Pickpocket (Robert Bresson). Review by Alan Price. Published in 1975 Bresson’s tantalisingly philosophical book Notes on the Cinematograph consists of notes, fragments, observations, wise lists about life and the difficult challenges of filmmaking. Bresson’s remark about the camera’s ability to indifferently record life happening un-dramatically, in front of the lens, feels more than appropriate for his 1959 film Pickpocket.
Alan Price
Simenon The Man, The Books, The Films by Barry Forshaw. Review by Alan Price. I came very late in the day to the works of Georges Simenon. It was five years ago whilst talking, with a friend, about the early 1960’s BBC TV series of Maigret when I picked up my first Maigret novel. It was The Misty Harbour (1932). This story of a disturbed man found wandering the streets of Paris, with no recollection of who he is or how he got there was remarkably compelling.
Blaise Cendrars, The Invention of Life – Eric Robertson. Review by Alan Price. “He repeatedly expressed impatience at the demands of being a writer, preferring life spent outdoors, travelling or in the company of others to the solitary confinement of the writing desk. Cendrars was widely photographed, most famously by Robert Doisneau, but never at a writing desk.”
Eric Robertson
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Complete Series. Review by Alan Price. Hitchcock said he had always wanted to work in the short story. ‘The small simple tale of a single idea building to a turn, a twist at the end. A little shocker. The story that’s lost when stretched to the length of a movie.’
Nightmare Alley and The Razor’s Edge. Signal One Blu Rays 2022. Review by Alan Price. Nightmare was violently against the grain and a box office flop. And Razor resolutely conventional yet questioning societal norms was a huge hit. Both are the film children of Edmund Goulding who on the evidence of these films and others (The Old Maid and Dark Victory) was a fine director.
The Lighthouse (2006). Review by Alan Price. The opening images of The Lighthouse (2006) set the scene for the film’s reoccurring visual motifs. Villagers, soon to be refugees, dancing and singing on a railway track. A badly burnt antiquarian book. The sleeping face, filmed on a train, of its female protagonist.
The Devil’s Trap – Blu Ray (Second Run). Review by Alan Price. The Devil’s Trap 1961) was directed by Frantisek Vlacil and is considered the first part of a loose trilogy of historical films that includes Marketa Lazarova (1967) and The Valley of the Bees (1967). All three films display an arresting black and white imagery that recalls Sergei Eisenstein – The Devil’s Trap’s pastoral lyricism evoking The General Line.
Diamonds of the Night (1964) / The Party and The Guests (1966). Review by Alan Price. Both of these Nemec films have been beautifully restored on Second Run. They are essential viewing for an understanding of how brave and uncompromising 60’s Czech cinema dared to be.
Johnny Got His Gun (1971) Imprint Blu Ray. Review by Alan Price. There’s no doubt that writer/director Dalton Trumbo sincerely wanted to convey the futility of WW1 as experienced by a young horribly injured soldier. In theory he did. In practise he misfires.
Forbidden Paradise (Lubitsch) 1924. Review by Alan Price. The plot of Forbidden Paradise is a bit of fluff and the politics are a silly adventure. Yet its comedic mise – en – scene is wonderful. It’s executed by Ernst Lubitsch, one of Hollywood’s greatest directors. Billy Wilder so admired Lubitsch that he had a sign on his office wall that said “How would he have done it?”
Coach to Vienna / The Ear (Blu Ray) Second Run 2020 /2022. Review by Alan Price. The creative partnership of director Karel Kachyna and screenwriter Jan Prochazka was one of the most remarkable to have been allowed to operate in communist Czech cinema of the 1960’s.
Larks on a String, Jiri Menzel. Review by Alan Price. The opening twenty three minutes of Larks on a String are exhilarating. They set the tone for the rest of this marvellous film whose lyric and comic surface has a deceptively light touch barely masking the pain experienced in its totalitarian landscape.
By Alan Price • film, year 2022 • Tags: Alan Price, film