Wild River

Two of my current fascinations Montgomery Clift and Elia Kazan come together in a film I saw as part of the BFI's Montgomery Clift season last night - Wild River (1960). As with all the films that these two great artists have made it did not disappoint.

It was a really important film for Kazan who wanted to imbibe the lead character Chuck Glover (Montgomery Clift) with all the idealism that he himself had in the 1930s. Chuck works for the TVA and thinks he can make people's lives better by implementing a scheme to dam the Tennessee River which will prevent floods and provide electricity. The only fly in the ointment is that some people don't want to sell the land that needs to be flooded to allow the scheme to go ahead. Glover travels to Tennessee to smooth things over, sees that things are more complex, upsets the status quo by employing a black labour force at equal pay, falls in love with one of the 'enemies', and gets attacked by a mob.

The other stars of the film are Jo Van Fleet who plays the unmoving matriarch Ella Garth and a luminous Lee Remick in one of her first film roles who plays her granddaughter and Glover's love interest Carol.

The film looks great - shot on location in Tennessee the landscape is vast and the skies are always blue (whenever it isn't raining). Jo Van Fleet is also very good as the feisty old lady. But of course it is Monty and more surprisingly Remick that hold the fascination for me. Their faces are so enthralling and their personas so captivating that I wanted them on screen the whole time. Their affair is depicted in a wholly unusual way - nothing explicit is ever shown but the erotic tension between them is palpable. A comment from the IMDb message board explains one such scene...

I like the scene where Clift tells Remick not to walk around in front of him, then she goes to the cupboard at the back of the room and gives herself a splinter, only then does Clift embrace her. I like the way it is staged, it is unusual for the emotional height of a scene to take place so far from the camera, it feels more genuine than if they were just shot in ever tighter close ups.

In fact Clift rushes to Remick when she exclaims in pain and proceeds to vigorously suck her finger before they embrace - wow.

Apparently Kazan originally wanted Brando for the part (because as he says he wanted Brando for everything at the time) and Marilyn was mooted for Remick's part. This would of course have changed everything. Kazan says that he altered the emphasis of the film to fit Monty - he realised that he couldn't convincingly play the dominant partner in the relationship with Remick and so he switched things to make her take the lead. This makes the film very different from standard 1950s fare and very contemporary.

The film didn't get much a release in 1960 as the studio didn't think it would find an audience and it is generally pretty much unseen. If you get the chance I wholly recommend it.

As for Monty I'll leave you with these words from Trevor Johnson's intro to the BFI's Montgomery Clift season. ... 'He lived fast, he died young, and he remained cool enough to have The Clash write their song The Right Profile about him…. "That’s Montgomery Clift, honey!".

A Royal Affair

It didn't make my 2012 top ten because I have only just seen it and I didn't see it at the cinema. But A Royal Affair is definitely one of the best films of 2012 - it is really very, very good. It has been nominated for the Best Foreign Film Oscar but I suspect that it may lose out to Amour. 

The film is Danish but please don't let that put you off - and if you watch the killing you may even find some of the language familiar - tak anyone. The female lead in the film - Alicia Vikander - played Kitty in Anna Karenina and has a kind of wonderfully blank quality that is also there in Elizabeth Olsen's face. The hero Mads Mikkelson has played baddies in mainstream films such as Casino Royal and also has an extraordinary face with a long straight nose, high cheek bones and wide lips.

The plot is a piece of Danish history that I knew nothing about - but it is compelling. It will remind you in places of other films (Marie Antoinette (2006), The Madness of King George (1994), Barry Lyndon (1975) etc.) but it is perfectly composed and contained and very much its own thing. It is also very beautiful.

Top Films of 2012

Its that time of year - so I thought I would join in and add my top ten films of 2012 to the many other lists. These are films that I saw on their first UK release at the cinema during 2012.

1: The Master
Stylish, intriguing and actually masterful. It might not have a straightforward story but it is always engaging. Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant (surely his character is modelled on the tics and quirks of Montgomery Clift) and I love love love the scene in the department store.

2: Martha Marcy May Marlene
Creepily atmospheric film about getting involved with a cult. The star, Elizabeth Olsen, has the most brilliantly expressive big face, her thoughts ripple across it making it readable without the need for dialogue. The music by Jackson C Frank is also very very good.

3: Shame
Michael Fassbender is a tour de force. I enjoyed his android version of Peter O'Toole in Prometheus but it is Brandon in Shame that is his major achievement of the year. His depiction of this dysfunctional character is deeply real, managing to be repulsive and strangely attractive at the same time. The acting performance of the year.

4: Electrick Children
A first film for director Rebecca Thomas. Charming story which pairs up a naive Mormon heroine (If this film had been made in the 1950s she could have been played by Marilyn Monroe) with a shambolic kind hearted stoner.

5: Amour
Not fun but it is completely engrossing which considering the whole film is set in a small apartment is quite an achievement. Occasionally director Haneke slips into cruelness but for the most part the film has a chilling honesty to it.

6: Silver Linings Playbook
Really enjoyable non-cheesy rom com (although there is not that much com). I also liked Take This Waltz and Liberal Arts which kind of have a similar feel to them but Silver Linings Playbook comes out on top for its originality and dancing.

7: The Descendants
I like director / writer Alexander Payne's downbeatness which makes things seem real. This is a story of a quiet guy played by George Clooney and how he copes with the circumstances that he finds himself in. Its also great to see Hawaii on screen post Elvis's Paradise Hawaiian Style.

8: Anna Karenina
Beautiful. Full of little Brechtian bits and pieces - most of the film is set in an old theatre. As with Robert Pattinson in Cosmopolis (see below) Aaron Johnson is perfectly cast as a shallow, handsome young man.

9: Cosmopolis
Worth the admission price just to look at the beautiful Pattinson face which is on screen in close-up for just about the entire film. Pattinson stars as a spoilt New Yorker who lives life purely on the surface. For most of the film he is in the back of a limousine which is stuck in traffic at various points around NYC. I think that director Cronenberg is having a little bit of a laugh at Pattinson and his stardom (in the same way that he has with Kiera Knightly in A Dangerous Method by making her gurn her way throughout the film). But Rob somehow runs with this and gives a really strong performance.

10: Goodbye First Love
There is something very French about the heroine and the story both of which have their roots in the director's own life. The heroine is self obsessed and a little amoral and the plot is unexpected, untidy and rambling but this gives the film a ring of truth that a neat beginning, middle and end could never provide.

Other honourable mentions (in no particular order) go to...
Take This Waltz
Liberal Arts
Starlet
On the Road
Skyfall
Breaking Dawn Part 2
Young Adult
She Monkeys

Disappointments were...
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Holy Motors
Avengers Assemble
Berberian Sound Studio
A Dangerous Method
Killing Them Softly

And my rock bottom film is...
Rock of Ages (truly, truly terrible, I am ashamed that I went to a cinema to see it)

It Always Rains on Sunday

I went to see It Always Rains on Sunday a couple of days ago at the BFI. It is a British film made by Robert Hamer in 1947 and is part of the BFIs Dark Ealing series. I have now become slightly obsessed with it because it is so good - it is going to be released around the country and on DVD so if you get the chance check it out.

It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)

The film is set in Bethnal Green, stars Googie Withers (who is brilliant) and centres on the claustrophobic interior of a small terraced house. The plot has a bit of everything - melodrama, thriller, action, romance but what I liked the most were the everyday details. The record shop on Petticoat Lane, the bits of Yiddish dialogue and talk of Jewish families moving to Stamford Hill,  the Anderson Shelter in the backyard, the bread and marg etc etc. These details are a seamless part of the whole. The film is sometimes called a British film noir and also cited as the first kitchen sink film. It does have both of those genres represented in it but like another British film that is really worth seeing,  Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957), it is not easily categorised.

Woman in a Dressing Gown (1957)

Why 'is Kristen Stewart's Bella a Good Role Model?' is an irrelevant question.

Kristen Stewart as Bella in Twilight

Kristen Stewart was interviewed in The Guardian yesterday, mostly about her new film Snow White and the Huntsman but also about the thorny subject of Twilight and its suitability as an important text/film for young girls. For those who don't know Kristen Stewart was one of the stars of the Twilight series of films. The first film was a low budget affair directed by Catherine Hardwicke which escalated into a huge money spinner for all concerned. The following films are slicker and less interesting but have nonetheless been massive blockbusters the world over. Interviewer Kira Cochrane says about the character Stewart plays in Twilight:

'Bella Swan might be devoid of any obvious interests beyond her lust for vampire Edward Cullen and werewolf Jacob Black, but her very blankness has allowed a generation of young women who are in love or would like to be to live out their longings for dangerous, unattainable men.'


and goes on to say:


'She (Stewart) plays a character who is a terrible role model in Twilight, but in person is a blessed relief.'


I think that this misses the point that she was interestingly edging towards in the first quote. Bella is a teenage girl who has led a pretty ordinary, unhappy life; she is socially awkward and does not fit in anywhere. She is intelligent and good at her school work but her real love (before meeting Edward) is the escapist world of fiction and she is a voracious reader. She is blank in the way that any teenager is blank, the experiences that form their character are still to come. In Twilight she meets a man (who yes does happen to be a vampire which has all sorts of metaphorical meanings) who she falls passionately in love with. This happens in life (although admittedly it tends not to involve a vampire) and critics who disapprove just need to try and remember back to how it was. Bella does not act stupidly - she is very sensible mostly, and like anyone would be, is excited by the new opportunities that this first love opens up. So why is she a bad role model? And why does Cochrane think that Stewart, the woman and actress, should be anything like the made-up character she plays in a film?


Interestingly in the print version of the newspaper there is an ad for a recently released French film whose English title is Goodbye First Love. Presumably this placement is not accidental. The film covers very similar ground to Twilight with the exception that fifteen year old Camille is sleeping with her older boyfriend and he is not into her as much as Edward is into Bella. Camille's feelings are intense and she relishes the misery of being in love. The director, Mia Hanson-Love, has said that the story is autobiographical - so these things do actual happen. 

Lola Créton as Camille in Goodbye First Love

Twilight has been such a huge success because it taps into feelings that are really felt and elevates them to a situation of heightened romanticism (maybe like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre etc etc). Rationally the conclusion can only be that Bella is a much better teenage role model that the mooning, un-criticised by the press Camille because she is much, much stronger willed. But ultimately why does she have to be seen as a role model at all. She is, as Cochrane pointed out, a blank canvas and as such we can project our desires onto her. Every James Bond style action hero is not pushed as some kind of role model for young men. So please leave Bella alone and let Kristen Stewart get on with her career.

This Week's Film Top Ten

I have watched ten films in the last week and some of them have been really very bad. So I thought I would give my top ten count down... Oh and Avengers Assemble and Damsels in Distress deserve their place below a very annoying Barbra Streisand film at the very bottom of the list.

1: Buffalo 66
2: An American in Paris
3: Sideways
4: Goodbye First Love
5: Jane Eyre
6: The Young Girls of Rochefort
7: Bridesmaids
8: On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
9: Damsels in Distress
10: Marvel Avengers Assemble

Buffalo 66 takes the number one spot. I haven't seen it for years and I hadn't remembered how much bits of it look like a David Lynch film. Yes it is pretentious but Christina Ricci is just stunning - she looks like a sulky little piglet in her baby blue dress and eyeshadow and super glossy lips. If you haven't seen it you should.

In Defence of Madonna's W.E. (kind of)

I can't help feeling that Madonna's main problem is that she doesn't know how to rein it in (see her performance at the 2012 Superbowl final). W.E. is her second film as a director and has everything in it and by this I mean ever idea and whim that she has ever had. It is autobiographical and historic, stylistically all over the place, a thriller and a revisionist drama. But despite what the critics say it is definitely not one of the worst films ever made (as was suggested by Mark Kermonde on Radio 5 on 20.01.12), it is quite revealing and actually pretty entertaining. AN Wilson on Radio 4's Front Row had it about right - W.E. is about fairy tales and how they don't happen.

Abbie Cornish as Wally Winthrop in W.E.

Lots of reviews of W.E. are very scathing about the complex structure of the film which combines a modern day tale of a young woman with the unfortunate name Wally (named by a family who were for some unexplained reason Wallis lovers) with the historic story of the Duchess of Windsor. Maybe Madonna should have kept it simple a la The Kings Speech but personally I found the modern tale quite captivating and the history a little dull. Abbie Cornish who I loved in Jane Campion's Bright Star plays Wally. She has the most extraordinary big face which I find visually fascinating - it's gauche and sophisticated all at once. She is trapped in an unhappy relationship and this is where a flurry of what I suspect are autobiographical references come in. It appears that her British husband is unfaithful, she wants children, he doesn't and he leaves her alone much of the time. When she spends money at an auction buying some of Wallis Simpson's gloves he goes crazy. She gave up her career as an auction house assistant - which he thought was a silly job - to live her fantasy life of the much loved wife, now he controls her - he has the money and the power. There are some really pertinent points here which male critics fail to grasp - it doesn't matter how rich or poor you are this kind of scenario is being played out in the lives of women the world over. To escape from her life Wally daydreams and even talks to Wallis Simpson. This is pure Kilimnik - a woman escaping an abusive relationship by thinking herself into another life. Of course fairy tales do not come true and just as Wallis Simpson's dream life became a kind of gilded prison so does Wally's marriage. Mark Kermode has a problem with rich people moaning about their lives - but surely you can suffer emotionally whether you are rich or poor. 

Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson in W.E.

Aside from the emotional heart of the film there are some great stylistic touches and as shallow as it may be I have to admit that the clothes are beautiful. On the downside too much of the film looks like fashion shoots or pop videos, a little more truth and a little less style would have helped the audience engage a little more. A scene of Wallis and Edward on the beach is self consciously lifted from Hoyningen-Huene's famous 1930 fashion image, another scene with numerous umbrellas is taken from Madonna's video for Rain directed by Mark Romanek. Oh and making the Queen Mum a major baddie was never going to go down well in the UK, however badly history has misrepresented poor Wallis. 

Hoyningen-Huene

In a feature about this year's Oscar nominations in The Observer Bidisha noted that women have generally been overlooked with a general lack of award nominations for the likes of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Wuthering Heights and Bridesmaids and she goes on to say 'guess what, Madonna's W.E. is a thousand times better than royal borefest The King's Snooze, in which a man spends two hours overcoming a speech impediment while Helena Bonham Carter looks on. W.E. actually has proper roles for women in it – and, sorry haters, Madonna can direct.'

Mrs Simpson and Edward as depicted in W.E.