Notes and scribblings: 2022

Monday, 31 October 2022

Halloween 2022

2022 October Horror Marathon

Real life intruded in unusual and at times conflicting ways to this year's horror marathon. We've had something of an Indian Summer this year and while it created idyllic conditions for doing walks and enjoying pleasant weekends, the blue skies and sunshine during much of October kinda ruined the autumnal vibes that I'm used to experiencing at this time of year. I'm certainly not complaining as I've saved plenty on heating bills during a cost of living crisis. More pertinently, having got through Covid-related illness over the summer I seem to be struggling with Long Covid symptoms including extreme tiredness and fatigue which means that I struggle to watch things without getting drowsy. At home I rarely manage to watch a film from start to finish in one sitting these days. It's quite often that anything longer than an hour and a half I need to break up in to two or three viewing sessions.

Prompted by a Film Twitter poll, I was watching westerns throughout September. I could easily have gone another month going through some of the interesting titles that came up in individual ballots that I hadn't yet seen. However, duty calls and it didn't take long to be immersed in my annual horrorthon. What made the transition somewhat easier was a late September viewing of the 2008 western/horror hybrid The Burrowers. I actually thought it worked better as a western than as a horror flick when it resorts to fairly standard genre tropes in the second half and charisma void Karl Geary becomes the main focus of the film. Seriously, how the hell did that guy get a film career?

My current lethargic state certainly dictated many of my viewing selections. Horror films of the 1930s and 1940s were often a go-to choice due to their brevity. A great number of those films come in at under 75 minutes, a trend I continually wish would get revived as it can bring a rigour and discipline to the work that so many modern films lack.

Bela Lugosi was a prominent name in this month's lineup, quite appropriate as it marked his 140th birthday. Born Béla Ferenc Dezsö Blaskó on October 20, 1882. Happy 140th Bela! By the early 1940s his career had definitely hit the skids but it seems that occasionally some of the old magic was still there, as was apparent from The Devil Bat and Invisible Ghost. I haven't ventured much in to his post-golden era career but have been convinced by others to look further. I draw the line at 1952's Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, for now at least. His contemporary and professional rival Boris Karloff appears in The Man Who Changed His Mind, one of a few returns he did to the U.K. after his Hollywood career took off and I also took the opportunity to revisit their finest pairing in 1934's The Black Cat.

Early on in the month and towards the end of the month I watched two of the better known adaptations of The Phantom of the Opera. I saw the 1925 version with Lon Chaney on television in the 1990s but was relatively new to silent films in my teens and besides Chaney's performance it didn't register much. Seeing the restored version with a live score at Howard Assembly Room was phenomenal. Last year it was Nosferatu that got the Halloween slot and I hope the tradition of silent horror screenings every October continues for many years to come. I had never seen the 1943 version with Claude Rains and wasn't even aware it was in colour until the film started, which makes it somewhat unique among the Universal Horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. The forties version was a childhood favourite of Dario Argento and he has said that the impression it made in his youth made him a film addict. With that connection it seemed like a good time to return to his dazzling 1987 masterwork Opera which, although not an official adaptation (Argento would get around to that in 1998), is a modernised variation of Gaston Leroux's classic story. His latest film (Dark Glasses) arrived on Shudder on 13th October and I'm pleased to say that it's every bit as good as I'd hoped it would be. Argento announed at the Sitges film festival this month that his new film will star Isabelle Huppert and starts filming next year. I couldn't be more excited about this news.

This October I went through my DVD/Blu-Ray library more than usual to revisit old favourites and to get a fresh perspective on some I hadn't seen for a long time. Some of these choices were informed by my current reading. I finally got around to reading Stephen King's novel 'Pet Sematary' this month, which gave me a perfect excuse (as if I needed any) to go back to Mary Lambert's brilliant 1989 adaptation. I prefer to try to forget that the 2019 remake exists, an inexcusably bland and listless telling of King's tale. I also read 'Cinemaphagy', a career spanning study by Scout Tafoya of the filmography of the great Tobe Hooper. It prompted me to check out Lifeforce again for the first time in far too many years. While I've seen all of Hooper's feature films, the book has compelled me to look further in to his TV work, including episodes of 'Amazing Stories' and 'Tales from the Crypt'.

I had previously only seen Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure in a grainy online version. This time I watched the U.K. Blu-Ray by the Eureka/Masters of Cinema label. It's easy to see why it's considered to be Kurosawa's breakthrough film and is still among his finest.

My Blu-Ray collection has grown exponentially since I got my own place and the Halloween season always spurs me on when it comes to adding more horror titles to my shelves. For my birthday I got the 1967 Nikolai Gogol adaptation Viy, another exemplary release by the Eureka label. I purchased Mario Bava's 1977 swansong Shock and Brian De Palma's The Fury and Raising Cain from Arrow's annual Shocktober Sale. The Shameless label was doing a two films for £15 offer at HMV, which allowed me to add more Sergio Martino (Torso) and Edwige Fenech (The Case of the Bloody Iris) films to my collection. Two of the month's finest discoveries came courtesy of fellow Euro Horror luminaries Lucio Fulci (The Psychic) and Jesus Franco (Female Vampire), both filmmakers like Jean Rollin whose work I'd had mixed experiences with in the past but am now more accepting of the fact that their extensive filmographies have inevitably got some rough spots.

The BFI Player had some fascinating offerings in the form of Japanese anthology film Orgies of Edo and recently rediscovered British folk horror The Appointment. One of my most eagerly anticipated films of recent years was Lucile Hadžihalilović's Earwig and I was finally able to see it on video on demand. It would have been nice to see it in cinemas but sadly there were no local screenings in my area.

Inevitably I was lured back to a few long-running film series'. The dreadful Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) put me off going any further with the 'Universal Horror' series of the 1930s and 1940s for a while. It's a major comedown from 1939's Son of Frankenstein and while it's perhaps unfair to expect the series to maintain that standard after three entries it was one of the biggest drops in quality between two installmentrs that I've ever witnessed in a legacy horror franchise. After watching the following year's Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man I've now convinced enough to see it through to the end. It's more effective as a sequel to 1941's The Wolf Man than as a continuation of the Frankenstein films. Seeing Bela Lugosi play the monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man makes me even more glad that the original plans for the 1931 film with Lugosi starring and Robert Florey directing never came to fruition. How different film history may have been without the iconic James Whale/Boris Karloff film is interesting to contemplate. Not only did it launch several extraordinary careers but it was a cornerstone of the entire genre for decades to come. Along with Tod Browning's Dracula the same year it also helped rescue Universal Studios from financial ruin during the Great Depression.

Part four of the Final Destination series (confusingly titled The Final Destination) was a lazy effort but having now seen the fifth and (to date) final entry from 2011 I was pleased to find that they wrapped things up rather nicely. It stands proudly as one of the best horror franchises of the 21st century so far. Others that come to mind are the Ginger Snaps trilogy of the early 2000s and Ju-On: The Grude series. Laying dormant for over a decade now it's surely not long until an inevitable reboot comes along.

This annual marathon is a 31 films in 31 days challenge so it seems appropriate enough that the 31st film that I watched was Halloween Ends. Colour me shocked. Against all the odds, I kinda liked it. It probably led to my final viewing of the month, John Carpenter - Live Retrospective, a decent recorded souvenir of the series of concerts that Carpenter and his band did in 2016. I wrote at the time about the miserable experience that I had at the show in Manchester six years ago. It was a nice little corrective to that unfortunate little episode. A behind the scenes documentary by the same production team has been put out on Blu-Ray in the US this month, which I'll hopefully find a way to see at some point - I don't have a multi-region Blu-Ray player. Carpenter himself has two new soundtrack LPs out this month, scores to Halloween Ends and the Firestarter remake that came out earlier this year to little fanfare. Two great additions to a sort of secondary career which has been given a very welcome extended run in recent years.

As I write this I'm already planning ahead for my next viewing project in November - the annual Leeds Film Festival. I attended the programme launch on 12th October. A few horror titles caught my interest, including The Harbinger, which will hopefully build on the promise that writer-director Andy Mitton showed in 2018's The Witch in the Window, and New Normal - an anthology horror title from South Korea. Sticking to the present though I'm just going to savour what remains of my favourite month of the year.

Happy Halloween!🎃

Here's a list of the horror titles that I've watched this October. Standout titles are marked with an asterisk (*), films I revisited are marked in red:
The Devil Bat
Phantom of the Opera (1943)
*Orgies of Edo
Supernatural
*Cure
Invisible Ghost
Satan and the Virgin
The Tell-Tale Heart
*Earwig
Werewolf of London
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
The Man Who Changed His Mind
*The Telephone Box
The Infernal Cauldron
Valley of the Zombies
*Opera
Biotherapy
*The Psychic
Dance of the Damned
Dark Glasses
*The Pit and the Pendulum (1964)
The Mistletoe Bough
*Poison for the Fairies
Final Destination 5
The Last Theft
*Lifeforce
*The Black Cat (1934)
*Kill, Baby... Kill!
Guzoo: The Thing Forsaken by God - Part I
Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell
Halloween Ends

The Appointment

*Pet Sematary (1989)

*Female Vampire

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

John Carpenter Live - Retrospective

https://letterboxd.com/willowybeing/list/october-2022/

The only break I had from the horror genre that I had this month was a cinema showing of Park Chan-wook's Decision to Leave. It proved to be rather apt that I watched it on the same day that the UK Prime Minister resigned.

Tuesday, 13 September 2022

R.I.P. Jean-Luc Godard

Words fail me right now but two quotations came to mind when I heard the sad news today:

Jean-Luc Godard once summarised the history of cinema by saying, “...Film begins with D. W. Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami.” His fellow critic and filmmaker François Truffaut perhaps said it better when he remarked: "There is cinema before Godard and after Godard."

R.I.P. Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022)

“I think of myself as an essayist, producing essays in novel form or novels in essay form: only instead of writing, I film them.” - Jean-Luc Godard

“Until the end, he questioned. He was a visionary. That’s why we’re all a bit like orphans now that he’s gone.” - Isabelle Huppert

*Martin Scorsese's tribute to Jean-Luc Godard in Cahiers du Cinema:
https://www.cahiersducinema.com/actualites/martin-scorsese-godard-is-perhaps-dead/

Saturday, 9 July 2022

'Zero Gravity' by Woody Allen

“Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.” - Woody Allen

“You know, there’s great wisdom in jokes, Falk, really." - David Dobel (played by Woody Allen) in Anything Else.

The UK feels like the last place in the world to not yet grant a release to Rifkin's Festival, Woody Allen's 49th film. The film had its premiere in September 2020 at the San Sebastian Film Festival and has gradually opened in territories across the globe ever since, including his native USA earlier this year. For UK based fans like myself it means another agonising wait. As with his prior film (A Rainy Day in New York) I'm still debating whether or not to get a foreign DVD/Blu-Ray of Rifkin's Festival as there is still no news of a UK release. I was always grateful for Woody's prolific work rate but only in the last few years have I realised just how blessed we were to have a new film to look forward to each year.

All the outright lies, disproved allegations and hateful media coverage thrown his way haven't diminished Allen's resolve to continue working. At the age of 86 though it may well be that he prefers to stick to written works rather than on-location film shoots. Allen announced on Leonard Maltin's podcast that he had a new collection of short stories set to be published. He also has a new play that will hopefully go in to production in the near future and a new film (his 50th) that is due to start shooting in Paris later this year.

During the first lockdown in 2020, the publication of Woody Allen's autobiography 'Apropos of Nothing' was a godsend. A book that I'd dreamed about for years was finally in print. We also got the belated release of A Rainy Day in New York. It was hard to judge the film objectively after a two year wait, having been shelved by original distributor Amazon, who in effect chose to bow down to the aforementioned malicious gossip and smears that ignored basic facts and two thorough investigations that exonerated Allen 30 years ago. I was really glad to finally get to see the film but it had a lot of baggage to contend with, notably Rebecca Hall and disingenuous creep T*mothee Ch*lamet’s presence in the cast and their keenness to distance themselves from its writer/director and a project they had actively pursued a role in* as well as a hostile media which seemed determined to lambast the film. In spite of all that, it managed to be a surprising commercial success when audiences got a chance to see it. I need to give it a rewatch to see it with a more nuanced and less bitter view but I remember I liked the freeflowing episodic structure, almost like that of a Robert Altman film, the allusions to J.D. Salinger and Fellini's The White Sheik and there was a standout performance by Cherry Jones, one of several relatively brief but remarkable supporting turns that has often been showcased in Allen’s work.**

'Zero Gravity' is Woody Allen’s fifth collection of short stories, following on from 'Mere Anarchy' in 2007. I was somewhat surprised when a copy of the book that I had pre-ordered in advance from Blackwell's showed up through my letterbox in June (thanks guys) despite having a UK publication date of 4th August. They must have received advanced copies from the US (where it came out in early June). Unlike 'Apropos of Nothing', 'Zero Gravity' seems to have encountered relatively little pushback over its existence in print. It seems that the Cancel Culture mob will allow Allen to publish a collection of short, amusing stories but the idea of him publishing a memoir that corrects many falsehoods and addresses a widely misunderstood 30 year old controversy is completely unacceptable. As I mentioned before, the actions of Amazon and the mainstream media-sponsored hate campaign of M*a and R*nan Farrow have only furthered my determination to follow Woody's work. 'Zero Gravity' fortunately didn't face the same scrutiny or manufactured outrage that 'Apropos of Nothing' had. Perhaps people like the ignorant, lemming-like d*psh*ts at Hachette Publishing who staged a walkout over the original bookdeal only have problems with non-fiction works? Could it be that R*nan Farrow, Hachette Book Group and the mainstream media didn't like the idea of Allen countering many of the myths that have grown about him over time and revealing a less than flattering side of his main accuser M*a Farrow? Despite numerous allegations of abuse over the years and various accounts of (to put it mildly) inappropriate behaviour towards her offspring and adopted children it seems that she is beyond reproach.***

Allen is well versed in this sort of storytelling. Amusing episodes are scattered throughout his work. There was an anecdotal quality to his early stand-up comic routines and Allen has written for the New Yorker many times in the past, including some of the stories (called “casuals” by the publication) featured here. In his filmography this quality was at its best and perhaps most successfully woven in to the episodic tapestry of Radio Days (the film works gloriously as a series of reminiscences about childhood events), the faux-documentary/newsreel style of Zelig and the jigsaw-like structure of Deconstructing Harry. Oedipus Wrecks, his contribution to the 3 part anthology film New York Stories, was a throwaway idea that found a perfect outlet in a 40 minute short film. A lot of his early directorial work (Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask) harkens back to the two reeler comedies of the silent era by the likes of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy. Less successfully, Hollywood Ending's story of a washed up filmmaker struck by temporary blindness when he's given a chance at a comeback project felt very much like a short story expanded to feature length while To Rome with Love comes across like some dusted off, cast-aside ideas that were revived for a portmanteau flick when financing came through to make a film in Italy. As someone who enjoys some of Allen’s more light-hearted and ostensibly frothy offerings (Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Alice, Magic in the Moonlight)**** as well as his previous prose collections I was only too eager to read this new collection.

'Zero Gravity' is a joyful read. At a time where it feels like every story and concept has been stretched to breaking point by bestsellers that feel at least 100 pages too long, prolonged series on streaming services and "Cinematic Universes" and "World Building" (God, how I loathe those terms) in mainstream movies, this sort of concision, disciplined writing, craftsmanship and brevity is like a breath of fresh air. When I saw Wonder Wheel on the big screen I was astonished about the ease with which Allen was able to establish the main characters, locations and scenario within the first ten minutes when many of my other cinema trips around that time had me suffering through muddled storytelling, weak, disjointed characterisation and an inability to convey atmosphere or any tangible sense of the environment in which the film took place. Allen’s wordplay, love of absurd names and details, skittish nature, cultural leanings and ability to deftly weave in incidental surprises with effortless aplomb all come through in this collection. The snappy nature of the stories means that even the lesser entries in the collection never overstay their welcome and the next story is more than likely to have its own delights and confounding interludes.

Favourite stories:

'There is Nothing Like a Brain' in which a beverage stand worker sees his old college crush, who is attracted to intellectual types. She becomes interested in him after he gets hit with a frying pan during a burglary which causes synethesia, a condition that makes his brain produce extraordinary feats. In his case he is able to recall the dining habits of people throughout history.

'Sorry, No Pets Allowed' in which a raunchy and promiscuous female popstar is subjected to a backlash and outrage when she states that she draws the line at animals. It's a nice swipe at Cancel Culture and PR-driven outrage in contemporary media and entertainment.

'Tails of Manhattan' chronicles a wealthy dentist who commits suicide after losing all of his savings in a Ponzi scheme and is reincarnated as a lobster, ending up on the menu in a luxurious Manhattan restaurant.

'You Can’t Go Home Again, and Here's Why' where a man allows a crew to shoot a film in his home on the understanding that he will be playing a pivotal acting role and doesn’t turn out quite like he hoped it would.

Allen chose the title ‘Zero Gravity’ to signify the lightweight and frivolous nature of the stories contained within but it strikes an unexpectedly profound and poignant note in its final tale. It's something of a cliché to glean autobiographical details from his work, often unfounded or greatly exaggerated, but 'Growing Up in Manhattan' certainly comes across that way. The story is an account of a young writer from Brooklyn, his failed first marriage, early career aspirations, love of Manhattan and what it symbolised to his younger self who enters a doomed affair with a free spirited Manhattanite. The ill-fated relationship comes to be a formative experience in his development as a writer, bringing knowledge, deeper themes and greater insight to his works as a playwright and humourist. I doubt the similarities with his own life story are coincidental. It could be seen as a charming offshoot of ‘Apropos of Nothing'. In a 1998 BBC interview Allen contemplated writing a novel and recently did confirm that he wrote one a while ago but it didn’t live up to his hopes for it. 'Growing Up in Manhattan' hints at what an Allen novel could be like and, who knows? He may yet surprise us.

Allen's recent statement about his determination to continue as a writer strikes a defiant and ultimately triumphant note:

“I am an author and no one can prevent me from writing, and therefore from working. It is the guarantee of my freedom and my independence.”

Allen and his work will never cease to be a source of inspiration for me in both my own life and my writing. I should get this quote framed and hung up on my wall.

In a podcast interview with Alec Baldwin on Instagram, Allen hinted that his directorial career may be coming to a close (at the age of 86, it's hard not to think that may be the case) and that his 50th feature, being filmed in France, may be his last but I hope there are many more published efforts still to look forward to.

* I'm boycotting the films of anyone who has denounced Allen and said they regret working with him, to appease the mob and (in their minds or at least their agents) not harm their own careers. Incidentally, Ch*lamet hasn't to my knowledge said anything against his Call Me By Your Name co-star and fellow blue blood Armie Hammer. It's spineless, ignorant, opportunistic, virtue-signalling narcissists like him that have all but destroyed mainstream American cinema.

** Other examples that come to mind, Max von Sydow in Hannah and Her Sisters, Elaine May in Small Time Crooks, Penelope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Antonio Banderas in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

*** Having now put out the thoroughly one-sided Allen vs Farrow documentary on HBO (another hit piece with selective memory and distorted details) they may finally have realised that they have exploited the topic for all its worth, at least until R*nan Farrow finds another opportunity to further his career and carry out his mother’s sworn vendetta to destroy Allen’s career and reputation. Has there yet been any backlash to Lena Dunham’s new directorial effort, Sharp Stick, being released given that Dunham has herself been a subject of controversy and allegations of molesting her younger sister? Or for that matter, David O. Russell's forthcoming Amsterdam? Russell seems to have got off pretty lightly for someone who has been accused of sexual misconduct by his own niece and has had numerous reported incidents of verbal and physical abuse towards cast and crew on his film sets.

**** Although it is framed as an inconsequential Jazz Age champagne comedy in a lush setting, Magic in the Moonlight strikes me as one of Allen’s deepest and most thoughtful films. One of several latter day efforts that still hasn’t got its due - see also Whatever Works, Irrational Man and Café Society. It's a shame that C*lin Firth decided to be one of the self-serving, disloyal rats who decided to express their “regret” about working with Allen. His presence now sadly tarnishes what I consider to be one of my favourites of his work.

Recommended links:

Washington Examiner Review

Mia Farrow - 45 Undeniable Facts

‘Allen v. Farrow’ Review: Reprehensible Act of Media McCarthyism

Monday, 4 July 2022

Top 100 American Films

As today is the Fourth of July I thought it was a perfect time to post a list of my top 100 (or so) American films. The list is in alphabetical order and personal favourites are marked with an asterisk (*). Happy Birthday America!

All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)
Apache Drums (Hugo Fregonese, 1951)
*Apocalypto (Mel Gibson, 2006)
The Asphalt Jungle (John Huston, 1950)
Badlands (Terrence Malick, 1973)
*The Black Cat (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1934)
The Breaking Point (Michael Curtiz, 1950)
*Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, 1919)
The 'Burbs (Joe Dante, 1989)
*Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur, 1946)
*Carnival of Souls (Herk Harvey, 1962)
*Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974)
The Circus (Charles Chaplin, 1928)
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
Colorado Territory (Raoul Walsh, 1949)
*Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)
*Deconstructing Harry (Woody Allen, 1997)
Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)
Escape from Alcatraz (Don Siegel, 1979)
Fantasia (James Algar, Samuel Armstrong, Ford Beebe, Norman Ferguson, David D. Hand, Jim Handley, T. Hee, Wilfred Jackson, Hamilton Luske, Bill Roberts, Paul Satterfield & Ben Sharpsteen, 1940)
Forbidden Planet (Fred M. Wilcox, 1956)
The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949)
*Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931)
*Freaks (Tod Browning, 1932)
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)
Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, 2008)
The Gun Hawk (Edward Ludwig, 1963)
*The Hanging Tree (Delmer Daves, 1959)
*Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen, 1986)
*He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Sjöström, 1924)
Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch, 1943)
The Heiress (William Wyler, 1949)
Hellfire (R.G. Springsteen, 1949)
*Hell's Hinges (Charles Swickard, 1916)
*High Noon (Fred Zinnemann, 1952)
Housekeeping (Bill Forsyth, 1987)
*I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)
*In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (Jack Arnold, 1957)
*Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Throughout the Ages (D.W. Griffith, 1916)
*Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956)
Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932)
*Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson, 1945)
Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)
Leave Her to Heaven (John M. Stahl, 1945)
The Long Riders (Walter Hill, 1980)
Louisiana Story (Robert J. Flaherty, 1948)
The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles, 1942)
*Make Way for Tomorrow (Leo McCarey, 1937)
*Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)
Metropolitan (Whit Stillman, 1990)
Moonrise (Frank Borzage, 1948)
*Ms .45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981)
My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
*Nanook of the North (Robert J. Flaherty, 1922)
*The New World (Terrence Malick, 2005)
The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955)
Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968)
*Nightfall (Jacques Tourneur, 1956)
No Name on the Bullet (Jack Arnold, 1959)
One-Eyed Jacks (Marlon Brando, 1961)
*Open Range (Kevin Costner, 2003)
*Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)
*The Passion of the Christ (Mel Gibson, 2004)
A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, 1951)
Point Blank (John Boorman, 1967)
Predator (John McTiernan, 1987)
Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960)
*The Purple Rose of Cairo (Woody Allen, 1985)
The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949)
*Ride the High Country (Sam Peckinpah, 1962)
*Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)
*Seven Men from Now (Budd Boetticher, 1956)
*The Seventh Victim (Mark Robson, 1943)
Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock, 1943)
The Shanghai Gesture (Josef von Sternberg, 1941)
Somewhere in Time (Jeannot Szwarc, 1980)
*The Song of Bernadette (Henry King, 1943)
Southern Comfort (Walter Hill, 1981)
*Spontaneous Combustion (Tobe Hooper, 1989)
Stranger at My Door (William Witney, 1956)
Star in the Dust (Charles F. Haas, 1956)
*Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (F.W. Murnau, 1927)
*Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (F.W. Murnau, 1931)
Targets (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968)
The Thing from Another World (Christian Nyby, 1951)
Tide of Empire (Allan Dwan, 1929)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston, 1948)
*True Heart Susie (D.W. Griffith, 1919)
*The Unchanging Sea (D.W. Griffith, 1910)
*The Uninvited (Lewis Allen, 1944)
*The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927)
*Way Down East (D.W. Griffith, 1920)
Wild River (Elia Kazan, 1960)
The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir, 1947)
The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (Stuart Gordon, 1998)
Wyatt Earp (Lawrence Kasdan, 1994)
X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (Roger Corman, 1963)
You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937)

https://letterboxd.com/willowybeing/list/top-100-american-films/

Monday, 28 February 2022

Stuart Gordon: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers series)

Stuart Gordon: Interviews (Conversations with Filmmakers Series)

Edited by Michael Doyle
University Press of Mississippi

I may have to consider buying another bookcase. My collection of film books is growing at an alarming rate and putting a serious strain on my bookshelves. This is something that the filmmaker Jamie Blanks tweeted about recently with a similar problem.

Until this book of interviews came along I'd been able to find relatively little in print on the life and career of filmmaker Stuart Gordon, who passed away in March 2020. When the term "genre ghetto" is used it feels more appropriate with relation to typecasting and the level of the recognition a filmmaker achieves rather than the actual quality of their work. Written features in old journals, fanzines and interviews online have shed some light on the man and his work while DVD extras, booklets and audio commentaries have also been useful sources of information. I felt that such a distinctive filmmaker and body of work deserved a worthy volume on his career and when I heard about the University of Mississippi Press releasing a collection of interviews spanning from 1968 to the late 2010s, it almost sounded too good to be true.

Simply put, this is by far the best of the UoM series that I've encountered so far. Most of the other filmmakers they have done volumes on have been covered in greater detail elsewhere and have well documented careers in print but this collection felt revelatory. It illuminated such a great amount of detail about its subject, that I ended up taking notes from nearly every page. This spans the whole breadth of Gordon's career in both theatre and cinema and hearing about it from the man himself as his career progresses gives a direct commentary and narrative to proceedings. In certain cases, this is the first time that the interviews have been published in their entirety.

Gordon is a very generous interviewee - informative, intelligent, honest, humourous, gracious and perceptive, with no delusions about his work or achievements. He's simply glad to hear that someone liked his films. Gordon flourished in the cult arena, never quite managing to draw attention away from the notoriety and shock value of his debut feature Re-Animator, which may be a reason why to this day he still seems like a hugely undervalued figure in American cinema, especially at a time when it seems that it has lost its ability to shock, provoke or even entertain in many cases. In a later interview he remarks, "Re-Animator has become my middle name". Like Tobe Hooper with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and George Romero with his 'Living Dead' films it was the work he was synonymous with. While graetful for how it launched his career it's a shame that other films didn't get as much of a following. I hope other films will get more attention as time passes. Books like this are very helpful in that respect.

Stuart Gordon saw horror as a medium for subversion, a quality he shared with his forebears from the 1970s such as George Romero, David Cronenberg, Tobe Hooper, Wes Craven and John Carpenter. It's sometimes forgotten that the 1980s produced its own distinctive breed of filmmakers of this ilk. Along with Gordon there were such notable figures as Frank Henenlotter, Brian Yuzna, Michele Soavi, Jorg Buttgereit, Shinya Tsukamoto and Clive Barker making their mark as directors and they all sought to bring an incendiary quality to their work. It was far from being the era of derivative slashers and franchises that some make it out to be.

The book sheds light on his theatre work in which Gordon was an active participant in Chicago in the 1970s and early 1980s, a period which also saw such emerging talents as David Mamet, Dennis Franz, William L. Peterson, Joe Mantegna, Gary Sinise and William H. Macy launch their careers. This was where Gordon developed his rapport with actors and an ability to tackle ambitious subjects with limited resources but boundless imagination and creativity. Some of the projects - pirate adventures, science fiction - had a cinematic quality and as a lifelong movielover it made the transition to filmmaking a logical next step in his career. He already had experience with gore effects when the time came to make his first feature in 1985.

The book made me aware of just how crucial the cinematographer Mac Ahlberg was to his work and how so many of the building blocks of Stuart Gordon's cinema were present in his debut film. Gordon reveals how Ahlberg taught him many of the fundamentals of filmmaking. There are numerous instances of this throughout film history, such as Gregg Toland schooling a young Orson Welles when he made Citizen Kane and Woody Allen said he learned a great deal about the technical side of cinema from Gordon Willis in his early work. His creative partnership with producer (and later director) Brian Yuzna reminded a little me of how Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur complimented each other in their seminal trio of RKO horror films in the 1940s. With Jeffrey Combs, Stuart Gordon found his ideal leading man and stock company member. He was a De Niro to his Scorsese, someone who occupied the worlds of his films so completely that it's hard to imagine anyone else in those roles (Herbert West in particular). Dennis Paoli was a lifelong friend of his who wrote numerous films for Gordon, some of which never made it beyond the initial screenplay stage.

As well as discussing the films he did make we also learn a great deal about some of his unrealised projects. It's fascinating to learn about all the films that Gordon had hoped to make but was unable to get the required funds to bring them to fruition. Some of the projects discussed in the book include adaptations of Joe Haldeman's 'The Forever War' and Bret Easton Ellis's 'American Psycho', a pirate adventure titled 'Bloody Bess', 'Berserker' (written for Arnold Schwarzenegger), 'Florian', 'Iron Man', ''68' (an autobiographical film about his involvement in late-1960s activism and the founding of The Organic Theatre), 'Kingdom Come', 'House of Re-Animator', 'Gris Gris', Soulmate (a ghost story that was eventually directed by its writer Axelle Carolyn, with Gordon's blessing) and at least two further proposed Lovecraft adaptations: The Lurking Fear and The Thing on the Doorstep. At least we have The Black Cat, one of his two 'Masters of Horror' episodes and something of a dry run for his play 'Nevermore', a one man show for Jeffrey Combs which he also hoped to turn in to a film. He gives his approval for Abel Ferrara's work on 1993's Body Snatchers, another film that Gordon was lined up to make before it got caught up in major studio politics and one that came out remarkably well under the circumstances. Earlier in the book, there are several mentions of a film version of Lovecraft's story 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' as far back as 1986. It was initially planned as his follow-up effort to Re-Animator so it's heartening to know it would finally get made as Dagon in 2001.

It seems nearly every filmmaker has a cursed production at some stage in their career and Robot Jox certainly had more than its fair share of setbacks. External factors beyond the filmmaker's control are made clear. Don Coscarelli shares similar stories in his autobiography 'True Indie', with relation to Bubba-Ho-Tep. Gordon talks about how 'Fear Itself' was taken off the air half way through the season to make room for the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Despite decent ratings the remaining shows weren't broadcast when the games were over. Of the films that did get made he laments that certain titles never got a chance to find an audience in cinemas, in particular The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit (made for Disney's Home Video division) which got caught up in a dispute between warring factions at the head of Disney and Dagon (which went straight to DVD). It's especially galling today when the multiplexes have become such a wasteland. Like many others, I discovered Gordon's work on VHS and later DVD, a reminder of how pivotal home viewing has been for film lovers over the last 40 years or so. He points out that Robot Jox did very well on VHS, despite its reputation as a flop. The home video market allowed his films to find an audience in ways that cinema distribution never could.

Severe stress and health concerns surrounded the making of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and eventually forced him to drop out two weeks before the film was scheduled to begin shooting. He says that the finished film is not too far removed from what he set out to make, because much of it resembled the work he had already planned and storyboarded. It could have taken his career in a very different direction and garnered other major studio assignments. It's a fascinating "what if?", much like with David Lynch being offered a chance to make Return of the Jedi in the early 1980s. I consider the period from Robot Jox (1989) through Daughter of Darkness (1990) and The Pit and the Pendulum (1991) to Fortress (1992) to be the least impressive stretch of his career. Just for the record, I still find all of these films to be highly watchable but I think they lack some of the zest of his best work. The professional struggles he encountered and difficulties working with studio meddling as well as the many projects that floundered in Development Hell may have had a detrimental effect on his work but there is never a stage in his career where one might have lost faith in his abilities.

He accurately predicted there may not be too many more films left in a 2006 interview. It's sad to read during the most productive phase of his film career that he wasn't sure how many films he had remaining in him and made me wonder how long his health issues (his death in 2020 was a result of multiple organ failure) were effecting him. Many film enthusiasts didn't realise how lucky we all were to have John Carpenter until he stepped away from directing after the hostile reception to Ghosts of Mars in 2001. Gordon's film career similarly came to an abrupt end. That no new films would get made by him after Stuck is a perfect example of the sorry state of American film since the financial crash. If such a thing doesn't already exist, there is probably a great thought piece to be written on US cinema since 2008 and how the industry has gradually bottled out of investing in any project that carries the slightest element of risk, uncertainty or even vaguely challenging ideas, something that has been exacerbated by the rise of streaming platforms.

After reading this collection, Stuart Gordon's post-2008 career now seems like a much more productive and fruitful period than I had previously thought. For a long time I held out hope that another feature would get made but I should have been searching elsewhere. Despite several film projects failing to get off the ground, resulting in a huge array of unproduced scripts, he remained active in other fields, and got to make acclaimed theatre work, a radio play and an autobiography (see below). The later theatre projects 'Nevermore: An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe',* 'Taste' and 'Re-Animator: The Musical'** all sound like he was open to risky and challenging new ventures. There was also the radio play "The Hound" from Tales From Beyond the Pale, which actually gives us a further addition (or addendum) to his series of Lovecraft adaptations. This collection also made me aware of other projects he was involved in and I made sure to add The Dentist and Progeny (both of which he co-wrote) to the top of my rental list. Like Joe Dante (another worthy subject for film studies), Gordon was an engaging cinephile and made several entertaining contributions to the Trailers from Hell website in which he covered films such as Nightmare Alley, Ride the High Country, Mr. Sardonicus and Cannibal Holocaust. A chapter where he discusses two of his favourite filmmakers - Roman Polanski and Stanley Kubrick is full of great insights in to their work and what made makes them masters of their craft. It also contains lovely tributes from the likes of Barbara Crampton, that really brings home what made his work so special and a splendidly detailed bibliography of articles and weblinks.

While scrolling through the bibliography I noticed a mention of 'Naked Theatre and Uncensored Horror', a book written by Gordon with a 2022 publication date. This had escaped my attention until now but it seems that Gordon had written his memoirs prior to his death two years ago and FAB Press had announced in 2020 that it will be publishing the book in the near future. Wonderful news and much like with Tobe Hooper it seems that fans and film scholars will have two incredible resources to draw on for assessing this remarkable career with plenty of information coming directly from the subject himself. At one point Gordon states: "I think movies have life spans" (pg. 65) and his work certainly lives on and only gains in stature as a result of this excellent collection. Already a major highlight of 2022 for me.

* A one-man show, featuring Jeffrey Combs as Poe. I don't think there is a film or audio version of this show available. Gordon was interested in doing a film version but according to Combs, he was opposed to the idea of doing a taping of the show.

** It's a source of regret now that I may have been able to see a performance of this at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival had I known about it sooner.

Links:

FAB Press announcement: https://twitter.com/fab_press/status/1557692979393007618

FilmInt book review by Thomas M. Puhr: http://filmint.nu/stuart-gordon-interviews-michael-doyle-review-thomas-m-puhr/

Wicked Horror.com review: https://wickedhorror.com/horror-reviews/stuart-gordon-interviews-a-singularly-subversive-spirit-book-review/

Monday, 31 January 2022

Top 100 British Films

Although a UK citizen for my entire life (so far at least) I've never really felt "British", or English either for that matter. Much of the culture, customs, lifestyle and humour still seem bizarre to me. It may be one of the reasons that when I was growing up, films from Hollywood and parts of Europe, like France, Italy, Germany, Poland and Sweden held enormous appeal. In many ways they felt more relatable and closer to my own worldview than things I saw from the UK. More often than not I tend to avoid films made in the UK as their subjects, themes and style don't hold much interest for me as a viewer. A few years ago though I began to realise there was perhaps more of merit than I had been willing to grant these shores in the past.

The BFI and Time Out magazine put out their own top 100 lists years ago and, disagreeing with multiple titles that were featured, I took it as a kind of challenge to attempt an overview of my own. I've been compiling a list of noteworthy British films for quite a while now, with some sort of eventual list in mind and decided now was as good a time as any to put the list out there for others to see. I'm excluding titles that were essentially Hollywood studio productions that were made in the UK (e.g. the James Bond films, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Strangelove etc.). My own personal favourites from within the list are marked with an asterisk (*).

The Abominable Snowman (Val Guest, 1957)
Akenfield (Peter Hall, 1974)
Alice in Wonderland (Jonathan Miller, 1966)
*Andrina (Bill Forsyth, 1981)
Bad Timing (Nicolas Roeg, 1980)
The Birth of a Flower (F. Percy Smith, 1910)
*Black Narcissus (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947)

Blithe Spirit (David Lean, 1945)
Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966)
Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
A Canterbury Tale (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1944)
Christine (Alan Clarke, 1987)
Circle of Danger (Jacques Tourneur, 1951)
A Colour Box (Len Lye, 1935)
The Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984)

Congregation Leaving St. Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Dublin (1901)
Corridors of Blood (Robert Day, 1958)
*Cul-de-Sac (Roman Polanski, 1966)
The Curse of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher, 1957)
Damage (Louis Malle, 1992)
The Day the Earth Caught Fire (Val Guest, 1961)
*Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden & Charles Crichton, 1945)
The Devils (Ken Russell, 1971)
A Diary for Timothy (Humphrey Jennings, 1945)
Drifters (John Grierson, 1929)
Edge of the World (Michael Powell, 1937)
*Elephant (Alan Clarke, 1989)

The Epic of Everest (J.B.L. Noel, 1924)
Gallivant (Andrew Kötting, 1996)
The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1971)
*The Gorgon (Terence Fisher, 1964)
*Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946)
The Great White Silence (Herbert Ponting, 1922)
*Hamlet (Laurence Olivier, 1948)

Hope and Glory (John Boorman, 1987)
The Horse's Mouth (Ronald Neame, 1958)
I Hired a Contract Killer (Aki Kaurismäki, 1990)
I Start Counting (David Greene, 1969)
if.... (Lindsay Anderson, 1968)
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, 1961)
*Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)
A King in New York (Charles Chaplin, 1957)
The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938)
The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955)
The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951)
*The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo (Margaret Tait, 1955)
The Lodger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1927)
*London (Patrick Keiller, 1994)
The Long Day Closes (Terence Davies, 1992)
A Man for All Seasons (Fred Zinnemann, 1966)
*The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1951)
*Man of Aran (Robert J. Flaherty, 1934)
*The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)

The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934)
*The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964)
The Mission (Roland Joffé, 1986)
The Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold, 1959)
My Childhood, My Ain Folk & My Way Home (Bill Douglas, 1972, 1973 & 1978)
Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950)
*Night of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957)
Night of the Eagle (Sidney Hayers, 1962)
*Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947)

*Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948)
One of the Missing (Tony Scott, 1968)
One Plus One (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968)
Paperhouse (Bernard Rose, 1988)
The Plague of the Zombies (John Gilling, 1966)
*Play Dirty (Andre de Toth, 1969)
*A Portrait of Ga (Margaret Tait, 1952)
The Quatermass Experiment (Val Guest, 1955)
Quatermass II (Val Guest, 1957)
*Quatermass and the Pit (Roy Ward Baker, 1967)
The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson, 1949)
A Quiet Passion (Terence Davies, 2016)
The Railway Children (Lionel Jeffries, 1970)
The Red Shoes (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1948)
Rembrandt (Alexander Korda, 1936)
*Repulsion (Roman Polanski, 1965)

The Return (Sture Rydman, 1973)
*Ryan's Daughter (David Lean, 1970)
Sabotage (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936)
See No Evil (Richard Fleischer, 1971)
The Shout (Jerzy Skolimowski, 1978)
The Sick Kitten (George Albert Smith, 1903)
The Snow Goose (Patrick Garland, 1971)
The Snowman (Dianne Jackson, 1982)
Song of Summer (Ken Russell, 1968)
The Sorcerers (Michael Reeves, 1967)
Spider (David Cronenberg, 2002)
*The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1951)

10 Rillington Place (Richard Fleischer, 1971)
*The Thief of Bagdad (Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, Tim Whelan, Alexander Korda, Zoltan Korda & William Cameron Menzies, 1940)
Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies, 1936)
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
*The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935)
This Happy Breed (David Lean, 1944)
*The Tomb of Ligeia (Roger Corman, 1964)
*Under Capricorn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1949)
Victim (Basil Dearden, 1961)
*Village of the Damned (Wolf Rilla, 1960)
The War Game (Peter Watkins, 1966)
A Warning to the Curious (Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972)
Watership Down (Martin Rosen & John Hubley, 1978)
*Whistle and I'll Come to You (Jonathan Miller, 1968)

The White Bus (Lindsay Anderson, 1967)

https://letterboxd.com/willowybeing/list/top-100-british-films/

Quotes:

"Southern English... entirely middle class... snobbish, anti-intelligent, emotionally inhibited, wilfully blind to the conditions and problems of the present, dedicated to an out-of-date, exhausted national ideal". - Lindsay Anderson on British cinema in "Get Out and Push!" for Declaration (1957)

"The film industry in its English language form is inherently American." - David Puttnam

"...what Britain has is not so much a film industry as a TV film industry." - Barry Norman

“The British cinema is boring, and reflects a submissive way of life, where enthusiasm, zeal and impetus are quickly rooted out. The film is a born loser just for being English.” - François Truffaut

"Bollocks to Truffaut." - Stephen Frears

Friday, 7 January 2022

R.I.P. Peter Bogdanovich

With the death of Peter Bogdanovich we have lost another link to the glorious distant past of American cinema. He did leave behind many treasurable interviews, essays and anecdotes regarding some of those he revered most - Cary Grant, James Stewart, Howard Hawks, Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford among others as well as documentaries on Ford and Buster Keaton. The great director Bertrand Tavernier passed away in March last year and in some ways he was a similar figure in regard to French cinema and its history.

The first serious book on cinema that I acquired was 'This Is Orson Welles', a collection of interviews (edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum) that a young Peter Bogdanovich did with Welles from the late 1960s through to the mid 1970s. It was a present from my parents on a visit to a random bookshop in King's Lynn when I was a teenager. In the years since I've read it from cover to cover many times and my copy is thoroughly worn through and tattered but the personal significance and sentimental value of the thing is hard to overstate. For me, it makes a biography of Welles more or less redundant as it gives you a real sense of Welles's personality behind the maverick persona, his sense of humour, his views and passions and an insight in to the incredible life that he lived. Bogdanovich is often accused of being a sycophant when dealing with his heroes but he challenges Welles on certain topics and respectfully disagrees on key subjects. It comes across as an enlightening experience for both men. Alongside the likes of Oja Kodar, Gary Graver, Henry Jaglom, Joseph McBride and Jonathan Rosenbaum he was one of several loyal Welles associates and collaborators to whom we owe a great deal for the continuing interest in Welles's work and they were all important advocates of his later career, helping make much of it possible.

In addition to the book on Welles I've greatly enjoyed 'Who the Devil Made It', a terrific collection of interviews that Bogdanovich did with top Hollywood directors like Don Siegel, Edgar G. Ulmer, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Josef von Sternberg, Allan Dwan, Leo McCarey, Howard Hawks and Robert Aldrich.

There was a trend for film critics to try their hand at directing films in the 1960s, most notably the French New Wave crowd (Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Rivette & Chabrol) from the magazine Cahiers du Cinema, Bernardo Bertolucci and Dario Argento in Italy and Lindsay Anderson in the U.K. In the U.S. Bogdanovich's fellow Movie Brat Paul Schrader had also been a critic and published works on key figures in international cinema. Not long after the Welles book changed the way I thought about film I encountered Bogdanovich's astonishing 1968 debut feature Targets on a late night BBC 2 screening from the series Moviedrome, a showcase for cult movies with introductions by Alex Cox and subsequently, Mark Cousins. Some kind person shared a recording of the introduction on YouTube:

In the pre-internet age, there was an incredible sense of discovery that came with seeing such films, either by chance, luck or through dedicated research and effort, trawling through TV schedules and old film guides. I had read about it being a tremendous late career highlight for its ageing star Boris Karloff, who had been one of my Horror idols ever since I first viewed Frankenstein. The film is something of an anomaly in Bogdanovich's output, and his later work would generally steer clear from violent themes.

As a filmmaker he shared a cine-literate approach with some of his contemporaries such as Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme and like them and many other greats he served his apprenticeship under the legendary low budget director/producer/distributor Roger Corman, who produced Targets. It would be my introduction to the filmography of one of the most singular and erratic talents in modern American cinema. I'm greatly looking forward to the forthcoming BFI Blu-Ray disc of the film later in the year.

Targets (1968)

Following his subsequent career has proved to be challenging at times (due to the unavailability of certain titles) but also hugely rewarding. In terms of critical and commercial success his career unquestionably peaked at an early stage. His sophomore film, The Last Picture Show, is still his best known and most celebrated.

The Last Picture Show (1971)

Many have observed that his then-wife Polly Platt was a highly significant (and for a long time undervalued) creative collaborator in his early career, working in an official capacity as a production designer and co-writer but she played a crucial role in shaping those films in other respects such as casting, costumes and choice of material. Before their separation they worked together on two subsequent hits (What's Up Doc? and Paper Moon), both of which were tributes to films of yesteryear and that typified Bogdanovich's affinity with the past.

His fortunes had shifted considerably by the mid-1970s after a trio of much derided flops (Daisy Miller, At Long Last Love and Nickelodeon). These 3 titles are still on my "to watch" list as the received wisdom for decades afterwards was that they were all unmitigated disasters but in recent years there have been signs of a newfound appreciation for the first two of those mentioned. Proof perhaps that the internet is a great way for even the most despised films to have a second life. The divorce from Platt, relationships with the actress Cybill Shepherd and Playboy model Dorothy Stratten as well as the growing feeling that he had been a flash in the pan behind the camera attracted fierce criticism from both the press and fellow figures in the industry and seemed to be linked to his ever-growing misfortunes. Besides 1985's Mask he would never regain the prestige or success of his early work. His career has been all but written off by many at this stage, a casual dismissal that ignores or rejects numerous wonderful films. Perhaps being unburdened by the new whizzkid and "next Orson Welles" labels attached to him in his early efforts would allow Bogdanovich to produce some of his best work, often under troubled circumstances and rather sadly few seemed to notice.

Saint Jack (1979) and They All Laughed (1981), two of his finest films, fell completely under the radar due to legal troubles and botched distribution and were very difficult to see for long periods but are well worth seeking out.

Saint Jack (1979)

They All Laughed (1981)

There's many other excellent films to his name that are overdue for a reappraisal including Noises Off... (1992 - for me the finest of his comedies), The Thing Called Love (1993) and The Cat's Meow (2001). All of these are testament to his great rapport and generosity with actors and it's worth remembering just how many performers did some of their best work under Bogdanovich's direction. Besides Academy Award winning performances by Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman and Tatum O'Neal in his films, the likes of John Ritter, Colleen Camp, Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliott and Christopher Reeve all did tremendous character work and showcased their comic skills like never before when working with him.

The Cat's Meow (2001)

In Texasville (1990) he returned to the setting and characters of The Last Picture Show with the sort of maturity and grace that seems to have gained currency in recent years in the films of such veterans as Martin Scorsese (The Irishman), Nobuhiko Obayashi (Hanagatami), John Boorman (Queen and Country) and Clint Eastwood (The Mule, Cry Macho). Some saw it as symbolic of Bogdanovich's dwindling status but I find it to be an extremely sincere and moving followup. Of all the belated sequels to New Hollywood classics that appeared in 1990 (The Two Jakes, Rocky V, The Exorcist III, The Godfather Part III) it feels like the most erudite and poignant in relation to its predecessor. The film's reckoning with the past is filled with loss, regret and nostalgia but also an acceptance of the passage of time that harkens back to films like The Magnificent Ambersons, Lola Montes, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Robin and Marian.

Texasville (1990)

New features became less frequent but each new addition to his filmography became a major event to fans like myself. The very existence of 2014's She's Funny That Way (much like James L. Brooks's How Do You Know (2010), Warren Beatty's The Rules Don't Apply (2016) and Alan Rudolph's Ray Meets Helen (2017)) feels like a miracle of sorts, a strange anachronism in the cinema of the 2010s, and there are now stories that Bogdanovich's preferred cut of the film (titled Squirrels to the Nuts) does in fact exist.* I've also heard about a longer cut of Texasville that was once available on Laserdisc. I'd love to see it get some sort of restoration.

He was a tireless devotee of cinema even through personal tragedy, bankruptcy and scandal. His ongoing efforts to get Welles's final film The Other Side of the Wind put together and given a belated release (courtesy of Netflix) in 2018 in a strange way brought his career full circle. The same year he gave us his final work as a director, The Great Buster: A Celebration, an affectionate tribute to one of the icons of comedy and silent cinema. Bogdanovich's own life and career was a remarkable and at times troubling story in its own right, in which a film enthusiast turned critic would go on to become a notable film historian and director whose contribution to film culture is incalculable.

R.I.P. Peter Bogdanovich (1939-2022)

Recommended links:

*James Kenney on the unreleased version of Bogdanovich's last film

2017 Q&A with Bogdanovich following a screening of They All Laughed (from metrograph.com)

Tribute by Joseph McBride (from WellesNet)

Obituary by Glenn Kenny (from Decider.com)

Article by Kyle Smith (from National Review)

Tributes to Peter Bogdanovich (from IndieWire)

Peter Tonguette remembers Peter Bogdanovich (from IndieWire)

The Connection to Old Hollywood (from RogerEbert.com)

Peter Bogdanovich in memoriam (from The Pink Smoke podcast)

Peter Bogdanovich R.I.P. (from The Lamp magazine)

Peter Bogdanovich Recommends (YouTube Channel)

Peter Bogdanovich discusses David Fincher's film Mank (from Decider.com)

How Peter Bogdanovich shaped the backstory of modern cinema (from The New Yorker)

Bogdanovich responds to the 2012 Sight & Sound poll

Trivia:

Despite his doubts about the validity of conducting a survey of "the greatest films", Bogdanovich did contribute a ballot of his top ten films for the 1972 Sight & Sound poll. He mentioned that he had favourite directors rather than favourite films, as the list demonstrates: