AFED #94: Juste avant la nuit [Just Before Nightfall] (France, 1971); Dir. Claude Chabrol

-

I'll be honest with you, I'm struggling badly with my motivation for this blog at the moment. Compared with similar efforts it seems hopelessly lightweight and superficial, lacking in both style and substance. The only way to resolve this is an altogether more delligent and clinical approach but my confidence is shot to pieces.

My conviction's gone. I've nothing to say.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Margaret Lockwood: Darling of Suburbia - Part 1

-
Image
Lockwood's former home: 34 Upper Park Road, Kingston ©Richard Halfhide L ondon’s cinematic psychogeography is a varied tapestry; some locations still seem permeated with mystery or drama, others bear no trace of their history. Sequestered in Upper Park Road, a quiet corner of Kingston upon Thames, is a house whose uniform nondescriptness belies its status as the final residence of an actress who was once the brightest light in British cinema.  Yet it’s entirely fitting. While she may have enjoyed its benefits Margaret Lockwood never courted celebrity. The star of The Man in Grey and The Wicked Lady was at heart an ordinary, middle-class girl; unpretentious and in some respects almost disappointingly prosaic. If her reclusive later years bestowed an enigmatic quality it probably owes more to Lockwood’s innate reserve than anything intrinsically Garboesque. Nor for that matter did she possess the caustic tongue of Louise Brooks, something borne out by the som...
Read more

In Search of Vanessa Howard

-
Image
About eight years ago I picked up a copy of a film called ‘MUMSY, NANNY, SONNY AND GIRLY’ (1970), a curious horror comedy about a dysfunctional family with a penchant for macabre games. Although she didn’t receive top billing it was the pretty, vivacious young actress playing the eponymous Girly who really made the piece. Her name was Vanessa Howard and she had the aura of a star. Howard was born in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, on 10th October 1948. Originally named Vanessa Tolhurst she was orphaned by the age of three and she and her older sister were raised by adoptive parents . Both girls were keen performers and for a time Vanessa attended the Phildene Stage School in London. According to later press sources this led her screen debut in Judy Garland's last picture, I COULD GO ON SINGING (1963), although I've never been able to conclusively identify her in the released version. Leaving school at fifteen she declined the opportunity to join her sister at the Guildhall ...
Read more

AFED #108: Haute Tension [High Tension, aka Switchblade Romance] (France, 2003); Dir. Alexandre Aja

-
Image
There's a gimmick that's gained prominence in cinema over the past decade that I find increasingly irksome. It cropped up in La casa muda just last week and here it is again, albeit Haute Tension preempted the Uruguayan film by several years. Let's call that gimmick EYTYKIW: Everything You Think You Know Is Wrong. Now EYTYKIW is a somewhat different creature to the twist ending, which has been with us ever since cavemen began sitting around the fire telling stories. Twist endings are the final snap in a story, a little surprise to muse over afterwards. By contrast EYTYKIW typically comes at some point during the third act and gleefully exposes the artifice of narrative; those logical assumptions we've made while reading or watching a story. The interesting thing about EYTYKIW is it can be effective without necessarily being that much of a surprise. Anybody with a passing knowledge of old school psycho-thrillers won't have been taken aback by Scorsese's Sh...
Read more