FeckenOdeon Films

A Bunch of Amateurs

2012-01-10T12:01:00.004Z

2008 - Dir: Andy Cardiff - 1 hour 27 minutes
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th January, 2012

This is very much a stereotypical quaint British film, but this is no bad thing and any lack of originality is made up for by the thespian talent on show. Derek Jacobi and Imelda Staunton carry the flag, supported by Samantha Bond (best known as the latest Miss Moneypenny) and despite the storyline sometimes becoming flimsy, the acting quality carries the film through any rough patches. Burt Reynolds does a great self parodying turn and the dialogue is enlivened by the pen of Private Eye’s Ian Hislop.

It’s probably a style of film making that only the British can enjoy - and then only certain sections of British society. Like many of the classics of old it gently makes fun of our way of life and our eccentricities. Our country and our activities are portrayed in a less than flattering but endearing way. Somehow this pushes all the right buttons and we laugh at ourselves. This approach doesn’t appeal to the more demanding metropolitan Brit - hence the downright snotty reviews the film received in the posher papers and glossies. Because it doesn’t contain explosions, car chases, amputations or aliens it didn’t get a full commercial release but it has done very well in community cinemas and film societies. It’s probably time for someone to make a quaint British Film about film societies.....

The film was chosen to be shown at the annual Royal Film Performance. The Queen and Prince Philip were so impressed that they requested a copy for all of the Royal family to watch at Sandringham over Christmas.
The setting of the little village of Stratford St. John, which is mistakenly confused as Stratford-Upon-Avon, was not even filmed in England but at two farm villages in the Isle of Man.
Burt Reynolds last filmed in the UK for “Rough Cut” - 28 years before this film was made.
Charles Durning, who plays the agent, was 85 at the time of filming. He and Burt Reynolds are great friends and have made 8 feature films and numerous TV shows together. Burt Reynolds is 76

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

2011-11-28T23:15:00.003Z

1953 - Dir.: Howard Hawkes - 1 hr 29 mins

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th December, 2011

Our main feature was released just a few months before “The Belles of St Trinian’s” but they could hardly be more different. St Trinian’s was shot in black and white in a mere six weeks while Blondes got the full Hollywood Technicolor treatment and took months to get in the can. Such a comparison is no criticism of either - merely an indictor of the state of the film industry in their respective countries not long after a major war.

20th Century Fox originally battled to buy the rights to the story with the intention of using it as a vehicle for Betty Grable. Columbia pushed up the price because they wanted it for Judy Holiday. Grable’s nose was pushed firmly out of joint when Fox finally won the rights… and promptly gave the part to the new kid on the lot. Marilyn Monroe had impressed the producers with her performance in the steamy thriller “Niagara” - so on her 26th birthday in 1952 she got a big part in a big musical and what became her signature tune (Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend). Co-star Jane Russell was an established name and a consummate professional. She’s been credited in keeping the nervously afflicted Monroe on track. She died earlier this year aged 87.

The story used here was serialized in Harper's Bazaar - the diary of flapper Lorelei Lee was a Jazz Age sensation. Lorelei's spelling was as bad as F. Scott Fitzgerald's, and she began every sentence with a conjunction. But, stringing along wealthy courtiers on all-expenses-paid shopping sprees, she showed a foxy intelligence in matters of the heart—unlike her best friend, Dorothy, an unlucky-in-love brunette wiseacre modelled on Anita Loos, the silent-film scenarist who'd invented them both. The stories became a best selling book in 1925 and hit the Times Square Theater's stage in 1926. It was first filmed in 1928 (silent), but it was Carol Channing’s Broadway performance in 1949 which brought Hollywood calling, and resulted in the “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” we see tonight.

Blonde Dumbness....

Anita Loos was no dumb brunette and she didn’t write about dumb blondes. Her characters were far from dumb - Lorelei may seem to be a stupid gold digger but she got what she wanted - so strike the stupid bit out. Marilyn Monroe, for all her faults, wasn’t dumb either and expressed great reservations about some of the lines in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes”. “I thought you were dumb,” says Esmond Senior. “I can be smart when it’s important,” Lorelei replies. “But most men don’t like it.” Marilyn herself suggested this piece of dialogue. In fact Lorelei would not work as a character – we wouldn’t like her and she would be unbearably cold and cynical – if it wasn’t for Marilyn’s clever and thoughtful acting and her perfectionism. She often insisted on re-taking scenes even when the director had accepted them… which prompted Howard Hawkes to say “There are three ways to get this picture finished: replace Marilyn, rewrite the script and make it shorter, and get a new director."

The Belles of St Trinian's

2011-11-28T23:10:00.002Z

1954 - Dir: Frank Launder - 1 hr 27 mins

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27^th December, 2011

“The Happiest Days of Your Life” (1950) was such a huge success that a follow-up was inevitable - and Ronald Searle's much-loved cartoons about the riotous, thankfully fictional girls' school St Trinian's provided the perfect inspiration. Searle was heavily involved with the screenplay and this, the first in the series, is probably the closest the film makers ever got to the strange world inside the cartoonist’s head. The main titles are drawn by Searle. “The Belles of St Trinian's” reunited Alastair Sim and Joyce Grenfell and threw in a bevy of 1950s character actors. The standout is George Cole as Flash Harry, Arthur Daley's spiritual ancestor, but there's sterling support from Hermione Baddeley, Irene Handl, Beryl Reid, Joan Sims and Sid James, while cameos include Searle and his wife and editor Kaye Webb as concerned parents. St Trinian's is presided over the genial Miss Millicent Fritton (Sim in drag), whose philosophy is summed up as: "in other schools girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world which has to be prepared".

Four sequels followed - “Blue Murder at St Trinian's” (1957), “The Pure Hell of St Trinian's” (1960), “The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery” (1966) and “The Wildcats of St Trinian's” (1980). Launder directed them all but they could be said to be flogging the proverbial dead horse as the idea ran out of steam. Even deader were the two updated sequels “St Trinians” (2007) and “St Trinian’s II” (2009) which starred such talents as David Tennent and Colin Firth… they really must have been short of cash!

The Shawshank Redemption

2011-11-20T23:47:00.006Z

1994 - Dir: Frank Darabont - 2 hours 16 minutes

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th November, 2011

"The Shawshank Redemption” was released in 1994 to a warm critical reception, but failed to make a profit at the box office. Finding an audience through TV and video, it gradually grew to become a phenomenon, a canonised classic, and something close to a religious experience for many. Now it is regarded as the ultimate feel-good film - but it only achieves this status by first visiting the darkest places imaginable. It's easy to forget how violent and depressing the story is and it's only by evoking a powerful sense of horror that Frank Darabont's masterful screenplay, based on a Stephen King story, earns its climactic feeling of release. The narrative obviously inspired the makers as much as it does the audience and it marks a career high for most of the considerable talents involved. The cinematography by long-time Coen Brothers collaborator Roger Deakins is a masterpiece of subtle composition. Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins gave touching and restrained performances and Darabont's direction displays the mastery of a man making his twentieth film, rather than, as this was, his first.“The Shawshank Redemption” is perhaps the only undisputed classic of the 1990s, although it's more popular with the public than with critics, who tend to be slightly sniffy about it's feel-good magic. In this respect, it has much in common with the other classics, with which it is often compared, such as “Casablanca” and “It's A Wonderful Life”.....which suggests that it will remain a favourite of the people for decades to come.

The American Humane Association monitored the filming of scenes involving a convict’s pet crow. During the scene where he fed it a maggot, they objected on the grounds that it was cruel to the maggot, and required that they use a maggot that had died from natural causes. One was found, and the scene was filmed.
In the original story, the prisoners watch a screening of “The Lost Weekend”. Because the rights to this were owned by a different studio, the director looked to see which old films he could show without incurring costs. He was delighted to see that one that he was able to use was “Gilda” - one of Rita Hayworth's greatest hits - there’s a poster for it hanging in the auditorium tonight.

Coco Before Chanel

2011-11-03T22:49:00.004Z

2009 - Dir: Anne Fontaine

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 11th November, 2011

There are few names more iconic than Chanel, yet few think of the word as anything other than a fashion brand. With Coco Avant Chanel, director-screenwriter Anne Fontaine portrays how Gabrielle Chanel, dispatched, along with her sister, to an orphanage on the death of her mother, transformed herself from lowly would-be orphan to the epitome of style and class, via the salons and boudoirs of the Belle Époque.

Fontaine spares us the grand arcs of an overwrought biopic, offering instead the quiet successes and failures of everyday life as experienced by an impoverished but brilliant young woman at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Chanel had no illusions about herself. Small-bosomed and narrow-hipped, she once said said, “Cut my head off and I look like an adolescent boy.” In fact, this “female Beau Brummell” (Cecil Beaton’s words) modernized women’s clothing in part by ransacking her lovers’ closets. Early on, as a milliner, she replaced heavy, ornate hats with severe straw boaters. As the girlfriend of polo-playing entrepreneur Boy Capel, she pioneered sportswear separates. Paramour Grand Duke Dmitri of Russia (Rasputin’s co-assassin) inspired the her to pile on exotic jewels. Instead of marrying the he-man millionaire Duke of Westminster, she appropriated his salmon fisherman’s sweaters and tweeds. This film would not have impressed her - moviemakers throughout her career loved her - Chanel did not return the compliment. She described Holywood as “the Mont-Saint-Michel of tit and tail,” and considered its celluloid goddesses to be distasteful.

Audrey Tautou is hardly a celluloid goddess... yet! She first came to international attention in the quirky “Amelie” (shown here in April 2010). She’s worked consistently since that 2001 triumph but has never hit the same stellar note. She was particularly miscast in the tedious DaVinci Code. In this film she has a role to suit her better.

The designs and costumes for the film were supervised by Karl Lagerfeld - Chanel’s Chief Designer. Audrey Tautou wears one of Coco’s own outfits in the final scenes.
There was speculation that Coco Chanel had been a Nazi collaborator and/or spy during WW2. She remained in Paris and is alleged to have had affairs with German officers. More likely is the theory that she merely manipulated the Germans in order to continue living in luxury at The Hotel Ritz.
Jackie Kennedy was wearing a pink Chanel suit when JFK was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.
Coco Chanel died, aged 87 in January 1971 in her wartime home the Hotel Ritz in Paris.

Gandhi

2011-10-22T18:56:00.005+01:00

1982 - Dir: Richard Attenborough - 3 hours 11 minutes

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 29^th October, 2011

This is one of the last old-school epics ever made, a glorious visual treat featuring tens of thousands of extras (real people, not digital effects) and sumptuous Panavision cinematography. But a true epic is about more than just widescreen photography, it concerns itself with noble subjects too, and the life story of Mahatma Gandhi is one of the noblest of all. Richard Attenborough's treatment is openly reverential, but, given the saint-like character of his subject, it's hard to see how it could have been anything else. He doesn't flinch from the implication that the Mahatma was naïve to expect a unified India, for example, but instead lets Gandhi's actions speak for themselves. The outstanding achievement of this labour of love is that it tells the story of an avowed pacifist who never raised a hand in anger, of a man who never held high office, of a man who shied away from publicity, and turns it into three hours of utterly mesmerising cinema. Attenborough is quite justified in regarding this as his finest achievement. The director struggled for years to get financing for his huge but "non-commercial" project.

Various actors were considered for the all-important title role, but the actor who was finally chosen, Ben Kingsley, makes the role so completely his own that there is a genuine feeling that the spirit of Gandhi is on the screen. Kingsley's performance is powerful without being loud or histrionic; he is almost always quiet, observant, and soft-spoken on the screen, and yet his performance comes across with such might that we realise, afterward, that the sheer moral force of Gandhi must have been behind the words. Apart from all its other qualities, what makes this movie special is that it was obviously made by people who believed in it. What is important about this film is not that it serves as a history lesson (although it does) but that, at a time when the world is a confusing and depressing place, it reminds us that we are, after all, human, and thus capable of the most extraordinary and wonderful achievements, simply through the use of our imagination, our will, and our sense of right.

300,000 extras appeared in the funeral sequence. About 200,000 were volunteers and 94,560 were paid a small fee. The sequence was filmed on 31st Jan 1981, the 33rd anniversary of Gandhi's funeral. 11 crews shot over 20,000 feet of film, which was pared down to just over 2 minutes.
Richard Attenborough and his wife Sheila Sim owned a share of the rights in Britain's longest-running play "The Mousetrap" which they sold to fund the production of this movie.
Sir Ben Kingsley was born Krishna Pandit
Bhanji in Snainton, North Yorkshire, England, the son of Anna Lyna Mary (née Goodman), an actress and model, and Rahimtulla Harji Bhanji, a medical doctor who came to the UK from Kenya. Sir Ben is now 68 and is currently filming “The Dictator” for release in 2012. He is a Quaker.
Baron Attenborough of Richmond on Thames is now 87 and confined to a wheelchair. He appeared as an actor in 64 films and directed 12. His brother, David, is quoted as saying that he doesn’t think Dickie will be making any more films... for now.

I Served the King of England

2011-10-12T00:42:00.004+01:00

2006 - Dir.: Jiri Menzel.

Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on October 14th, 2011

Many of us first got to know the Czech director Jiri Menzel through his whimsical 1966 Oscar-winner "Closely Observed Trains." Veteran critic Roger Ebert looked up his review of the earlier film and found a sentence that also could apply to this movie: "If you're charged up emotionally, you'd better lie down for an hour or two before going to see it. It requires an audience at peace with itself." Don't assume, however, that Menzel's "I Served the King of England" is a snoozer; for that matter, don't assume it has anything to do with the King of England. It's a film filled with wicked satire and sex both joyful and pitiful. But Menzel doesn't pound home his points. He skips gracefully through them, like his hero. He takes the velvet-glove approach. Here is a film with a hatred of Nazis and a crafty condemnation of communist bureaucracy and cronyism. It seems to be a comic tale of the long and somewhat uneventful life of Jan Dite, who worked as a waiter, bought a hotel with stolen postage stamps and was jailed because he wasn't quick enough to figure out what the communists, when they came to power, really wanted from him.

Director Jiri Menzel, like the film’s hero is a survivor. He began his career in the false dawn of the Prague Spring. Unlike his contemporaries Ivan Passer and Milos Forman, he didn't move to the US following the Soviet invasion of 1968, and publicly dissociated himself from his pre-invasion films, including Closely Observed Trains. Now 70 he’s able once again to work freely as a senior figure in the Czech film industry and there's no one left to complain about the political subtext in his movie, or to try to censor the sex scenes. No one will doubt the skill and exuberance with which he continues to bring to his work. This film has a zest that belies the director's age. There is no sense here of a distinguished director striking a ponderous and introspective note at the twilight of his career. Visually, I Served the King… is lithe and imaginative. It uses music, montage and silent-movie conventions with wit and energy. In Common with most of Menzel’s movies, this is based on a novel by his close friend Bohumil Hrabal, who died in 1997.

The scenes for the Hotel Pariz restaurant were filmed in the main restaurant in Prague's Obecni Dum (Civic House), just around the corner from the actual Hotel Pariz. Both restaurants were designed in the Art Nouveau style by artist Alphons Mucha, but the Obecni Dum restaurant is larger.
Ivan Barnev, who plays Dite, is a Bulgarian television actor much loved for his performance in the soap “Priyatelite Me Narichat Chicho”. Showered with awards for this performance, he’s now shooting major feature films... in Bulgaria.

The King's Speech

2011-09-19T19:57:00.004+01:00

2010 - Dir.: Tom Hooper.

Shown at the FeckenOdeon on 24th September 2011

It's a peculiar person—if not an unabashed
sadist—who takes pleasure in someone's stuttering, particularly at a public
event. Yet when filmmaker Tom Hooper heard that Colin Firth couldn't stop
stammering while accepting an acting honour for "A Single Man," he
couldn't hide his delight. That Firth was able to transplant King George's
faltering diction onto his own tongue meant that audiences could see, and hear, how disabling a speech impediment can be. We may never have been able to admire Firth’s efforts without the intervention of the Queen Mum. Screen writer David Seidler wanted to make this film in the mid-1970s. He wrote to Queen Elizabeth asking permission to tell the story. She wrote back saying that "The memory of these events are still too painful" and that she wouldn't accede in her lifetime... the Queen Mother lived to be 101 - perhaps the longest delay in film history.

Based
on a true story....

Much of “The King’s Speech” is true - based on the speech therapist’s notes and other writings. George VI was indeed thrust somewhat unprepared into the limelight at a crucial point in history when his brother abdicated in order to marry a divorcee. The film skirts nimbly round the rather ticklish points of Edward’s liking for a certain Herr Hitler and his previous playboy reputation. The portrayal of Churchill (the one piece of really bad casting in the film) also dodges round Winston’s support for Edward. But there’s little doubt that Logue’s intervention gave the country a functioning figurehead at a time when such a thing was desperately needed.

Lionel Logue's diaries were discovered just nine weeks prior to principal photography. Quotations from them were worked into the film's screenplay.
Helena Bonham Carter filmed this in tandem with the final Harry Potter film. She shot scenes for Potter at the weekends and fitted in the Queen during the week.
To the great disgust of the actors and crew the film has been cut for the United States. To avoid getting an R rating the distributors removed the climactic scene where Bertie violently uses swear words to overcome his stammer. The film has been rendered meaningless but the money men just don’t give a f***. We do - and we’re showing the full version!

Grow Your Own

2011-04-19T10:46:00.003+01:00

2007 - Dir: Richard Laxton - Shown at the FeckenOdeon on 30th April, 2011

This film did not begin - as most films do - with a round of pitches and commissions in film company offices. It grew from a seed that was planted and nurtured in "Art in Action" - a long-established community arts project based in Bootle. Bass player Carl Hunter was asked to make a short video to promote and help raise funds for an extraordinary enterprise. The Family Refugee Support Project in Liverpool tries to help people who have had terrible experiences in their home countries, and who are trying to cope with the physical and mental aftereffects of those experiences in the sometimes inhospitable atmosphere of their adopted city. Under this scheme, these people were given - not drugs - but allotments.

Carl realised that there was more than a fundraising video in this story and took it to the BBC who pulled in extra funding, director Richard Laxton and a lot of familiar character actors. Carl was given help to write his first ever screenplay - given the working title of "The Allotment". The result is a bit of an odd hybrid - part Ealing comedy, part social comment. It can be said to work on both levels. Many people have allotments (there are two sites here in Feckenham) and regard them as their private escape - how people react when their space is invaded is always good dramatic fuel.

And what happened next? The project upon which this film is based was refused funding by the Lottery and by Government Agencies. Perhaps a lesson for our current financial predicament - nothing grows unless you water it!

The Rocket Post

2011-03-21T00:39:00.001Z

2004 (Limited release in Scotland only) / 2006 (Limited UK release) - Dir: Stephan Whittaker

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th March, 2011

This films holds the dubious record for the longest time taken from shooting to showing in the cinema. In 2002, it won a major prize at the Stony Brook Film Festival in New York State, and there were other special screenings, including one at the An Lanntair arts centre in Stornoway in 2005. The film even came out on DVD in Scandinavia, but still took years to find a UK distributor. Sadly the director died before his work hit the big screen and the producer took up an new career promoting wind farm technology. The rather lame explanation given by the distributors who eventually gave it a very limited release was that the film would not have appealed to the young people who inhabit multiplex cinemas - and these are the same people who regard the film society movement as a "minority market". Haven’t they heard? We’re all living longer!

The cast of this £5m production, shot largely on the Hebridean island of Taransay in 2001, includes Trainspotting star Kevin McKidd, Gary Lewis from Billy Elliot and newcomer Shauna Macdonald. Not in any way edgy or challenging, The Rocket Post does what British films do best – light, quirky comedy with lots of familiar faces, picture postcard scenery, a splash of romance and a dash of drama.

The real Gerhard Zucker appears to have been a bit of a charlatan. In the early 1930s he organised a number of rocket demonstrations in German villages. The impressive rocket was really a large canister with some large fireworks stuffed up the rear end. It took off with an impressive roar, rose about 15 metres and then inevitably crashed to the ground. Zucker made money by selling postal covers which (fraudulently) claimed to have been transported by one of his rockets. After the war he became a furniture salesman but was unable to resist further experimentation with rockets. In 1964 one of his contraptions went out of control and killed a bystander. This led to all non-military rocketry being banned in Germany. Undeterred Zucker resumed launching fraudulent 'rocket postal covers'. Having done a great deal to set back scientific rocketry in Germany, Zucker died at home in his bed in 1985.

Round Ireland With A Fridge

2011-03-09T14:50:00.003Z

2010 - Dir: Ed Bye

Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on 16th March, 2011

The current state of the film distribution industry in Britain means that very few home grown films are shown in mainstream cinemas. It’s a situation that’s been exacerbated by the introduction of Digital Cinema. The very technology that should have made it possible for cinemas to be flexible and adventurous in their programming has been used to narrow the choice even further. Because the equipment needed for digital projection is so expensive it has been necessary for cinemas to enter into finance deals with the large American studios.. which, of course, means that the studios expect the cinemas to show their films and very little else. There are token nods towards diversity in the form of "alternative content" - operas and sporting events - but in reality the multiplexes are condemned to a sold diet of "RoboPotter of the Caribbean Part 9" and our British film makers are forced out into "straight to DVD" or, even worse, free distribution on the internet or direct to your mobile phone.

Tonight’s film is a case in point. Firstly the Americans liked the book. They said they might like to make a film of it. Then they said nothing. Then they said maybe. Then they said nothing again. Then Tony Hawks said "Sod it! I’ll make the thing myself". So he did. And then no-one would touch it. A minor distributor toyed with it, put it out on DVD... and walked away. It didn’t even get a showing on the telly. And there things would have languished if Mr Hawks hadn’t been made of sterner stuff. He got in touch with community cinemas like The FeckenOdeon as well as film festival organisers to tell them that he’d got a good British film - and would we like to show it? It’s not the best film or funniest film or the glossiest film ever made - but it’s a happy, professionally made hour and a half of entertainment. The sort of thing we like in Britain... and certainly in Feckenham!

This story has been repeated many times over in recent years. Even our next film in the main cinema has suffered - it took the producers no less that 7 years to get a very limited UK release for "The Rocket Post". We’re now getting offers of British movies that in the past would have had a guaranteed modest showing on the big circuits. Do it yourself is now seen as the only way forward. There are over 350 film societies in the UK and there are about 100 full time independent community cinemas - that’s a "circuit" of about 450 screens and it may well be the only way for British films to be seen by the public they were made for. We shall be delighted and proud to play our part!

To Have and Have Not

2011-02-21T01:21:00.002Z

1944 - Dir: Howard Hawks

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th February, 2011

Hemmingway wasn’t too proud of his book "To Have and Have Not". Warner Brothers didn’t think much of it either but they’d bought the rights and wanted to make some money on the investment. The solution was to get William Faulkner and Jules Furthman to completely rewrite it (it remains in the same setting and the theme of rum running survives). They then threw their hottest property (Humphrey Bogart) at it and got Howard Hawks, one of the steadiest hands in the business, to direct it. All seemed set for a solid but rather unexciting film that would have done modest business even during wartime... but then there was Lauren Bacall.

Hawks had spotted Bacall in New York where she was a model and bit part stage actress. He persuaded her mother to let her travel to Los Angeles, signed her to a Warner Bros contract, and spent many months grooming her for a major role in the movies. There’s little doubt that Mr Hawks regarded the nineteen year old Bacall as his protege and expected a "reward" for his attentions. But then Bacall met Bogart on the set... Mr Hawks was not best pleased. Bogart was married to actress Mayo Methot but the marriage was on the rocks - largely due to Mrs Bogart’s overindulgence in whisky on the rocks.

Bacall claims to have been so nervous during the shoot that she trembled almost uncontrollably before takes. If that’s the case there’s not a sign of it in the finished movie where she can be said to smoulder rather than shiver. When the film was released she was the sensation of the moment. Despite the studio’s misgivings the story of their whirlwind romance was lapped up by the public and they became one of Hollywood’s most established and stable pairings. Howard Hawks never spoke to Bogart again.

Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs

2011-02-20T23:51:00.003Z

1939 - Dir: Walt Disney with six sequence directors

Shown at the FeckenOdeon on 26th February, 2011

This is the first full length animated feature film ever made. It hadn’t been thought that animation could sustain anything more that a few minutes of madcap merriment involving mice and chases. Walt Disney was convinced that a really well made film with strong characters and a good plot could work as well, if not better, than any live action picture.

Disney's inspiration was not in creating Snow White but in creating her world. At a time when animation was a painstaking frame-by-frame activity and every additional movement detail took an artist days or weeks to draw, Disney imagined a film in which every corner and dimension would contain something that was alive and moving. From the top to the bottom, from the front to the back, he filled the frame. So complex were his frames, indeed, that Disney and his team of animators found that the cels they used for their short cartoons were not large enough to contain all the details he wanted, and larger cels were needed. The film's earliest audiences may not have known the technical reasons for the film's impact, but in the early scene where Snow White runs through the forest, they were thrilled by the way the branches reached out to snatch at her, and how the sinister eyes in the darkness were revealed to belong to friendly woodland animals. The trees didn't just sit there within the frame. Nothing like the techniques in ''Snow White'' had been seen before. Disney demonstrated how animation could release a movie from its trap of space and time; how gravity, dimension, physical limitations and the rules of movement itself could be transcended by the imaginations of the animators.

Ironically it’s only today, through the wonders of High Definition Digital projection, that we can see the film as Disney wanted it to be seen. No worn projectors, scratches, dust or colour fade - just rock solid, pin sharp animation - every frame (or field in modern technospeak) is a work of art in its own right.

The film took 750 artists four years to make.

From many who auditioned for the voice of Snow White (Walt turned down Deanna Durbin), he chose the young singer Adriana Caselotti. Harry Stockwell, the father of Dean Stockwell, did the voice of the prince.

For a while after its release the film was the highest-grossing motion picture of all time, until it was finally surpassed by "Gone With the Wind" a couple of years later.

In England, the film was deemed too scary for children, and those under 16 had to be accompanied by a parent.

The Concert

2011-02-07T16:00:00.002Z

2009 - Dir: Radu Mihaileanu

Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on February 11th, 2011

You may need an extra hankie for this one! It’s advertised as a comedy and much of it is very funny - but even the hard bitten critic of the Daily Mirror was forced to admit that he was reduced to tears by the end. If you think about it this is an odd subject for a comedy. Doubly so when you realise the basic premise - that, in the Soviet Union of the 1960s, Jewish musicians suffered in much the same way as they had in Nazi Germany - is a bit flawed. The director has said that the conductor Filipov is ‘inspired by real-life conductor Evgeny Svetlanov’, which is odd because although Svetlanov was indeed principal conductor at the Bolshoi, this was in 1962-1965 - long after the anti-semetic excesses of Stalin. At no time in his long career was Svetlanov linked with political controversy involving Jewish musicians - but this is fantasy where the facts should never be allowed to spoil a good story! Perhaps it was never intended to be "true to life" as it pokes critical fun at what lies behind power, ambition and even failure.

There are terrific performances by its Russian-Franco-Romanian cast and fantastic playing by the (hidden) musicians of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra. Melanie Laurent’s violin playing is dubbed by Sarah Nemtanu of the Orchestre National de France - who doesn’t even get a credit!

The Sting

2011-01-09T12:48:00.004Z

1973 - Dir: George Roy Hill

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 29th January, 2011

Having succeeded in the Old West, director George Roy Hill turned his talents to that other rich vein of popular rebel mythology - and good cinema - prohibition-era gangsterville. Hill's film is almost a sequel to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" in that it follows a similar formula and although set in 1936 Chicago, the two heroes retain the same characteristics. Close attention is paid to building period detail, and one of the film’s major strengths is its atmospheric recreation of the mean streets of Chicago. The plot gets complex quickly. But don't worry. For those with fashionably short attention spans, titles with different chapter headings break the plot into easily digestible chunks.
"The Sting" became one of the biggest hits of the early '70s; grossing 68.5 million dollars during its first run, the film also picked up seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Adapted Score for Marvin Hamlisch.

The movie is based on the real-life exploits of grifter brothers Charley and Fred Gondorf, whose experiences culminated in a scam similar to the one shown in the film, known in 1914 as "the wire" or "the big store". Unlike the movie, however, the actual "mark" was more than happy to testify against Charley Gondorf, the front man of the scam, and he spent time in Sing Sing, as did his younger brother a year later for running another scam. Both served a few years and were released. As late as 1924, when Charley was 65 and Fred 60, they were still active, and running new scams.

The movie was filmed on the backlot of Universal studios and the diner in which Hooker meets Lonnegan is the same diner interior used in "Back to the Future".

Although "The Sting" helped bring Scott Joplin's rags back into popular culture, they actually predate the period of the story by 25 years and wouldn’t have been heard in the 1030s.

When Elizabeth Taylor announced that "The Sting" had won and Oscar for Best Picture a streaker ran accross the stage. A few years later the same streaker was found dead in an art gallery. The two events are not thought to have been connected.... or were they?

Oklahoma!

2010-12-11T11:24:00.002Z

1955 - Dir: Fred Zinnermann

Shown at the FeckenOdeon on December 27th, 2010

Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1943 stage musical was considered revolutionary for a multitude of reasons, not least of which were the play's intricate integration of song and storyline, and the simplicity and austerity of its production design. This 1955 film version of Oklahoma! retains the songs and the story, but the simplicity gives way to the spectacle of Technicolor, Todd-AO, and Stereophonic Sound. Nine years is a long time in showbiz so the original Broadway stars were overlooked in favour of newer talent - though Aunt Eller is played by Charlotte Greenwood who the part was written for (illness had prevented her from playing it on the stage).
THE PLOT & CAST
The story can be boiled down to a single sentence: a girl must decide between the two suitors who want to take her to a social.
In her movie debut, 19-year-old Shirley Jones plays Laurie, an Oklahoma farm gal who is courted by boisterous cowboy Curley (Gordon MacRae) and by menacing, obsessive farm hand Jud Frye (Rod Steiger). Counterpointing the serious elements of the story is a comic subplot involving innocently promiscuous Ado Annie (Gloria Grahame), her erstwhile sweetheart Will Parker (Gene Nelson) and lascivious oriental travelling salesman Ali Hakim (Eddie Albert) - who looks and sounds as if the closest he’s been to the orient is the Bronx.
It’s all very jolly stuff and, as you might expect, the story ends on a high with the pioneering Oklahomers singing of the great future they and their newly minted state can look forward to... It’s ironic to note that the real settlers overworked the land and created the dust bowl chronicled in Steinbeck’s harrowing "Grapes of Wrath"....

TWO FOR THE PRICE OF ONE!

Oklahoma! was made twice at the same time... There were two versions. One was the general release CinemaScope version we’re seeing tonight. The other was the first film ever to be made in ToddAO - a process which used film 70mm wide (twice the width of the standard 35mm film) and which produced pin sharp pictures on the very biggest of screens - the ToddAO version was only shown in large city centre theatres. Director Fred Zinnermann and his long suffering cast shot each scene separately for the two versions - a long and tedious process which, we’re told, resulted in two subtly different movies. We’ll have to take their word for it because the ToddAO version no longer exists - 20th Century Fox ditched most of the prints and those that do survive are but faded shadows of their former glory. The print you’re watching tonight is a digital restoration of the 35mm version.

SHALL WE DANCE?

Just before the interval we’re treated to a classic 1950s Hollywood ballet - it’s all just a bad dream and it’s just as well because it’s all a bit strange. For some reason the leading characters are danced by people who don’t look a bit like them... except for Rod Steiger. It’s well executed but it seems to belong in a different film - it’s quite a relief to wake up in good old folksy Oklahoma again!

ELEPHANTINE CORN

Finding "corn as high as an elephant's eye" proved to be quite a challenge. Since filming was to take place out of season, no tall cornfields were to be found anywhere. The job was given to the people of the University of Arizona Agricultural Department, who planted each stalk in individual containers and held their breath. With rain and good luck, the corn grew to a height of 16 feet, causing Oscar Hammerstein to quip: "The corn is now as high as the eye of an elephant on top of another elephant."

Citizen Kane

2010-11-20T20:08:00.002Z

1941 - Dir: Orson Welles
Shown at the FeckenOdeon on 27th November, 2010

What can one write that hasn’t already been written a thousand times about Citizen Kane? "The greatest film ever made"... a debatable assertion but who can deny that this is a remarkable piece of work. Roger Ebert, distinguished critic of the Chicago Sun Times has analysed the film more than 30 times over the years and still can’t help being drawn back. Perhaps it’s best to let him introduce it:
"The origins of "Citizen Kane'' are well known. Orson Welles, the boy wonder of radio and stage, was given freedom by RKO Radio Pictures to make any picture he wished. Herman Mankiewicz, an experienced screenwriter, collaborated with him on a screenplay originally called ``The American.'' Its inspiration was the life of William Randolph Hearst, who had put together an empire of newspapers, radio stations, magazines and news services, and then built to himself the flamboyant monument of San Simeon, a castle furnished by rummaging the remains of nations. Hearst was Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates rolled up into an enigma. "Citizen Kane'' covers the rise of the penny press (here Joseph Pulitzer is the model), the Hearst-supported Spanish-American War, the birth of radio, the power of political machines, the rise of fascism, the growth of celebrity journalism...."

William Randolph Hearst was infuriated by this movie, obviously based on his life. "Rosebud" was Hearst's pet name for a certain part of the anatomy of his long-time mistress Marion Davies.
The film flopped when it first opened - this may have had something to do with the panning Hearst’s papers and radio stations gave it. Hearst also ordered his advertising departments not to accept ads for theatres showing the film.
Ted Turner had plans to "colorize the film. Welles hear about it and roared ""Tell Ted Turner to keep his crayons away from my movie!". The film has never been tampered with.

The Ghost

2010-11-10T14:06:00.002Z

2009 - Dir: Roman Polanski

Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on November 19th, 2010

“It’s harder than usual not to think about Roman Polanski and his self-induced messy life when watching The Ghost. That the film was edited and completed while Polanski was under house arrest in a chalet in Gstaad only adds to the sense that the fear and paranoia hovering over its every scene emerges from distinctly personal disquiet.”... well, that’s the opinion of the Daily Telegraph’s film critic Sukhdev Sandhu. Robert Harris who wrote the novel and the screenplay and worked closely with Polanski throughout doesn’t agree. He says that Mr P was on top form - full of energy, acting out every scene and attacking the job with creative energy crackling from every pore. Even when arrested he cut himself off from the distractions of legal action and imprisonment - the film was completed using a laptop and the Internet. The truth, as so often is the case, probably lies somewhere in between. Polanski is a director of vast experience. His craftsmanship is stamped on every scene and, even though Mr Harris’ script on occasions drives a coach and horses through logic and credibility, Polanski sews it all together with such skill that we believe every frame. The man is a professional - if you gave him the script of Carry on Camping and asked him to make a thriller out of it a thriller is exactly what you would get - polished, compelling and literate.... Only after the film was over would you start to wonder about the holes in the plot....

Is this based on Tony and Cherie? Mr Harris says “sort of”. Well of course it is! Which other contemporary British Prime Minister took the country to war in the Middle East? Ok - John Major did it as well - but there’s no sign of Edwina Currie hiding in the wardrobe and you never catch even a glimpse of the top of Pierce Brosnan’s underpants. It has to be Blair... but it’s unfortunate that the media, ever seduced by a whiff of scandal, had little to say about the film itself but everything to say about the Blairs and Mr Polanski’s lurid past (it’s 33 years past). As a result this really very good thriller enjoyed a quick week in the multiplexes before being pensioned off to await a video release. It deserves better!

Ewan McGregor’s character never had a name. McGregor invented “Gordon McFarquor” so that he’d have an identity to work with. The credits simply list him as The Ghost.

Because Polanski couldn’t travel to the United States, much of the filming took place in Germany. The island of Sylt stood in for Martha’s Vinyard.

Pierce Brosnan said during a promotional interview, "It's sad for all concerned, but it's also heightened the movie. The movie's in the can, Polanski's in the can."

In the film The Ghost is given a manuscript by Lang's attorney. In the taxi he checks the number of pages: 624. Tony Blair's memoirs A Journey, published in September 2010 (after the film had been released) also has 624 pages.... spooky!

Flawless

2010-09-27T00:32:00.002+01:00

2008 - Dir: Michael Radford

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on October 30th, 2010

This is a modern, slick piece of filmaking with a difference. While "Flawless" follows the rules of the crime thriller genre, it does so in a kinder, gentler manner than many of its contemporaries. This movie has no chases or killings and lacks many of the violent trappings audiences have come to expect from heist movies. In fact, one could make a convincing argument that, although the production is primarily about the planning, execution, and aftermath of the crime, it's actually an unconventional love story. This is a strange and tense film - more of howdunnit than a whodunnit. We meet a high flying business woman (Demi Moore) who slightly improbably teams up with the company janitor (Michael Caine) to steal some Flawless diamonds. The robbery, its planning and execution, are exciting enough - but it’s only then that we get to the meat in the sandwich.... to say much more would be to say too much...
It’s 40 years since Michael Caine blew the bloody doors off the conventions of crime movies in "The Italian Job". Now he’s at it again - proving once and for all that pensioners are just young hoodlums in old skins. Mr Caine, now 77 years old, never seems to stop working. It can’t be for the money so the only conclusion can be that he simply loves the job. Since this film he’s completed another six and is now working on a further two projects - including the next in the Batman series. Mr Caine is supported by a fine cast of British character actors including Joss Ackland who is 83 and Derren Nesbitt aged 75... not a lot of people know that...

The Pope's Toilet

2010-08-18T18:30:00.002+01:00

El Baño del Papa
2007 - Dir: César Charlone & Enrique Fernández

Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on September 17th, 2010

The Pope is coming to the UK - in fact he’s here today and will be doing a bit of canonisation and sprinkling of Holy Water in Brum on Sunday. Needless to say that the streets around the venue will be taken over by the purveyors of dubious souvenirs, fast food wagons and programme sellers. It happens everywhere for every type of event where thousands of people are expected. Been there - got the T shirt is the glib phrase but.. Beto’s story couldn’t happen here... or could it? When a country is in the grip of economic disaster people tend to take desperate measures to earn a crust. Admittedly we’re not starting from as low a point as Ecuador - we can at least afford flush toilets.... for now....
This bittersweet film comes right from the heart. The action tales place in Melo in North Eastern Uruguay. It’s about the same size as Redditch and it’s desperately poor. It’s also the home of the director César Charlone and many of the people acting in it are local amateurs. The story is imaginary. The poverty isn’t.
In 1988, when the Pope visited, Uruguay was just emerging from years of brutal dictatorship and, despite the first flutterings of fledgling democracy, the old guard found it hard to let go. The struggle to exist was still being made even harder by corrupt officials like the border guards who terrorised Beto. None of this is fictitious and all of this is still happening. It would be easy to let all this overshadow the essential message of The Pope’s Toilet - that the spirit and good humour of people is difficult to quash ... a bit of the blitz mentality surfacing in South America?

Invictus

2010-07-12T15:59:00.003+01:00

2009 - Dir: Clint Eastwood
Shown at FeckenOdeon 2 on 16th July, 2010
It was only a matter of time before somebody made a film about Nelson Mandela - one of the few truly inspirational figures of the late 20th Century. It was also only a matter of time before somebody cast Morgan Freeman to play the great man - even Mandela himself had accepted that the only actor capable of such a task was the veteran American. It wasn’t so obvious that the film, when it eventually appeared, would not concern itself with the great struggle to achieve majority rule in South Africa but focused instead on the period of consolidation that followed Mandela’s election as President - the battle for hearts and minds and the healing of old sores. It’s a period that could be said to be Mandela’s finest - a situation that could so easily have run out of control and, in other nations had resulted in civil war and genocide, begat the era of Truth and Reconciliation. That such an era should have begun with and depended upon the game of rugby is either a stroke of luck... or a touch of genius...
The choice of director to tell this extraordinary story was initially equally surprising. Clint Eastwood, of Dirty Harry and spaghetti western fame, isn’t a name that springs to mind when considering a docu-drama with political overtones. But Mr Eastwood, now 80 years old and still working, has no less than 35 feature films under his directorial belt and is regarded as one of the most dependable craftsmen working in the industry. He’s known for telling a story simply and directly, letting the actors do their work and for understanding every nut and bolt of the film-making process. It’s said that he insists that his actors wear as little makeup as possible and he likes to print first takes - as a result, his films consistently finish on schedule and on budget. That’s not to say that his films lack style or vitality - he just knows how to achieve results in a totally calm and professional way. Perhaps other directors should watch and learn?

Jonah Lomu, the imposing New Zealand player, is portrayed by Zak Feaunati, who was once a player of the Bath Rugby team and is currently head of Rugby at Bishop Vesey's Grammar school in Sutton Coldfield.

All the rugby games were filmed at Johannesburg's Ellis Park Stadium, where they had actually been played. When filming the games, there were only 2,000-plus extras in the stands. Using motion-capture techniques, the visual effects team was able to "sell out" the stadium with 62,000 fans.

Matt Damon met François Pienaar and told the director "You know, this guy is huge!" Eastwood replied, "Hell, you worry about everything else. Let me worry about that." By structuring set-ups and camera angles, Eastwood made the average-height Damon look about Pienaar's height.

The word "invictus" is Latin for "unbeaten". It is also the name of a short poem written in 1875 by William Ernest Henley. It was written while Henley was in hospital having his foot amputated.

Clint Eastwood became a convert to rugby. He watched so many matches in preparation for the film that he found himself not only understanding it but also enjoying it.

A Knight's Tale

2010-05-20T09:14:00.002+01:00

2001 - Dir: Brian Helgeland

Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on May 21st, 2010

The medieval romance has been constantly with us ever since Herbert Beerbohm Tree filmed scenes from his stage production of Shakespeare's King John in 1899. There have been some serious, even solemn, examples of the genre - but most knightly films have been somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Douglas Fairbanks thought Charlie Chaplin was taking things a little too far when he asked if he could borrow the Nottingham Castle built for Fairbanks's 1922 Robin Hood (in its day the biggest set in Hollywood) so that the gigantic drawbridge could be lowered and Charlie's tramp emerge to put out the cat and take in the milk. Few have, with the notable exception of Monty Python, taken the Michael quite so much as “A Knight’s Tale”.Oh to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meeting for this movie. Faced with a bunch of execs in suits, director Brian Helgeland says: "OK - so the whole thing is kind of Gladiator meets Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and it's set in the olden days with genuine medieval Tudorbethan beams and the hero is really just a squire so he gets Geoffrey Chaucer to forge his patents of nobility, and then he gets this babe who is also a blacksmith to make his armour.... and at his first joust, everyone is singing We Will Rock You by Queen." Was there ever a time when writer-producer-director Helgeland, an Oscar-winner for his LA Confidential screenplay, actually wanted a to make a screen version of Chaucer's Knight's Tale? Is this film based on a dream he had after eating far too much cheese? As a cinematic experience, it's about as nourishing as eating a pound and a half of candy floss. But it's undeniably fun in a summer silly season sort of way - and this is the start of our Summer Season after all. You have to be in the mood for a film partly based on Chaucer which has knights and ladies doing courtly dancing to the tune of David Bowie's Golden Years. It's not often a film comes along to meet that mood.... perhaps another trip to the bar before it starts might help you meet it half way??

The film was shot entirely in Prague. Many of the extras were homeless people and very few of them spoke English... which accounts for the quizzical expressions.

Heath Ledger knocked out one of director Brian Helgeland's front teeth with a broomstick when the two were demonstrating a jousting move. It was the only jousting injury on the shoot.

Plenty of effort was expended creating lances that would splinter convincingly without injuring the stunt riders. The hollow tips were made of balsa wood and were filled with balsa chips and linguini to make convincing splinters.

The film’s charismatic star, Heath Ledger, was an Australian actor who, after this film, seemed destined for great things. He won countless awards for his role in “Brokeback Mountain”, was exploring a new career in direction and had hit new heights in his portrayal of The Joker in “The Dark Knight”. He died in January 2008 through an accidental overdose of prescription drugs - sleeping pills, anti-depressants and antibiotics. He was 28 years old.

Amelie

2010-04-08T11:16:00.002+01:00

Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
2001 - Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Shown at FeckenOdeon 2 on 16th April, 2010
This utterly beguiling fable from one half of the team behind "Delicatessen" and "The City of Lost Children" whipped up a storm of controversy across the Channel, with some commentators arguing that its nostalgic whimsy brushed the realities of modern multicultural Paris under the carpet. Audiences didn't seem to mind though, over seven million French people saw it in the first weeks of its release, and the film earned accolades from both Prime Minister Lionel Jospin and President Jacques Chirac. Since the historic setting of Amélie is at the time of Lady Di's tragic car accident, one can safely assume that the film was a while in the making. Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet admits that he got called on to make “Alien Resurrection” in between and had to let it go for a while. Jeunet loves cartoons and did art work for sophisticated French comics called 'Fluide Glaciale', 'Charlie Mensuel', and 'Fantasmagorie'. Bringing cartoons to life is what Jeunet seems to do best. You can imagine him sitting on this film many years, refining it, polishing it and hand crafting it.
Fun and charm aside, this film is a triumph of technical wizardry. The camera work shows a Paris that is vivid and full of extraordinary colours, almost a fairyland where Amélie is the lonely princess without love. M.Jeunet talked about the film with Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam and the style owes something to the latter’s facility for creating a world within a world. Barely a frame is un-retouched or digitally un-adjusted and the result is a fantasy Paris that we fervently wish was real. It could be the Paris of 50 years ago: no McDonald's, no Pompidou Centre, certainly no glass Bibliothèque Nationale towers or Grande Arche de la Défense. It is a sumptuous confection of a city, a virtual-reality CGI-Paris.
It's a rare pleasure to see a film where the parts gel so well that the finished result is so perfect. The comedy is subversive enough to satisfy the most cynical of tastes and performances all round are first rate. The film is not only a mix of genres - romance, comedy, drama - but is also a mix of the sweet gooeyness of marzipan, rich strawberry cream cake, pure sugar... Energised with its own sugar-rush quality, the film's pace is athletic. Overall, “Amelie” is a tribute to randomness and imagination and you can dig your sweet tooth into it, without fretting about the calories. Bon Appétit!

Hobson's Choice

2010-04-08T00:31:00.000+01:00

1953 - Dir: David Lean (1hr 40mins)
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on April 24th, 2010
It was Alexander Korda who suggested Harold Brighouse's 1915 stage comedy "Hobson's Choice" to David Lean as a possible film project. Korda had been approached by the screenwriting team, Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, who were developing a screen adaptation. Korda bought the screen rights from under them and offered the project to David Lean.
Charles Laughton had already made several successful films for Korda before he was offered Hobson, a role he had actually played on stage as a teenager in his native Scarborough. He was the first real international star that David Lean had worked with up to that time. Korda knew that Laughton could be difficult and obsessive, but realised he would be perfect for the outsized character and told the actor that the part had been written for him. Laughton got on famously with Lean, often socialising with the director after hours, and he spoke of the role of Hobson as one of his favourite screen performances.... but the filming was far from untroubled. Robert Donat was originally cast in the role of boot-maker Willie Mossop but was in ill health and was forced to drop out (replaced by John Mills). Laughton threw a fit, claiming he had only agreed to the film to work with his old friend and that the production was thus in breach of contract. Korda countered by threatening Laughton with a scandal, which would reveal the actor's well-concealed private life (he was homosexual, which was then illegal). Laughton returned to work but remained furious. He didn’t like his accommodation, was unhappy with playing so many drunk scenes and he loathed his co-star, Brenda De Banzie, a stage actress with only a few films to her credit - the feeling was mutual! The off screen fireworks never detract from this most professional of productions. There’s fine playing from a distinguished cast (including a few faces more familiar from the small screen), a brilliant score by William Walton and meticulous craftsmanship throughout.

This is David Lean’s last film shot in black and white. Jack Hilyard’s rich monochrome photography is often regarded as the very best ever achieved.
The exterior scenes were shot in Salford. The Corporation had cleaned up the canalside location when they heard that filming was to take place. The crew took great delight in dirtying it all down again with copious quantities of rubbish and detergent powder.

Easy Virtue

2010-03-19T22:50:00.001Z

2008 - Dir: Stephan Elliot

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th March, 2010
The twenties have roared... the thirties have yet to swing. John Whittaker, a young Englishman, falls madly in love with Larita, a sexy and glamorous American woman, and they marry impetuously... and then he takes her home to Mother....
Unusually for a play by Noel Coward, Love struggles while conquering All in this subversive view of British country-house society between the wars. That era has been described as the most blessed in modern history (assuming you were Upstairs and not Down), but not here, where the Whittakers occupy a mouldering pile in the countryside. It is said that nothing in a country house should look new. Nothing in this one looks as if it were ever new.
Written in 1924, this was Coward’s 16th play, and was originally filmed in 1928 by Alfred Hitchcock. The thing about Coward's work, whether in its unexpurgated version or in this new, re-tooled approach, is it's all about the dialogue. (Ironically, the Hitchcock adaptation was silent, resulting in much of the dialogue being excised.) There is a plot - but it's a secondary element to the lines the actors deliver. Only Oscar Wilde has the same bite. Fortunately, Elliott understands this, which makes Easy Virtue go down smoothly.This is a 1920s-era comedy of bad manners done by experts. The director’s previous project was the way over the top "Priscilla. Queen of the Desert" - which is perhaps why a script that could have been stodgy actually yields some startling surprises. It’s perhaps fitting that this was made at Ealing Studios!

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

2010-02-06T01:40:00.002Z

Dir: Lasse Halströmm
Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on 12th February, 2010

“Movies like "What's Eating Gilbert Grape" are not easily summarised; they don't have that slick "high concept" one-sentence peg that makes them easy to sell. But some of the best movies are like this: They show everyday life, carefully observed, and as we grow to know the people in the film, maybe we find out something about ourselves. The fact that Lasse Hallström is able to combine these qualities with comedy, romance and even melodrama make the movie very rare.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times

Gilbert Grape is the mainstay of a family that is a little unusual. Most communities have such people. They’re the ones that, if you’re kind, you try not to notice. The ones who get on with their lives in their own way but make you slightly uneasy. This is a story of people who most definitely aren't misfits (despite what society may think) mainly because they don't see themselves that way. Thankfully this film doesn’t treat them with tragic seriousness; it is a problem, yes, to have a retarded younger brother. And it is also a problem to have a mother so fat she never leaves the house. But when kids from the neighbourhood sneak around to peek at the fat lady in the living room, Gilbert sometimes gives them a boost up to the window. What the hell.
This film is a starting point for the careers of two of Hollywood’s big earners and it contains fantastic performances from both of them. Johnny Depp has the easier task in portraying the patient and caring young father substitute but he does it with such gentle conviction that the character remains totally believable even when the plot strays a little way from the credible.
The young Leonardo DiCaprio - only 16 at the time of the filming - has a more difficult task. How do you tackle the portrayal of a mentally handicapped youngster without either underplaying the character or turning it into a gross caricature? Mr DiCaprio recalls, "I had to really research and get into the mind of somebody with a disability like that. So I spent a few days at a home for mentally retarded teens. We just talked and I watched their mannerisms. People have these expectations that mentally retarded children are really crazy, but it's not so. It's refreshing to see them because everything's so new to them."
The other big character in the Grape residence is Momma. Momma was played by Darlene Cates and yes, she really is that big. She weighs 38 stones. This is her film acting debut. She’d been through all kinds of treatments and (like Momma) endured a 5 year period where she didn’t leave her home. She had finally emerged go on a TV show to highlight the plight of people like herself. The film’s writer saw the show and suggested that she play the part of Momma. She had her doubts but said: “I had to make a choice, I could stay where I was and be miserable, or I could take a risk and do something exciting. I talked with the author, Peter Hedges. There were some things in the book that I didn't like but as we went along I was so proud of the way that the character was portrayed and so proud of the way that the children came around to see that this woman had good qualities, and how much she really did care about her family”. Ms Cates continues to act and to campaign for the rights of larger people.

Steamboat Bill Jr.

2010-02-06T00:11:00.002Z

1928 - Dir: Buster Keaton & Charles Reisner

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th February, 2010

This is the last film Buster Keaton made as an independent producer. It’s perhaps not surprising that the "great stone face" never cracks into even the hint of a smile. During the filming he was told that the money men had pulled the plug and that his studio was to be closed down once "Steamboat Bill" was complete. It’s said that he was so desolated by the news that he took more risks than usual because he didn’t really care if he lived or died. He later took a job with MGM who promised him creative freedom. A short lived promise - "The Cameraman" (shown here in April 2008) was the only picture he was allowed to direct and his career nose dived from then on.

It’s difficult to know if Keaton would have survived the transition to sound. His voice wasn’t great and his technique so physical that he was probably destined to become a museum piece. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the films of Jaques Tati made those techniques fashionable again.

The original script featured a flood. However, due to the effects of a real flood, this became a "cyclone."
Marion Byron couldn’t swim, so the scenes when she’s in the river used Buster's real-life sister Louise. The water was very cold and during a day of filming Buster and Louise each required 5 large glasses of French Brandy to keep them warm... well, that was their excuse...
The film was the model for "Steamboat Willie" - Disney’s first sound cartoon.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2010-01-02T11:58:00.005Z

1967 - Dir: Sergio Leone
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 30th January, 2010

This is a bit of a hybrid. Its roots are firmly set in the old wild west but the style and narrative are far more European. Its Italian director, Sergio Leone, embarked on his series of “Spaghetti westerns” with the express intention of shaking up an old genre. The somewhat less than subtle use of violence shook up a little more than the genre. Sg. Leone explains that "the killings in my films are exaggerated because I wanted to make a tongue-in-cheek satire on run-of-the-mill westerns. The west was made by violent, uncomplicated men, and it is this strength and simplicity that I try to recapture in my pictures." The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has been described as European cinema's best representation of the Western genre film, and Quentin Tarantino has called it "the best-directed film of all time." - perhaps a bit of an exaggeration but the film has terrific style and forced a change of direction for action movies.
Shooting took place in Spain - the Spanish government approved production and provided the army for technical assistance; the film's cast includes 1,500 local militia members as extras.
As an international cast was employed, actors performed in their native languages. Eastwood, Van Cleef and Wallach spoke English, and were dubbed into Italian for the debut release in Rome. For the American version, the lead acting voices were used, but supporting cast members were dubbed into English. The result is noticeable in the bad synchronisation of voices to lip movements on screen; none of the dialogue is completely in sync because Leone rarely shot his scenes with synchronised sound.
The director established a rule that he follows throughout "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." The rule is that the ability to see is limited by the sides of the frame. At important moments in the film, what the camera cannot see, the characters cannot see, and that gives Leone the freedom to surprise us with entrances that cannot be explained by the practical geography of his shots.

The film was shot using a process called Techniscope. This means that you can shoot without an anamorphic lens, and only use half as much film as you would normally use. The Techniscope process places two widescreen frames on a single 35 mm frame. Like all cheapskate compromises this doesn’t quite work - if you use half of the film area it means that you have to enlarge the picture twice as much when you project it and consequently the picture tends to be fuzzier and grainier...
The bridge that Tuco and Blondie demolish was an actual bridge built by Spanish army engineers. The Spanish agreed to dynamite the bridge only if the their captain could be the one to do it. The captain was so excited by the prospect that he forgot all about the film and just blew the bridge up without any cameras rolling. The army was so embarrassed that they rebuilt the bridge so that it could be blown up again.
Clint Eastwood fell out with the director during the shoot. This came to a head at the dubbing session where Eastwood insisted on recording a different version of the script than that used in the final cut.

Breakfast at Tiffany's

2009-12-07T11:10:00.005Z

1961 - Dir.: Blake Edwards
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th December, 2009
"I was nothing like her, but I felt I could 'act' Holly. I knew the part would be a challenge, but I wanted it anyway. I always wonder if I risked enough on that one. I should have been a little more outrageous. But at the time, as a new mother, I was about as wild as I could be. If only I were a Method player, huh? But the fact is, I didn't really believe in The Method. I believed in good casting. And I'm still not sure about Holly and me..."

-Audrey Hepburn

Romantic comedy is a difficult genre to perfect and it has rarely been done as well as it is here. Hepburn and Peppard create the kind of screen chemistry that comes along all too rarely. Despite the sordid implications of the relationships portrayed, the humour and the Oscar-winning refrains of Henry Mancini's score maintain the feel-good factor. The result is a charming fable of love in big, bad New York. The magic owes a lot to the poise and waif-like beauty of the bewitching Hepburn. Her Givenchy-clad entrance, sashaying down a deserted street before gazing into the Tiffany's window display, is a moment of pure wonder. All this and one of the best cats ever to grace the screen!

Holly is so closely associated with Audrey Hepburn that it's hard to believe that the author Truman Capote insisted that he wanted Marilyn Monroe to play the part. He'd sold the film rights for $65,000 to Paramount and the studio hired George Axelrod, author of The Seven Year Itch, to adapt the book for Monroe. She wanted Holly badly, but her acting coach Paula Strasberg turned down the part on the basis of its immorality.
“Breakfast at Tiffany's” is almost, but not quite, ruined by Mickey Rooney's hideously stereotyped performance as Hepburn's Japanese neighbor, buck teeth and all. Intended to provide broad comedy at the time, the scenes provoke intense discomfort today and the movie has been banned in many cities with large Chinese populations in the USA
Audrey Hepburn was Belgian but grew up in Nazi occupied Arnhem where she was known as Edda van Heemstra. She went to London in 1948 to study ballet. She made her screen debut in “Nederlands in 7 Lessen” playing an airline stewardess.

Notorious

2009-11-08T22:22:00.001Z

1946 - Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th November, 2009

In the hands of many another director, “Notorious” would have been merely a film noir - a cruel story of a courageous, patriotic young woman turned inside out by manipulative and unscrupulous men, one of whom uses her love for him to force her into extreme danger. But with Hitchcock it becomes something deeper: a glorious exercise in film style, where virtuoso camerawork combines with the characters to create a wonderful harmony of visuals and narrative. Even sixty three years after the film's initial release, the simplicity and subtlety of Hitchcock's direction will have you holding your breath in anticipation, at almost every turn.
Hitchcock made this film in 1946, when the war was over but the Cold War was just beginning. A few months later, he would have made the villains Communists, but as he and Ben Hecht worked on the script, Nazis were still uppermost in their minds. In 1946 the United States Government was still very sensitive about the atomic bomb, and J Edgar Hoover, then head of the FBI was violently opposed to the making of “Notorious”. Only after long discussions between David O Selznick, Hitchcock and Hoover did it go ahead, on the understanding that there was no mention in the script of the FBI or nuclear weapons.

Notorious contains what was billed as “The longest screen kiss in the history of the movies”. It lasts an impressive 3 minutes but is a bit of a phoney. The actors break off every now and then to satisfy the Hayes Code (the American censor) which insisted that kisses should only last 3 seconds.
Claude Rains was somewhat challenged in the height department. He had to stand on a box for scenes with Cary Grant who was a full 7 inches taller.
Hitchcock makes his usual on screen appearance - no prizes for spotting him - look for the portly gent in theparty scene.

A Prairie Home Companion

2009-11-08T00:21:00.002Z

2006 - Dir: Robert Altman
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 13th November, 2009

“What a lovely film this is, so gentle and whimsical, so simple and profound. It is nothing less than an elegy, a memorial to memories of times gone by, to dreams that died but left the dreamers dreaming, to appreciating what you've had instead of insisting on more.” Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times
This movie is the product of the meeting of two great minds. It’s written by Garrison Keillor (of Lake Wobegon fame) and directed by Robert Altman (who made MASH, The Long Goodbye, Nashville, Gosford Park and over a hundred more films). The dry, wry, laid back wit of Mr Keillor is ideal material for Mr Altman who worked with multiple cameras in a free flowing, semi-improvised style. The dialogue is spoken in a natural way and is presented, uncut, un-tampered with and at its natural pace. Mr Altman lived for the movies and gave each project his all. He said he kept track of time not by the years but by the film he was making. Given an Honorary Oscar in March 2006, he astonished his audience by revealing he had been living 10 or 11 years with a heart transplant. He didn't mention that he also had leukaemia. He died just after this film, his last, had its first showings . At the time of his death, he had two films in pre-production.
If this film bears Altman’s directorial stamp, it owes its inspiration and its title to the imagination of Garrison Keillor. Since 1974 Mr Keillor has been presenting a weekly radio show on Minnesota Public Radio called...”A Prairie Home Companion”. It was his creation - all the characters in this film regularly appear (played by Mr Keillor and a small cast of regulars). One of the show's best known features is News from Lake Wobegon, a weekly story-telling monologue, claiming to be a report from Mr Keillor's fictitious hometown of Lake Wobegon, "the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve ... where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."
The show is "sponsored" by the fictitious product "Powdermilk Biscuits", whose slogan is "Made from whole wheat raised in the rich bottomlands of the Lake Wobegon river valley by Norwegian bachelor farmers; so you know they're not only good for you, but pure ... mostly",

The film was shot largely on-site at the Fitzgerald Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, the home of the actual A Prairie Home Companion radio show.
Altman reputedly directed most of the film from a wheelchair. Despite being over 80 he embraced new technology and shot his last film in High Definition video.
All the musical numbers were recorded “live” in front of an audience - no miming to playback or editing. The audience voted for the best take.

The Wizard of Oz

2009-10-10T20:04:00.004+01:00

1939 - Dir: Victor Fleming
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 31st October, 2009 (Family matinee)

First of all - rest assured that this film IS in colour. It starts out in black and white but after a few minutes all will be revealed. It’s just a little cinema magic trick - and there are plenty more to come!
For those of us who have grown up knowing this film it seems impossible that it’s seventy years old this year. There’s only one member of the FeckenOdeon’s Committee who was alive when the film was made... and even he would have been too young to be taken to see it. We’ve all enjoyed it on the telly but very few of us have experienced it on the big screen - the way children originally saw it in 1939.
The world in 1939 was a very different place. War was about to be declared and people had just endured a recession that made our recent financial crisis look tiny in comparison. The plight of Dorothy at the beginning of the film would have been familiar to many in the audience. The little girl is lonely, living with poor relatives (we are never told what happened to her parents). Her little dog is all she has and now someone is trying to take it away from her.. but then she and we are transported into a magic land. We all escape from our daily woes and worries for a while. What an experience it must have been to leave the drabness, gloom and poverty, settle into a warm seat and immerse yourself in the colourful fantasy of Oz. It was an exquisite and extravagent fantasy - the very best that Hollywood could afford - and it was based one of America’s favourite books. Small wonder that the nation and the world loved Oz. All this wouldn't be half as impressive if The Wizard hadn’t gone on to work his magic on successive generations.
The film became a Christmas institution on television and has been reprinted and reshown the world over - a resilient 70 year old with a big future!
· Colour films were rare in 1939 and Technicolor was an experimental process. Technicians found that the yellow brick road came out green in early parts of the filming and had to be repainted to make it look yellow.
· The Munchkins are portrayed by the Singer Midgets, named not for their musical abilities, but rather for Leo Singer, their manager. The troupe came from Europe, and a number of the Munchkins took advantage of the trip to remain in America and escape the Nazis.
· Toto’s real name was Terry. Judy Garland wanted to keep her at the end of filming but her owners refused and she went on to star in another six movies.
· It was originally intended to use a real lion to play the Cowardly Lion - for some reason the plan was abandoned and the lion was dropped - a fate also suffered by the original candidate for the part of Dorothy - Shirley Temple.

Slumdog Millionaire

2009-09-28T15:59:00.004+01:00

2008 - Dir: Danny Boyle
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 31st October, 2009

There are scenes in this film which may shock you. There are things that may make you want to cover your eyes. There are acts, the very thought of which may make you want to flee into the fresh Feckenham air. Please don’t. You are watching the truth. This is India. Warts and all... and it’s like that NOW.
That such a gritty portrayal of poverty, cruelty and avarice should have been made by a major Hollywood studio is strange enough. That it should be a rip-roaring success with modern filmgoers accustomed to a diet of glitzy blockbusters is almost as much a paradox as India itself. Like the country, Slumdog displays as much of the glamour and beauty of India as it does the squalor and violence. You may say that this isn’t the most morally pure of films - the "happy ending" involves forgetting the quagmire you came from and living at the top of the heap at the expense of those at the bottom.... India is like that and who are we, given that our collonising forebears carry some responsibility for the current state of India, to judge?

The film is glossily made, yet cost a fraction of the usual Hollywood budget. It features no known stars, yet grossed over $360 million and won no less than 8 Academy Awards... more paradoxes!
Mercedes-Benz asked that its logos be removed in scenes taking place in the slums. The company did not want to be associated with the poverty-stricken area, fearing that that might taint its image. Similarly, the "Thums Up" branding had to be removed from drinks bottles on the request of the manufacturers who did not want to be associated with the poverty depicted in the film.
The pile of "unpleasantness" that the young Jamal jumps into (don’t try this at home!) was made from a combination of peanut butter and chocolate.
The song "Darshan Do Ghanshyam" which is used by the "selecters" to select and train child beggars was composed and sung by Surdas, a legendary medieval Indian singer who was blind. The significance and poignancy of this will be clearer once you have seen the film.
Lead actor Dev Patel is also a British martial arts champion and hold a 1st Dan Black Belt and several international awards.
Warner Brothers got cold feet in the late stages of production and came close to sending the film straight to DVD (and certain oblivion).

Greenfingers

2009-08-31T10:55:00.001+01:00

2000 - Dir.: Joel Hershman
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th September, 2009

Now here’s a curious thing - a thoroughly British comedy... made by Americans! Having noticed the success of films like "The Full Monty" the MGM studio bosses grabbed a script based on a true story and hoped to make a fast buck on the back of a wave of British success. "Greenfingers" trades almost entirely on the laughable notion of hardened criminals delicately pruning their roses. But here's the rub - big muscular guys pruning roses is funny - and charming. Add a jolly performance from one of the UK’s toughest Dames, an unlikely love story and some pretty pictures of flowers and you have a recipe for commercial success... but then Americans never did understand the vagaries of the British. The film generated only a modest cashflow at the box office despite the effortlessly warm performances, especially from Clive Owen and David Kelly, two of the sweetest and unlikeliest jailbirds you could ever hope to meet doing time. This perhaps isn’t the greatest movie ever made but its American funded Britishness makes its gentle pace and whimsical humour not only cosily comfortable but positively heartwarming. Not every film has to be a blockbuster!

Red Dust

2009-08-31T10:51:00.001+01:00

1932 - Dir.: Victor Fleming

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th September, 2009

The most compelling reason for seeing this film is its cast - a set of MGM's most prized possessions: including Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Gene Raymond and Mary Astor. In their first major onscreen pairing, Harlow and Gable prove just how much fun lust can be. This red-blooded romance brings our stars together in the remote and steamy jungles of Africa, which allows them to be as wild and wanton as they wish.
"Red Dust" is a hot-blooded example of a lot of things that would soon be banned by the censors until the 1960s. Jean Harlow is a slut, Mary Astor an adulteress, Clark Gable a two-timing cad. No one suffers for the sins of the flesh, and nothing happens that is the least bit subtle or ambiguous. You are invited to create your own carnal images with each suggestive fade-out (go on - we dare you!).
The original play, by William Collison, closed after only eight performances on Broadway, but after this film the story was reused in 1939 as "Congo Maisie", and again in 1953 when it appeared as "Mogambo". Sadly Jean Harlow wasn’t so long lived. She died in 1937 - apparently poisoned by the platinum used to dye her hair.

Passport to Pimlico

2009-08-15T00:23:00.001+01:00

1949 - Dir.: Henry Cornelius
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on April 30th, 2005

It's time to relax into comforting black and white for a cosy tale set in post war England.., or is it England? The idea for the plot came from a news item spotted by writer Tibby Clarke which stated that during the war, in order that a rule be observed whereby members of the Dutch royal succession must be born on Netherlands soil, a room in Ottawa, where the family was in exile from the German occupation, officially became Dutch territory. So if that could happen in Ottowa why not.. Pimlico!
The cast reads like a Who's Who of British character actors - Stanley Holloway and Dame Margaret Rutherford lead the troops but sharp eyes (and memories) will spot Sir Michael Hordern, Sidney Taffler, Charles Hawtrey, Hermoine Baddeley, Sam Kydd and Sir Winston Churchill (it's true!) amongst many others. John Slater, later to be a Z Cars stalwart and a resident of Stratford-upon-Avon, plays one of his biggest big screen roles. It's a classic Ealing Studios product with classic British humour poking gentle fun at our own Britishness. There are those who regard the film as political satire but most just sit back and enjoy a glimpse through a window on a world and way of life many of us can't even remember.

The Adventures of Robin Hood

2009-08-15T00:14:00.004+01:00

1938 - Dir,: Michael Cutiz & William Keighley
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on April 30th, 2005
ONLY THE RAINBOW CAN DUPLICATE ITS BRILLIANCE!
To those who think of vintage movies in terms of flickery, scratched black and white this meticulously restored 1938 blockbuster will be a revelation. Technical standards were at an all time high and Warner Brothers' art department knew nothing of budgetary restraint - it's a riot of colour, action and spectacle. This may be a museum piece but who says you can't have fun in a museum!
In the most engaging performance of his career, Errol Flynn is jaunty, romantic, and larger than life, but also slyly funny as the Saxon knight who takes on the nasty Normans who have usurped the rule of England while King Richard has been out of town liberating the Holy Land from the "infidels." This is movie pageantry at its best, done in the grand manner of silent
spectacles, brimming over with the sort of primitive energy that drew people to the movies in the first place.
• Erich Korngold was invited by Warner Brothers to come from his native Austria to Hollywood to see the film with a view to scoring it. He initially turned down the chance as he felt that his musical style was ill-suited for adventure spectaculars. However, while in Hollywood, he learned that the Nazis were about to invade Austria and, feeling he had to secure a source of revenue in the United States. He accepted the assignment and scooped one of the film's 3 Oscars.
• 'heavily padded stunt players and actors were paid $150 per arrow for being shot by
professional archer Howard Hill, who also played the captain of the archers.
• The production used all 11 of the Technicolor cameras in existence in 1938 and they were all
returned to Technicolor at the end of each day's filming.
• Although shot on location in California, indigenous English plants were added and the grass was painted to give a greener, more English look.

Cabaret

2009-08-15T00:03:00.003+01:00

1972 - Dir.: Bob Fosse

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on April 2nd, 2005

Much was made at the time of this film's release about the fact that it was the first musical to receive the dubious honour of an X certificate. It is perhaps predictable that the popular press should get in a lather about a few strong words and lewd(ish) moments while ignoring the real and gut wrenching feeling of outrage provoked by the vivid and stark portrayal of the rise of the greatest obscenity of the 20th Century. Those of us who saw "Cabaret" back in the free wheeling seventies were brought up sharp by the awful realisation that the rise of the Nazis was all but unstoppable and that ordinary people had no way of intervening. As our own political system lurched to the right and skinheads took to the streets, those of us with vivid imaginations drew worrying parallels.... Whatever our personal political feelings, no-one could fail to be shocked by "Cabaret" - but sex had absolutely nothing to do with it.
The film is based on Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical book of anecdotes from the era, `Goodbye to Berlin'. The Sally Bowles character appeared in those stories and then appeared in the play and movie 'I Am a Camera' before returning to the stage in this musical, and then making it into the movies a second time...
That such a tale set in such a time can also give great joy is a tribute to it's Director and it's superb and spirited cast. It can be said to have been a "once in a lifetime" film for almost all the main participants. Although Bob Fosse made a couple more films (including the autobiographical "All that Jazz") and worked extensively on the Broadway stage he never again hit such a high as "Cabaret". He died before he could transfer his stage hit "Chicago" to the big screen. Lisa Minelli, who really made us believe that she was the reincarnation of her mother (Judy Garland), failed to keep up the momentum and bounced from one indifferent project to the next mediocre one. Joel Grey (Master of Ceremonies) who is perhaps the kingpin of "Cabaret" was really too good at the part - he was reckoned to be "difficult to cast" by Hollywood's money men who obviously could only see him in white face and tails (that's him in the picture). He's still working on US television. Helmutt Griem worked only in his native language after "Cabaret" (he died last year) and Marisa Berenson also stayed firmly in Europe - though she's soon to be seen in a film called "Colour me Kubrick". The exception is of course Michael York who has so far appeared in 111 feature films and is still working - "Cabaret" is his 14th movie role.
"Tomorrow Belongs to Me" was written by John Kander and Fred Ebb in the style of a traditional German song, sung by the Nazi youth in the movie, to stir tip patriotism for the "fatherland". It has often been mistaken for a genuine "Nazi anthem" and has led to the songwriters being accused of anti-Semitism. This would be most surprising, as they are, in fact, Jewish. It is also the only song sung outside of the cabaret setting to survive the transition from stage to film.

Shooting Stars

2009-08-14T23:56:00.002+01:00

1927 - Dir.: Anthony Asquith & A.E.Bramble
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th February, 2005
Live piano accompaniment by Peter Smith

Although late in the silent era (the all talking "Jazz Singer" was released in the same year), "Shooting Stars" is thought of as the movie that marked the coming of age of the British film industry. It's a fully fledged feature film with a strong story and excellent acting. It established Anthony Asquith as one of our most distinguished directors and it made the American studios realise that films could be made outside California. Despite its jolly start it's a real tearjerker - tissues available from the bar!
Brian Aherne, who plays Julian, was a local lad from Kings Norton. He survived the transition to the talkies and went to Hollywood in 1933, starred alongside such deities as Katherine Hepburn and married Joan Fontaine (briefly).
Little is known of the fate of co-star Annette Benson. She stayed in films until 1931 and, after the rather grim sounding "Deadlock" disappeared completely from the limelight.
The remarkably named Chili Bouchier (real name Dorothy Hill) worked continuously in films, on the stage and in television from 1927 until her death in 1999 at the age of 100. The name came from her theme song 'I Love My Chili Bom-Bom'. Billed as "Britain's IT Girl", she possessed a knack for self publicity and was seldom out of the public eye. In her later years she dined (and most definitely supped) out on her reputation as "The Last of The Silent Film Stars". Despite her fame (or perhaps notoriety) she died alone in her council flat off the Edgware Road

Don Giovanni

2009-08-14T23:47:00.002+01:00

1979 - Dir.: Joseph Losey
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on January 30th, 2005

Veteran director Joseph Losey realised a lifelong ambition with this project - he'd been dissatisfied with the Hollywood projects that came his way in the 70s so the chance to direct Mozart's greatest opera was grabbed with enormous enthusiasm. Losey's film is rightly regarded to be one of the finest opera films ever made. It's rarely shown - this screening is the only one planned in the UK during 2005.
CAST in order of singing
Leporello Jose Van Dam
Donna Anna Edda Moser
Don Giovanni Ruggero Raimondi
The Comendatore John Macurdy
Don Otavio Kenneth Riegel
Donna Elvira Kiri Te Kanawa
Zerlina Teresa Berganza
Masetto Malcolm King
The Orchestra and Chorus of The Paris Opera
Conducted by Lorin Maazel
Sung in Italian with English Subtitles
Synopsis:
ACT 1: After one of Mozart's most powerful overtures, the action begins in a square outside the palace of the Commendatore, the aging local commander of forces. It is night, and Leporello is grumbling about his duties as servant to Don Giovanni, a dissolute nobleman. Soon the masked Don appears, pursued by Donna Anna, the Commendatore's daughter, whom he has tried to seduce. When the Commendatore himself answers Anna's cries, he is killed in a duel by Giovanni, who escapes. Anna now returns with her fiance, Don Ottavio. Finding her father dead, she makes Ottavio swear vengeance on the assassin.
At dawn, Giovanni unwittingly flirts with Donna Elvira, a woman he once raped. Realising his mistake he escapes while Leporello distracts Elvira by reciting his master's long catalog of conquests. Peasants arrive, celebrating the nuptials of their friends Zerlina and Masetto; when Giovanni joins in, he pursues the bride, angering the groom. Alone with Zerlina, the Don applies his charm, but Elvira interrupts and protectively whisks the girl away. Outside the palace, Zerlina begs Masetto to forgive her apparent infidelity, Masetto hides when the Don appears, emerging from the shadows as Giovanni comers Zerlina. Elvira, Anna and Ottavio arrive disguised in costume and masks and are invited to the feast by Leporello. During the festivities, Leporello entices Masetto into the dance as Giovanni draws Zerlina out of the room. When the girl's cries for help put him on the spot, Giovanni tries to blame Leporello. But no one is convinced; at the end of the Act Elvira, Anna and Ottavio unmask and confront Giovanni.
Act 2: Under Elvira's balcony, Leporello exchanges cloaks with Giovanni to woo the lady in his master's stead. Leporello leads Elvira off, leaving the Don free to serenade Elvira's maid. When Masetto passes with a band of armed peasants bent on punishing Giovanni, the disguised rake gives them false directions, then beats up Masetto. In a passageway, Elvira and Leporello are surprised by Anna, Ottavio, Zerlina and Masetto, who, mistaking s,trrvant for master, threaten Leporello. He reveals his identity and escapes. When Anna departs, Ottavio affirms his confidence in their love.
Leporello catches up with his master in a cemetery, where a voice warns Giovanni of his doom. This is the statue of the Commendatore, which the Don proposes Leporello invite to dinner. In her home, Anna, still in mourning puts off Ottavio's offer of marriage until her father is avenged. Leporello is serving Giovanni's dinner when Elvira rushes in, begging the Don, whom she still loves, to reform. But he waves her out contemptuously. At the door, her screams announce the arrival of the Gommendatore's statue. Giovanni boldly refuses warnings to repent, even in the face of death. Flames engulf his house, and the sinner is dragged to hell. The mood changes, and the survivors join in a sextet in which they plan their future and recite themoral: such is the fate of a wrongdoer.
AN APOLOGY: Mozart's genius has endured for hundreds of years. We only wish that film was as future proof! Unfortunately this, the only available print of "Don Giovanni", has not passed the test of time and has faded badly. The fires of Hell are not so much flaming red as flickering pink and everthing else is turning sepia. We do hope your enjoyment of the drama and, above all, the music is not completely spoiled by this sad deterioration.

The Dish

2009-08-14T23:42:00.003+01:00

2000 - Dir.: Rob Sitch
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 29th January, 2005

Just, for a moment, imagine that the powers that be had planted a great big satellite tracking dish on the outskirts of Feckenham - in the middle of the cricket field for instance. No, forget about the planning row - it's there. It's a fact - And it's about to be the single most important cog in the machine that's about to bring pictures to the world of the most spectacular event in the history of mankind... The Parish Council is swelling with civic pride, the pubs have ordered extra beer and everything is set and then one of Feckenham's legendary power cuts strikes. Transpose this scenario to the little town of Parkes in Australia and you have the story of "The Dish". In 1969 Parkes tracking station was the only one in the southern hemisphere capable of picking up the feeble signals from the Lunar Module at the time man first set foot on the Moon. Like many of the modern films we've shown at The FeckenOdeon "The Dish" looks at a big event through the eyes of ordinary people. The crew at Parkes made it possible for Neil Armstrong's "one small step for man" to be seen by six hundred million people, or one fifth of the world's population at the time. While "The Dish" may not be a "giant leap for mankind", it's a quietly moving film that delights in small things.
The film is set in the town of Parkes, in New South Wales, Australia, but was actually filmed in Forbes, which is a neighbouring town a few miles down the road. Parkes has changed over the last 30 years, but Forbes hasn't changed as much - Forbes still looked like a 1960s town, like Parkes did 30 years before.

Genevieve

2009-08-14T23:35:00.003+01:00

1953 - Dir.: Henry Cornelius
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 29th January, 2005

Many remember "Genevieve" as the best Ealing comedy that never was. Given its storyline and pedigree it is very easy to understand why. Its director Henry Cornelius had in fact joined the studio in 1944 as a producer and in 1949 directed their classic comedy "Passport to Pimlico" before leaving to become an independent. In addition the screenplay is by William Rose, who would later pen such classic Ealing comedies as "The Ladykillers". Cornelius even offered the project to Ealing Studios, but Michael Balcon turned it down. The film was eventually produced by Rank, but with a budget so meagre that most of the shooting was accomplished in and around their Pinewood studios in Buckinghamshire, with just a few days of location filming.
Larry Adler's score for harmonica and small orchestra also contributed to the film's distinctive quality, although his name was removed from American prints of the film as at that time he was a victim of the McCarthy blacklist; the credit went instead to Muir Mathieson.
• Genevieve is a twin-cylinder 10/12 hp Darracq built in Paris in 1904. After the film she was sold and shipped to New Zealand and later to Australia. In 1993 she was acquired by the Louwman National Motor Museum at Ramsdonkyveer, Holland - where she still resides.
• Alexander Darracq was a man who didn't like driving cars or being driven in them. Darracq preferred making bicycles. But in 1896, he felt compelled to develop an electric car, which he later dismissed as being "worthless." After running into financial problems, his company was reformed with British capital, ultimately merging with Talbot and then Sunbeam before expiring in 1939.

Top Hat

2009-08-14T23:28:00.002+01:00

1935 - Dir.: Mark Sandrich
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on December 27th, 2004

The story, as you'll discover, is incidental to the music and dance - not many films could survive on such a minuscule plot, but somehow "Top Hat" is one that excels because of it. No one really cares how and why Fred and Ginger get together, just that they do.
Practically the entire cast of the 1934 hit "The Gay Divorcee" reunites for this frothy confection, along with director Mark Sandrich, designer Van Nest Polglase, and choreographer Hermes Pan. Irving Berlin provides a tuneful score, including "Cheek to Cheek," which provides a classic duet for Astaire and Rogers, and "Top Hat, White Tie and Tails," which remains one of Astaire's finest solo numbers. Polglase outdoes himself with sets both elegant and outrageous and Hermes Pan's choreography is as smooth as ever, but ultimately it's the grace and chemistry of the leads that makes "Top Hat" top entertainment.
It's worth remembering that the world was still in the grip of the Great Depression in 1935 - this kind of film was popular with the poorest audiences and allowed a temporary escape into into a world of luxury and excess. There's hardly a second of realism allowed to intrude - even the waters of the (studio) Venetian lagoon were dyed black to provide a greater contrast with the shimmering white buildings.... and swimming in the canals? Even today that'd be taking a risk!
Incidentally Eric Rhodes, who plays Bedinni and who specialised in funny Italians ("For zee woman, zee kiss; for zee man, zee sword!") was a native of Oklahoma - not many people know that.

Calendar Girls

2009-08-14T23:24:00.003+01:00

2003 - Dir.: Nigel Cole
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on November 27th, 2004

It's perhaps inevitable that the FeckenOdeon found it hard to resist showing this film in the Hall that has hosted literally thousands of Women's institute meetings - and continues to do so on the second Thursday of every month..... Feckenham WI have so far declined to give a practical demonstration - though members of the real life Calendar Girls from Highgyll W.I. make cameo appearances in the film.
This is the kind of good-humoured comedy that used to feature Margaret Rutherford, although Helen Mirren and Julie Waiters, its daring stars, would have curled Dame Margaret's eyebrows! Tim Firth and Juliette Towhidi infuse the script with a gentle, warm sense of humour. The British talent for self mockery saves us (and the ladies) from any embarrassment and we laugh along with the "Girls" rather than at them. The participant's sheer spirit makes them seem much younger than they appear, and their sheer fun is infectious. Modesty is mostly preserved - thank God for the flower arrangements! Like last season's "Waking Ned" this is a little celebration of maturity... and of a second childhood that is often much more fun than the first! It also proves that, given the chance, we can still make very fine films this side of the Atlantic.
• Contrary to the film's storyline, the head office of the Women's Institute supported and encouraged the publication of the calendar.
• The real women of Rylstone and District Women's Institute (all names and places have been changed in the film) raised over £600,000 for medical research.

Belleville Rendez-vous

2009-08-14T23:17:00.003+01:00

2003 - Dir.: Sylvain Chomet
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on November 27th, 2004

Every so often the far fringes of animation cough up something so amazing that it's almost beyond criticism. It is safe to say you have never seen an animated film remotely like "Belleville Rendez-vous". With traditional pen-and-ink cartoons increasingly giving way to the popularity of computer animation, you may never have a chance to see another one quite like it again.
With contributions from teams of animators based in France, Belgium and Latvia, "Belleville Rendez-vous" (known to the rest of the world as "Les Triplettes de Belleville") is clearly the product of a single controlling imagination, that of the French comic-strip artist and filmmaker Sylvain Chomet, whose first feature this is. It's funny, bizarre and ultimately quite moving. With a bit of Tintin and Tati, Charlie Chaplin and Wallace and Gromit echoing in the pacing and comic sensibility, "Belleville Rendez-vous" conjures up a world that's totally surprising and sublime. Chomet and his animation crew have come up with a gem. It really is a dream come true.... though if you're having dreams like this perhaps you should seek help!

Vertigo

2009-08-14T23:10:00.001+01:00

1958 - Dir.: Alfred Hitchcock
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on October 30th

What can one write without giving the game away?! This is perhaps the strangest and most frightening film we've ever shown at the FeckenOdeon with dark and disturbing undercurrents running beneath the seemingly straighforward plot. James Stewart, at his very best, brilliantly portrays a man at his most obsessed - not unlike the director? "Vertigo" came close to disappearing altogether but a painstaking restoration by Universal Pictures in 1996 gave us new prints with vibrant colours and a crystal clear soundtrack... but the tale of Stewart's heights-fearing detective who gets caught up with the woman he's investigating makes the restored spectacle almost irrelevant. If you're looking for jokes they're in short supply - but the thrills and tension are here... as is a dark and inescapable nightmarish compulsion. You don't want to look... but you simply have to.
The film is based upon "D'Entre les Morts" (From Among the Dead) which was written specifically for Hitchcock by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac after they heard that he had tried to buy the rights to their previous novel.
• San Juan Batiste, the Spanish mission which features in key scenes in the movie doesn't actually have a bell tower - it was added using trick photography.
• Uncredited second-unit cameraman Irmin Roberts invented the famous "forward zoom and reverse tracking" shot (now sometimes called "contra-zoom" or "trombone shot") to convey the sense of vertigo to the audience. The view down the mission stairwell cost $19,000 for just a couple of seconds of screen time.
In accordance with the instructions of Mr Hitchcock NO-ONE WILL BE ALLOWED TO ENTER ORLEAVE THE AUDITORIUM DURING THE FIRST 15 MINUTES OF "VERTIGO"

Blithe Spirit

2009-08-14T23:06:00.001+01:00

1945 - Dir.: David Lean
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on Spetember 24th, 2004

Another escapist treat - this time the horrors were those of war - not a mention of the conflict in a film that had them flocking to the cinemas in the closing months of WW2. In the same year as they produced the heart rending "Brief Encounter" Noel Coward and David Lean collaborated on this much lighter confection based on Coward's smash hit stage play. Coward's script and Lean's direction must have some influence on proceedings but all their efforts (and those of the rest of the cast) are swept aside by the charging juggernaut that is Margaret Rutherford's Madame Arcate. Dame Margaret, who made her first screen appearance in 1936 at the age of 41, played dotty old dears throughout her long film career but this one was something special. Coward wrote the role specifically for her to play on the stage and then further adapted it to suit her screen persona. In real life Dame Margaret was the daughter of William Benn but her father murdered her grandfather just before she was born, and she was christened with her mother's last name of Christie.

A Night at the Opera

2009-08-14T23:03:00.002+01:00

1936 - Dir.: Sam Wood
Shown at The Feckenodeon on 25th September, 2004

The Marx Brothers phenomenon is a perfect illustration of the function of the Picture Palace in the great depression and immediately afterwards. Audiences flocked to escape the harshness of everyday life into the comfort of gilt and red plush for a glimpse of the high life - tempered with a bit of pure streetwise vaudeville. For such an audience the idea of the Brothers having a crack at the grandest of artforms must have worked on two levels. The most obvious is the pricking of the bubbles of pomposity and social climbing which so often surrounded opera. Less obvious is the appeal of the music itself. America was still a young country with millions of first and second generation immigrants who brought a genuine love of truly popular opera as part of their contribution to the culture of their new nation. The immigration sub plot must also have struck a chord. The usual Marx machine gun technique of rapid fire gags is employed but the big budget of this film allowed the boys to enjoy high production values and some of the musical numbers rival the best of Hollywood's "straight" musicals. Not a film made for sophisticates - so leave your sensitivities outside and wallow in the sheer daftness of it all...
"And now, on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor."

The Ladykillers

2009-08-14T19:37:00.003+01:00

1955 - Dir.: Alexander Mackendrick
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on April 24th, 2004

The last film in our third season is the last Ealing Comedy ever made at Ealing Studios. Fittingly "The Ladykillers" was directed by Alexander Mackendrick - who also directed "Whisky Galore" which opened the season way back in September 2003. This was Mackendrick's last film for Ealing, and when it was completed he left for America. Subversive, hilarious and more English than Elgar this is a classic Ealing confection of charm and whimsy coating a black comic core. Seventy eight year old Katie Johnson plays the deliciously dithery Mrs Wilberforce who totally innocently potters her way through all manner of hideous villainy and dodgy dealings... and never once suspects what's going on. Alec Guinness, Peter Sellers, and Herbert Lom lead a superb cast - even so they're totally upstaged by Mrs Wilberforce and her elderly cronies... It's a case of little old ladies rule, and an explanation for the triumph of Victorian Great Britain and the Empire. The film is strangely immensely popular in America, and is given frequent television airings. Its bizarre, almost surreal approach now makes it seem a decade ahead of its time. This is a film that proves how great the British film industry used to be. It's little wonder Hollywood has spent the best part of a decade trying to remake "The Ladykillers" - they'll never succeed!!!
• The producers originally refused to cast Katie Johnson fearing that she was too frail to withstand the rigours of filming. The younger actress who was given the part died just before filming began - Miss Johnson, who began her film career in 1932 playing a glamorous secretary in "After Office Hours", was recalled and went on to complete two more pictures before she died in 1957.
• It is widely believed that the voice of the parrot was supplied by Peter Sellers.

Brief Encounter

2009-08-14T19:32:00.002+01:00

1945 - Dir.: David Lean
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on April 24th, 2004

To open the show we present what is surely the greatest tearjerker of them all. "Brief Encounter" is an outstanding piece of film making which stands the test of time. It may well be that this tale of doomed love born out of fear and loneliness was made just at the right time to exploit the feelings of the many thousands of people who's lives had been shaken by the forced separations of the war years.
To many, "Brief Encounter" may seem like a relic of more proper times when the pressures of marital decorum and fidelity were perhaps more keenly felt. In truth, David Lean's fourth film remains a timeless study of true love (or, rather, the promise of it), and the aching desire for intimacy that is often subdued by the obligations of marriage. Ordinary Londoners Alec (Trevor Howard), a married doctor, and contented housewife Laura (Celia Johnson) meet by chance one day in a railway station buffet, when he volunteers to remove a fleck of ash from her eye. The outcome of this affair - both agonising and rapturous - is subtle and yet powerful enough to draw tears from the numbest of souls.
NB: The FeckenOdeon's operators are used to patching up old copies of vintage films - but this one has taken more patching than most. We hope that all will be well and that you won't find the sound of the projectionist praying too much of a distraction. (In the event all was well on screen... though there was drama in the projection room when a vital bobbin dropped off. The operator spent most of the film kneeling beside the machinery as his little finger stood in for the missing part)

Dr Zhivago

2009-08-14T19:26:00.002+01:00

1966 - Dir.: David Lean
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on March 27th, 2004

More than anything else, "Doctor Zhivago" is a love story. In fact, as a critic of the day once commented, it may be the biggest, grandest soap opera ever produced, a criticism that at the time distressed the director no end. But it is a soap with the exalted breadth of a "Gone With the Wind." It too tells an intimate story of love and conflict set against the backdrop of a country in the throes of civil war. What raises it above the level of a mere romance is its expansive visual structure, its incredible and meticulous set design and the totally stunning cinematography by Freddie Young - all of which have yet to be equalled. David Lean was a wonderfully visual filmmaker with a great understanding of how to tell a story with the camera - and this film is a terrific example of his mastery of the craft.
The film is based on the lengthy novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak. English screenwriter Robert Bolt condensed the 700 pages of the original into a coherent script and was rewarded with an Oscar for best screenplay. The story doesn't illuminate "Zhivago's" vision of history the way the psychological portrait of T.E. Lawrence in "Lawrence of Arabia" makes sense of the historical events that film records. In "Zhivago," history is presented not as a subject for curious inquiry, but as an implacable, impersonal force that keeps mucking up the private lives of the protagonists.
The book had been banned in the Soviet Union for daring to contradict the "official" view of the formation of that super state. Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for the work in 1958 but was forced by the authorities to turn the honour down. The book was not published in Russia until 1987 - nearly twenty years after this film had broken box office records world wide and twenty seven years after the author's own death.
"Doctor Zhivago" deservedly won a host of awards for Freddie Francis' breathtaking photography and John Box's amazing production design and costumes. The score by Maurice Jarre is film music on a symphonic scale - but will be perpetually remembered for the haunting "Lara's Theme". The film is regarded by many as the last truly great David Lean film and by some as the last truly great epic scale film. Such claims are probably somewhat exaggerated but "Dr Zhivago" is film making of a scale and depth rarely attempted since.
• The film was torn apart by critics when first released. Newsweek, in particular, made comments about 'hack-job sets' and 'pallid photography'. 'David Lean' was so deeply affected by these criticisms that he swore he would never make another film - though he soon retreated from this position when the box office returns proved that the critics were spectacularly out of tune with popular taste.
• Producer Carlo Ponti had bought the rights to the story years before with the intention of casting his wife Sophia Loren in the role of Lara. David Lean refused to use her because she was "too tall".
• The film was shot in Spain during the regime of General Franco. While a scene involving a crowd chanting Marxist slogans was being filmed (at Sam in the morning), police showed up at the set thinking that a real revolution was taking place and insisted on staying until the scene was finished. Apparently, people who lived near where filming was taking place had awoken to the sound of revolutionary singing and had mistakenly believed that Franco had been overthrown.
• The "ice house" was built amid the snows of Finland but was actually made out of wax.

The General

2009-08-14T19:07:00.003+01:00

1927 - Dir.: Buster Keaton & Clyde Brookman
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th February, 2004
and to an open air audience on 26th June, 2007 at The Square, Feckenham
Both performances accompanied on the piano by Ian Room

"The General" was made in 1927, the year before the talkies transformed the cinema world. Filled with hilarious sight gags and perfectly timed stunt work, this Civil War chase comedy was written and directed by Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman, and filmed with a huge budget for its time ($400,000). The scale and direction of the movie was revolutionary, and those who haven't seen it before will be surprised at the skilful choreography of the action. The superb cinematography compliments the pace of the direction as Keaton cleverly builds up the scale of the stunts. These culminate in increasingly impressive train-based acrobatics as he dodges the fiendish attempts by the Union men to derail him. As with any good blockbuster, Keaton saves the best for last with a climax involving a spectacular train crash over a burning bridge. Staged for real, the reputed $42,000 cost of that single shot was unheard of in those days, and it's just as impressive today as it was then. It is in fact reckoned to be the single most expensive shot of the entire silent movie era. The locomotive itself remained in the river until WWII, when it was salvaged for scrap iron.
Born in 1897, the same year as the cinema, Buster Keaton grew up in a vaudeville family. He started in films with Fatty Arbuckle in 1917 and directed his first shorts in 1920. In less than a decade, from 1920 to 1928, he created a body of work that stands beside Chaplin's (some would say above it), and he did it with fewer resources because he was never as popular or well-funded as the Little Tramp. When the talkies came in, he made an ill-advised deal with MGM that ended his artistic independence. Largely forgotten by the 1940s, he was reduced to doing a live half-hour TV show in Los Angeles. He reappeared on the big screen in Samuel Beckett's "Film" (1965), and this brought him back into the public eye. A retrospective at Venice shortly before his death in 1966 confirmed his "rehabilitation" and acknowledged his enormous contribution to the technique and art of the cinema.

Waking Ned

2009-08-14T19:04:00.001+01:00

1998 - Dir: Dirk Jones
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 31st January, 2004

Our main feature harks back almost to the Ealing style of whimsical comedy which "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" blasted into history. It's set in an Irish village much the same size as Feckenham - and with the same liking for a good bit of gossip and fun. So you can imagine the excitement when it's reported that the winning ticket in the national lottery, worth nearly seven million punts, was bought in the village. The plot is simple, but provides a framework for excellent character acting - turning Hollywood on its youth obsessed head, and proving that a movie focusing on older folks can be deliciously entertaining.
Ian Bannen and David Kelly lead the band of mischief makers and Kirk Jones directs with a lightness of touch rarely seen in modern movie making. The beauty of this film is its simplicity - It's just good old-fashioned story-telling. A wealth of charm, clever acting and the beauty of the Irish countryside make "Waking Ned" a heart warming proposition for a late January night out - except that the "Irish" countryside is actually the Isle of Man countryside. The IoM government had been able to offer a better financial deal to the film makers and we defy anyone to tell the difference!
While made to the finest current technical standards, the film does not pretend for one moment to be anything more than it is - a peopled by some gently zany folks who give us gleams of recognition of ordinary foibles. It is the lack of pretence and Jones' light touch that allows this confection to float successfully. (The film was released in the USA under the title "Waking Ned Devine" for reasons only American logic can explain).

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

2009-08-14T18:56:00.002+01:00

1960 - Dir.: Karel Reisz
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 31st January, 2004

The rebellious energy of post-war theatre's 'angry young man' erupted on screen in 1960 with Karel Reisz's radical drama "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning". Alan Sillitoe wrote the script based on his novel and an authentic working-class hero swaggered into the spotlight of British cinema for the first time. Arthur Seaton, first seen amid the noise of a Nottingham factory, is a young labourer who just wants to get through the week and raise hell at the weekend: "All I want is a good time. The rest is propaganda".
More recently seen flexing his charisma as Churchill in the BBC drama 'The Gathering Storm', Albert Finney's bravura performance as the embittered anti-hero was universally acclaimed. Crackling with fresh content and style, set to a jazz soundtrack by Johnny Dankworth, Reisz's film was an international success. It brought prestige to the British film industry and the profit enabled producer Harry Saltzman to buy the rights of Ian Fleming's James Bond novels.
"Don't let the bastards grind you down," is the message in this belligerent portrait of working class manhood - the film's gritty realism and honesty in its portrayal of ordinary young people's sexuality sent shock waves through the establishment. Before this film, the proletariat, especially "up north", was shown as poor and oppressed, poor and shiftless, or just poor and shameless. "Saturday Night" changed all that - the working man was allowed to be depicted not as an empty representative of his class and age, but a fully-fleshed person in his own right.
The great and the good clamoured to condemn this film almost as loudly as the public clamoured for tickets. An `X' certificate was reluctantly granted but our neighbours in Warwickshire were unable to see it because the County Council demanded substantial cuts. As far as we are aware the Warwickshire ban still stands!

An American in Paris

2009-08-14T18:35:00.002+01:00

1951 - Dir: Vincente Minelli
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th December, 2003

You could take just about any movie storyline, set it to George Gershwin's music and end up with a film that sounds and feels like a big success. That's what Gershwin's music does for a movie. The tragically short-lived composer (only 39 when he died) did as good a job as anyone ever has of bridging `serious' and popular music - remarkably able to sound majestic and jazzy at the same time. And what better place to show this off than in a Hollywood musical starring Gene Kelly? It's a winning combination, and when you toss in the deft direction of Vincente Minnelli, the charming screen debut of Leslie Caron and a capable supporting cast, the result is elevated from a merely successful movie to a truly memorable classic.
Gershwin had been dead for 14 years when the film was made - the tone poem upon which the score is based was written in 1928 but it is undoubtedly the key to the movie's enduring appeal.The Gershwin score may be the big star of the show, but Gene Kelly's performance is certainly the glue that holds it together. Kelly's remarkable ability to be both strong and subtle on the dance floor works to great effect here. Caron, who was added to the cast at the last minute, when Cyd Charisse found herself pregnant and unable to play the role, is sweet and appealing. She was a dancer at the Paris Opera when Kelly spotted her and, despite opposition from the studio, persuaded the Director to take the huge risk of casting a totally inexperienced unknown in a major role. The gamble paid off, the movie was a huge success and Caron, at 19, found herself feted as one of Hollywood's biggest stars.
The main body of the picture was shot in six weeks... but then the ballet finale took two months to perfect. This tour of Paris through the eyes of that country's greatest painters is one of the cinema's greatest spectacles. Gene Kelly choreographed it himself and demanded an astounding $400,000 for doing so. MGM, not renowned for its generosity to performers, must have reckoned they were on to a winner and gave Kelly and Minelli a free hand.
'An American in Paris' garnered six other Oscars, including an honorary award to Gene Kelly 'in appreciation of his versatility as an actor, singer, director, and dancer, and specially for his brilliant achievement in the art of choreography on film.'
Fascinating facts:
Maurice Chevalier was offered the part played by Georges Guetary but turned it down because he didn't get the girl in the last reel. The Newsvendor is played by the appropriately named Marie-Antoinette Andrews.

The Return of the Pink Panther

2009-08-14T18:10:00.002+01:00

1974 - Dir: Blake Edwards
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on November 29th, 2003

The enormous success of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in the first "Pink Panther" movie in 1964 prompted its producers to rush another one ("A Shot in the Dark") out the same year but it would be over ten years before Sellers made this third film. In the meantime, Alan Arkin undertook the part in a forgettable 1968 film called, appropriately enough, "Inspector Clouseau." But Sellers' return was a triumph, so much so that the actor would complete two more "Panther" films before his untimely death. "The Return of the Pink Panther" is sillier than its predecessors, with Sellers more the buffoon than ever and starting to mangle his comic pronunciations at an ever-increasing rate. This film demonstrates how Clouseau became such a signature role for Sellers. As many friends testified, he would come alive only when playing absurd characters, even at private dinners. Clouseau was not only an absurd character, he was one who got more absurd with each disguise - an oversized Mafioso, a Quasimodo with an inflatable hump, a Toulouse Lautrec with shoes on his knees. "I'm sorry," he tells a delivery boy vainly expecting a tip, "I'm a little short."
This film was printed in Eastmancolor. Like many prints of a similar vintage the dyes had faded making the predominant colour... pink.

The Lord of The Rings

2009-08-14T17:55:00.003+01:00

The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
2001/2 - Dir.:Peter Jackson
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 15th November, 2003

When J. R. R.Tolkien wrote his amazing "Lord of the Rings" trilogy in the 1930s and 40s he could hardly of dared to dream that one day the fantastic world he created in the imaginations of his readers could ever be successfully re-created on the cinema screen. It took a terrific leap forward in special effects technology and the determination of the fledgling film industry of New Zealand to bring to vivid life the Hobbits, Goblins, Orcs, Elves and Ents hitherto only glimpsed as sketches. Many people have carried round their own treasured mental images of Middle Earth since reading the books as young people. Some have been reluctant to see the films for fear of spoiling their personal memories of a very special story. They need not have worried. Director Peter Jackson and his team have been meticulously faithful to the text and, using the very latest techniques (some invented specifically for these films), have produced what many consider to be the greatest fantasy films ever made. They are thrilling, beautiful, moving, frightening and totally breathtaking.
The Story so far
This film picks up the story from the end of Tolkein's "try out" book "The Hobbit". Even at this early stage the plot is a little entangled so we're deeply indebted to The Tolkien Society for writing this neat summary and for including a link to our website on their own excellent site at www.tokiensociety.org):-"In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-Earth still it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell, by chance, into the hands of the Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. On his eleventy-first birthday, Bilbo disappeared, bequeathing to his young nephew, Frodo, the Ruling Ring, and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-Earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom."
These two films were shown on the eve of the release of the third film in the trilogy to allow people to refresh their memories before plunging into "The Return of the King". Hobbiton suppers were served at The Rose & Crown between the films.

North by Northwest

2009-08-14T17:52:00.001+01:00

1959 - Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 25th October, 2003

This saga of a stranger in a strange land was still playing when Nikita Khrushchev became the first Soviet leader to tour the U.S. (His trip included several of the movie's spectacular locations). It is sometimes regarded as a forerunner to the later James Bond films but this is more sophisticated fare - there are thrills and spills galore and a good deal of humour but the Master keeps a sinister undercurrent of unease bubbling along throughout.
Hitchcock collaborators composer Bernard Herrmann and cinematographer Robert Burks are in top form in "North by Northwest". Burks lights the stage sets of Mount Rushmore with a fantastic glow and Herrmann's signature strident passages emphasize the danger and menace.
As screenwriter Ernest Lehman recalls, Hitchcock said to him, "We're not making a movie, we're constructing an organ". The movie was born from two key scenes that Hitchcock was desperate to realise. One was to be set at the United Nations, and the other was to be a chase across the presidential faces carved into the Mount Rushmore National Monument. It was Lehman's job to construct a film around these two visions, and out of them emerges a thriller so improbable that it becomes quite brilliant in evading even the most fantastic of audience guesses. Hitch delivers a series emotional highs and lows with perfect timing, allowing moments of relief to break out before mounting another crescendo of excitement. The effect is like a grand musical work, conducted with bravura audience manipulation.

Night Mail

2009-08-14T17:45:00.002+01:00

1939 - Dir.: Harry Watt & Basil Wright

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 25th October, 2003

"Night Mail" had modest origins: a film to explain to Post Office employees how the postal special travelling between London and Scotland worked. John Grierson asked several writers to make the journey and give him their observations about the trip from Edinburgh to Euston. Grierson insisted that in the film the train journey be made in the opposite direction from south to north. Harry Watt was given the film to direct, with Chick Fowle and Jonah Jones as cameramen and Pat Jackson and, later, W.H. Auden as assistants. When the shooting was finished and the first rough assembly was shown, Grierson was conscious of something missing. The film showed only the machinery of getting letters from one point to another, there was nothing about the people who're going to get the letters or about the people who write them. W.H. Auden wrote the verse on a trial and error basis. It had to be cut to fit the visuals, edited by R.Q. McNaughton, working with Alberto Cavalcanti and Basil Wright. Many lines were discarded, ending as crumpled fragments in the wastepaper basket. Some of Auden's verbal images - the rounded Scottish hills 'heaped like slaughtered horses' were too strong for the film; but what was retained made Night Mail as much a film about loneliness and companionship as about the collection and delivery of letters. It was that difference that made it a work of art.

Whisky Galore

2009-08-14T17:37:00.003+01:00

1949 - Dir: Alexander Mackendrick

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th September, 2003
The first film to be shown using the Society's newly installed 35mm projector

"Whisky Galore" was filmed on the island of Barra in the Outer Hebrides, as far from Ealing yet still in the British Isles as possible. That it was made on location at all was entirely due to the fact that the studios were fully booked at the time of shooting. It was the first movie Monja Danischewsky produced and the first Alexander Mackendrick had directed. Mackendrick, a strict Presbyterian, fell out with the producer over the latter's romantic vision of a remote community fighting foreign interference, but Danischewsky got his way and the film is light and whimsical. The production went heavily over budget (by some £20,000, a fleabite by today's standards, but virtually a hanging matter at Ealing). The main reason was not the inexperience of the production team but the weather, the summer of 1948 being one of the legendarily awful ones.
The story was adapted from the novel by Compton Mackenzie, a prolific and imaginative Scottish novelist, and a well-known figure in the islands, where he had a home. It was based on a true incident, when a cargo ship (the S.S.Politician) had foundered off the Isle of Eriskay. Some 50,000 cases of Scotch destined for the United States were aboard. The author himself wrote the screenplay in association with Angus MacPhail, and even played a small part in the film. We are told in the film's epilogue that the whisky did not last long and that the islanders of Todday lived unhappily ever after - a concession to the strictly applied morality code enforced on films shown in America. Even the title was unacceptable in America and so it became "Tight Little Island". In France the film was called "Whisky, a Go-Go", and enjoyed such success that a night club was opened bearing the name.

Murder Most Foul

2009-08-14T17:33:00.002+01:00

1964 - Dir.: George Pollock (16mm print)

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th September, 2003

Many fine actors have had a crack at Miss Marple - notably, and most recently, Joan Hickson - but few have achieved such popular success as Margaret Rutherford. Although Christie admired and eventually became friends with the redoubtable Margaret (even dedicating one of her Miss Marple novels, "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side", to the actress) she apparently did not like the MGM films at all. This was the third in the hugely popular series. "Murder, She Said" (1962) set the humorous tone that would follow in the subsequent films: "Murder at the Gallop" (1963), "Murder Most Foul" (1964), and "Murder Ahoy!" (1964). This film was based on Christie's 1952 novel "Mrs. McGinty's Dead" which featured Hercule Poirot as the sleuth. Christie described the title as "rotten" - it seems that the cinema going public did not agree!

Gone with the Wind

2009-08-11T00:53:00.002+01:00

1939 - Dir.: Victor Fleming (and George Cukor, Sam Wood, William Cameron Menzies, etc.)

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on April 26th, 2003

"Forget it, Louis. No Civil war film ever made a nickel!" (Irving Thalberg, 1936). This giant of a film made plenty of nickels - it topped the earnings poll for many generations and by 1974 had made $150m. That it was made at all was largely down to the determination of David O. Selznick who bought the rights from author Margaret Mitchell for a paltry $50,000 (he later had a pang of conscience and slipped the lady another $50,000).
Selznick drove the project with iron determination and, when the thing threatened to swallow up his own studio, swallowed his pride and went cap in hand to his old employer Louis B. Mayer. Although almost half of the film was directed by Victor Fleming (45%) - who received the screen credit, four other directors contributed various parts of the film: Sam Wood (15%), William Cameron Menzies (15%), George Cukor (5%) - the first director, B. Reeves ("Breezy") Eason (2%), and the remaining from various second unit directors (18%). Fleming had a nervous breakdown ten weeks after he replaced George Cukor and the turnover of writers was no less frenetic. Sidney Howard is reckoned to have contributed most (he died before the film was complete). Ben Hecht and Scott Fitzgerald also had a crack at it (Selznick sacked Fitzgerald after only three weeks). The great Burning of Atlanta scene was shot weeks before the lead roles were even cast. Seven cameras rolled as enormous sets on the MGM backlot were torched - it is thought that D.W.Griffiths' set for "Intolerance" was amongst them.
The casting of the main roles was a matter of intense public and industry debate - in particular that of Scarlett O'Hara. Fourteen hundred tests were shot and every Hollywood name was in the frame at some time or other. Norma Shearer was chosen and turned it down. Paulette Godard and Joan Fontaine were likely contenders and then, shock of shocks, an English actress got the part. Vivien Leigh hadn't even been screen tested but had been spotted by Selznick in "A Yank in Oxford". She was paid $25,000 for 125 days work while co-star Clark Gable got $121,000 for his 71 days. The film took ten Oscars including one for the marvellous Hattie McDaniel - the first ever for a black actor. Sadly Selznick soured her achievement by suggesting that it would be too embarrassing if she were to attend the premier in Atlanta.
"Gone with the Wind" opened in London with a simultaneous premier in three theatres - The Empire, the Ritz and The Palace. It was rapturously received and disorderly scenes were witnessed as the public scrambled for tickets. There was disorder behind the scenes too - MGM asked British cinemas to pay 70% of their takings for the privilege of showing the film - and to raise their ticket prices. The large circuits and the Cinema Exhibitors Association rebelled. Questions were asked in in parliament and it was left to smaller operators, notably the Granada circuit, to bring the film to the provinces - and to make a handsome profit.

Mon Oncle

2009-08-11T00:51:00.001+01:00

1956 - Dir.: Jaques Tati

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on March 29th, 2003

Tati's eccentric creation M.Hulot charmed us last year in "M.Hulot's Holiday". For those of us who have loved Tati's humour for many years, it was a delight to see that this truly international comic genius could still work his magic.This time he's tangling with the latest (1950s) technology in "Mon Oncle". Hulot's young nephew is being brought up in a high tech apartment. As you might imagine Hulot and technology really don't mix and chaos results. The boy's parents try to reform the errant uncle by giving him a job in their ultra modern plastics factory - a big mistake. If Hulot can practically destroy a kitchen with a food mixer just imagine what he can do with an extruding machine. Tati is one of the cinema's great treasures, and this movie (his first in colour) is unforgettable. It took a host of awards culminating with an Oscar for Best Foreign Film of 1956.

The Gold Rush

2009-08-11T00:44:00.002+01:00

1925 - Dir: Charles Chaplin

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on Febrary 22nd, 2003

The Gold Rush is the quintessential Chaplin/Little Tramp film, with a balance of slapstick comedy and pantomime, social satire and emotional and dramatic moments of tenderness. It was Chaplin's own personal favourite and the first movie he made for United Artists (the company he co-founded with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W.Griffith).
Classic scenes include the starvation scene of two cabin-marooned prospectors boiling and eating a shoe, the teetering cabin on the edge of a cliff, and Chaplin's lonely New Year's Eve party (with the dancing dinner rolls routine). Early working titles for the film included Lucky Strike and The Northern Story. Chaplin dreamed up this story after reading a book about the infamous Donner party tragedy. The Donner party was travelling to California by wagon train in the last century and got caught by a blizzard in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Soon they ran out of food and their desperation led them to consume clothing, including leather boots, and eventually the bodies of their friends who had frozen to death. Chaplin even chose to do his exterior shooting in Truckee, Nevada, close to the site of this catastrophe. The first scene of the film, with several hundred prospectors slogging up a mountain towards the gold fields, and in which the Little Tramp is followed by a bear, is the most memorable of these location shots. It's perhaps a sobering thought that the 2,500 men playing prospectors were all genuine vagrants. The famous boot eating scene took three days and 63 takes. The boot was made of liquorice, and Chaplin was later rushed to hospital suffering insulin shock.

The Balloonatic

2009-08-11T00:43:00.001+01:00

1923 - Dir: Buster Keaton

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on February 22nd, 2003

Intrepid Buster Keaton faces danger on land, on water & in the air - generally because of his disastrous attempts to impress lovely young women. When at six months he tumbled down a flight of stairs unharmed the young Keaton was given the name "Buster" by 'Harry Houdini' who. along with W.C.Fields, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson shared vaudeville bills with The Three Keatons: Buster, his father Joe and mother Myra. Their act, one of the most dangerous in vaudeville, was about how to discipline a prankster child. Buster was thrown all over the stage and even into the audience. No matter what the stunt, he was poker-faced. By age 21 his father was so alcoholic the stunts became too dangerous to perform and the act dissolved. An association with Fatty Arbuckle led to a series of highly imaginative short subjects and classic, silent feature-length films - all from 1920 to 1928. Writer, director, star & stuntman - Buster could do it all. More akin to Fairbanks than Chaplin, Buster's films were full of splendid adventure, exciting derring-do and the most dangerous physical stunts imaginable.

Brassed Off

2009-08-11T00:37:00.000+01:00

1996 - Dir.: Mark Herman

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on January 25th, 2003

Set in Yorkshire in 1992 at the time of mass pit closures, this film offers a humorous and moving insight into the lives of ordinary people at a time of great social change. Grimley Colliery Brass band is as old as the mine - it has been in existence for a hundred years. But the miners are now deciding whether to fight to keep the pit open, and the future for town and band looks bleak. They believe they have no hope until Gloria (Tania Fitzgerald) appears carrying her Flugelhorn. The film is notable as an early outing for Ewan McGregor - currently one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood - and for a remarkable performance from Pete Poslethwaite, one of our most able character actors.

The Lady Vanishes

2009-08-11T00:32:00.001+01:00

1938 - Dir: Alfred Hitchcock

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on January 25th, 2003

Alfred Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes" takes us off to the fictional country of Bandrika (which seems to be a thinly disguised stand-in for nazi-controlled Austria, so recently annexed by Hitler's Germany) aboard a train during the uncertain years which lead to the second world war. Dame May Whitty plays a charming elderly lady travelling back to England and who, quite inexplicably, vanishes -just like that! Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave take it upon themselves to investigate - and, just when you think that this is going to be a rather ordinary melodrama, Hitchcock cranks up the suspense and it's edge of the seat time!
Like many of the best films this is a bit of an accident. It was originally to be called "Lost Lady" and was all set to roll when the original director fell ill. Hitch stepped in with cast and crew already chosen and the result was a meticulously crafted classic. The script is by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat who worked together throughout a writing career which spanned over forty years and included "Oh Mr Porter" and this season's opening film "The Happiest Days of Your Life". The redoubtable Dame May Whitty first appeared on screen in 1914 and made her final appearance just before her death in 1948

Singin' in the Rain

2009-08-11T00:16:00.002+01:00

1952 - Dir.: Stanley Donen

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th December, 2002

There can be few people who haven't seen and enjoyed this movie on TV but its true home is on the big screen. The colour, spectacle and immaculate production values practically leap out of the frame and it is hard to believe that such technical brilliance was possible over fifty years ago. The film lover's bible "Halliwell's Film Guide" says it all when it notes that the film has "the catchiest tunes, the liveliest choreography, the most engaging performances and the most hilarious jokes of any musical".
"Singin' in the Rain" tells of the uncomfortable transition from silent to sound films in the 1920s. Many stars of the silent screen were revealed to have inadequate speaking voices and some could break glass with a single syllable. Jean Hagen plays one such - Lina Lamont is a big star and she means to remain one despite having a slender grasp of the English language ("You think I'm dumb or summink?"). She ruthlessly uses her co-star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly), his girlfriend Kathy Seldon (Debbie Reynolds) and musician Cosmo Brown (Donald O'Connor) in an attempt to remain "everybody's number one - bar none!" It's a story with a grain of truth in it - Hollywood lawyers made fat fees out of hapless actors desperate to cling to stardom despite having voices like bronchitic goats.
The songs are so well known - "Make `em Laugh", "Good Morning", "You were Made for Me" - that joining in will be excused and perhaps expected. The orchestrations are confident and on occasions almost symphonic. The highlight for many is the balletic "Broadway Melody" sequence in which Cyd Charise uses her very longest scarf and her even longer legs to devastating effect. Perhaps Fred and Ginger did more technically proficient dancing in "Top Hat" or "Swing Time". Maybe the Busby Berkeley extravaganzas, like "Footlight Parade", had more spectacular set pieces. But Singin' in the Rain is quite simply the greatest musical of all time. The film shines with the joy of performance - everyone involved is obviously having enormous fun - and it's infectious. Gene Kelly's universally celebrated "Singin' in the Rain" scene is justly regarded as one of the greatest moments in the history of film, and easily the most memorable dance number of all time. Yet Donald O'Connor gives Kelly a real run for his money with the astonishingly acrobatic antics of "Make 'em Laugh" and takes the lead in the inspired nuttiness of the "Moses Supposes" sequence.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about "Singin' in the Rain", apart from the fact that Hollywood never tried to duplicate it, is that it wasn't originally made with the intention of creating a timeless classic. As with "Casablanca" and other great films, the greatness of "Singin' in the Rain" happened by accident. Most of the music had been sitting around unused for some twenty years, and screenwriters Adolph Green and Betty Comden were given the responsibility of coming up with a story for it. During an all night brainstorming session, they hit upon the inspired idea of setting the story during Hollywood's transition from the silent era to the age of sound, the period the songs actually date from. Songwriter Arthur Freed combines his own work from the 20s and 30s with new material; the film lunges between narrative continuity and song and dance fantasy; choreography was virtually improvised due to the pressures of the production schedule - the film arises from an unruly batch of elements. But its songs are winners, its sets elaborate, its Technicolor glorious and its dance routines inventive. For humour and sheer energy, no musical betters "Singin' In The Rain".
　

Blazing Saddles

2009-08-11T00:13:00.001+01:00

1974 - Dir.: Mel Brookes

Shown at the FeckenOdeon on 30th November, 2002

"NEVER GIVE A SAGA AN EVEN BREAK!"
Perhaps the greatest of all cowboy parodies. Mel Brookes takes a sledgehammer to crack a million gags and the pace is frenetic. The plot, for as much as it matters, concerns the appointment of a new sheriff in the wild, untamed town of Rockridge. When the new appointee turns out to be black there's a bit of a problem - until the races unite against a common enemy. To sensitive souls this may seem to be a crass and crude movie but it is also very, very funny - even if some of the gags get lost in the mayhem. It's also a very brave film - made barely a decade after the American race riots of the '60s it tackles bigotry and intolerance head on and some of the points even hit the mark. The result may not seem very PC by today's standards but at least it calls a spade a sp....

The Man from Laramie

2009-08-11T00:08:00.001+01:00

1955 - Dir: Anthony Mann

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on October 30th, 2002

A Grade A classic western with James Stewart dominating the screen as he seeks revenge on those who killed his brother. Director Anthony Mann injects a toughness into the proceedings and this, combined with Stewart's totally committed performance, makes the film strong meat when compared to the standard horse opera of the period. The giant 'Scope screen is used to great effect and, even if westerns aren't really your thing, you can sit back and admire the gloriously photographed New Mexico landscape.

Little Shop of Horrors

2009-08-11T00:05:00.002+01:00

1986 - Dir: Frank Oz

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th October, 2002

In gorious Technicolor®, "Little Shop Of Horrors" is aptly described as "the funniest musical every made about a man eating plant". The fact that it is the only musical ever made about a man eating plant shouldn't be allowed to detract from the facts that it is very funny and very musical. Ten stone weakling Seymour (Rick Moranis) takes an unusual plant into the flower shop where he works. Seymour has a crush on the blond dumbshell cashier (Ellen Greene) and seeks to woo her away from her sadistic dentist boyfriend (Steve Martin). The plant? Well... it's hungry. Based on the stage show which ran in London and on Broadway for several years, the film has a lively musical score with truly inventive comic lyrics by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman who were later to be responsible for the Oscar winning scores to "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Little Mermaid" (you can't win `em all!). There are visually amusing touches throughout - not surprising considering that the director was responsible for much of the Muppet phenomenon and provided the voice of Miss Piggy.

Son of Frankenstein

2009-08-11T00:00:00.001+01:00

1939 - Dir: Rowland V. Lee

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 26th October, 2002

"TO HAVE SEEN IT IS TO WEAR A BADGE OF COURAGE!" "Son of Frankenstein" was made in 1939 and is the final film in the classic trio that James Whale started in 1931 with the first talking "Frankenstein" and which continued in 1935 with "Bride of Frankenstein". That this could have been regarded as a most terrifying experience and only for the brave hearted seems strange in these post "Exorcist" days but there is a certain unworldly tension despite the almost total lack of any real horror. The crew at Universal had really got the hang of the gothic business by the time this one was made and the sets and effects are stupendous. Look out for fun and games in the sulphur pit. Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Basil Rathbone ham it up for all it's worth and the film is reckoned to be one of the finest examples of its type ever produced.

The Happiest Days of Your Life

2009-08-10T23:57:00.002+01:00

1950 - Dir: Frank Launder

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th September, 2002

Nutbourne College, an old established boys' boarding school is told that another school is to be billeted in the same building due to wartime restrictions. The shock is that it's a girls' school that has been sent. The two head teachers are soon battling for the upper hand with each other and the Ministry. But a crisis (or two) forces them to work together. This fifty year old comedy wears incredibly well. The pace is frantic, like a French farce with doors opening and closing and much dashing along corridors with split second timing as the two groups try to avoid each other. Margaret Rutherford and Alistair Sim ham it up superbly and there are many familiar faces in the supporting cast - including "Mr Margaret Rutherford" (Stringer Davis).
The script is adapted from a play by John Dighton, who was responsible for much of the dialogue for "Kind Hearts and Coronets", a number of Will Hay and George Formby vehicles and who co-wrote "The Man in the White Suit". There are fine performances throughout and although the film spawned the "St Trinians" series - it is considerably more stylish, light hearted and literate than the ensuing efforts.

Two Way Stretch

2009-08-10T23:55:00.000+01:00

1960 - Dir: Robert Day

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th September 2002

"Two-Way Stretch" combines all the elements of classic British comedy: great comic actors, tight story line, fast pace, and not over broad slapstick. Sellers, Cribbins, and Jeffries come close to replaying their roles in "Wrong Arm of the Law," with Sellers and Cribbins the crooks and Jeffries representing the Law. But this time Jeffries is a delightfully wicked "screw," out to get the two lay-about inmates in any way he can. Wilfred Hyde-White, masterminds the whole thing from his vantage point as a venal vicar! The zany Liz Fraser plays Sellers' girlfriend, Ethel, and the incomparable Irene Handl charms as Cribbins' mum. A delight all round! If you haven't seen this movie you're in for a treat, Forget Inspector Clousseau, this is the definitive Peter Sellers. Director Robert Day was responsible for much of the "Tarzan" series of films and, later in a long career, directed mainly for television - including episodes of "Emergency Ward 10" and "Dallas".

The Man in the White Suit

2009-08-10T00:04:00.001+01:00

1951 - Dir.: Alexander Mackendrick

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 22nd June, 2002

The Man in the White Suit appeared in August 1951, just two months after The Lavender Hill Mob (also starring Alec Guinness) opened. Telling the story of a scientist who is undone by the seeming perfection of his own invention, Alexander Mackendrick's astute film is the only Ealing comedy truly to bare its teeth. Capitalist greed, professional jealousy, the spectre of unemployment and a fear of progress are just some of the provocative themes explored in this razor-sharp satire that spurns the studio's customary whimsy (with the possible exception of Edie Martin's charming performance as the landlady). Alec Guinness is wonderfully unworldly as the boffin whose indestructible cloth unites the textile industry against him, while Joan Greenwood is perhaps even more impressive as the spirited daughter of mill owner Cecil Parker. Ernest Thesiger, playing the baddest of the baddies, draws on experience gained while working with James Whale on Bride of Frankenstein (1935) to add a gothic touch . Veteran Coronation Street watchers might like to keep an eye out for Jack Howarth (later to play Arbert Tatlock) in the role of a receptionist.

Kind Hearts and Coronets

2009-08-10T00:02:00.001+01:00

1949 - Dir.: Robert Hamer

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th April, 2002

Kind Hearts and Coronets is a black comedy, presented in a coolly elegant style with the most articulate and literate of all Ealing screenplays. The title was taken from a Tennysonian couplet quoted by one of the characters: 'Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood'; in France the film was called Noblesse Oblige. lt was based on a novel by Roy Horniman published early in the century called Israel Rank, but the film credits do not betray the title - perhaps because another Rank (J.Arthur) had provided the major part of the film's finance as well as its British distribution. Dennis Price's cool headed murderer carries the narrative but Alec Guinness steals the show playing no less than eight members of the same family. Look out for Arthur Lowe - it was to be twenty five years before Captain Mainwaring made him a household name.
The ending is ambiguous but leaves us under the impression that Louis might just get away with it. Such a possibility offended the Johnston Office in America which administered the production code, one of the strictest rules of which was that crime must not be seen to pay. So an additional and aesthetically displeasing scene was appended to the American print in which the incriminating article is seen in the hands of the authorities.

The Titfield Thunderbolt

2009-08-09T23:59:00.002+01:00

1952 - Dir: Charles Crighton

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th April, 2002

Local direct action is the theme of this sometimes underrated Ealing picture. A group of villagers defy the faceless bureaucrats bent on closing down their local railway line. It was filmed only a few years before the Beeching revolution wiped out almost all such branch lines - in fact, the line on which filming took place, near the village of Limpley Stoke, a few miles from Bath did disappear as a result of British Rail's rationalisation programme. Douglas Slocombe's photography was evocative of the West Country of the time and used Technicolor for the first time for an Ealing comedy. Hugh Samson in Picturegoer reported during shooting: "The odd thing about this railway film is that not a single railway enthusiast is to be found in the whole crew. T.E.B. 'Tibby' Clarke, writer of the script, loathes trains. Producer Michael Truman can't get out of them quick enough. And director Crichton - well, you won't find him taking engine numbers at Paddington" - must've been hell for them but the result is great fun for us!

Cinema Paradiso

2009-08-09T23:53:00.002+01:00

1988 - Dir.: Guiseppe Tomatore

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on March 23rd, 2002

Programme notes are almost superfluous for this month's top of the bill. The following quote from an American critic says it all:
"If you love movies, it's impossible not to appreciate "Cinema Paradiso", Giuseppe Tornatore's heart-warming, nostalgic look at one man's love affair with film, and the story of a very special friendship. Affecting (but not cloying) and sentimental (but not sappy), "Cinema Paradiso" is the kind of motion picture that can brighten up a gloomy day and bring a smile to the lips of the most taciturn individual. Light and romantic, this fantasy is tinged with just enough realism to make us believe in its magic, even as we are enraptured by its spell. This film is sometimes funny, sometimes joyful, and sometimes poignant, but it's always warm, wonderful, and satisfying."
The film was made in the director's home village of Bagheria on the island of Sicily, many of the locals appear as extras and bit part players and the story is thought to be part autobiographical. The distributors are issuing a "Director's Cut"* version this summer (2002) - with 45 minutes of unseen material added. It's hard to see how this will improve what many consider to be an almost perfect film. The music is by Ennio Moriconne - taking a break from spaghetti westerns and epics to prove that he capable of a more lyrical approach.
*Released in the USA at 170 minutes but never seen in the UK

The Son of the Sheik

2009-08-09T23:50:00.002+01:00

1926 - Dir: George Fitzmaurice

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on February 23rd, 2002

"A charming adventure comedy of playful sex and violence" "An eye feast of virile action with colorful settings and glowing climaxes". "The very picture for which the world's wife, mother and daughter have been waiting" - The quotes are from contemporary reviews of the smash hit of 1926. The plot concerns the son of the Sheik of the title who is in love with a half French dancer.... but that trivial detail had little to do with the frenzy - this was the latest and greatest appearance of the first international male sex symbol in the form of Rudolph Valentino. Valentino plays both the Sheik and the Son. Born as Rodolfo Alfonzo Raffaelo Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla in Castellaneta, Italy, the young Rudolph had worked as landscape gardener, dishwasher, waiter, gigolo and exotic dancer. He was spotted by screen writer June Mathis and shot to stardom in "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" in 1921. "The Sheik" (one of the five pictures he made in 1921) established his image as an erotic lover and this follow up, five years later, was the peak of a career that seemed to be set to run and run. Sadly, on 23rd August 1926 Valentino died of a perforated ulcer. He was as successful in death as he had been alive - 80,000 mourners caused a near riot at his New York funeral so a second funeral was staged in California.
Valentino's co-star was the Hungarian Vilma Banky. She had starred in a series of Hungarian and German films until Samuel Goldwyn brought her to Hollywood. Ms Banky spoke no English so Goldwyn taught her a phrase to use whenever she spoke to reporters - "Lamp chops and pineapple". We have no record of her reaction when she found out the deception but she was known as a "strong character". She made her last film in 1931 but continued to play a mean round of golf until her death at the age of 93 in 1991.

A Private Function

2009-08-09T23:47:00.000+01:00

1985 - Dir: Malcolm Mowbray

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on January 26th, 2002

You'll never be able to look a pork scratching in the same light after this piece of British whimsy. The world of Alan Bennett could hardly be further away from the highly charged atmosphere of a Hitchcock film - but there is tension here. "Will he or won't he?" is the question throughout the film. Magpie Smith powers her way through all obstacles, Michael Palin proves that he can act, Liz Smith charms us with yet another dotty old lady - BUT it's the pig that matters. "It's not just pork, it's power!!" Three porcine thespians were used to play "Betty" and, even on a good day, it took upwards of 15 takes to get the animals to do what was required of them. Human actors would rehearse with a stuffed pig and then hope that the real thing would be just as co-operative.
Bennett had written much for the small screen but this was his first effort for the movies. More recently he's adapted Joe Orton's biography "Prick up Your Ears" and his own stage play "The Madness of King George".

The Boyfriend

2009-08-09T23:45:00.001+01:00

1971 - Dir: Ken Russell

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 29th December, 2001

A tuneful, glittering and downright daft movie! Sandy Wilson's flapper musical "The Boy Friend" has long been a stalwart of the amateur operatic society circuit. Ken Russell gives it a kick and a shove and proves how very good the old war-horse can be. His version is colourful, lively, touching and hilarious - and owes a good deal to the spectacular ideas of Busby Berkeley. Casting Twiggy in the lead was bound to be a calculated risk but her inexperience in the acting field pays dividends and makes her portrayal of the nervous and naive Polly totally believable. Playing opposite her is Christopher Gable - his only big screen appearance - who went on to found the renowned Northern Ballet Theatre. The rest of the cast is made up of a galaxy of British character actors - Max Adrian, Georgina Hale, and Barbara Windsor among them. Glenda Jackson makes an uncredited appearance as the big star who can't go on because of a little accident involving a tram. A superb orchestration and gutsy performance of Wilson's music by Peter Maxwell-Davies makes this one of the few truly memorable British big screen musicals.

M.Hulot's Holiday

2009-08-09T23:41:00.003+01:00

Les Vacances de M.Hulot

1953 - Dir: Jaques Tati

Shown at the FeckenOdeon on 24th November, 2001 and on 30th April, 2011

Jaques Tati (or Tatischeff to give him his real name) learnt his craft on the music-hall circuit in the 1930s. He was often seen this side of the channel with his famous tennis-player act (part of which is shown in tonight's film). Tati always insisted on being in full charge of his material and performance and, though his output is relatively modest (6 features and 10 shorts), he is regarded as one of the master craftsmen of the silver screen.
This film is Tati's second feature. It took over two years to make and stars almost the entire population of the seaside resort of Saint-Marc-sur-Mere. The director preferred using "real people" rather than actors for most of the supporting roles. The hotel was a real hotel - an artificial entrance was constructed for the filming and caused endless confusion amongst hotel guests and staff alike.
This is the first appearance of Tati's chaotic and bumbling Monsieur Hulot. Tati's acute observation and immaculate timing make him at once hilarious and sympathetic. The character enjoyed another three outings and earned his creator an Oscar in 1959.
Oddly for a film without words, there was great praise for the use of sound in "M.Hulot's Holiday" - one critic called it "the greatest event in the history of sound film"

Carry On Spying

2009-08-09T23:39:00.000+01:00

1964 - Dir: Gerald Thomas

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on October 20th, 2001

"Carry On Spying" is regarded as one of the funniest in the series. The music is intentionally reminiscent of the zither theme from "The Third Man" and there are many references made to this film - hardly surprising when you learn that director Gerald Thomas had been Assistant Editor on Reed's classic. The film also alludes to the sixties smash hit series of Bond films.
Barbara Windsor makes her Carry On debut as Daphne Honeybutt whose talents include a photographic memory, a complete imperviousness to pain... and a large chest. Barbara came direct from Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop and had appeared in TV's "The Rag Trade". Bernard Breslaw is reputed to have been struck by "plastic bullets" during the filming and vowed never to appear in another Carry On - a vow destined to be broken time and time again.
The usual Carry On crew (minus Hattie Jaques on this occasion) play with a freshness that is lacking in the later films (this was the ninth) and the film rattles through a catalogue of quick fire gags and clever visuals like a dose of salts (Ooh Matron!!).

The Third Man

2009-08-09T23:36:00.001+01:00

1949 - Dir: Carol Reed

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on October 20th, 2001.

It's unlikely that there has ever been a film where the music more perfectly suited the action than Carol Reeds "The Third Man". Anton Karas was discovered by Trevor Howard in a Vienna bar. The haunting chords of Karas' "Harry Lime Theme" draw us into the unreal, shattered world of post war Vienna. A city divided into French, Russian, American and British zones. Joseph Cotton as Holly Martin arrives in Vienna to meet his college friend Harry Lime - but Harry is dead.... or is he? "The Third Man" was made by men who knew the devastation of Europe at first hand. Carol Reed worked for the British Army's wartime documentary unit and the screenplay was by Graham Greene, who not only wrote about spies but occasionally acted as one. The film was shot entirely on location in Vienna amid the mountains of rubble and the gaping bomb craters. It's a world where even the truth is false and trust is a dream no-one dares hope for.

The Smallest Show on Earth

2009-08-09T23:33:00.002+01:00

1957 - Dir.: Basil Dearden

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 29th September, 2001 - our opening show.

When a young couple from the Home Counties (Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers) unexpectedly inherit a cinema in the north they assume it to be the town's new showpiece theatre. When they arrive to inspect their property they find that it is in fact the "Bijou" - a falling apart museum piece of a picture house with a few falling apart museum pieces working in it. Margaret Rutherford as Mrs.Fazackerly rules the box office, Peter Sellers' drunken projectionist clings desperately to his wobbly equipment while Bernard Miles (as Old Tom the doorman) pines for a proper uniform. Director Basil Dearden treats his subject with humour and respect and the result is a funny, bitter sweet tribute to a bygone age of film going. The Bijou was the model for the first "Night at the Pictures" in Feckenham "Seats in all parts"!

Duck Soup

2009-08-09T23:28:00.003+01:00

1933 - Dir.: Leo McCarey

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on September 29th, 2001 - our opening film.

"Duck Soup" is a fast moving anarchic satire. It lampoons the posturing of blundering dictators, fascism and authoritarian government. It proved a hot political potato for Paramount in the nervous period before WW2 - Mussolini banned it outright in Italy. The plot sees Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly ingratiating himself with Margaret Dumont's bewildered Mrs Teasdale - and into the Presidency of Freedonia. Chico, Harpo and (in his last film) Zeppo do their best to make the wheels of diplomacy run erratically and Raquel Torres vamps it as a sultry Mata Hari. That governments could be provoked to fury by the later part of the film where the brothers point up the futility of war just goes to prove their point!
"I could dance with you 'til the cows come home....
On second thoughts, I could dance with the cows 'til you get home"

A Hard Day's Night

2009-08-08T16:17:00.002+01:00

1964 - Dir: Dick Lester

Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on August 8th, 2009
When "A Hard Day’s Night" was released in 1964, The Beatles had just made it into the big time. After barely a year of national existence, they had become a phenomenon. The film begins with girls chasing them, ends with girls chasing them, and has many moments of, well, girls chasing them.
Director Dick Lester tried hard to avoid turning this into "Carry On Up The Beatles" despite pressure from the somewhat conservative British studio system. He managed to avoid the traditional soppy and contrived plot but he got stuck with some cliches - notably Victor Spinnetti’s camp TV director worrying that the mop tops won’t turn up on time - we all know that they will but everybody dutifully goes through the motions. Mr Lester, already an old hand on TV commercials, directs inventively, using documentary techniques, speeded-up action, jump editing, even occasional surrealism - so much so that the distributors sent the first print back because they thought there was something wrong with it. It was all received very enthusiastically and Mr Lester’s style became the norm for music movies - though it has to be noted that he’d had a big flop a year earlier using the same techniques in "It’s Trad Dad" which had been intended to propel Helen Shapiro into the Hollywood big league... oops!
London in the first half of the 1960s seems very different. So many policemen on the beat. Such smartly turned-out teenagers, the girls in neat skirts, the boys wearing ties. Keep your eyes peeled and you may even spot a young Phil Collins among the fans. This is also the film that gave the world the word 'grotty' and, if you don’t blink, you’ll see the first blatant big screen flash of the word "t*ts"

Keeping Mum

2009-04-18T11:26:00.002+01:00

2005 - Dir: Niall Johnson

Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 25th April, 2009
Adapted seamlessly from its original American setting by writer/director Niall Johnson (novelist Richard Russo penned the initial script), Keeping Mum manages to be both reassuringly familiar and surprisingly fresh. "Waking Ned" meets "Kind Hearts and Coronets". Apart from the witty script, the secret to its success lies in its offbeat casting. Scott Thomas loosens her stiff upper lip and clearly relishes playing Gloria Goodfellow, a wife and mother who's thinking about playing around with a sleazy golf instructor (Patrick Swayze) and abandoning her inert husband Walter (Rowan Atkinson), the vicar of Little Wallop (don't worry, nothing else is quite so twee). If she's the main draw, there's also a comedy masterclass to behold from Maggie Smith. The redoubtable screen veteran combines the sweetness of a doting grandmother with looks that kill and hilariously bloodthirsty solutions to everyday problems such as school bullies and yappy dogs. Mainstream British comedies are notoriously difficult to get right - too often they're simply poor copies of Hollywood pap - which is why Keeping Mum really is something to shout about.
"There is a British tradition of darkness in comedy which we haven’t seen for some time and in many ways the pleasantness and the appealing nature of the characters when it turns out that they are concealing dark secrets, is in many ways even more shocking. What drew me to the script was that it had a great tone to it. It was very gentle and definitely comic; but comedy with a much greater subtlety than I am normally associated with. Walter is a very three-dimensional character, and the script has just got a lovely, slightly dark tone to it." Rowan Atkinson

The Purple Rose of Cairo

2009-04-18T11:23:00.002+01:00

1985 - Dir: Woody Allen
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 25th April, 2009
A delightful tale centred on how cinema can change lives, if only when the lights are down, Woody Allen combines romance with intelligence to great comic effect. Cranking out just about a film a year, Woody Allen is easy to take for granted, especially recently, as quantity seems to be winning the battle over quality. He could be said to have entered an extended bad patch with a flurry of mediocre work, ranging from horrid miscalculation ("Small Time Crooks," "Hollywood Ending") to sub-average romantic comedy ("Anything Else"). It's easy to overlook his great films - and "The Purple Rose of Cairo" is the most overlooked of his great films. Of the 33 features Allen has directed, it's one of the few in which he didn't appear, and the one he calls his favourite. At 84 minutes, it's short but nearly every one of those minutes is blissful. So sit back, relax and imagine how you’d feel if you favourite movie star stepped down from the screen and asked you to run away with him/her* (*delete as appropriate).

Volver

2009-04-06T11:00:00.003+01:00

(Coming Back)

2006 - Dir: Pedro Almodóvar

Shown at FeckenOdeon 2 on 17th April, 2009

“Volver” catches director Pedro Almodóvar and star Penélope Cruz at the peak of their respective powers, in service of a layered, thought-provoking film. This melodrama is set in a Spain tourists rarely see - a Spain where the daily soap is just as important as “Corrie” is in certain parts of Doncaster. While there’s a leisurely middle section in modern-day Madrid, the heart and soul of the story takes place in a small, windy town in La Mancha that seems stuck in a time warp. It’s an ordinary, everyday world where the abnormal happens to normal people... and how they cope with ghosts, murder, illness and incest. What is most unexpected about "Volver" is that it's not really about murder or the afterlife, but simply incorporates those awkward developments into the problems of daily living. The characters approach their dilemmas not with metaphysics but with common sense. A dead woman turns up as a ghost and is immediately absorbed into her family's ongoing problems: So what took her so long?

Penélope Cruz won Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes by the ton for this performance and it’s fascinating to see an established Hollywood star working in her native language. As it did with Sophia Loren in the 1950s, Hollywood has tried to force Cruz into a series of show-biz categories, when she is obviously most at home playing a woman like the ones she knew, grew up with and could have become - and, yes, her bum is padded in this film!

Director Almodóvar has electrified Spanish cinema over the past twenty years. From early beginnings, when he subsidised his film making by selling bric-a-brac in Barcelona’s flea markets, his film have been stylish and attention grabbing. He came to international prominence in the late 1980s with the hard hitting “Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” and “Tie me up, Tie me down”. His films are colourful and sensitive and often feature strong women - apparently his mother was a strong woman. Asked about the plethora of shots featuring Ms Cruz’s cleavage in “Volver”, Almodóvar nodded happily and said "Yes, I am a gay man, but I love breasts."

The “ghost” is played by veteran actress Carmen Maura. She’s a long standing Almodovar favourite who headed an art gallery and performed in night-clubs before starting her acting career. She’s the great-grand-niece of the Spanish Prime Minister (pre-Franco), Antonio Maura and won the "Goya Award" (the Spanish equivalent of the Oscar) in 1989, 1991, 2001 and 2007.

Rebecca

2009-03-25T11:47:00.001Z

1940 - Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th March, 2009
In 1939 Alfred Hitchcock made what may be thought of as an opportune move to the United States to start a contract with Selznick international. His first job was supposed to be on a film about the sinking of the Titanic - but things changed. Hitchcock had considered producing “Rebecca” at Elstree Studios as a follow up to “The Lady Vanishes”. The asking price for the story was too high and Hitch abandoned the idea. The producer (and Hitch’s new boss) David O Selznick then bought the rights and gave the project a budget far in excess of anything the British Studios could have mustered - and assigned Hitchcock to direct it. Both men were larger than life characters and disagreed with each other on almost every aspect of the film. Shooting started just as war was declared in Europe and the largely British cast and crew struggled to concentrate. At the end of the filming schedule Selznick tried to take the film over but was frustrated by the fact that Hitch had only shot exactly what he needed - there was no way of altering any of the scenes. Both expressed their unhappiness at the final result... but all animosity dissolved when Rebecca pulled in vast audiences and an Oscar for Best Picture.
· Rebecca was shot almost entirely in the studio on 44 specially built sets. Shooting was delayed because they had to wait for “Gone with the Wind” to vacate the only sound stage big enough to accommodate the scenery.
· Although Selznick wanted to be faithful to the novel, the censors demanded that Max could not kill his wife without paying the penalty. Suicide was also frowned upon. After a hard-fought but futile battle, Selznick had to settle for Rebecca being accidentally killed.
· Vivien Leigh wanted the lead in Rebecca and, as she was enjoying an affair with Olivier, thought she would get it. She made her displeasure very clear when Olivia de Haviland’s lesser known sister (Joan Fontaine) got the part.

The Quiller Memorandum

2009-03-25T11:45:00.000Z

1966 - Dir: Michael Anderson
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th February, 2009
Spy movies were very much in vogue in the mid 1960s. The British Bond bandwagon was gathering speed, the Matt Helm series was trying to keep pace on the other side of the Atlantic and Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer was finding his feet in “The Ipcress File”. “The Quiller Memorandum”, though a thriller featuring spies, is a completely different kettle of fish. The film stands out from most of its contemporaries for its dreamlike, ritualistic, almost fairytale atmosphere. This derives largely from the cryptic dialogue by Harold Pinter and the stylish imagery supplied by director Michael Anderson and cinematographer Erwin Hillier.
There’s one other factor that makes this film stand out from the spy films of the time - while they focused on the Cold War between the West (mainly America and Great Britain) and the Communist threat from the East (mainly the Soviet Union), The Quiller Memorandum went back to an old enemy for its villain - the Nazis in Germany. Based on a novel by Trevor Dudley Smith (of Flight Of The Phoenix fame) The Quiller Memorandum takes place in mid-'60s Berlin, where Nazis new and old are attempting to make a comeback two decades after the Third Reich was defeated.
There are splendid performances from George Segal and Alec Guinness (perhaps limbering up for Smiley) and a haunting score from John Barry (who was simultaneously concocting much more energetic stuff for the Bond Movies)
We dedicate this showing of The Quiller Memorandum to the memory of Harold Pinter, who died on Christmas Eve 2008

Jour de Fete

2009-03-25T11:43:00.000Z

1949 - Dir: Jaques Tati
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 28th February, 2009
There's no one quite like Jacques Tati, a meticulous and innovative comic genius whose work grows from an acute but benevolent observation of humanity. He made only five feature films but as writer, director, and star of each of them he developed new techniques of filmmaking. Tati characterised his humour as "laughter born of a certain fundamental absurdity". “Jour de Fete” was Tati's first feature and is built upon his short “L'ecole des Facteurs”. This is truly international humour, very visual in style, with a minimal plot in which music, sound effects and speech are used only as embellishments. Tati the actor is lanky and awkward with all the skill of the great silent comedians to command the screen. The timing and sheer cleverness of the gags is breathtaking. But, above all, this film is supremely good-natured. We can laugh at the idiocies and embarrassment of Francois and his fellow villagers, but only because we recognise ourselves in them.
TECHNICAL NOTE: This film is shown in colour - as Tati intended. The prologue will explain what happened. You may like to know that the painstaking restoration took six years. We can only suppose that this is what Thomson Color would have looked like but it does appear to be a sort of tinted black and white. Tati was so frustrated by the failure of the original colour shoot that he resorted to hand tinting parts of the black and white negative for a re-release in the 1960s. He died in 1982 and never saw the film in colour - so we can’t be sure that this is what he really wanted.

Bombón el Perro

2009-03-25T11:40:00.000Z

(Bombón the Dog)
2004 - Dir: Carlos Sorin
Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on 13th February, 2009
Argentina is a bit of a mystery to most of us. Our thoughts of this vast country (the 8th largest in the world) are inextricably entangled with images of war and the crude "Argie" bashing headlines the Falklands conflict generated. It’s good to be able to present a film that lifts the lid to reveal ordinary people leading ordinary lives - and to note that, despite all else that divides us, Argies and Brits have one thing in common - a weakness for big slobbery dogs.
The film was made in Patagonia, the arid, featureless flatlands of southernmost Argentina - a harsh landscape that reflects both the desolation and the resilience of the principal character. Poverty caused by Argentina’s economic collapse is the source for Juan’s adventures, but the director concentrates on how his characters overcome it rather than dwelling on the depressing side of hardship. It's filmed with a beautiful sense of the Patagonian countryside--expansive deserts, dusty towns, invasive commercial culture. Basically this is a simple series of adventures for a man and his dog as they transform each other's life. Each sequence is inventive and disarmingly entertaining, with big laughs and small insights.
Director Carlos Sorin handles his simple tale with an unashamedly sentimental touch. He’s aided in this by the delightfully simple acting style of his main character - Juan Villegas is an amateur actor and was formerly employed as the studio’s car park attendant - his gentle and genuine performance carries the film. The rest of the charm offensive is in the expert paws of Gregorio who plays Bombón as if he was born to star on the silver screen.
The film has a 15 certificate. You may think this odd for such a charming and inoffensive film. The censor apparently took exception to one scene. You’ll know that scene when you see it - it’s the one where Bombón (ahem!) "comes of age" and proves that this is not so much a shaggy dog story as a.... erm ... doggy sh** story.

Babette's Feast

2009-03-25T11:38:00.000Z

(Babbette’s Gaestebud)
1987 - Dir: Gabriel Axel
Shown in FeckenOdeon 2 on 14th November, 2008
"Babette's Feast" is about edible art - Art with a capital A - a tour de force for the taste buds laid down before neither gourmets nor gourmands, but a sect of gruel-eating puritans. In this piquant Danish drama, an exiled artist confronts the uneducated palate, awakening interest.... if not applause.
"Babette's Feast," a precise and elegant piece, is adapted from Karen Blixens’s (real name Isak Dinesen) short story by director Gabriel Axel, a fellow Dane who, like Dinesen, found inspiration elsewhere. Axel is uniquely suited to this story of a culinary genius who spends 14 years in Jutland smoking cod. And then one day she stuns the taciturn Jutlanders by preparing a mighty feast.
French actress Stéphane Audran is perfection as the enigmatic Parisian Babette, who flees the Communard uprising in 1871 and is taken in by two sisters, Martina (Birgitte Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodil Kjer), the leaders of a small Danish sect. Her handsome face, her voice like a rich sauce and her strong, healthy stride are set against the prettiness and primness of the older but still angelically beautiful Martina. But like the gifted singer Philippa, Babette possesses a great talent denied. The film is beautifully photographed and paced and there’s something about it that makes one appreciative of the good and gentle things in the world - in these "interesting" times it’s perhaps a useful reminder!

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

2009-03-25T11:36:00.000Z

2000 - Dir: Joel Cohen
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 31st January, 2009
Our main feature is set in the same period as Little Caesar but there the similarity ends! It’s a product of the talented and remarkable brothers Coen and is resolutely uncategorisable. A combination of musical, comedy and fantasy, it follows a trio of convicts who escape from a chain gang to find some hidden treasure. Things are never quite what they seem. The film is loosely based on Homer’s 'Odyssey' and as such the boys bump into all manner of folk on their quest, from a one-eyed bible salesman to a campaigning mayoral candidate. The whole thing is immaculately designed and photographed (it won an Oscar for this) in a style designed to give a period feel without actually seeming old fashioned and it’s constantly inventive and original. George Clooney acts his hairnet off in a style that owes more than a little to the young Cary Grant. The music’s great too - Yee haww!!
· Tim Blake Nelson is a film director who was only offered a part because he’s a friend of the Coens - he makes the film as the endlessly thick Delmar.
· The prisoners’ musical chant from the beginning of the movie is an old recording of a real chain-gang.
· The film’s official website ran a trivia contest to promote the film and gave winners canisters of Dapper Dan pomade. (No, you can’t buy it - it’s not a real brand).
· The American Humane Association mistook a computer-generated cow in the movie for a real animal and demanded proof before they would allow the use of their famous disclaimer, "No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture." After seeing a demonstration of how the cow was created, the Humane Association added "Scenes which may appear to place an animal in jeopardy were simulated."

Little Caesar

2009-03-25T11:34:00.000Z

1931 - Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on January 31st, 2009
The following is taken from Variety Magazine’s 1931 review of “Little Caesar”: “There are enough killings herein to fill the quota for an old time cowboy-Indian thriller. And one tough mugg, in the title part, who is tough all the way from the start, when he's a bum with ambition, to the finish, when he's a bum again, but a dead one. For a performance as Little Caesar no director could ask for more than Edward G. Robinson's contribution. Here, no matter what he has to say, he's entirely convincing. No new twists to the gunman stuff [from the novel by W.R. Burnett] same formula and all the standard tricks, but Mervyn LeRoy, directing, had a good yarn to start with and gives it plenty of pace besides astute handling.”
This probably says it all - but fails to predict the impact this short film had on the style of crime pictures made over the following decade - this is very much a trend setter. The acting is over stated to say the least but actors had only just learned to cope with the new fangled sound - the style is very much a combination of silent movie exaggeration and theatrical projection (“Can’t hear you at the back, luvvie!”). The gangsters upon whom the film was based were still active - Warner Brothers must have been hoping they didn’t recognise themselves!
· The character of Cesare Enrico Bandello is not, as widely believed, based on 'Al Capone'. Instead, he is based on Salvatore "Sam" Cardinella, a violent Chicago gangster who operated in the early years of Prohibition. The character Diamond Pete Montana was modelled on Big Jim Colisimo, who was murdered by Al Capone; and "The Big Boy" was based on corrupt politician Big Bill Thompson, Mayor of Chicago.
· The underworld banquet sequence was also based on a real event - a notorious party in honour of two gangsters, Dion "Deanie" O'Bannion and Samuel J. "Nails” Morton.

High Society

2009-03-25T11:30:00.002Z

“My dear boy, this is the sort of day history
tells us is better spent in bed”

1956: Dir.: Charles Walters
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th December, 2008
High Society is a remake of the popular 1940 romantic comedy The Philadelphia Story, which starred Cary Grant as C.K. Dexter-Haven, Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord, and James Stewart as Mike Connor. The plot details and character names are the same for both versions, as are some of the lines of dialogue, but there is one critical difference: the addition of nine top-notch musical numbers from Cole Porter. While it's true that some of the character interaction in this film isn't as pointed or witty, the musical component more than makes up for this deficiency. If you’d like to compare the two it’s entirely possible that we may show The Philadelphia Story soon.
· Grace Kelly was no singer as she would have freely admitted, but Cole Porter wrote True Love specifically to accommodate her limited range The song sold a million records - and it was Bing Crosby’s 20th Gold record.
· Katherine Hepburn owned the rights to The Philadelphia Story and didn’t want “her” film re-made. MGM got round this by changing the name and removing the original writer’s credit... though much of his dialogue seems to have crept into High Society.
· Grace Kelly had just become engaged to Prince Rainier of Monaco when this film was in production. She couldn’t resist the chance to show off her real engagement ring on the silver screen.
“That man's gonna wind up a juvenile
delinquent mark my words”

Every Day Except Christmas

2009-03-25T11:28:00.000Z

1957: Dir.: Lindsay Anderson
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 27th December, 2008
This film was made possible because Lindsay Anderson’s Free Cinema accomplice Karel Reisz was working for the Ford company. Reisz had accepted the job on condition that he would be allowed to produce a series of non-advertising documentaries. He invited Anderson to make the first film. They started looking for a subject, and when the idea of a film about Covent Garden came up, Anderson spent a few nights following workers around the market. A very rough treatment was written, but most of the film was improvised on the spot.
Every Day was the centrepiece of the third Free Cinema programme at the National Film Theatre in May 1957. Reviews of the film were almost unanimous in their praise. It went on to win the Grand Prix at the Venice Festival of Shorts and Documentaries later that year.

The African Queen

2009-03-25T11:26:00.000Z

“I never dreamed that any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!”

1951 - Dir: John Huston
Shown at The FeckenOdeon on 29th November, 2008
The African Queen is the uncomplicated tale of two companions with mismatched, "opposites attract" personalities who develop an implausible love affair as they travel together downriver in Africa around the start of World War I. This quixotic film by director John Huston, based on the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester, is one of the classics of Hollywood adventure filmmaking, with comedy and romance besides. It was the first colour film for the two leads and for director Huston.
The acting of the two principal actors - Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn - is some of the strongest ever registered on film, although this was their first and only pairing together. This was 44 year-old Hepburn's first screen appearance as a spinster, and marked her transition to more mature roles for the rest of her career. At 52 years of age, Bogart was also past his prime as a handsome, hard-boiled detective. John Mills, David Niven, and Bette Davis were, at one time, considered for the lead roles. Romulus Films took the almost unheard of risk of filming on location in central Africa
· Contemporary articles detail the various perils of shooting on location in Africa, including dysentery, malaria, bacteria-filled drinking water and several close brushes with wild animals and poisonous snakes. Most of the cast and crew were sick for much of the filming.
· To show her disgust with the amount of alcohol that Huston and Bogart consumed during the shoot, Hepburn drank only water - and suffered a severe bout of dysentery as a result. Bogart later said, "All I ate was baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whiskey. Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead."
· Scenes in the water were filmed in a tank at Isleworth Studios for “health reasons”.
· John Huston’s next project was “Moulin Rouge” starring Jose Ferrer and Zsa-Zsa Gabor - a very different film to that shown here last month!