My summer trash read ...

Hot on the heels of Scotty Bowers' trash memoirs, we now have this tome on the Redgraves - its the one they tried to stop publication of, an offending paragraph has been removed, but it is not really about the Redgraves at all ... what we have here is a full-blown biography of director Tony Richardson (Vanessa's husband in the 60s) - interesting in its own right, but not what it says on the tin - so why is it being sold as a book on the Redgrave dynasty? Obviously to attract more sales ... We hardly see Michael Redgrave after a brief first chapter on his family .... there is no mention of his great film successes like THE WAY TO THE STARS, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST or indeed THE BROWNING VERSION. No mention of the hit play he had in 1965 A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY with Ingrid Bergman, one of the first plays I saw, or the 2 plays I saw Vanessa in: DESIGN FOR LIVING and MADHOUSE IN GOA - Michael's decline and death is barely mentioned, no reason given why his ashes were left at the crematorium for 8 years. For a volume supposedly about the Redgraves it has no list of their stage or film credits, essential in a book like this. Lynn hardly gets a look in until her decline ...  I have always been interested in the Redgraves for their work - not scandal about their private lives - as per my earlier 'People We Like' post here on Michael (Michael Redgrave label) and my appreciations of Vanessa and Lynn.

It is certainly fascinating though for anyone interested in British theatre and cinema since the '50s, with the emergence of the Royal Court and those early John Osborne plays like LOOK BACK IN ANGER and THE ENTERTAINER and Richardson's first successful films of them and A TASTE OF HONEY in '61 (Rita Tushingham label) and THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER, so very 1962. As covered in my recent post on "Hollywood UK" tv series, the huge success of TOM JONES in 1963 gave his company Woodfall Films unlimited funds for Richardson to indulge himself with films that nobody saw at the time or simply were not well-released, we never got a chance to see SANCTUARY with Lee Remick in 1961, THE LOVED ONE in '65 or those 2 in France with Jeanne Moreau, MADEMOISELLE from Genet and THE SAILOR FROM GIBRALTAR by Marguerite Duras - both rare movies for a long time. Vanessa is brilliant in the latter, in a supporting role at that time her cinema career took off with MORGAN, BLOW-UP, CAMELOT, ISADORA etc. Her politics at this time are well covered too ... now that she is a revered elderly actress this may be a part of her past she does not want dwelled on now. But where are the Redgraves and their illustrious careers ? the author just wants to focus on the family's oddities and scandals, up to the deaths of Natasha, Lynn and Corin in 2009 and 2010.

The first howler is on the dust-jacket which says it was 1928 when Olivier announced the birth of a new actress when Vanessa was born, which of course was 1937. It would be useful too if a biographer acquainted himself with the works of those he writes about. This is how he describes Vanessa's role in BLOW-UP: "Vanessa played one of two dolly birds cavorting in his photographer's studio. Although she was only on screen for 10 minutes, romping topless with Jane Birkin, it was enough for Hollywood to sit up and take notice. Her agent began getting calls". Thats all he has to say about BLOW-UP !

Well this show he knows nothing about Antonioni's classic and has not seen it, a cursory look at the synopsis of this still available and influential film would show her role is very different, and she had already appeared in MORGAN before it was released. So how on earth can anything else he says be taken seriously? and it was David Hemmings - not John Osborne - who named his son Nolan after the character he played in the LIGHT BRIGADE film; and Vanessa and Lynn were both competing for the Best Actress Oscar in 1966 - he gets that wrong too. He also misses the irony of Richardson telling Vanessa in the early 60s that he wanted her to look like Monica Vitti - then she is chosen to star in Antonioni's London film, which must have been a surprise for him.

Richardson & Redgrave

I am now just regarding it as a trashy read, akin to a summer disposable book to amuse oneself with on holiday. As for the remaining Redgraves, I do not think they need worry about it too much. It is good though on Woodfall films and how Richardson (and Osborne) got through all that money, spent too on his badly-received THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE in 1968, while still living the champagne lifestyle in the South of France, so it covers that mad time in the 60s when the Americans were financing (for a while) these bizarre loss-making English movies; but its certainly not a book about the Redgraves and their theatrical legacy. Richardson emerges as a complex man, who after his early successes was able to keep making oddball films that did not attract audiences: A DELICATE BALANCE, DEAD CERT, LAUGHTER IN THE DARK, his hippie HAMLET at the Roundhouse (I used to go to concerts there) with Nicol Williamson and Marianne Faithfull is entertainingly dealt with here, this gave him access to Mick Jagger which led to NED KELLY in Australia and all the headlines that attracted due to Faithfull's collapse - nobody much saw the film though, Jagger only did it to have something to do and felt he should be in movies and just walked away from it. Richardson though had his estate 'La Nid du Duc' in the South of France, where Hockney painted and there was a constant stream of house-guests. Richardson was lucky though to have his daughters nursing him in his final illness. After his death the story turns to Natasha and Liam Neeson, and Vanessa re-unites with Franco Nero.

This is the kind of book though where every salacious rumour has to be dragged in. Adler goes into more detail than I have ever heard before of what Mick and Marianne were doing when the police raided - again supposed to be totally untrue, and not relevant here, nor is the story of one of Joely's boyfriends, Jamie Theakston, visiting a brothel. As for the offending deleted passage (which was printed in the 'Daily Mail'), words fail me! Utter trash then ... with lots of silly mistakes which should have been noticed. However, Richardson and Osborne come across as people you really would not want to to know no matter how brilliant their early work was before complacency set in.

Les Infideles: The Players

Oscar winning star Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Gilles Lellouche (Tell No One) star in a hilarious comedy exploring the triumphs and failures of male infidelity in all its deperate, absurd and wildly funny forms. From a sales conference hotel in the suburbs to a smart sex addiction clinic, from a swish Parisian nightclub to the glitzy meat market of Las Vegas, they launch themselves into the age old pursuit. Every time worn excuses are proferred; every trick in the book is played. The quest to get laid is on .....

Well thats what the blurb says. Dujardin is markedly less charming here in these 7 crass short films about male infidelity. The most notable vignettes involve an excruciating sales weekend where his obnoxious would-be cheater pursues every woman in the hotel, and a married couple being "honest" about their affairs in the best segment (which is the only one directed by a woman). Its not a patch of any of Woody Allen's sex comedies, in fact in the main, this French portmanteau is a deeply unfunny, vaguely misogynistic mess.  
THE ARTIST's Michel  Hazanavicious is one of the directors here as is Jean Dujardin himself. We get to see quite a lot of Jean and his pal as they have sex all over the place including finally with each other as of course despite all the womanising that is what they really want ... the end coda is rather amusing as they set up their new gay life.

Interesting though to see a new episodic film like those Italian ones I like (GOLD OF NAPLES, BOCCACCIO 7O, LE BAMBOLE, LE FATE) - this one though without the Weinsteins behind it has already been and gone without causing a ripple, another THE ARTIST it is not. If you want to see Jean at his best though go for those crazy hilarious OSS 117 spoofs CAIRO NEST OF SPIES and LOST IN RIO which I enthused about recently.

The Olympic Team sail to Europe ...

Dorothy and friends ...

Yup, its GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES once again, its starting just now - we love Lorelei Lee and her pursuit of diamonds but her pal Dorothy (Jane Russell - love that swaggercoat) has a good eye for beefcake and once she finds out the U.S. Olympic team are on board their ship to "Europe France" she wastes no time in joining them in the gym, the boys though are in strict training .... "Ain't there anyone here for love?" Its another terrific Jack Cole number that fits in perfectly with Howard  Hawks' delirious extravaganza, along with 'Piggy' Beekman and Henry Spofforth III, and Piggy's wife (Norma Varden) and her tiara ...as Lorelei says, she just loves finding new places to wear diamonds.

Summer re-runs: Janet and Psycho

Our 'Hitchcock summer' rumbles on here in London - those key 50s/60s films are on television, the National Film Theatre is running that mammoth complete Hitchcock season which runs into October and they have published an interesting compendium of essays, currenly oh my coffee table (Camille Paglia on the Hithcock blonde, with Edith Head sketches etc) and of course VERTIGO is now basking in the glow of being the best film of all time according to the  "Sight & Sound" latest 10-year poll (see below) having dislodged CITIZEN KANE from the top spot.

 
REAR WINDOW and VERTIGO were as rich and complex and yes mesmerising once again when I re-visited them last week, and it was PSYCHO's turn yesterday. Now I know PSYCHO inside out over the years but had not actually seen it for maybe 20 years or so, so I was surprised to be so totally involved and stunned by it all over again. It is such a rich complex film that draws one in time and time again, this time I noticed how amazing that music score is - its not just all screaming violins, as Herrmann complements the action perfectly. Tony Perkins of course had his defining role as Norman Bates, but so did Janet Leigh as Marion Crane - after all her years as a leading lady this is the role she will be remembered for (as her then husband Curtis will be for Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT made around the same time). Never mind the size of the role she should have been a contender for best actress of the year.

Janet has revealed how Hitch called her in, told her he knew she could act and told her what he wanted from her in his camera set-ups and left the creation of the role to her. She certainly delivers here and looks her best - she did get rather emaciated in her later years. This nice photo by Nocoletta Zalaffi is from a 1969 "Sight & Sound" interview where she discusses working with Hitch and Welles among others. The movie of course is famous for other things too: the first time a toilet is flushed in a mainstream movie. Odd too the date in the opening scene is given as December 11th, but there no mention of Christmas at all, as our heroine flees from Phoenix Arixona to that lone highway, after sleeping in her car all night attracting the interest of that cop ... 
then that great scene with that strange young man as they talk about birds and the traps they are in and she resolves to get out of hers. Great moments too with the old police chief and that psychiatrist at the end as the swamp gives up its secrets. We are now in the age of 'torture porn' (which I don't bother with) so PSYCHO may seem old-hat to some, but its still as powerful now as when I first saw it .... Hitch of course was the master showman here with his teasing trailer visiting the site of the motel, and those ads, during the era of continuous performances, not letting people in once it had started. Quite right too. Its off to Bodega Bay once again too this weekend with Tippi and the lovevbirds, and I want to dig out some of those early rarities like the 1931 RICH AND STRANGE... I have always liked Janet, more on her and Hitch at labels.

Callas, Medea

To win the kingdom his uncle took from his father, a tale told to him by the centaur Chiron who has reared him,  Jason must steal the golden fleece from the land of barbarians, where Medea is royalty and a powerful sorceress, where human sacrifice helps crops to grow. Medea sees Jason and swoons, then enlists her brother's aid to take the fleece. 
They flee and elude capture by her beheading her brother and she becomes Jason's lover. Back in Greece, the king keeps the throne, the fleece has no power, and Medea lives an exile's life, respected but feared, abandoned by Jason. When she learns he's to marry the daughter of the King of Corinth, Medea tames her emotions and sends gifts via her sons; then, loss overwhelms her and she unleashes a fire storm on the king, the bride, and Jason. That's an outline of the plot...

Laurent Terzieff as the Centaur

 Despite being set in Ancient Greece Pasolini's film is from that time he was fascinated by the peoples and landscapes of Turkey and North Africa, where a lot of this was filmed. Again we have barren landscapes, curious dwellings carved out of caves, discordant sounds and a very graphic human sacrifice to ensure a good crop - thats just for starters.  The first half hour is rather incomprehensible as one imagines this is the kind of arthouse stuff that used to sometimes infuriate one, but once Maria Callas as Medea takes centre stage it becomes a mesmerising experience. Laurent Terzieff (see below in LA NOTTE BRAVA) is the centaur, and Guiseppe Gentile (an Olympic triple-jumper from the Mexico City Games in 1968) is Jason - we get ample opportunity to appraise his stunning legs. Callas of course is mesmerising; as that song from the musical of SUNSET BOULEVARD puts it "With One Look" she commands the screen. The plotline seems rather jumbed though - I did not realise 10 years had passed and she and Jason now had children ... the deaths of the princess and her father the King of Corinth (Massimo Girotti)  are enacted twice - first as fantasy and then reality, which was rather confusing initially.

Callas & Pasolini

Pasolini began of course script-writing for movies like Loren's WOMAN OF THE RIVER, 1954 and that 1959 discovery of mine last week - LA NOTTE BRAVA, see review below - before his first acclaimed films ACCATONE and MAMMA ROMA in 1961. I have not seen those but we all highly regarded his 1964 THE PASSION OF SAINT MATTHEW and then those arthouse hits OEDIPE RE in 1967 and TEOREMA, a sensational film in '68 (Silvana Mangano label), I missed MEDEA at the time but saw his PIGSTY in 1969 - not one I think I would care to revisit - and then in the '70s he embarked on those decorative period pieces THE DECAMERON, THE CANTERBURY TALES and THE ARABIAN NIGHTS.

Silvana as the Madonna

We found his DECAMERON "interesting" but the others seemed more of the same at the time .... Pasolini after his years of realism seemed to be in search of mythical worlds full of pretty people and erotic fantasies. The grimly realistic, if not notorious, SALO though in 1975 was one we decided we could live without seeing, and Pasolini himself was murdered later that year. Was it some rentboy pickup that went wrong or more politically motivated?  Like Fassbinder at that time his films polarised viewers as his politics got more extreme ... now we just have the films. I do want to see the fascinating OEDIPE RE again, and its good to finally experience MEDEA and the stunning presence of Maria Callas.

Summer re-runs: Romy & L'Enfer

A beautiful woman is smoking, her face covered in glittering body paint and illuminated by undulating lights. Who is she?  It is European favourite Romy Schneider in fragments of a film L'ENFER (INFERNO) made in 1964 but only recently made available in 2009 for viewing, and a fascinating experience it turns out to be. This was an ambitious project by revered French director Henri-Georges Clouzot (of LES DIABOLIQUES and THE WAGES OF FEAR) with Romy and Serge Regianni heading the cast in this study of obsessive jealousy set in a lakeside resort setting. We see scenes of the husband following his wife and imagining her being unfaithful with both a local hotelier and his attractive wife ...

The director had an unlimited budget at his disposal and was highly ambitious. Schendier was then one of Europe's leading young actresses after having shaking off her SISSI wholesome image and having worked with Welles and Visconti. Yet the project was doomed. After various complications Clouzot had to abandon the project only three weeks into filming when he suffered from a stroke. The stunning images they'd already created would be lost to the public for decades. 

After meeting her when they were delayed in a Paris elevator, Serge Bromberg convinced Clouzot's widow to disclose the original footage to enable him to reconstruct the film. Initially he'd only expected to find two or three hours of material, but there were fifteen....  Bromberg and Ruxandra Medrea have now drawn on the hours of material Clouzot shot (including the amazing test footage) and have interviewed everyone connected with the film who's still alive, and they've produced a fascinating picture, with the aid of Berenice Bejo and Jacques Gamblin to fill out the leading parts using the script. It could have been a fascinating film as we see from the bits that remain, and it shows what an adventerous actress Schneider was as she acts out Clouzot's scenarios. 

Schneider & Clouzot

It was a busy time for Schneider, so prolific in the '60s and '70s until her untimely death aged 43 in 1982 (as per my previous posts on her here, see label). She had just done THE CARDINAL for Preminger and THE VICTORS for Carl Foreman and was going to to those comedies GOOD NEIGHBOUR SAM in America and WHATS NEW PUSSYCAT in Paris. L'ENFER would surely have been another stunning success if Clouzot had been able to finish it.

Soon: an early Romy MADCHEN IN UNIFORM from 1958 and her last in 1982: LA PASSANTE DE SANS SOUCI. There are 62 Romy titles in her filmography - I have over 30 of them, so several more to track down ...

The 50th anniversary tribute to Marilyn Monroe

I did a lengthy tribute to Marilyn two years ago exactly (click MM label below) pondering what the 50th anniversary would be like, and now here it is - with the expected tributes in all the quality (and not so..) press.

As I mentioned before I was 16 then in Ireland and remember the coverage - we heard the announcement on the radio while sitting in deckchairs that Sunday afternoon, after having seen BUS STOP that Saturday night, the 4th of August, while events were unfolding in California ...

These though are the images that stayed with me, as that Monroe cult took off in the 60s with all those books and features: those last photos by George Barris that day at the beach, and the subject of several books and posters. 
I had that TOWN magazine when I was 16.  As a child I saw her on all those American movie magazine covers, LIFE magazine and the rest - and that first time I became aware of her, in that red swimsuit in HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE...    As I say too in that earlier tribute she accomplished so much in that brief time - 1950 to 1962, aftrer being a Fox starlet and party girl for the likes of Elia Kazan, then those roles that got her noticed in ALL ABOUT EVE and THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, her breakthrough in 1953, consolidated in 1954 and 1955, (her vocal talents and how she looked in those years, as per my other posts on her, Marilyn Monroe label); then the move to New York and forming her own company with Milton Greene (who also took some marvellous pictures of her), then those last films where it seemed to be harder and harder for her to be Marilyn. Then that new Marilyn for the '60s ... while Taylor was marrying huckster producers, crooners and that Welsh actor squandering his talent MM had linked up with America's sporting hero, one of its greatest writers and THE political family ...

I was obsessed about THE MISFITS for a long time in that pre-video age and had to attend revival screenings and never miss a television showing ... just like I had been with James Dean and EAST OF EDEN.  

Apart from the films those great photographs by Barris, Eve Arnold, Bert Stern, Milton Greene, Bob Willoughby and the others will always be in circulation.  

Looking at the '50s objectively now it was Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor who were at the top of the tree of female stars, along with Audrey and Grace; and then the likes of Kim, Janet, Doris, Debbie etc as well as new girls Lee Remick, Shirley McLaine, Eva Marie Saint, Joanne Woodward and that grown-up Natalie Wood; Brigitte and Sophia were discovered in Europe joining Gina and Silvana;  those '40s new girls like Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner and Lauren Bacall came to maturity ... while the older Lana, Rita, Vivien, Olivia and sister Joan, June Allyson, and that great 30s quartet of Bette, Joan, Katharine and Barbara kept working [Loretta, Norma, Margaret, Irene had retired or gone to tv], Ingrid Bergman was "forgiven", Anna Magnani was imported for a few roles; new girls like Sandra Dee, Carol Lynley, Dolores Hart, Jean Seberg and England's Kay Kendall arrived, and that 'second tier' comprising Anne Baxter, Cyd Charisse, Vera Miles, Jane Russell, Martha Hyer, Joan Collins, Dorothy Malone, Yvonne De Carlo, Rhonda Fleming, Arlene Dahl, Ruth Roman, Debra Paget, Hope Lange et al were also busy, and then there was Jayne Mansfield and Anita Ekberg. Thats a list! Here's some more: Dana Wynter, Angie Dickinson, Jane Wyman, Carroll Baker, Diane Baker, Barbara Rush, Patricia Owens, Virginia Mayo, Donna Reed, Jan Sterling, Dorothy McGuire and another 30s gal Rosalind Russell, and Eleanor Parker and Maureen O'Hara were still working - have I missed anyone? Well yes, those stylish intelligent actresses equally at home on the stage as in movies, like Glynis Johns, Claire Bloom, Julie Harris, Angela Lansbury, and of course Marilyn's one-time room-mate Shelley Winters, one of the busiest gals of the '50s ! British viewers also had their own sirens in Belinda Lee and Diana Dors, as well as leading ladies like Sylvia Syms and Yvonne Mitchell.
 (The early '60s saw the first stirrings of Jane Fonda, Ann-Margret, Pamela Tiffin; and Julie Christie, Susannah York and those British girls... and Deneuve and Dorleac, Moreau, 1959's Best Actress winner Signoret and 1961's Loren plus Schneider, Cardinale and Vitti heading the European contingent, while Faye Dunway and Jacqueline Bissett burst on the mid-'60s scene along with those Redgrave girls...).

 

That new Top 50 !

Congratulations are due to "Sight & Sound" that pseudo-intellectual* British movie magazine on their latest list of the best movies ever, which they do every 10 years. By cunningly dislodging CITIZEN KANE from the top spot (where it has been since 1952) they have reaped astounding publicity here, so the new September issue with all the details, which I should be getting today, will surely be a sell-out. They made the evening news here and the internet has been abuzz with comment on the new list.

In case you did not hear, the new number one is VERTIGO - which ties in nicely with the BFI's mammoth Hitchcock season this summer (my previous post on this is at Hitchcock label). Just for the record, here are the other top 50 choices:

2. Citizen Kane / 3. Tokyo Story / 4. Rules Of The Game  / 5. Sunrise / 6. 2001: A Space Odyssey /7. The Searchers  / 8. Man With A Movie Camera  / 9. Passion Of Joan Of Arc / 10. 8 1/2 / 11. Battleship Potemkin / 12. L'Atalante  /13. A Bout De Souffle  /14. Apocalypse Now  / 15. Late Spring  /16. Au Hasard Balthazar  /17= Seven Samurai  / 17= Persona  / 19. Mirror  / 20. Singing In The Rain  / 21= L'Avventura / 21= Le Mepris  / 21= The Godfather  / 24= Ordet / 24= In The Mood For Love  / 26= Rashomon  / 26= Andrei Rublev  /28. Mulholland Drive  /29= Stalker  / 29= Shoah  / 31= The Godfather Part II  31= Taxi Driver / 33. Bicycle Thieves  / 34. The General  / 35= Metropolis  / 35= Psycho  /35= Jeanne Dielman  35= Satantango / 39= The 400 Blows 39= La Dolce Vita  /41. Voyage to Italy  /42= Pather Panchali  /42= Some Like It Hot  /42= Gertrud  /42= Pierrot Le Fou  /42= Play Time  /42= Close-Up  /48= The Battle Of Algiers  /48= Histoire Du Cinema  /50= City Lights  /50= Ugetsu Monogatari  / 50= La Jetee.

We all have our own lists of course, this is pretty standard after all those polls (they have polled over 800 critics and experts), what I like is seeing the individual choices of those polled - and what the next 50 will include. Here though apart from VERTIGO at Nr 1 there is just one other Hitchcock (PSYCHO), no Michael Powell or David Lean, just one Bergman - but at least L'AVVENTURA and VOYAGE TO ITALY have been re-discovered. Pleased to see Keaton, Tati, the Dreyer's and Ozu's - but 4 Godards ? (he is my blind spot...), also just one musical: the predictable SINGIN' IN THE RAIN, and just SOME LIKE IT HOT from Wilder. (I really will have to watch JEANNE DIELMAN soon, its been sitting in my pending pile for ages, along with that other ritzy Delphine Seyrig number DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS...).

The current magazine editor indicates that the intention was to knock CITIZEN KANE off the top spot, they "refreshed" the poll by inviting younger critics and omitting to ask several of the older generation (like Penelope Houston, the original editor of S&S), which seems inconsiderate at least. Its this attitude of "CITIZEN KANE is old hat now, let's have a new number one" which jars. As he says: "I remember hoping last time that Citizen Kane would get knocked off and it never happened, so yes, I was surprised. And delighted."Citizen Kane, which is a lot of bombast and is very theatrical and slightly hammy by modern acting standards. Vertigo is about our inner life." Thus the new opinion-makers try to change received opinion ....

Maybe more comment when I have perused the actual results in full. 

* I liked "Sight & Sound" a lot when it was published quatertly in the '60s and '70s (and have kept a lot of those issues) and did not consider it intellectual at all, like "Films & Filming"  and "Movie" and the American "Film Comment" there were lots in it to read and return to; it did not seem the same though once it went monthly and suddenly seemed self-consciously arty, if not downright pretentious. But magazines and their editors change over the years ...(magazines label). "Sight & Sound" can keep going decade after decade as it has the BFI (British Film Institute) money, while other privately-owned magazines like "Films & Filming" or "Films Illustrated" fold ...

And how do we feel about VERTIGO at number one? Some do not even regard it as the best Hitchcock. VERTIGO went missing for a long time in the '70s when it and a handful of other Hitch's were out of circulation (in that pre-video age) until he cannily re-released them to cinemas. People didn't see VERTIGO, they remembered it, as Robin Wood said. I love some elements of it - the dreamlike mesmerising early sections as Scottie follows Madeline around that ideal San Francisco, and that stunning transformation scene when Madeline comes back to Scottie, and that spellbinding music score,  its pure cinema obviously but for me NOTORIOUS, REAR WINDOW, PSYCHO, THE BIRDS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST are equally as good.

Now that I have got the new issue, the remainder of the Top 100 are:

53 - Rear Window  / North by Northwest  / Raging Bull  / 56 - M  / Touch of Evil  / The Leopard  / 59 - Sherlock Jr  / Sansho dayu  / Le Maman et la Putain  / Barry Lyndon  / 63 - Modern Times  / Sunset Boulevard  / Night of the Hunter  / Wild Strawberries  / Rio Bravo  / Pickpocket  / 69 - A Man Escaped  / Blade Runner  / Sans Soleil  / Blue Velvet  / 73 - Le Grande Illusion  / Les Enfants du Paradis / The Third Man / L'Eclisse  / Nashville / 78 - Once Upon a Time in the West  / Chinatown / Beau Travail  / 81 - The Magnificent Ambersons / Lawrence of Arabia / The Spirit of the Beehive / 84 - Greed / Casablanca / The Colour of Pomegranates / The Wild Bunch / Fanny and Alexander / A Brighter Summer Day / 90 - Partie de campagne / A Matter of Life and Death / Aguirre Wrath of God / 93 - Intolerance / Un chien andalou / The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp / Madame de ... / The Seventh Seal / Imitation of Life / Touki-Bouki / A One and a Two.

- a few unknown to me here, but most of the usual suspects present .... The breakdowns of how many from each decade, or country, interesting too. There is a selection of the individual voting, and directors' choices - the full lists will be available on line at the BFI website as from 15 August. The new look magazine is better designed too.

Gore Vidal + R.I.P.s

Well he had to go sometime - he seemed alarmingly frail in the last few years after his long sojurn in Italy.  Gore Vidal (1925-2012) of course was a novelist, essayist, playwright and screenwriter, and a leading liberal voice and commentator from the 1960's onward. I was in my 20s then and loved his screamingly funny novel MYRA BRECKINDRIGE (heck, we even liked the movie ...) and its follow-up MYRON, capturing that dawn of movie-buffery perfectly. I also liked those collections of essays - essential to have them in bound volumes (like Pauline Kael's movie reviews). I particularly liked MATTERS OF FACT AND FICTION in 1977 where he cast his eye over the current best-sellers and told of his times with the "golden bird" Tennessee Williams in Italy after the war when they were young ... other titles included YELLOW STAR AND PINK TRIANGLE and REFLECTIONS ON A SINKING SHIP. His first memoir PALIMPSEST in 1995 was illuminating and his second, POINT TO POINT NAVIGATION in 2006 even more so - not only on his ruminations on sex and politics and than bisexual world he believed in, but also all those people he knew from Garbo to Tennessee Williams and Nureyev and the Newmans as well as the Kennedys and oh just about everyone ...

Then there is the fiction: that influential early novel THE CITY AND THE PILLAR in 1948, making him famous or notorious in his 20s, those short stories in A THIRSTY EVIL, and those other novels we liked dealing with Roman history or American politics: JULIAN, KALKI, TWO SISTERS, THE JUDGEMENT OF PARIS, MESSIAH, BURR, WASHINGTON DC, EMPIRE, HOLLYWOOD and those others .... what a prodigious output. Those plays like THE BEST MAN and his time in Hollywood, scripts for THE CATERED AFFAIR, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER and he supposedly sexed up BEN HUR for Wyler to give Massala the motivation of lusting after Ben (but they did not tell Heston), then there was CALIGULA .... he appears in FELLINI'S ROMA and THE CELLULOID CLOSET and also scripted Clements' IS PARIS BURNING? (Clements, war labels).

The quotes: "It is not enough to succeed, others must fail".

He was seen as the last of the ruthless, witty grandees prepared to rat on his own political class. He ran for Congress from New York State, been welcome for a while in the White House when Jackie Kennedy (to whom he was related) was its chatelaine;  He moved from TV chatshows (where he was always a lively presence) to Hollywood studios to literary feuding.  He famously refused to enrol as a heterosexual or a homosexual, not confusing desire with team games; and yet he wrote one of the first influential gay novels. He was perhaps the last defiant man of letters, and he got us to love Hollywood in the "golden age".

Vidal & Newman in Greece

Because of his matter-of-fact treatment of same-sex relations in such books as THE CITY AND THE PILLAR, Vidal is often seen as an early champion of sexual liberation. In the September 1969 edition of ESQUIRE, for example, he wrote, "We are all bisexual to begin with. That is a fact of our condition. And we are all responsive to sexual stimuli from our own as well as from the opposite sex. Certain societies at certain times, usually in the interest of maintaining the baby supply, have discouraged homosexuality. Other societies, particularly militaristic ones, have exalted it. But regardless of tribal taboos, homosexuality is a constant fact of the human condition and it is not a sickness, not a sin, not a crime ... despite the best efforts of our puritan tribe to make it all three. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Notice I use the word 'natural,' not normal." I also recall a great long interview he did for PLAYBOY in the late 60s.

Gore, Tennessee & JFK in 1958

PALIMPSEST is a book about a young man on the move, on the make, on the rise: sexy and brash. It also includes a romance: Vidal's boyhood lover Jimmy Trimble who died at Iwo Jima. Then there was Howard Austen, his partner for 53 years (the secret, Vidal insists yet again, was "no sex"). He was also once engaged to Joanne Woodward and was lifelong pals with her and Paul. Confined to a wheelchair after his return to the States, Gore has finally departed at age 86. We really won't see his like again. But we will be returning to that treasure trove of fiction, comment and memoirs. There are several compendiums of his selected writings... One of today's obituaries refer to him as "the man who knew everyone" - rather like our Dirk Bogarde here in the UK, and asks "Could anyone again ever have the career of Gore Vidal?"

Thanks to the great PEPLUM site for this photo of William Wyler, Christopher Fry, Gore and Charlton Heston on the set of BEN HUR, which proves that Gore was involved in the production, despite Heston and others later playing down his involvement ...

Also:

Chris Marker (1921-2012) - Of all the French film-makers who emerged in the 1950s, Marker was by all accounts the most forward-looking with pioneering films like SANS SOLEIL. His masterpiece - I have not seen it but know it is acclaimed - is LA JETEE, a poetic time travel tale from 1962 told almost entirely in still images (and now Nr 50 in the new "Sight & Sound" top 50 films).

Tony Martin (1913-2012) - Vocalist and actor, he lived to be 98, a peer of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra. Although he never became a full-fledged movie star, he was featured in 25 films, most of them like ZIEGFIELD GIRL and TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY, made during the heyday of the Hollywood musicals. A husky 6 feet tall and dashingly handsome, he was often cast as the romantic lead - first married Alice Faye and then in 1948 Cyd Charisse whom he spent 60 years with until her death in 2008 .... you could say some guys have all the luck.

Maeve Binchy - the popular Irish novelist who has died aged 72. Her books are great upbeat reads which make one feel good, capturing the upbeat sunny side of Irish life, I have enjoyed several of them - whereas Edna O'Brien, my particular favourite, caught that darker undercurrent of the Irish character, a nice contrast to the Binchy view.

Marvin Hamlisch - aged 68, composer and musician, winner of Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards. . THE WAY WE WERE, A CHORUS LINE  etc. He started out his professional career as a rehearsal pianist for FUNNY GIRL, beginning a long history of working with Barbra Streisand.

Robert Hughes - aged 74, Influential Australian art critic and historian, author of that great tome on the settlement of Australia "The Fatal Shore" and that television series THE SHOCK OF THE NEW. He was also Time magazine's art critic.

Judith Crist - aged 90, that other infuential American movie critic (along with Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris). I loved her pithy comment on that dreadful 1965 Warren Beatty-Leslie Caron comedy PROMISE HER ANYTHING - "but don't take her to this"! 

Summer re-runs: Seven Beauties

I was worried about seeing SEVEN BEAUTIES again ... it stunned me when I saw it in the '70s, its powerful images stayed with me - it was one of those arthouse big movies of the era (along with PADRE PADRONE, THE AMERICAN FRIEND etc), but what if I no longer liked it? I do. It is still a key Italian films of the '70s and probably Lina Wertmuller's masterpiece. Other films that try to tackle the holocaust and life in concentration camps, whether revered like SCHINDLER'S LIST or reviled like THE NIGHT PORTER, have their admirers but SEVEN BEAUTIES (1975) should be much better known. It also contains one of the great performances in all cinema - Giancarlo Giannini's Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties). 

The seven beauties are his sisters and Pasqualino is the only man in the family so he has to defend their honour. The early scenes in a sunny Naples have a warm glow and it is bliss watching Pasqualino, a cheap hood, with his suit and hat and gun, strutting around and bossing his sisters around, and his adoring mamma.  There is also that nice girl who has her eye on him. One of his sisters though brings shame on the family as her lover makes her a prostitute so Pasqualino has to kill him .... this is all hilariously accomplised and the body despatched in 3 parcels, but Pasqualino cannot claim self-defence as his gun went off accidentally before the greasy obese hood could reach for his.  He fakes insanity, gets sent to an institution, escapes by joining the military, deserts, gets caught, and is put in a concentration camp. There, he seduces his grotesque female camp commander in order to survive. Giannini makes his character wholly believable, and his presence on-screen (in nearly every scene) keeps the story going from one plot twist to the next, he is simply everyman who will do anything to survive.

Others won't - it is still stunning seeing how Fernando Rey commits suicide after deciding he cannot stand it anymore after he rails against the Nazis, also Pasqualino has to shoot his comrade ... after the Nazi Commandant (Shirley Stoler in a mesmerising performance) makes our hero head of his unit and he has to choose 6 to be killed or else they all will. Now he really has to show how he will do anything to survive. Stoler succeeds in making him one of them. The scenes where he attracts her interest and has to try to get excited to have sex with her are stunning done. She feeds him and then he has to perform, or else ....  These scenes in the concentration camp are like a descent into hell or a universe created by Hieronymous Bosch.  Also that early scene before his capture when he and fellow deserter are in the woods wondering where they are and witness Nazis shooting people is both horrifying and captures the feelings of guilt our witnesses experience but if they intervene they will be shot too ... in the camp Stoler knows they will lose the war but she hates the Italians and continues killing them. For Pasqualino though survival is everything and he does what he has to ... but at what price? He seems dead behind the eyes in that final shot.

Finally the war is over and he has survived. He is back in sunny Naples. His mother and sisters are delighted he is home. They are all whores now of course and so is the pure girl he was attracted to. He asks if she is doing well and she says yes, so he says Good - they will now get married and start producing children, as many as possible as its going to be a grim world out there, with everyone struggling to survive. I don't want to make SEVEN BEAUTIES sound grim or depressing - it isn't, there is lots of slapstick and humour as Wertmuller paints on a broad canvas, all of life is here, its a stunning, engaging film which one will be drawn into. Not many movies today can affect me like this. See it too for Giancarlo Giannini - this performance and his role in Visconti's L'INNOCENTE (Visconti label) are among the best on film, and he has a great comic role with Vitti and Mastroianni in Scola's THE PIZZA TRIANGLE (DRAMMA DELLA GELOSIA) 1970, too long unseen. He was nominated for best actor that great year 1976 but of course it was the year of TAXI DRIVER and NETWORK ... Good too to see he is still acting. Praise too to Shirley Stoler (1929-1999) for her astonishing role here - she was also stunning in THE HONEYMOON KILLERS (1969) and also pops up in KLUTE among others.