Jerzy Skolimowski. Review by Alan Price. Watching the 1960’s films of Jerzy Skolimowski is to be transported back to a time of youthful radicalism: a cultural space of provocative inventiveness and style.
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Scala!!! Review by Alan Price. Last night I attended a screening of the new documentary Scala!!! which tells the story of London’s Scala cinema from the 1960s to its closure in 1993. Its most fondly remembered home was in a seedy King’s Cross long before its eventual gentrification.
It’s A Wonderful Life . Review by Alan Price. Christmas is coming and in many parts of the world Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life will be screened in cinemas and on television.
The Life and Work of Ingmar Bergman. Review by Alan Price. Do we need another book on Ingmar Bergman? Although the sheer quantity of Bergman books doesn’t exceed Alfred Hitchcock there also exists a huge number of scholarly articles and PhDs on the Swedish master of film. In the case of Peter Cowie we can say yes to another book.
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.
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).
Ray Harryhausen: Special Edition Collection. Review by Alan Price. Ray’s unique imaginative insight into his beautifully made models is a great validation for the artistry of stop motion: one artist’s sole painstaking control over his creation – all those hours, in solitude, crafting the finally realised results.
By Alan Price • art, film, year 2024 • Tags: Alan Price, art, film