Decadent Women. Review by Alan Price. Jad Adam’s book is the first to document the female contribution to a journal that began to be associated with the blanket term decadence. From 1894 to 1897 it was London’s most chic publication that new writers clamoured to be in.
Alan Price
Pearls of the Deep. Review by Alan Price. All of the short films in this portmanteau production are adaptations from the stories of Bohumil Hrabal (1914 -1997) who was one of the most important Czech writers of the 20th century.
Three Films by Yasujiro Ozu. Review by Alan Price. For anyone familiar with the work of Yasujiro Ozu, especially his magisterial Tokyo Story (1953) this set will prove to be fascinating.
The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger / The Red Shoes. Review by Alan Price. Since the 1970’s there have been extensive tributes to Michael Powell at the NFT and BFI Southbank. Of course they also included Powell’s collaborations with Emeric Pressburger.
The Lorenza Mazzetti Collection. Review by Alan Price. Franz Kafka was a major influence on director Lorenzi Mazzetti (1927 – 2020). Kafka’s real and fictional sense of anxiety and persecution helped to both disguise then channel the trauma of Mazzetti’s childhood.
Interrogation (Bugajski). Review by Alan Price. Two thirds of the way through Interrogation (1982) the police interrogator tells his female prisoner not to be so naïve to belief that her husband and friends couldn’t be complicit in informing on others, betraying their loved ones: for this is how the world works and she needs to wake up to the fact that “there is no unconditional honesty.”
Partie de Campagne. Review by Alan Price. Partie de Campagne is a period piece set in 1860, an adaptation of the Guy de Maupassant short story, A Day in the Country (1881).
Targets. Review by Alan Price. Although Peter Bogdanovich’s film Targets is usually categorised as a crime thriller I feel more comfortable calling it a suburban horror film. This is a chilling story of sniper Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly) who goes on a killing spree: a motiveless Vietnam veteran turned psychopathic: a young, clean cut modern monster.
The Driver’s Seat. Review by Alan Price. On its release in 1974 “The Driver’s Seat” did badly commercially and critically. Today it will probably fascinate, engage, repel, disturb, disarm and draw you into its own world.
Twilight. Reviewed by Alan Price. Images of uncompromising nature, in the form of the forests, mountains and plains, surrounding the ex-mining village Ronabanya in northern Hungary, begin and end the extraordinary Twilight.
La Regle Du Jeu (Jean Renoir) 1939 – BFI Blu Ray 2023. Review by Alan Price. Since 1952 Renoir’s La Regle Du Jeu has stood high in Sight and Sound’s poll of the greatest films of all time.
Bluebeard’s Castle. Review by Alan Price. Bluebeard’s Castle is one of Michael Powell’s striking music films. And he’s made quite a few of them. Powell directs the opera’s singers / actors with a purposeful intensity.
By Alan Price • film, music, opera, year 2023 • Tags: Alan Price, film, music, opera