Film

Jean-Luc Godard, 1930-2022

When film academic David Bordwell wrote his classic Narration in the Fiction Film he brought together various directors under headings — Montage cinema, Classical Hollywood etc. — but only the Franco-Swiss Jean-Luc Godard had a chapter all to himself. Bordwell, like many others, saw Godard, who died on 13 September, as unique. His career spanned sixty years but he will be best remembered for his early films, which were an important part of the French New Wave and a major influence on filmmakers such as Bernardo Bertolucci in Parma, István Szabó in Hungary, Jiři Menzel in Prague and Quentin...

Kino Eye: Native Americans onscreen

Sacheen Littlefeather at the 1973 Oscars The recent apology to Native American Sacheen Littlefeather for her treatment at the 1973 Academy Awards Ceremony when she declined an Oscar on behalf of Marlon Brando is about 50 years too late, but welcome all the same. While attempting to speak for the cause of Native American rights she was booed and, some allege, threatened by John Wayne. Officials told her to keep her speech to one minute or face arrest. It could well be the case that Native Americans have been subjected to more racist abuse, onscreen, than any other ethnic minority in the world...

Kino Eye: Wolfgang Petersen, 1941-2022

German director Wolfgang Petersen, who died in August, was renowned for his brilliant World War Two film Das Boot (“The Boat”, 1981). Based on Lothar Bucheim’s novel, Das Boot follows the German U-Boat U96 as it stalks Allied convoys in the North Atlantic. The film is notable for its lack of conventional heroics and its stress on the details of submarine life — very smelly, grubby, cramped and tedious. The U96 captain, played by Jürgen Prochnow, dislikes the Nazis but he carries out his duty (as he sees it) with a degree of detachment and subdued cynicism. The crew share his sentiments and...

Kino Eye: Iranian film directors jailed

Mohammad Rasoulof (recent winner of the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival) and Mostafa Al-Ahmad, two internationally known Iranian film directors, have been arrested after posting an online appeal to the Iranian security services, urging them not to use their weapons against demonstrators. Another film director, Jafar Panahi, who went to the police to complain about the arrests, was himself arrested. The whereabouts of all three are currently not known. This follows hard on the heels of the arrests of two documentary film-makers, Mina Keshavarz and Firouzeh Khosravani in May this...

Kino Eye: Jean-Louis Trintignant, 1930-2022

During Kino Eye’s recent brief absence, of one of Europe’s great cinema actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant, died. He made his name in such New Wave films as Un Homme et une Femme ( A Man and a Woman , 1966) directed by Claude Lelouch. His best known appearance, however, is probably his role as Clerici, the confused and hesitant fascist sympathiser in Bernardo Bertolucci’s brilliant Il Conformista ( The Conformist). Drawn into a fascist plot to assassinate the leader of the Italian left, in exile in Paris, once his professor when a student, Clerici is clearly not up to the job; as the film’s title...

Women's Fightback: Bechdel Test gets an update

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel has given us a cheeky update to the "Bechdel Test" in response to internet drama about rom com Fire Island , a rewriting of Pride and Prejudice with the Bennet sisters replaced with a group of queer, working-class, Asian-American men. The accidentally ubiquitous Bechdel test is a set of criteria to judge the representation of women in film, from comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For . To pass a movie has to: • have at least two (named) women in it • who talk to each other • about something besides a man. The blunt instrument of gender-equality judgement was found lacking...

The Lady of Heaven row: no to religious censorship

See also this piece by Kenan Malik. Following protests organised by right-wing Sunni Muslim groups outside cinemas showing the film The Lady of Heaven , the Cineworld chain has cancelled all screenings of it. (Read the Guardian ’s report here .) We have not yet seen the film, but this is how things look to us. The writer of The Lady of Heaven is himself a right-wing religious bigot – a Shia Muslim sectarian hostile to Sunnis. From what we understand the main purpose of the film is to promote such sectarianism. But a film having politics judged objectionable is not a justification for it being...

Kino Eye: Transgender history on film

The Danish Girl (dir. Tom Hooper, 2015), based on a novel by David Ebershoff, tells the story of Einar Wegener/ Lili Elbe, a Danish painter, who has reassignment surgery in the early 1930s. Einar/ Lili (played by Eddie Redmayne) has thought of herself as a woman for many years; seeks help from a psychiatrist, but all he suggests is confinement to an asylum. A German surgeon, Kurt Warnekros, offers to perform the complex — and then dangerous — surgery. The first stage is completed and Lili takes a job in an elite department store. She returns to Germany to complete the surgery, but dies shortly...

Kino Eye: Silkwood and work safety

Solidarity 635 carried an article on “unsafe workplaces” demonstrating the high price workers often pay for a lack of safety at work. Those who become whistle-blowers are particularly vulnerable. In Silkwood (1983, directed by Mike Nichols) the eponymous character (played by Meryl Streep) works at a plutonium plant making fuel rods for the nuclear industry. She is a member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers’ Union and becomes increasingly concerned about safety at the plant, going to Washington to testify before the Atomic Energy Commission. Back at work she activates an alarm and it is...

Kino Eye: NHS on film

Since its inception the NHS has been the subject of numerous films, soap operas and TV dramas: everything from Carry on Nurse and Emergency Ward Ten to Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later in 2002. One of the more controversial was Lindsay Anderson’s dark comedy Britannia Hospital , released in 1982. A new wing is to be opened at the Britannia Hospital by “HRH” (presumably the Queen although this term is never used) and the Chief Administrator Vincent Potter (Leonard Rossiter) runs himself ragged trying to ensure the opening goes off without mishap. Fat chance of that! A reporter (Malcolm McDowell) is...

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