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Victoria (2015)
Oh Dear! Bravura film-making with self-seeking and psychotic characters!
This always looks great and is a good example of what can be achieved in one take with digital recording. Absence of a script (yesterday Director Sebastian Schipper at London Film Festival said all that existed was a 12 page outline) means that film has no Director's vision or sense of form. I was surprised that this was shown in the Thriller section of the festival as it denies audience of many of the (admittedly) vicarious pleasures of the genre. The audience seemed to really enjoy the movie which is great but without any characters I could care about for very long (apart from a terrified young couple whose flat is invaded by two of the protagonists and who I wished had fought back) I felt very detached. This film is a great experiment and has a kind of forward energy but without a sense of a world that it takes place in (suggestion: most modern audiences want energy, action and nods towards humanity but have no time for character development or a genuine sense of empathy?). I wish the film, actors and Director well with this venture but its not for me, as indeed was Run Lola Run which the director of this appeared in. That was much more cinematic but similarly uninterested in honestly-developed characters (so has probably been successful over the years?).
The Lady Vanishes (1979)
An elegant and witty remake ...
Its inevitable that this would be compared to Hitchcock's 1938 original but for me there are many pleasures to be had in this elegant comedy-thriller. Douglas Slocombe's Panavision photography is wonderful and the playing of all involved is beautifully poised. George Axelrod's reworking of Sidney Gilliat's screenplay adds a nice screwball touch with his one-liners and Ian Carmichael and Arthur Lowe as the cricket-obsessed British tourists add humanity to their chauvinistic bullishness. And as a self-confessed Angela Lansbury fan I of course relished her depiction of Miss Froy. On a big cinema screen this looks terrific.
Take a Powder (1953)
Oh dear ... deeply unfunny "comedy" made on a shoestring in and around Brighton
Don't hold your breath waiting for this to be released on DVD! I saw this on an old 16mm film print recently and apart from some interest because it was filmed in and around Brighton on the South Coast here in the UK and the lovely crisp black and white print quality there was little else to enjoy. It is almost resolutely unfunny! Fortunately it only runs for less than an hour. Max Bacon has a couple of sequences that hark back to music hall routines. In one he starts talking about his outrageous eating habits to make a woman on a train be sick enough to venture to take one of the "atomic powders" that the film is ostensibly about. In the other sequence he is mistaken for a medical professor and proceeds to attempt to lecture some student doctors on the finer points of anatomy. Some credit due to those involved for producing a film on what have been a minuscule budget.
Fangs of the Wild (1939)
... In which Rinty and Queenie thwart the fox fur thieves!
This title was amongst a job lot of 16mm films we bought and was a British copy complete with British Board of Film Censors "U" certificate and an Ealing Film Distributors logo at the beginning. It is so ineptly directed and scripted and the "handsome" leading man is so wooden in his role that I found it all rather charming and endearing. Undoubtedly watching this on a screen in a gorgeous crisp and contrasty 16mm print added to my enjoyment. Students of action sequences should study the fight scenes so as to learn how not to do it. And the two presumably intended-to-be-nefarious "bad" guys - Brad and Pete - are really quite affable.
To show how gentle the hero's dog Rinty is there is a brief sequence where he takes off ("Dogs are like humans; sometimes they just like to be on their own" intones our stolid leading man to his nephew)and coming across a gorgeous little litter of fluffy white bunnies decides to snuggle down next to them! One wonders if this is where Peanuts creator Charles Schultz got the idea for Snoopy's affection for bunnies? The music is manically mismatched! At the end Rinty settles down to a relationship with the villain's reformed dog Queenie. Lovely! Oh .. and there is a brief appearance by Laurel and Hardy shorts regular Mae Busch.