Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 109: Thu Apr 18

Blow Out (De Palma, 1981): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm

This is a 35mm presentation.

Full review here:
Blow Out
is among Brian De Palma's very best films. It entertains a close relation with a very strong (and better respected) American film of the '70s, Francis Coppola's The Conversation (1974). Both these films are about the art and the act of sound recording; both are about the uncovering of conspiracies. Through The Conversation, De Palma reaches back to Michelangelo Antonioni's famous (and somewhat overrated) Blow Up (1966), where it was still photography that inadvertently uncovered a mystery. All three films trace a sad arc of failure: the conspirators rise up and crush the would-be everyday investigators, with their cameras and sound recording machines. All are about the treachery of appearances, and the ease with which technological evidence can be tampered with (photos can be falsified, audiotapes can be erased), something which usually happens mysteriously, off-screen, in the dead of night. Finally, all three films, from the '60s to the '80s mark a certain kind of moral, or rather amoral mood. Their heroes, whether played by David Hemmings (Blow Up), Gene Hackman (The Conversation) or John Travolta (Blow Out), tend to have pretty soft, flabby, moral senses to begin with – they're cool, indifferent, cruising, sometimes repressing very effectively some past crisis or trauma. And although fate spurs all three into some daring action, they eventually take the blows of the world as some kind of sad, tragic or just matter-of-fact confirmation that no ordinary person can effect or change anything in this dirty world – so you may as well sink back into sloth, and keep drifting off to the big sleep.
Adrian Martin

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 108: Wed Apr 17

The Quince Tree Sun (Erice, 1992): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.25pm

This film, part of the Victor Erice season at BFI Southbank, is also being screened on March 28th. Full details can be found here.

Time Out review:
A truly magnificent film from the maker of Spirit of the Beehive and The South, which effortlessly transcends the term 'documentary'. Basically, it follows Madrileño painter Antonio López as he meticulously and slowly labours over a painting of a quince tree in his garden. That the task takes him months is of interest in itself, but where the film scores is in its fleshing out of its subject through conversation with friends, wife, admirers, and builders at work on his house, a strategy that simultaneously contextualises López and puts his bizarre, even limited conception of artistic endeavour into perspective. Don't worry about a lengthy, fairly banal dialogue about half-an-hour into the film; the rest is visually extraordinary, funny, touching, and quite unlike anything else.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is an excerpt.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 107: Tue Apr 16

The First Gentleman (Cavalcanti, 1948): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6pm

This is a 35mm presentation and will feature a introduction by Josephine Botting, the BFI's National Archive Curator.

BFI introduction:
The behaviour of the British royals is a hot topic, and this historical drama depicts one of the House of Windsor’s most controversial forebears. Cecil Parker, best known as a character actor, was given the leading role he was born to play: the bloated, dissolute Prince Regent. He revels in the pomposity and lecherousness of the decadent ‘Prinny’, who attempts to marry off his daughter Charlotte. Her tragically brief but happy marriage to the handsome Belgian Prince Leopold is superbly portrayed through the sensitive performances of Hopkins and Aumont. Beautifully photographed against a lavish regency canvas, the fabulous costumes by top Gainsborough designer Elizabeth Haffenden are the icing on the cake.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 106: Mon Apr 15

Dragonwyck (Mankiewicz, 1946): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.40pm

This film (screening from a 4K restoration) is part of the Gene Tierney season at BFI Southbank and also screens on April 18th and March 30th. Full details here.

Time Out review:
Joseph L. Mankiewicz's directing debut is a far cry from the acerbically scripted satires - A Letter to Three Wives, All About Eve - for which he is best known; indeed, though it inhabits basically the same Gothic territory as his later The Ghost and Mrs Muir, it lacks that film's charm, easy wit and ambivalent psychological insights. Still, it's an efficient enough drama in the tradition of Rebecca, with innocent young Gene Tierney leaving her rural home to stay with wealthy and sophisticated cousin Vincent Price. Needless to say, she marries him only to discover that he's a cruel, brooding tyrant who maltreats his workers and has a sinister skeleton in his closet. Few surprises, but the performances are vivid and the recreation of the 1840s setting is subtly plausible.
Geoff Andrew

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 105: Sun Apr 14

The Parallax View (Pakula, 1974): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm

This 35mm presentation (also showing on 30th April) is part of the Pakula Paranoia Trilogy. You can find the full details here.

Time out review:
A thriller about a journalist, alerted to the mysterious deaths of witnesses to the assassination of a presidential candidate, who embarks on an investigation that reveals a nebulous conspiracy of gigantic and all-embracing scope. It sounds familiar, and refers to or overlaps a good handful of similar films, but is most relevantly tied to Klute. Where Klute was an exploration of claustrophobic anxiety, The Parallax View is inexorably agoraphobic. Its visual organisation is stunning as the journalist (Beatty) is drawn into an increasingly nightmarish world characterised by impenetrably opaque structures, a screen whited out from time to time, or meshed over with visually deceptive patterns. It is some indication of the area the film explores that in place of the self-revealing session with the analyst in Klute, The Parallax View presents us with the more insecurity-inducing questionnaire used by the mysterious Parallax Corporation for personality-testing prospective employees. Excellent performances; fascinating film.
Verina Glaessner

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 104: Sat Apr 13

Laura (Preminger, 1944): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 3.30pm


This genunine Hollywood classic screens as part of the Gene Tierney season at BFI Southbank and is alose being shown on March 28th and April 14th. Full details here.

Chicago Reader review:
Otto Preminger's directorial debut (1944), not counting the five previous B films he refused to acknowledge and an earlier feature made in Austria. It reveals a coldly objective temperament and a masterful narrative sense, which combine to turn this standard 40s melodrama into something as haunting as its famous theme. Less a crime film than a study in levels of obsession, Laura is one of those classic works that leave their subject matter behind and live on the strength of their seductive style. With Dana Andrews as the detective, Gene Tierney as the lady in the portrait, and Clifton Webb as the epicene litterateur.
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is the trailer.

Capital Celluloid 2024 — Day 103: Fri Apr 12

Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 9pm

This film, also screening on April 6th,  is part of the Big Screen Classics strand at BFI Southbank and features an introduction by Arike Oke, Executive Director of Knowledge, Learning & Collections at BFI and musical accompaniment from Neil Brand.

Chicago Reader review:
'A masterpiece of the German silent cinema and easily the most effective version ofDracula on record. F.W. Murnau's 1922 film follows the Bram Stoker novel fairly closely, although he neglected to purchase the screen rights—hence, the title change. But the key elements are all Murnau's own: the eerie intrusions of expressionist style on natural settings, the strong sexual subtext, and the daring use of fast-motion and negative photography.'
Dave Kehr

Here (and above) is an extract.