Film

It is a commonly held idea that when we become engrossed in a film we, somehow, become part of the action (‘It felt like I was there’)

Released in 1978, Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep initially had a difficult time reaching an audience. It was made on a tight budget while Burnett was finishing at film school — he was writer, producer, editor and director — and there were problems with the film’s release as Burnett had not acquired the rights to the 22 songs on the soundtrack. That was eventually sorted out and the film was transferred to a 35mm print and DVD. It became a much praised depiction of working-class African-American life in the Watts district of Los Angeles, shot almost entirely on location and using many non...

I must confess to not watching very much cinema from India. I’ve never been a big fan of Bollywood; however I hope to make some small amends by highlighting Bengali director Satjajit Ray’s brilliant Apu Trilogy: Panther Panchali (1955), Aparjito (1956) and Apu Sarvar ( The World of Apu ) (1959). With original music by a then almost unknown Ravi Shankar, these films are a story of the childhood, education, youth and early manhood of Apu in the early twentieth century. Apu is born into rural poverty. His family moves to the city of Benares/Varanasi, but their life does not improve. His father...

The 1920s Austrian Expressionist film The City Without Jews was once thought lost but fragments turned up in an archive. A full copy (in very bad condition) was later found in a jumble sale and painstakingly restored. The film was based on the novel of the same name by Hugo Bettauer and depicts a city (Vienna) from which the entire Jewish population is expelled. It was adapted for the screen by Hans Karl Breslauer, and first screened in Vienna in 1924. Many thought it was a ridiculous fantasy. In New York it was panned as “fatuous”, yet it would be only another ten years or so before the Nazis...

Better known as a singer, Harry Belafonte performed in a number of films and was a long-standing civil rights activist in the United States. Born in Harlem, he was the son of Jamaican parents, becoming attracted to the theatre at an early age. His first film was Bright Road in 1953. followed by Carmen Jones (1954), Island in the Sun (1957) and others. He famously turned down the role of Porgy in Otto Preminger’s film adaptation of Porgy and Bess , saying the role was racially stereotyped. From 1954 to 1961 he refused to perform in the American South. He concentrated on his singing career, but...

April 10 was 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement, and 24 May will be 100 years after the end of the Irish civil war. Neil Jordan’s 1996 film Michael Collins , with Liam Neeson as the Republican military leader Michael Collins, begins with the defeat of the 1916 uprising in Dublin. Collins vows that the next struggle will be different, a guerrilla war where the British superiority in numbers and arms will not prove decisive. After springing Eamon de Valera (Alan Rickman) from prison, he builds up an effective guerrilla force. He wipes out the British secret service agents in Dublin and the...

I detest the Oscars, so all praise to actor George C. Scott who once remarked: "The whole thing is a goddamn meat parade. I don’t want any part of it". Alongside Patton , Scott’s best known film is Doctor Strangelove (director Stanley Kubrick, 1964), a black satire on the Cold War. Scott plays General Buck Turgidson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A rogue B-52 bomber is heading for the Soviet Union to drop its nuclear bombs and cannot be recalled because its radio has been destroyed. The reason is complex but involves a deranged USAAF Commander who is obsessed by his hatred of the...

Although he was almost always cast as a Nazi villain (most famously as Major Strasser in the Hollywood classic Casablanca ), the German actor Conrad Veidt was an active and committed anti-fascist. On 3 April it will be 80 years since his untimely death, aged only 50. He sprang to fame with his role in the German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920), and became one of the most popular actors attached to the German UFA Studio. Under the new Nazi laws introduced in 1933 Veidt was expected to sign a racial declaration. He put his “race” down as Jewish — his wife was Jewish but...

Following on from the mentions of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 and 2022 versions) I would like to close this consideration of anti-war films depicting World War 1 by highlighting Stanley Kubrick’s film Paths of Glory (1957), featuring Kirk Douglas. An assault on the “Anthill” — a German stronghold — is mounted by the French army. Colonel Dax (Douglas) leads the suicidal attack but the first wave is completely wiped out. “B” Company, who would have been the second wave, refuse to leave their trenches and Dax stops the attack. The French High Command is furious, partly because one of...

Writer and director Sarah Polley’s new film, Women Talking , based on Miriam Toews’ book, is a devastating exploration of abuse and sexual violence, trauma and women’s oppression — and resistance. In an isolated religious community, a group of men have been drugging and raping the women and girls for years. Women have long been excluded from education, silenced, and kept disempowered, some domestically abused. Women Talking ’s opening declaration, “What follows is an act of female imagination”, alludes to the response of the village elders to the attacks. The attacks were dismissed as either...