Film

Kino Eye: A Popular Front film, 1936

The recent French elections have revealed a left that is in chaos. In 1936, much of that left united in the “Popular Front”. It was riddled with contradictions, and short-lived. Trotsky was scathing in his analysis. Yet one aspect of the Popular Front was a flourishing of films with a left orientation. Many film directors, gathered in the Groupe Octobre, sided with the Popular Front. The best known was Jean Renoir, who directed The Crime of Monsieur Lange in 1936. Amédée Lange (Rene Lefevre) is a writer who works for a publishing company owned by the loathsome Batala (Jules Berry) who is...

Women's Fightback: A film about puberty? Good. But not well done

Turning Red is about a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian named Mei Lee. She gets good grades, does all the extra-curricular activities and helps out at the local temple, and when puberty arrives she discovers that the women in her family turn into giant Red Panda monsters when they experience strong emotions. Producer Lindsey Collins explained the body horror for kids: “Everybody on the crew was unapologetic in support of having these real conversations about periods and about these moments in girls’ lives.” It is great to see periods and puberty addressed in a Pixar film. Accusations that Pixar...

Kino Eye: Gangsterism as capitalism

It is the 50th anniversary of the release of The Godfather . However, if it is gangsterism as capitalism that you are thinking about, then there is a better film (in my opinion): Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil from 1948. John Garfield plays the part of Joe Morse, a crooked but smart lawyer who works for a crime syndicate. It is a ruthless world where the big fish swallow up the small fry. One of those small fry is Morse’s older brother Leo. Morse tries but fails to save his brother. Realising that he has destroyed his own brother and himself, Morse then turns on the head of the crime...

Bend It Like Beckham, Blairism and class politics

Originally published on Media Diversified , a website for writers of colour. We republish with thanks. You can donate to Media Diversified here . I must have watched Bend It Like Beckham a dozen times – most recently on the twentieth anniversary of its release, last week. At the top of the UK box office for over three months in 2002, Gurinder Chadha’s film became a hit worldwide: the only film ever, believe it or not, officially released in every country, North Korea included. There are pages of statistics for its success. It undoubtedly had special resonance for British Asians. As a middle...

One of the Hollywood Ten

The independent film Salt of the Earth (1954), about a 1950-2 miners’ strike in New Mexico, is well known to activists in the labour movement. One of the Hollywood Ten , directed by Welshman Karl Francis in 2000 and shot in Spain, follows Salt ’s director Herbert Biberman (played by Jeff Goldblum) when he refuses to give evidence at a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the McCarthy period. He is jailed for six months. On his release he is determined to make a film about the strike. Since he has been sacked by Warner Brothers, it is a struggle to find finance. Only five...

Don't tell us the ending

I’ve been enjoying the Kino Eye columns very much. It’s so refreshing to hear about films we might not otherwise discover. May I make a suggestion? Perhaps it would be better not to reveal how the film ends. I do enjoy watching Mr. Kino’s recommendations, but a degree of dramatic tension is lost once you already know the protagonist is going to get blown up by a mine. Beryl Smeaton, St Austell I will endeavour not to Thank you for your comment. Although, personally, knowing the ending of a film doesn’t spoil it for me, I recognise I am in a minority and others have, from time to time...

Kino Eye: Deflating McCarthy, 1953

A film about the McCarthy era seems appropriate. There’s quite a few to choose from. One of the best known is George Clooney’s 2006 release, Good Night and Good Luck, set in 1953 at the height of Senator Joe McCarthy’s increasingly deranged “crusade” against supposed “communist” infiltration of every facet of American society. David Strathairn plays the American broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, whose famous signing off phrase provides the title of the film. Murrow is increasingly concerned about McCarthy, noting that some of his colleagues are becoming scared of even opening their mouths. Along...

Long live cosmopolitanism

In February Ukrainian film-maker Sergei Loznitsa resigned from the European Film Academy (EFA), attacking its comments on the Russian invasion of Ukraine as “too neutral, toothless and conformist in relation to Russian aggression”. “Is it really possible”, Loznitsa demanded of the EFA, “that you – humanists, human rights and dignity advocates, champions of freedom and democracy – are afraid to call a war a war, to condemn barbarity and voice your protest?” Then things took a stranger turn. The next day the EFA issued a stronger statement, this time supporting a boycott of Russian films...

Kino Eye: William Hurt, 1950-2022

I once met William Hurt, who died 13 March, at a director’s Q and A which I moderated at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. What I remember most is that after the Q and A he came up to me and thanked me for chairing the session so well. No one, director, actor, or whatever, had done this before, or has done since. Usually the moderator of these events is either ignored or complained about, as in “I had my hand up to speak and you ignored me!”. The gesture seemed typical of the man. Three of his films stand out for me: Gorky Park (1983, Michael Apted), where he plays Moscow policeman Arkady...

Kino Eye: Left to die in the Balkans

No Man’s Land (Danis Tanović, 2001) demonstrates the problems of intervention in the Balkan wars, problems that the film does not resolve. A Bosniak soldier and a Serb soldier find themselves trapped in a trench in no man’s land. They argue, fight and almost shoot each other but they eventually calm down and begin to talk. They have a lot in common as they discover they come from nearby villages. However, their situation is complicated by the presence of a badly wounded Bosniak soldier who earlier, taken for dead, is placed on a landmine by a Serb. Any attempt to move him will detonate the...

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