Graphic Journey Blog

Making it real.

I went to see Charlotte Rampling in Andrea Pallaoro's 'Hannah', made in 2017, but only just released in the UK. Rampling gives the most astonishing performance of her career. She goes to places that other actors would fear to tread, deep, heart-wrenching, dark emotional hells. And often achieves it with such understated subtlety.

Set in Belgium it opens on a close up of Hannah (Rampling) making strange animal-like squeals and cries. It becomes clear that she is involved in a Stanislavski style acting class, at which she appears to be the oldest member by several decades - having taken an identical course myself when in my 60s, I can swear to its accuracy. We see Hannah travel home in a menacing metro where a couple is having a full-scale argument about their relationship. All the while Hannah appears isolated in her own thoughts. At home she prepares supper and we watch as she places the food on the table and sits in silence with her husband (André Wilms) in their tiny kitchen, with an undercurrent of tension. It transpires that the next day is when her husband is to be imprisoned for a crime that is not clear at this point.

When needs must, Rampling as domestic help.

The wonderful thing about Pallaoro's direction is that nothing is heavily underscored, there are subtle clues leaving the viewer to piece together the story in their own way. Interestingly I think this film has a lot of parallels with Alfonso Cuarón's 'Roma' (2018).

Cleo in her daily drudgery.

Rampling is also a domestic help to a wealthy couple living in a modernist house with a pool, hot and cold running everything and a young son seemingly lacking in human contact, and there is an exquisite moment where the boy, clearly very fond of Hannah, asks her to scratch his head like she used to. He snuggles into her lap and as she runs her finger through his hair while telling him a story, he drifts into sleep.

A moment away from the psychological mayhem.

It was a moment of escape from their respective worlds, evocative of the relationship Cleo has with the children in 'Roma'.

A tender moment from Roma.

This is a film about, transferred guilt, denial, and discovery that the person you have loved, lived with, had children with and cherished has catastrophically shattered your life forever.

The high emotional commitment that Rampling has given to the film is staggering. There is one particular scene where after visiting her husband in prison where she rushes to a lavatory, locks the door, and the dam of internal emotion brakes through in a series of strangulated cries, that she attempts to stifle with her hands, but there is no stopping. It was primeval and one of the most truthful and heart-wrenching scenes I have seen in cinema. This is a slow reveal film, you have to engage and work to be part of the story. It is intelligent, uncompromising cinema at its best, and I salute both Rampling and director Pallaoro for their bravery.

See the trailer here

Sir Ken Adam: In conversation

  Listen here

Sir Christopher Frayling: In conversation

To hear the interview click HERE

Books, books, books: I love them

London studio where books are always close by.

I was recently ask to contribute to the always fascinating It's Nice That website.

They wanted me to share books that have a special meaning to me. You can find out what they are here.

William Gold: It's a wrap

Bob Gold 1921 – 2018

Bob Gold's 1942 poster for Casablanca.

Gold was one of America's best known graphic designers for his many movie poster designs over the past 70 years. He clocked up over 2,000 during the 20th and 21st century. He set the graphic style agenda for film industry promotion.

Here is just a small sampling from his hefty output...

Ce ñ'est pas un film?

If you enjoyed Ruben Östlund’s 'Force Majeure' then you will like his new outing, 'The Square'. I say enjoy but perhaps endure is a better word, as this new film runs for two and a half hours. Like 'Force Majeure' it starts with a dramatic event involving a mobile phone. In this case an elaborate street theft of the main protagonist, one Christian, (Claes Bang), a high profile curator of a Stockholm based contemporary art museum. The event spirals him into a personal catastrophe forming the spine of the story.

To a large part, the film is a biting satire on the world of conceptual art, with its convoluted post rationalisations on art in the form of impenetrable curatorial speak, we've all read it in gallery brochures. The film opens with journalist Anne, (Elizabeth Moss) quoting back to an American artist, Julian (Dominic West) a statement he made about his work that Anne had difficulty in understanding. The response from Julian is highly amusing.

Peppered throughout the 156 minutes are more hilarious moments of ridicule on the art establishment. Another such is when an alarmed member of staff nervously tells Christian that one of the twenty-odd regimented piles of pristine gravel displayed in one of the many stark gallery spaces has been accidentally destroyed by a cleaner. What to do? " Should we call the insurers?". "No," says Christan, "Where is the gravel now?". "In the basement". "Okay, I will rebuild it, no one will know".

In addition to this art finger pointing, there is a myriad of themes from the politically correct and inclusive nature of Swedish society to the elite wealthiest patrons of the corporate world. And the seeming epidemic of homeless people on the streets of Stockholm to the animalistic possibilities in mankind. It takes a lot of knitting together and keeps you thinking long after the film. But, and there usually is one, like many directors Ruben Östlund has fallen in love with what his cinematographer, Fredrik Wenzel has captured for him. Östlund wants it all up there on the screen for all to see. Unfortunately, in parts, it makes for many unnecessarily lengthy scenes. But for all that like 'Force Majeure,' it is an unusual and highly original work.

Darkest Hour / Winston’s wanderings

An unrecognisable Garry Oldman as Winston Churchill.

There’s no doubt about Garry Oldman’s performance as Winston Churchill in Joe Wright’s Darkest Hour, but the film itself is a case of style over substance, with the addition of some downright embarrassing moments in the script.

Along with Oldman goes full marks, and no doubt awards, for the outstanding prosthetic designers, cinematography, costumes, and art direction. But what destroyed this film for me was Wright’s overindulgence in visual gimmickry. Endless plan-view zooms, both in and out, of stairwells, aerial shots and bombing. Unnecessary close-ups of the passing objects. Slow-motion panning shots of street scenes showing background extras, looking like background extras being far too self-conscious, along with overly clean period cars, and some of those were post-war models.

The self-consciousness of the extras was heightened by the use of slow motion and car boffins would spot the post-war Ford Anglia (far left). A silly mistake when so many prewar models would have been readily available from enthusiasts.

But far worse were two dreadfully sentimental and questionable scenes. The first is the unlikely close relationship between Churchill and his overly pretty typist/secretary Elizabeth Layton – it smacks of being manufactured by committee.

The rather more glamorous Elizabeth Layton (played by Lily James ) than the genuine Elizabeth below.

The second is an absolutely ludicrous scene when Churchill goes AWOL at a crucial moment when he is being pressured into peace talks with “Herr Hitler” via Mussolini to avert the impending Dunkirk massacre. To help with the taxing dilemma, Winston decides to join “the ordinary people” on an underground train.

"Cor blimey! It's Mr Churchill anall".

The trigger for this event is at the opening of the film, when Winston, cosseted in the back of his chauffeur-driven car, looks out at a bus and says “You know, I have never travelled on a bus”. Fast forward to the end of the film and we have Winston sitting in a crowded tube carriage, complete with Homburg hat and Havana cigar, where he canvasses views on the mood of the country from the ridiculously humble London passengers. It is like a jaunty, forelock-tugging, Enfield/Whitehouse 1940s sketch. Utterly laughable.

"We're with you all the way, Gor bless you Mr Churchill Sir".

Within this lavishness, there could have been a great film. But it is marred by visual over stimulation and a very patchy script.

Bruno Ganz as Hitler in Downfall 2004.

You only have to view Oliver Hirschbiegel’s brilliant film Downfall to see how a serious historical subject can be handled with great skill and subtlety, without an ounce of sentimentality or visual gymnastics, to understand what I am on about. Wright seems to have picked up Stephen Spielberg’s irritating habit of inserting syrup-driven sentimentality into his films. And, incidentally, you’ll find that in Spielberg’s latest The Post.

Often, when directors get to a stage in their careers when they have all the tricks made available, they tend to want to show them. It reminds me of a quote from the late great advertising man Bill Bernbach, who warned creatives not to gild the lily:

“Be provocative. But be sure your provocativeness stems from your product... Merely to let your imagination run riot, to dream unrelated dreams, to indulge in graphic acrobatics is not being creative. The creative person has harnessed his imagination. He has disciplined it so that every thought, every idea, every word he puts down, every line he draws... makes more vivid, more believable, more persuasive...”

I think Bill knew what he was talking about. Less is always more, and Darkest Hour could have been a superior film had Joe Wright adhered to that, along with using a sturdy pair of scissors to cut out the duff scenes.

Eyvind Earle: In the background

Lady and The Tramp (1955) a film I adored as a 10-year boy,

As a boy in the 1950s, I was obsessed with the work of Walt Disney and would while away hours copying characters from his latest animated films. A great deal of their magic happens in the beautifully illustrated backgrounds to the action. And one of the most brilliant Disney staff artists responsible for these vistas was Eyvind Earle.

Earle at his studio easel.

Earle was originally born in New York, he moved with his family to Hollywood; at age ten, he started painting. He had his first solo show in France aged 14. He rapidly progressed, always improving his talent and later exhibiting in New York at the Charles Morgan Galleries in 1937, at which the Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a work for its permanent exhibition. In the 1940s, he signed on with the American Artist Group and clocked up 800 Christmas card designs for them. 

Then came the job that would put him on the map: he joined Walt Disney to assist on backgrounds. It was here that he was to excel, creating work for a range of popular Disney characters. He first worked on Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom – a short film that picked up an Academy Award in 1953. That pushed him up the Disney ladder, where he worked on Peter Pan, Working for Peanuts, Pigs Is Pigs, Paul Bunyan, and Lady and the Tramp. His later styling and background work on Sleeping Beauty was highly acclaimed.

Top: Earle plotting the storyboard for Sleeping Beauty (1959), followed by some backgrounds being painted by him. Lastly, some finished works complete with their cell overlays. 

Earle was selected by Walt Disney to set the style for the long-in-production feature, Sleeping Beauty. However many of the animators actively disliked his art direction and openly protested, but Walt Disney supported Earle to the very end of the production.

After leaving Disney in the mid-1960s, Earle started his own studio, Eyvind Earle Productions, Inc. He produced animated and trailer for the feature film West Side Story, under the close eye of Saul Bass. He also designed a number of TV series trailers. In the mid-1960s. He eventually turned his back on animation to concentrate on painting alone in his studio. Out of this came a myriad of work: oils, watercolours, scraperboard, line illustration and sculpture represented by a number of large galleries across the states and he sold a lot of works through theses. But a lot of finished left after his death had never exhibited. 

Above a selection of Earle's work. It is evocative of a combination of the work of Frank Newbold, Grant Wood and Japanese traditional paintings.

He left behind an astonishing body of work that has gained a big following from illustrators and animation artists over the years, inspiring a new generation of creatives.

In 1998, Earle was honoured at the 26th Annie Awards with the Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement in the art of animation. And in 2015, Earle was inducted as a Disney Legend. His daughter, Kristin Thompson, accepted the award on her father’s behalf.

Here is a scene from Sleeping Beauty

Excess vs. Restraint

I attended a double-screening last Friday evening. 

The first was the much-applauded Elle, directed by Paul (Basic Instinct) Verhoeven. It stars the superb Isabelle Huppert playing Michèle Leblanc, a wealthy CEO of a games company. She is an icy, emotionless character, akin to the part Huppert played in The Piano Teacher (2001). 

The film opens on the horrifically violent rape of Leblanc by a masked attacker, after which Leblanc does not, as one would expect, report the attack to the police. Instead, she calmly sweeps up the broken glass, takes a bath and then phones for takeaway sushi as if nothing had happened. Next day at work, we see her reviewing a screening of a new game with her creative team. She heavily criticises it for not having enough sex and violence and demands more. At this point, I realised that Leblanc is clearly emotionally desensitised to the actual horror perpetrated on her. We also discover in newsreel flashbacks that her father had committed multiple murders when she was a child. Scenes from the opening rape are repeated during the course of the film, including revised versions where Leblanc imagines she defended herself more successfully. I’ll stop there. 

Now, this film was given five stars by The Guardian. I have never trusted their film critic since he awarded five stars to Exhibition, my all-time most-hated British film. To give five starts to Elle is utterly shameful: it is a grossly misogynistic piece of work from a director who seems to relish in the kind of exploitative brutality depicted in this film. I am astonished that Isabelle Huppert, an actress of enormous talent, actually agreed to make it. 

The second film, which, by coincidence, also has an attack on a woman at its heart, was The Salesman, written and directed by Asghar Farhadi, one of the most outstanding talents in cinema working today. His latest offering rightly earned him the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Film of 2016. His earlier work, The Past and A Separation are masterpieces in observing the minutiae of the human condition. The Salesman is yet another wonderfully sensitive piece.

The story reflects Iranian culture and the necessity for directors to work within the guidelines of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. But the restrictions in no way hamper Farhadi’s work; if anything, they enhance it. 

The main protagonists of The Salesmen are husband and wife Shahab Hosseini as Emad and Taraneh Alidoosti as Rana. Due to a violent earth tremor, they are forced to vacate their apartment. With nowhere for them to go, a friend from the theatre company where they are both taking part in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman offers them a temporary apartment that, unbeknown to them, was formerly occupied by a prostitute. After the effort of moving in, Emad pops out to get some food supplies while Rana takes a shower. The door buzzer sounds and Rana, thinking that it is Emad returning, just presses the entrance door release and leaves the apartment door ajar. The camera holds on the door slowly swinging open. We cut to Emad on the street carrying groceries. He climbs the stairs to the apartment and notices some blood on one of the steps and further up bloody footprints. He rushes into the apartment, calling for his wife: she is not there and the bathroom is blood splattered. We discover that Rana has been taken to hospital by the downstairs neighbours, where she is having her head stitched. Rana refuses to involve the police and shuts down emotionally, becoming fearful of being left alone. Despite Emad’s appeal to Rana to tell him what happened, she refuses. Emad finds a bunch of keys, some money and a bloody sock while surveying the scene of the attack and he becomes obsessed with finding the perpetrator. And so begins a wonderful tangle of events that touch on the plight of women in Iranian society and the shame attached to reporting crimes of this nature. “Better to forget it”, say their neighbours. The keys left in the apartment lead Emad to a pickup truck parked in the street below and eventually lead him to the individual responsible for the attack. What follows I won’t reveal, as I wouldn’t want to spoil it.

Farhadi’s film, in comparison to Verhoeven’s, is clear: there are no scenes of the actual attack, as it is left to our imagination. Farhadi handles his film with a quiet, beautifully understated elegance, coupled with supremely intelligent storytelling. And the performances from Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti are totally believable, making for a compelling experience. Farhadi is a wonderful writer-director creating work that cuts through geographical barriers. His films are imbued with empathy and his subjects are universal. Give me the restraint of Farhadi over the excesses of Verhoeven any day.

Here are the trailers for both films. ELLE

And THE SALESMEN

Viceroy's House

I should have trusted my instincts when confronted by the poster (above) for this film. It smacked of 'design by committee'. But no, I sat through the hour and thirty odd minutes hoping for something special, think 'The Jewell in The Crown'. Instead, it was a sort of Downton Abbey comes to Bollywood with the all important tragic tangled love interest set against a country in bubbling turmoil between Muslim and Hindu factions, but all happening at the same time.

In 1947 Lord Mountbatten (Hugh 'Downton' Bonneville) as Britain's last Viceroy of India was charged with overseeing the peaceful handover and partition of India. On his arrival, along with wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson) and daughter (Lily Travers), we are thrust into the obscene opulence afforded to the British rulers. So amazed is Mountbatten's wife by Viceroy House she remarks, "It makes Buckingham Palace seem like a bungalow". Very quickly she sets about seemingly befriending the below stairs staff in that rather aloof superior manner that only the British can muster.

On the surface, it should have worked as Director, Gurinder Chadha has family connections with the events that took place seventy years ago via her grandmother. But like the poster, I sensed the hand of the powerful co-funding parties with their differing interests.

To my mind, the manipulation by Churchill over the partition boundaries, without Mountbatten's knowledge, was too shallowly dealt with. Had the screenplay been written by say, David Hare, he would have had scenes of swirling cigar smoke with Churchill plotting India's carve up. Hare has an uncanny ability to produce just the right dialogue for the British ruling class and he would have certainly struck a blue line through the contrived romantic interest. And together with Hare, I'd put Oliver Stone in the director's seat to transformed this into an intelligent riveting film. Sadly what we are given is an attempt to please everyone and failing on all fronts. I think it was clearly an overly ambitious production for Chadha.

And on a nit-picky point, the film is peppered with bad art department details, inaccurate period newspaper typography, continuous tone images rather that 65 dot screen, Obviously resin cast statues rather than marble and a plethora of really badly spoofed up classical paintings. It may seem petty but it is these little details that help to make a film believable.

Meanwhile, the love story (ultimately for a BBC1 audience) takes centre stage at the end of the film with the most syrupy, sentimental and I have to say laughable outcome.