Barry Lyndon

Year of Release:  1975
Director:  Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay:  Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
Starring:  Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Krüger, Diana Koerner, Gay Hamilton
Running Time:  187 minutes
Genre:  Period drama

In 18th Century Ireland, headstrong Redmond Barry (O'Neal), believing that he has killed an English officer in a duel, leaves his home to seek his fortune.  He embarks on many adventures as a soldier, spy, professional gambler, con-man in his quest to become one of the gentry.

This is possibly Stanley Kubrick's most underrated film, coming between the controversial A Clockwork Orange (1971) and the horror classic The Shining (1980).  However, this ravishingly beautiful period drama is one of Kubrick's finest works, and in my opinion it is a masterpiece.  It's based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray, who is possibly best known for writing Vanity Fair (1848).  Kubrick turned to the book when his planned film about the life of Napoleon Bonaparte fell apart, and was able to incorporate that he had already done about the 1800s into this film.  It's a film of two parts, divided by chapter headings, the first part dealing with Barry's scheming and adventures to achieve wealth and status, and the much darker second part is more of a domestic drama as everything falls apart.  While this stately film may not be as obviously groundbreaking as other Kubrick films, it is still innovative is several respects, perhaps most notably the technique filmmakers devised to allow scenes to be lit solely by candlelight.   Almost every scene in the film is like a painting you feel you could hang on your wall.  Ryan O'Neal plays Barry from a gauche, reckless young man, to cynical antihero, and ultimately tragic figure, with a kind of icy charisma, Marisa Berenson plays the unlucky Lady Lyndon  as a fragile, tragic character, hiding depths behind her blank, mask-like face.  Barry's stepson Lord Bullingdon is played by Leon Vitali, who would later become Kubrick's assistant, and if you have any interest at all in Kubrick or film-making, the documentary about Vitali, Filmworker (2017), is a must-see.  Michael Hordern's narration provides a witty, ironic commentary on the events on screen, a departure from the novel which is narrated by Barry himself.  The soundtrack uses classical music from Bach, Handel, Vivaldi and Schubert among others, and Irish folk music

"It was in the reign of George III that these personages lived and quarreled.  Good or bad, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now."

           

Ill met by candlelight in Barry Lyndon

The Magnificent Ambersons

Year of Release:  1942
Director:  Orson Welles
Screenplay:  Orson Welles, based on the novel The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
Starring:  Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Tim Holt, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Richard Bennett
Running Time:  88 minutes (cut from 148 minutes)
Genre:  Period drama

The Ambersons are an old, vastly wealthy Midwestern family at the turn of the 20th Century.  However they face a change in fortune as the proud and willful son of the family, George (Holt), refuses to allow his widowed mother (Costello) to reunite with Eugene Morgan (Cotten), who she was involved with before George's father came along, and has remained her one true love.  Meanwhile the world around them is changing due to increasingly industrialisation, particularly the growing influence of the motorcar, and George refuses to move with the times.

This was Orson Welles' follow-up to Citizen Kane (1941).  The film was controversially re-edited by the studio who felt it was too long and depressing, so they cut it by an hour and substituted a more upbeat ending.  While this was going on Welles was in Brazil working on another film.  We are unlikely ever to see a Welles cut of the film, because the original negatives of the cut footage were destroyed, although Welles detailed notes for the film survive.  The composer, Bernard Herrmann, was so incensed by his score being cut by an hour that he demanded his name be removed from the film.  While we don't have the Welles Ambersons what we do have is a powerful and impressive film.  It's stylish and visually striking, and there are some fantastic performances from Welles' Mercury Theater company.  The opening sequences are masterful creating a surprisingly humorous elegy for a forgotten world.  It is a film about the dangers of overweening pride as well as the perils of refusing to move ahead with the times.  There are a very few places where it shows signs of heavy cutting, and the ending looks very obviously tacked on (which it was, of course) and doesn't work with the feel of the film.  While it is no Citizen Kane, there is still brilliance here and it has it's own flawed magnificence.

Anne Baxter and Tim Holt in The Magnificent Ambersons

Mirror

Year of Release:  1975
Director:  Andrei Tarkovsky
Screenplay:  Aleksandr Misharin and Andrei Tarkovsky
Starring:  Margarita Terekhova, Ignat Daniltsev, Larisa Tarkovskaya, Alla Demidova, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Tamara Ogorodnikova, Arseny Tarkovsky
Running Time:  106 minutes
Genre:  autobiography, drama

If you are unfamiliar with the work of acclaimed Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky it's worth bearing in mind that he once said that no film that is any good should be "enjoyable".  Even by Tarkovsky's standards Mirror is inaccessible.  This largely plotless film blends autobiographical fragments, Russian history, dreams, nightmares and fantasies.  It features many Tarkovsy hallmarks such as long languorous takes, switches between colour, black-and-white and sepia,  images of nature, fire and water, and levitation.  Tarkovsky's father, Arseny Tarkovsky reads his own poetry in voice over, and the director's wife, Larissa Tarkovskaya, and mother, Maria Vihnyakova, appear.  It is not a film that can be understood in the way that a normal film can be, it's like a film poem.  If you give yourself over to it's unique spell you will be rewarded with beautiful imagery, that lingers for years after you've seen it.  In fact it is a film that it's hard not to feel affected by.  It's a demanding film, but worthwhile.  At least after it, you feel like you have had an experience.

  A look into Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror

Sunset Boulevard

Year of Release:  1950
Director:  Billy Wilder
Screenplay:  Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, D. M. Marshman Jr.
Starring:  William Holden, Gloria Swanson, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, Fred Clark, Lloyd Gough
Running Time:  110 minutes
Genre:  Drama, thriller, film noir

Joe Gillis (Holden) is a struggling Hollywood screenwriter, who hasn't had work in ages.  In danger of losing his car and his apartment, he hides out at a decaying old Hollywood mansion on Sunset Boulevard which turns out to be owned by faded star of the silent screen, Norma Desmond (Swanson), who lives alone with her enigmatic servant Max (von Stroheim).  Norma is determined to be a star again and has written a long and terrible screenplay of Salome, which she hopes to star in with Cecil B. DeMille directing.  Gillis persuades her to hire him as a script doctor, and soon finds himself drawn into her bizarre and twisted world of faded starlight.

Hollywood has always loved making films about itself, and this is one of the darkest and bitterest takes on the dream factory.  It has one of the greatest opening in film history, as we first meet Joe Gillis as a corpse floating face down in a swimming pool, and flashing back six months to tell the story of how he came to be there, the fact that the film is narrated by a corpse helps set the strange tone for the film, where everything seems slightly off centre.  Former silent star Gloria Swanson gives a memorable performance as the terrifying, pitiful and tragic Norma Desmond.  A great star forgotten and left behind by an industry and a world that has moved on without her, with nothing to sustain her but memories and dreams, she becomes almost heroic in her tragedy.  Joe Gillis, our nominal hero, is really more of an anti-hero, basically using Norma for her money, while mostly holding her in contempt.  The great silent director turned actor Erich von Stroheim appears as the sinister manservant Max.  There are several cameos from well known figures of the silent screen including Buster Keaton and Cecil B. DeMille.  Incidentally this is one of David Lynch's favourite films, and I can definitely see why.  It's a great film.

"I am big!  It was the pictures that got small"
- Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson)

Gloria Swanson readies for her close-up in Sunset Boulevard

Citizen Kane

Year of Release:  1941
Director:  Orson Welles
Screenplay:  Herman J. Mankiewicz and Orson Welles
Starring:  Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Everett Sloane, Ray Collins, George Coulouris, Agnes Moorehead, Paul Stewart, Ruth Warwick, Erskine Sanford, William Alland
Running Time:  117 minutes
Genre:  Drama

Following the death of controversial tycoon, Charles Foster Kane (Welles), one of the richest and most famous men in America, newsreel reporter Thompson (Alland) is sent to get a fresh angle on Kane's life by investigating the meaning of his last word, "Rosebud."  As he interviews those who knew and worked with Kane, Thompson builds a picture of his life from his poor childhood in rural Colorado, to his foundation of a huge newspaper empire, to his political ambitions, and troubled private life.

This was the first film of legendary actor, writer, producer and director Orson Welles, who had already made a splash with his Mercury Theater company, and his notorious radio production of The War of the Worlds.  It was a very experimental film for the time, with it's non-linear structure, unconventional camera angles, and pseudo-documentary sequences.  Famously it often tops polls as the best film ever made, while I am not sure if it is or not, it is a personal favourite of mine, and it is certainly a great film.  It offers much, but reveals little.  The great writer Jorge Luis Borges described Citizen Kane as "a labyrinth without a centre", and it is an entrancing puzzle.  It's mysteries, even when revealed, seem to lead to yet more mysteries.  Ultimately we end where we begin, outside, the forbidding gates of Xanadu.  The film is a technical marvel, and full of images that have become iconic.  The complex, literate script is beautifully written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, and the performances are very impressive all round.  The film pretty much disappeared on release, thanks in no small part to real-life newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who was enraged by the film, believing that Welles was having a go at him, and he tried to ensure the film was buried.  Fortunately Hearst failed, and this dazzling film could be reappraised as the masterpiece it is.

Orson Welles as Citizen Kane

A Fistful of Dollars

Year of Release:  1964
Director:  Sergio Leone
Screenplay:  Victor Andrés Catena, Jaime Comas Gil, Sergio Leone, Adriano Bolzani and Mark Lowell, based on Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa and Ryūzō Kikushima
Starring:  Clint Eastwood, Marianne Koch, Josef Egger, Wolfgang Lukschy, John Wells, Daniel Martin, Carol Brown, Benny Reeves
Running Time:  99 minutes
Genre:  Western, Spaghetti Western, action

The small town of San Miguel, on the Mexican-United States border, is divided between two smuggler families, who are engaged in a violent and long-running feud.  One day a mysterious stranger (Eastwood) arrives in town and, learning of the situation, decides that he can make some money by playing each side off against the other.

This relatively low budget film with no big stars, and from fairly unknown director, which was panned by the critics on it's initial release, went on to not only launch one of the biggest movie stars, and one of the most iconic characters but almost defined an entire genre.  If you don't know, the term "Spaghetti Western" were Westerns produced and directed by Italian filmmakers and usually shot in Spain.  A Fistful of Dollars was not the first Italian Western but it created the style and the hallmarks of the genre.  Leone wanted to make a Western that felt like an Italian film.  In this film, everything feels exaggerated, the streets of the small town are as wide as most modern city streets, the closeups are extreme so you can read every crevice on the craggy faces, the violence is stylish and fast moving.  This was the first film to star Clint Eastwood, who at the time was best known for the TV series Rawhide (1959 - 1965), and his "Man With No Name" became possibly his defining role (although in this film, an undertaker refers to him as "Joe").  The character is iconic, the man of mystery who you know about as much at the end of the film as you did at the beginning.  The fast shooting, quick drawing gunman with a permanent squint in the eye and sneer who always seems to be two moves ahead of everyone else.
The film is widely regarded as an unauthorised remake of the classic Japanese film Yojimbo (1961), directed by Akira Kurosawa who brought a lawsuit against the filmmakers.  Kurosawa stated "Leone made a fine film, but it was my film."  Leone pointed out that Kurosawa was not the first person to use the plot of an individual playing two sides off against each other, noting the Dashiell Hammett novel Red Harvest (1929) and the 18th Century play Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni.  However, the lawsuit was settled out of court.
A Fistful of Dollars is a must see for all fans of Westerns or action films in general.  Leone and Eastwood would ride again in two sequels: For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966).

Clint Eastwood as The Man with No Name            

Mona Lisa

Year of Release:  1986
Director:  Neil Jordan
Screenplay:  Neil Jordan and David Leland
Starring:  Bob Hoskins, Cathy Tyson, Michael Caine, Robbie Coltrane, Clarke Peters, Kate Hardie
Running Time:  104 minutes
Genre:  Drama, thriller

George (Hoskins) is a small-time London gangster who is released after seven years in prison and is given a job a driver and bodyguard to call girl Simone (Tyson).  The two take an instant dislike to each other but their mutual animosity warms into a tentative friendship and George begins to fall in love with her.  On Simone's behalf, he embarks on a dangerous odyssey through London's sleaziest clubs and vice dens to rescue a young girl.

Irish director Neil Jordan is probably best known for such films as The Crying Game (1992) and Interview with a Vampire (1994).  In this stylish British gangland thriller, which plays a little like a London take on Taxi Driver (1976), Jordan moves from gritty realism to almost surrealism.  Bob Hoskins was Oscar nominated for his portrayal of the conflicted and strangely naïve hoodlum, who moves between a kind of gruff compassion to bursts of savage violence, he always seems like a powderkeg that can detonate at any moment.  Cathy Tyson is impressive as the enigmatic Simone.  Michael Caine appears as Denny Mortwell, George's suave, sleazy boss, a wealthy pornographer, pimp, procurer and blackmailer, and comedian and actor Robbie Coltrane provides one of the film's few glimpses of warmth and humanity as Thomas, George's eccentric but kind-hearted mechanic friend.  While this plays essentially as an above average British gangster thriller, it has a style and offbeat humour that really elevates it.  It is definitely worth watching, but be warned it goes into some very disturbing territory and gets really dark at times. 

Cathy Tyson and Bob Hoskins in Mona Lisa