Sometimes life gets in the way of watching movies, and this year it felt like that happened too often for my liking. Although I saw 119 older films in cinemas this year, which many would see as a very substantial total, I feel like a number of retrospectives and screenings passed me by due to me not having the time or focus to be able to fit them in. I’m hoping I’ll be able to breathe a little easier in 2025 and have more time to devote to discovering and revisiting films at repertory screenings, especially with the BFI’s Film on Film event – such a joy in 2023 – returning next summer.
Of the 119 rep screenings I did attend, 81 were projected from 35mm, with three on 16mm and one on 70mm. The 50 that most vividly lingered in my memory are listed below.
50 - Into the Night (John Landis, 1985) – Prince Charles Cinema, 35mm
This film came out a few months before Scorsese’s After Hours. Both pictures follow a similar template – an unassuming, frustrated man ventures into the city at night, meets a mysterious woman, and gets caught up in an increasingly bizarre nightmare – but while Scorsese sustained a tone of frenzied comic energy, Landis doesn’t do much of anything with this material. The story is barely coherent and the film has a tendency to meander when it should be racing, but there is some fun to be had in the eclectic cast that Landis enlisted, including two charming on-the-cusp-of-stardom leads in Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfieffer. This pair is backed by a supporting cast that includes David Bowie, Richard Farnsworth, Vera Miles and Bruce McGill, but Landis also populates the film with bizarre cameos from fellow directors – David Cronenberg, Jonathan Demme, Roger Vadim, Lawrence Kasdan, Paul Bartel and Don Siegel to name just a few. The film is tonally messy and only fitfully amusing, although perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Landis didn’t entirely seem to have his mind on the job, as his trial for involuntary manslaughter was taking place as he shot.
49 - The Street Singer (Jean de Marguenat, 1937) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Arthur Tracy became a radio star in the 1930s as The Street Singer, and a number of films attempted to capitalise on his popularity, although his acting career never quite took off. He's a bit stiff as the stage star who leaves a rehearsal in his beggar's costume and is mistaken for a vagrant by the lovely Margaret Lockwood. In fact, Tracy is outshone by pretty much every actor here, with Arthur Riscoe on boisterous form as Lockwood's father, a conjurer and thief, and Emile Boreo delivering an eccentric turn as the frantic director counting down to curtain up with no leading man. The pianist team of Rawicz and Landauer impress with their synchronised performances, and this enjoyable film climaxes amusingly at a chaotic opening night where the revolving stage spins out of control.
48 - Love Object (Robert Parigi, 2003) – ICA, Digital
This creepy low-budget picture begins with an intriguing premise. Desmond Harrington is shy and awkward writer of technical manuals who purchases a lifelike sex doll named Nikki, whom he begins to style after his attractive co-worker Lia (Melissa Sagemiller). When he eventually does begin to develop a relationship with Lisa, the doll appears to develop jealous feelings and becomes a sinister and dominating presence in his life. The film is occasionally quite perceptive on the subject of objectification and there is a hint of Vertigo in Kenneth’s attempts to turn Lisa and the doll into facsimiles of one another, but mostly it plays best as a freaky tale that walks the line between awkward comedy and genuine horror, a line that it perhaps slips off a few times, particularly towards the end. Harrington and Sagemiller are both very good and there are great supporting turns from Rip Torn, as Kenneth’s boss, and Udo Kier, as his fatally nosy landlord.
47 - The Tamarind Seed (Blake Edwards, 1974) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
"This is a nice film," Julie Andrews said of The Tamarind Seed. "It's just right for my comeback." This was her first feature in four years and it’s not hard to see why she plumped for a film directed by her husband that required her to spend time on location in Barbados. It’s a lush romantic spy drama in which Andrews’ Home Office worker falls for Omar Sharif’s Soviet attaché, and the pair’s relationship becomes the focus for both the British and Russian authorities. Until the explosive finale, this is an unhurried picture that is more convincing and involving dealing with the romantic side of things than it is when engaging in the spycraft and attempting to generate thrills. A pleasure to watch, thanks to the two stars, Freddie Young’s excellent widescreen cinematography, and John Barry’s lush score.
46 - Murder in the Family (Albert Parker, 1938) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Not really a whodunit, although it sets itself up as one, giving plenty of people a motive to do away with the dreadful Aunt Octavia (Annie Esmond), who is as rich as she is unpleasant. Albert Parker’s film shows us how she meets her end, but because nobody confesses to the crime, everybody in the family falls under suspicion. This quota quickie is a simple but effective story about a family trying to remain strong under intolerable pressure from the outside. Parker’s direction exhibits little flair, but the ensemble is strong and it boasts a couple of stars of the future – Roddy McDowall and Glynis Johns play two of the children, while Jessica Tandy is wonderful in her first major screen role. A striking beauty, she holds the attention with an unmistakable star quality, and it’s a shame she didn’t have a much bigger film career in these early years.
45 - Dance Pretty Lady (Anthony Asquith, 1931) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
This early sound film from Anthony Asquith began life as a film called The Soul of Jenny Pearl, and you can see hints of greatness within it, but it was a victim of studio interference. The butchered 65-minute version we have cuts a wildly different third act in which chorus girl Jenny (Ann Casson) marries a man who we never see in this edit and suffers through an abusive marriage. Asquith’s original ending sounded like a brutally sad one, but here we have her embracing her lover in a rushed and unsatisfying conclusion. Still, much of the film is beautifully composed, with Asquith showing the same eye for bold compositions and camera moves that he displayed in his silent films, and the use of sound is remarkably sophisticated and atmospheric. There’s also a terrific lead performance from the spirited Casson, who was 15 years old at the time of shooting. I’d love to see what she would have done with the dramatic scenes excised from this film.
44 - The Last Dawn (Michael Curtiz, 1917) – Lumiere-Mastroianni, Bologna, Digital
A film directed by Mihály Kertész, who later established himself as one of the great Hollywood directors under the name Michael Curtiz. This Hungarian silent feature is a study of despair and the value of life, beginning with a man being prevented from committing suicide, and subsequently following another character who takes out a life insurance policy with the intention of dying in exactly one year. For most of this film’s running time it’s a pretty nondescript affair, although Curtiz’s eye for framing shots is evident and he pulls off a couple of neat impressionistic tricks, but the culmination of the plot involves a bizarre twist ending and an absolutely hilarious reveal that makes it seem like Curtiz is foreshadowing David Fincher’s The Game.
43 - J'ai Tué (Roger Lion, 1924) – Lumiere-Mastroianni, Bologna, 35mm
The title translates as I Have Killed but that sets up false expectations for the picture, as the murder in question doesn’t occur until over an hour of the film has elapsed. The first two-thirds of the film focus on Hidéo (Sessue Hayakawa), a Japanese arts dealer who arrives in Paris after losing his studio in an earthquake, with archive footage of the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923 being cut in here as flashbacks. He moves in with Max Maxudian and Huguette Duflos, who accept him as part of the family, but he soon gets caught up in the affair that Duflos is carrying on behind her husband’s back, and it is this situation that eventually leads to Hidéo standing trial for a murder he did not commit. The film is not particularly gripping on the whole, but Sessue Hayakawa is a compelling screen presence, and every scene in which he appears instantly sparks with new life, not least when he leaps across the courtroom to confront his accuser.
42 - Forbidden (George King, 1949) – BFI Southbank, 35mm.jpeg)
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This British drama is most notable for its depiction of Blackpool’s ‘Golden Mile’ in its heyday, with this bustling location acting as the atmospheric backdrop to a tale of romance, deception and murder. In his final feature film, Douglass Montgomery is the down-on-his-luck pharmacist working on a fairground stall who falls for a candy floss seller (the very engaging Hazel Court) but is stuck with a deeply unpleasant wife (Patricia Burke). He plots to get rid of her, and the film comes up with a neat little twist around this planned murder, which refreshes a familiar narrative. George King keeps things moving in a tight, no-fuss manner and the film builds to an almost Hitchcockian confrontation on Blackpool Tower, an exciting climax that leaves all of these breathless characters in need of a nice calming cup of tea.
41 - A Swordsman in the Twilight (Jeong Chang-Hwa, 1967) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Known primarily for his work with Shaw Brothers, for whom he directed King Boxer in 1972, Jeong Chang-Hwa shows his elegant way with action in this modest but handsomely crafted picture. He makes much use of the iconography of his mysterious protagonist, who arrives with his face covered by a large hat before whipping out his sword to cut down assailants. Flashbacks gradually reveal the source of his grievance and the spur for his revenge against the cackling villain, who is distinguished by some quite magnificent eyebrows. The fight scenes are staged and executed with a classical sense of composition and sharp editing, and the film is beautifully photographed in black-and-white by Bae Seong-hak. There’s nothing hugely surprising of amazing about the film, it’s simply a very involving and well-crafted piece of work.
40 - Love 'em and Leave 'em (Frank Tuttle, 1926) – BFI Southbank, 16mm
When this film first appeared in the BFI programme I was sure I’d seen it before, but I was thinking of Why Be Good? from 1929, another department store comedy featuring Colleen Moore, who bears a striking resemblance to Louise Brooks. Although she has a supporting role in this film, Brooks is undoubtedly the star attraction here. She plays Janie, the younger sister of Mame (Evelyn Brent). While Mame is the good, dutiful older sister, Janie is flirtatious and reckless, getting unwisely involved with the wrong men (including her sister’s) and gambling away the money that she was supposed to be safeguarding for their department store’s annual dance. Love 'em and Leave 'em is ably directed by Frank Tuttle and it ends satisfyingly with Evelyn Brent dishing out some physical punishment to the shady Osgood Perkins.
39 - Pink Narcissus (James Bidgood, 1971) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
This is quite a spectacle. Crafted by James Bidgood (although his onscreen credit says Anonymous) over the course of seven years on a budget of $27k, Pink Narcissus is a vibrant homoerotic fantasia that's simultaneously charmingly amateurish and strikingly lush. The title obviously evokes Black Narcissus - a film celebrated for its incredible art direction - and the production and costume design here is extremely impressive, embracing artifice in the way Powell and Pressburger often did, and creating a series of delirious vignettes. There's not much to Pink Narcissus beyond its surface pleasures, and even at the relatively slim running time of 71 minutes it feels a bit one-note and overextended, but the the dreamy hothouse atmosphere that Bidgood concocts is quite captivating, and just when your interest might be starting to wane, the film shocks you into attention with an extreme close-up of a cock ejaculating directly at the camera.
38 - The Quiet Family (Kim Jee-woon, 1998) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
The debut feature by Kim Jee-woon – who soon afterwards found international acclaim with films like A Tale of Two Sisters, The Good, the Bad, the Weird and I Saw the Devil – The Quiet Family is a pitch-black comedy about a family struggling to establish a lodge in the mountains. Their attempts to get this business off the ground aren’t helped by the fact that their guests keep dying, and their attempts to cover up these deaths only results in an ever-increasing number of bodies that need to be disposed of. Kim wears his influences on his sleeve, notably Hitchcock and Scorsese, and he puts together a number of clever, skilfully crafted sequences that blend comedy and violence to startling effect. The ever-excellent Song Kang-ho is the standout performer, with his screams getting more high-pitched as the situation spirals out of control. A few years later, Takashi Miike loosely remade the film as The Happiness of the Katakuris.
37 - The Avenger of Davos (Heinrich Brandt, 1924) – Lumiere-Mastroianni, Bologna, 35mm
An enjoyably twisty drama about a con man attempting to swindle a wealthy industrialist and his daughter, The Avenger of Davos is most notable for being filmed against the backdrop of the 1924 Winter Sports Week, a spin-off from that year’s Summer Olympics that was later recognised by the IOC as "the first Olympic Winter Games". Heinrich Brandt occasionally cuts away from the main narrative to give us glimpses of the bobsleighing, skiing, ice hockey and other sports taking place around Chamonix, and he uses the location in other effective ways too, most notably during chase sequence that climaxes with an exciting set-piece on a moving train.
36 - Stolen Face (Terence Fisher, 1952) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Made a few years before Vertigo, this fascinating Hammer curio stars Paul Henreid as the arrogant plastic surgeon who believes he can cure criminals of their wicked ways by fixing their facial disfigurement. While on holiday he meets and falls for concert pianist Alice (played by Lizabeth Scott), but when he discovers that she is married, he decides to transform his next subject at Holloway prison into an exact copy of Alice. There’s also an element of Pygmalion here as Dr. Ritter attempts to introduce this kleptomaniac into the high life, but she keeps getting drawn back to her old ways, and her accent never changes, meaning we are treated to the bizarre sight of Lizabeth Scott’s memorably sultry voice being replaced by harsh cockney tones (she was dubbed by Mary Mackenzie). Aside from a rushed ending, Stolen Face is a pretty well-paced and entertaining drama, which was paired on this double-bill with Fisher’s To the Public Danger, another fine discovery.
35 - The Light of Asia (Franz Osten, Himanshu Rai, 1925) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Adapted from Edwin Arnold’s 1861 poem, this silent film tells the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, who founded Buddhism. Played by the film’s co-director Himansu Rai, he renounces his privileged life of wealth and seclusion and becomes a wandering ascetic, finding enlightenment through helping others. As evidenced by the presence of a German co-director, The Light of Asia was intended to repackage this story for European audiences, and the eye is drawn to the beauty of the locations (not to mention the beauty of Seeta Devi), which Osten and his team spent months filming in sweltering conditions. But beneath all of that, there is a very pure tale of faith and redemption here that almost evokes Pasolini’s The Gospel According to Matthew in its moving simplicity.
34 - Ballet Mécanique (Dudley Murphy, Fernand Léger, 1924) – Cinema Modernissimo, Bologna, 35mm
Made in collaboration with Man Ray, Dudley Murphy and Fernand Léger’s Ballet Mécanique is a startling experiment in film form. Throughout its twenty-minute running time, a series of shapes, photographs and film clips rapidly flash across the screen in a kaleidoscopic frenzy. Through the film’s hectic rhythm, it creates a sense of being trapped inside a machine; perhaps a commentary on our state of being in the modern world, although the film defies easy explanation. It’s a dazzling, mesmerising feat, given an extra burst of energy at this screening by Valentina Magaletti's drum-based live score.
33 - The Scapegoat (Robert Hamer, 1959) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Alec Guinness shows his brilliance in a variety of ways in this doppelgänger drama, which feels weirdly obscure when you consider it was directed by Robert Hamer, and adapted from the Daphne Du Maurier novel by Gore Vidal. It’s an inconsistent film, which may have something to do with its troubled production history, but Guinness carries it superbly as both the timid schoolteacher on holiday and the underhand French nobleman he gets mistaken for. As well as doing double duty in front of the camera, Guinness often had to steer the ship, as Hamer was losing his battle against alcoholism by this point in his career and was often too drunk to direct. A number of scenes in the film are impressively directed, not least the couple of instances in which Guinness acts against himself, which boast some very impressive trick photography. Bette Davis enlivens a couple of moments with her cranky performance as bedridden Countess.
32 - Lucretia Lombard (Jack Conway, 1923) – Lumiere-Mastroianni, Bologna, 16mm
I saw the first five minutes of Lucretia Lombard last year, when this vintage 16mm print was shown in Bologna, but the projector failed as soon as Norma Shearer appeared – perhaps the excitement generated by seeing Shearer in one of her earliest films was simply too much for the machinery to handle! I was glad they had another go with the print this year as it’s a highly entertaining melodrama, which only gets wilder as it progresses, throwing in some unexpected twist every ten minutes. The finale is a grand spectacle that sees Shearer and Irene Rich fleeing a forest fire and evading bears and wild dogs before trying to survive being swept away by the rapids – it’s a sequence that boasts some pretty impressive miniatures and stuntwork.
31 - Blood and Sand (Fred Niblo, 1922) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Seeing Rouben Mamoulian’s Blood and Sand on a nitrate print last year was an extraordinary thrill, and while this earlier silent version can’t quite measure up to the sensory overload of that experience, it’s a fine film, with Rudolph Valentino being very well cast as the matador Gallardo. He shares some particularly strong scenes with Nita Naldi, who vamps up a storm as the seductive Doña Sol. The film was directed by Fred Niblo although Dorothy Arzner was one of the key architects behind its success. She was working on the film as an editor when she suggested cutting stock footage of real bullfights in amongst the close-ups of Valentino, an idea that is credited with saving Paramount a great deal of money as well as bringing an impressive sense of realism to the scenes in the arena.
30 - Twins of Evil (John Hough, 1971) – Prince Charles Cinema, 35mm
I happened to see two John Hough-directed Hammer films on 35mm in the space of a week this year. The Legend of Hell House was a mildly entertaining film, ultimately most notable for the completely insane twist ending, but Twins of Evil is a terrific vampire film. It’s built around a piece of stunt casting, with Madeleine and Mary Collinson being previously best known for being identical twins who posed in Playboy magazine. They give decent performances – especially Mary, who is seduced by Count Karnstein and turns to the dark side – but the real star turn here is from Peter Cushing, who is on magnificent form as the puritanical witch-hunter in whose care these twins have been left. There are some neat trick shots in which the vampires’ lack of a reflection is shown in the mirror, and the craftmanship is impeccable throughout, with the film offering lots of fog-shrouded atmosphere, a dose of gratuitous nudity, and some satisfying beheadings.
29 - An Officer and a Spy (Roman Polanski, 2019) – Phoenix Cinema, Digital
An Officer and a Spy (or J’accuse) was released in France in 2019 to critical acclaim and it earned Roman Polanski the Best Director award at the following year’s Cesars (sparking protests and walkouts), but remarkably, until this event which took place as part of the Jewish Film Festival, the film had never been screened in any English-speaking country. It’s easy to see why – if the idea of distributing Polanski himself isn’t distasteful enough, his suggestion that he identifies with wrongfully persecuted Dreyfus doesn’t help his case – but the film is an absorbing and beautifully crafted retelling of The Dreyfus Affair, which certainly deserves to find an audience. Adapted by Polasnki and Robert Harris from Harris’s novel, An Officer and a Spy begins with the sentencing of Dreyfus (Louis Garrel) for treason but the protagonist is investigator Georges Picquart (Jean Dujardin), who begins to unravel the anti-Semitic case that was built against him. It’s a sober, straightforward piece of storytelling, elevated by the uniformly fine performances, rich period details, and Polanski’s casually excellent direction.
28 - The Scent of Green Papaya (Tran Anh Hung, 1993) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Tran Anh Hung’s The Taste of Things was one of my favourite new releases in 2024, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to see his debut feature, and I was especially pleased I got to enjoy it on a gorgeous 35mm print. The film’s narrative is a thin one, concerning a young peasant girl who is hired to work for a wealthy family in 1950s Saigon, but as the title suggests, it is sensory pleasures rather than plot details that primarily interest this filmmaker. Brilliantly shot by Benoît Delhomme, the film creates a rich atmosphere that you can practically taste and smell. Tran is so alive to evoking every sensation – the feeling of rain on skin, of papaya juice on the fingers, the breath of a loved one – and the camera is constantly gliding through this house as if hungrily in search of new sights and sounds. It is a wholly intoxicating experience.
27 - Merlusse (Marcel Pagnol, 1935) – Cinema Modernissimo, Bologna - 35mm
Having released The Holdovers in cinemas last year, Alexander Payne was on hand in Bologna to introduce the film that had inspired it. Pagnol’s film is a much more modest offering than Payne’s – running for 72 minutes vs. 133 – but the bones of the story are the same, with the main character being a cranky schoolteacher with a glass eye and a strong odour of fish, forced to spend Christmas supervising the students who have nowhere to go. Pagnol directs with such a deft touch, quickly giving us a sharp sense of these characters, and each scene is an affecting miniature of characterisation, humour and insight. Henri Poupon is terrific as the gruff teacher, and the film’s climactic depiction of kindness and generosity is genuinely touching without the film ever becoming pushily sentimental.
26 - Silent Sherlock (Maurice Elvey, George Ridgewell, 1921-1923) – Alexandra Palace, Digital
The is the first instalment in a mammoth restoration effort, with the Stoll Pictures Sherlock Holmes collection containing 45 shorts and two features. The three shorts presented at this special screening were A Scandal in Bohemia, The Golden Pince-Nez and The Final Problem, and they demonstrated how well the filmmakers adapted Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories to the two-reeler format, efficiently and entertainingly setting up the mystery, deduction and solution, and judiciously using flashbacks to reveal key details. Holmes is played in these films by Eille Norwood – an actor who won the approval of Conan Doyle himself – and he is a pleasure to watch, especially when Holmes is donning a disguise, something Norwood took evident pleasure in. I can’t wait to enjoy the rest of these films when the BFI has completed this invaluable restoration.
25 - The Wrestler and the Clown (Konstantin Yudin, Boris Barnet, 1957) – Lumiere-Scorsese, Bologna, 35mm
This tribute to the circuses of his youth was a passion project for director Konstantin Yudin, but he died suddenly a few weeks into production. Boris Barnet stepped in to complete the shoot, and the result is a marvellous, heartfelt portrait of lives lived under the big top. The two title characters are the wrestler Poddubny (Stanislav Chekan) – inspired by a real-life professional wrestler – and the clown Durov (Aleksandr Mikhaylov), who meet en route to the circus and become steadfast friends. They share a number of triumphs and tragedies over the years, including a devastating moment involving a trapeze artist. The film unfolds in an episodic fashion but every scene has a vivid sense of spontaneity and life, not just in the atmosphere that Barnet evokes within the circus, but also in the sense of community that we see in Poddubny’s hometown when he quits the circus and returns to the family farm. The use of colour is gorgeous throughout too. A wonderful film.
24 - Au Secours! (Abel Gance, 1924) – Cinema Modernissimo, Bologna, 35mm
Between his two monumental productions La Roue and Napoléon, Abel Gance found time for this entertaining little Max Linder vehicle. The film arose after Linder dared the director to try and make a film in three days, and a wager is at the heart of this hastily constructed story too, with Linder taking the bet that he can spend one hour in a reputedly haunted castle without calling for help. This the excuse Gance needs to pack the film with as many effects and trick shots as he can muster, as Linder is plagued by spooky mannequins, ghosts and a variety of wild animals who appear out of nowhere. Gance seems to shift the entire dimensions of the frame, and there is the same sheer delight in the delirious possibilities of moviemaking here that you can find in Keaton’s Sherlock, Jr., which was released in the same year.
23 - The Night (Mohammad Malas, 1992) – Cinema Jolly, Bologna, 35mm
Mohammad Malas’ Dreams of the City was one of my favourite discoveries of 2023, so I was thrilled to have the opportunity to dig deeper into his filmography with a rare screening of The Night. This is a more abstract and elusive picture than Dreams of the City, with Malas blending memories, dreams and fiction to evoke the experience of growing up in Quneitra against the backdrop of growing tensions with Israel. I thought of filmmakers like Terence Davies and Andrei Tarkovsky as I watched The Night, frequently agog at the beauty of the sequences that Malas was crafting. The central narrative thread and emotional core of the picture is harder to grasp than it was in Dreams of the City, but over the course of the film’s running time, the accumulation of images which are clearly drawn from a deeply personal well builds a considerable emotional force.
22 - Mortu Nega (Flora Gomes, 1988) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Notable for being the first film produced in Guinea-Bissau, Mortu Nega tells the story of the decade-long Guinea-Bissau War of Independence, immediately plunging the viewer into the battle as it follows Diminga (Bia Gomes), who has joined the guerillas to find her husband, an injured soldier on the front lines. The film is gripping and violent in its depiction of these hostilities, but it grows even more interesting when it moves beyond the battle to consider life after independence has been won. The shadow of conflict still hangs over these newly independent people as they attempt to rebuild their lives with meagre supplies, still scarred by the physical and mental injuries they have suffered. Gomes films everything in a very simple and frank manner, to very potent effect.
21 - The Sealed Soil (Marva Nabili, 1977) – Cinema Jolly, Bologna, Digital
Another special discovery from pre-revolution Iran, The Sealed Soil has the added distinction of being one of the few films from this era made by a female director. Shot in a week on 16mm, the film bears a resemblance to the work of Chantal Akerman and Robert Bresson in its stripped-down aesthetic and the way the film’s rhythm is dictated by the mundane routine of its protagonist. We watch as Roo-Bekheir (Flora Shabaviz) cooks and cleans for her family, who live in a poor village somewhere in southern Iran, and slowly a narrative emerges, with her resistance to the marriage that is being forced upon her. The Sealed Soil is a sober, pointed film about the limited choices faced by women in this society, and it achieves a suffocating restrictiveness through Nabili’s austere approach, which is only alleviated in the lyrical sequence when Roo-Bekheir briefly gets away from home and undresses in the rain.
20 - If You Were There... (Lindsay Anderson, 1985) – BFI Southbank, Digital
In 1985 Lindsay Anderson was invited to document WHAM! As they became the first western pop group to tour China since the end of the Cultural Revolution. The experience was an unhappy one for Anderson, who injured his knee and did not enjoy following George Michael and Andrew Ridgley around China, and who later saw his film recut into the more nakedly promotional and celebratory Wham! in China: Foreign Skies. Anderson’s film If You Were There... has been subsequently suppressed, so it was a rare treat to see it screened this year, and to discover that it is a fascinating study of an extraordinary collision of cultures, with Michael and Ridgley almost appearing as aliens in this Communist country slowly emerging from the shadow of Mao. Anderson has some fun with the awkward attempts at diplomacy, but I think his perspective is generally surprisingly affectionate, and there are some great moments of connection captured here between the group and the Chinese youth. This film could only screened with special approval from Ridgley and the George Michael estate, but it deserves to be much more widely appreciated.
19 - Stars in Broad Daylight (Ossama Mohammed, 1988) – Cinema Jolly, Digital
Stars in Broad Daylight was one of the great restoration stories from this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato. Director Ossama Mohammed had long believed it to be lost, with the Syrian authorities denying even the existence of any film made by this exiled filmmaker, and only the discovery of a print in the archives of a German TV station allowed it to be rescued and restored. An allegorical portrait of life under the Baathist regime, it’s an extraordinary piece of filmmaking. Every shot is bustling with a sense of life and activity, and Mohammed creates so many powerful compositions. Stars in Broad Daylight was immediately banned in Syria following its premiere in 1988, and there’s a pleasing irony in the fact that its rediscovery comes in the same year that Syrians finally saw the possibility of freedom after so many years of Assad’s rule.
18 - Tragic Hunt (Giuseppe De Santis, 1947) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
De Santis is best known for his excellent Bitter Rice, but I was just as taken by his directorial debut Tragic Hunt, which was made in the aftermath of World War II. De Santis liked to blend a neorealist style with classic genre dynamics, and that approach serves his story well here. He uses the camera brilliantly to create tension and dynamism in his frames, but he also makes sure to place the characters in the context of their surroundings, which are still scarred by the recent conflict. The plot involves a group of fascists who are stealing the funds that are supposed to go to a farming collective, and the urgent need of the farmers who are desperately trying to regenerate their lands raises the stakes considerably. A riveting thriller and a illuminating portrait of postwar Italian society.
17 - Petulia (Richard Lester, 1968) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
John Haase, who wrote the novel Petulia was adapted from, loathed what Richard Lester had done to it, but Petulia is a dazzling display of filmmaking technique that gradually unfolds a sad story of cruelty and longing. George C. Scott is the divorced doctor who falls for young socialite Petulia (Julie Christie), whose tiresomely quirky behaviour (“Aren't I a kook?”) covers a deep sadness. Lester tells this story in a nervous, fragmented manner, with Antony Gibbs’ editing cutting back and forwards in time in a manner that may have influenced Nicolas Roeg, who brilliantly shot this film before finally making the leap to becoming a director with Performance. Both Scott and Christie do some beautiful work, gradually revealing layers to characters who initially feel archetypal, and there is fine support from Richard Chamberlain and Joseph Cotton. It’s a remarkable film.
16 - Four in the Morning (Anthony Simmons, 1965) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Although it may be considered a typical example of 1960s kitchen realism on first glance, Four in the Morning has a more unusual texture, with Simmons apparently taking inspiration from Antonioni in his story of one night in the lives of two London couples; a young man and a club hostess who consider their relationship as they wander the city in the early morning light, and a young mother frustrated that her husband has taken a drinking buddy home as she tries to get their baby to sleep. Judi Dench received most of the attention for her performance as the wife, winning a BAFTA as Best Newcomer, but Ann Lynn is equally fine, with her slight resemblance to Monica Vitti perhaps adding to the sense of this film as an Antonioni homage. Simmons occasionally cuts into these two narrative threads with a third strand, detailing the recovery and removal of a dead girl from the Thames – these scenes are shot with a striking and unnerving frankness – and the film’s bleak atmosphere is aided by a score from the great John Barry.
15 - Brief Ecstasy (Edmond T. Gréville, 1937) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
The story is a simple and overfamiliar one; in fact, it’s likely to immediately put you in mind of another much more renowned film with Brief in the title from a few years later, as it concerns a woman married to an older man who finds herself tempted into an affair when a handsome younger man enters her life. The twist here is that she already enjoyed a one-night stand with the younger man some years before, and she may have ended up marrying him had cruel fate not intervened. Their initial meeting is expressed with a wonderful sense of imagination and efficiency in a slick montage at the start of the film, and this sequence sets the tone, with Gréville’s directorial flair distinguishing a picture that could have easily been stiff and stagey in another filmmaker’s hands. Almost every scene has some unusual angle, composition or edit that keeps the film feeling slightly off-kilter and surprising, while expressing the roiling emotions felt by the film’s characters.
14 - The Long Absence (Henri Colpi, 1961) – ICA, Digital
In 1961, the Palme d’Or was shared between two films. One was Luis Buñuel’s Viridiana, which is still justly celebrated today, but the other film was The Long Absence, which seems to have been largely forgotten (although not by Akira Kurosawa, who named it as one of his 100 favourite films). This shouldn’t be the case, as it’s a moving drama which contains outstanding performances from Alida Valli and Georges Wilson. Thérèse (Valli) is a café owner who believes that the tramp (Wilson) she sees walking through town is in fact her husband, who never returned from the war and has long been presumed dead, leading her to try and reawaken his memory by sharing and recreating elements of their past lives together. The Long Absence was written by Marguerite Duras, continuing her exploration of memory and trauma in the shadow of war after Hiroshima mon amour, and Colpi directs it with skill and restraint, using careful compositions to let these two excellent actors carry the film, which they do magnificently.
13 - Māyā Miriga (Nirad Mohapatra, 1984) – Cinema Jolly, Bologna, Digital
Nirad Mohapatra’s only feature as a director, an independently produced Odia-language drama, was thought lost for many years, but the astonishing restoration that has been achieved from poor-quality materials reveals a masterful portrait of a a middle-class family over the course of many months. The family patriarch is determined that his children must succeed at their exams, obtain respectable jobs and marry well, regardless of how their own desires align with these ideals. This generational tension is intelligently captured by Mohapatra, and as the dynamics between characters shift in subtle ways, he always knows where to place his camera to maximise the spaces within the house wherein the story takes place. A revelatory discovery from a lesser-known region of Indian cinema.
12 - La Musica (Marguerite Duras and Paul Séban, 1967) – ICA, Digital
The first film on which Marguerite Duras was credited as a director was this adaptation of her stage play, in which a divorced couple (played by Delphine Seyrig and Robert Hossein) meet for the first time in three years. She took a co-director credit because she said she didn’t understand how a film was made and she let Paul Séban take care of the technical details such as lighting and movement of the camera, but so much of the way this film is shot suggests hallmarks of Duras’ later works. I love the way she uses the space around her actors to emphasise the relationship between them and the way they are both haunted by their shared memories, and her use of sound – always a crucial factor for Duras – is already an effective tool here. It’s a mesmerising film, elegantly shot by the great Sacha Vierny and perfectly acted.
11 - Bílý ráj (Karel Lamač, 1924) – Piazzetta Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bologna, 35mm
One of the true highlights of this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato was seeing this a hand-tinted print of this 100-year-old film screened on the carbon arc projector, which made the image gleam beautifully. Set in “the wild mountain country where people were born with loneliness in their hearts,” Bílý ráj (or White Paradise) the film is the story of an orphan girl living with her curmudgeonly guardian in a remote mountaintop tavern. She fantasises about living in a crystal palace, which she constructs from the tavern’s glasses, much to the owner’s chagrin, and a taste of adventure enters her life when she crosses paths with an escaped convict, who is desperate to get home to his dying mother. The protagonist is played Anny Ondráková, who later found fame abroad as Anny Ondra, and she’s a terrific heroine, but the real star of the movie is the spectacular cinematography, which brilliantly exploits the snowbound location. The film was shot by the great Otto Heller.
10 - Four Steps in the Clouds (Alessandro Blasetti, 1942) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
In Four Steps in the Clouds Alessandro Blasetti brings a neorealist spirit to a delightful comedy of misunderstanding. Travelling salesman Paolo (Gino Cervi) helps a young woman (Adriana Benetti) who doesn’t have a ticket for the train, and soon gets drawn into her complicated life. Having fallen pregnant to a man who quickly abandoned her, Maria needs somebody to pose as her husband for her family to avoid her being kicked out of the house in disgrace. Blasetti strikes a bittersweet comic tone throughout, getting laughs from Paolo’s increasing exasperation at the situation he has become mired in, but also finding poignancy in the possibility of Maria being rejected by her family, and Paolo’s impassioned speech to her father decrying these attitudes gives the film a stirring climax. It was remade in 1995 with Keanu Reeves in the lead role, but I doubt that version is as skilfully crafted and satisfying as this.
9 - Comrades: Almost Love Story (Peter Chan, 1996) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
This romantic melodrama spans years and continents as it charts the relationship between Xiao-Jun (Leon Lai) and Li Qiao (Maggie Cheung), a pair of Chinese immigrants trying to make it in Hong Kong. He’s hopelessly naïve at first while she’s more entrepreneurial, and the pair form a mutually beneficial alliance, which subsequently shifts into an on-off love affair. Peter Chan’s film captures the sense of arriving in the big city feeling hopelessly lost and seeking a connection, and there’s a vital chemistry evident between the two enormously charming lead actors here, with the film suggesting that they are bound by fate as the action moves from Hong Kong to New York, via some wild narrative shifts. It’s an engrossing romance as well as a vibrant portrait of a changing Hong Kong in the 80s and 90s, and best of all it features a cameo from Christopher Doyle who teaches his students key phrases such as "Jump you son of a bitch! Jump!"
8 - The Public Eye (Carol Reed, 1972) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
It’s strange how this film has slipped into obscurity, considering its pedigree: it was written by Peter Schaffer, shot by Christopher Challis, edited by Anne V. Coates, scored by John Barry, and it was the last film directed by the great Carol Reed. It also gave Topol his first role after the enormous success of Fiddler on the Roof, and he’s terrific as the private eye hired by a stuffy English banker (Michael Jayston) to follow the free-spirited young American wife (Mia Farrow) he impulsively married and find out if she’s having an affair. The best sequence in the film is a long wordless stretch that shows Topol following Farrow around London and gradually falling for her – a sequence that has the added benefit of showing off some superb location photography around the city, including a number of cinemas that are no longer with us. The film is an eccentric comedy but it also has real compassion for its characters, and it has a genuine sense of romance in its heart.
7 - The Annihilation of Fish (Charles Burnett, 1999) – Lumiere-Scorsese, Bologna, Digital
Nothing in Charles Burnett’s career has been easy, and he has spent too may years fighting to get his films made and struggling to get them released. The Annihilation of Fish premiered at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival and from there it should have gone on to delight many audiences, but instead it disappeared, when a single negative review in the trade press was apparently enough to sink its distribution chances. It’s a sad fate for a lovely film; an unconventional romance about two lonely and troubled souls finding each other. Fish (James Earl Jones) is constantly beset by an invisible demon he has to wrestle (this leads to a great running visual gag) while Poinsetta (Lynn Redgrave) believes she is engaged to the ghost of Puccini. Their relationship is both funny and tender, and the film becomes a poignant consideration of what it means to find love late in life with so much baggage behind us. Margot Kidder has a fun supporting role as the pair’s equally eccentric landlady.
6 - A Question of Silence (Marleen Gorris, 1982) – ICA, Digital
In A Question of Silence, three ordinary women who do not know each other impulsively kill a man who none of them have any connection to. After the trio is arrested without protest, the perplexed authorities bring in a criminal psychiatrist to examine them and adjudicate whether they are sane enough to stand trial. Through flashbacks, Gorris reveals details of the three women’s lives. There is no single trigger to drive them to murder, but we can see the stifling quality of lives lived in this patriarchal society is gradually chipping away at their souls, and through the experience of meeting these women, the psychiatrist begins to question her own comfortable middle-class life with her husband. Gorris directs A Question of Silence with a cool, clinical style that makes the film brilliantly unnerving, and the ending is brilliant, with the women’s laughter resonating long after the credits have rolled.
5 - The Children Are Watching Us (Vittorio De Sica, 1944) – BFI Southbank, 35mm
Alongside Shoeshine and Bicycle Thieves, this film is further proof that Vittorio De Sica had a special knack for drawing wonderful performances out of child actors. The Children Are Watching Us is the story of a marriage that begins to crumble following the mother’s affair, but as these scenes of adult strife ply out, young Pricò (Luciano De Ambrosis) is always sitting unnoticed in the nearby, observing this behaviour, and none of the adults seem to know or understand the effect that they are having on him. De Sica creates scenes that are full of truth and rich in emotional texture, and he knows exactly the right moment to utilise his young lead’s big, sad eyes for maximum impact in a piercing close-up. The ending is absolutely devastating.
4 - Rouge (Stanley Kwan, 1987) – ICA, 35mm
There are two stories being told in Stanley Kwan ‘s Rouge. The first is set in a Brothel in the 1930s, where a courtesan named Fleur (Anita Mui) fell in love with the playboy scion of a wealthy family (Leslie Cheung), and with their relationship proving to be impossible in the real world, the pair committed suicide to be together forever in the afterlife. The second story takes place in Hong Kong in 1987, where Fleur’s ghost continues to wander the streets, searching for the lover who failed to join her on the other side. This fantastical premise is handled with such delicacy and wit by Kwan, who shifts between time periods and balances the melancholic nature of his doomed romance with some nicely played bits of comedy through Fleur’s communication with a newspaper reporter and his girlfriend in the modern world. It’s a breathtakingly gorgeous picture – cinematographer Bill Wong’s use of colour is sublime – and Anita Mui’s lead performance is astonishing.
3 - City for Conquest (Anatole Litvak, 1940) – Cinema Jolly, Bologna, 35mm
City for Conquest is a New York-set boxing movie starring James Cagney and shot by James Wong Howe, a combination that seemed so squarely up my street it was inexplicable to me that I had never even heard of it. Cagney plays the boxer who reluctantly keeps fighting so he can raise money to help his brother write his symphony, while his girlfriend Ann Sheridan wants to make it as a dancer, but falls into the shady hands of impresario Anthony Quinn. New York is presented as a city of dreamers, but one where these dreamers having to sell a part of themselves to make the big time, and it builds to an extremely moving finale, where the tragedy of Cagney’s character is set against the backdrop of his brother’s success, which his sacrifice facilitated. This is one of Cagney’s greatest performances; his refusal to soften his character into sentimentality or beg for audience sympathy makes his plight even more wrenching.
2 - The Naked Face of Night (Kōzaburō Yoshimura, 1958) – Cinema Jolly, Bologna, 35mm
This year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato programme featured a retrospective dedicated to Kōzaburō Yoshimura, whose work has rarely been seen outside of Japan. He was revealed as a directors whose attention to the plight of women in Japanese society earned him comparisons with Mizoguchi – in fact, the excellent satire Osaka Monogatari was directed by Yoshimura after Mizoguchi died during pre-production. This focus on women is central to his magnificent melodrama The Naked Face of Night, scripted by his regular collaborator Kaneto Shindo who said, “What I’m interested in are money, power, bluffing, lewdness, and naked human statues that dance with excitement.” There are echoes of All About Eve in its tale of a dancer who eclipses her mentor, only to find her own star status eventually threatened by her young disciple, in what the film presents as an endless cycle of ambition and treachery.
1 - By the Law (Lev Kuleshov, 1926) – Barbican, 35mm
A year after Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, Kuleshov took a prospecting adventure into much darker territory with this Jack London adaptation. Shot on a low budget with a small cast and mostly taking place inside a single log cabin, By the Law is an intense chamber piece about a husband and wife holding captive the man who has murdered two of their colleagues. They must determine whether to enact justice themselves or hold him until they can turn him over to the authorities, with portrait of Queen Victoria on the wall being a constant reminder of civilisation and the ‘proper’ way things should be done. After a terrible storm, the river bursts its banks and these three characters are left strands on a small island as the flood waters rise around them, striving to hold onto their moral compass and their sanity while battling the elements. Kuleshov generates an extraordinary intensity in this film through his editing and composition, and especially through the way he shoots his actors – Aleksandra Khokhlova, in particular, has an extraordinarily expressive face that receives some unforgettable close-ups. This unsparing study of humanity features a series of nightmarish images towards the end, as it considers the toll that these characters’ actions is going to take on their soul. It is a stunning piece of filmmaking.
