Cecil says: At last a feel-good film. This 1939 classic was showing at the NFT to a packed audience. Average age in the room must have been 70 and I couldn't help wondering how many were watching the film for the 10th or 12th time. For Bea and me, it was our first, but may well not be our last!
Set in Hungary, in a small, family-run leather goods store. James Stewart is the lead salesman (or clerk, as the Americans obviously called them then). Stewart the actor is already 31 when this film was made (his first film was at what would now be considered the ancient age of 28), but he is probably supposed to be quite a bit younger in role (and the programme notes suggested that he was chosen over other Hollywood greats of the time as he was thought to be relatively 'ugly', which seems a bit unfair).
The most charming character is Pirovitch, the Groucho Marx lookalike whose comic value early in the film (he does an about-turn every time the shop owner asks for an 'honest opinion') slowly changes into compassion and warmth: he is the one who is always there to support Kralik (Stewart) through thick and thin.
The plot centres around an early-day Lonely Hearts correspondence. Remember those days when a hand-written letter could be eagerly awaited in the poste restante? The ending is predictable but warm and delightful; the kind of boost to the spirit everyone needs around Christmas. A film to rival 'It's a Wonderful Life' for cosy charm on a winter's night.
Just not sure about the garters in the last scene...
***
Bea says: The garter scene was completely lost on me - too young I guess to remember men wearing garters with socks! Yes this film was a tonic after our recent overwhelmingly gloomy choices. Lovely Christmas-y snow scenes, and a certainty that it was all going to turn out alright in the end - Stewart was going to get the girl. The best scene for me was Matuschek describing their shared Christmas dinner to the young messenger lad - roast goose, red cabbage, potatoes, cucumber salad, stewed apple, and apple strudel to follow. Exactly as my own (German) grandmother would have made for Christmas. It made my mouth water just to think of it, and a trip to Cafe Daquise wouldn't have been out of order afterwards. However, we were on the South Bank, so Wagamamas had to do.
***
Thursday 31 December 2009
Nowhere Boy
Bea says: As the daughter of a Liverpudlian, the niece of a major Beatles fan, and as they were the soundtrack to much of my childhood and adolescence, I felt I had to see this film about John Lennon's early life. I knew bits and pieces of it - that he was brought up by Aunt Mimi because his mother couldn't look after him, and about Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane as they were places my family talked about too. As I grew up in South Australia - about as far from Liverpool as you can get, geographically - these places seemed like something out of a storybook. I knew that John Lennon lived near - or in - the area my grandmother grew up in, and that my mother was born in the same hospital, as this was the kind of thing my family talked about.
So it was with pleasant anticipation that I settled down in the Vue cinema in Hull to see this film, and it didn't disappoint. Two hours flew by as the film focussed on a year or so of Lennon's life - trouble at school, the forming of the skiffle band The Quarrymen, the fated meeting with McCartney, and most importantly being reunited with his mother Julia, and his subsequent relationship building with her, and Mimi, under these changed circumstances. I think the film presented a fair and even-handed view of Lennon from what I know of him, and Julia and Mimi were sensitively handled. McCartney was extremely baby-faced and rather goody-two-shoes, but as he is still a bit like that now I expect that was the truth. I did wonder however whether the writers/directors were going easy on McCartney as the only Beatles member from that era (Ringo was not part of this film) still alive.
I must say that this film showed a side of 1960s sex I hadn't seen before - when Lennon nips off to the woods with a pretty female school friend I expected the usual wham, bam, thank you ma'am (and we do get this later), but much to my surprise the scene showed Lennon pleasuring the young woman before anything happens to him at all. A very considerate lover for those times, I would have thought.
***
Cecil says: I thought this film would be packed-out in Hull, a Northern city with a tradition of spawning young musical talent. The queue was certainly long to get tickets, but with only a dozen or so others in the room with us, I guess they were all heading to watch Avatar or Sherlock Holmes. Sad.
This was a delightful film. The music was fab. None of the major Beatles hits (and somehow they contrived never to utter the word 'Beatles' even when it was specifically mentioned that the band had changed name), but some great rock 'n' roll classics, which made me want to go straight out and buy the film soundtrack.
As Bea said, the film focused on the family triangle of Lennon, his Mum and his Aunt Mimi. Mimi the solid support, who bought his first guitar, but also confiscated it when he misbehaved; his Mum the creative and musical influence, teaching him to play banjo and encouraging his musical talent.
You get a hint of Lennon's short temper and tendency to violence, especially after the death of his mother. But above all, you feel the straitjacket of late 50s/early 60s caution and constraints working against anyone trying to do something out of the ordinary. This is the second film we have seen in recent weeks dealing with this period (see An Education) and how tough it was to defy the norms of the period. I can remember schools career sessions in an early 1970s Hull comprehensive, where I was being advised to look at banking as a career even though I had 'university' written all over my school reports. Banking was safe (!!) and ten years earlier, when this film was set, safety and security seemed far more appealing to struggling adults than a career in music...So much easier these days to follow your instinct and take risks, even in a recession.
Highly recommended.
***
So it was with pleasant anticipation that I settled down in the Vue cinema in Hull to see this film, and it didn't disappoint. Two hours flew by as the film focussed on a year or so of Lennon's life - trouble at school, the forming of the skiffle band The Quarrymen, the fated meeting with McCartney, and most importantly being reunited with his mother Julia, and his subsequent relationship building with her, and Mimi, under these changed circumstances. I think the film presented a fair and even-handed view of Lennon from what I know of him, and Julia and Mimi were sensitively handled. McCartney was extremely baby-faced and rather goody-two-shoes, but as he is still a bit like that now I expect that was the truth. I did wonder however whether the writers/directors were going easy on McCartney as the only Beatles member from that era (Ringo was not part of this film) still alive.
I must say that this film showed a side of 1960s sex I hadn't seen before - when Lennon nips off to the woods with a pretty female school friend I expected the usual wham, bam, thank you ma'am (and we do get this later), but much to my surprise the scene showed Lennon pleasuring the young woman before anything happens to him at all. A very considerate lover for those times, I would have thought.
***
Cecil says: I thought this film would be packed-out in Hull, a Northern city with a tradition of spawning young musical talent. The queue was certainly long to get tickets, but with only a dozen or so others in the room with us, I guess they were all heading to watch Avatar or Sherlock Holmes. Sad.
This was a delightful film. The music was fab. None of the major Beatles hits (and somehow they contrived never to utter the word 'Beatles' even when it was specifically mentioned that the band had changed name), but some great rock 'n' roll classics, which made me want to go straight out and buy the film soundtrack.
As Bea said, the film focused on the family triangle of Lennon, his Mum and his Aunt Mimi. Mimi the solid support, who bought his first guitar, but also confiscated it when he misbehaved; his Mum the creative and musical influence, teaching him to play banjo and encouraging his musical talent.
You get a hint of Lennon's short temper and tendency to violence, especially after the death of his mother. But above all, you feel the straitjacket of late 50s/early 60s caution and constraints working against anyone trying to do something out of the ordinary. This is the second film we have seen in recent weeks dealing with this period (see An Education) and how tough it was to defy the norms of the period. I can remember schools career sessions in an early 1970s Hull comprehensive, where I was being advised to look at banking as a career even though I had 'university' written all over my school reports. Banking was safe (!!) and ten years earlier, when this film was set, safety and security seemed far more appealing to struggling adults than a career in music...So much easier these days to follow your instinct and take risks, even in a recession.
Highly recommended.
***
Bright Star
Bea says: It's some time since I've seen a film by Jane Campion, and I had loved The Piano, so I was very amenable to Cecil's suggestion that we go along and see this, her latest offering. It was...okay. Neither particularly gripping, nor memorable, it did however pass a couple of hours fairly pleasantly. What seemed to be missing from it was the raw emotion of The Piano, although this was perhaps deliberate as the plot dealt with the English middle classes, rather than New Zealand immigrants.
Bright Star's apparently true story centres on Keats' time living in with a friend and fellow poet (Brown) in the village of Hampstead, near London (how quaint). A family live next door, and soon the eldest daughter of the household is enamoured with Mr Keats - cue much sobbing and some self harm whenever he has to go away. Keats is the archetypal penniless poet, and also rather delicate of constitution - before too long he has consumption and is clearly not long for this world, as those of us who know the Romantic poets knew anyway. He leaves for the improving climate of Rome, but as any visitor to the Spanish Steps knows, he dies there, leaving Fanny Brawn to walk the Heath alone until her own death years later.
Although I found Fanny's character a little tiresome and felt like telling her to pull herself together at times, I did enjoy her dressmaking, and the fabulous costumes, and cinematography, of this costume drama. I am not sure if I was supposed to be, but I wasn't convinced of Keats feelings for Fanny - it seemed he was more in love with the idea of love, rather than with her which fits, I suppose, with the Romantic poets. Cecil and I wondered afterwards if there was a hint of homosexuality in his relationship with the friend he lived with (Mr Brown - best performance in the film, I think).
Not highly recommended, and a sad end, but not a bad DVD film perhaps. It made me want to read a biography of Keats, which is no bad thing I guess.
**1/2
Cecil says: I don't have much to say about this film. Indeed, I don't remember much about it, even though we only saw it about a week ago. It was midday on a Saturday before Christmas, but perhaps the fact that we were the only people in the cinema when the lights went down should have been a clue about its popularity. At first, I was slightly miffed when a third person came in late and ruined our private viewing. But half an hour in, I had an inkling of why everyone was out Christmas shopping instead.
"Bright Star" sounds so optimistic, such a positive-sounding film, after our gloom-fest with the "White Ribbon" a few weeks ago. I had been warned by someone who knows a fair bit about Keats' life that it was likely to be a sad ending, given his early demise, but honestly there was not a lot to be positive about through the whole film.
Relationships not quite fitting; his work not quite selling; his health on a slow but steady downhill path. Yep, gloom and doom again. How do I pick these films?
And now, two weeks later, I am struggling to remember anything about the film. Is that not the worst indictment of a film: that it is utterly forgettable?
*.5
Bright Star's apparently true story centres on Keats' time living in with a friend and fellow poet (Brown) in the village of Hampstead, near London (how quaint). A family live next door, and soon the eldest daughter of the household is enamoured with Mr Keats - cue much sobbing and some self harm whenever he has to go away. Keats is the archetypal penniless poet, and also rather delicate of constitution - before too long he has consumption and is clearly not long for this world, as those of us who know the Romantic poets knew anyway. He leaves for the improving climate of Rome, but as any visitor to the Spanish Steps knows, he dies there, leaving Fanny Brawn to walk the Heath alone until her own death years later.
Although I found Fanny's character a little tiresome and felt like telling her to pull herself together at times, I did enjoy her dressmaking, and the fabulous costumes, and cinematography, of this costume drama. I am not sure if I was supposed to be, but I wasn't convinced of Keats feelings for Fanny - it seemed he was more in love with the idea of love, rather than with her which fits, I suppose, with the Romantic poets. Cecil and I wondered afterwards if there was a hint of homosexuality in his relationship with the friend he lived with (Mr Brown - best performance in the film, I think).
Not highly recommended, and a sad end, but not a bad DVD film perhaps. It made me want to read a biography of Keats, which is no bad thing I guess.
**1/2
Cecil says: I don't have much to say about this film. Indeed, I don't remember much about it, even though we only saw it about a week ago. It was midday on a Saturday before Christmas, but perhaps the fact that we were the only people in the cinema when the lights went down should have been a clue about its popularity. At first, I was slightly miffed when a third person came in late and ruined our private viewing. But half an hour in, I had an inkling of why everyone was out Christmas shopping instead.
"Bright Star" sounds so optimistic, such a positive-sounding film, after our gloom-fest with the "White Ribbon" a few weeks ago. I had been warned by someone who knows a fair bit about Keats' life that it was likely to be a sad ending, given his early demise, but honestly there was not a lot to be positive about through the whole film.
Relationships not quite fitting; his work not quite selling; his health on a slow but steady downhill path. Yep, gloom and doom again. How do I pick these films?
And now, two weeks later, I am struggling to remember anything about the film. Is that not the worst indictment of a film: that it is utterly forgettable?
*.5
Sunday 6 December 2009
The White Ribbon (Das weisse Band)
Bea says: If you've ever watched an episode of Lark Rise to Candelford and found its tweeness just too sickly sweet for words - then this is the film for you!
Das weisse Band, shot entirely in black and white, and with absolutely no soundtrack at all, other than the singing of Protestant hymns in church and a bit of fiddling and dancing at the Harvest festival, begins in a beautful and peaceful north German village in 1913. However, over the two and half hours that we watch the film, the rural idyll is completely shattered by revelations of grinding poverty, murder, accidents, suicide, child abuse, incest, paedophilia and possible child killers.
It is certainly gripping stuff, and well acted and shot, but very, very grim - Cecil and I saw this late last Wednesday evening after a quick meal, feeling all was well with the world. We didn't feel that way when we came out. The story is narrated by one of the key characters - the village schoolmaster, who begins to investigate some of the strange accidents, abductions, beatings and murders that take place. We also follow his bumbling romance with the local laird's nanny, conducted in the shadow of WW1. However, by the film's end we are none the wiser as to the reason for, or perpetrators of, the incidents, nor are we given any information as to whether the schoolmaster and nanny every married - all we discover is that he survived WW1.
The best and most memorable scene for me - the church choir singing Bach. That is one moment in the film I did enjoy - but probably the only one.
It is not a bad film - just so depressing.
**
Cecil says: If you fancy a good belly laugh or some quick-witted dialogue, or a mystery with a quirky twist to the plot, this film is definitely not for you. I'm not one of those film reviewers who likes to search for 'meaning' or 'purpose' in a film. But I left the cinema after this one thinking: but, why? Why did this guy make this film? What was the point he was making? And why have I spent over two hours of my life watching a film where we don't even know at the end 'whodunnit'...
There was something hypnotic about the German in the film - very clear, very slow, very...rural. I did find myself listening rather than reading the subtitles, whereas in most subtitled films I try to taking in the action AND reading the subtitles, even if I follow the dialogue perfectly.
The complete lack of soundtrack also felt significant. Village life in 1913 after all must have been pretty quiet: no cars, no police sirens, no radios blaring out music. And the silence certainly added to the starkness of the atmosphere.
What was odd, though, was that the lack of theme music took away all desire to stay and read the credits, whereas I am usually one of those film geeks who stays to the bitter end to see every detail of what was filmed where, what music was used, who the gaffer was etc. But then maybe it was just the utter bleakness of the film that made me just want to get out of there.
The German title of the film is actually: Das weisse Band. Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte. This was no children's story in the usual sense of the word, but it did tend to see life from a child's perspective (the bullying, the punishments, the permissions sought or denied, the pet animals, the rivalries, the pecking order) and I guess when you are a child, the world can seem as sinister as this film made it appear.
**
Das weisse Band, shot entirely in black and white, and with absolutely no soundtrack at all, other than the singing of Protestant hymns in church and a bit of fiddling and dancing at the Harvest festival, begins in a beautful and peaceful north German village in 1913. However, over the two and half hours that we watch the film, the rural idyll is completely shattered by revelations of grinding poverty, murder, accidents, suicide, child abuse, incest, paedophilia and possible child killers.
It is certainly gripping stuff, and well acted and shot, but very, very grim - Cecil and I saw this late last Wednesday evening after a quick meal, feeling all was well with the world. We didn't feel that way when we came out. The story is narrated by one of the key characters - the village schoolmaster, who begins to investigate some of the strange accidents, abductions, beatings and murders that take place. We also follow his bumbling romance with the local laird's nanny, conducted in the shadow of WW1. However, by the film's end we are none the wiser as to the reason for, or perpetrators of, the incidents, nor are we given any information as to whether the schoolmaster and nanny every married - all we discover is that he survived WW1.
The best and most memorable scene for me - the church choir singing Bach. That is one moment in the film I did enjoy - but probably the only one.
It is not a bad film - just so depressing.
**
Cecil says: If you fancy a good belly laugh or some quick-witted dialogue, or a mystery with a quirky twist to the plot, this film is definitely not for you. I'm not one of those film reviewers who likes to search for 'meaning' or 'purpose' in a film. But I left the cinema after this one thinking: but, why? Why did this guy make this film? What was the point he was making? And why have I spent over two hours of my life watching a film where we don't even know at the end 'whodunnit'...
There was something hypnotic about the German in the film - very clear, very slow, very...rural. I did find myself listening rather than reading the subtitles, whereas in most subtitled films I try to taking in the action AND reading the subtitles, even if I follow the dialogue perfectly.
The complete lack of soundtrack also felt significant. Village life in 1913 after all must have been pretty quiet: no cars, no police sirens, no radios blaring out music. And the silence certainly added to the starkness of the atmosphere.
What was odd, though, was that the lack of theme music took away all desire to stay and read the credits, whereas I am usually one of those film geeks who stays to the bitter end to see every detail of what was filmed where, what music was used, who the gaffer was etc. But then maybe it was just the utter bleakness of the film that made me just want to get out of there.
The German title of the film is actually: Das weisse Band. Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte. This was no children's story in the usual sense of the word, but it did tend to see life from a child's perspective (the bullying, the punishments, the permissions sought or denied, the pet animals, the rivalries, the pecking order) and I guess when you are a child, the world can seem as sinister as this film made it appear.
**
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