Pharaoh. Review by Alan Price. In the 1966 advertising campaign for Pharaoh Film Polski promoted Pharaoh as being an “anti-Cleopatra epic” and one commentator even declared it to be “Communism’s answer to Cleopatra.”
Alan Price
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Michael Powell: Early Works. Review by Alan Price. In the 1930’s a government directive was issued to the British film industry that there had to be a specific number of films produced for home consumption. These were known as quota quickies. Michael Powell directed 23 low budget films over six years. Only 13 are known to exist.
Ikiru (Kurosawa). Review by Alan Price. Ikiru has been translated as Living or To Live. Earlier on in the 1950/60’s it was Living and living with a six month’s only death sentence (The film’s protagonist is terminally ill with stomach cancer).
Pirandello In Context. Review by Alan Price. Luigi Pirandello (1867-1936) is best known for his 1921 stage play Six Characters in Search of an Author. It was a landmark play that changed theatre.
Floating Clouds. Review by Alan Price. Mikio Naruse’s 1955 film Floating Clouds is held in great esteem in Japan. It’s at number 3 in a poll of their best films ever made. Hideo Takamine and Masuyuki Mori’s wonderful acting make it a wholly involving, and at times great film. Unforgettable.
The Music Lovers. Review by Alan Price. Great heroes are the stuff of myth and legend, not facts. Music and facts don’t mix. Tchaikovsky said: ‘My life is in my music.’ And who can deny that the man’s music is not utterly fantastic”
Film Focus Kim Novak. Review by Alan Price. For too many people Kim Novak has been over-associated with one supreme film Vertigo (1958). Being the luminous blonde icon in what is now universally considered to be one of the greatest films ever made has placed Novak on a Hitchcock-driven goddess pedestal that has tended to eclipse her other intense acting achievements.
I Was Born But…. / There Was a Father. Review by Alan Price. This Spring sees the BFI Blu Ray release of I Was Born But…. coupled with There Was a Father and the publication of a translation of Shiguehiko Hasumi’s book Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. A dual event to celebrate.
Happy End. Review by Alan Price. Oldritch Lipsky’s film Happy End technically has a tight control of its narrative – the reverse action is brilliantly used to evoke silent cinema comedy: a Mack Sennet madness gleefully backing off into a time before our hero’s crime.
Face To Face (Bergman). Review by Alan Price. All Bergman enthusiasts will want to see Face to Face. It’s not one of his masterpieces but contains masterly passages sealed and crowned by Liv Ulman.
Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties. Review by Alan Price. Putting trailer hyperbole to one side, Hirsch has written one of the best, most engaging and detailed accounts of this wonderful, probably best, period in American cinema.
The Outcasts. Review by Alan Price. Very few films have a genuine Celtic / pagan sensibility were environment and characters possess a mysterious and magical charge that feels authentically rooted in myth and legend.
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film • Tags: Alan Price, film