knife edge of hysteria

Further to my previous comments about great B&W photography in Bela Tarr's MFL, the excellent work of Ernest Laszlo (another Hungarian, this time a long-term Hollywood emigré) in The Big Knife, 1955, is to be cherished. Robert Aldrich's terrific drama, which I saw in student days and had not seen since, seems better now than it ever did. Aldrich, once affectionately termed by French critics 'le gros Bob', was one of the very best Hollywood directors, specialising in gritty if not brutal movies about survival against the odds. Working mainly within the system, Aldrich produced some genre classics - war, westerns, noirs etc - including some of my absolute favourites in those fields: Attack, Apache, The Last Sunset, Ulzana's Raid, The Grissom Gang, Emperor Of The North, and the quite superb Kiss Me Deadly. You'd expect no less from a man who'd worked with Welles, while the physicality, the brilliantly expressive, almost expressionist, camera angles, the almost if not quite OTT performances, all seem perfectly right in these films' contexts.

As for The Big Knife itself, it features a matchless cast: the inimitable Jack Palance in one of his finest and most gripping dramatic roles; well supported by Ida Lupino, Shelley Winters, Everett Sloane, Wendell Corey, and Jean Hagen (she of "Aah jest caint stann um" fame in Singing In The Rain). And of course, there's Rod Steiger with a strange haircut and a deaf-aid, ranting and raving away as a studio mogul who's an unholy mix of Messrs Mayer and Cohn… Yet his "hammy outrageousness" (Time Out) somehow works when set against Palance's obdurate intensity.

Here's fear and loathing in LA, via the flawed but often brilliant Clifford Odets! His "wordy and stagebound script" was nonetheless considered (also by Time Out) "intellligent and literate", and it seems in hindsight a rather accurate depiction of Fifties America, cold war paranoia and all.

Early last year we saw a stage production of Odets's first success, Waiting For Lefty, and this Thirties piece seemed both curiously timely and dated. The powerful verbal gifts (along with the accompanying torrential verbosity) retained much of their force, while most of the occasional sentimental blemishes could be overlooked: Odets's socialism, like his heart, was in the right, or rather the left, place. Alas, by the end of the McCarthy era, Odets had sold out and become an extremely well-rewarded Hollywood hack, albeit one of the best around: see also Sweet Smell Of Success, an equally fine, equally hysterical film scripted by him a couple of years after TBK.

Unfortunately, just like Aldrich himself, whose later output declined and became slickly commercial (remember The Dirty Dozen and what happened to the later careers of Mesdames Davis and Crawford?) Odets went for the easy money flowing down the mainstream. But he remained, according to Jean Renoir, a decent, warm and very generous friend. In My Life And My Films (1974) Renoir writes movingly of their friendship and Odets's last days. He praises Odets's only foray into directing - the very odd None But The Lonely Heart, which starred an absurdly OTT Cary Grant plus dreadful cockney (not even Bristolian!) accent. This praise was, one feels, down to Renoir's own comradeship and innate generosity, rather than a true reflection of an interesting failure: surely NBTLH is not, as anyone who's seen this muddled piece will agree, any sort of "masterpiece"? Still those were times of exaggeration, days of hysteria and suspicion, when friendship accorded to outsiders, foreigners and exiles in Hollywood was in short supply. Renoir simply notes that Odets was "like everyone representative of his period… a victim of the anti-communist obsession". The paranoia and blame of that time are in impressive and riveting evidence in The Big Knife.

cutting edge of pseudery

What fairly recent movie garnered the following puffs on its dvd case? ("Mesmeric… This is film noir as metaphysical poetry… Extraordinary black and white camerawork" - Time Out. "extraordinary" - The Observer. "compelling" - Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian. "majestic and mysterious"- Scotland on Sunday. "mesmerising… Swinton is just one highlight" - Jonathan Romney, Independent on Sunday.) And was a Cannes festival selection, at that? Answer: The Man From London, directed by Bela Tarr, 2007.

I recalled struggling with his earlier four hour effort, the dismal Satantango, whose opening sequence, a dark wet farmyard somewhere in Hungary, lasts for about half an hour – during which time we see some murky outbuildings, cattle crossing the mud in the wind and rain and nothing much else of any excitement or edification. We found ourselves eventually forced to fastforward in disbelief, and realised that nothing much else did happen during this interminable and lugubriously boring saga: nothing like our own dear and multiply-plotted Archers!

Anyhow, in all fairness, I checked out of our library this more recent film, because the time listed was only "90 mins approx". Also, The MFL was based on an author I admire, Simenon: this promised to be an unexpected marvel of psychological accuracy and gripping too. And the excellent and risktaking Swinton is always worth watching… Ah what a disappointment! The opening shot, up down and across, back and forth, along a ship's hull at night, was indeed leisurely. Thereafter the trades description act should have been invoked: a total of two hours ten minutes is not quite "90 mins approx", while all those carefully-selected, grandiose M-words and laudatory adjectives from various supposedly intelligent critics, from "mesmeric" onward, should have tipped us the wink. We dutifully stayed the course, again with considerable exasperation: was it really possible for any filmmaker to be so impossibly, wilfully slow, to show such complete and utter disdain for both narrative and audience?

Absurd multilingual dubbing and absolutely ludicrous 'storyline' didn't make for a riveting experience. Why should the extremely aged retiree Scotland Yard inspector, the eponymous TMFL, who speaks with the voice of Edward Fox, cross the Channel to investigate a missing sixty thousand quid – from a theatre box office of all unlikely places? He ignores a corpse in the harbour (Bastia apparently, rather than Belgium) and finally allows a murderer – the killer of the first killer, if you follow me – to go free with a large wodge of money and a pat on the back. (Tarr very much?) I don't think I have spoilt the film by hinting at the sheer absurdity of it all. Yes, it's indeed beautifully lit and photographed, but so what? Every face and object, longshot or closeup, is lingered on interminably, for no discernible purpose. A frustrated stills photographer Tarr may be or might have been, but an auteur he ain't. A pretty pretentious interview with The Man From Hungary is included as an 'extra'. This confirmed my misgivings and resolve never to watch another such piece of stodgily intellectualised boloney ever again. Life is too short, and good art is still shorter, but the Bela experience is far too long: beware and avoid!

those Quays!

The Quay twins, never to be confused with the awful Krays, conceived and directed in 1995 the unique and extraordinary Institute Benjamenta, or This dream people call human life. It was great to catch up with this rare gem a few days ago (thanks once again to Exeter's fine film library!) in its new dual format edition. This includes an informative booklet and lots of fascinating extras – several other shorts by the Brothers Q, and interviews with them and the exceptional actors Mark Rylance and Alice Krige, who star in this wonderful film. Of course the fact that it's B&W and drawn from the weird works of the German-Swiss author Robert Walser (1878-1956), whose latter years, from 1929, were spent in a mental hospital, may discourage your average browser in search of digital tricks and zappy sledgehammer editing, but the loss will be theirs.

The distinguished British poet and translator Christopher Middleton refers to Walser's "charmed ironic clownishness", and certainly the Quays seem to capture this. "An exquisitely realised anti-fairytale, a fragile world shimmering with luminous energy and hypnotic beauty" says blurb, and for once that's spot on. I should think anyone who likes Beckett, Kafka and Keaton would love this film about a very peculiar training school for servants, but it's a truly independent and original piece of cinema. Gottfried John, a Fassbinder stalwart, also plays an important part, and the film is mysterious, comical, oneiric, surreal and gorgeous to watch. Those who have savoured the strangely distinctive, sometimes nightmarish animation and the singularly odd puppetry and dreamscapes of the Quays' earlier films – their adaptations of Bruno Schulz for example – and their affinity with Central European filmmakers like Svjankmaier and Borowczyk, will need no further recommendation.

two oldies but goodies

Two amazing movies: one of the best ever documentaries; one of the most visually exquisite films ever made. First, The Thin Blue Line (1988), directed by Errol Morris the true story of the murder of a policeman in a Texan town. A grim and absolutely riveting chunk of lowlife exposing a dreadful miscarriage of US justice, it involved a mixture of corruption, malice and incompetence that resulted in the wrong man being convicted and despatched to Death Row. Uniquely and admirably, the filmmaker's dogged investigation into this crime proved instrumental in the innocent's belated release and the actual killer's eventual arrest and conviction. Apart from its vital crusading element, the film is brilliantly assembled – interviews trenchant and edgy, photography, editing and music all terrific. (The latter is by Philip Glass, what's more!) Gripping, grotesque and often blackly humorous, it's an indictment of ignorance, prejudice and the complete folly of judging by appearances.

A very different but equally extraordinary picture is Színdbad (1971), the wonderful Hungarian film directed by ill-fated, highly talented Zoltan Huszárak – dead at fifty and still scarcely known outside his homeland. The excellent Second Run outfit this year released a dvd of his single masterpiece: it's a film of breathtaking visual beauty, humorous, poignant and in the best sense truly colourful. In just 90 minutes, the eponymous protagonist is shown reflecting on his life of sensual indulgence: memories of food and women predominate, since Színdbad's a greedy connoisseur of both. Yet the singleminded pursuit of pleasure can't ever distract him from the awareness of time passing and of ageing, nor from the inevitability of that final encounter which always comprises the last voyage of every Sinbad. The film adapts some fictions dating from 1911-1912 by a well-known Hungarian author Gyula Krúdy – poetic, avant-garde for their time and, by reputation, extremely difficult to translate. It seems though that Huszárak accomplished the near-impossible in movie terms: if the narrative on first viewing appears baffling here and there, this stunning film absolutely holds the interest throughout. Spellbinding colour photography and editing, a fine central performance, and some of the strangest and most lingeringly beautiful images and sequences ever: think Ophuls, Renoir, Michael Powell, than whom there's no higher praise!

admirations and qualifications

I'm a great admirer of Terence Davies and his extraordinary films and have told him so in the past, but The Deep Blue Sea is a sad miscalculation, curate's egg if ever there was! There's a wonderful cast, giving uniformly excellent performances, as one would expect from a lineup that includes Simon Russell Beale, Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and, in support, Barbara Jefford and Ann Mitchell… But, but, but – why remake what was originally a somewhat thin if 'wellmade' and rather middlebrow theatre piece (by T. Rattigan), already filmed, equally unexcitingly, with Kenneth More and Vivien Leigh in 1955?

As regards recreating the immediate post-WW2 period, it's all slightly wrong: the dark interiors aren't dingy enough, the film is generally too colourful and soft-focus, while London in the late 1940s and early 50s seemed – via my own recollections of a middleclass background and upbringing there – altogether more sombre, dirty and impoverished. The film's clothes and the people wearing them invariably look too clean; the streets and bomb sites are too 'theatrically' arranged and not really squalid; the smogs and grime are missing: the glum and downbeat plot required monochrome! Weisz is too young and glamorous for the role of Hester, while the age-gap between herself and Russell Beale, playing her husband Judge Collyer, makes their earlier relationship (or 'backstory' if you prefer) altogether unlikely.

There's a flashback scene to the blitz with people sheltering in the underground, which, again, is too extended and extraneous and so seems wilful, artificial, quite the opposite of truly atmospheric. (Matthew Sweet's recent book West End Front tells fascinating tales of the toffs – among whom would surely be numbered the likes of Judge and Lady Collyer – holing out in the posher London hotels whose cellars and basements had been specially adapted for the comfort and convenience of the better-orf.) Further details are off-kilter also: jolly pub singalongs, dwelt on indulgently, ditto the opening and closing Samuel Barber stuff. Oh dear, and Weisz doesn't even smoke her cigarettes convincingly, the only minor (if important!) criticism one might make of her very fine performance…

Once again, as in my previous comments on Andrea Arnold, one must stress that every talented director has the right to come a cropper every so often! It's hard enough to raise funding for any film, fullstop, and creative spirits need to work. So the temptation to remake or adapt a classic, or some tried-and-tested vehicle for actors, must be ever-present. At least this is a watchable couple of hours, dull and a bit camp, but not out-and-out exasperating drivel like Withering Depths: try again lads and lasses, to find, fund and film something worthier of your considerable talents!

ups and downs with books and films

Julian Barnes's Man Booker win was predictable (a 'third time lucky' or consolation prize for a dependable if unexceptional veteran?), but his rather slight novel's not a patch on a longlisted debut noirish fiction by A.D.Miller Snowdrops. Barnes is a good critic of, and writer on, most things French, particularly literature, but Miller's terrific Moscow-set thriller with its chilly atmospheric descriptions, cool psychological insights and frighteningly casual brutality is very well written indeed, Graham Greene without the catholic claptrap, an uncluttered and intelligent look at current Russian society. (Maybe Snowdrops didn't have enough intellectual pretension, perhaps downgraded somewhat as a 'genre' novel, but we found it a fascinating and unputdownable read.)

Two recent films seen, by a couple of the best directors around (both women, coincidentally). Wuthering Heights (dir. Andrea Arnold), an absolute disaster, a dreadful film from what's anyhow a very over-rated novel. A friend who works in the theatre told us it was like having her face thrust in pig slurry for two hours! I suppose re Arnold and her directing of features it was "third time unlucky" and every director, however talented, has the right to try something and fail, but this was an absolute disaster with hardly any redeeming features, anachronistic to the point of absurdity. The idea of a rather sensitive black Heathcliff (a nod to updating and/or political correctness?) was simply misguided, and, given the 1820s, any such person who told his landowning 'superiors' to "Fuck off you cunts!"simply could not have existed, nor continued to exist thereafter! More generally, no one so much as shivered in all that cold and wet oop on they moors; the drippy closing song, a folk-rock indulgence was ridiculous, etc etc. But it's hardly worth serious analysis: avoid!

Lynne Ramsay's welcome return to direction, with We Need To Talk About Kevin, was something else altogether. Properly forceful and shocking. (Given a dvd of this, we were riveted, neither of us having read the book.) But we're longterm fans of the intense, statuesque and magnificent Tilda Swinton, a brilliant actress (no, not actor!) The casting was completely convincing too, all except for the husband, who – no fault of his own – looked like a bluecollar worker, someone off a building site, perhaps, and thus no intellectual or physical match for the brainy and literate Tilda character. It was never explained, either, how this taciturn geezer made his money – and there was lots of it, judging by the family's lavish home and life-style. Maybe we missed something that made sense or was explained adequately in the book, but this seemed the only flaw in a very absorbing and thought-provoking movie: recommended for those not, as they say, of nervous disposition.

travels and more films

Getting around France by SNCF, especially if you are eligible for and invest in, a Carte Senior, booking well ahead, is a very pleasant experience, easy, affordable and stress-free. Too much in our three weeks to reflect upon and write about, as yet. Highlights included the biggest ever Diane Arbus exhibition at the Jeu de Paume in Paris, and the Musée Angladon in Avignon (great collection of 19th and 20th century art, plus first editions, notebooks, sketches, MSS etc from the likes of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Verlaine, Apollinaire, Jarry, the Surrealists and best of all where I was concerned – 3 of Lautréamont-Ducasse's 7 known letters). The amazing Roman arena/amphitheatre at Nimes, and walking over the hills to the equally stunning Pont du Gard. And staying, for several days in her Provençal village house, with Jean Rhys's granddaughter: thank you, Ellen! Following which, Mourjou's (23rd?) annual chestnut festival, where we spent a wonderful week chez our old friend the grand maître of the chataigneraie, author and cheesemeister Peter Graham. Bliss: wonderful weather, great company and fantastic quality and quantity of degustations of all sorts.

Adjusting to the UK on return has proved gradual if not downright strange. But at least a couple of good films (borrowed once again from the wonderful World Cinema section of our beleaguered local library) to regale us: Larks on a string (Jiri Menzel, 1969) and Incendies (Denis Villeneuve, 2011). The first, immediately banned in his native Czechoslovakia for years, did not resurface until 1990, and caused Menzel much hassle – disrupting a career that had promised so much, with the Oscar-winning Closely Observed Trains. His colleague on both films and several later ones, the fine author Bohumil Hrabal, also suffered when the shortlived Prague spring of 1968 was followed by the brutal Soviet occupation of their country. Larks… gained an underground reputation however, and in 1990 won the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear. The 2011 dvd reissue, plus short interview with Jiri Menzel, is highly recommended, a very funny yet poignant and instructive little satire and a colourful (in both senses) slice of European history.

As for this year's foreign Oscar-nominated Incendies, it's closer to Greek tragedy, but set in an unspecified Middle Eastern country whose inhabitants, whether exiled or returned, cannot escape past or present conflicts and all the various dreadful legacies of violence. If that sounds solemn or 'worthy', believe me it's not! This French-Canadian-Arabic production is impeccably acted by a cast that includes both professional and non-professional actors: indeed, some of the latter are actually refugees themselves. The result, adapted from a stage play, is an extremely powerful and moving cinematic drama, full of extraordinary landscapes, faces and situations. Unmissable for anyone interested in contemporary cinema, and also including some fascinating director interviews.