Scopophiliac
Recently caught Henri-Georges Clouzot's last film, the misleadingly titled, and even more so in its English language title, La prisonniere. Nothing in his oeuvre hitherto quite prepares you for it…
A Good Year
Peter Mayle's book, A Year in Provence, was a newstand hit at the same time I spent my own very formative year there, and so I resisted reading it and, for a long time, resisted watching Scott's screen version of it…
Face of a star
Just saw Face of a Fugitive on Film Four, and what a great B-movie Western it is. But more than that, it caused me to reflect as I watched Fred MacMurray's effortlessly charismatic performance,…
High Noon and Carl Foreman
So The Duke despised it ('Whoever heard of a sheriff running around asking for help against a bunch of gunmen?'), Hawks hated it (not enough action to keep it going),…
I Am Cubist
I made a discovery a couple of weeks ago from which I am still reeling with surprise and elation. It was Mikhail Kalatozov’s 1964 film, I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba), made as the world recovered from the Bay of Pigs crisis…
Straight as a Bullitt
I was taking another look at an old favourite the other week – Peter Yates’s classic police thriller, Bullitt (1968). It is a movie I have seen some nine times – I used to catch it regularly on ITV late-night screenings at one time,…
A Kubrickian Odyssey
Last month the Ipswich Film Society showed Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory, in part to commemorate the hundred years that have elapsed since the commencement of the First World War…
Salon de musique
Stung by Patrice Leconte’s latest underwhelming effort (A Promise) at the IFT last month, I dusted off one of my old favourites, The Hairdresser’s Husband, to be reminded of former glories…
Opening Credits
What with exam marking and report writing it has been a pretty fallow month on the cinematic front so, if I may be permitted an indulgence, I thought I would take my cue from Sight & Sound’s very successful ‘closing shot’ series at the end of their monthly magazine…
The Weary Death
Death holds out his hands for the innocent babe’s life, but the heroine after some hesitation demurs…
Rebel without applause?
Rebel without a Cause is one of those films, like The Seven Year Itch, which acquired mythic status because it offered the spectacle of a tragically short-lived star persona stripped to its essentials…
Abel in the City
Still on a high after this weekend's screening of Abel Gance's silent masterpiece, Napoléon (1927),…
Whatever happened to Rita Gam...?
...the actress who came from TV and returned to TV, made a sizzling debut in The Thief (1952, pictured) opposite Ray Milland,…
Ten Greatest
Following on from Sight & Sound's Critics' Top Ten in September of this year, I thought I would have a go at one myself…