Take a bite of peach
Carmen (1983)
To make it clear, this is the Carlos Saura flamenco version of the classic story. This is an object lesson in how to film dance sequences. Whole chunks of screen time are consumed by nothing more than elegant Spanish dancers of both sexes winding sinuously around each other to the accompaniment of nothing more than their own feet on a wooden floor or a single acoustic guitar. Bizet’s Carmen was the first opera I really learned to appreciate, and this modern take on the story surfaced at the same time. Reality (the rehearsal of a flamenco production of the Carmen story using some of Bizet’s music) slowly starts to bleed away and the Carmen story itself takes over, which does not bode well for the flamenco director (playing Don Jose) and his ill-founded relationship with his tempestuous leading lady.
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Warner Home Video’s Ultra Resolution process has made an astonishing difference to the video quality of this classic film. Clips from earlier telecine transfers turn up in one of the making of documentaries and the difference is like night and day. In the new transfer you can actually see the bricks of the yellow brick road, and the sepia tone of the original opening has replaced what I always remember seeing in black and white. Which leads me to…
Wild at Heart (1990)
Or, Dorothy goes on the road with a guy in a snakeskin jacket, a symbol of his individuality and his belief in personal freedom.
Nikita (1990)
Luc Besson’s movies wouldn’t be half as good as they are without Eric Serra’s music. And Nikita is really a highpoint in their collaboration. Even the end title song doesn’t suck. How come no American director can make an action movie as good as this?
Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973)
First of all, I lived through the 70s but I don’t remember the fashions being quite as horrible as they were. Cruel Picture indeed. Tony, the pimp who abducts Madeleine, hooks her on heroin, and prostitutes her to his friends, first appears wearing a fantastically awful suit, shirt and tie combo that really should have warned Madeleine not to get into his car in the first place, but alas. Tony takes her to a restaurant and plies her with drink, and the restaurant has this appalling mural painted over an alcove. Truly, it was the decade that taste forgot. Perhaps it also accounts for why this film was made in the first place. For this was a time when it probably seemed like a really good idea to shoot hardcore inserts and place them in the scenes where Madeleine has been forced to service Tony’s clients. Even for an exploitation picture, this seems like a step too far. But I don’t know that it is. There is a kind of honesty and integrity to the inserts, there is no shying away from what is really going on. And it is an unfortunate fact that real women from real Eastern European countries are really being brought to Britain and locked up in houses and forced to have sex with men who are only too willing to ask no questions and have sex with mute witnesses who speak no English; a couple of male and female Tony’s were arrested in my local area for doing exactly this. The inserts seem shocking, but what they’re really saying is that this is the reality of this situation, does this seem right to you? They’re the opposite of eroticism. And away from the fashions and the sex, the film flat out ceases to make any sense on a whole number of occasions. My favourite non sequitur occurs when Tony and friends with Madeleine in pursuit drive up to an empty racecourse and proceed inside to a fully functioning bistro. What the hell? It’s a deserted racecourse, why would a bistro be open? It’s true that the film has this whole Ingmar Bergman directing a sleazy movie feel to it, it’s a sleazy movie with artful compositions, a distorted electronic music score and a heroine without a line of dialogue but lots of scenes shot from her point of view. It’s certainly put me in the mood for some more Eurotrash, so that’s what next week may hold.