Change Your Image
osullivan60
Also discussed [but not kept - perhaps I should do them again!] were: Jeffrey Hunter, Lee Marvin, Claire Bloom, Glynis Johns, Flora Robson, Irene Papas, Capucine, Belinda Lee, Anita Ekberg, David Hemmings, Michael York, Michael Craig, Trevor Howard, Jack Hawkins, Stewart Granger, Michael Wilding, Jane Asher, Peter McEnery, John Fraser and English actresses of the '50s.
TOP 30 FILMS:
BLOW-UP - Antonioni [1966/67]
L'ECLISSE - Antonioni [1962]
I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING - Powell [1945]
BLACK NARCISSUS - Powell [1947]
THE SCARLET EMPRESS - Von Sterberg [1934]
BRINGING UP BABY - Hawks [1938]
SOME LIKE IT HOT - Wilder [1959]
ALL ABOUT EVE - Mankiewicz [1950]
A STAR IS BORN - Cukor [1954]
2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY - Kubrick [1968]
THE PASSENGER - Antonioni [1975]
THE LEOPARD - Visconti [1963]
NOTORIOUS - Hitchcock [1946]
REAR WINDOW - Hitchcock [1954]
VERTIGO - Hitchcock [1958]
NORTH BY NORTHWEST - Hitchcock [1959]
PSYCHO - Hitchcock [1960]
THE BIRDS - Hitchcock [1963]
L'AVVENTURA - Antonioni [1960]
SUNSET BOULEVARD - Wilder [1950]
DOUBLE INDEMNITY - Wilder [1944]
THE QUIET MAN - Ford [1952]
THE SEARCHERS - Ford [1956]
JOHNNY GUITAR - Ray [1954]
KLUTE - Pakula [1971]
THE BANDWAGON - Minnelli [1953] / LES GIRLS - Cukor [1957]
AUTUMN SONATA - Bergman [1978] / WILD STRAWBERRIES - Bergman [1957]
TOYKO STORY - Ozu [1953]
PATHAR PANCHALI - Ray [1955]
UMBERTO D - De Sica [1952]
AU HASARD BALTHASAR - Bresson [1966]
A RANDOM SELECTION OF OTHER FAVOURITE MOVIES:
A Matter of Life and Death, The Women, The Innocents, The Reluctant Debutante, Barry Lyndon, Tom Jones, The Servant, Billy Liar, The Misfits, Only Angels Have Wings, Chinatown, New York New York, American Gigolo, All That Jazz, Nashville, Kiss Me Kate, Days of Wine and Roses, Night of the Iguana, Heaven Knows Mr Allison, Separate Tables, The Sundowners, I Want to Live, With a Song in my Heart, I'll Cry Tomorrow, Modesty Blaise, The Lion in Winter, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Girl with Green Eyes, I Was Happy Here, A Letter to Three Wives, The Queen of Spades, La Notte, The Red Desert, Desperately Seeking Susan, Whats New Pussycat, The Pink Panther, Dance of the Vampires [The Fearless Vampire Killers], Smiles of a Summer Night, Persona, Cries and Whispers, The Girl Can't Help It, Genevieve, Simon and Laura, Designing Woman, Its Always Fair Weather, Brigadoon, My Sister Eileen, Loving You, Wild River, Bhowani Junction, Moulin Rouge ('53), The Unforgiven, To Have and Have Not, Hatari, Man's Favourite Sport, Laura, Gilda, Mildred Pierce, Trooper Hook, Walk on the Wild Side, All That Heaven Allows, A Summer Place, North to Alaska, The Best of Everything, Taxi Driver, Obsession, Close Encounters, Le Feu Follet, Plein Soleil, Arabesque, Charade, Senso, Odd Man Out, The Heiress, Old Acquaintance, Dead Ringer, The Devil Is a Woman, Queen Christina, Steamboat Bill Jr, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeousie, Anatomy of a Murder, Giant, East of Eden, Friendly Persuasion, The Big Country, Casablanca, Mrs Miniver, This Happy Breed, The Way to the Stars, Captain Blood, Adventures of Robin Hood, Advenures of Quentin Durward, Two for the Road, Coma, And God Created Woman, Peeping Tom, El Cid, The Vikings, Spartacus, Ben Hur, Solomon and Sheba, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Fall of the Roman Empire, Alexander, All About My Mother, Law of Desire, La Femme Infidele, Boy on a Dolphin, Sissi, Innocents with Dirty Hands, Mommie Dearest, The Arrangement, Zabriskie Point, The Chapman Report, Something for Everyone, Just a Gigolo, Torch Song, The Opposite Sex, Woman's World, Raintree County, Hound Dog Man, No Down Payment, The Tempest, Five Miles to Midnight, Goodbye Again, Inside Daisy Clover, Deep End, Chimes at Midnight, Dangerous Exile, Toys in the Attic, Viva Maria, The Silver Chalice, The Spanish Gardener, Campbell's Kingdom, An Alligator Named Daisy.
MOST WANTED LIST:
The Sea Wall [This Angry Age], L'Homme De Rio, Sanctuary, The Sound and The Fury, A Brief Vacation, Royal Flash.
FAVOURITE ACTRESSES:
Sophia Loren / Monica Vitti
Kay Kendall / Marilyn Monroe
Lee Remick / Susan Hayward
Julie Christie / Faye Dunaway
Romy Schneider / Audrey Hepburn
Katharine Hepburn / Bette Davis
Greta Garbo / Marlene Dietrich
Deborah Kerr / Jean Simmons
Ava Gardner / Elizabeth Taylor
Ingrid Bergman / Vivien Leigh
Anouk Aimee / Lilli Palmer
Joan Crawford / Barbara Stanwyck
Julie Harris / Anne Baxter
Gene Tierney / Rita Hayworth
Belinda Lee / Francoise Dorleac
Isabelle Adjani / Stephane Audran
Carole Lombard / Judy Garland
Geraldine Page / Lauren Bacall
Olivia De Havilland / Joan Fontaine.
ROLLCALL OF HONOUR - OTHER FAVOURITES:
Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Genevieve Bujold, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Anjelica Huston, Cyd Charisse, Claire Bloom, Wendy Hiller, Joan Greenwood, Capucine, Janet Leigh, Dolores Gray, Natalie Wood, Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint, Julie Andrews, Mary Astor, Ann Miller, Jean Hagen, Ida Lupino, Jane Greer, Suzanne Pleshette, Tuesday Weld, Angie Dickinson, Sandy Dennis, Thelma Ritter, Eve Arden, Agnes Moorehead, Jo Van Fleet, Beatrice Lillie, Catherine Deneuve, Paula Prentiss, Susannah York, Sarah Miles, Hope Lange, Tippi Hedren, Silvana Mangano, Anna Magnani, Jeanne Moreau, Simone Signoret, Melina Mercouri, Liv Ullmann, Ingrid Thulin, Fanny Ardant, Charlotte Rampling, Marie Laforet, Claudia Cardinale, Gina Lollobrigida, Anita Ekberg, Alida Valli, Delphine Seyrig, Genevieve Page, Vera Miles, Jean Seberg, Jane Russell, Betty Garrett, Celeste Holm, Linda Darnell, Barbara Harris, Madeline Kahn, Mary Steenburgen, Margaret Leighton, Gladys Cooper, Coral Browne, Pamela Brown, Edith Evans, Celia Johnson, Flora Robson, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave, Rita Tushingham, Billie Whitelaw, Yvonne Mitchell, Sylvia Syms, Kay Walsh, Vivien Pickles, Kathleen Byron, Ruth Gordon, Sheila Gish, Jane Asher, Anna Quayle, Glynis Johns, Brenda de Banzie, Martita Hunt, Joan Sims, Irene Handl, Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales.
CURRENT: Helen Mirren, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, Julie Walters, Brenda Blethyn, Imelda Staunton, Emma Thompson, Alison Steadman, Laura Linney.
NEW DISCOVERY:
Loretta Young in '30s films like LADIES IN LOVE, RAMONA, ZOO IN BUDAPEST, THE CRUSADES.
TOP 20 ACTORS:
Dirk Bogarde
Robert de Niro
Cary Grant
James Stewart
Gary Cooper
James Mason
Alan Bates
Peter Finch
James Dean
Jeffrey Hunter
Gregory Peck
William Holden
Humphrey Bogart
Marlon Brando
Montgomery Clift
Ian McKellen
Trevor Howard
Alec Guinness
Laurence Olivier
Ralph Richardson
and
Buster Keaton.
OTHER FAVOURITES:
Burt Lancaster, Glenn Ford, Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor, John Wayne, Charlton Heston, Stephen Boyd, George Sanders, Clifton Webb, Anton Walbrook, Vincent Price, Robert Preston, Albert Finney, Peter O'Toole, Rex Harrison, Roger Livesey, Michael Craig, John Fraser, Gary Raymond, Peter McEnery, Tab Hunter, Rod Taylor, Cliff Robertson, Brandon de Wilde, Donald Sutherland, Alain Delon, Anthony Perkins, Bruno Ganz, Farley Granger, Raf Vollone, Jean Sorel, Maurice Ronet, Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves, Richard Gere, Terence Stamp, David Hemmings, David Warner, Michael York, Claude Rains, Stewart Granger, Harry Andrews, Jack Hawkins, Richard Todd, Roland Curram, Derek Jacobi, Nigel Hawthorne, Michael Wilding, Jack Carson, Charles Bickford, Henry Daniell.
CURRENT:
Clive Owen, Gael Garcia Bernal, Liam Neeson, Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal, Brendan Fraser, Joseph Fiennes
TOP DIRECTORS
Michelangelo Antonioni / Ingmar Bergman.
AMERICAN:
Alfred Hitchcock
Howard Hawks
John Huston
William Wyler
Billy Wilder
Joe Mankiewicz
George Cukor
Vincente Minnelli
Martin Scorsese
Robert Altman
Josef Von Sternberg
Orson Welles
George Stevens
Fred Zinnemann
THE REST OF THE PANTHEON:
Alan Pakula, Robert Mulligan, Sidney Lumet, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Schrader, Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, Terrence Malick, John Ford, Frank Capra, Michael Curtiz, Charles Walters.
OF THEIR TIME (50s/60s):
Kazan, Kramer, Frank Tashlin, Otto Preminger, Nicholas Ray, Anthony Mann, Robert Rossen, Martin Ritt, Douglas Sirk, Stanley Donen, John Frankenheimer, Richard Brooks, Jean Negulesco, John Sturges, Blake Edwards, Richard Quine, George Roy Hill, Robert Wise, Richard Fleisher, J Lee Thompson.
NEW DIRECTORS:
Todd Haynes, Francois Ozon, Bill Condon, Ang Lee.
BRITISH:
John Schlesinger, Stephen Frears, Nicholas Roeg, Joseph Losey*, Richard Lester*, Michael Powell, John Boorman, Ridley Scott, Clive Donner, Desmond Davis, Terence Davies, Tony Richardson, J Lee Thompson, Lewis Gilbert, Ronald Neame [* honorary Brits]
EUROPEAN:
Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio de Sica, Pedro Almodovar, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Ingmar Bergman, Max Ophuls, Luis Bunuel, Wim Wenders, Louis Malle, Francois Truffaut, Jacques Demy, Rene Clement, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Claude Lelouch, Roger Vadim.
TOP 12 MUSICALS:
The Bandwagon, Kiss Me Kate, On The Town, Swingtime, The Gay Divorce, There's No Business Like Show Business, Meet Me In St Louis, The Pirate, Les Girls, My Sister Eileen, Silk Stockings, Funny Face, Gypsy + South Pacific.
FAVOURITE SILENTS:
Steamboat Bill Jr, The Thief of Baghdad, Exit Smiling, The Wind, Way Down East.
First movie seen: JOHNNY GUITAR - when aged 8. What an introduction to cinema ....
Reviews
A Single Man (2009)
Startling changes from Isherwood's book, but still fascinating
Tom Ford's A SINGLE MAN finally makes it to my local art-house, and turns out to be well worth the wait. A fascinating example of a film of a book one likes and which I had recently re-read. (I never wanted to see the film of CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN once I had read it was a filleted, travelogue version of the story...).
Here though the changes are quite startling as fashion designer Tom Ford creates Isherwood's story in his vision. In the 1964 novel George the university lecturer is a crumpled 58 year old with no interest in fashion and lives in a boxy apartment which was too small for him and his lover/partner Jim (who was killed in an accident). It is now 8 months later and George struggles through the day, keeping his feelings in check as he copes with the University, the students, and his best friend Charley - who is, in the novel, a lumpy middle aged woman who dresses in ethnic peasant attire and lives in a dilapidated bungalow. In the movie George lives in an impossibly glamorous glass and wood house - one laughs out loud at seeing it - with perfect modern style furnishings, which hardly seems possible on his university salary (and it just does not look 1962 style). Charley is now a very glamorous divorcée who drinks a lot and lives in what is like a Hollywood mansion.
Colin Firth is totally engrossing as George and Julianne Moore certainly ramps up the glamour as Charlie. Matthew Goode is seen as the deceased partner, and Nicholas Hoult scores as the young attractive student who seems to be stalking George. There is also that attractive hustler who tries to pick him up, in that wonderfully lit scene like a studio set as they are bathed in a golden light against that giant PSYCHO poster. Details like these are fascinating and and its all brilliantly conveyed, Tom Ford has indeed brought his vision to it, as anyone who saw his "Vanity Fair" Hollywood issue will see. I particularly like his brilliantly styled flashback to the '40s when George and Jim first meet at that seaside bar.
I was very pleased Colin Firth in a career best performance - he is no longer a lightweight actor - got the BAFTA award.
Fascinating movie, fascinating music too - I had to wait to the very end credits to see who sang that version of "Stormy Weather", its Etta James! Its a movie I love the look of, its quite an achievement to (mainly) get the early 60s look right - all the rage now with MAD MEN. Ford also partly produced and co-wrote the screenplay. Its certainly intentionally very homo-erotic too with the camera lingering on those male bodies and in the presentation of Kenny, the student, with the white underwear and that nude swim. Niggles remain though about making it all more glamorous - those perfect white shirts! - and the ending is perplexing as there are slight changes. There is no gun or suicide intent in Isherwood's story, Kenny the student sees the photo of the nude late partner, and remains in the house on the sofa, whereas in the book George wakes up to find him gone and a note left, and then ..... Isherwood takes a detached tone regarding George and his ageing body in the book, but the George in the film looks fit in his late 40s and not likely to topple over any time soon...
Looking forward to the DVD and any special features! So, another BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN ?
Things were obviously very different back in the early '60s but surely there would have been more interaction with Jim's family - who must have been aware of George's existence if they were together 16 years? (In my own case in 1996 when my then partner died suddenly his family, whom I thought I had got on well with and had met several times a year for 10 years, were on the doorstep the next day to claim his possessions (which they were entitled to) and also tried to claim the house (which they were not) and this was a wealthy middle-class family!). Another comment on that impossibly perfect house - back in '62 Marilyn Monroe for instance was living in a Spanish-style bungalow, quite the style in California, with a very ordinary divan bed; there may well have been stunningly modern houses but I wouldn't imagine university lecturers were in that league!
The System (1964)
The System is back and still works
A blast from the past for those young in the early 60s is the belated DVD release of THE SYSTEM (US Title: THE GO-GETTERS) made in 63 and released in 64 - when I saw it aged 18 when it would have played here in the UK for a week on release as part of a double bill and then promptly vanished without trace until I saw the DVD yesterday. It comes with a nice 8 page booklet too setting the film in context which is a model of its kind, if only more DVD re-issues followed suit!
The film directed by Michael Winner with marvellous black and white photography by Nicholas Roeg is set in one of those English seaside towns following a gang of young men, led by the then very charismatic Oliver Reed, and their amorous pursuits over the summer and is actually a perfect compendium of European cinema trends of the time - there are Antonioniish moments (the tennis game here has a real ball) and it ends like LA DOLCE VITA in a Felliniesque dawn at the beach as the disillusioned characters realise the summer is over. The script by Peter Draper anticipates elements of DARLING and BLOWUP.
It sports of course a great cast of English young players of the time (Barbara Ferris, Julia Foster, Ann Lynn, John Alderton) as well as reliables like Harry Andrews. Of the young cast David Hemmings (rather in the background here) would two years later personify the 60s when chosen by Antonioni for his lead in BLOWUP. Jane Merrow (Hemmings' girlfriend of the time, and a replacement for Julie Christie who was doing BILLY LIAR) is perfect as Nicola the rich girl whom Reed falls for but she plays the game better than he does. I got to meet her myself once ...
Winner of course may be rather a figure of fun now, one forgets that in the 60s before those DEATH WISHES etc his films caught the moment as well as any by Richard Lester, Losey, Schlesinger or the underrated Clive Donner, with titles like THE JOKERS and I'LL NEVER FORGET WHATSHISNAME where Reed was meant to be his character from THE SYSTEM five years later.
In all its a perfect early 60s movie full of sounds and faces and the mood of that time before the 60s happened. For anyone interested in English cinema or remembers the era, its a real pleasure to see again 40+ years later !
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)
A completely satisfying movie!
Reading these comments has made me want to take out my Powell-Pressburger DVD pack and see this once again. There is just so much to enjoy: the magic of the Highlands, the quest, confident woman being undermined by romance, the interplay between Hiller and Livesey. Above all the dialogue and the way its said is just so satisfying: Wendy Hiller saying "I can't do a thing with my hair" after the storm, and Roger Livesey replying about the missing wedding dress "A mermaid will get married in it...". Then there is the wonderful way Pamela Brown (a great English eccentric actress) says "Yes but money isn't everything". The whole sequence at Ardnocroish is also magical ..... yes its time to go back to the magic of the highlands and Powell and Pressburger one more time. It is in fact a timeless classic up there with Casablanca, The African Queen and The Quiet Man.
Professione: reporter (1975)
The Passenger is back and as mysterious as ever
This is from a feature I wrote 30 years ago, when 30 myself, on The Passenger for a now defunct London film magazine (Films Illustrated) where readers could discuss/analyse/deconstruct favourite movies (before the age of video and DVD!). I am revisiting it now that The Passenger is available again after a 20 year disappearance. However as I am limited to 1,000 words I have had to edit
"The Passenger will remain a film of the mid '70s, as one of Antonioni's previous films, Blow-Up, remains a film for and symbolises the '60s. It also contains one of Jack Nicholson's definitive performances (along with Chinatown, The Last Detail and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest) and has, perhaps, been a trifle overshadowed by these films all emerging within a short period of time of each other and the enormous publicity and word-of-mouth they have generated. But The Passenger has proved itself a strangely durable film and, like Chinatown, one that will remain around for a long time, both in the consciousness of its admirers and, one hopes, constant revivals.
Antonioni's third English-speaking film, The Passenger, like Blow-Up and Zabriskie Point, centres around the oblique, unresolved aspects of life. In Antonioni's films - as in life - there are no easy answers, things are not tidied up, explained, sorted out.
So it is with The Passenger. Jack Nicholson is Locke, an outwardly successful television journalist, but he also is being eaten away by his own disillusionment with the job and the value of his interviews, and that general malaise that affects Antonioni's people. When the film begins, we find him on location in Chad where his jeep breaks down and gets bogged in the sand. Locke breaks down and collapses on the sand as the camera pans away over the strange but beautiful desert panorama.
We next see Locke, in an advanced state of exhaustion, struggling back to his hotel and a cool shower, and discovering that the man in the next room, who looks rather like him, has died. We are very conscious of the stillness in the hotel - the blue walls, a fly buzzing, the noise of the fan, Locke staring intently at the dead man on the bed. We hear their dialogue of the previous evening and the aural flashback changes to a visual one by some very neat editing. Locke changes rooms, passport photos and luggage, and finds it quite easy to take on a new identity. How desperate his need is can be judged by his conversations back in Europe with the free, liberated girl (Maria Schneider) he meets up with. ("I used to be somebody else, but I traded him in"). She, incidentally, is freer than Locke could ever be.
It transpires Locke has taken over the identity of a gun-runner, Robertson. Perhaps it is best not to go into the plot in too much detail. Best all round just to pick out some of the marvellous moments along the way to the final breathtaking conceit. There's Locke, back in London, daringly visiting his old haunts - delighting in being someone else, but of course he isn't. Later on he is suspended in a cable car high about the ocean his arms outstretched like a bird in flight. Later still, the girl asks him what he is running from, and he tells her to turn around and we see what she sees - the road behind them.
By now, we the audience are caught up in this mesmerising film and its deliberations of he mysteries of identity. We are now totally involved in Locke's plight. He has given up one identity for another and becomes more and more helpless as the situation gets out of his control. Finally, in a remote Spanish hotel he can go no further, either as himself or as his new identity, as his wife and the gun-runners close in on him. One shouldn't spoil the last sequence for those still to see it, but it shows the only real freedom from identity and self is in death. The final scene shows us the aftermath: as the sun goes down, the hotel-keeper comes out for a walk, a woman sits in the doorway resting. For some people, who do not question their existence, the continuity of life goes on.
Antonioni, now in his sixties, is one of the great Italian directors who, like Fellini and Visconti, burst upon the international film scene in the late '50s. His trilogy of Italian films, L'Avventura, La Notte and L'Eclisse, and his first colour film The Red Desert (all with Monica Vitti) contributed to the renaissance of the European cinema. Then he switched to his English-speaking films, of which Blow-Up was the first. He is as much a master of landscape as John Ford was in his genre. He thinks nothing of painting whole streets or trees to get the effect he wants. Blow-Up is the only film from the whole, crazy period of Swinging London films that has not dated and which encapsulates what it was really all about. It remains one of the great films. Like Bergman, Bunuel or Fellini you either respond to his vision or reject it totally. His images linger on in the mind, his work never dates."
That is what part of what I wrote in 1976 and The Passenger indeed remains endlessly fascinating and particularly so now that it is available again. Even at the Antonioni retrospective in 2005 it was not available to include in the season, but we did have cast members Jenny Runacre and Steve Berkoff there to speak warmly of it's making and importance.
Let's hope a new generation will discover its timeless appeal, and amazingly Antonioni now in his 90s is still with us, if rather frail. A 2005 short of his was shown last year on the great statue of Moses in Rome and was also in its own way fascinatingly mysterious.
Dead Ringer (1963)
Dead Ringer is terrific !
I saw 'Dead Ringers' or 'Dead Image' as it was called here in the UK on its first release in 1964 (when very young!)and friends and I enjoyed it as a great Bette Davis role (roles) after Baby Jane and Charlotte - perhaps the last of her leading lady roles. This is obviously Bette at her most mannered - so many great quotable lines: "Castoffs, but you haven't seen my castoffs...", !"you HAVE'NT GOT that amount of money!", "Poor Father, A Wino" etc.
I had not seen it for years, until discussing it with another poster on these boards recently, which made me dig out my VHS copy and I was entranced all over again! If only the DVD was available here in the UK, looking forward to those special features! On the face of it here is a dumpy middle aged woman in a low budget picture in black and white, and she is mesmerising. You can't take your eyes off her.
Definiately up there with the great Bette moments: "Edie's Cocktail Bar on Figueroa" etc. Now for another look at "the Anniversary" !