two new documentary classics

The finest, most memorable, and by far the most emotionally involving films I've seen in the past month are both documentaries. Our excellent local Picturehouse should be commended for showing two such disturbing – indeed deeply shocking, and therefore uncommercial, or anti-commercial – films.

Both 5 Broken Cameras (dir. Emat Burnat and Guy Davidi) and McCullin (dir. David Morris and Jacqui Morris) focus on truthful and courageous photo-journalism in extremely hazardous and life-threatening circumstances. Exemplary bravery, honesty and compassion are the (un)common denominators of both.

5 Broken Cameras is co-directed by a Palestinian and an Israeli – in itself a remarkable enterprise – and the Picturehouse brochure describes it thus: "At his son Gibreel's birth, Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat gets his first movie camera. He starts recording both Gibreel's childhood and the violent conflict that snowballs as Israel's 'security barrier' is driven through their neighbourhood. This affecting, poetic documentary reveals the determined spirit of Burnat and his family." An understatement, of course, as anyone who's been to the West Bank would recognize.

"Affecting" yes, but a truly effective picture too, in which the shameful daily injustices, and the bullying brutality and murderous actions perpetrated by the IDF and the self-styled Zionist "settlers" are vividly and searingly depicted. Personal essay and political cinema at its most provocative, its award at the Sundance Film Festival was well-merited: audiences will need strong stomachs and open minds to watch this extraordinary film, but let's hope it gets as widely distributed as possible. Don't miss it! (There's also a frank and informative interview with the two directors – impressive and dignified people, both of them. This is on Youtube, and a dvd will be available at the end of January.)

Don McCullin, now in his seventies, is in John Lennon's phrase a "working class hero", an internationally renowned British photographer. Here he is interviewed about his life and dangerous career – the art of survival while witnessing and chronicling many of the bloodiest and most violent conflicts of the last 50 years. These range from the Congo to Vietnam, Biafra to Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Salvador and the Middle East. McCullin's sincerity, modesty and moral decency (as with Messrs. Burnat and Davidi) shine through the interviews, stills and archive footage around which this biographical feature is constructed. This film too is revealing and riveting, and it too exposes the full madness, horror and human tragedy of occupation and war. McCullin doesn't duck the hard questions, especially the awkward and perhaps unavoidable fact that taking photos in high-risk situations so often gives the person behind the camera an adrenalin rush like no other: gambling with one's life for the sake of a scoop, in order to fix something quite fleeting, yet absolutely precious and unique, made him almost what he calls in his superb autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour (1990),
"a war junkie". Fortunately for him and for us he survived various misadventures and injuries along the way. Now he lives in his beloved Somerset, photographing the landscape and sorting his amazing archive for posterity. Another impressive human being, now the subject of an equally impressive film.

another terrific film

I've been travelling and writing quite a bit recently, hence no blog since June. We've been to Berlin and Lübeck, fascinating places, the latter a rather pleasant surprise, especially as regards art and marzipan…(Incidentally our city Exeter was bombed in WW2 in retaliation for the devastation of Lübeck, Hitler's so-called Baedeker raids of 1942.) Then the new book Getting On (Poems 2000-12) was launched here in Exeter, with a further launch and reading scheduled at Bookmarks in London next week (Nov 6th).

At present our main library is undergoing major alterations and refurbishment, moving to a site next door: all these changes and (let's hope) improvements will take about 14 months apparently. Alongside the staff shake-ups and redundancies, all too many books and dvds are being sold off at bargain prices: in terms of film, this has meant we've watched a variety of interesting foreign classics, award winners and recent indie stuff (because that's what The Powers That Be are generally keen to get rid of!) None of them easily classifiable, let alone qualifying as mainstream movies.

Among some unexpected treasures not so far listed to be sold off, is Leap Year, a terrific Mexican film directed by an Australian director in his mid-thirties, Michael Rowe. Leap Year dates from 2010, when it won the Golden Camera award at Cannes for best debut film. It's quite gruelling and explicit – one-room, low-budget filming, while the acting of Monica del Carmen is courageous and extraordinary. Here's the supreme antidote to all the sick-making Hollywood shlock pumped out about dating and human relationships: in its pared-down (89 mins) style – a quasi-Bressonian eroticism? – and its extreme and unrelenting sincerity, Leap Year is strong stuff. Its frankness might well offend, provoking shock and defensive emotional reactions from many quarters – especially among the narrower sorts of feminists, the censorious prudes and lovers of sentimental cliché, and all those unthinking consumers of standard porn – none of whom would properly engage with the brutal and moving realities of the film's sexual politics. And it's not simply about gender attitudes, big city isolation and loneliness, but also very much concerned with class, race and economics in Mexico, where Michael Rowe has lived for many years. Rowe's stubborn persistence in getting his uncompromising script accepted and, after years of difficulties encountered, managing to direct it so effectively, bodes well for the future of someone who seems like a genuine auteur. Good luck to him, the award for his Año Bisiesto was no more than he deserved.

canine clerics and doggy Deans

The 2008 UK-NZ co-production, Dean Spanley – is still further cause for celebrating our excellent city library. This film is a delight, a true lettuce, a veritable 'little gem' – 96 mins only, crisp and perfectly delicious, excellent through and through.

Its pedigree, however, is as weird, wonderful and unexpected as can be. The extraordinary plot, unusually witty and engaging, is drawn from Lord Dunsany's novel My Talks With Dean Spanley. Dunsany (1878-1935), was an Anglo-Irish peer, friendly with Yeats, Gogarty and other literati of his time. He wrote in many fields, in verse and prose, and had plays performed at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin. He's remembered these days, if at all, for various anthologised supernatural tales in collections here and there; these uncanny stories may seem rather understated by current tastes, and occasionally a bit whimsical, but they're generally literate and well worth seeking out.

I've not read the Dunsany novel on which the film is based, but the screenwriter is another original, the veteran Alan Sharp. Sharp, a Scottish novelist who moved to the USA in the Sixties, and now lives in New Zealand, worked with distinction in Hollywood on some terrific movies. I recall and recommend Night Moves and Ulzana's Raid – just two of his screenplays, thriller and western respectively, which managed to put various new twists on those declining genres. The quality of the dialogue and narrative is almost guaranteed, therefore, by this unlikely Celtic combination, ancient and modern. And the fine and perfectly judged direction is by a relatively new hand, Toa Fraser, a (thirtyish?) New Zealand guy.

As for the story, it's a very curious narrative, set in Edwardian times, about reincarnation and metempsychosis and father-son relationships and the ways of dogs and man, wine and cricket, life and death! There's no violence, but considerable verbal wit and impeccable visual style in this film: the exceptional, high-quality cast (five principal characters) play it out quite beautifully. Entrancing, hilarious and yet poignant performances by them all…We've never seen Peter O'Toole better, he's quite brilliant here, while Jeremy Northam, Bryan Brown, Judy Parfitt and Sam Neill are superb in support. Neill, especially, is both funny and affecting as the eponymous Spanley, an anguished churchman strangely dogged by caninity, who seems ready to sell his soul for some rare Tokay. What an ensemble! The players all seem effortlessly to inhabit that vanished Edwardian world: it's the art that conceals art, thoroughgoing professionalism plus the odd dash of sheer inspiration. This is a ravishing film to look at also, neatly paced and edited what's more, and unlike anything else I've seen in years. "A genuine and surprising pleasure", Time Out called it, and their critic was spot on: Woof woof! sniff this special treat out now!

Jean Rhys and her new blue plaque

In London post-WW2 there's never been quite the equivalent of a Parisian crepuscule, that brief 'blue hour' to which Jean Rhys often refers in her pre-war writings set in these cities. At any rate, it was around 4 o'clock on a dull grey but luckily dry March afternoon (06.03.2012) when the impressive English Heritage blue plaque for Jean was unveiled.

Witnesses to this memorable day numbered about two dozen, most notably Jean's granddaughter Ellen Moerman and various Dutch and French friends and colleagues; the excellent organisers from English Heritage, Dr Celina Fox and Libby Wardle; my partner Maggie Fisher, photographer for both my memoirs of Jean; Paul Sieveking, co-founding Editor of Fortean Times, and a mixed bag of cross-generational admirers, along with several biographers of the psychologising/speculative variety. Ironically but perhaps fittingly too, there were no publishers, no literary critics and no journalists to be seen. Jean had stated quite specifically that she never wanted biographies of herself – something Ellen also confirmed. (See too my recent haiku The Author/ities included with the short speech mentioned below.) However, Jean would doubtless have been delighted to be accepted, acknowledged and celebrated so enthusiastically and indeed definitively as a famous name in 20th century literature.

The distinguished historian and author Celina Fox, opening the proceedings, spoke about the work of English Heritage and their criteria for blue plaque consideration. It was at Flat 22, Dr Fox pointed out, that Jean and her second husband Leslie Tilden Smith lived, after their visit to Dominica. This was the only time Jean revisited the island of her childhood and it had proved a bitter experience, though it did bear strange and extraordinary fruit in Wide Sargasso Sea. If Jean's most famous book was written in Devon, however, it was fitting she should be commemorated in London where she spent much of her life, the city serving as background for much of her fiction. At Paultons House Jean Rhys wrote that superb and tragic book Good Morning, Midnight. But it was also in Chelsea, in 1914, that she first began setting down in notebooks bought in the Kings Road, memories of an emotionally devastating love affair – the sort of traumatic material she could later describe, concisely and objectively, like no other modern writer.

The traffic on the Kings Road scarcely required raised voices, let alone microphones, and after my own short speech, I introduced Ellen, who concluded her own comments on this relaxed and touching occasion by drawing the red curtains (which a cherrypicker had earlier placed high on the wall), and so the plaque was permanently on view to London and the world.

Photos of this ceremony – plus the cover of a special commemorative booklet of a quartet of her terrific short stories, edited by Ellen Moerman – may be viewed at http://www.alexislykiard.com. Click on Articles and Reviews, then on Jean Rhys Used To Live There Once for my short eulogy on the occasion, and for further information about the proceedings.

Check out the Czechs and Greeks

Two more excellent dvds from Europe, via our beleaguered but still splendid city Library. First, though it hardly needs recommendation, especially after its initial, huge international success, an absolute milestone of Czech cinema – Milos Forman's superb picture from 1965, A Blonde In Love. Don't be put off by the iffy UK title: this modest, 81-minute B&W masterpiece is an unforgettable movie, so humane, quirkily funny and bitter-sweet about the thwarted dreams and expectations of young lovers. It proved a favourite with Lindsay Anderson, Ken Loach, Tom Milne and many other estimable cineastes and critics. As for director Forman, he progressed of course to Hollywood and a glittering career as an 'American' filmmaker, scooping in the process various Oscars for One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. His colleague on ABIL, Ivan Passer, didn't do so badly either (see my earlier comments on Passer's terrific thriller Cutter's Way).

All in all, ABIL, a small-scale, perfectly realised and observant piece proved highly revealing and slyly satirical about Czech life under a repressive regime. (This was several years before the shortlived Prague Spring gave the ordinary unprivileged citizens a welcome glimmer of hope and temporary relief from their everyday struggle to exist.) If the film had not been such a prizewinner and runaway success both critically and commercially worldwide, Forman and his team might have found themselves in trouble with the homeland authorities.

But joyous subversion apart, there's just so much to enjoy: the eponymous teenage blonde Hana Brejchova (Forman's ex-sister-in-law) whose debut this was, gives a quite delightful performance, although performance is perhaps the wrong word for such a natural, poignant and attractive on-screen presence. Most of the amazingly well chosen cast were non-professionals, while the best-known actor, the male lead Vladimir Pucholt (another perfectly judged character) eventually moved to the UK, assisted by Lindsay Anderson and others. Pucholt, who had not been allowed to study medicine, his first love – apparently because of his suspect bourgeois background, or some such strange authoritarian pretext – moved again to Canada and became a paediatrician in Toronto. What a star, eh?! This sort of unusual honesty, a decent, anti-heroic, gently humane and good-humoured view of life suffuses the film: it's a touching, uplifting and at times hilarious work.

Not in this league, but very original and strangely affecting too, as well as humorous and unexpected, is Attenberg (dir. Athina Rachel Tsingari, 2010). As in ABIL, there's a stunning young actress, Ariane Labed, who won an award for her performance at the Venice Festival of 2010. Yorgos Lanthimos, director of an even odder, also recent Greek film called Dogtooth, plays one of the main roles, but it's all impeccably acted and directed. (In colour, almost inevitably these days – though as with the late great Angelopoulos, there's often mud, rain, factories, cheap hotels, dereliction and ugly concrete buildings – so sundrenched beaches etc don't actually get much of a look-in.)

Never mind, though: this weird, downbeat little tale of a virginal young woman trying to come to terms both with her father's terminal illness and her own inexperience confronting sex and mortality – let alone her own reclusiveness and problem with living in the 'real' world – has considerable fascination. It's eccentric and intriguing, but never boring… Labed's obsession with David Attenborough/'Attenberg' and his tv. studies of different species makes a strange and rather funny counterpoint to the glum confusion and manic girly behaviour depicted. Viewers may also learn, and perhaps be as outraged as we were, that the Greek Orthodox church does not allow cremation! Director Tsingari herself is very intelligent, and her comments (see the interview in the Extras) on this sort of social hypocrisy, and about her individual approach to directing the picture – referencing screwball comedy, buddy movies, rites of adulthood and much else, suggest she's a talent to watch. But… given the current Greek crisis… who will step forward to finance her next film? Fingers crossed.

Russia and 'Russitania'

I've just seen for the first time two old films, both set in 'old' Russia, both beautifully made B&W features, both very much of their times (the Forties and Fifties). Each looks back however to depict a particular vision of Russia during an earlier historical period: they cover the pre-Revolutionary era and WW2, embracing both melodrama and drama, kitsch and tragedy – courtesy of Moscow and Hollywood. Two inevitably different views of course – poles apart, fantastical or neoRealist – of Russia and what one might label 'Russitania'.

I'd highly recommend Summer Storm (d. Douglas Sirk, 1944), taken from Chekhov's only novel The Shooting Party, itself a little known yet fascinating piece of early crime fiction. Sirk was a wonderful director, another of those talented European emigrés to Hollywood, and he assembled an odd but splendid trio of leads: George Sanders, Edward Everett Horton, Linda Darnell – and even Sig Ruman as the latter's drunken dad! The lovely and planturous Linda D. plays a splendid femme fatale, not at all a fairhaired Chekovian belle paysanne, but superb and statuesque nonetheless. In his film review of July 1944, the great James Agee wrote of "Linda Darnell, flashing her eyes and teeth and flexing her glands at both men", adding wistfully, "since, in general appearance she is a kind of person I can imagine going on all fours for, especially if I were a provincial judge, I thought her not entirely ill cast." Sanders is Sanders, witty, worldweary and irreplaceable. He was actually closer to Chekhov than the other thesps (born, after all, in St Petersburg); indeed, David Thomson has remarked on the unique Sanders style of "ostentatious and articulate disdain", brilliantly comparing him to "an amused, intelligent and playful Nabokov narrator". Many incidental pleasures too, in this studio-bound but highly entertaining Russitanian flick – another fine dvd reissue.

As for Mikhail Kalatovov's 1958 Cannes prizewinner, The Cranes Are Flying, it's moving and gruelling, a big international breakthrough for post-war Soviet cinema, and a truly gripping anti-militarist piece. What's more, there's another, very different and equally gorgeous female lead, the beautiful and redoubtable Tatiana Samoilova, the great-niece of Stanislavski, no less! Film historian and distinguished documentarist Basil Wright has noted (1974) that here "we at last find a heroine of character, indeed of a certain elegance, very much unlike the puddingy future hausfrauen of the cliche-ridden Stalinist cinema." Apart from what Wright calls its "technical exuberance" the film is a salutary reminder of the sacrifices made by ordinary Russians during WW2 (their losses – around forty million dead – were on a scale scarcely imaginable to us today). Samoilova is deeply affecting while everyone, given the tragic nature of the story, seems to 'exist' on the screen, rather than 'act': this was very much a picture of the real world, rather than a skilfully contrived studio fantasy. But both these films, so expertly made, in their quite different ways provide unforgettable images and performances which, once seen, will surely linger in the minds of anyone who loves what Lenin called 'The Tenth Muse'.

two terrific noirs

Both dated 1950, both B&W as noirs should be, brilliantly photographed by Burnett Guffey and Hal Rosson respectively. Both are adapted from good, workmanlike pulp novels, by Dorothy B. Hughes and W.R.Burnett. (Who they? younger fans may ask, but even the minor genre names are easier to follow up now than they once were.) Anyway, both have superb casts of clearly defined, believable if not sympathetic, and of course flawed characters.

Nicholas Ray's In A Lonely Place (via Hughes) contains perhaps Bogart's and Gloria Grahame's finest performances, which in both their cases is saying something. John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle also has a topflight cast, though not of such starry names – Sterling Hayden, Jean Hagen [see my Feb 12 blog], Sam Jaffe, James Whitmore, Louis Calhern. (But there's an unforgettable cameo by the young Marilyn Monroe!) While IALP, a psychological thriller, has very little explicit violence, TAJ has quite a lot: both, though, are equally affecting/involving. You care rather more about these people than the stock characters and cliche'd types in most genre movies. But then Ray was a near-great director. Andrew Sarris, one of the best ever US film critics, in his outstanding and provocative book The American Cinema (1968), lists Ray in the section 'The Far Side Of Paradise', concluding that "His films are the indisputable records of a very personal anguish that found artistic expression for little more than a decade". Ray's characters are imbued with "all the psychic ills of the Fifties", says Sarris shrewdly as ever; indeed, Bogart's sardonic paranoia and Grahame's bruised and spiky beauty, are a perfect match (in acting terms) and make a perfect mismatch in terms of the twisting, cunningly paced narrative.

Where Ray's vision was often appealingly raw, imaginative (or dare one say, re Hollywood, poetic?) and always highly emotional, Huston tended to be overblown and overrated [he's "Less than meets the eye", in another very apt Sarris category], too often cynical and calculating. In his latter years Huston turned increasingly to adapting, or in my view, ruining, some great and inspired works of literature by Melville, Crane, Lowry, Tennessee Williams, McCullers, and Joyce – works whose obsessive poetry totally eluded him. TAJ is probably Huston's last truly excellent movie. In terms of getting everything absolutely right, that is… But it was good to see these two terrific noirs once again: they've worn well since I first saw them, in the Sixties – the Ray one of the best and sourest dissections of Hollywood, the Huston one of the best heist movies. They've recently been reissued/restored in dvd form and no movie collection should be without them.