Features
Jasper Rees
Before the blonde, there was Bergman. In the second half of the 1940s, Hitchcock cast Ingrid Bergman three times, and on each occasion asked her to incarnate a different kind of leading lady. In the film noir Spellbound (1945) she was a psychoanalyst defrosted by Gregory Peck, and she played the loyal sister of a convict in 19th-century Australia in Hitchcock's first colour film, the costumed period piece Under Capricorn (1949). In Notorious (1946), she takes the role of Alicia Huberman, a good-time girl whom we find drowning her sorrows after her father is convicted as a Nazi spook.She is Read more ...
fisun.guner
Giving his press conference speech at the opening of Kiev’s first international art biennale, David Elliott, the seasoned British curator charged with its organisation, looked exhausted, though far from triumphant and more than a little irate. “It’s not the way I usually handle things,” he said. He had opened his speech with an apology – some of the exhibits were still not ready. Meanwhile, the attendant press, who had come from as far as Tokyo, New York and London, were perhaps also a little disgruntled. The official opening had been scheduled for 11am that morning but it was now pushing 5pm Read more ...
Sarah Kent
It’s 50 years since Marilyn Monroe died alone on the night of August 4, 1962, from swallowing too many sleeping pills. The sad story soon became the stuff of legend. When they found her, she was still slumped over the telephone receiver; she had been ringing around, desperately trying to get help. Rumours soon spread about her relationship with Senator Robert Kennedy and possible access to state secrets, which gave rise to far-fetched conspiracy theories implicating the CIA in her death.The intrigue may have helped keep her memory alive, but it goes nowhere near to explaining why, half a Read more ...
ronald.bergan
The epithet "mellifluous" might have been invented to describe Herbert Marshall’s voice. It was lucky that sound came along at the time Marshall, after a prestigious stage career, entered films when he was almost 40. We don’t hear those beautiful tones until some time into Murder!Marshall, as the theatrical knight, Sir John Menier, is first seen as a member of a jury at a murder trial of a young actress. While 11 of the jury members discuss the case, Menier is neither seen nor heard. After they have agreed on a guilty verdict, Menier then makes his "not guilty" view known. Gradually, with the Read more ...
emma.simmonds
In Vertigo Kim Novak plays two women who are really just one. First Madeleine, a supernatural siren, a woman apparently possessed by her tragedienne great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes. However, it’s a performance within a performance and she’s merely a facsimile, a devastating creation played by an agent in a murderous plot. The imposter manipulates Scottie (James Stewart) into loving her only so that he may witness her apparent death. Then there’s Judy, the real woman behind the performance who is persuaded back into the part when Scottie can’t let go of Madeleine’s ghost.The dual role Read more ...
ronald.bergan
The recent speculation as to whether Michael Phelps can be regarded as "the greatest Olympian" leads one to ponder the very notion of judging "greatness" hierarchically. If the only criterion for claiming Phelps as the "greatest" is based on his winning the most medals then it would be equivalent to judging the best film ever made on the amount of Oscars it had won. Step up Ben Hur, Titanic and The Lord of the Rings, each of which gained 11 Academy Awards. Yet none of these three films featured prominently, or at all, in the decennial Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made. Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
The final collaboration between Grant and Hitch also happens to be some of the helmer’s most deft, joyously irreverent work, light of touch and bereft of sentiment. Grant stars as a slick Mad Ave exec who’s mistaken for a spy and pursued across the US by a cabal of shadowy agents, a state of affairs that he takes impressively in his debonair stride.“Not that I mind a slight case of abduction now and then,” his Roger Thornhill quips drily, “but I have tickets for the theatre this evening.” A line like this could easily play as posturing, but Grant walks just the right razor’s edge between Read more ...
emma.simmonds
As a director François Ozon perpetually confounds, with a string of diverse films to his name (the intense 5X2 and the gambolling Potiche to name but two) and this effort from 2002 is characteristically capricious - is it crisp, contemplative drama, eroticism or thriller? In Swimming Pool former provocateur Charlotte Rampling finds her peace shattered, her sensuality re-awakened and her robust beauty upstaged by the brazen Ludivine Sagnier.Swimming Pool tells the story of artistically frustrated crime writer Sarah (Rampling) who retreats to France at the behest of her greedy publisher and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Hitchcock’s penultimate film was the grubby, squirm-inducing Frenzy, and Barry Foster's depiction of the grim killer Robert Rusk is central to the disquieting aura it casts. The film’s production was problematic enough, having been cut by the BBFC before release. It also had casting problems – Michael Caine turned down the lead role. Hitchcock dismissed composer Henry Mancini from soundtrack duties after having commissioned him. Hitchcock’s first British production for two decades wasn’t an easy ride for the director or audiences.Students of London history can look to Frenzy as a time capsule Read more ...
Peter Culshaw and Garth Cartwright
You know, as someone tweeted, that the acid has kicked in when you see Prince Harry wearing a duck’s hat backstage, writes Peter Culshaw. For every newcomer like Harry or Channel 4’s Jon Snow, who raved about it, there were as many others others for whom WOMAD is an essential part of the British “summer” (although this year they were lucky with the weather). Now 30, which makes it an institution, the Peter Gabriel inspired Festival is a pretty well-oiled machine by now.While some of the more famous headliners - Femi Kuti, Khaled, Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club - were predictable, and Read more ...
Graham Fuller
It’s always a thrill watching The 39 Steps’ Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) doing daredevil feats on the Flying Scotsman as it speeds across the Forth Bridge, kissing a Scottish crofter’s jealously guarded wife, and bringing down the house with an inane extemporized speech at a constituency meeting.A passive ex-Canadian rancher in London, Hannay must extricate himself from a murder rap and expose a spy ring by revealing unexpected daring, physical agility, and mental resourcefulness. Wrongly suspected of murdering a Mata Hari type (Lucie Mannheim) he thought was a prostitute but had no interest Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Football and film: what is that? Let’s agree that it has not always been the happiest relationship. If you’ve observed Brian Clough’s brief encounter with the Leeds squad in The Damned United, you'll get the picture. They really ought to be best mates, both being forms of mass entertainment. They have the same values, dreams and indeed time frame: 90 minutes or thereabouts (depends who's reffing/directing). And at their most venal they both pray at the altar of profit. Somehow, though, they just don’t click.Why? Time for a bit of punditry, Ron. The main problem is no scriptwriter can make up Read more ...