A Knight's Tale

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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).