All Slights Deserved

I'm going to have to be quick because this one was so forgettable I'm afraid it might slip from the memory entirely. Behind the Headlines is a short (just 65 minutes) second feature that was presumably produced as a 'quota quickie' ; low-budget British films made under the edict of the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act with the intention of stimulating the indigenous industry. Between 1930 and 1960 (when the Act was repealed) thousands of quickies were made, mostly deemed to be of lamentable quality. Personally I think there are some real gems amongst them and hopefully I'll be able to look at some more in the coming weeks and months. In fact Behind the Headlines is by no means a bad example and certainly benefits from higher production values than were typical, but there's nothing remarkable either. It starts promisingly; a platinum blonde bombshell takes a phone call at her flat from somebody she's apparently blackmailing and shortly after is murdered ...

Speak, memory. Back in my last year of university, some thirteen years ago, I found myself spending a lot of time at the student union bar. They were pretty uneventful evenings, truth be told, and most of the time me and few of the other guys on my film studies course used to talk about nothing very much. Actually, they tended to do most the talking, for the main part I was content to listen. But there used to be a few characters who frequented the place. One of them I particularly recall was an Irish mature student called Rob, who was doing an art degree. Being quite a bit older the guy had a certain swagger and confidence most of us gauche kids lacked (i.e. he'd actually had a life) as well as an occasionally excitable Celtic temperament. He irritated me early on by asking me where I came from - by which he meant ethnically - which, as a hangover of experiencing racism when I was younger was always a bit of a sore point. But he was basically a nice guy and I often wonder what b...

Although Bollywood cinema has risen in prominence in the west in recent years, the independent tradition, what's known as the Indian New Wave or Parallel Cinema, has a history that's nearly as long as its mainstream counterpart. Its most famous exponent is of course Satyajit Ray, whose Apu Trilogy remains one of the great landmarks of world cinema. But the independent tradition of making films that don't shy away from contemporary concerns and divisive issues continues - despite some ups and downs - to the present day. Released in 2002, Mr. and Mrs. Iyer , is an example of the more recent trend towards films made in English, presumably with an eye towards the international market. This perhaps accounts for some of its mildly expository tendencies, but that doesn't detract from a touching and sensitively told melodrama.   A road movie of sorts, it's the story of Meenakshi Iyer, a young Indian mother travelling with her baby son back to the city after a trip ...

Let's start with the facts: western imperialism may have been responsible for many injustices, but despite the scenario depicted here British (or 'European') colonialism in Asia never extended as far as Mongolia. While Vsevolod Pudovkin may have intended his story to be a fable one suspects this point might have been lost on a the Russian audience, although perhaps it was all grist to the mill for the communist cause as Stalin began to flex his muscles. That aside, I'll have to confess my ignorance about the work of Pudovkin, who lives somewhat in the shadow of his contemporary Eisenstein, but also played an important role in expanding Soviet montage theory. This film, the final part of a loose trilogy of Bolshevik propaganda works that included Mother (1926) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927). Compared with Eisenstein it's surprisingly western, in both the broader and thematic sense of the word, utilising the barren Mongolian tundra in a way John Ford wo...

I'd originally intended for this to be a review solely of The Iron Giant but decided taking in The Incredibles as well would make for both an interesting comparison between traditional and computer animation, and also how director Brad Bird made a successful jump across to the newer format. I'm highlighting Bird, because as the writer/director it's reasonable to consider him the guiding creative influence behind the two films, but it's notable that when he made the move from Warners to Pixar he took the Iron Giant 's animation team with him. Inevitably a prolonged period of adapting to the new medium ensued, but the final result ( The Incredibles ) represented a visceral and stylistic leap forward in Pixar's house style after the more sedate Toy Story franchise, et al. Given that it's been sitting amongst my dvd collection unwatched for a few years now, I'd not appreciated The Iron Giant was released as far back as 1999 and that Ted Hughes, whos...

What I find fascinating about avant-garde cinema is how angrily some people react to it. I was reading a few of the comments to a ten-minute extract of Wavelength posted on Youtube and they often say more about the person responding than the film itself. "What a weird piece of shit." "If this film were a race, I'd support it's genocide." "I'm all for the art of cinema...but it has to have a point!" Let's pick up on the last one, because although Wavelength may not possess a plot per se it clearly has a point, which is to draw attention to the film-making process in itself and our preconceptions of what cinema is or should be. We're so conditioned to audio visual experiences that are narratively driven that many of us don't pick up on the devices through which this effect is achieved. Wavelength isolates one of these in particular, the camera zoom, and compels the viewer to relentlessly focus upon it. Inexorably, o...

If yesterday's film Bigger Than Life represented an affront to civilised, bourgeois values, then superficially Themroc should have society's moral guardians calling for martial law. The trouble is that while Claude Faraldo's satire takes iconoclasm to its logical extreme, it does so in a manner that favours the ridiculous over the subversive. The result is an oddity that might be novel, even mildly amusing, but doesn't pose much of a threat from the margins. Michel Piccoli, an actor whose name might as easily be a byword for seventies art cinema, stars as the eponymous anti-hero; an atavistic factory worker. Living in a dilapidated tenement with his nagging mother and a girl who's apparently his sister; Themroc's existence is clearly one of repetitive daily grind. After a confrontation with his boss at work he snaps and returns home to start tearing apart the flat and bricking up the entrance so he can live like a modern-day caveman. Before long Themroc...

What's this, another Czechoslovak film already? Indeed, but I'll make no apologies for my endless fascination with cinema from that corner of Europe and have just come into possession of a pile of films from there, hence my choice. My journey into Czech cinema didn't really begin until three or four years ago. It could have been different; I'd first encountered Jiří Menzel's debut film, Ostře sledované vlaky [ Closely Watched Trains ] in 1995 - as part of a season of 100 films the BBC were showing to commemorate the centenary of the moving image - but for whatever reason it failed to impress. Although wry humour pervades, it's stark monochrome felt bleak and depressing and I had no stomach for a coming of age drama that morning I watched it as a nineteen year-old. So although I've watched dozens of Czechoslovak films since then, I've steered clear of Menzel's work despite its canonic position in the New Wave. Today's film could be seen as an...

Horror movies tend to treat all science as quackery, it just so happens that all quackery is valid. Transplant surgery, in one form or another, has been the subject of the wildest fantasies ever since Frankenstein ; from the many adaptations of the Shelley story, to The Hands of Orlac , to aberrations like the previously mentioned The Man Without a Body ( AFED #61 ). So even when Christiaan Barnard conducted the first successful human heart transplant in 1967 it was never likely to dampen the zeal for the original Body Horror. Sure enough Night of the Bloody Apes, made not long after, presents a grim reminder of what could go tragically wrong... if only science was a bit less rational. It's your typical mad scientist yarn, albeit with a distinctly Mexican spin. Dr Krellman (José Elías Moreno) decides to conduct the world's ape-to-human heart transplant, in a desperate bid to save the life of his son Julio, who's dying of leukemia. After kidnapping an ape from ...

I have to admit I've never been completely sold on the work of Preston Sturges. It took me years to see the film regarded his masterpiece, Sullivan's Travels , but while it's by no means a bad film I couldn't quite understand the acclaim. Sturges followed it with screwball The Palm Beach Story and its a livelier affair with sophisticated humour that's aged well, although certainly not on a par with Bringing Up Baby . So I wasn't sure how much to expect from Hail the Conquering Hero and perhaps for that reason came away pleasantly surprised. It's a deft little comedy; part satire on the (then) current fixation with war heroes and part Capraesque hokum of small town American life. Woodrow Truesmith (Eddie Bracken), a marine discharged with chronic hay fever before he ever saw any action, encounters some serving marines in a bar in San Diego. He reveals to them that he's been hiding out there working in a shipyard rather than go home and tell his mot...

Said to have been an influence on Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey , Czech sci-fi Ikarie XB-1 demonstrates both a debt to its American cousins and a willingness to do things a little differently. The eponymous 'Icarus XB-1' is an exploratory spaceship in the 22nd century, with a mission to go boldly go where no man has gone before, namely Alpha Centauri. Manned by a large mixed crew of various skills, their journey is scheduled to take some fifteen earth years; although because of "time dilation" only two years will pass for those on board. The earlier part of the film focuses on the humdrum details of life on board the ship, which gradually gives way to frustration and cabin fever as time wears on. Just when you've started to wonder whether anything of significance is ever going to happen, they encounter a derelict twentieth century vessel armed with nuclear weapons. When it explodes, killing two members of the Icarus's crew in the process, our enlig...

While researching world cinema recently I've been reminded how films which may be held in high regard in cine-literate circles are often by no means favourites in their countries of origin. Take Poland for example. If you know anything about its film history you might expect the work of Krzysztof Kieślowski, Andrzej Wajda or even Roman Polanski (though most his work has been produced overseas) to dominate polls. Yet some of the most popular films amongst Poles have been little-known (in the west) comedies such as Seksmisja [ Sexmission ] and Sami swoi [ Our Folks ]. Similarly in India although Satyajit Ray 's work is much acclaimed internationally it's atypical of the national cinema. A far more popular work in its homeland is the epic 1957 melodrama Mother India . It's the story of Radha (Nargis), who as an elderly woman is asked to open a new dam in the village in which she is considered the matriarch. The film then recounts her arrival there as a young bride...

Some seventy years before Fantastic Mr. Fox , pioneering animator Ladislas Starevich delivered another anthropomorphic animal story that comfortably rivals it for quality. Le Roman de Renard may not boast George Clooney's laconic tones but its influence on the style and ambiance of Wes Anderson's film is plainly obvious, right down to the depiction of the animals' domestic lives. Adapted from Goethe's version of the Reynard legend (a staple of European folklore), Starevich's film was one of the earliest feature length animations and a decade in the making. It shows both in the wealth of detail bestowed on every scene; from the vast menagerie of different animal characters to the meticulous set design and visual gags. The story charts the fortunes of Reynard, a cunning and inventive fox who runs afoul of the rest of the animal kingdom with his constant tricks and ruses. The king of the beasts, the Lion, finally loses patience and sends an army to lay siege to R...

Sooner or later most infamous real-life crimes receive a dramatisation, but the timing of such treatments can vary enormously. Some cases, such as that of the Moors Murders, are granted a respectful distance (although See No Evil finally told the story for tv in 2006). Others, like that of Harold Shipman, can make it to the screen in just a couple years . American readers will know that over there the turnaround can be even quicker. Perhaps it owes something to the degree to which ordinary, middle-class society is offended or horrified by the crimes, or to what extent they simply feel a morbid curiosity. Film or television executives will seldom commission such a drama if there's any risk of a public backlash, even if it rarely equates to a drop in revenue (far from it). And occasionally independent producers have taken real-life crimes and crafted them into grimly effective films. One of the most notable (if sadly neglected) examples is The Black Panther (1977), a criminal...

Although The Goon Show represented something of a watershed for post-war comedy, it's probably not unfair to describe Spike Milligan's output thereafter as variable. By all accounts his Q sketch series contained flashes of genius (and was shamelessly ripped off by the Monty Python team) but there was also the infamous Johnny Speight-penned sitcom Curry and Chips , in which Milligan blacked up to play an Indian immigrant working in a factory. Unlike his pal Peter Sellers, Milligan was more of a comedy writer than actor, but the pressure to be consistently funny and solicit the approval of one's peers must be hugely exacting. Small wonder Spike suffered several nervous breakdowns and struggled with depression. Perhaps that's also why he was drawn to the tragi-comic figure of William Topaz McGonagall , the nineteenth century Scottish poet and actor whom he depicted in a 1974 film. McGonagall, an aspiring laureate whose hopelessly mediocre, yet seemingly earnest,...

For those who believed that the horror portmanteau format originated with Ealing's Dead of Night in 1945 might be intrigued to discover this entertaining progenitor from Weimar Germany a quarter of a century earlier. Indeed Unheimliche Geschichten , which shouldn't be confused with a 1932 film of the same name also directed by Richard Oswald, utilises many of what became standard devices in this sub-genre. For starters there's a framing device; set in an antiquarian bookshop, where paintings of three archetypal figures - a Harlot (Anita Berber), the Devil (Reinhold Schünzel), and Death (the great Conrad Veidt) - come to life, much to the terror of the shopkeeper. They proceed flicking through the books, whereupon we embark on a series of five short dramatisations starring the same three actors. In the first of these Veidt plays a man who rescues a young woman (Berber) from her lunatic husband (Schünzel). The pair check into a hotel and Veidt begins contemplating havin...

It feels a little disprespectful to have gone nearly a fifth of the way into this odyssey without covering a single film by either of the world's two most populated countries. Hopefully I'll be able to take a look at some Indian cinema next week, but first here's the film that was voted the greatest in Chinese history in a poll by the prestigious Hong Kong Film Awards in 2005. Spring in a Small Town is a melodrama concerning Dai Liyan (Shi Yu) and Zhou Yuwen (Wei Wei), a couple who live with Liyan's effervescent teenage sister Dai Xiu on the outskirts of a small town shortly after the end of the second Sino-Japanese War. Liyan has spent some years recuperating from tuberculosis and, combined with regret for the decline in his family's fortunes, his marriage to Yuwen is stagnant and passionless. Into this setting comes Zhang Zhichen (Li Wei) a doctor and childhood friend of Liyan who, unbeknownst to Liyan, was also Yuwen's sweetheart many years earlier. The for...

Welcome to the sleepy English village of Unspecific, a veritable Babel of different dialects where apparently there are some "ruins", the local policeman's face is adorned with a prodigious caterpillar, and a worrying number of people have been dying violently and inexplicably. Patrick Magee is also a resident, which is never a good sign. Given his rapacious scenery chewing it's probably wise that the locals keep their distance, but they're naturally suspicious why he spends so much time lurking around the cemetery. Magee plays Dr Robert Miles, a medium obsessed by communicating with spirits who resides in a grand gothic pile in the company of an aggressive black cat with whom he has a strange love/hate relationship. The cat may or may not embody the spirit of Magee's dead son, but either way it has an uncanny habit of being in the vicinity when anything nasty takes place. Very loosely adapted from Poe's classic short story, Fulci's entertaining ...

Leni Riefenstahl: evil Nazi film-maker or pioneering genius of pre-war cinema? Or perhaps both? Either way Riefenstahl remains probably the most influential woman film-maker ever. That's perhaps all the more remarkable because her reputation is principally due to two films, both documentaries. The first, Triumph of the Will is an account of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg; a chilling work of propaganda that showcases Hitler's hypnotic genius and the spell he was casting upon the German people. Although a certain mystique has built up around this film and its sinister subtext in truth it's not the most compelling viewing to a contemporary audience. The more innovative of Riefenstahl's techniques - such as the use of telescopic lenses and aerial photography - were assimilated by the wider film-making fraternity, but many scenes drag interminably and lack subtlety. Her second, Olympia is generally viewed more sympathetically. An epic three and a half hour accou...

In the early part of the twentieth century thousands of southern African-Americans migrated north, inspired by the promise of a better life. Many relocated to the city of Chicago, where the prosperous environment saw the emergence of a new black middle class with its own distinctive culture. Out of this milieu the 'race film' was born; independently produced films made specifically for a black audience by mainly black-owned studios. Between 1915 and 1950 some 500 or so race mfilms were produced, the majority of which have now been lost. Yet amongst black audiences, both north and south (where segregation still held strong), they were hugely popular. Unlike the stereotypical depiction of African-Americans in mainstream films - tarnished from the onset by Griffith's Birth of a Nation and only progressing at an interminably slow rate - the race films depicted blacks across the social spectrum and gave early roles to the likes of Hattie McDaniel ( Gone With the Wind ) and the...

In Rio de Janeiro, in June 2000, 21 year-old Sandro Rosa do Nascimento, a young man from an impoverished background, boarded a public bus and held its passengers at gunpoint. What started as an armed robbery rapidly turned into a hostage situation as the police arrived, beginning a four hour stand-off that was captured by television crews and broadcast live to the nation. The incident became a cause célèbre, highlighting issues both about the state of Brazilean policing and the plight of those less privileged in the country. Made two years after the event Padhila and Lacerda's documentary interviews many of those involved that day - including hostages and police - as well as exploring Sandro's story and the desperate circumstances that led him to attempt the robbery. For those of us not familiar with the original event it plays out like a tense drama, albeit one from which we suspect not all the principals are going to come out alive. Naturally much use is made of the televisio...

Um... the plan tonight was to fit in Rossellini's Germany Year Zero , but then I changed my mind. So instead here's one that, at ninety seconds, will surely be the shortest film of the year.  The title says everything. No, really; check it out on Youtube and other online sources. What else can one add? Very little, although it launched Marv Newland on quite a distinguished animation career and became regarded as a classic of sorts in cartoon circles. The irony is that, despite its brevity and crudeness of style, with today's technology nowadays you could put something together in a fraction of the time that looks infinitely more accomplished. There are basically two gags; the opening and closing credits account for about eighty percent of the running time and it's all over very abruptly. I suppose in an era before micro films it must have seemed quite innovative. Is it a clever critique of the spectacle-driven 'Cinema of Attractions'? No, it was a ...

Hidden amongst the quatrains of Nostradamus's celebrated Prophecies , published in 1555, is a curious passage which has long baffled scholars: In London, many years from now I shall awaken, disembodied, in a physician's chamber At the behest of a rich and powerful man. But he and I, we shall not be friends. LOL . Baffling indeed, but it seems unlike many of the 'great' seer's predictions it may have some shred of credence. A little over 400 years later came the extraordinary dramatisation of an incident that rocked the foundations of science to its very core... This is the remarkable account of Karl Brussard (George Coulouris ), a massively successful entrepreneur who discovers he's dying from a brain tumour. It's a tragic waste because Brussard , by his own modest admission, is such a fine physical specimen (!). Fortunately Brussard's doctor has heard of a surgeon in London who's been conducting some exciting research in brain transplantation. Bu...