Graphic Journey Blog

Graphic Journey Film Club

I have been revisiting some of my favourite British films from the 1960’s.

If you are unfamiliar with the period, The Pumpkin Eater (1964) directed by Jack Clayton is a very good place to start.  It tells the story of a woman (sensitively played by Ann Bancroft above) in slow emotional disintegration brought about by her husband’s philandering and deceit. Photographed in sumptuous black and white by Oswald Morris with some beautiful compositions…

Above, Morris's composition and framing are superb throughout the film.

All under the sure direction of  the great Jack Clayton, who knows exactly what he is doing even with children… The film is peppered with some stalwart British character actors giving gravitas to every performance. And not forgetting lead actor Peter Finch who is as always superb along with a great cameo from James Mason makes for a highly watchable film.

A Hitchcockian moment with this series on progressive close ups of James Mason's mouth delivering some venomous Pinter dialog

And if that were not enough Harold Pinter penned a terrifically taut script. The great French composer Georges Delerue created a beautifully charged score, full of emotion. 

Above, Jack Clayton (right) on set directing Ann Bancroft and Richard Johnson.

 The film is unhurriedly paced with a quiet integrity along with supreme elegance. It allows the viewer space to think and engage with the characters and immerse themselves into the story. Give it a whirl.

 

Graphic Journey film club

Another British film that I rate very highly is John Schlesinger’s Sunday Bloody Sunday 1971 staring Peter Finch, Glenda Jackson and Murray Head. 

It is an incredibly well paced and cinematically elegant film, with wonderful performances from Jackson and Finch. They are involved in a love triangle with the same man. Finch plays a gay GP with incredible sympathy.

The film is a microcosm of 70’s middle class Britain.  In the closing scene, Finch is seen learning Italian from a recording. He abruptly stops, looks up and addresses the cinema audience directly in the most touching way, summarising his life, living alone and being gay. 

The film caused a sensational at the time for showing Finch and Head kissing full on the lips. Frivolous now, but 40 years ago things were quite different.

Two see Finch's moving closing scene, in a continuous 2.5 minute shot, and hear Mozart's wonderful trio from Così fan tutte from the closing titles click here.

Capturing the past

Why is it, that when it comes to capturing the past in drama, it often goes spectacularly wrong? In 2010 we had Sam Taylor Wood’s lamentable film  Nowhere Boy...

Nowhere Boy 2010.

wildly over art directed. Plus the equally dismal BBC drama about John and Yoko, Lennon Naked with Christopher Eccleston decked out in a ridiculous ill-fitting wig. 

"I'm John Lennon. Honest, I really am."

And just last week the BBC aired We’ll take 'Manhattan, a drama centring on the love affair between photographer David Bailey and model Jean Shrimpton. 

We’ll take 'Manhattan 2012

It was so bad I burst out laughing in disbelief ­– I was in bed at the time watching it on my iPad, which catapulted off the duvet. 

Mad Men 2007. The grandaddy of the current 60s frenzy
 
Since the success of the excellent Mad Men, every TV and film executive has been clamouring to jump on the 50’s and 60’s bandwagon. As in BBCs The Hour last year…

The Hour 2011. Imagined BBC studio life in 1956, featuring a telephone not introduced until 1959. It's the little things that really count.

The real thing. The BBC in the 50s with the correct telephone. 

Out come the black horn rimmed glasses, pipes, shift style dresses, Dansette record players, overly immaculate vintage cars and trucks, along with a scattering of period magazines, conspicuously displayed in shot.  I wonder if any of the directors of these efforts ever bother to talk ‘in depth’ to people who lived through the period they are trying to evoke? Only the recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy got near a 60s feel. 

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 2011

But even that featured the most bizarre sound proofed portacabin affairs placed in the middle of the spy headquarters. They were far more suited to the set of Doctor Who.

The original Tinker Tailor Solider Spy 1979 BBC series with Alec Guinness

 In 2009, An Education was passable with its 60s look...

An Education 2009, with the ubiquitous Dansette  to set the 60s scene

and Anton Corbijn’s 2007 film Control was an extremely good rendition of mid 70s mood, but opted

Control 2007

 for a more 60s Dick Lester, Hard Days Night cinematic quality rather than the more appropriate grainy pushed coloured film stock of the 70s. 

Hard Days Night 1964

We also have the current TV series Call the Midwife  featuring the cleanest 1950s East End slums I have ever seen.

Call the Midwife 2012.  The cosy myth...

and the harsh reality.

I recently went to see Mike Leigh’s new play Grief at the National and, although it only had one static set, it manage to utterly capture the sprit of the late 50’s middle class…

Grief 2012.

Just as he did so wonderfully in the working class world of Vera Drake…

Vera Drake 2004

It is directors of a certain age and experience, like Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Alan Parker, Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick and Terrence Davies who tend to get things right when it come to evoking a period. 

Terence Davies's perfect The Long Day Closes 1992 

Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory 1957.

Birdsong 2012.

A refreshing exception was the 2-part dramatisation of Sebastian Faulks’s Birdsong a stunningly realised evocation of the First World. Made possible by the perfect sets designed by Grant Montgomery, beautiful cinematography by Julian Court and costumes design by Charlotte Walter. Plus the sterling work of the many make up artists involved. But I feel it would have been even better if they had shot it on film rather than HD. The dancing grain of film just adds the magic and takes away that 21^st century hyper pristine clarity. Capturing the past is a combination of period detail, casting - especially the extras, who often stand out for being so wrong. Costumes, make up, the overall look of the period -  often everything is far too clean and shiny. And the voices and language, overlooked by many directors. It's rare to to see a film where all of those things in sync.

We seem to be drifting deeper into a world of nostalgia. The Oscar nominated The Artist (a perfect example of getting it right) is testament to this along with a myriad of period TV dramas.

The Artist 2011. A love letter to the silent era.

When things are depressing in the present, we seem to take solace in the past. It seems more comforting somehow. 

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

Graphic Journey film club

If you are into gritty crime, then The Friends of Eddie Coyle is for you, a forgotten little treasure of the 70's. It is about an over-the-hill small time gunrunner. Eddie Coyle discovers that he's facing long jail sentence with no appeal. Torn between turning police informer or preserving his loyalty to the Mob, Coyle moves slowly towards his final decision, while unbeknownst to him, the machinations of others in the criminal network are setting an unwitting trap from which poor Coyle cannot escape.

Robert Mitchum, who plays Coyle, gives a wonderfully understated performance full of pathos and gravitas, accentuating the weariness of a two-bit loser looking to check out before it's too late.

British director Peter Yates (who died last year) handles this genre with great panache as he did on two early films Robbery 1967, Bullitt 1968.

Have a peek here and here.

 

 

Graphic Journey film club

Welcome. As regular readers of this blog will know I am a life long aficionado of cinema. I intend to offer each week, a film that has left an impression on me during my many cinematic forays since 1950’s childhood.

So I hope that the cineastes among you will find some surprises in my somewhat eclectic selection. My first synchronises with the UK release of The Awakening, a spooky tale set in a rambling, ghost inhabited boarding school.

Back in 1961 a far more superior work in this spine-tinkling genre was released. The Innocents...

starring Deborah Kerr was based on Henry James’s short story The Turn of the Screw and directed by Jack Clayton, one of my favorite British directors and a master of eking out fantastic performances from young children.

The sumptuous black and white, highly atmospheric, cinematography was by the great Freddie Francis who uses deep focus shots throughout the film.

Have a little taster of the mood here.

 Jack Clayton’s work on The Innocents greatly influenced another in the chiller department, The Haunting 1963 directed by Robert Wise with some sterling cinematography by Davis Boulton.

Compare these 2 scenes.

The Innocents here and The Haunting here.

Both films are perfect for late night viewing when the wind is howling, fire crackling and clock quietly ticking.

 

Ken Russell 1927 - 2011

The enfant terrible of British cinema has died. A sad day but his early work is the most fantastic cinematic legacy. Read an earlier post on him here.

(I) Need to talk about Kevin

In recent months I have seen 3 films that have left the audience in total silence as the final credits roll. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, Lars von Trier’s Melancholia and last night Lynnne Ramsay’s We Need to talk About Kevin. This latter is a relentless attack on the emotions, with no relief whatsoever.

Edited in a mosaic of scenes placed out of conventional chronology and laced with the addition of ambient images throughout. From its opening scene, which features a gently billowing curtain floating in white light, it builds to reveal a harrowing portrait of a woman, not only victimised by all around her, but with an entrenched guilt of her on part in the tragedy that unfolds during the film's fragmented structure.  This leads to an esculating series of extremely unpalatable events that disturbs the senses long after the film has ended. 

My difficulty with Ramsey’s is her over-manipulation of the audience. This was achieved through the casting (no one looks normal). The architecture (akin the Nightmare on Elm Street). The interiors (very Lynchian in their soullessness. The colour palette (cold with Hichcockian flashes of symbolic red throughout). The music (50s and 60 pop intertwined with electronic tension) plus the many randomly framed images that become super charged with menace. It was a relentless journey that became more horrific with every step. 

It left me wondering why I had paid money to put myself through such an ordeal. It was without doubt one of the most unpleasant films I have ever seen. And despite my admiration for Ramsay’s ability I would not recommend it to anyone.

The world we live in at the moment is filled with horrors flashed to our TV screens everyday. This film is an unnecessary addition.

Any excuse

My little weakness for Miss Seberg...

Ken Russell - maverick or charlatan?

Back in the dark days of the late 50s and early 60s television, when there were only two channels at our fingertips (no remotes then) and the Reithian legacy was still very much in evidence at the BBC, there was a rather special arts programme called Monitor edited by the legendary Huw Wheldon.  He had an uncanny knack of discovering emerging creative talent. Among these were John Schlesinger, Jonathan Miller and Ken Russell. Under Wheldon’s wing they were inventing a new form called drama documentary. Of the trio, Russell’s sensibilities seem to suit the genre most.

The young Ken Russell

In 1962 he directed Elgar for Monitor… It is still regarded by the BFI as one of the best television documentaries. In 1966 Russell made Isadora Duncan and a year later Song of Summer - a beautifully crafted piece on the closing years of British composer, Fredrick Delius.

 Song of Summer 1966

This for me was the culmination of Russell’s trail blazing work in this ‘dramadoc’ genre. Russell collaborated with the wonderful cinematographer Dick Bush who went on to make three more films with him. Bush also worked with Jonathan Miller on two wonderful BBC films, Alice in Wonderland 1966 and Whistle and I'll Come to You 1968.

In 1969 I was working at the publishers William Heinemann who handled the rights of D.H.Lawrence’s estate. I was invited to a private screening of a new film directed by Ken Russell based on Lawrence’s Women in Love (below). Also attending that evening was a young dashing writer called Melvyn Bragg (now Lord Bragg). He would later be responsible for the screen adaptation of Russell's The Music Lovers.

The homoerotic wrestling scene from Women in Love 1969

It was this film that was to be the beginning of Russell’s long and checkered career that soared the heights only to later plummet to the depths. His increasing preoccupation with sex, nudity, Nazism and the church saw him upset just about everyone on the planet.

 Above two stills from Russell's notorious The Devils 1971 

Glenda Jackson's total nudity caused a stir in The Music Makers 1970

There was one wonderful moment when Russell appeared on a chat show alongside the late film critic Alexander Walker – earlier in the week Walker had viciously laid into Russell latest film The Devils (1971) calling it "monstrously indecent". Russell's responded by hitting Walker repeatedly over the head with a rolled-up copy of the offending newspaper.

But before becoming Britain's most notorious film director, Russell was a talented photographer, which was revealed last year in an exhibition of his documentary photographs of street life in the UK. Here are some examples of those photographs. And interesting to note that this is a style that he transfered to his early films.

All images © Ken Russell / Top Foto

For more information on Ken Russell's photographic work visit the Proud Gallery

 

 

 

 

Graceful Grace

For no other reason other than she is beautiful and is wearing a great pair of loafers.