Graphic Journey Blog

Class act

It is rare to go to the cinema and come away being deeply disturbed and moved in equal measures.

But it happened to me last week and I am still turning over the images and dialogue in my mind. The film was Fish Tank directed by Andrea Arnold.  This is her second outing in the world of features – her first being the excellent Red Road.

Arnold follows in the territory trail blazed by the great Ken Loach, the under- belly of British society, but very much from a deeply felt feminist prospective.

Fish Tank centers on the life of Mai, a hardened, angry and brutalized 15 year old who blocks out the grimness of her daily life with alcohol, violence and dance. Living in the transparent world of a high-rise council estate, where we see lives played out by the under privileged inmates, set against a backdrop of music, abuse and deprivation.  Language is reduced to little more than aggressive barking, peppered with extreme expletives, even from Mia’s 8-year-old sister.

The tiny cell like rooms are filled with visual squalor and filth. TV is pumping out a mix of banal celebrity based programmes and endless gyrating dance videos.  The latter being aped by the young girls living on the estate, and seemingly the height of their aspirations. I do not intend to outline the whole film here, as I would urge you to see it. It is a very important piece of British new wave cinema and Arnold has a place at the top table.

It may seem a bizarre juxtaposition to link this film with the highly entertaining Little Miss Sunshine of a couple years back...

But at the heart of that film was the sinister sexualization of very young girls via the seemingly innocent beauty pageants run throughout the USA.  This same trait is evident in Arnold’s film but via the dance routines played out on the council estates copied from the endless diet of pop videos pumped out via MTV style stations.

Arnold’s landscape is educationally barren where the future of the children is destined to reflect their own, mostly single parented, brutalized families.  There is a glimmer of hope in the actions of the Mia, the main protagonist, but only a glimmer. What I was left with was the bleak view of the male species - a horrid predatory creature ready to take advantage at every opening.  A toughly depressing, but nevertheless, essential piece of viewing.

Andrea Arnold's 2005 Oscar winning short film, Wasp is a remakable debut and is clearly a maquette for Fish Tank. It is well worth a view. But have a stiff drink first...

You can view Wasp here

Trailer for Fish Tank click here.  Little Miss Sunshine click here 

Journey into Space

Since childhood I have always loved science fiction films, being fascinated  by the progress in space exploration and all the hardware that goes with it. This was the comic that I used to read…

 – Well, I say read, but I mostly looked at the pictures and copied them using my amazing three-coloured Biro (whose story can be found elsewhere on this blog, if you are into Biros that is)
 
I have put all of the sci-fi films that have impressed me most in chronological order starting with Destination Moon, 1950 directed by Irving Pichel. This was one of the first science fiction films to attempt a high level of accurate technical detail telling the story of the first trip to the moon. And the astronauts wore some natty coloured outfits…

Conquest of Space, 1955. Directed by Byron Haskin. A team of American astronauts leave their space station on the first mission to Mars, but the captain's religious beliefs cause problems…

 Forbidden Planet 1956. Directed by Fred M. Wilcox. When Adams and his crew are sent to investigate the silence from a planet inhabited by scientists, he finds all but two have died. Featuring ‘Robbie the Robot’ and the stunning mini skirted Anne Francis...

 2001, 1968 Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Monkeys, monoliths, HAL (the willful onboard computer) ...

and the meaning of life made this film both pretentious and wonderful in equal measures. It created the benchmark for all sci-fi films that followed...

Silent Running, 1972. Directed by Douglas Trumbull. A lone crewmember of a spaceship harbouring Earth's last nature reserves goes ape when he is ordered to jettison his beloved onboard forest return to earth... 

Dark Star, 1974 Directed by John Carpenter. The crew of the Dark Star are on a 20-year mission to create a highway in space by destroying planets that are in the way of navigation routes. (remarkably similar to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to come four years later as a BBC Radio drama) After a series of mishaps Mother (see HAL in 2001), the ships computer, can no longer persuade Bomb not to detonate. Even the dead captain is of little help in arguing with Bomb who is bound to do his duty...

Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977. The mother of all spaceships. A visual spectacle and I wanted to be up there in line with Richard Dreyfuss to leave the earth with those cute little aliens...

Alien, 1979 directed by Ridley Scott. ‘In space no one can hear you scream’ went the by line. But they certainly could hear you in the cinema. I saw this at a cast and crew screening without any knowledge of its content and was completely traumatized for days after...

Blade Runner, 1982. Deckard, a blade runner, has to track down and terminate 4 replicants who hijacked a ship in space and have returned to earth seeking their maker. Scott marked out the territory for the look of the future brilliantly.  

 Solaris, 2002.  Directed by Steven Soderbergh. No not the earlier Tarkovsky version (which I admired) but the stunningly beautiful remake with a sublime sound track by Cliff Martinez. A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet with hallucinogenic tendencies…

Sunshine, 2007 Directed by Danny Boyle. A team of astronauts are sent to re-ignite the dying sun 50 years into the future but are side tracked by a signal from an earlier, believed to be, failed mission...

And I’m pretty sure that the diving suites used in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1954, must have inspired the costume designers. Directed by Richard Fleischer…

 See what I mean?
 
Moon, 2009. Directed by Duncan Jones. Astronaut Sam Bell has a bizarre encounter with himself at the end of his three-year stint on the moon, where he, working alongside, yet another HAL like computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth batches of a resource that has helped to alleviate our planet's ailing power problems. This is film is a pure delight to any sci-fi movie fans because of the many references to early films of the genre. Pure self-indulgent pleasure...

Soft, gentle and low

Michael Caine once said that his idea of God’s voice would be the film director, John Huston - he of the booming, gravely tones. My own choice would be the great Orson Welles...

He had a voice of such sensitivity, warmth, clarity and authority, that it was an unbelievable pleasure to listen to. His control of this beautiful gift was astonishing. He would use phrases like 'musical notes to be drawn out hypnotically' or 'stabbed like a stiletto'. His command of his vocal kit was grounded in theatre and particularly radio. It was the latter where he was able to establish a fantastic intimacy rarely possible in theatre. And it was his voice that sent Americans panicking into the streets with his 1930’s radio production of H G Well’s, ‘World of the Worlds’. Welles understood precisely what the voice was capable of and throughout his career he perfected his instrument and often prostituted it too. Stories are legion about Welles’s interrupted film projects, normally because he would run out of money. In order to bolster the coffers he would take on cameo roles in box office potboilers, endorse products in many commercials or take on voice-overs. There are two hilarious moments from these commercial enterprises and thanks to good old You Tube, we can still witness them. The first is a voice over for Findus Frozen Peas, during the recording of which, Welles looses it and lashes out at all those around him. It is highly embarrassing but very, very funny. Click to hear it. The other is on the set of a Paul Masson wine commercial when it is clear that Welles has had rather too much of the said liquid, with the result that he was only able to utter a series of slurred squeaks.  Click to see and hear.  But here he is in one of his finest roles as the amoral Renaissance prince Cesare Borgia, in the 1949 film Prince of Foxes...

This is a scene about the power of seduction and the seductions of power where he uses his vocal talents to the full. See and hear for yourself here.

Enduring icons

James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain. All are frozen in time. They will never age. They will always be as fresh in our mind as the moment before they departed. The earliest of these was the remarkable young actor James Dean. What made him so special? To understand that, he needs to be put into the context of the style of acting that had been developing in New York in the 1950s. Lee Strasberg formed the Actors Studio and he worked along the principles of the Russian Theatre Director Constantine Stanislavski. It became known as ‘The Method’ and it infected a whole generation of young American actors. Most notably Marlon Brando, who in fact, contrary to popular belief, did not study at the Actors Studio with Strasberg, but at the breakaway theatre school run by Stella Adler – another inspirational acting teacher using the Russian technique. But while we all (well, some of us) witnessed Brando develop into an astonishing actor in his early days, we also had to endure his slow demise, disillusionment with the craft of acting and his ballooning into a vast frame while wasting away his talent.

Not so with James Dean, he didn't even get into his stride. He killed himself in a car crash in 1955 at the age of 24 with only 3 major films under his belt, two of which earned him Oscar nominations.  But for us Dean is left intact on celluloid in those films. Look at any of them and you cannot fail to be taken with his highly naturalistic performances. His eccentric charm. His look...

so alien to those other actors around him at the time. Here are two short moments. The first is from East of Eden The second is a scene from Rebel Without A Cause  Take a look at the ever fresh. Ever beautiful. James Dean.

Picture perfect

I stumbled upon this delightful Polaroid (above) on my favourite website, FFFFound!

Looking at it got me thinking about one of the classic films of the 1970s, The Last Picture Show 1971...

directed by one time film critic, Peter Bogdanovich.  A near masterpiece of cinema, it captures the demise of a small, wind swept, Texan town in the 1950s, and is symbolised by the closing of the last picture house.  It tells of a brief period in the lives of three teenagers, Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) and Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), their dreams of leaving, desires and inadequacies set against an ageing population. Superbly shot in black and white by Hollywood stalwart of the lens, Robert Surtees who gives the film a wide screen panoramic look, with pin sharp deep focus and a quiet feel. One of the most poignant scenes in the film is a monologue delivered by old-timer, Sam (Ben Johnson). He reflects on his life in this little backwater, where nothing ever happens and no one ever seems to escape from. It is a beautifully sensitive performance by Johnson - who was a real cowboy in his early life and regular extra in John Ford westerns –and won him an Oscar

 for his efforts. Take a look for yourself…

Bogdanovich went on to make a few more notable films, What’s Up Doc and Paper Moon. But he never again reached the near perfection of The Last Picture Show.

 

Vee hev veys of making you votch

Two German films that I caught this week are a must. Cherry Blossoms (Kirschblüten - Hanami.) 2009 is a touching, but unsentimental (I say that guardedly) film about family relationships, the aging process, longing, unfulfilled desire, guilt, self -obsession and much, much more. 

Directed by Dorris Dörrie it tells the story of a pilgrimage to Japan by Rudi - a widower whose recently departed wife had longed to visit the land of the rising sun. Filled with remorse in the knowledge that he prevented her from the one adventure she always wanted, he travels to Tokyo with a suitcase filled with her clothing; later we discover Rudi wearing his wife’s angora sweater and skirt beneath his overcoat, in an effort to be closer to her, and for her to experience the spectacle of the cherry blossom season. An encounter with an eccentric, homeless teenager -

whose daily ritual is to dance for her dead mother, brings them together. They embark on a journey to see Mount Fuji - Rudi’s wife’s ultimate dream. But as the wayward teenager explains to Rudi, " Mount Fuji is sometimes very shy and refuses to show herself" . And the wait begins. You’ll need to take along a large box of man size tissues, and I guarantee you’ll be ringing your parents to check on them for weeks to come. And then of course, it will fade and you will reflect the behavior of Rudi’s own children in the movie. To see the trailer click here.

Encounters at the End of the World 2007, written, directed and narrated by Werner Herzog, is a magnificent documentary about the people who inhabit McMurdo research station in the Antarctic. This ragamuffin group, looking akin to a bunch of quirky spacemen and women ferrying cargo in a battered spaceship deep into the universe, work, dream and live in an ugly man made prefabricated base camp set against the endlessly white landscape. Rather than bombard us with facts and graphics about the effects of global warming in this last bastion of naturalness, Herzog opts to turn his interest and camera on the individuals who have come to this frozen waste. Each of them have fascinating personal stories to tell. One makes an impassioned plea for us all to take seriously the imminent extinction of many languages. “Nobody seems to care,” he says.  Another, a Russian, who escaped the Soviet Union during the communist regime, under desperate circumstances. Herzog asks him to tell the story of his departure. The man became so tongue tied and stressed that Herzog cut in and said, “It’s all right you don’t have to tell us, I can see that it must be difficult”. In a less sensitive directors hand the camera would have zoomed in for the emotional close up and  the question would have been pushed until the memory and tears flowed. But not Herzog, who seems to have an antenna for human frailty, but he never exploits it. Only Herzog could get away with asking an incredibly reticent scientist - who had spent all of his life studying the habits of penguins – “Do you think there is such a thing as a gay penguin?” or “Do you think that penguins can go insane?” His delivery is so deadpan, earnest and from the heart that it seem highly appropriate.  Following Grizzly Man and various television documentaries Herzog brings avery individual take on this genre. 

The film is a feast of stunning natural beauty with pin sharp cinematography from Peter Zeitlinger and a haunting selection of original and existing pieces of music to accompany the ever changing and extraordinary images. To see the trailer click here.

And a fond farewell to the legendary cinematographer Jack Cardiff 1919 – 2009. His work on Black Narcissus gained him an Oscar in 1948.

 

His career spanned a remarkable eight decades. He will be best remembered for his collaborations with directors Powell & Pressburger for not only the above but  A Matter of Life & Death and The Red Shoes. He was also an accomplished portrait photographer. Here is one of my favorites, the delectable Miss Hepburn…

Do Look Now

On my regular weekly trip to the cinema I went to see this…

 Michael Winterbottom’s ‘Genova’ (2008). Within ten minutes I was stuck by the connection with this much early film…

‘Don’t Look Now’ (1973), Nichols Roeg’s cinematic masterwork. Winterbottom is clearly paying homage to Roeg’s groundbreaking film. From the off  'Genova' has a deeply unsettling mood, brought about by Marcel Zyskind’s cinematography – erratic, hand held and constantly on the move, using available light to such and extent that whole scenes appeared to be underexpose, which adds to the claustrophobic and menacing quality of the film. This coupled with the location – Genova’s labyrinthine network of alleyways and a brilliantly skillful soundscape by Joakim Sunstrom. We are drawn into the darkness of this world, populated with shadowy, menacing figures and the cries, whispers and swirling echoes of life in these unsetelling ancient canyons. Winterbottom replicates the same sensation achieved by Roeg in the darken canals and alleyways of Venice, so loving pieced together over three decades ago. The Basic outline to ‘Genova’ goes like this. Following the tragic death of Marianne, wife of Joe, played by Colin Firth. He along with his two young daughters move from Chicago to Genova in Italy for a one year teaching post, in order to try to put their lives back together. While there Firth’s youngest daughter, Kelly – who was inadvertainly the cause of car crash blames herself for her mother's death – begins to hear her mother talking. And later beings to see her. So we have a similar scenario as ‘Don’t look Now’ with the roles reversed – Daughter dies tragically in the opening moments of the film. Mother, played by Julie Christie, recuperates in Venice with her husband, Donald Sutherland. While eating in a restaurant Christie is told by a blind woman, also in the same dining room and is clairvoyant, that Christie’s dead daughter wants her to know that she is happy. From there on begins a bizarre series of events. If you’ve never seen it, you should. Both films have climatic endings that draw all the character together to a single point. In ‘Don’t Look Now’ it is the death of Sutherland. In ‘Genova’ it is the near death of Kelly. But the latter film lacks power and fades in comparison to the final moments of ‘Don’t Look Now’. But for all that Winterbottom has made a throuhrly compelling film, with clearly little budget, but a highly creative crew and ensemble of actors. Well worth paying for an unsettling 93 minutes.

Short back and sly

As a boy my mother used to take me for a weekly visit to the cinema. I loved it. We clocked up westerns, musicals, comedies, war movies and lots more. And just about every Victor Mature film going - a special favorite of my mum’s. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will know that I have a bit of a thing about films. Well, in 1953 we went to see a film called, ‘Trouble in Store’. It stared Norman Wisdom and I was absolutely smitten by him and also became slightly obsessed. In the film he sang a song called ‘ Don’t Laugh at Me ‘Cos I’m a Fool’. It turned into a big hit. If you’re ever in particularly cheesy mood have a little listen. Anyway, one of my other regular outings was a visit to the barber for my short back and sides. On this particular day I was sitting on the bench seat waiting my turn to be served. I started thumbing through the magazines. I picked up a copy of Picturegoer (a film mag of the period). The cover featured a picture of Norman Wisdom...

Even better there was a center spread of him. I wanted it, had to have it. Very slowly I started to unprise the staples, looking around as I did so, at the row of men puffing away on their pipes and cigarettes, just to make sure I wasn’t being observed. When the page became detached I carefully folded it in two, taking care to be sure that the barber hadn’t spotted my slight of hand. Once removed from the magazine I casually shoved it up the front of my pull over. ‘Next’, came the voice. My heart started to thump. As I rose up I could hear the crackling of the paper beneath my jumper. Throughout the haircut I sat motionless and bolt upright, thinking any moment the hairdresser would discover my misdemeanor. Every time I breathed in I could hear the crackling of the pages. My cheeks were burning, my pulse rate quickening. I wished I hadn’t done it. ‘There you go sonny, that’ll be 2/6p’. I jumped out of my skin.  Got out of the chair and followed the barber to the till.  The sound of the pages rubbing against my Fair Isle jumper seem even louder as I traveled the length of the shop, and I was even hotter. I paid my 2/6p and ran out of the shop and half way down the road before I felt safe enough to extract my booty. There he was resplendent in a black, orange duotone. Perfect for my bedroom wall. This event stayed with me for years. In the 1970s I recalled the event in this autobiographical painting…

The reason for telling this story is simple; all of your life is an inspiration. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon, and for the rest of your life. Now where have I heard that before?

And poor Norman Wisdom is now tucked away in a home somewhere on the Isle of White suffering with the dreaded Alzheimer’s disease. So sad.

Jean, Jeanie

To help combat  Monday morning blues - if you get them that is - here are two pictures of the ever lovely

 Jean Seberg.  And check out the BFI in April when they will be screening 'À  bout de souffle' (Breathless).

Telephone sex

 The telephone has always featured heavily in movies. But as a sex aid? Well, you might be sceptical. But hold  on, let me show you...

The NFT in London is currently screening a season of Ingrid Bergman films.

I went to see her in this...

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1946 cracker Notorious. Along with  Bergman is the immaculate Cary Grant. 

It is a wonderful experience to sit among an attentive audience who appreciate film as an art form, following every frame with the keenness of a philatelist. And with the added beauty of a scratch free print, projected at the very intimate Academy screen ratio, is a real pleasure

Early on in the film there is a highly erotic telephone scene between Bergman and the Grant – you can see the scene here by spooling forward to 5:06. It reminded me of an equally highly charged scene from It’s a wonderful Life...

 – see the scene here by spooling forward to 0:58. Compare the two.

In an age where everything and anything goes up on our cinema screens, it is fascinating to see just how sexual two fully clothed people can be, with the aid of a telephone.  And here is the lovely Donna Reed who starts with Jimmy Stewart in that good old seasonal stalwart.