinematography and surrealist flairs punctuate this beautiful, hypnotic masterpiece.
The same date, and John Maybury’s Love Is The Devil: Study For A Portrait Of Francis Bacon, gets the BFI treatment:
An intriguing biographical look at British painter Francis Bacon (Derek Jacobi), focusing on his turbulent and tragic relationship with lover and model George Dyer (Daniel Craig), a former boxer and small time thief who competes for Bacon’s affections so passionately that it eventually destroys him. Tilda Swinton also stars.
Slightly less exotic, the BFI has scheduled a busy August 18 for British Transport Films: Volume 8 - Points and Aspects:
Continuing the BRITISH TRANSPORT FILMS COLLECTION, POINTS AND ASPECTS is a fond look back at the history and evolution of the locomotive, as well as a fascinating documentary in its own right. Topics covered in this volume include: ‘Single Line Working’, ‘Day To Day Track Maintenance Pt.1′, ‘Day To Day Track Maintenance Pt.2′, ‘The Signal Engineers’, ‘Mishap’, ‘Spick And Span’, ‘The Long Night Haul’, ‘Care Of St Christopher’, ‘Measured For Transport’, ‘Channel Islands’, ‘Under The Wires’, ‘Points And Aspects’, ‘Scotland For Sport’.
Almost there; and the BFI has announced the UK two-disc SD SE and all-regions Blu-ray Disc releases of Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom on 22nd September 2008 priced at £22.99/£24.99. Pier Paolo Pasolini’s final and most controversial film has been banned, censored and reviled the world over since its first release in 1975. It did not receive UK certification until late 2000, when it was passed uncut.
The film is a brutal allegory based on the novel 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. Special features (these apply to the Blu-ray set - specs and art for the SD set can be found at the DVD Times link provided below):
Disc 1: Main Feature
Fully Complete & Uncut, telecined from original Italian restoration negatives
1.85:1 (1080p, 24fps) / BD25 / PCM mono
Original Italian language version (with optional English subtitles)
Original English language version (with optional HoH subtitles)
Original Italian trailer (with optional English subtitles)
Coil - Ostia (the Death of Pasolini) The original 1987 track from Coil’s celebrated second album, Horse Rotorvator, with a newly created video accompaniment, shot especially for this release, by Peter Christopherson.Disc 2: Extra Features - A standard definition PAL DVD with the following content:
On set footage and interviews (1974, 25m) – newly created documentary using full colour footage shot in 1974 by acclaimed film journalist and Pasolini expert Gideon Bachmann.
Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die (1981, 58m) Philo Bregstein’s classic documentary on the life and death of Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Fade to Black (2001, 25m) – documentary with Mark Kermode exploring the ongoing relevance and power of Pasolini’s controversial masterpiece, with Bernardo Bertolucci and other leading directors.
Ostia (1991, 25m, with optional director commentary track) – Julian Cole’s short film about the last days of Pasolini, starring Derek Jarman.Fully illustrated booklet
Newly commissioned essay by Sam Rohdie (Italian film scholar and author on Pasolini)
Sight & Sound article by Gideon Bachmann incorporating his on-set diary
1979 review of the film by Gilbert Adair
James Ferman letter to the Director of Public Prosecutions
Cast and credits for the film
Pasolini biography by Italian film specialist Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
Photographs of Pasolini at work on set
Artwork (this has a Showing Soon ‘busty substances’ alert) for Salò or The 120 Days of Sodom can be seen at DVD Times here. Also looking forward to September, and three more documentary sets from the BFI; Manufactured Landscapes, GPO Volume 1 (2-DVD) and Animal Films, but more on those another time.
That’s the end of this ‘BFI special’ Showing Soon; the next blog in this strand will be posted here next week (no fear of overwork then…), and Showing Soon will take a look at the rest of the upcoming releases he feels are of note in the UK.
Deserved Award For BFI Project
The BFI National Archive’s ‘Documentary Centenaries’ project which included the restoration and release of the BFI DVDs Night Mail Collector’s Edition and the 4-disc box-set Land of Promise: The British Documentary Movement 1930 - 1950 won the Award for the Best Archive Restoration or Preservation Project at the Focal International Awards 2008, presented recently.
Marking the centenaries last year of five pioneer documentarists, this ambitious project of great importance to the UK’s cultural heritage involved the curatorial assessment of each of the film-makers’ entire surviving output. Some 84 titles were then selected for restoration, preservation and programming for exhibition, touring and release on DVD.
In addition to a major ‘Documentary Centenaries’ season at BFI Southbank last September and an international tour of Humphrey Jennings: Finest Hour, a Collector’s Edition DVD of Night Mail was released in partnership with The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) and the Royal Mail, instantly becoming a BFI best-seller. The critically-acclaimed Land of Promise 4-disc box-set, in deluxe packaging complete with a 96-page book, was released in April 2008 and quickly sold out. It is already on its second manufacturing run.
Patrick Russell, Senior Curator for Non-Fiction at the BFI National Archive, accepted the award on behalf of the BFI and said: “It’s apt that this project celebrating a collective movement of film-makers was itself deeply collaborative. This award is gratifying recognition of a lot of hard work by many colleagues across different teams in the BFI over the last two years. We are delighted that the essential contribution of our technical archivists, and the sheer quality of their work, is valued so highly in the archival community. And it is immensely encouraging that there is such a public appetite for archival documentary – an important part of our national film-making heritage”
A much deserved award.
At the Movies…
Hailed as one of – if not the most – sophisticated film ever to come out of Cuba in the early days of Castro’s revolution, Memories Of Underdevelopment (Memorias Del Subdesarollo) is visionary Cuban director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s 1968 tour de force and is coming to UK cinemas, on limited release, in a few days time.
The blurb:
Listed at number fifty-four on Derek Malcolm’s 100 Greatest Movies, this cinematic masterpiece will receive its UK theatrical release on 11 July 2008.
Memories Of Underdevelopment follows Sergio (Sergio Corrieri - Soy Cuba), through his life following the departure of his wife, parents and friends in the wake of the Bay of Pigs incident. Alone in a brave new world, Sergio observes the constant threat of foreign invasion while chasing young women all over Havana before finally meeting Elena (Daisy Granados), a young virgin girl he seeks to mould into the image of his ex-wife, but at what cost to himself?
Even though director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea was a staunch and devoted supporter of the revolution, Memories of Underdevelopment makes a raw and uncompromising analysis of the newly formed system of government. Through a moving blend of narrative fiction, still photography and rare documentary footage, Alea catalogues the intricacies of the early days of the Castro regime; producing a stirring and enigmatic work that feeds from the culture of the very subject it is studying; Cuba.
Showing Soon; Picnic At Hanging Rock, The Bill Douglas Trilogy, and Bond is Back… April 17, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, DVD News & Info, Showing Soon , 5 commentsMore news of upcoming home entertainment classics in the U.K….
Are Second Sight going to give us the definitive DVD version of Peter Weir’s ethereal Picnic at Hanging Rock? It certainly looks so…
On Saturday 14th February 1900 a party of schoolgirls from Appleyard College took a trip to Hanging Rock near Mt. Macedon in the state of Victoria. During the idyllic sun-drenched afternoon some of the party left the rest of the group and having climbed higher stopped to rest and fell asleep. They awoke as though still in a dream and silently ventured further through 
a passage in the imposing rock face. Some of the girls were never seen again.
The film that established Peter Weir as a major filmmaker is a critically acclaimed classic of Australian cinema. With BAFTA-winning photography and a memorably haunting score Picnic at Hanging Rock remains one of the most chillingly atmospheric and beautifully enigmatic films ever made.
Thrillingly, this Deluxe 3 disc edition, coming June 30, features both cuts of the 1975 film:
The Director’s Cut and the much in demand longer Original Version (currently unavailable in any territory)
‘A Dream Within A Dream’ (120 min documentary)
‘A Recollection - Hanging Rock 1900′ (a 1975 on-set documentary)
Joan Lindsay interview (from 1974)
Hanging Rock and Martindale Hall - Then and Now (a tour of the locations)
The Day of St Valentine (1st screen adaptation of Joan’s novel made in 1969 by a 13-years-old schoolboy, Tony Ingram)
Audio Interviews
Stills and Poster Gallery
The Director’s Cut deleted scenes
Director’s Cut 5.1 audio.
This set does appear to trump Umbrella’s R4 two-discer, boasting most of that 2-disc edition’s extras, plus the seven minutes of scenes Weir took out of the original theatrical version to achieve his director’s cut as deleted scenes, plus those scenes integrated into the theatrical version.
Yes, yes, but will we - at last - get two (greedy, I know) bloody gorgeous anamorphic OAR transfers? Exciting isn’t it? And when will the Criterion R1 remaster, as mooted by Peter Weir himself some while back, see the light of day? The same day as Picnic at Hanging Rock hits the shops, Second Sight will release Weir’s The Cars That Ate Paris, but no details of any extras, if any, on that one.
The BFI is releasing The Bill Douglas Trilogy - My Childhood (1972), My Ain Folk (1973) and My Way Home (1978) on two discs (the total running time is only about three hours) - in June:
Bill Douglas’ magnificent award-winning Trilogy is the product of an assured, formidable artistic vision. These are some of the most compelling films about childhood ever made.The films narrative is largely autobiographical, following Jamie - eight years old when we first meet him - as he grows up in a poverty-stricken mining village in post-war Scotland. These are brutal surroundings, and Jamie is subject to hardship and rejection, at the mercy of the relatives and neighbours responsible for his welfare. Through these films we see Jamie grow from child to adolescent; angry, bewildered, and violent, yet playful, affectionate, and full of imagination.
The BFI releases Jayne Parker in their British Artists Films strand, again for June:
Jayne Parker discovered film as a medium when she was a sculpture student at Canterbury College of Art (1977-80). Objects, performance and gesture were combined by the camera to explore space, duration and the physical body. Soon the films became independent works. Free Show (1979) is ‘a film in three acts’ in which domestic events have overtones of threat as well as the circus (cutting liver, ironing a fly, plucking eyebrows). In RX Recipe (1980), a large eel in a bath is stuffed with vegetables and bandaged by a woman who then similarly binds her own leg, to whispered instructions on the soundtrack. I Cat (1980) was the first of a series of roughcast but sharply drawn animations featuring a woman, a cat and a fish.
DVD extras include theFrame: Jayne Parker, a 25 minutes illustrated interview with Jayne Parker produced by Illuminations, plus an iIllustrated 20-page booklet containing full annotated filmography.
More from the BFI in June; Man With a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov’s 1929 silent film described as ‘One of the most extraordinary films in the history of cinema and as important and watchable now as when it was made. It’s an exhilarating and often hilarious montage showing Moscow people at work and play and the machines that keep the city moving. Vertov pioneers the use of all available cinematic techniques - dissolves, split screen, slow motion and freeze frames and anticipates political cinema from Godard to Patrick Keiller.’
Also coming from the BFI, The Terence Davies Trilogy; Children, which he directed after he left the Coventry School of Drama with backing from the BFI Production Board. Madonna and Child completed as his National Film School graduation film in 1980. and Death and Transfiguration (1983) made with funding from the Greater London Arts Association and the BFI, though no date has been set for the trilogy’s release it should be ’soon’. Antonioni’s Red Desert, is also on the cards from the BFI, with a commentary from David Forgacs, as is Charles Bennett’s Killer of Sheep and there’s a whisper that the BFI will also tuck into the work of director Frank Bozage at some stage, though no word of which. This is some schedule the BFI is setting itself isn’t it? Very pleasing indeed.
June and Tartan with the Fukasaku Trilogy (3 Discs): The breakout success of the fantastic Battle Royale resulted in long-overdue global recognition of the films of Kinji Fukasaku. This prolific Japanese filmmaker, who died in 2003, had already made himself a name in his home country as an auteur who favoured outrageous style and biting social commentary. This collection brings together three exciting and colourful early films from Japanese cinema’s most exhilarating director. Titles Comprise:
Blackmail Is My Life: Tautly paced and fueled by a trendy soundtrack synthesis of whistled themes and electric rock, Blackmail Is My Life centres on a quartet of young daredevil hipsters who discover blackmail as a means to enjoy the booming economy from which they’ve been excluded. These rebellious youths tread a deadly line by blackmailing both sides of society- namely the Yakuza kingpins and top government officials. Blackmail Is My Life is a bloody wake-up call to Japanese culture and budding criminals and a perfect example of the director working in his prime.
Black Rose Mansion: A feverishly perverse 1969 film noir oddity starring female impersonator Akihiro Maruyama. When wealthy Kyohei hires singer “Black Rose” to perform in his exclusive men’s club, he gets more than he bargains for when she attracts scores of homicidal past lovers. The film takes a bizarre twist when Kyohei’s son falls victim to the femme fatale’s unique charm.
If You Were Young: If You Were Young highlights the other side of post-war Japanese prosperity, focusing on the throngs of young people who missed out on the boom. We follow a group of young men that can’t seem to get ahead, despite their willingness to try. Then one hits upon a plan - to work together to save for a dump truck and thus become independent contractors and be their own bosses at last. Ultimately life presents obstacles: jail for one, violence at the hands of the police for another and a girlfriend and subsequent children for the third. An early Kinji Fukasaku gem that imports the freewheeling style of the French New Wave and the hip detachment of American noir.
Nucleus release two hours of Grindhouse Trailer Classics Vol. 2 in June, which includes a featurette with Emily Booth and a Poster Gallery. Released at the end of April is the Wojcieck Has directed The Saragossa Manuscript (1965) from Mr Bongo Films, said to be:
…the full-length masterpiece of this incredible [Polish] film.
Martin Scorses, Francis Ford Coppola, Luis Bunuel and Jerry Garcai have at various times described The Saragossa Manuscript as their favorite film.
Based on the book by the highly-esteemed Count Jan Potocki, the film version is reputedly a respectful, mostly faithful adaptation of this literary cat’s cradle set in the weird fantasy landscapes of arid 17th-century Spain. The films creates a magical, sometimes disturbing, world of the supernatural so it’s no surprise that this was a counterculture classic and Jerry Garcia’s favourite. He, along with Martin Scorsese, put up part of the money to have it restored to its full length. Besides the convoluted structure, characters pop in and out of each other’s stories with the random logic of a trip. The characters includes sexy ghost princesses, demon-possessions and many a corpse. The intriguing stylistic flourishes sit against the wonderful soundtrack, which was composed by Krzyszt Penderecki, famous for the scores of The Shining and Wild At Heart.
The Mr Bongo label, relatively new on the scene, also has two Antonioni films prepped for June; L’Avventura and Identification Of A Woman (Identificazione di una donna); other titles on the go (with no specific release date) include Glauber Rocha’s Black God, White Devil (Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol), John Huston’s Under The Volcano, and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s 1968 Cuban film Memories of Underdevelopment (Memorias del subdesarrollo).
July and Artificial Eye release The Satyajit Ray Collection (Volume 2) to follow up the first Volume which goes on sale in May; no details save the titles - Kapurush / Mahapurush / Joi Baba Felunath.
These are more of those ‘caveat emptor’ releases; Pegasus have never been renowned for the quality of their discs, but, if the pass at the BBFC is to be believed, they are at least giving an outing to Jack Starrett’s (he of Race With The Devil) poor 1970 western Cry Blood, Apache, which is notable only inasmuch as it stars Jody McCrae (who produced) and his father Joel, in his next to last film role; not a way to end a career. The transfer will be full-frame. Similarly, the BBFC has passed Robert Gordon’s 1972 western, The Gatling Gun, for Pegasus, with Dean Stockwell and Robert Fuller, and Earl Bellamy’s Against a Crooked Sky (1976), with Richard Boone, both also in full frame.
The BBFC seems to confirm those Gerard Depardieu and Brigette Bardot box sets from Optimum Showing Soon mentioned a while back, with passes for several titles that will most likely be included. It’s not definitive, but it is a positive sign.
Not really Showing Soon’s era, but definitely Showing Soon’s kind of film; Lionsgate has had a 15 minute extra for the 2006 ‘what if’ Orson Welles murder thriller (just opened in the UK) Fade to Black (with John’s son Danny Huston as Welles) passed; looks interesting.
No full details as yet on Network’s Jason King: Complete Series Special Edition (7 discs) coming at the end of June, except to note that Peter Wyngarde does not feature in any of the extras, save in clips or referred to by others; he’s not donated a commentary or been involved in the documentary. Which is a shame.
Lawrence of Liverpool and Other Screenings…
There’s a special screening of Lawrence of Arabia as part of the ongoing David Lean Centenary celebrations at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall on Tuesday, 22 July, at 7.00pm. The blurb:
Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival and BAFTA celebrate the centenary of David Lean’s birth, one of the academy’s founding members, with a screening and discussion of his seminal award-winning film, Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif. Egyptian actor Omar Sharif gained international stardom from the film, which he considers to be one of his greatest. The film will be accompanied by a Q & A discussion, guest speaker to be announced.
More details here.
Just a mention that a Alfred Hitchcock’s newly spruced up The 39 Steps is currently enjoying a limited theatrical run at ‘BFI Southbank, Filmhouse Edinburgh and key cities’, from July a restored print of Wilder’s The Apartment may also be coming to a cinema near you after opening at the Curzon Cinema, Mayfair, in ‘that London’, and from August 1, Leone’s The Good, The Bad & The Ugly gets a run out at the ‘BFI Southbank and key cities’; it’s also ‘restored’ but they don’t say if it is the controversial version put out by MGM on DVD, with previously deleted and revoiced scenes, plus gunshots retuned for the big screen that rather jarr on those familiar with the picture. And hurry if you want to catch Bond back in action on the big screen in the company of director Lewis Gilbert:
The Spy Who Loved Me – Restored and Back in Action
The James Bond classic, The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) is to be presented, back on the big screen, in a glorious digital restoration at a special event in one of London’s biggest cinema venues.
The classic action thriller, directed by Lewis Gilbert and starring Roger Moore as James Bond, is a firm favourite with fans everywhere. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards, and features many iconic scenes, including Bond’s Lotus car turning into a submarine and his first encounter with Jaws (Richard Kiel).
The special screening will be held at the Empire Leicester Square, Screen 1, on Sunday 20 April at 1.30pm for 2pm. In attendance at the event will be several people involved in the making of the film, including director Lewis Gilbert and actor Caroline Munro.
Tickets for the screening are on sale now from Empire Cinemas, via www.empirecinemas.co.uk
David Lean Centenary; Special Events, Theatrical Showings, new 10 DVD Box Set… March 10, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, DVD News & Info, British Film , 4 commentsThis is Sir David Lean’s centenary year.
To mark the event, and as a tribute to the great director - born 25 March 1908, died 16 April, 1991 - 10 films directed by Lean during the 1940s and ’50s have been ‘faithfully restored’ by the BFI National Archive, in partnership with Granada 
International. Alongside many special events both at home and abroad, the films will be shown theatrically and form a special season on the film channel Film 4, before being released in the U.K. in a David Lean Cententary Collection box set come August.
The blurb:
…The sparkling new restorations were announced as part of a year-long programme of events, screenings, tributes, book and DVD releases involving different organisations and allowing people across Britain to discover and rediscover Lean’s work.
The £1 million restoration project was completed thanks to generous funding from the David Lean Foundation. The Foundation was set up at Lean’s request to promote the appreciation of film as an art form and to encourage skills and technical excellence in filmmaking.
David Lean remains one of Britain’s most widely known and respected directors and many of his films are part of our national memory, whether the forlorn couple in the station café or that tiny figure shimmering on the desert horizon. A master of visual storytelling, Lean was meticulous in his craft and admired by filmmakers for his loving attention to detail. Like Hitchcock, Lean loved to explore the nature of British or English identity whether on the Home Front of wartime drama, literary adaptations and doomed romances, or on the larger canvas of his later Hollywood-backed epics.
Most of us know the great Lean epics that won many awards here and in Hollywood - The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) - but he directed 16 fiction films and edited numerous others in a career that spanned six decades. The BFI and its partners aim to cast new light on his earlier work which includes the classics In Which We Serve (1942), Brief Encounter (1945) and Great Expectations (1946), also enabling people to rediscover lesser-known films such as The Passionate Friends (1948), to be released by the BFI in June.
At BFI Southbank in June and July there will be a retrospective of the 16 feature films Lean directed, as well as a number of the more significant ones he edited, including Pygmalion (1938) by Anthony Asquith and 49th Parallel (1941), directed by Michael Powell. The two month season, in association with Film 4, will also include events with documentary clips, discussions and feature presentations from experts exploring themes around his career and working style.
Throughout the year, brand new 35mm and high definition digital prints of the restored films will be screened up and down the country by Granada International, through its theatrical partners Park Circus and the BFI, and by Canal Plus. A complete season is also planned for screening on Film 4 in September, taking Lean’s films to a wider audience across Britain. Also ITV DVD and Optimum will release the newly restored pictures on DVD in the UK in August.
BAFTA is a charity organisation with long-established links with David Lean, which supports, develops and promotes the art forms of the moving image. BAFTA will be holding events and screenings in London, New York and Los Angeles for the public and for Academy members, which started with a tribute to David Lean at the Orange British Academy Film Awards on 10 February. There will be further tributes in the US later in the year, and during the first weekend in August four restored prints will be screened publicly at BAFTA’s headquarters on Piccadilly. The annual David Lean Lecture will also take place as usual this year, details of the date and 2008 lecturer are yet to be announced.
Carnforth Tribute
Also paying tribute to David Lean will be Carnforth Station in Lancashire, the location for most of the key scenes in Brief Encounter (1945). This poignant story of unfulfilled passion and guilt will be shown along with other Lean classics during a week of screenings in March at the station itself or in nearby Lancaster.
A week-long calendar of ‘fun-filled activities’ at both Carnforth Station Visitor Centre and the Dukes Theatre, Lancaster will be launched on Saturday 22 March. There will be special screenings of the newly restored films Great Expectations; Brief Encounter; Dr Zhivago and Oliver Twist at both venues, and there will be a David Lean exhibition at Carnforth Station to commemorate the life and career of ‘one of the most iconic film directors of all time’:
DAVID LEAN CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS PROGRAMME
22nd – 29th March 2008
Sat 22nd March
LAUNCH DAY
3pm Great Expectations Dukes
6pm Brief Encounter Carnforth
6pm-8pm Evening meal / Browse Visitor Centre Carnforth
8pm Brief Encounter Carnforth
Tues 25th March
CENTENARY DAY
7.30pm Oliver Twist Carnforth
Thurs 27th March
5.15pm Dr Zhivago Dukes
8.30pm David Lean Lecture/Discussion Dukes
Fri 28th March
7.00pm Still Life Carnforth & 8.30pm After Dark Theatre
Sat 29th March
5.30pm Summer Madness Dukes
An exhibition of the life and work of David Lean will be on display throughout in the Furness & Midland Hall.
In February David Lean: A Biography was republished by Faber & Faber UK. Written by filmmaker and historian Kevin Brownlow who spent many hours in conversation with David Lean, his family and co-workers, this exhaustive book is universally acknowledged to be the definitive biography and provides the reader with a unique insight into the man, the director, his career and his work. It’s a mammoth tome and fascinating reading, not least in the way Brownlow describes how Lean had the capacity to completely cut out of his life those who were no longer of any use, be they ex-lovers or former colleagues.
A two-day conference gathering together filmmakers, writers, scholars and collaborators of Lean is planned for late July at Queen Mary University of London and will offer a broad range of perspectives examining aspects of the director’s life and career in cinema.
The David Lean Film Restoration Project
Perhaps the most mouth-watering prospect for fans is the aforementioned restoration and theatrical presentation of 10 of Lean’s films, from before his ‘epic’ period, and perhaps all the more satisfying for it. It is these films that explore ‘Englishness’, whether we’re stood on the bridge of a stricken Naval vessel with the stiff-upper lipped Captain ‘D’, struggling vainly to maintain some semblance of middle-class morality in a railway canteen, or finding the cracks in the patriarchal society in a Salford boot shop.
The films with then be released in a 10 DVD box set by ITV DVD, with Hobson’s Choice and The Sound Barrier re-released by Optimum; a bit tough on those Lean fans who already have the 2006 released nine disc David Lean Collection (it’s minus In Which We Serve) from ITV DVD, only to find that obsolescence is just around the corner. Incidentally, the transfers in that set range from excellent to average - it will be interesting to see what transpires in the new set; new extras would be nice. The blurb:
All film restorations require collaboration, but the David Lean Film Restoration Project partnership is a model for how this kind of collaboration can most profoundly affect film heritage. The David Lean Foundation, whose resources come directly from the revenue the films of David Lean still generate, sponsored the restoration of eleven* of the sixteen films that David Lean directed.
The BFI undertook the technical side of the restoration of ten of these titles, working with Granada International and Canal Plus. The BFI National Archive in Berkhamsted is now the permanent home of the preservation elements resulting from the restoration work. The restored films will be the basis of all distributed elements in the future, ensuring that every audience everywhere will see the restored version of each film.
The overall technical approach to the project, led by Andrea Kalas, Senior Preservation Manager of the Archive Film Lab, was to find the best surviving material on each title and restore and preserve each film using the best methods available. For 8 of the films this involved collaboration with Granada International’s Perivale archive and working with the technical team headed by Fiona Maxwell, Director of Operations and Servicing. As quality considerations focus mainly on elements duplicated from an original, each element was inspected for quality and condition. Dirt and scratches can be printed in, and focus and fluctuation issues in the image can also occur. Condition issues can include signs of deterioration, mould, and most often the effects of usage.
Original camera negatives of many of the films were badly damaged: with scratches, frames missing, tears, even one important original negative entirely missing. Elements from both the BFI and Granada International archives were viewed and compared to find the best materials to work from.
The next stage was to decide how and where to complete the restoration which needed specialized equipment and expertise. Archival film is often fragile and in need of printers and scanners that have been optimized for this purpose, and the knowledge of the experts who are restoring the films is crucial. The ability to ensure that Guy Green’s black and white cinematography is brought back to life with utmost care is the ability to understand how to effectively reproduce sharpness, contrast and the greyscale range. To ensure that the Blithe Spirit is a shade of green that looks ghostly and not cartoonish, requires an understanding of the Technicolor process and how to replicate that in modern film stocks.
The ten films were restored by one of three standard film restoration processes:
Photochemical, Digital Sections and Full Digital Intermediate. Each film also had digital audio restoration. Although the Archive Film Lab at the BFI National Archive was the main facility for the restoration work, other film labs such as Cineric in New York were used for additional specialized work. Following the photo-chemical work, Granada International remastered their films to High Definition with full digital picture and sound restoration.THE RESTORED TITLES
IN WHICH WE SERVE
Lean shared the directing credit with Noël Coward, who wrote and starred in this tense and moving account of life on board a wartime destroyer. Although based on the experiences of Louis Mountbatten, this is a state-of-the-nation film with social divisions on shore faithfully mirrored aboard ship. Lean arranged all the camera set-ups and directed Coward in his scenes in front of the camera.
With John Mills, Bernard Miles, Celia Johnson, Richard Attenborough.
UK / 1942 / bw / 116 mins / Granada International / Park CircusTHIS HAPPY BREED
Noël Coward was again the source for this story of a London lower middle-class suburban family in the inter-war years from 1919 to 1939. The finely and wittily observed family feuds unfold against a panorama of public events ranging from the General Strike of 1926 to the outbreak of war itself. Beautifully acted by an ensemble cast and shot in Technicolor, the film was a huge contemporary hit and has lost little of its appeal.
With Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, John Mills, Kay Walsh, Stanley Holloway.
UK / 1944 / Technicolor / 114 mins / Granada International / Park CircusBLITHE SPIRIT
David Lean’s first comedy, again scripted by Noël Coward from his Broadway hit, stars Rex Harrison as a successful and cheerfully cynical novelist whose marital bliss is interrupted by the mischievous ghost of his first wife, visible to him but invisible to everyone else. The simple but effective special effects, all the more impressive in Technicolor, won an Oscar.
With Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond, Margaret Rutherford.
UK / 1945 / Technicolor / 96 mins / Granada International / Park Circus
BRIEF ENCOUNTER
David Lean’s international reputation was established with this study of unfulfilled passion and guilt – themes that were to recur in his later work. Critically debated, mocked, referenced and remade, this account of an unconsummated affair between a middle-class housewife and a doctor, forced to meet at a railway station, retains a tight emotional grip on any contemporary audience.
With Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard.
UK / 1945 / bw / 86 mins / Granada International / Park CircusGREAT EXPECTATIONS
Undoubtedly one of the finest Dickens adaptations, the film is studded with memorable setpieces, from young Pip’s hair-raising encounter with Magwitch in the graveyard to the eerie Gothic fantasy world of Miss Havisham. The Oscar-winning team of cinematographer Guy Green and production designer John Bryan bring Dickens’ settings to vivid, indelible life.
With John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Bernard Miles, Alec Guinness.
UK / 1946 / bw / 118 mins / Granada International / BFI (licensed by Park Circus)OLIVER TWIST
Dickens’ extravagant vision of Victorian London is perfectly balanced by superb performances and Lean’s fierce grip on the sprawling narrative. Guy Green and John Bryan lend an Expressionist look to Fagin’s hellish underworld and Alec Guinness, in his second major role, gives a finely judged theatrical – if controversial – depiction of Fagin himself. Lean was always eager to open a film without dialogue and here he excels himself with a tour de force sequence of Oliver’s pregnant mother battling against a storm.
With Robert Newton, John Howard Davies, Kay Walsh.
UK / 1948 / bw / 116 mins / Granada International / BFI (licensed by Park Circus)THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS
Re-released by the BFI to mark David Lean’s centenary in 2008, The Passionate Friends has been hailed by critic David Thomson as his work ‘most deserving rediscovery’. Mary (Ann Todd) has chosen a comfortable secure life with her rich banker husband (Claude Rains) over romantic passion with her first love Steven (Trevor Howard). Turmoil ensues when Steven suddenly reappears in her life. With its subtle performances, nuanced direction and beautiful cinematography, Lean’s absorbing romance, adapted from a story by H G Wells, is a fascinating companion piece to Brief Encounter.
With Ann Todd, Trevor Howard, Claude Rains.
UK / 1948 / bw / 91 mins / Granada International / BFI (licensed by Park Circus)MADELEINE
In this period drama, set in Victorian Glasgow and based on a true story, Lean exploits the ambiguous and enigmatic screen presence of Ann Todd. Here she plays a young woman who, rebelling against her patriarchal father, falls for a penniless but exploitative French aristocrat who later dies of arsenic poisoning. Madeleine is anything but a victim, daring to expose her sexuality. Guy Green’s deep focus photography owes much to CITIZEN KANE.
With Leslie Banks, Elizabeth Sellars, Ivan Desny.
UK / 1949 / 91 mins / Granada International / BFI (licensed by Park Circus)THE SOUND BARRIER
The human cost of scientific progress underlies this story of an aircraft manufacturer whose obsession for perfection leads him into near madness and brings his family suffering – a tendency shared by Lean himself. The script by Terence Rattigan delivers the drama, but the exhilarating aerial footage and the score by Malcolm Arnold are what lodge in the memory.
With Ralph Richardson, Ann Todd, Nigel Patrick.
UK / 1952 / bw / 118 mins / Canal PlusHOBSON’S CHOICE
Charles Laughton delivers a bravura performance as a self-important Lancashire bootmaker who attempts to dictate his daughter’s choice of husband, only to find that she marries his downtrodden and simple-minded employee and starts a rival business. Set in the 1890s, this working class comedy by Harold Brighouse was first staged in 1916 but is here given a fresh breath of cinematic life thanks to luminous cinematography by Jack Hildyard.
With John Mills, Brenda de Banzie, Prunella Scales.
UK / 1953 / bw / 107 mins / Canal Plus
*Mentioned above, the 11th film restored is Summer Madness, one of the last independent films Lean made and the most important in need of restoration.
The work was carried out five years ago by experts at the British Film Institute at a cost approaching £60,000 with support from the American Academy Foundation and the David Lean Foundation, and a screening of the film closed the 2003 The Venice Film Festival.
Kevin Brownlow, David Lean’s biographer, said: “Colour film has a horrible habit of fading and this was in Eastmancolor, which wasn’t a permanent colour.
“But Lean was such a visual artist it is important to get it as close as possible to what it originally looked like. What is strange about Summer Madness is that it was his favourite film. It’s a curious choice for someone who made Lawrence of Arabia.”
More details on Centenary activities at the BFI here and at the Carnforth Railway Visitors Centre here. Meanwhile, it’s worthwhile ending with a précis of the diary of just some of the special event highlights, though it has still to be finalised:
March
Screenings of Lean films in Carnforth, Lancaster and, his birthplace, Croydon.
25 March
Centenary of David Lean’s birth. Academy members’ screening of Ryan’s Daughter in 70mm at 195 Piccadilly, London. Film4 screening of The Bridge on the River Kwai
April
An evening in honour of David Lean as part of Brit Week, presented by BAFTA/LA in Los Angeles.
7 – 11 April
Granada International to launch the David Lean Centenary collection to international broadcasters at MIPTV in Cannes
Summer
Open-air screening events (BFI, Park Circus) TBC
June
Ten newly restored titles released across the UK - The David Lean Foundation has generously funded the restoration of ten of Sir David Lean’s sixteen films by the BFI National Archive, Granada International and Canal Plus, and these will be available in high quality 35mm prints and HD digital format through BFI Distribution and Park Circus.
June – July
Rediscover David Lean: Retrospective at BFI Southbank. In addition to screening all of David Lean’s works as director and a selection of those which he edited, BFI Southbank will also present a number of events ranging from presentations by experts in particular aspects of his work, to introduced screenings by those associated with individual titles and will also include discussions embracing different perspectives on some of these classic titles.
July – December
USA theatrical tour (BFI, Park Circus)
24 / 25 July
David Lean Conference, Queen Mary University of London. Gathering together film-makers, writers, scholars and people who knew Lean, this conference will offer a broad range of perspectives. Papers welcome on individual films, conditions of production, literary adaptation, key collaborations, as well as all other aspects of Lean’s life in the cinema.
August
ITVDVD release The David Lean Centenary Collection. Optimum Releasing issue The Sound Barrier and Hobson’s Choice on DVD
2 – 3 August
Public screenings of a selection of four restored prints of David Lean films at BAFTA’s headquarters on 195 Piccadilly, London
September
An event in honour of David Lean, presented by BAFTA East Coast in New York City. David Lean Season on Film4, including restored prints. Opening of The David Lean Library at the National Film and Television School - Generously supported by the David Lean Foundation, the light and airy David Lean Library is a central feature of the School’s new building, completed in time for the new academic year starting at the end of January 2008. As well as increased space for books and study, the new Library provides improved storage facilities for the School’s collections, including room for many years of growth in audio-visual material.
Date TBC
BAFTA David Lean Centenary Lecture - Since 2001, the David Lean Foundation has generously supported BAFTA’s high profile annual film lecture at 195 Piccadilly designed to educate, inform and inspire practitioners by providing insight into the experiences of some of the world’s most compelling filmmakers. Previous lectures have been given by Sydney Pollack, Robert Altman, Ken Loach, John Boorman, Woody Allen, Oliver Stone and David Lynch. The lecturer for 2008 has yet to be announced.
Let’s Watch a Film; a Little Showing Soon, Christmas Ghosts… December 15, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, DVD News & Info, Showing Soon , 5 commentsLet’s watch a film…
Long time ago, in a country far, far away, that opening proposition would probably have lead to Mrs H leafing through the local newspaper and the two of us choosing a film, and a cinema, within a couple of minutes.
The advent of video didn’t change the routine that much, except that I haunted the disappointingly tiny sections in both HMV and Virgin devoted to widescreen transfers (though I never, ever, called them ‘transfers’) on VHS tape. I begrudgingly paid the premium such a luxury demanded, but our pre-recorded tape collection never amounted to much. Laser disc was both far beyond my pocket and my ken.
Around the same time that VHS was pulverising Betamax, along came our family, money was scarce, time was even more so, and our cinema going was much curtailed, revived, principally, for the odd family film. Thanks to a combination of cinema visits, tape, and the movie oriented OCD that I seem to have passed to my children in my genes, I am word perfect in both dialogue and lyrics to The Lion King. God help me.
But behold the mighty riches held chez Hodson on Digital Versatile Disc; 1000s of films in a library any minor satellite film channel (who, maybe, would like an ‘Eve Arden Evening’ or a ’Michael Ripper Festival’) would be proud of. Films from all eras, covering most genres, suitable for every mood; so, let’s watch a film.
Tricky.
First there is the issue of trying to satisfy other tastes. I’m not a solitary viewer, if there are riches I prefer to share the wealth and, bless her, Mrs H has been most accommodating over the years even if the entertainment on view hasn’t been her preference. We came out of 2001: A Space Odyssey, I could barely contain myself. Mrs H said it was ‘okay’. I was apoplectic.
Heaven forfend if I present a less than flattering portrait - it was Mrs H who brought Bergman to the table, who loved The Seven Samurai and Depardieu’s Cyrano de Bergerac. It’s just that when I’m in the mood for something that’s a little grim, a little demanding these days, my partner, at the end of a long tiring day, wants something to lighten the mood. Something to make her laugh.
Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garica? No, it’s Arsenic and Old Lace. Again. Not that I have anything against Capra’s wonderful farce, but, I’m not in a Cary Grant mood. Bring me the head of Warren Oates dammit. However, I’m old enough, wise (well, maybe not wise exactly…) enough to know what’s good for me. Chaaaaaaaaaaarge!
That leaves some titles that will only ever be watched in my own company, usually last thing at night (Mrs H only has to hear a few bars of a James Bernard score to begin yawning, and making a nice milky drink…). Down goes the sound, off go the lights, and within 20 minutes I’m aware of an extraneous noise akin to a butcher’s saw hacking its way through gristle and bone. And I’m not even watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s me, I’m making the bloody noise, snoring loudly, head on chest. Drooling.
Bugger.
Finding a time slot during any evening where I’m bright-eyed and bushy tailed, where I can have some ‘me’ time is a problem. Someone absent-mindedly trots in front of the screen, asks me sweetly if I want a coffee, the ‘phone rings, or I can hear the ‘thumpety, thumpety’ of my 15-year-old’s sound system, all the above make the veins on the side of my head throb, and that other noise is my teeth grinding. Or maybe it’s me bellowing like a marooned James Tiberius Kirk. Oh, fer gawd’s sake - what happened then!? Stop, rewind, try again. And repeat.
There are occasions when I stand before the ranks of DVD cases, staring at the titles on the spines, trying to focus, to square the circle of film / mood / time. After 20 minutes or so, at least one of the aforementioned prerequisites has changed and I wonder away, defeated, literally spoilt for choice. Probably to watch a film on the telly, the haphazardness of a TV schedule somehow more preferable. It does occur to me that sometimes the very act of choosing, taking the disc out of the box, switching over the amplification, the monitor, waiting for the DVD to boot up, dodge past the ads, the FBI screen, is simply too much trouble. I can’t be bothered.
Certain, special, films I want to watch in an environment where everything has to be perfect, no thoughts of the day job buzzing through my head, no family interruptions, the real world put on hold and I’m encapsulated in a beautiful bubble with The Film and company who will appreciate same. Rare occasions. Hence, on my shelves, still in an unpackaged, unwatched petulant strop, sit Days of Heaven, Nosferatu, well, far too many to mention, save to say they are all ’special’. So special I rarely watch them. They glare at me reprovingly.
Let’s watch a film?
I know; how about Arsenic and Old Lace. Or maybe - and here’s an off the wall suggestion - let’s go to The Pictures…
Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid - The Protest That Never Was
The Cornerhouse in Manchester recently screened a Sunday matinee of Sam Peckinpah’s flawed masterpiece Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid. Reports from the U.S. suggest that the 2005 cut of the film perpetrated by Paul Seydor - which I now hate with an almost unnatural passion - is being shown in cinemas in preference to Peckinpah’s work print and I swear to God that I was willing and ready to stage a one-man protest should the same misguided fan edit appear on these shores.
I would probably have booed in an understated British way, muttering something like ‘down with this kind of thing’. And got myself thrown out of a cinema for the second time in my life. I also knew I would have been invigorated by the experience, as if I had done Sam Peckinpah a really rather grand favour. He would have owed me one. Such sacrifice.
But no, bless ‘em, a crisis the Cornerhouse were blissfully unaware of was averted when Sam’s cut hit the screen. Good job too, I would have showed them.
Probably.
Well, perhaps not.
The strange thing is that for the first time in many a year I was fully aware of the condition of the print. This is what DVD and the endless discussion of the minutiae of home cinema transfers has done to us. The huge, messy, reel change markers became the signal to watch for whole sections of the film that were in a variety of states; for instance the opening reel, unmarked and with beautiful eye-popping colours, gave way to a second that was faded and marked. And so on. Damn you DVD.
I have to say that, despite my remarks, it didn’t spoil the film in the slightest, which we both thoroughly enjoyed; even in it’s unfinished state (and in my view, it’s only a minor few edits away from being complete), it’s a beautiful piece of work that just gets better with each viewing. I accept fully that what Seydor did, he did for all the right reasons; he wanted to pay homage to Peckinpah, to complete a movie that remains majestically incomplete. But he, more than anyone perhaps, should have understood, that what you want and what you get are two different things…
I just wish Billy had offered a little help to Paco’s widow, having watched her husband murdered, her means of getting home destroyed. Not to mention being stripped and raped. What does he do? He rides away without a backward glance, or even a ‘I’m goin’ fer help’ line of explanation. What was Billy thinking? More pertinently, just what was Peckinpah on? Sadly, we know the answer to that. Bah! It’s a minor aberration in the grand scheme of things.
I was determined to return from the cinema and tap away with some more considered thoughts here. But then I re-read Mike Sutton’s DVD Times review - here - and decided, sadly, I could not trump, or even come close to equalling, that truly wonderful piece of film criticism which reflects my own views, both on the film and the current DVD, perfectly. Down to the last syllable. Brilliant stuff from Mike, one of the ‘net’s finest film reviewers.
A Mini Showing Soon
Just a few, brief notes on U.K. R2 titles coming up in the New Year, which I feel I must tell you about in advance of the next ‘Showing Soon’ proper.
ITV DVD is to celebrate the centenary of John Mills birth with at least one box set. Some etailers have a John Mills Centenary Collection: Icon Box Set as ‘Vol. 1′ which presupposes that another is on the way. The first set, released February, is six discs containing a mixture of titles both extant and new to DVD: Great Expectations, The October Man, Morning Departure, Waterloo Road, In Which We Serve plus Sir John Mills’ Moving Memories, a documentary featuring some of the 1000s of feet of home movies Mills, one of British cinema’s finest and most versatile actors, shot during his long life.
Eureka is releasing a three disc set of Luchino Visconti’s Rocco And His Brothers in February in their Masters of Cinema series. The set includes:
A new anamorphic restoration of the film in its fully uncut original 3 hour long Italian release version
New and improved English subtitles
Newsreel featurette
Interviews with with cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, Annie Girardot and Claudia Cardinale
Original Italian trailer
Les Coulisses Du Tournage: Documentary featurette
Luchino Visconti: Documentary featurette
Soundtrack CD of Nino Rota’s glorious score for the film
40-page booklet featuring archival imagery, articles by Luchino Visconti, and respected Italian film critic Guido Aristarco, and a rare interview with Luchino Visconti translated into English for the first time.
Sounds good.
There are a couple of etailer listings for two new Screen Icon sets from Optimum in February, for both Brigitte Bardot and Gerard Depardieu; no titles I’m afraid and nothing concrete on the Optimum website, so we’ll have to wait and see if / when they come to fruition.
Following up the excellent Early Hitchcock Collection from Optimum, Network is apparently planning a 10-disc set for release February, titled Alfred Hitchcock: The British Years. There are no details, not even on the Network website, but fingers crossed that not only will the set include the titles in the acclaimed German Concorde box (it must surely), but that they will be of the same very high quality. I’d be hoping for some decent extras, but this being Network, who knows? They might even replicate the titles in the Optimum set, a la the crossover between their Laurence Olivier set and ITV DVDs.
A guess, but I would hope the titles Network will license from rights holders Granada International may be: Jamaica Inn (1939), The Lady Vanishes (1938), Young and Innocent (1937), Sabotage (1936), Secret Agent (1936), The 39 Steps (1935), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), Downhill (1927), The Lodger (1927), and well, a long shot, The Pleasure Garden (1925) - anyone know better? Post away here, please!
10 discs; could be more (or less) than 10 films, of course.
It’s Beginning To Feel a Lot Like (a Ghost Story For) Christmas…
The BBC begins showing some of their marvellous Ghost Stories for Christmas tonight on BBC4. The full schedule can be found here. The season kicks off with The Haunted Airman and continues with A View From A Hill, The Stalls Of Barchester, Number 13, The Treasure Of Abbot Thomas, Whistle And I’ll Come To You (reviewed by this blog here), Lost Hearts, and ends with The Signalman on December 20. Oh, for a complete DVD box set!
And Finally…
I’ll end with a couple of bargains; Fantom Films are getting into the spirit (sorry…) offering a free MP3 download of MR James The Ash Tree, read by Ian Fairbairn (part of three-volume collection entitled Tales of the Supernatural, with readings by Murray Melvin, Gareth David-Lloyd, Phil Reynolds and Geoffrey Bayldon) here. And Amazon UK is offering the excellent 3-disc BBC Quatermass Collection for just £12.97 - here.
Have yourself a scary little Christmas with Mr. Kneale and Mr. James…
Trick Or Treat… November 1, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, Horror, British Film , 10 commentsThirty years on from the introduction of the Compact Disc as a medium for playing recorded music, the debate over whether digital or that old analogue war horse, the vinyl record, is best still rages. And, as we see more and more films, particularly cinema classics, screened in a digital format, just as surely will a parallel debate divide movie buffs.
The naysayers claim that movies presented in cinemas digitally will never actually look like film. A digital presentation lacks the warmth, the vibrancy, the depth and the black levels of film. Certainly it lacks film’s ‘organic’ attributes; any nicks and marks - or lack of - seen in any given digital transfer are embedded there forever. There’s no going back, year after year to your favourite festival to see that new print take on the patina of age. A digital presentation is locked, caught in time; age shall not wither it. Only advancing technology.
There’s also the issue of the projectionist; watching How The West Was Won at Bradford a while back I was mindful that it takes no little skill or experience to fire up multi-panel ’Cinerama’ screenings, and the projectors themselves are hulking, complex things of some beauty, a glimpse of which brought a strange desire, deeply embedded in the psyche of most male adults, to go tinker with (preferably armed with a small tool kit). I strongly suspect the difference between a film and digital projectionist, equates to the gulf between a Chef de Cuisine and your average burger flipper.
My own reservations about digital were largely swept aside, however, during this year’s Summer of British Film Festival when I took in as many screenings as I could, all of them digitally projected and every one a blissful encounter. It wasn’t just that I viewed several films that I had never seen in a cinema before, but the fact that I was enjoying the communal experience in the company of people who were seeing the films for the first time; a vicarious pleasure.
I’ve read that other screenings had their own problems - out of synch sound seems to be a digital bugbear - but only once did I become fully aware that I was watching a movie, not as a combination of celluloid, emulsion and light, but via binary and laser, a short video glitch marring an otherwise impeccable showing of a stunning transfer of Goldfinger.
People young enough to be Billy Fisher’s grandchildren laughed in all the right places during Billy Liar, those to whom WWII is just a few musty old pages in history books became misty eyed during The Dam Busters as the camera silently panned through the empty quarters of the airmen who would never return. You could have heard a pin drop.
So, a hit, a palpable hit for digital, one which will encourage more showings of classic films on the big screen. Fired up by all this ‘digitation’, the BFI restoration of Hammer’s 1958 classic Dracula, began a limited U.K. theatrical showing last night, fittingly on Hallowe’en.
There has been much controversy over the BFI’s involvement in restoring Dracula since it was showcased at Cannes last May. Back then, the BFI National Archive, Senior Preservation Manager Andrea Kalas was quoted as saying:
“The restoration of what many fans call the best Hammer horror film required extensive research into reported censored scenes. Rumour and fact, not unlike the Dracula story itself, are intermingled.
“Our research into missing scenes led us to every conceivable resource from the vaults of Warner Bros to an archive in Japan. Scenes censored by the BBFC for the release of the UK version, but included in the US version, have been recovered. In addition, the US title, Horror of Dracula, had been attached to most theatrical and video releases. We have restored the original British release title with its distinctive illuminated “D.”
“Ben Thompson of the BFI National Archive film lab oversaw the restoration and it is due to his diligence and perfectionism that the film is restored. We owe special thanks to Richard Dayton and Eric Aijala of YCM Laboratories and Tim Everett, Ned Price and Bill Rush at Warner Bros.”
The BFI went on to add:
The film was restored from the original negative, except for the original British title and the censored scenes, which were from dupe negatives found in Warner Bros’ vaults. The original prints were released on IB-Technicolor prints, and Richard Dayton at YCM Laboratories in Burbank worked with Ben to achieve this particular look.
However the Custodes Lucis Group, who claim to be ‘members of staff of the British Film Institute and people who work with the Institute in a variety of ways’ have a different tale to tell. Back in June their site reported:
Highlight of the BFI’s Cannes presence this year was a presentation of a new version of Dracula (1958) which the BFI claimed had been restored by the Archive. This raised some eyebrows when it was first announced, as the 50th anniversary of the film’s release is not until 2008, and the first Hammer film was produced in 1935. Moreover, because of the vagaries of distribution and donation, the NFTVA had never actually been able to acquire any material on this title in the past, and, of course, colour feature films are extremely costly items to restore. Considering the vast number of NFTVA-held titles in urgent need of preservation, restoration, rediscovery, and so on, to pick a film not in the collection, one which would eat up most, if not all, of the preservation budget for the year, and one not due for any kind of commemorative release, seemed a little peculiar.
However, on May 15th, a press release was posted on the BFI website, headed “Dracula in Cannes” [part of which is reproduced above]…
We all know that Dracula is a fantasy but surely no-one ever expected the British Film Institute to dream up such a fantastical press release. There is not a shred of truth in these assertions. The BFI did not restore the 1958 Hammer Dracula. This was done by Warner Bros. (the copyright owners) about six years ago, and was, by all accounts a very straightforward procedure, requiring no research, as the negative they worked from (of the American release version) was complete and in good condition. All the “BFI National Archive” did, in reality, was to have a laboratory in California add the British main titles to the American release picture, thus producing a hybrid that was never, ever in distribution. So much for the BFI’s policy of enhanced curatorial control. Such a decision – to create, in effect, a new work without clearly documenting the modification – would be anathema to any right-thinking archivist elsewhere in the world. In the BFI’s new fantasy land, though, it seems that anything goes.
In an interview published in The Independent on Sunday…Anthony Minghella, Chair of the BFI’s Board of Governors, talking about the high cost of archival duplication, noted that “… we are restoring the Hammer film starring Christopher Lee as Dracula…” The question is: who lied to whom? Did Mr Minghella genuinely believe that the BFI/NFTVA was carrying out a full restoration of this classic? If so, he must have had the information from Amanda Nevill. Did Ms Nevill genuinely believe that the Archive was carrying out such a restoration? If so, she must have had the information from Andrea Kalas. Where does this extraordinary chain of deception begin and end?
It’s perhaps worth pointing out that such a restoration (had it really taken place) would have run entirely counter to the BFI’s stated policy that the studios should look after their own, and that the Archive should work only on films which have no rights’ owners and are therefore exploitable commercially. And what would the Film Council have said had the BFI spent its money on this restoration?
Pretty strong language, and quite shocking stuff*. However, none of that detracts from what was a superb digital showing of Dracula last night; from the moment the pristine BBFC certification hit the screen, up came the Universal Internationallogo and there it was - virtually unmarked, beautifully framed (unlike the current DVD releases on both sides of the Atlantic), just enough film grain to stop it looking unnatural, and shown in the original 1.66:1 ratio. The colours, particularly the vivid, bloody reds, were strong and vibrant; it whets the appetite for the home video re-release that Warners have promised, and that will no doubt come in the film’s 50th anniversary year, 2008.
Even more pleasing for this viewer was the fact that my 15-years-old son was held spellbound by Terence Fisher’s half century old film, and confessed, without shame later that it scared him, something, I must admit, I didn’t quite expect of a dyed in the wool denizen of the 21st century whose only previous encounter with the Prince of Darkness was a showing of the meeting between Mr Lugosi, Mr Abbott and Mr Costello. Oh, and he didn’t ask once what our corpuscle hungry Count wanted with a librarian (come to think of it, what did he want with a librarian? Are they tastier? Bite a librarian today, and report back to me post haste. On the other hand, best not. I digress…)
I thought I’d overplayed my hand when I described the final encounter between Dracula and Van Helsing as one of the greatest scenes in horror film history. But no, not only does it still raise the hairs on the back of my neck (even thinking about it now, James Bernard’s score literally racing, galloping along…), it also did it for the boy. How very satisfying.
Three showings last night, we plumped for the early screening at 6pm, so I decided to round off Hallowe’en with a midnight showing chez Hodson of Brides of Dracula on DVD, the beautiful R1 transfer from Universal. I doubt my admiration for Peter Cushing could increase further, but while in Dracula, Christopher Lee has the plumb role that dominates while he’s off screen, it’s Cushing’s considerable craft and ability that is the glue that holds both films together and which left a big daft smile on my face.
A consummate professional, Cushing inhabits the character of Van Helsing, making sure that he’s the very embodiment of a 19th century physician by perfecting bits of ‘business’, whether it’s handling antique equipment - needles, swabs, the wonderful Phonograph (listen how he enunciates on the recording) - with an easy familiarity or alighting from a moving carriage with the athletic grace of someone who does so daily. When Universal revived the character recently, they trumpeted that they had reinvented Van Helsing as a ‘kick ass action hero’. Surely some mistake? Mr Cushing got there first. Picture his Professor Van Helsing - a snarling, feral, Dracula closing in for the kill - leaping to the table top, springboarding to rip down the curtains and bathe his foe in deadly sunlight, or jumping to catch the sails of the windmill, thus forming the shadow of an enormous vampire culling crucifix - nobody does it better.
You can find out more on when and where Dracula is being shown here. Go now, my children of the night, and book your tickets…
So, while film in our living rooms have been steadily moving towards a digital future for the past decade, it seems more of us will be watching movies in similar fashion theatrically. Vue will open Europe’s first all-digital cinema in Hull in December - it’s coming whether we like it or not.
Cost must be a factor, as must ease of operation. Yet if digital means that new life is breathed into classic films so that they can be enjoyed, where they belong, on the big screen by new generations, can that ever be seen as a bad thing? Obviously film must come first, but providing preservation of the original elements is paramount, providing that digital technology can give the viewer the most filmlike experience possible, I’m finding it hard to come up with a downside.
Will digital ultimately ‘kill’ traditional film? I don’t think so. Perhaps we should note that while CD signalled the end for the turntable more than three decades ago, vinyl records are still very much with us.
*Nov. 8 update; when these allegations were first made, it appears a poster at the British Film Forums had this to say, which I’ll leave for you to read without comment from me:
As Senior Curator (Fiction) at the BFI National Archive, I’d like [to] answer the points raised over our work on DRACULA. The work undertaken by Warner Bros in the mid-1990s was not a restoration as such but simply the preparation of digital materials for a DVD release. The BFI has prepared new preservation materials on film from the original negative. The new version, incorporating the original UK title sequence, benefits from additional technical work that has been carried out on both picture and sound. Furthermore, we have reinstated a brief sequence which was cut from the UK release version by the BBFC. None of this is a secret and we are pleased to offer the film to UK audiences in as complete a form as is currently possible.
Can I also add a small caveat as regards Dracula, which raises more issues. The BFI has been showing their restored print - not in digital form - at the National Film Theatre in London and there are several reports around the ‘net from very disappointed viewers that all is not as it should be; it’s marked, murky and with poor sound. Why should the digital version be so much better? Good question isn’t it…
Letter From America… February 8, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, Westerns , 7 comments‘Swiss Toni’ might claim it is ‘…like making love to a beautiful woman…’ (’you get it all down, you think you’ve performed superbly…but there’s not much sign of any response…’), however, gentle reader, I have come to discover that blogging is much more like my golf game (with the added bonus that there is no need for fine wines or Belgian chocolates).
I play round after round, hacking away in the gorse, scaring the wildlife - myself and other golfers - scrabbling amongst more sand than Lawrence of Surburbia, trying desperately, but vainly, to stay on the mown bit and keep my score beneath three figures.
And then I hit one.
That’s all it takes. Just one shot, one perfect long iron that as you connect you know is, unlike the other 94 you hammered at that day, just the right side of perfection. The mating of club head and ball makes that sweet and unique pinging noise that you hear every single damned shot as you meekly follow the club professional around the course.
Time is slowed right down, and you are granted a zen-like out of body overview of your ‘moment’. You don’t even seem to feel the impact as the ball lifts off the fairway, taking a beautifully sliced divot. The club shaft makes a perfect arc through the air, you can see with almost superhuman crystal clarity - and with just a little fade to bring it round to the green - your ball zipping, ripping, through the crisp, evening air. You can picture yourself even as you do it; your is swing is a thing of beauty, the follow through textbook perfection. You are a golfing God!
It is 219 yards from where you stand to the green and your shot, your beautiful, gorgeous, sexy shot, pitches, bounces three times before nestling a trifling eight inches from the cup. There are a couple of guys walking down the opposite fairway who look on with envious eyes. You try to maintain just a hint of decorum, as if you played every shot in the same, casual insouciant manner, heft your bag and saunter away. Just the merest hint of a swagger.
That was a four iron I played to the 15th, oh, maybe eight years ago; I can recall each delicious millisecond. I had never played a finer shot before or since; I will never better it. Never. But it doesn’t matter because it happened. Once. Thank you God for a truly beautiful experience. I wish I could have had it stuffed and mounted.
Where was I? Ah, yes. Blogging. Well here we are; you post on this or that subject, put a little of yourself into it, a tiny bit of sweat, a modicum of effort. And then when it’s finished and you look it and think ‘well, that’s not half bad’, you hit the ‘publish’ button and…get absolutely zero response.
No-one comes along pats you on the head and proffers a sugar lump. No-one pops up and says ‘that wasn’t so bad, but…’ (which my delicate ego could just about put up with). But worst of all, you have no indication that anyone, someone who cares, has even seen it. It might as well not exist.
The posts, one after the other, become sad-eyed orphans of the internet; unloved, unwanted and unread. It is, sometimes, terribly dispiriting, but I’m a big boy and quite aware that it comes with the territory. However, it doesn’t stop me whimpering at my computer screen, begging someone to pretty please (with sugar on) reassure me that this isn’t completely worthless? For most bloggers, I do suspect, post after post, the silence in their email inbox is deafening.
And then you hit one.
I was so pleased when John Mulholland replied to my piece on Vera Cruz; and very kind comments they were too. The utterly delightful thing is, that John is one of the leading lights at MODA Entertainment. As a writer and director of some rather spiffy documentaries, he possesses far, far more knowledge than I on Vera Cruz and High Noon, and imagine my delight when he was generously willing to share what he knows with me - and ultmately you, gentle reader - thus fleshing out both those blogs in a way I couldn’t have imagined whilst writing either.
John has kindly granted permission to share the emails he sent to me with you, and that is exactly what I intend doing here.
First off MODA Entertainment - it is, as you’ll see if you click on that link above, based on Madison Avenue, New York. By way of explanation: ‘…Its Board of Producers, uniquely consisting of estate holders of celebrated classic Hollywood actors, directors, and writers. MODA Entertainment spearheads many projects that introduce the history of Classic Hollywood films and actors to new generations. The Board of Producers are the decision makers, consultants, and active producers on all of MODA’s projects.
‘The Board of Producers consist of Writer and Director John Mulholland, Stephen Bogart (son of actor Humphrey Bogart and actress Lauren Bacall), Maria Cooper (actor Gary Cooper’s daughter), Pia Lindstrom (actress Ingrid Bergman’s daughter), Jack Hathaway (director Henry Hathaway’s son), and Peter McCrea (actors Joel McCrea and Frances Dee’s son) among others. The Producers provide a unique link and history to classic Hollywood and the entertainment industry. They have been instrumental in ensuring that MODA Entertainment continues preserving the integrity of Hollywood’s Golden Age.’
Amongst the documentaries MODA has produced is Sergeant York: For God & Country on Warners recent SE disc of Hawks film, and The Children Remember, on Warners sublime Casablanca.
In his reply to my Vera Cruz blog, John said he had ‘just finished a documentary’ on Cooper and Hemingway and it was this that really set my juices flowing. Because my wheels turn exceedingly slow at times, I thought at first that John was just another enthusiastic fan, until - his name ringing loud bells in my head - I checked out IMDB.
It was then, bursting with curiosity, that I decided to email the documentary maker, and happily, as it turns out, he was just about to email me…:
“…the doc is called Cooper And Hemingway: The True Gen. It hasn’t been released yet. Just finished it - well, allegedly finished is perhaps more accurate. In some ways, we blew it. We were accepted at the Venice Film Festival this past year, after they saw a rough cut. But we were unable to finish it and we had to decline.”
John says the initial cut was some nine hours long, but has been trimmed to about two and a half hours now for theatrical purposes. A DVD will likely show up at some point, probably longer than that (but no doubt shorter than nine hours), which is quite excellent news.
“The Cooper who emerged from research was such an astonishingly different guy than his public image - rather slow-witted cowboy, not much intellectual breadth, etc. - that I found myself in genuine awe of the man.
“Numbered among his good friends were not just Hemingway, but Picasso, John O’Hara, Irwin Shaw, Robert Sherwood, Clifford Odets, the Shah of Iran(?!?), Abba Eban, James Watson (co-discoverer of DNA), Babe Ruth, etc. His epic philandering has been well established, but the art connoisseur, the man of seemingly bottomless curiosity, infinite loyalty (as with trying to get Ingrid Bergman back to America and Hollywood by personally offering the lead opposite him in Friendly Persuasion, promising he’d take the heat for the decision), etc, were revelations.
“During the making of High Noon, Cooper became embroiled in the whole HUAC disgrace. In 1947, he had testified on the first day of hearings - named no names, no scripts, nothing - he was there, as he put it, to inform the committee that Hollywood was not a nest of communists. That this was a mistake, simply appearing, Cooper later acknowledged. But the waters hadn’t yet been muddied.
“When seemingly half of Hollwood’s leading men - Kirk Douglas, Peck, Brando, Heston, Clift - turned down High Noon, and a lettuce grower offered to put up the remaining $250,000 to meet its budget of $750,000, he did it with the proviso that Cooper star. No Cooper, no money.
“So, he read the script and leaped at it. Which is when the complex and very loyal man behind the myth came out. Jonathan Foreman, Carl Foreman’s son, graciously shared all of his father’s papers and notes and correspondence with me.
“Foreman, a former member of the Communist Party, was very concerned about Cooper and his political stand. So, he went to lunch with Cooper several months before shooting began and told him about having been a member of the Party. To his surprise, Cooper said it was Foreman’s business, not his.
“They became very friendly. When Foreman was publicly named as a Communist by an HUAC witness, there was a call for Foreman to be fired. John Wayne was a vocal leader in this. Cooper issued a statement to the press that, ‘Carl Foreman was the finest kind of American. His politics were his business, and his alone.’
“Foreman’s date to testify was two weeks into ‘Noon’s’ shoot. Wayne and his cohorts - Ward Bond and Ginger Rodgers, among others - warned Stanley Kramer that the film would be blackballed if Foreman’s name weren’t removed as screenwriter. Kramer agreed. But when Cooper and Fred Zinnemann heard of this, they told Kramer they were walking off the film if Foreman’s name weren’t kept on. They got their way.
“Which incensed Wayne. He approached Foreman and urged him to name names or his career would be ruined and his passport lifted (both of which happened). Then, Cooper offered to testify on Foreman’s behalf, but character witnesses weren’t permitted. When Wayne heard about this, he warned Cooper that his career would be over if he didn’t walk off the film.
“Cooper, of course, told Wayne to go to hell. After the film was finished and Foreman had been blacklisted, and before it had become such a huge hit, Foreman formed his own company. Cooper publicly invested in the company. Big headlines in the trades, an article how they’d both produce, Foreman would write and direct and Cooper star, etc.
“But pressure over the next few days became so intense that Foreman realized they’d never get a film made and Cooper’s career would be ruined, too. He released him from any obligations and left for England.
“So impressed by - and grateful for - Cooper’s behavior, Foreman ever after sent Cooper his scripts for first refusal, including The Bridge On The River Kwai, The Key and The Guns Of Navarone. Cooper’s age and failing health forced him to reject all three.”
Gary Cooper, John Wayne…and Oscar
I asked John about the real reason Coop asked Wayne to accept his Best Actor Oscar for High Noon at the 1953 Academy Awards, always a puzzle in view of Wayne’s views on the film. His answer left me tickled pink…
Said John: “I had a long talk with Anthony Quinn for Cooper/Hemingway. He knew them both and especially admired Cooper, who had saved him from being fired on his first day ever on a set (during The Plainsman). They became close friends.
“In March, 1953, during the Academy Awards ceremonies, Quinn and Cooper were down in Mexico shooting Blowing Wild. Both were nominated. As Quinn told me, he wanted to go up to LA for the awards, but when Cooper said he wasn’t going, he decided not to.
“Quinn said: ‘Whatever Coop did, I would do. He was literally my idol’. So, a radio feed was set up. And Quinn was all excited, there was a party. But then he spotted Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck each grab a bottle of wine and start out. He asked Cooper if he wasn’t going to listen to the awards. Cooper said no and he and Stanwyck disappeared. Quinn said he really wanted to listen, maybe he’d win, but if Coop wasn’t going to listen, he wasn’t.
“Quinn grabs a bottle of wine and joins Cooper and Stanwayck, who’d settled up a hill, drinking their wine.
“After a while, the three of them are laying on their backs gazing up at the night sky, when Cooper starts chuckling to himself. Pretty soon, he’s laughing so hard that he has to sit up. Quinn and Stanwyck had no idea what he was laughing at. They asked him what was so funny.
“Cooper told them he’d run into Wayne a week before over in Cuernavaca. Quinn hoped that he’d belted him. But Cooper shook his head and said he’d asked him to pick up his Oscar should he win. Quinn said he couldn’t believe this, after Wayne had tried to get him blacklisted.
“But Cooper had this wonderfully dry sense of humor - both his parents were from England and he had spent three years in school in England - and Quinn said he almost rubbed his hands together with delight wh