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THE APARTMENT
****½
L'AVVENTURA
****½
Italy
Modernism was such a new thing to cinema in 1960 that within a couple of
years, this – Antonioni’s first major success and a sensation at Cannes –
made it into Sight and Sound’s all time Top 10, ranked behind only
“Citizen Kane”. It’s a melancholy probing into the boredom and alienation
of the hollow riche, as they come to the surface when the disappearance of
a glamourous but mercurial heiress leads to very little mourning and a lot
more sex between her fiancé and her best friend.
Antonioni’s revolutionary and greatly influential approach was to
eschew narrative progression in favour of expressive compositions and mood
build-up. However, it’s certainly not an empty bit of stylising. If that
were the case, the people in it would at the very least be a lot more
likable.
dir: Michelangelo Antonioni
cast:
Monica Vitti, Gabriele Ferzetti, Lea Massari, Dominique Blanchar, Renzo
Ricci, James Adams, Dorothy De Poliolo, Lelio Luttazzi
THE
BAD SLEEP WELL
****
Japan
Although somewhat heavier-going than Kurosawa would allow when in top
form, this tale of corporate corruption and revenge politics (with vague
allusions to Hamlet in its plotting) has several things worth
recommending: its stately, noirish visual style; its play on the notion of
evil having a grandfatherly face; its escalating tension; as well as its
disconcerting strands of cynicism and pessimism, which position it in
stark contrast to the humanism that shapes much of Kurosawa's work.
dir: Akira Kurosawa
ph: Yuzuru Aizawa
m: Masaru Satô
cast: Toshirô Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Kyôko Kagawa, Tatsuya
Mihashi, Takashi Shimura, Kô Nishimura, Takeshi Katô
BLACK
SUNDAY
****
Italy
A delicious low-budget mix of wooden acting, cheesy vampire mythology,
cheap (though effective) Gothic sets, clever bits of gore and very exciting
high-contrast visuals. The plot is reportedly derived from a Gogol story
and evidently it was deemed absolutely necessary that the original 1830's
Moldavia setting be retained.
dir/ph: Mario Bava
cast: Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Ivo Garrani, Andrea
Checchi, Arturo Dominici, Enrico Olivieri, Antonio Pierfederici, Clara
Bindi, Germana Dominici
BREATHLESS
****½
France
With things like jump-cuts, hand-held
camerawork, pop culture references and off-screen dialogue, Jean-Luc Godard
was credited for reinventing cinema. The plot that connects the
upstart techniques, concerning a Parisian hood who shoots a cop and goes
on the run with his American girlfriend, is barely enough to support 90
minutes, and there are a couple of stretches where the jump cuts slow down
and you notice exactly how thin it is. And Jean Seberg's French is terribly irritating. But most of
the picture does retain a freshness and a vitality. You come out of the theatre
knowing full well why it's proven so iconic.
wr/dir: Jean-Luc Godard
ph: Raoul Coutard
ed: Cecil Decugis, Lila Herman
m: Martial Solal
cast: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, Daniel Boulanger,
Jean-Pierre Melville, Liliane Robin, Henri-Jacques Huit, Jean-Luc Godard
COMANCHE STATION
**½
USA
A cowboy rescues a married
white woman from the Indians.
A simple, run-of-the-mill B-Western that proved the final collaboration
between the star and director. Certain admirers of the latter have been
awarding this greater attention than it warrants.
dir: Budd Boetticher
cast: Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Atkins, Skip Homeier,
Richard Rust
CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH
***½
Japan
In this cornerstone of Japanese New Wave cinema, Nagisa Oshima uses the
youth-gone-wild formula to dissect contemporary Japan's social mores. The
nihilism of a teenage couple and their bed-hopping acquaintances plays out
in the context of the generation that weathered the occupation. Shot on
location in bold Technicolor, it plays like a more grounded, politically
switched-on Breathless.
wr/dir: Nagisa Oshima
ph: Takashi Kiwamata
cast: Yusuke Kawazu, Miyuki Kuwano, Yoshiko Kuga, Fumio Watanabe,
Shinji Tanaka
LA DOLCE VITA
*****
Italy
The experiences of a Roman
tabloid reporter.
A decadent, seductive, kaleidoscopic panorama of then-contemporary Roman life,
intoxicating to this day.
dir: Federico Fellini
cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anita Ekberg, Anouk Aimée
LET'S
MAKE LOVE
***½
USA
Yves Montand plays a billionaire lothario about to get lampooned by an
off-Broadway musical. When he goes to cancel the show, he meets the star -
Marilyn Monroe. C'est l'amour.
Where the plot goes after doesn't make a whole lot of sense,
but whenever Marilyn's on-screen, it doesn't need to. With customary pep
and conviction - looking startlingly beautiful and wearing less than she
has in any other film - she performs tracks called things like "My
Heart Belongs to Daddy", "Specialization" and the title
tune. There are a couple of lengthy stretches where she disappears, and
you feel the picture sagging. These sections are interchangeable for
the bloated, clogged-up big-budget sitcoms, which the studios started
churning out around this period, and which usually starred Rock Hudson.
dir: George Cukor
cast: Yves Montand, Marilyn Monroe, Tony Randall, Frankie
Vaughan, Wilfrid Hyde-White, David Burns, Milton Berle, Bing Crosby, Gene
Kelly
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PEEPING TOM
***½
UK
A young cameraman struggles with his penchant for filming women while stabbing them with his tripod.
A sensationalist take on voyeurism, renounced upon release then
reevaluated some time later by people like Martin Scorsese. It hasn't
dated all that well - the dialogue is unsubtle, and the lead is either too
subtle or just plain vacant -
but it's still absorbing.
dir: Michael Powell
cast: Karl Boehm, Anna Massey, Maxine Audley, Edmond Knight, Moira
Shearer, Bartlett Mullins, Shirley Ann Field
PSYCHO
*****
USA
A secretary on the run from the
law signs in at the Bates Motel.
The masterpiece of the macabre, with a gritty B-movie sensibility profoundly
unsettling to this day. Its overall impact has not been diminished in the slightest by the never-ending
string of rip-offs.
dir: Alfred Hitchcock
wr: Joseph Stefano
ph: John L. Russell Jr.
ed: George Tomasini
m: Bernard Herrmann
pd: Joseph Hurley, Robert Clatworthy
cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, Martin
Balsam, John Gavin
PURPLE
NOON
***½
France/Italy
An inimitably sleazy take on Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr.
Ripley, with tanned, toned Alain Delon playing the famed psychopath.
To a cheeky Nino Rota tune, he goes about his pathological crimes in expensive suits and lush
resorts. The direction is wobbly and the
psychology cursory, but you get a shirtless Delon in his prime, sun-drenched Mediterranean
scenery, and on a couple of magical occasions, both at the same time. Also, there is
something morbidly seductive about the tension between the ghastly subject
matter and the relaxed, chic presentation.
dir: René Clément
ph: Henri Decaë
m: Nino Rota
cast: Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet, Marie Laforêt, Erno Crisa, Frank
Latimore, Billy Kearns, Ave Ninchi
SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING
***½
UK
The frustrations of a young
Nottingham factory worker.
A detailed, landmark piece of kitchen-sink social
observation, with an intelligent script and great performances.
dir: Karel Reisz
wr: Alan Sillitoe
cast: Albert Finney, Shirley Anne Field, Rachel Roberts,
Bryan Pringle, Norman Rossington, Hylda Baker
SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER
***
France
A disillusioned café piano
player is drawn into his brothers' crime against his will.
An odd mix of New Wave and noir, with extended, alienating narrative
shifts that detract from the mood build-up.
dir: François Truffaut
cast: Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, Michele
Mercier, Albert Remy, Jacques Aslanian, Richard Kanayan
SPARTACUS
***
SWISS
FAMILY ROBINSON
**½
THE VIRGIN SPRING
***
Sweden
In 14th century Sweden, a
Christian virgin is raped by herdsmen.
Stark, gloomy medieval drama based on legend, generally subdued, but
with outbursts of brutality. For all its fascination and brooding
evocativeness, it feels as if Bergman only realised half-way through filming that he no longer
had anything to add on topics he had already exhausted.
dir: Ingmar Bergman
ph: Sven Nykvist, Rolf Halmquist
cast: Max von Sydow, Birgitta Valberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Birgitta
Petersson, Axel Düberg, Tor Isedal, Ove Porath
THE
WILD, WILD ROSE
**½
Hong Kong
An awkward early case of crudely Westernised Hong Kong cinema. Bizet's
Carmen is transmuted into a sultry nightclub performer and her story is
filtered through Hollywood noir iconography and early 60s Japanese pop.
The curiosity value wears off early, with two hours still to go.
dir: Wang Tian-lin
cast: Grace Chang, Lei Da, Liu Enjia, Ma Li, Ma Xianogong, Ouyang
Sha-fei, Shen Yun, Su Feng
THE
YOUNG ONE
****½
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