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1st 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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2nd 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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3rd 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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4th 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.
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