Imitations of Life: The Films of Douglas Sirk (December 23 – January 6) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York gathers a substantial number of the German auteur's classic films together with more obscure titles, some of which may deserve elevation into the higher ranks of his oeuvre. Already, in the past few years, There's Always Tomorrow (1956) has crept up the league table of Sirkian melodrama, mainly because it became easier to see and people recognized that it could stand comparison with All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Imitation of Life (1959), or nearly so.Some Sirk movies will, however, never be quite respectable, but in a way I love them for that. His period movies often dive headlong into Hollywood kitsch in a way that his once-despised weepies mainly avoid. There's a trio of movies playing with George Sanders which exemplify this in their different ways. Summer Storm (1944) was Hollywood's...
- 12/10/2015
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Imitations of Life: The Films of Douglas Sirk (December 23 – January 6) at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York gathers a substantial number of the German auteur's classic films together with more obscure titles, some of which may deserve elevation into the higher ranks of his oeuvre. Already, in the past few years, There's Always Tomorrow (1956) has crept up the league table of Sirkian melodrama, mainly because it became easier to see and people recognized that it could stand comparison with All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Imitation of Life (1959), or nearly so.Some Sirk movies will, however, never be quite respectable, but in a way I love them for that. His period movies often dive headlong into Hollywood kitsch in a way that his once-despised weepies mainly avoid. There's a trio of movies playing with George Sanders which exemplify this in their different ways. Summer Storm (1944) was Hollywood's...
- 12/10/2015
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Television director in the glory days of the BBC, who went on to make feature films
Alan Bridges, who has died aged 86, was a leading director during the glory days of the BBC, from the mid-60s to the early 70s. Today, whenever media pundits analyse the history of television drama, they wax lyrical about The Wednesday Play and its successor Play for Today, bemoaning the virtual disappearance of the single play.
By the time Bridges started working in the Wednesday Play slot, he was already one of the BBC's most experienced TV directors – he had directed excellent 10-part adaptations of two 19th-century classics, Great Expectations and Les Misérables (both in 1967) – but he relished the "right to fail" ethos at the BBC, enjoying working with exciting contemporary writers.
While continuing to have a distinguished television career into the 80s, adeptly moving from the popular to the experimental, from the modern to the classical,...
Alan Bridges, who has died aged 86, was a leading director during the glory days of the BBC, from the mid-60s to the early 70s. Today, whenever media pundits analyse the history of television drama, they wax lyrical about The Wednesday Play and its successor Play for Today, bemoaning the virtual disappearance of the single play.
By the time Bridges started working in the Wednesday Play slot, he was already one of the BBC's most experienced TV directors – he had directed excellent 10-part adaptations of two 19th-century classics, Great Expectations and Les Misérables (both in 1967) – but he relished the "right to fail" ethos at the BBC, enjoying working with exciting contemporary writers.
While continuing to have a distinguished television career into the 80s, adeptly moving from the popular to the experimental, from the modern to the classical,...
- 1/29/2014
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
The gifted film-maker, winner of the top prize at Cannes in 1973, did not always get the acclaim he deserved in his native Britain
The death of the British director Alan Bridges at the age of 86 is a great sadness. Bridges was a brilliant poet and cinematic satirist – in tones both mordant and melancholy – of the English class system of the early 20th century, and a director with a flair for psychology and interior crisis, as evidenced by movies like The Return of the Soldier (1982) and The Shooting Party (1985).
A film-maker to bear comparison with Joseph Losey and John Schlesinger, he was one of the few British directors to win the top prize at the Cannes film festival. Bridges earned that accolade with his wonderful 1973 movie The Hireling, when the award was called the Grand Prix – jointly, in fact, with Jerry Schatzberg's marvellous Scarecrow, another film only recently being rediscovered.
The death of the British director Alan Bridges at the age of 86 is a great sadness. Bridges was a brilliant poet and cinematic satirist – in tones both mordant and melancholy – of the English class system of the early 20th century, and a director with a flair for psychology and interior crisis, as evidenced by movies like The Return of the Soldier (1982) and The Shooting Party (1985).
A film-maker to bear comparison with Joseph Losey and John Schlesinger, he was one of the few British directors to win the top prize at the Cannes film festival. Bridges earned that accolade with his wonderful 1973 movie The Hireling, when the award was called the Grand Prix – jointly, in fact, with Jerry Schatzberg's marvellous Scarecrow, another film only recently being rediscovered.
- 1/24/2014
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
Film-maker associated with Michael Caine
The film director and producer Geoffrey Reeve, who has died aged 77, contributed polished examples of mainstream British cinema in a variety of forms over several decades.
He was born in Tring, Hertfordshire, the son of a compositor who would cycle each day to the printworks in nearby King's Langley. A bright pupil at the local primary, Reeve won a county council scholarship to Berkhamsted school where he excelled in sports, academic subjects and school plays. He was also a notable chorister, an experience he would put to good use for the subplot of the film Shadow Run 50 years later.
After national service with the 7th Royal Tank Regiment in Hong Kong, he went to Exeter College, Oxford, in 1953 to read law. His singing voice and his gift for comic acting made him a useful addition to Oxford's drama and revue companies, and he was apparently...
The film director and producer Geoffrey Reeve, who has died aged 77, contributed polished examples of mainstream British cinema in a variety of forms over several decades.
He was born in Tring, Hertfordshire, the son of a compositor who would cycle each day to the printworks in nearby King's Langley. A bright pupil at the local primary, Reeve won a county council scholarship to Berkhamsted school where he excelled in sports, academic subjects and school plays. He was also a notable chorister, an experience he would put to good use for the subplot of the film Shadow Run 50 years later.
After national service with the 7th Royal Tank Regiment in Hong Kong, he went to Exeter College, Oxford, in 1953 to read law. His singing voice and his gift for comic acting made him a useful addition to Oxford's drama and revue companies, and he was apparently...
- 4/19/2010
- The Guardian - Film News
Michael Haneke's Palme D'or winner offers a spellbinding tale of bigotry and brutality in a pre-Great War rural German community, says Philip French
Numerous novelists, dramatists and film-makers have been attracted to the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the First World War to give their work a touch of nostalgia, irony or historical resonance.
Jb Priestley, whose life had been transformed by his experiences on the Western Front, was among the earliest with his 1934 play Eden End, set in 1912 Yorkshire. Isabel Colegate's novel The Shooting Party (filmed by Alan Bridges in 1984) takes place at a grand country house in 1913. István Szabó's movie Colonel Redl cuts straight from its eponymous antihero's death to the Austro-Hungarian army going into battle, though it was as early as 1916 that the Austrian wit Karl Kraus launched one of the last century's greatest cliches by having a newsboy enter a Viennese cafe shouting: "Extra!
Numerous novelists, dramatists and film-makers have been attracted to the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the First World War to give their work a touch of nostalgia, irony or historical resonance.
Jb Priestley, whose life had been transformed by his experiences on the Western Front, was among the earliest with his 1934 play Eden End, set in 1912 Yorkshire. Isabel Colegate's novel The Shooting Party (filmed by Alan Bridges in 1984) takes place at a grand country house in 1913. István Szabó's movie Colonel Redl cuts straight from its eponymous antihero's death to the Austro-Hungarian army going into battle, though it was as early as 1916 that the Austrian wit Karl Kraus launched one of the last century's greatest cliches by having a newsboy enter a Viennese cafe shouting: "Extra!
- 11/15/2009
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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