This Week...#3 (1st December to 4th December 2012)

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1^st December 2012: A Cottage On Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith, 1941)

In a small-town hairdressing salon, a young barber, Joe (Uno Henning) is trying to court Sally, the beautiful manicurist (Nora Baring) and asks her out. She rejects him in favour of the security offered by an older, wealthier farmer. In a jealous rage Joe slashes the farmer with a razor and is sent to Dartmoor prison for attempted murder. He escapes over the moors to find Sally, who does not know if he has come to kill her or ask her forgiveness, and it's at this point that the film begins. The rest of the story is told in flashback. (BFI Filmstore)

Slow for me to adapt to the film’s tone, but once this silent British film starts to run through its brisk running time, it is very good, a very interesting and emotional pot-boiler matched to an inspired visual palette, the dusk of silent cinema not stopping Asquith from using anything from Expressionistic shadows, clever use of news reels and even Sergei Eisenstein’s ‘Montage of Attractions’ theory amongst other techniques to an inherently British take on doomed love.

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2^nd December 2012: Tod und Teuful (Dir. Stephen Dwoskin, 1973) & Face Anthea (Stephen Dwoskin, 1990)

The action of the film evolves around the rooms of a house as one of the main characters, Lisiska, is waiting and is studied in depth as she prepares herself for a meeting & The film attempts to display sexual barriers and misconceptions, and about the role-playing and the confusion around the whole question of sexual and sensual involvement. The essence is the confrontation with self-deception, lies and the real fear of contact with both sexes.' (Luxonline.org.uk from a quotation from the late Dwoskin himself)

Containing only three extended scenes within its ninety minute running time, prolonged to extended lengths with the camera scrutinising the actors’ worn faces and bodies, this is as abstract as a dramatic story, adapted from a play, can be, a story of sexual relationships stripped down to its barest strands. The extended viewings of the actors’ faces can seem over longed and in danger of pretention, but the overlongness of the images actually helps the film. The human face, marked and aged especially, is a fascinating and beautiful thing to look at, yet if one stares at someone for such a prolonged amount of time it can become discomforting. The viewing of strangers in such a way is almost seen as bad manners and frowned upon, to which Dwoskin forces the viewer to look deeply at another person, especially the beautiful and yet tragic main female actress, her flawed beauty matched by deep black eyes and expressions that are either in bliss or sadness or both at the same time. Through this experiment, Dwoskin the experimental filmmaker fittingly makes a film that can stand up as a great narrative one too, so stripped down of much of what usually takes place in a narrative but yet still full enough to have fleshed out characters and a clear idea on sexual and gender issues through human relationships that stands up a lot better than more over-filled movies.

Again, another film on the same DVD, Face Anthea, is worth adding to this for an additional layer; pretty much a completely experimental work, consisting of a woman viewing the camera (ie. us the viewer) for an entire sixty minutes. Anyone who views this as pretentious I can understand in their mindset to it, but Face Anthea was also a great film as a pure distillation of its content. Artistic interpretations are completely pointless when its true virtue is such an obvious idea for a film, in that the woman, like us, is viewing her unknown audience like a spectator, as we (I in this case) watch her too, as if through a two way mirror that is separate by time and the video stock the piece was shot on. It was amazing for me to think while viewing the film that few people actual look carefully and with consideration at their fellow human beings’ faces and presence for such a long amount of time outside of representations done in paintings, sculpture etc., and it has to be argued, along with Tod und Teuful, that having to do so with these films is a great virtue for them. Also unlike other experimental and minimalist pieces these two at least concentrate on other people and their bodies, something inherently fascinating that can even be seen in  mainstream cinema when one lovingly watches their favourite actor or actress onscreen regardless of the content and story.

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3^rd December 2012: Super Bitch aka. Mafia Function (Massimo Dallamano, 1973)

Italian trash cinema icon Ivan Rassimov is a police inspector working undercover to expose a London escort agency where the frequently naked Stephanie Beacham is being filmed in sexually compromising situations with her moneyed clients. These poor chumps will soon be smuggling drugs across international borders for her and her shadowy associates. (Arrow Films)

Probably not the best way for me to enter the Poliziotteschi genre in terms of the traditional style of the sub-genre, Italian crime stories that blossomed in the 1970s to 1980s, but I loved it as ridiculous, beautiful looking trash as its UK distributor Arrow Films probably viewed it as when they released it to DVD within November. It’s convoluted, tasteless, and like the best exploitation films, the title has nothing to do with the content, and was added for a British video re-release in the eighties as a cruel joke at the expense of main actress Stephanie Beacham. There is something compelling about such an erratic film though, entertaining in its tangents and amusing dialogue; there is a sense that it may have been made to be intentionally ridiculous, counteracting the apparent rightwing nature of the genre that is discussed in an introduction to Poliziotteschi in the DVD extras. Even the fact that the puppet master/police inspector Ivan Rassimov is almost completely disconnected from the events around him or many steps ahead of it, in danger of making it impossible to engage with him,  may be on purpose, especially when it becomes obvious just how corrupt he is as a person.

It was also surprising, presuming it would be an entirely Italian film until I researched the film hours before viewing it, that it was set mostly in England, director Dallamano viewing London and the English landscape, urban and rural, through a different eye and visual appearance than a home born director would, adding a great deal more of interest too. If Arrow Films hadn’t picked this up, and they were prodded towards it, the British Film Institution’s Flipside series of Blu-Rays and DVDs, catering in odder and eclectic British or British set films, would be perfect for something like this.

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4^th December 2012: Joanna (Michael Sarne, 1966)

When 17 year old Joanna comes to Swinging London, she meets a host of colourful characters (such as Lord Sanderson, played by Donald Sutherland), discovers the pleasures of casual sex, and falls in love with Gordon (Calvin Lockart). That’s when things get complicated. (MUBI)

Speaking of the Flipside series, this is one of the official releases from the sub-label from the director of the infamous Myra Breckinridge adaptation. It is a very solid drama, sold as a ‘female Alfie’ to Fox studios to get them to produce the film, an interesting story that is helped immensely from its cast including Geneviève Waïte as the titular character. What makes the film even more interesting is the manipulation of its structure and tone by Sarne. Not only does he include dreams sequences, even non-diagetic sound effects, with the narrative but he plays and manipulates the time and mood of the narrative as well, distorting the sense of cinematic reality to fit the mindset of its main character. The results are fascinating and shows that when directors were allowed to, British films could be very interesting and take a chance in playing with conventions.