47) Breathless

A bout de souffle (1960)

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Starring: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg


This week in Introduction to Cinema we are looking at Jean-Luc Godard and the French New Wave. If you are going to introduce people to the cinema of Godard it pretty much goes without saying that you do so by showing them Breathless.

Small time crook Michel Poiccard (Belmondo) steals a car and shoots dead a policeman who tries to pull him over. On the run from the law, he heads to Paris where he plans to collect a debt from an underworld figure he knows there, as well as meeting up with a young American woman, Patricia Franchini (Seberg), who he met in Nice a few weeks earlier who he wants to escape with him to Rome. Poiccard has trouble finding his underworld acquaintance, meaning his stay in Paris is longer than he had hoped with the authorities zeroing in on his whereabouts.

Jean-Luc Godard is a very celebrated director. MovieMaker magazine ranked him number four on their list of the 25 most influential directors of all time, behind only Alfred Hitchcock, D.W. Griffith and Orson Welles. But for many, it is difficult to see what all the fuss is about. The greatness of Godard's films is not as easily apparent as in the films of the other three. Like most of Godard's work, Breathless is a film which can only really be appreciated when you have an understanding of it's historical context.

The French New Wave challenged the established cinematic order in France and in the process revolutionised world cinema. Led by a small group of young film critics-turned-filmmakers including Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and Claude Chabrol, the French New Wave sought to elevate the act of filmmaking from one of mere adaptation to one of artistic creation. They believed that up to that point in time, the films being celebrated in France had failed to fully engage the artistic potential of the cinema, but rather were too literary, merely seeking to put pictures with the words of the script. Much like Bertolt Brecht had done with the theatre, the New Wave directors sought to draw attention to the actual construction of the film. With this in mind, the polished and stylised veneer of the classical cinema was gone in exchange for a much more casual, some might even say sloppy, style of shooting. The strictly obeyed rules of continuity editing were toyed with. Longer takes were used in which actors were encouraged to improvise their dialogue. Advances in technology had made cameras more lightweight so that location shooting was now possible. This move out of the studio became a real feature of the New Wave. These lightweight cameras also enabled a the camera to be much more active. Traditionally the camera would be locked off on a tripod, but the French New Wave employed a lot of camera movement, pans and tracks, to really break down the fourth wall and bring the viewer into the scene.

While it was not the first film of the French New Wave, Godard's Breathless was seen as a kind of manifesto of the French New Wave. It perfectly encapsulated the tone and the style of this new cinematic movement. It was Godard's first film, and one he described as "the culmination of a decade's worth of filmmaking in my head."

Breathless contains all the characteristics we expect from a New Wave film. There are a number of long, moving camera shots (for example the famous scene walking up and down the Champs Elysees, and another scene in the travel agents, in which the camera follows a man in one long take as he goes from the lobby, through a series of corridors and back out to the lobby). Belmondo and Seberg were encouraged to improvise their dialogue, making for much less refined, more organic discussions between the two. There is a lot of referencing of the American films, particularly film noir, which these young film critics had been so interested in. Poiccard is fascinated by the figure of Humphrey Bogart, adopting a very noirish image (the hat, cigarette and pistol) as well as constantly mimicking Bogart's famous habit of rubbing his lip.

One of the distinct formal features in Breathless which will forever be associated with Godard is the jump cut. Time for a quick lesson in film editing. The number one rule of continuity editing is that if you want to cut two shots together they have to be different either in terms of size or vantage point. If they are sufficiently different, the cut will be seamless and the viewer will unconsciously accept it. If the shots are from a similar vantage point, some of the items within the frame appear the same, meaning that those that change create a little jump within the frame. The easiest example I can think of to make the concept of a jump cut accessible is to think of I Dream of Jeannie. The shots in which Jeannie appears or vanishes are achieved by the use of a jump cut, cutting two shots together where all the elements in the frame are the same except for the presence of Barbara Eden. As a viewer in those shots you get a little sense of a jump when some of the other characters in the scene may not be in exactly the same position as in the previous shot. Godard took this jump cut, previously a sign of bad editing, and employed it as a means of supporting the narrative. He uses it for two purposes. At some points he uses it to give the sense of the passing of time (for example the early scene looking out the windscreen from the driver's perspective we have jump cuts of different scenery to suggest the car's progress down the road). At other points he uses it to animate the state of mind of the protagonist. Michel is a bit of a flighty person. His brain goes at one hundred miles an hour. So Godard uses a lot of jump cuts mid conversations to accompany Michel's changing of thoughts. Thus, in a way that is achieving what the New Wave directors set out to demonstrate, Godard is using some of the techniques and devices available to the filmmaker to assist in the progression of his narrative and establishment of his characters. He is engaging with the previously untapped potential of the cinematic form. So there you go. You've just had a crash course in Godard101: Jump Cuts. So now you know if you get stuck in a conversation with a pretentious film nerd and the get onto Godard you just have to nod and say, "... and those jump cuts. Amazing..."

Godard's Breathless is a film with a huge reputation. However, it is important to remember that this reputation is not so much based on it being a great film, but rather it being an unprecedented film and an influential film. It is a filmmakers film, with a number of great filmmakers citing it as one of the biggest influences on their work. However, many of the techniques in the film which were so revolutionary at the time (the moving camera, the long takes, referencing of other films, improvised dialogue) have been absorbed into the mainstream, so don't amaze us. If you can try and place the film within it's historical context you can appreciate it from that perspective. If you can't do that you may struggle to see what all the fuss is about. I definitely got more out of it on my second viewing than I did when I saw it the first time.

46) Wendy and Lucy

Wendy and Lucy (2008)


Director: Kelly Reichardt

Starring: Michelle Williams, Wally Dalton, Will Patton, Lucy the Dog


Once every three months or so Turramurra Uniting Church runs a Reel Dialogue evening. Reel Dialogue is a program which encourages Christians to "engage with popular culture without disengaging their faith". A film is screened and then there is a discussion about some of the issues and themes present in the film and the statements it makes about the world in which we live. Previously we've screened films like Wall-E, Doubt and Lars and the Real Girl. This time we screened a small American independent film called Wendy and Lucy.

Wendy (Williams) is poor and living out of her car as she tries to make her way across America to Alaska in hope of finding a job. Her only company is her dog Lucy (Lucy the Dog). She finds herself stranded in a small town in Oregon when her car breaks down. After being caught shop lifting she is taken to the police station, leaving Lucy tied up outside the store. When she returns to find Lucy gone, she begins the frantic search to find her beloved dog.

Director Kelly Reichardt says: "I don’t really have a plan for the audience, just questions. Like, are we related and do we owe each other anything? Are we supposed to take care of each other to any degree?" Wendy and Lucy really throws down some challenges to you as a viewer in terms of how we choose to see homeless people. We are often inclined to ignore homeless people, and Wendy's character is so unassuming and shy that even the camera at times does this. There are a number of scenes in which Wendy moves out of the frame and the camera neglects to follow her, continuing to stare at an empty screen until she moves back into shot. As the film progresses and characters become more familiar with them, the temptation to dehumanise her starts to give way to the realisation that she is a person. This change is most obvious in the Wendy's primary on-going human relationship in the film, with the old security guard (Dalton). The progression of this relationship is beautifully presented and is quite touching to watch.

Michelle Williams (the ex-Mrs. Heath Ledger) really carries this film, putting in a stunning performance which would not have looked out of place with a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Her performance as a young woman determined not to resign herself to the path her circumstances seem to be leading her down, is very subdued and understated, but quite stirring. This is probably the performance of Williams' career so far, but she has definitely come a long way since she was 'the other girl in Dawson's Creek' to become a real talent, if an under appreciated one.

Credit must also go to the performance of Lucy the Dog, or maybe more to Reichardt's direction. Having an animal as a main character can often lead to some very unsubtle moments but to Reichardt's credit, Lucy is never played for laughs or for cute puppy-dog-eyes moments. Rather Lucy is more of a blank canvas who Wendy can project her emotions onto.

With a running time of only 77mins, this film is very short by feature film standards, but it is the perfect length for the story it is trying to tell. While the story is quite emotional and powerful, it is also quite simple. There are not a lot of narrative threads, there aren't any great plot twists or anything like that, the narrative is straight forward and trying to extend it out to 90+mins would have merely diluted the power of the story.

Most likely this is a film you will never have heard of and will probably be a bit of a challenge to get your hands on a copy, but it is a heart-breaking, gut-wrenching, intimate little film. If you have a strong sense of social conscience this film will fire you up. If you don't, it might just open your eyes to some things.

45) Gangs of New York

Gangs of New York (2002)

Director: Martin Scorsese

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day Lewis, Cameron Diaz, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly, Brendan Gleeson, Henry Thomas, Gary Lewis, Liam Neeson

I watched Gangs of New York for the first time two years ago. I watch a lot of films, and I see a lot of very good films, but not a lot of them really impact me the way this one did. Every now and then you see a film which just completely engrosses you, and as soon as it's over you know that it is one of the best films you have seen in a long time. Gangs of New York was one of those films for me. It may have helped that for some reason or other I didn't come into it with hugely high expectations, but it really hit me and I've been wanting to give it another view ever since, if only to see if the film was as good as I remembered it. I had a evening at home to myself tonight, so decided it was time to have another look.

In the 1840s, 50s and 60s waves of Irish immigrants poured into New York's Five Points, much to the dissatisfaction of the citizens, mostly of British and Dutch heritage, who lived there. As a result of this tension the Five Points became a particularly volatile area, overrun with numerous gangs. In 1863, 16 years after witnessing the death of his father 'Priest' Vallen (Neeson) at the hand of William 'Bill the Butcher' Cutting (Day-Lewis) in a gang war for the control of the Five Points, Amsterdam Vallen (DiCaprio) returns to the Five Points seeking revenge against the Butcher.

Gangs of New York was a project a long time in the making. It is based on a non-fiction book written by Herbert Asbury in 1928 which Scorsese first read in 1970. In 1976 the first draft of the screenplay was written and in 1977 the project was announced in the film trade magazine Variety. But the project floundered, resurfacing in the early 1980s as a possible Scorsese/De Niro collaboration to follow up The King of Comedy, and then again in the early 1990s after the box office success of Cape Fear. But it was in 1998, when Scorsese and screenwriter Jay Cocks were onto their tenth redraft of the script, that Mike Ovitz suggested Scorsese consider making the film with Leonardo DiCaprio, a hot commodity after the success of Titanic, and really got things rolling. Initially Gangs of New York was to be a Disney film, but when concerns arose that the violent content would not sit with Disney's family friendly image the project passed to Miramax. With a budget of over $80million and a production which had trouble keeping to schedule, the film would have one final hurdle to jump. The September 11 attacks led to the decision to postpone the release of the film as it was deemed that the barbarism it depicted was not appropriate for the mood of the times (it wouldn't surprise me if this was also a factor in the Academy's decision to lean towards Chicago on Oscar night. Gangs of New York received 10 nominations but did not win any of them). Despite all of this, the film Scorsese produced is simply stunning.

Visually, this film is simply stunning. The combination of elaborate set design, art direction and costume has done an amazing job of bringing this world to life in great detail, and Michael Ballhaus' cinematography that captures it all is at times breathtaking (I particularly love the shot early in the film as The Priest is rallying the White Rabbits for battle against the natives and after convincing Monk to join them he opens the door and the camera moves out from the dark underground to the snow covered openness of the Five Points. It's a beautiful shot). All of the above mentioned departments were deservedly nominated for Oscars though the design awards ended up going to Chicago and the cinematography to Road to Perdition.

Initially the role of Butcher Bill was offered to Robert De Niro. Had he accepted it Gangs of New York could have been an interesting overlap between Scorsese's two main collaborating partners; De Niro and DiCaprio, but De Niro turned down the film. As much as I love Robert De Niro, I'm glad he turned it down, because as a second option Scorsese managed to persuade Daniel Day-Lewis to come out of his four year retirement and take the role and Day-Lewis's portrayal of Butcher Bill is one of the real keys to the film. Day-Lewis is a famously intense method actor who completely immerses himself in his characters, often choosing to stay in character for the entirety of the shooting schedule. In the past this has caused issues for him. In shooting his Oscar winning role in My Left Foot he broke two ribs as a result of sitting hunched over in a wheelchair for so long. There is also the infamous incident when he collapsed on stage during a 1989 performance of Hamlet. In the scene in which Hamlet sees the ghost of his father for the first time, Day-Lewis collapsed, started weeping uncontrollably and refused to return to the stage, later admitting that he had at that moment seen the ghost of his own deceased father. Day-Lewis's intense preparation, combined with his incredibly selective taking on of roles (in the 21 years since his first Oscar win he has only made nine films), leads to incredibly powerful performances of which his turn as Butcher Bill is a prime example. Butcher Bill is arguably the most fearsome and intimidating screen villain of the decade. He will make you sweat. The only other performance as a villain which I think has hit me the same way was the first time I saw Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

Critically, Gangs of New York seems to be quite a divisive film. Some have loved it, some have hated it, some think it's overrated, some think it's underrated. That being the case, as much as I love it I don't feel that I can guarantee others will feel the same. But from my perspective, it is an incredible historical epic, visually stunning with some amazing performances. I loved it the first time I watched it, and while a second viewing will often bring films down a few pegs, I still thought it was brilliant. Gangs of New York provides a variation on a familiar Scorsese theme and makes for one of his most entertaining films.

44) Shampoo

Shampoo (1975)

Director: Hal Ashby

Starring: Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Lester Warden, Carrie Fisher

When I read Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls a few years ago Warren Beatty kept popping up as one of the key figures in the early part of that 1960s and 1970s Hollywood Renaissance (in fact Biskind has since written a biography of Beatty entitled Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America). Shampoo was talked about particularly prominently as a combination of three key Hollywood Renaissance figures; actor, producer and co-writer Warren Beatty, director Hal Ashby and screenwriter Robert Towne. I'd been meaning to see it since then but hadn't come across it until Ulladulla Video Ezy struck again in January. I finally got around to watching it today.

George Roundy (Beatty) is very talented and promiscuous Beverly Hills hairstylist. He is living with aspiring actress Jill (Hawn). He dreams of opening his own salon having grown frustrated with working for man he perceives as being less talented. When one of his clients, Felicia (Grant in the role which won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar), who he happens to be having an affair with, suggests that he should seek the financial backing of her husband, prominent businessman Lester Karpf (Warden), George becomes involved in a web of infidelity. He discovers that Lesters mistress, Jackie (Christie), is an old flame of his, a relationship which soon rekindles. For the sake of his dream George has to not only conceal his relationships with Lester's wife and mistress from Lester as well as Jill, he also has to conceal Lester's relationship with Jackie from his wife.

Like all of Ashby's films, the comedy of Shampoo is balanced with some social commentary. While this film is a tongue in cheek look at the sexual revolution of the 1960s, it is also heavily influenced by the dark times, social changes and loss of innocence America would experience in the mid 1970s with the breaking of the Watergate scandal. Written in 1975 but set in 1968, the federal election in which Nixon wins power is a constant background to the central action of the narrative. Towards the end of the film a couple of characters stop mid-scene to watch Nixon's victory speech and it is no coincidence that the snippet of that address the filmmakers have chosen to include is when Nixon is assuring the people that "this will be an open administration," a statement which no doubt would have left a bitter taste in the mouths of 1975 viewers.

Interestingly, I think Beatty really plays with his reputation as a bit of a ladies man in this film. The character of George is as promiscuous as they come, and early in the film as we see him bounce from woman to woman we think it is simply a caricature of Beatty. But as the film goes on that image is deconstructed as George is shown to be lost, his life seemingly out of control, and struggling to realise what it actually is he wants.

There are some parallels between Shampoo and Robert Altman's earlier revisionist Western McCabe and Mrs. Miller which also starred Beatty and Christie. The dynamic of the relationship between their characters is quite similar in both films despite the vastly different context. In Altman's film Beatty plays a promising prospector and Christie an upstanding whore, roles which can be aligned with Beatty's portrayal of George as a promising young hairdresser just waiting to start his own salon and strike it rich, and Christie as a very stylish, but none the less kept woman.

Shampoo was the screen debut for the 19 year old Carrie Fisher. Her role is small but her performance is quite strong. Her next role, hitting screens two years later, would be the female lead in the film which would make here a star, Star Wars. I think you get more insight into her talent as an actress from her small part in Shampoo than from her much greater role in Star Wars. Star Wars was great, but it wasn't the acting that made it so. In fairness though, the actors were only as good as the dialogue they were given. To quote Harrison Ford as he berated George Lucas on set: "You can write this shit, George, but you sure can't say it."

For mine, Shampoo doesn't really stack up with some of the other films that came out of that brilliant era in Hollywood's history. It is not the best film Beatty, Ashby or Towne have made. Having watched Ashby's The Last Detail quite recently and been impressed by it, I was disappointed that Shampoo didn't quite have the same depth. It didn't resonate with you like The Last Detail did, but in fairness that could be largely attributed to its much lighter subject matter. Like all Ashby films, it is an interesting document as a sign of the times, and you will find things within it to appreciate, but it is not going to blow you away.

43) Spirited Away

Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Starring (English Voice Cast): Daveigh Chase, Suzanne Pleshette, Jason Marsden, Susan Egan, David Ogden Stiers, Lauren Holly, Michael Chiklis, John Ratzenberger

I'll admit that despite having heard how good Miyazaki's films were supposed I'd always avoided them. I have a bias against anime grounded in the rubbishy Pokemon/Dragon Ball Z serials that get played on kids morning TV. It was only when a few people who's opinions I respected started to rave about his films that I thought perhaps I had a skewed perspective on anime/manga. I went and saw Ponyo at the movies last year, and wasn't blown away by it and I picked up Spirited Away on DVD a while ago and have taken a while to get around to watching. Kate had a rough day today and needed to unwind. She decided to watch it, so I sat down with her to give it a try.

Chihiro (Chase) and her family are on their way to their new house when a shortcut gone wrong leads them to an abandoned theme park. One of the restaurants in the town is filled with delicious food so her parents sit down to eat while Chihiro goes on exploring. As dusk arrives the empty streets become filled with spirits. Frightened, Chihiro returns to her parents to find they have been transformed into pigs. Chihiro is forced to get a job in the nearby bathhouse while she works out how she will rescue her parents, with the help of a mysterious boy named Haku (Marsden).

While it is nowhere near as prominant here in Australia, the Japanese company Studio Ghibli is up there with Pixar and Disney in terms of producing critically acclaimed animation over the last couple of decades. While a minority in the know already held Miyazaki's films such as Kiki's Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke in high regard, Spirited Away was the film which really garnered international attention. In Japan it smashed all sorts of records, knocking off Titanic as the highest grossing film ever at the Japanese box office, and it became the first film to have racked up box office takings of US$200million before it opened in America. Hayao Miyazaki won the Best Animated Feature Oscar for Spirited Away over an albeit weaker than usual field which included Ice Age and Lilo and Stitch. He would be nominated for this award again four years later for Howl's Moving Castle but be pipped by Wallace and Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Honestly, I'm not blown away by Miyazaki's films, though I'm yet to see Howl's Moving Castle which Kate is adamant is better than Spirited Away. That is not to say I don't think they are very good films, they are, but much like Pixar in the mid 2000s I think reviewers and critics get a bit carried away in the praise they heap on them. Ponyo in particular I didn't think was worthy of the 5 star reviews it was getting. However, I do find them very interesting films to watch because they are not Western. The stories, often rooted in Eastern mythologies, are different from the usual narrative styles you get from Disney, Dreamworks and Pixar.

Spirited Away is a coming of age,life lessons, personal growth kind of movie. Through her experiences, Chihiro, who starts the film as quite a spoilt young girl, learns the importance of personal sacrifice for the sake of those you love. It's a nice enough story however, what you don't get which you expect from Pixar, Disney or Dreamworks, is an attempt to have the story operate on two levels giving something for the older viewer as well as the younger viewer. Spirited Away is quite straightforward and simple in that regard. There is also not a lot of narrative explanation, you just have to go with it.

While usually dubbing of foreign films can prove a bit dodgy, in this case the responsibility for the dubbing was given to John Lasseter from Disney Pixar and is excellent. While the cast for the English version is not exactly made up of household names, they do an excellent job. The success of Spirited Away has made doing the English dubbing for Miyazaki's films quite a sought after job with his two films since including the vocal talents of Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Jean Simmons, Lauren Bacall, Tina Fey, Liam Neeson, Christian Bale, Lilly Tomlin, Billy Crystal, Emily Mortimer and Betty White.

Spirited Away is a lovely film, and something a bit different to what you get from the mainly American animations which we tend to get here. It is worth a look, but if you are not an animation fan I don't think it is going to change your stance.

42) Duel

Duel (1971)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Starring: Dennis Weaver

For Introduction to Cinema this week we are looking at the phenomenon of the B-movie, and we watched Steven Spieberg's first film, Duel. I'd seen it before as part of my thesis research but was quite excited to see it again.

Salesman David Mann sets out from Los Angeles on an intercity business trip. As he drives along the two late highway he comes across a truck which seems hell bent on trying to kill him. That is pretty much it.

While Duel is not a long film, it only runs for about 85mins, it's narrative can hardly be described as dense. This makes it rather impressive that it manages to maintain your interest for the entire time. Spielberg has said that he saw Duel as an exercise in suspense filmmaking, likening it to a Hitchcock film. The film is broken down into a number of sequences; the diner sequence, the school bus sequence, the train-crossing sequence, allowing for just enough variation around the central narrative idea, truck trying to get him, that suspense can be maintained for pretty much the entirety of the film. In making this concept work on screen you can see the early evidence of Spielberg's immense talent which would really be put on show only four years later when he made Jaws.

Duel was a made-for-television movie. It was an ABC Movie of the Week. This meant that the production schedule that Spielberg had to work to was very condensed. He was initially given 10 days to shoot the film, making the studio very nervous about his decision to film on location rather than on sound stages. Spielberg was adamant that shooting on stages would result in the film looking fake and tacky, and having seen it, if I try and imagine what it would have looked like if every interior shot was done in front of a screen I think his insistence saved this film. In the end his shoot ran over a bit, lasting 12-13 days. After the lightening shoot Spielberg was left with just over three weeks in which to edit the film before it was to go to air, so he had to work with multiple editors to get it done. On the back of impressive ratings Duel was given a cinematic release in Europe for which Spielberg had to film an additional 12mins of footage to bring the running time up from 73mins to 85mins, the minimum acceptable running time for a feature film. It is this version of the film which is available on DVD.

The B-movie/exploitation cinema in the 1960s and 1970s provided a valuable entry point into the film industry for a number of young filmmakers. Films were made quickly and cheaply so required filmmakers willing to work for very small salaries, but still talented enough to work around the limitations of cheap filmmaking. Many notable filmmakers made B-films early in their career including Martin Scorsese (Boxcar Bertha) and Francis Ford Coppola (Dementia 13). It can be argued that Duel is not strictly speaking a B-movie as it was made for television rather than the cinema, but much of the priorities in the filmmaking process were the same, as were the reasons which made the young Spielberg the ideal choice of director. No small part of the interest in a film like Duel comes from the fact that it was the debut film for Spielberg, who would go on to become one of the most powerful directors in Hollywood history. The DVD release of Duel contains an excellent 35min interview with Spielberg from 2001 in which he talks about his experience making the film. While some might expect a director who has achieved as much as Spielberg has to be a bit embarrassed about his humble beginnings, he actually comes across as very proud of what he achieved and very aware of how important a step it was in his career. He acknowledges that if it were not for Duel he would never have got the opportunity to make his first cinematic feature The Sugarland Express, and it was the combination of the two which helped to land him Jaws. In fact many of his later films contain references to Duel. In 1941 John Belushi's character lands his fighter jet at the same petrol station, where the same actress is playing the attendant. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the same elderly couple who David pulls over for assistance are present in an escape helicopter. The most direct link of all though is that the same roaring sound effect it used for the destruction of the shark at the end of Jaws as is heard when the truck is destroyed at the end of Duel.

Duel is a simple little film which is really good fun. It won't take much of your time, and if you like some cheap thrills you'll love it.

41) The Long Good Friday

The Long Good Friday (1980)

Director: John Mackenzie

Starring: Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Derek Thompson, P.H. Moriarty, Paul Freeman, Bryan Marshall, Pierce Brosnan

The Long Good Friday first came onto my radar a few years ago when it was mentioned a few times in some readings I was doing for a topic on the gangster film. I had been interested to see it but had been unable to find it on DVD anywhere. However during January when I went down the coast for a holiday I stuck my head into Video Ezy at Ulladulla, because I've often found they have some interesting things for sale and lo and behold there it was on the sale table for about $10 so I grabbed it.

It is Good Friday and powerful underworld boss Harold Shand (Hoskins) is close to sealing a crucial deal with an American crime organisation. Harold and his wife Victoria (Mirren) are entertaining Charlie (Constantine), a representative of the American organisation in London to finalise the deal, when without warning Harold's empire comes under attack. Two of his henchmen are killed, his mother is almost blown up in a car bomb and a pub he was minutes away from entering is blown up. If Harold wants to save this very lucrative deal, he has to work out where this trouble is coming from and deal with it quickly.

For most of us, when we think gangster movies we think American and there's a good reason for this. America has produced some amazing gangster pictures Little Caesar, The Public Enemy, Scarface: The Shame of a Nation and the De Palma remake Scarface, Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs and, of course, the epic Godfather trilogy. However, Britain also has a wonderful gangster film tradition having produced films like Get Carter, Brighton Rock, Sexy Beast and Guy Ritchie's trio of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and Rock 'n' Rolla. The Long Good Friday is among the very best examples of the British style of gangster movie.

British gangster movies tend to be quite different to American gangster movies in terms of their tone. With the exception of a few like The Departed and Miller's Crossing which focus on Irish gangsters, most American gangster films deal with the Italian Mafia. This has lead to the romanticising of gangsters in American film. Gangsters are seen to be stylish, influential, glamorous people, typified by Marlon Brando's Don Corleone in The Godfather. British gangster films, on the other hand, promote a much earthier, grittier view of the gangster. The British gangster tends to be more aligned to the working class, cockney 'geezer'. Rather than the glamorous portrayal we see in American films where Mafioso are almost seen like royalty, British gangsters are shown to be more small time crooks, and even when they become wealthy and powerful, the essence of the character remains the same. The grittier tone of the British gangster film in comparison with the American is actually alluded to in The Long Good Friday in a scene towards the end of the film where Harold confronts the Americans who have been scared out of making the deal with him by all the violence, accusing them of being soft, of having this great reputation but not having the toughness to handle the way things work in Britain, ending dismissively with "The Mafia? I've shit 'em."

The cast in this film is a real treat, especially for younger viewers who are only used to seeing some of these actors in their older age. Bob Hoskins is fantastic as the fearsome, ruthless Harold. The Long Good Friday was really the film which put Bob Hoskins on the map, establishing his character as the tough little bastard. It was released in the USA in 1982 and not long after that he was hired to play gangster Owney Madden in Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club. From there Hoskins would go on to appear in either leading or key supporting roles in notable American films such as Brazil, Mona Lisa, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Mermaids, Hook, Nixon and of course Super Mario Bros. Helen Mirren does a wonderful job of balancing sexy and strong with her performance as Victoria. There are also smaller performances from some familiar faces like Paul Freeman, best known for his role as Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and a very young, almost boyish looking Pierce Brosnan.

The one complaint I do have about this film, which is more a sign of the times than a unique criticism of this film, is that the score dates the film quite horribly. The Long Good Friday has a synthesiser driven score which instantly places the film in the early 1980s. Orchestral scores don't date films the way pop music or non-orchestral scores do.

The Long Good Friday is a really good film. It is a whodunnit disguised in the clothes of a gangster film, and this combination works. At times some of the violence is a bit confronting, so it is not one for the feint hearted, but if you are a fan of the gangster genre it is not to be missed.

40) Psycho

Psycho (1960)

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam, John McIntire

This week in Introduction to Cinema we were talking about two completely unrelated themes, film sound and authorship. We watched Alfred Hitchcock's famous horror film Psycho as it fits the bill perfectly for both topics.

When Phoenix office worker Marion Crane (Leigh) is entrusted with the job of taking $40,000 cash to the bank for safe keeping over the weekend, she sees an opportunity to change her life. She steals the money and heads for California to be with her lover Sam (Gavin). Driving late in the evening she is hit by heavy rain so decides to stop for the evening at the Bates Motel. With the moving of the main highway, the Bates Motel does little to no business, but is diligently maintained Norman Bates (Perkins) who lives there with his feeble mother. When Norman becomes friendly with Marion, his mother gets jealous and murders her, leaving Norman to dutifully cover up her crime, but it is not long before people come asking questions.

The key ingredient in what made what could have been a run of the mill, B grade horror film into one of the all time classics of cinema is Alfred Hitchcock, a master of suspense and the psychological thriller. The importance of Hitchcock is made apparent by the failed sequels Psycho II (1983) and Psycho III (1986), which were directed by Richard Franklin and Anthony Perkins respectively, and the made for TV prequel Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), directed by Mick Garris. This fact was again reinforced with Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake. In one of the great "what were they thinking" moments in film history, Van Sant directed a near shot-for-shot remake of Hitchcock's film. Starring Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates and a cast including Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen and William H. Macy, Van Sant's Psycho was widely panned, and despite being practically an exact replica, possessed none of the magic which made the original so effective. Hitchcock is a masterful director. Even if you don't really like old movies, you will still get a kick out of Hitchcock's films. They really stand up, even 40 and 50 years after they were made.

Psycho is a truly iconic movie. Even if you have not seen it before, you will be familiar with aspects of it; the famous shower scene, perhaps the name Norman Bates, definitely the music. The shrill strings of Bernard Hermann's score really brings this film to life, creating tension, suspense, unease and horror. Hitchcock has been quoted as saying that a third of the credit for the success of the film has to go to Hermann. Initially, Hitchcock intended to take a very minimal approach to music in the film, specifically in the famous shower scene, but upon a viewing of the completed film Hitchcock was so disillusioned with what he saw that he intended to cut it down for television. Luckily Hermann convinced him to wait, let him add a score and see what he thought then. When Hitchcock saw the film again with the addition of Hermann's score he was blown away, prompting his famous acknowledgement that his initial plan was "an improper suggestion".

Another thing that was notable about this film is the fact that when it was initially released in cinemas Hitchcock personally insisted that people where not to be admitted to the cinema once the film had commenced (see below poster). At that time it was still common place for people to arrive fashionable late to films. But given that Marion Crane dies so early in the film (only about 2/5ths of the way through) he was adament that people should be there from the beginning.


Psycho is an absolute classic, a must see, and a great introduction to the world of Alfred Hitchcock. If you haven't seen it, give it a look and then move on to Vertigo, North by Northwest, Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Birds...

39) WALL-E

WALL-E (2008)

Director: Andrew Stanton

Starring: Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, Fred Willard, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, Sigourney Weaver


I had just enough time after Memento and Adaptation for something short so I decided to rewatch WALL-E. I loved it when I saw it for the first time early last year and had been meaning to rewatch it since I saw Up.

After pollution has made earth uninhabitable, mankind has packed its bags and moved into space, leaving it up to the Waste Allocation Load Lifter -Earth class robots to clean the place up. In the few hundred years that have passed since then these robots have broken down and crashed, to the point that only one remains, WALL-E (Burtt). WALL-E continues about his job of cleaning up, all the while collecting little bits and pieces that intrigue him. But one day another robot, Eve (Knight), touches down and captures WALL-E's heart. WALL-E's devotion to Eve then takes him on a journey which will change the course of mankind.

Toy Story was a real turning point in the history of film animation. The success of that film opened up peoples eyes to the potential of digital animation and it was not long before classic 2D style animation pretty much disappeared. Throughout this era of digital animation Pixar has led the way. I must confess however, that through the 2000s I thought that some of the praise heaped on Pixar was a bit excessive. In particular I felt that the critical response to Finding Nemo and The Incredibles went a bit too far. Both films were very good family films, but were treated as though they were masterpieces. Pixar had an incredible run of back to back hits and I think some people got a bit carried away. But with WALL-E and then Up I think Pixar have really hit their straps. WALL-E took Pixar and digital animation to the next level.

WALL-E is quite simply a beautiful film. Beautiful is the perfect word to describe it. Visually it is stunning. This is probably the first animated film where I've ever been conscious of the cinematography, the choice of shots and angles from which we view the action. Especially early in the film, when WALL-E is alone, some of the wide shots are breath-taking. But the beautiful visuals ultimately support what is a beautifully told story. The storyline itself and the themes it explores are nothing groundbreaking, but the way in which the story is told, the pacing, the focus on the characters, is just a delight. WALL-E is a simple, innocent, but at the same time heroic character, and is undoubtedly the most lovable robot since R2-D2.

What really made WALL-E stand out is how ambitious a project it was. It did not have the obvious commercial appeal of a film like Cars or The Incredibles. This was no sure thing money-spinner. This was a film conceived of by filmmakers rather than market-testers. For starters you have a protagonist who has a minimal vocabulary which consists less than half a dozen words. Dialogue in general is not the main feature of this film. The film opens up with almost half an hour of dialogue free exploration where we simply follow WALL-E around and are introduced to his world. While things do get a bit more conventional and dialogue-driven once they arrive on the Axiom, in general WALL-E is all about visual storytelling. Stanton and his team obviously really believed in what they were doing and stuck to it despite the fact it would no doubt have made a number of Disney executives a bit uncomfortable.

WALL-E was also the first Pixar film to use live action actors. The film contains a number of live action actors in videos from the past. Most prominent among these actors is Fred Willard. I love Fred Willard. He is pure gold and his presence instantly takes a film to the next level.

This is a magical film, both in terms of its visuals and its heart. WALL-E is, in my opinion, the film with which Pixar really reached its potential. If you haven't seen it, even if you are not generally an animation person, give it a look.

38) Adaptation

Adaptation (2002)

Director: Spike Jonze

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, Chris Cooper, Cara Seymour, Tilda Swinton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Brian Cox

The second film of my lovely Sunday in front of the television was Spike Jonze's Adaptation. Adaptation and Memento are two films I have always put together in my head. I knew they both did interesting things with narrative and they had also both sold out in every DVD retailer in the country for years. Thank you eBay, though it must be said I only turn to eBay as a last resort for DVDs as sometimes I'm not entirely convinced about the legitimacy of the product I get (that's right, I'm talking to you what_a_bargain09).

Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Cage) has been hired to write the adaptation of Susan Orlean's (Streep) book The Orchid Thief, based on the life of eccentric plant collector John LaRoche (Cooper). The prospect of writing a different, non-conventional style screenplay, much more in line with the feel of the book excites him, but he has no idea how to do it and is suffering from horrible writer's block. His quest for originality is made all the more frustrating by the fact that his less talented brother Donald (also Cage), who has recently decide he would also like to be a screenwriter, seems to be writing his naff, cliche-ridden screenplay with ease.

Adaptation has an incredibly clever screenplay, but for very different reasons to Memento. What makes Charlie Kaufman's screenplay for Adaptation so amazing is how self reflexive it is. The real life Charlie Kaufman was given the job of writing an adaptation of The Orchid Thief but struggled with how to make it work, so instead he writes a screenplay about Charlie Kaufman, a screenwriter who was given the job or writing an adaptation of The Orchid Thief but struggles with how to make it work, so instead he writes a screenplay about Charlie Kaufman... It is like when you are in an elevator with mirror walls and they just keep reflecting and reflecting and reflecting, and getting smaller and smaller. The film starts of with a degree of reflexivity as we know that the character we see Nicolas Cage portraying is in fact a real life screenwriter, and is in fact the writer of the film we are watching. But where it gets really clever is when it starts becoming very apparent that the film we are watching Nicholas Cage write is in fact the film we are watching. About a third of the way through the on screen Kaufman has a brain wave and starts to narrate into his dictaphone the very sequence of scenes with which Adaptation opened. Thus as a viewer of the film, we see the events and inspirations responsible for the tone of the film we are watching.

From the beginning, Kaufman is adamant that he does not want this screenplay to be typical Hollywood stuff. He tells the producer: "I don't want to cram in sex or guns or car chases, you know... or characters, you know, learning profound life lessons or growing or coming to like each other or overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end, you know. I mean... The book isn't like that, and life isn't like that. You know, it just isn't." Adaptation, continues in this vain for much of the film with Charlie struggling for inspiration, and not developing at all as a character until his brother Donald convinces him to got to a screenwriting seminar by Robert McKee (Cox). McKee preaches the importance of conflict, drama and character development, all staples of the typical Hollywood screenplay. After going to this workshop Charlie enlists his brother Donald to help him finish his screenplay and from that point on the tone of Adaptation changes. The cliched and conventional influence of Donald is felt in the film we are watching and all of a sudden many of the very things Charlie vowed to keep out of his script; sex, guns and car chases, manage to find their way into the film. This makes for a final act which has divided people. It is very different to the rest of the film, which has led a number of people to say it ruins the film, while others who appreciate the cleverness of the transition are very much supporters of the different ending. I can understand why it is the way it is, and appreciate how clever that is, but if you are looking at the narrative in isolation you'd have to say it's not a great ending.

Charlie and Donald Kaufman were nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. They didn't win, but this nomination is none the less notable due to the fact that Donald Kaufman does not exist, he was created for the purposes of the film. Thus Donald became the first ever fictional character to be nominated for an Academy Award (that is, unless you count the Coen brothers' nomination for Best Editing for Fargo which they edited together under the fake name Roderick Jaynes).

Once you work out what's going on, you will appreciate just how clever this film is. If you don't work it out you will find it a quite boring and frustrating film.

37) Memento

Memento (2000)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano


Kate is away this weekend at the Blue Mountains Music Festival so I have the place to myself. With nothing to do on a Sunday I decide to sit down for a movie marathon and watched three back to back, the first of which was Christopher Nolan's Memento. Only his second feature film, it was Memento which made people sit up and notice Nolan, establishing a reputation for psychological storytelling that would be cemented with his two Batman films.

Leonard was an insurance investigator whose life was changed when his wife was raped and murdered. Trying to come to his wife's aid Leonard was beaten and as a result now has a condition which prevents him from creating new memories. He doesn't have amnesia, he simply has no short term memory. Leonard sets out for revenge on the man who killed his wife, using a disciplined system of photographs and notes to overcome his inability to remember.

Christopher Nolan has established himself as one of the best storytellers working in Hollywood today. His speciality is the character based psychological thriller. Think about it, the success of Batman Begins came down to the fact that he was able to get into the head of the Batman character and provide a psychological justification for his actions, and then with The Dark Knight he adds to that an incredibly fearsome, complex, psychopathic nemesis. In Memento we have a similar situation where a psychologically complex protagonist, Leonard, is the driving force of the story. But what takes Memento to the next level is that Nolan allows Leonard's condition to dictate the structure of the film.

The unique narrative structure used by screenwriters Jonathan and Christopher Nolan, is a real treat. The first thing we see see is the climax of the film, Leonard killing the man he has worked out raped and murdered his wife. From there we work backwards through the story of his investigation. By running the narrative backwards, in a series of short scenes, each of which ends where the previous one started, we are put into the mind of Leonard. Like him, we have no idea how we got to the scene that we are currently watching, we only find out through the explanation of each note.

I'll admit, when the film started with the resolution to the story, I was left wondering wondering how this was going to work as a film. How was dramatic tension going to be built when we already know what happens? But while we see the chronological climax of the film to start, it is not the dramatic resolution. Rather, the story plays on the idea of the unreliable narrator. Initially our interest is in how Leonard came to his conclusion, but it becomes about whether or not he has got it right. Leonard's condition means that he can forget clues and incidents which we, as an audience, see and go off on tangents that we are aware are false. The film does not have a twist ending as such, you don't spend the entire film thinking one thing and then get flipped at the end, rather Memento contains a series of revelations which constantly challenge where we think the story is heading.

Guy Pearce does a very convincing job of making quite a complicated character believable, and that is hard for me to say because I have an inexplicable bias against Guy Pearce. I think it dates back to his part in Dating the Enemy. It was the first thing I'd ever seen him in, I was quite young and just decided that I didn't like him and it's kind of stuck with me since. But with this role he has gone a long way to redeeming himself in my eyes.

Memento is a fantastic film. It is one of the most clever and different thrillers you will see. It's a must see.

36) Tyson

Tyson (2008)

Director: James Toback

Starring: Mike Tyson


Tyson is a film which didn't really get a great deal of promotion out here. That's not overly surprising given it's a documentary, or at least a documentary made by someone other than Michael Moore. But despite that, at least from where I was sitting, it was one of the best reviewed films of last year. I read a number of glowing reviews of the film, so when I saw it on sale at JB Hi-Fi the other week I thought I'd give it a go.

In a series of detailed interviews Mike Tyson talks about his life, from being an insecure kid growing up in poverty, his meteoric rise to become one of the youngest heavyweight champions in history, and then his spectacular implosion in which he lost everything.

While watching this film, my natural point of comparison was Leon Gast's Oscar winning When We Were Kings, a brilliant documentary about Mohammad Ali and the famous Rumble in the Jungle. While Gast's film was blatant hero worship of Ali, interviewing those around him to gain insight into what made him such an inspiring, admirable figure, Toback has a very different purpose and thus makes a very different film. Toback does not idealise Tyson. He condone the mistakes Tyson has made, but at the same time he does not condemn him for them. Rather he simply provides a space in which Tyson can speak.

What you get here is Mike Tyson's side of the story. Tyson is the only person who is directly interviewed for the film, the rest is archival footage, either news footage or fight footage. Given that it is his side of the story you don't necessarily take what he says as gospel, but none the less it makes for intriguing viewing. Tyson is a man who we only tend to hear from in short sound bytes, like the famous "I want to eat his children" jibe prior to his fight with Lennox Lewis, so it is interesting to see Tyson given an opportunity to try and explain himself. To his credit, Tyson is amazingly candid, being open and honest in a way we've never seen before. No topic is off limits. He speaks openly about his issues with sex, drugs, promiscuity, alcohol, about his time in jail, and his attitude towards boxing. We get insight into his incredible insecurities. Insecurities which contributed equally to his rise and fall. He gets quite emotional at times, particularly when talking about his now deceased trainer/mentor/father-figure Cus D'Amato.

When you build a film around a talking head interview you run the risk of it getting visually quite boring. But Toback doesn't resign himself to thinking that the talking head shots are the visually dull bits between the more interesting archival footage. Rather, he uses his camera and editing in a really interesting fashion to really enhance the power of what we are hearing from Tyson. He uses a lot of extreme close ups, allowing us to glean a lot from Tyson's facial expressions and especially his eyes. He also splits the screen up between different camera angles and layers the different bits of vision and audio over each other. It takes a while to get used to it at the beginning of the film, but it really emphasises this jumbled, uncertain way in which Tyson is thinking and talking.

Mike Tyson is one of the truly tragic figures of our time. He was an incredibly gifted athlete who had a meteoric rise to super stardom from very humble beginnings, but was unable to handle the pressures of fame and his fall was just as spectacular as his rise. The ferociousness that made him such an intimidating fighter in his prime spilled into his everyday life and destroyed him. What really makes this film though is how painfully self-aware Tyson is. If you can put aside your prejudices for a moment, Tyson is a very interesting film indeed.

35) Alice in Wonderland

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Director: Tim Burton

Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Crispin Glover, Matt Lucas, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman, Barbara Windsor, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough

Today Kate and I went to see Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. It is a film we'd both been looking forward to, so I had to make sure I found a time when Kate could see it with me, because while I have no issues with going to the cinema on my own, Kate does and if I'd seen it without her it may well have meant that she'd miss out.

It has been thirteen years since Alice (Wasikowski) was last in Wonderland, she has grown up and has managed to convince herself that her memories of this magical place are nothing more than recurring dreams. Alice and her mother attend a party which, unbeknown to her, is to mark her pending engagement to the horrible Hamish, whom she has no interest in marrying. Alice flees the party and falls down the rabbit hole. She returns to Wonderland, convinced that she is dreaming, and finds a world in turmoil. The Mad Hatter (Depp) explains to her that the Red Queen (Bonham Carter), with the help of the Knave of Hearts (Glover), reigns oppressively over Wonderland. However, there is a prophecy which claims that it is to be Alice who will slay the Jabberwocky (Lee), the dragon who serves the Red Queen and assures her power, thus ending the rain of the Red Queen, restoring power to the much loved White Queen (Hathaway) and bringing peace to Wonderland.

This film was not intended to be a straight retelling of Lewis Carrol's Alice in Wonderland, but unfortunately I think it would have been better served if it was. The new narrative really lets the film down. The storyline feels very 'Chronicles of Narnia', and thus has a real sense of familiarity to it. It feels just like any number of family fantasy films which have been released over the last five or so years. As a result, the story really fails to grab you. The film still has interesting characters and individual scenes and settings are engaging, but the story itself doesn't inspire wonder.

With a background in animation, Tim Burton really established himself as a director in late 1980s. After his debut feature Pee-wee's Big Adventure did moderate business, Burton gave the world their first insight into his unique style with Beetlejuice. With a growing reputation built on his Gothic inspired visual style and outsider based stories, Burton would go on to make some marvelous films in the late 1980s and early to mid 1990s including the example par excellence of the Tim Burton style, Edward Scissorhands, as well as his two installments in the Batman series, Batman and Batman Returns, and the brilliant but relatively unknown biopic Ed Wood. He also wrote and produced Herny Sellick's The Nightmare Before Christmas. However, since the mid-1990s Burton's work seems to have become more formulaic. Burton's films have become quite predictable and as a result have failed to reach the heights of his earlier work. For example, despite all the hype surrounding it's release, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has proved itself to be an amazingly forgettable film.

As a Tim Burton fan, I've been particularly frustrated by his seeming unwillingness to try something different. Obviously, he has a personal style and people want to see that. There is no one who does Tim Burton like Tim Burton. But there is room within that style for him to try things. This is particularly the case in casting. When Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was in the early stages of pre-production there were all sorts of rumours surrounding who would be playing Willy Wonka. The two which had me genuinely excited were Christopher Walken and Michael Keaton. Both had worked with Burton before and both had the potential to make Willy Wonka a wonderfully creepy character and really fit the Tim Burton mould. But instead he just went with Depp. I actually found Gene Wilder creepier in the original. The seemingly automatic casting of Depp in the Burton's films suggests that he doesn't even consider other options. Even Alice in Wonderland feels like part of the motivation behind the changing of the storyline was to make the Mad Hatter, and thus Johnny Depp, a more central figure.

As I alluded to in my response to Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, Tim Burton has his people that he likes to work with. Danny Elfman has scored pretty much every film that Burton has made. Burton also has an ensemble cast that he likes to work with and Alice in Wonderland contains many of the familiar faces, or at least voices, along with a few nice additions. As well as the stock standard Johnny Depp and Mrs. Tim Burton, Helena Bonham Carter, in the lead roles, it is nice to hear the familiar voices of Christopher Lee and Michael Gough (who frankly I'm surprised to find that he's still alive). Crispin Glover fits right in with the Burton feel, so much so that it's amazing they haven't teamed up before. Matt Lucas, of Little Britain fame, does a lovely job as Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee. Alan Rickman and Stephen Fry lend their amazing voices to the Blue Caterpillar and the Cheshire Cat and fit the bill perfectly. Unknown Aussie Mia Wasikowski has been copping a lot of flack for her performance as Alice and while yes she is boring, I don't know that her part was all that well written so perhaps all the blame shouldn't be shouldered by her.

The film contains a couple of jarring moments which really don't fit the tone that has been established. Primary example being the Hatter's little dance scene at the end of the film. But one which really hit me too was the choice to play an Avril Lavigne song over the start of the end credits, rather than just continuing with the Danny Elfman score. It is really quite a jarring contrast to finish the film on.

Also, I'm still yet to be really convinced about the merits of 3D cinema. It doesn't give me headaches or anything like that, but I find it distracting a lot of the time. It prevents me from engaging with the film. I've seen about half a dozen films in 3D now, and with the exception of Avatar and maybe Coraline, I usually come out of the film thinking that I'd have preferred to see it in standard 2D.

This has come across as a really negative response to the film. Really, it is not all that bad. A lot of people will quite enjoy it, but as a Tim Burton fan, I had just hoped for a bit more and thus was left disappointed by the film. His next film though, Frankenweenie, is a feature length version of a short he made in 1984, so I hold on to the hope that it may be a return to the Tim Burton of old.

34) Blow-Up

Blow-Up (1966)

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni

Starring: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle

For the third week of Introduction to Cinema we are looking at art cinema. This is traditionally a tricky week. The film for this week is Michelangelo Antonioni's highly influential Blow-Up. It was the first art film to really break into the American market, causing a sensation when the studio refused to cut it in order to get a Production Code seal, claiming that it was an artwork and any censorship would devalue it. Special thanks to Jon for helping me get my hands on a copy of the film (I had to miss the screening to watch the Oscars).

It is the 1960s and Thomas (Hemmings) is an in demand fashion photographer in swinging London. While taking photos in a local park he comes across a man and a woman sharing an intimate moment and decides to photograph them. When the woman, Jane (Redgrave), notices him, she insists that he give her the film. He tells her that she can collect the prints from his studio. However, when he starts printing the photos he notices details which suggest something much more sinister is at hand.

Interestingly, this film originated with MGM studios rather than with Antonioni. This film is so strongly associated with Antonioni that it was surprising to learn that the germ of the idea was not his. Carlo Ponti, the highly commercial Italian producer on a multi-picture deal with MGM, had the idea of making a film about a hip, young fashion photographer in mod London, based on an article by Francis Wyndham called "The Modelmakers", and started working on the project in 1964. Antonioni came on board, seeing it as an opportunity to gain some commercial credibility (Antonioni, already a highly respected figure in art cinema circles, had previously expressed resentment about being underpaid and under-recognised in relation to his Hollywood counterparts). While the idea did not originate with Antonioni, he would make the film his own as both the writer and director of the finished film.

If you are inexperienced with art cinema, you will find this a frustrating film to watch. Art cinema narratives do not operate like conventional film narratives. They are not driven by cause and effect, in which everything that happens on screen contributes to the furthering of the storyline. Thus there are a number of interruptions to the building of dramatic tension and a number of scenes which are completely unrelated to the central narrative strand. Art cinema also uses narrative ambiguity. In other words, the film is not wrapped up with a nice, neat resolution at the end. In fact, in the case of Blow-Up nearly nothing is resolved at the end.

A point of interest for music buffs, at one point Thomas goes into a bar where The Yardbirds are playing. This is apparently the only bit of film in which you can see Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck playing together. So there you go.

While Blow-Up is more viewer friendly that something like Fellini's 8 1/2, if you are new to art cinema you will still find it hard going. If you are interested in seeing it, more power to you. It will be an important step in your film education. If you're just a casual movie watcher, I wouldn't bother. Francis Ford Coppola made a brilliant film in the 1970s called The Conversation starring Gene Hackman which was heavily influenced by Blow-Up and deals with similar ideas of surveillance, perspective, real and unreal. I think you are much better served tracking this one down first. It has a nice balance of art cinema sensibility with a more conventional narrative. Personally, I wouldn't say that I really enjoy watching art cinema, but I'm happy that I've reached a point where I can appreciate it.