A few of the more below the radar sale recommendations:
‘The “Underground” of the Great Metropolis of the British Empire, with its teeming multitudes of ‘all sorts and conditions of men,’ contributes its share of light and shade, romance and tragedy and all those things that go to make up what we call ‘life.’ So in the “Underground” is set our story of ordinary work-a-day people whose names are just Nell, Bill, Kate and Bert.’
He may have become better known for his adaptations of stage plays and ended his career making glossy pictures about glamorous people as befits the son of a distinguished Prime Minister, but Anthony Asquith’s early work was considerably more down to Earth, or rather distinctly
Underground, his terrific 1928 silent film (his first directorial credit) dealing with a beautiful observed romantic triangle between three working class people whose paths cross on the London Underground system. Beginning as an observational comedy filled with all the behavioural traits that Londoners still slavishly adhere to on the Tube to this day, for much of the film it’s a traditional tale of romantic rivalry, with Cyril McLaglen’s power worker setting his cap at shopgirl Elissa Landi but merely annoying her with his boorish bravado on the train and finding himself out of the running when she meets cute with Brian Aherne’s porter on the escalator. Nothing especially novel or exciting happens, with the emphasis on the everyday, but it’s all so hugely enjoyable and good natured that it’s a real surprise when things take a much darker turn as McLaglen (yes, Victor’s brother) enlists his still devoted ex Norah Baring to break up the lovers, with disastrous results…
Despite seeming a tricky proposition to pull off, the shift in tone and genre is executed so well that it never feels jarring but rather a natural consequence of events: it’s a mundane, petty enough revenge to convince even as its consequences spiral out of control. That’s in no small part because Asquith never patronises his characters or stereotypes them because of their background – indeed, they and their world are so convincing you’d never guess the lifelong socialist was brought up in such a rarefied social
circle (seen in interview footage Asquith almost sounded like a parody of the awfully, awfully nice awfully, awfully posh). He has a great eye for places and faces (a couple of which in the pub scene could pass for Alfie Bass and Victoria Wood’s grandparents) and his direction has all has the energy of a young man’s film, whether the camera is frantically following a dropped parcel as it falls down the escalator or finding moments of visual grandeur in the everyday (there’s a particularly magnificent establishing shot of the pub interior in the darts scene).
More than that, the film is constantly alive. Asquith’s sound films would become increasingly performance and dialogue-led, earning him a somewhat undeserved reputation as a staid, establishment filmmaker, but his silent work is very different – so different that you’d be forgiven for assuming the young tyro behind the camera was a completely different person. He not only knows just how to move a camera (and parts of the film really move) but more importantly when to move it depending on whether a scene needs a burst of energy or an emotional revelation. And it’s very emotional filmmaking at times: when Baring’s mind finally snaps completely outside the power station, the camera breaks loose with her as she loses herself, while the final extended chase sequence is one of the best action scenes in silent cinema.
All in all it’s a fantastic piece of filmmaking and a fantastic film: the two don’t always go together, but they genuinely do here.
Long only available in a badly water damaged print, the BFI’s Blu-ray/DVD combo release is an excellent transfer taken from two different sources that looks strikingly good and befits from an excellent score by Neil Brand (there’s the option of an alternate, more modern score by Chris Watson, but Brand’s is the more effectively appropriate). A good selection of extras includes a brief newsreel clip of the young Asquith watching early planes with his father and a selection of shorts and newsreels about the Underground system (most of the latter only included on the DVD version), a featurette on the restoration and a booklet. Very highly recommended.
“If I dream things when I’m awake, I’m going out of my mind…”
Sometimes a director’s greatest success can be the cause of their downfall. If Thorold Dickinson’s career didn’t entirely fail, the huge success of his original 1940 British adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s
Gaslight – along with the Second World War – certainly derailed it into one of occasional features and frequent projects falling through leaving him with a tragically small body of work. When MGM bought the remake rights they demanded the negative and all copies be destroyed, but with Dickinson turning down an invitation to go to Hollywood to stay in Britain making public information films during the war (several included on the BFI’s Blu-ray/DVD combo release) he found himself unable to establish much of a career after hostilities ended, especially since he was legally barred from showing prospective employers the print of Gaslight he had saved from the furnace. For years the film went unseen, its reputation overshadowed by the lavish Hollywood remake.
Dickinson was, as with his other film with Anton Walbrook, 1949’s Queen of Spades, a replacement director (in this case after Anthony Asquith dropped out when the film’s shooting schedule was brought forward), though at least this time he had 20 days before shooting to completely rework the script from the original screenplay’s blood-and-thunder melodrama that gave the game away from the very first scene to something more restrained and claustrophobic. Hamilton’s play had already been adapted for pre-war television and radio and would become much imitated both on onstage and on screen until the premise of a husband trying to drive his wife insane would become something of an old chestnut, but as even Hamilton had to admit despite his dislike of the changes to his plot, in Dickinson’s hands it’s a remarkably assured piece of filmmaking bolstered by fine performances.
Even without the opening murder by unseen hands we’d know that there’s something wrong with Anton Walbrook’s ostensibly devoted and overprotective husband, and not just because he’s socially beyond the pale for the polite society in Pimlico Square London he and his delicate wife Diana Wynyard move into. With his displays of pious Victorian morality and regard for appearances offset by the dirty laugh he reserves for Cathleen Cordell’s parlour maid whose face has dirty weekend written all over it (“You are inexperienced, aren’t you?” “Depends how you mean, sir.”), we know he’s not a real smoothie but a pretender. It’s the kind of part that could easily be overacted to unintentionally comic effect, but Walbrook has a restrained malice that’s all the more effective for being underplayed until his own sanity is forfeit as the tables are turned. It’s such a remarkably intense performance that it’s reputation has tended to overshadow Wynyard’s work as the wife who is so controlled by his mind games that she starts to believe she really is mad and that the noises in the sealed-off attic and the flickering gaslight are just symptoms of her disease until she can’t even believe that her potential saviour, Frank Pettingell’s amiable retired policeman (“I don’t like these violent methods. Makes me feel like a dentist”), is real. And as the last shot so eloquently expresses, saving her sanity means losing everything else in her life. As Walbrook contemptuously tells her, “God help you indeed.”
The budget was only £39,000, shockingly low even for a British film in 1940 let alone compared to the $2m budget of the 1944 remake, but it never looks cheap – the only noticeable technical flaws are the painted backdrop in one shot, the cleverly disguised scarcity of extras in the music hall set pressed back into service from the producers' Will Hay comedy Those Were the Days and the kind of fog that doesn’t move when the camera does that you only get from an optical printer. The film’s Pimlico Square set is impressive and the film has a great visual sense (cinematographer Bernard Knowles had shot five films for Hitchcock, including The 39 Steps), but just as importantly the elegant and elaborate camerawork is used to add to the performances and build the drama rather than just show off. Running a concise 85 minutes, it never feels rushed or compromised, but so perfectly realised it would have been a tragedy if it had truly been lost forever.
Considering the film was lost and the BFI’s Blu-ray transfer came from a 35mm print that needed restoration work the quality is impressive: a few shots have minor contrast issues or lack of depth but for the most part the film looks excellent. There’s a very impressive collection of extras as well, with a detailed booklet covering the film, Dickinson and the self-destructive Patrick Hamilton’s careers and five of Dickinson’s documentaries – two of his pro-Republican films about the Spanish Civil War (Spanish ABC and Behind the Spanish Lines) and three of his wartime public information films, Westward Ho! (in its original uncut version before the footage of European mothers expressing their regret for not evacuating their children before it was too late was removed because it distressed the film’s target audience), Miss Grant Goes to War (a cautionary tale about German invaders in the Home Counties) and Yesterday is Over Your Shoulder (featuring talented farceur Robertson Hare as an unskilled worker joining a government training scheme). Even if you’ve got the film as an extra on the US DVD or Blu (where its only in SD) of the 1944 version (one that ironically wasn’t carried over for the film’s British DVD release), it’s well worth considering an upgrade.
“What’s the matter with people?”
Originally intended as a fictional psychological thriller before its distributors insisted the script be reworked around a notorious real case,
The Black Panther was probably the most demonised British film of the 70s. Banned in many parts of the country and then pulled completely from UK screens shortly after release in 1977 and only given a brief video release, it disappeared for three-and-a-half decades after a self-righteous media frenzy about it tastelessly exploiting the then notorious kidnapping and death of heiress Lesley Whittle and murder of three postmasters at the hands of Donald Neilson that most of those same papers and news outlets had ruthlessly exploited and possibly exacerbated to boost their circulation and ratings. The timing (it opened the day after Christmas) and attempts to get Whittle’s family’s approval were certainly ill-judged, but the only moment in the film that feels genuinely exploitative is a brief bit of nudity, an unnecessary touch in a film that otherwise scrupulously avoids the lurid. Indeed, far from being a crude exploitation film, it remains at a dispassionate remove, allowing the events to speak for themselves in a low key almost drama documentary recounting of the known facts at the time (the screenplay was completely rewritten by Michael Armstrong and every detail meticulously checked by lawyers) that avoids editorialising, explaining or special pleading to simply observe the bungled crimewave. It’s a lean script with little dialogue, no big character scenes or attempt to get inside Neilson’s head, instead following the ex-soldier as he trains, meticulously plans and hopelessly bungles post office robberies inbetween running his family like a bullying sergeant major giving hopeless recruits an ear-lashing over imagined infractions of discipline before moving on to bungle a bigger crime.
With director Ian Merrick adopting guerrilla filmmaking techniques with a small crew and no stars (though Ian Holm was originally lined up to play Neilson until Whittle’s family expressed their misgivings about the project), the influence of filmmakers like Peter Watkins and Richard Fleischer’s 10 Rillington Place is apparent at times, but if anything it’s even more rigorously naturalistic. It’s a coldly unemotional film that’s quietly compelling precisely because it never seems to be trying to attract your attention but makes you feel that you’re eavesdropping on someone you really don’t want to get close to but can’t look away from. And in Donald Sumpter’s chillingly underplayed Neilson it has a very ordinary and very believable monster who is able to cry at sad endings to schlocky movies and give a small smile of satisfaction at a job well done as he pastes the cutting of his latest botched robbery into his scrapbook – an inadequate man cutting himself off from the people around him while convincing himself that he’s still the good soldier even as everything he touches goes wrong. It’s a performance not of big moments but of small details, like the way he alternates between the fake foreign accent he adopts as a pathetic disguise and his natural voice when dealing with his hostage, or the mounting frustration he tries to keep in control as his plans inevitably unravel.
There’s certainly a state of the nation undercurrent to the film, set against then-bankrupt country in what seemed like irreversible decay where casual street violence and racism are simply accepted without comment (even Neilson’s accidental capture elicits no reaction from the passers-by as they blankly watch while eating their chips), but it’s kept in the background. So, more for budgetary reasons, is the botched police investigation, the various local forces incompetence and inability to connect the robberies and the kidnapping downplayed, the press’s catastrophic intervention in the case limited to a horrifying moment when Whittle’s brother is doorstepped by reporters, tipped off by the police, while waiting for instructions to deliver the ransom.
It’s a downbeat feelbad film if ever there was one – apart from Whittle’s family, no-one comes out of it looking good - but it’s an intelligent one that is undeserving of the public pillorying it received.
The BFI’s Blu-ray/DVD combo offers a fine widescreen transfer of the feature, especially considering the limitations of the source material, though the accompanying short film directed by Bob Bentley, Recluse, fares less well: the Blu-ray transfer is riddled with digital noise in the darker scenes, though the transfer on the accompanying DVD has no such problems. Both discs also include footage of the location recce for the short film, which was shot on the actual farm that the family killing it depicts took place, though the trailer for The Black Panther is only included on the DVD. There’s also an excellent booklet with articles by Ian Merrick and Michael Armstrong about the feature.
“His later work, which I promise you will see and remember, seems to have its roots in some private world of dreams, perhaps never otherwise expressed.”
Produced as part of the BBC’s Omnibus arts documentary strand rather than by its drama department, 1977’s
Schalcken the Painter feels like a close relation to the channel’s revered Ghost Story for Christmas specials. Using Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1839
Strange Event in the Life of Schalcken the Painter as its starting point, it weaves a story around the real 17th Century Dutch artist’s paintings that’s a combination of ghost story and twisted morality play, but those coming to it expecting a conventional horror story are likely to come away disappointed. Director Leslie Megahey’s idea was to subvert an art film and turn it into something else, but the art is very much in the foreground, with its story unfolding slowly and subtly, with much of the horror unfolding between the brushstrokes.
It begins with Godfried Schalcken (Jeremy Clyde) a student of Gerrit Dau (Maurice Denham) and quietly in love with the master painter’s niece (Cheryl Kennedy) – or, as Charles Gray’s narrator notes, “as much as a Dutchman can be.” But the appearance of the deathly Vanderhausen (John Justin, looking like a freshly exhumed corpse, his appearances heralded by the creak of a floorboard and always discovered in the frame rather than making an entrance) changes all that when he makes Dau an offer he cannot refuse for her hand: “You need not pledge yourself unnecessarily, but I think when you see the value of my commission you will find it is necessary.” Rather than run away with her, Schalcken breaks her heart by promising to buy back her marriage contract once he has made his name and fortune, only for both Vanderhausen and the niece to disappear without trace until one night the manic and terrified girl returns begging for protection and repeating “The dead and the living can never be one”…
Along with the deliberate pacing, the veiled nature of the plot may frustrate some, and the film is in many ways more about mood and atmosphere than plot - at times it’s more interested in the shifting light and shadows as a candle moves around a statue’s face. Yet that emphasis on the visual over the narrative seems entirely appropriate for a film about an artist and the look of the of the film is remarkable, the lighting and colour looking uncannily like a living painting of the period, with careful composition and a measured editing style that allows you to feel like you’re in a private gallery viewing with plenty of time to take in each detail. Like Barry Lyndon, it uses natural light and candlelight, the latter burning brightly but still unable to cast any light on the surrounding darkness to mirror both Vermeer and Schalcken’s own visual style (and not just Schalcken’s: at one point Rembrandt makes a brief appearance looking just like his self-portrait). There’s a documentary-like attention to detail too, with the scrubbing and clothing of the artist’s model carried out without any regard for either her comfort or even her humanity, reducing her to an object to be reproduced on canvas. And it’s that rejection of the human comforts for artistic success that’s at the heart of this dark tale: Schalcken’s damnation, like Dau’s, comes from forsaking and ultimately damning the human being who should be closest to them. It’s a simple enough moral, but delivered with a spellbinding style rare in television work of any era.
There’s an intriguing interview featurette on the BFI’s Blu-ray/DVD combo with director Megahey, editor Paul Humphries and lighting cameraman John Hooper that reveals the development of the piece and the casting process. The narrator was originally intended as an onscreen figure and written with Vincent Price in mind, hoping that his love of art would attract him to the project, and when he passed on it was offered to Peter Cushing, who found the script extremely distasteful and rejected it in no uncertain terms. Similarly the role of Schalcken’s mentor was originally intended for Arthur Lowe. There’s also an explanation of why the final painting was an original work created for the film after they found themselves unable to locate the one Le Fanu referred to or even confirm it had ever existed. Additionally, there are two short films, The Pit (a stylised half hour adaptation of The Pit and the Pendulum from 1962 that includes some production design sketches as well) and The Pledge from 1981 (in which a trio of petty criminals resolve to cut down a colleague from the gallows tree) as well as the customary booklet.
Before the Revolution is a ravishingly cinematic piece of work, with Bernardo Bertolucci showing a real confidence with both camera and location that both serves and enhances the script. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it's an outstanding piece of cinema first and foremost - the politics is more a reflection of a universal weakness of character than a specific moment in time a la Godard (the film was adapted and updated from Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma). Even the movie references don't gall the way they almost always do in modern films because Bertolucci not only puts them into context with the other arts (literature, music, painting, photography) but makes them personal obsessions that are part of character - the movie buff isn't just there to talk about Bertolucci's favorite films, or even to point out that in cinema style is content: it's simply how that character communicates by equating life to art. A surprisingly exciting piece of cinema.
The very impressive Italian 2-disc set offers a superb widescreen transfer with English subtitles and a wide array of interviews, all with English subtitles, with cast, crew, academics and directors influenced by the film, including several not included on the BFI's Blu-ray release. The
full list, for those who are interested: Travelling Companions (Enzo Siciliano, Adriano Apra and Giovanni Bertolucci), Self-Portrait (Bernardo Bertolucci, 45 minutes), Gina and Fabrizio (Adriana Asti and Francesco Barilli), The Workshop of the Young Masters (Roberto Perpignani, Vittorio Storaro and Ennio Morricone), Re-Readings (Francesco Casetti, Giovanna Grignaffini and Lucilla Albano) and After the Revolution (Marco Tullio Giordana and Marco Bellocchio). The DVD also includes workprint/final cut comparisons, an extract from TV programmes Cinema d'Oggi from the film's original release and Effetti Personali from 1984 as well as stills gallery and original trailer - the latter the only item on the disc without English subtitles.
By contrast, the BFI's Region B-locked blu-ray offers only the trailer in high definition, with the remainder of the extras relegated to the DVD: these are the 46-minute Self-Portrait interview with Bernardo Bertolucci, The Workshop of the Young Masters interviews (Roberto Perpignani, Vittorio Storaro and Ennio Morricone), the workprint/final cut comparisons, an extract from TV programme Cinema d'Oggi from the film's original release and, the soe extra unique to the BFI version apart from the accompanying booklet, a 12-minute Q&A with Bertolucci at the NFT from 2011. (The interviews with Adriana Asti, Francesco Barilli, Francesco Casetti, Giovanna Grignaffini, Lucilla Albano, Marco Tullio Giordana and Marco Bellocchio and the extract from Effetti Personali from 1984 from the Italian release have not been carried over.)
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