penfold

[quote=Cheeky Bob;72742]Talking of Brownlow, it's well worth watching the fifth episode of the otherwise magisterial Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood, about British cinema - where he commits precisely the sins we're accusing others of, favouring prejudice over evidence!

quote]

Quite....even KB, and I will bow to no-one in my admiration for the man and what he's achieved, has his biases and blind spots. In fairness, he also admits this quite candidly in private....Garbo could do no wrong, British silent cinema is rubbish, he will even get Hollywood films wrong occasionally. At a festival a few years ago, they were screening the Clive Brook/Fay Wray Four Feathers, which he had tried to warn us off over dinner. After the screening, I suggested that it wasn't at all bad, looked quizzical, and he grinned and said 'Yes, what was I thinking?!"

Bit of a Bay Window, what??

foha80

Thanks Mark,I am in total agreement you saved me a lengthy reply.

Terry

foha80

Hello Bats

I actually thought that the new 'grittier Bond' was a direct result of the success of the Bourne films.

Terry

D Cairns

I'm all for the season, which contains a nice mix of films including several that are new to me. And even if I've seen some of them many times, I'm still going to applaud any broadcaster that screens THE RED SHOES.

My complaints are really all about the accompanying series, which is aimed at people who don't care about British cinema and alienating to those who do. It's possible that it will interest a few more viewers in film history (but giving away the endings of films won't help) but my point is that if it were better, it would make MORE converts. I certainly didn't know much about silent film when I saw HOLYWOOD at 14, so you don't need a specialist audience, just an interesting and engaging approach. When you have the whole of UK cinema to draw upon, there's no excuse for being dull, but by chopping the films in mincemeat and interspersing them with acres of idiotspeak, this show certainly does that.

ChristineCB

Another excellent, even perfect, point.

batman

It would be naive to think that Eon didn't take note of how successful the Bourne films have been. It was obvious that the Bond films were beginning to look 'tired' again and the idea of a re-boot was IMHO inevitable. It gave them the opportunity to 'introduce' all the essential Bond ingredients to a new generation ... the Bourne generation. I think it worked like a dream. I loved Casino Royale and am looking forward to the next one. I am also looking forward to the new Bourne film but have to say I hope it will be the last. The three books have now been filmed and I don't think the Bourne character has the longevity of Bond, especially in this era of limited attention spans. Long live Bond ... and thanks Bourne for giving him the kick in the pants he needed.

Bats.

"Boom boom a baby .... Banham Zoo .... Banana pants! Hahahaha"

Steve Crook

Well it made at least one convert. I found a thread in a usenet group from someone who'd see the documentary who said "Watching yesterday's programme about love in british cinema on BBC2 I realised how much I still have to learn about films of the past.

I pretty much hadn't heard of any of the films pre-1985 (with a few exceptions like "Alfie" or "Educating Rita" which I haven't seen) and to my great shame had never heard of Powell and Pressburger (although I'm pretty sure I've already seen films with the "Archers Introduction")."

I replied, pointing them in the right direction to let them discover more films like those Powell & Pressburger ones shown.

Steve

PS68060

Unfortunately that is a self-fulfilling prophecy for the film makers.

Like a cheese shop that doesn't stock cheddar because no-one ever buys it. Well no one ever will unless the shop stocks it.

I am sure that many of you will have looked at cinema listings and decided that there is nothing you want to see. I also think that many teenagers often have the same problem but still go to see Yet Another Teen Movie 14 because it is something to do.

"Oh! Pete!"

Steve Crook

I didn't grow up loving Powell & Pressburger films. I am too young to have seen them when they were first released (yes, really). And when I started getting interested in films they weren't being shown in cinemas at all. It was when I started seeing films on TV I gradually realised that many of the films I liked the best all started off with that arrow hitting the target, then I realised that they were all made by the same people. At first, the arrow in the target was a bit like the man hitting the gong for Rank, I knew it was going to be a good film but I didn't realise they were all made by the same people because they were all so different.

When I did finally realise I started to get interested in them as a group of film-makers and wanted to find out more about them and see more of the films they'd made. That led to attending screenings wherever they happened, the NFT, the ICA and other "art house" cinemas in London and the South East. That led to meeting other people attending the screenings and we eventually said "Hello" (being English that took a few meetings) and that led to the PaPAS group being started.

But how many other people would follow up a curiosity like that? I must admit I watched a lot of rubbish before I started being more discriminating. If you don't even know that Cheddar exists then you won't look for it and you'll never discover the really good stuff like Stilton

Steve

ChristineCB

This entire thread has so many excellent points being made.

Last evening, a chat with one of the festival-theatre owners reaffirmed my belief. Of the 40-odd never-seen-since-initial-release films that we're getting during 2007 (out of 140 classics), all of those have recent DVD-releases. And suddenly, new prints appear for those festival-theatre distributors.

That's a bit more than coincidental, I think.

And it's quite contrary to the Monsterplex Owners claims that "DVDs are killing us! Piracy is killing us!" No, it sounds like THEIR choices are killing them. I obviously am too pea-brained to understand all of the reasons for their suicidal choices, but for the 7 years I've been here, these festival- and 2nd-run theatres continue to pack in crowds, show after show, year after year, and they were doing it long before I arrived.

Of the 100 classics that are being 're-shown' at the local festivals, yes, a lot are the clichéd choices. Getting INDY JONES, JAWS, the Universal Monster films, ET and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, fifteen or so BOND films - those are easy choices to ensure big audiences.

Sandwiching in Renoir, Cocteau and Fellini films with BRIEF ENCOUNTERS, 5 Carol Reed films and a Julie Christie festival feeds the other side of the audience monster.

I know some of both sides will be interested in all of these films, and I think film-lovers will always grow to appreciate the older films.

With that in mind, I do wonder why the financiers aren't looking at the longer view. Investing in films that have very short shelf-lives, that can barely be tolerated to be viewed once, much less over and over - how can that be a wise expenditure of money?

Unless we're pulling THE PRODUCERS tax-tricks - "invest in a sure loser, save tax money". What crap.

Ade Miller

This season started well I suppose, but seems to be dwindling now as the afternoons are being taken over by those cheesy Elvis movies. I'm sure the BBC could have been a little more imaginative with it's scheduling. I assume the BBC has a vast library to draw from and with all the interest in British Movies (at least on this site!) and all the current DVD cash-in releases, surely they could show a lot more keys films. They once ran a brief 'Lost Films' season - more of that please! Theycould also do with bringing back Moviedrome. Hard cheese!

Mr Cosmo

I think the Elvis movies are a one-off on Thursday to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his passing.

Steve Crook

Is it still the case that to get the big blockbusters on their first run, the cinemas have to sign up for a complete distribution ppackage and take all the other rubbish - like all the remakes

Steve

ChristineCB

Yes, I'd imagine that there are contracts that these national cineplex owners sign up for. It looks like Studios are a very small part of the moviemaking process, and then Theatre Chains are another part.

But somehow, Distributors are a monster among them - they get some contract signed where theatres must jump thru hoops of fire, or else they'll be blackballed or something and no "legitimate" distributor will send films to them.

Then the Distributor tells the studio, "We've got 50% of our profits from Action-CGI crap, 10% of our profits from good films, and 40% on truly awful films. So, you need to make more of that 90% calibre films. And none of those small-profit types."

But like Princess Leila once said, "The tighter you squeeze, the more that slips thru your fingers."

This is the core of the independents. I don't know how this national monsterplex was able to land 4 prints of HARD DAYS NIGHT, but the Sunday night shows were even more packed than Fri and Sat shows. If theatre owners are really interested in profits, and if distributors are, too, then I'm amazed that we don't see at least some classic films in every monsterplex.

DB7

A very British cop-out

The BBC and the Film Council can stop congratulating themselves on their Summer of British Film. It's nothing less than condescending propaganda, argues Alex Cox

Wednesday August 15, 2007
The Guardian

Notting Hill. Exterior. Day. Brilliant sunshine. From the multi-ethnic throngs of the carnival, Mike Myers, clad in psychedelic pearly king attire, steps forth. Says Myers (with a cockney accent): "Haustin Powers 'ere, guv'nor! H'oim your genial 'ost, 'ere to celebrate one 'undred years of British cinema - and that's one shagadelic bonk-a-thon, by blimey!"

Enter Mr Bean. He and Myers shake hands. Their trousers fall down. Dick Van Dyke, dressed as a chimney sweep, glides through on a product-placed Harley-Davidson. He is pursued by Hugh Grant, dressed as a Beefeater, and several striking coal-miners wearing only G-strings. Fade to black.

Article continues
You like the above? Well, you're probably loving the BBC and the UK Film Council's Summer of British Film. In the cinema, we've been getting digital projections of Goldfinger and will be getting patriotic war movies, such as The Dam Busters; plus there's a TV documentary series with episode titles like Longing, Loving and Legovers - The Story of British Romance; and a season of Great British Movies (ie, whatever British movies the BBC happens to have in the cupboard).

Ten seconds' thought leads you to realise that the BBC and the UK Film Council aren't necessarily interested in British cinema per se. As quangos funded by the government, they are obliged to come up with a war-friendly - and essentially mid-Atlantic - version of British film history that suits their paymasters. Sorry to be blunt, chaps, but we remember what happened to that naughty Greg Dyke, don't we?

Labour's attitude to film-making is all over the place. On the one hand, individual ministers claim to be passionate about film and concerned about the survival of the British industry. On the other, New Labour sits in the pocket of the Americans, whether the policy is culture or war. Billy Elliot could have been made specifically for Tony Blair, with his "meritocratic" fantasies and his contempt for the unions. Casino Royale is more Gordon Brown's cup of tea: a large-scale transfer of lottery funds to American studios, under the pretence of making a "British" film.

This duality of attitude is worthy of some examination, as the current BBC2 series, British Film Forever, resonates with early New-Labourspeak. We are told, in the Thrillers episode, that The Italian Job was "the ultimate in Cool Britannia-dom". If anyone really needs reminding, Cool Britannia is now a discredited and despised invention of New Labour. These late-1990s fantasies soon segue into something more sinister: an apparent loathing of the history, or the culture, of the country the series is supposed to celebrate.

We are told 10 Rillington Place "brilliantly embodies the seedy degradation of the real little Britain of the time". Get Carter depicts "a Britain paralysed by strikes and a failing economy ... in short, a nation on the skids". Get Carter was made in 1971. I was a teenager then, and can assure the promoters of this depressing vision that, despite strikes and IRA atrocities, Albion was a long way from skid row. When I went to college, the government paid for it. I incurred no debt. The state owned the water pipes, the reservoirs, the airline, the lecky, the telephone system and the railways, which ran on time and were reasonably cheap. We weren't engaged in two wars of colonial aggression. Muslims weren't our enemies. And the weather was great!

Get Carter is an excellent gangster film. But there is no way that Mike Hodges' fine script can be extrapolated into a condemnation of the unions, or of the economic policies of the time. Hodges would, I suspect, be offended at the suggestion. Both the choice of British films, and the condescending tone of the documentaries, push a very specific view of recent British history. To wit: the second world war, grit, duty and pluck, triumph over adversity. Good. The establishment of the welfare state and the development of trade unions. Bad. Thatcherite greed-years. Also bad. Blair and Brown greed-and-war-years. Excellent!

In this Film Council/BBC vision of the world, everything is multi-culturally marvellous. Asian girls play football. Thatcher's excesses have been put right. And Casino Royale is a British film.

Only it isn't. The James Bond franchise belongs to a US studio, MGM. Some British actors and technicians may get paid to work on the pictures, but the profits are repatriated to Los Angeles. The American Bond marque involves the biggest "movie-based gaming franchise" in history, and highly lucrative product placement (usually of German cars). The franchise also serves an outright propaganda purpose, as one of the US producers interviewed in British Film Forever, makes clear: "It's a more serious world. We expect our heroes to fight their battles with less frivolity."

Of the BBC2 season of films, once you get past the mid-Atlantic junk, there are some nuggets: Gumshoe, A Night to Remember, Dr Who and the Daleks. Not for the first time, one wishes the BBC had more of a budget for acquiring films. Then they could actually show Get Carter, instead of a minor Hodges work, Pulp. What they're screening is clearly limited by what they already have under licence; after all, the Beeb needs to save its money to buy the rights to the next James Bond movie, from the Americans.

The Summer of British Film is mainly notable for who, and what, is missing. There are no Derek Jarman pictures here, no films by Tony Richardson, nor Peter Greenaway, Mike Figgis, Jack Gold. Great British film-makers such as Lindsay Anderson, Nic Roeg and Ken Russell are represented by relatively trivial work: This Sporting Life, Bad Timing, The Rainbow. Maybe the BBC doesn't have their masterpieces under licence. Or maybe it's a deliberate part of this strange project: recasting history by misrepresenting British films.

This process of exclusion began in the last century, when the BFI decided to pick the "100 best British films" and sent out a list of "approved British features" for journalists and cineastes to vote on. The list was as skewed as the 2000 Florida voter lists; someone was clearly playing games. Who was missing from the BFI's best film-maker list? Peter Watkins, for one, and Stanley Kubrick. And it wasn't Kubrick's nationality that excluded him. There were other American directors on the BFI's list: Terry Gilliam was prominent. John Woodward (then head of the BFI, now of the Film Council) couldn't give me an explanation as to why Watkins or Kubrick had been excluded. But he assured me it wouldn't happen again.

Now it's happened again. And the reason is the same, I think: Watkins and Kubrick made two of the most artistically successful and politically powerful anti-war, anti-nuclear films ever: The War Game and Dr Strangelove. At a time when Britain is upping the nuclear ante, threatening a new generation of nuclear power stations and a new Trident weapons system, Watkins and Kubrick's films could not be more timely. So, once again, they are ignored.

Kubrick is dead, of course. And I'm sure Watkins doesn't care. But it is an act of criminal culturelessness to shut out these great film-makers.

Nukes, Jesus, MI5 and the Goons

How the Summer of British Film should have looked

Ten suggestions for an alternative film season, consisting of British films by independent British directors - films that, in the current reactionary climate, could never be made. The very fact of their exclusion from the official list shows how low the BBC and Film Council have set the bar - and how fast the rewriting of our cultural history proceeds.

The War Game
(Peter Watkins, 1965)
The best film the BBC ever commissioned, and refused to show.

Dr Strangelove, or A Clockwork Orange, or Full Metal Jacket
(all Stanley Kubrick: 1964, 1971 and 1987 respectively)
All made in Britain with British crews. All apparently unknown to the BFI, the Film Council and the BBC.

The Devils
(Ken Russell, 1971)
Who else would have dared such a thing? Who else but Russell - and his designer, Derek Jarman - could have pulled it off ? Warning: this film may offend people of a religious (especially Christian) sensibility.

The Old Crowd
(Lindsay Anderson,1979)
Made on video for Central TV; produced by Stephen Frears and written by Alan Bennett. Hated by the critics, who should prepare their mea culpas.

Performance
(Donald Cammell & Nic Roeg, 1970)
Original, extraordinary, unbelievable, ageless.

Sebastiane
(Derek Jarman & Paul Humfress, 1976)
Apt to offend Christians, and bigots of all denominations.

A Very British Coup
(Mick Jackson, 1988)
The real story of the "special relationship", by Chris Mullin. Mullin wrote about how an MI5 officer vetted BBC employees for promotion. He had his own office in Broadcasting House. (The film was made by Channel 4.)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
(Tony Richardson, 1962)
A great film about the class struggle, a lad with principles and the stupidity of sport. So it has to be suppressed.

Letter to Brezhnev
(Chris Bernard, 1985)
A small, original masterpiece of humanity and local pride.

The Goons
I know they never made a proper feature (Down Among the Z Men doesn't really count), but some effort should be made to preserve the TV tapes, if they still exist. The original Goons broadcasts influenced writers, actors, and film-makers for a generation or more, and set the stage for the Pythons.

The BBC and the Film Council can stop congratulating themselves on their Summer of British Film. It's nothing less than condescending propaganda, argues Alex Cox

Wednesday August 15, 2007
The Guardian

Notting Hill. Exterior. Day. Brilliant sunshine. From the multi-ethnic throngs of the carnival, Mike Myers, clad in psychedelic pearly king attire, steps forth. Says Myers (with a cockney accent): "Haustin Powers 'ere, guv'nor! H'oim your genial 'ost, 'ere to celebrate one 'undred years of British cinema - and that's one shagadelic bonk-a-thon, by blimey!"

Enter Mr Bean. He and Myers shake hands. Their trousers fall down. Dick Van Dyke, dressed as a chimney sweep, glides through on a product-placed Harley-Davidson. He is pursued by Hugh Grant, dressed as a Beefeater, and several striking coal-miners wearing only G-strings. Fade to black.

Article continues
You like the above? Well, you're probably loving the BBC and the UK Film Council's Summer of British Film. In the cinema, we've been getting digital projections of Goldfinger and will be getting patriotic war movies, such as The Dam Busters; plus there's a TV documentary series with episode titles like Longing, Loving and Legovers - The Story of British Romance; and a season of Great British Movies (ie, whatever British movies the BBC happens to have in the cupboard).

Ten seconds' thought leads you to realise that the BBC and the UK Film Council aren't necessarily interested in British cinema per se. As quangos funded by the government, they are obliged to come up with a war-friendly - and essentially mid-Atlantic - version of British film history that suits their paymasters. Sorry to be blunt, chaps, but we remember what happened to that naughty Greg Dyke, don't we?

Labour's attitude to film-making is all over the place. On the one hand, individual ministers claim to be passionate about film and concerned about the survival of the British industry. On the other, New Labour sits in the pocket of the Americans, whether the policy is culture or war. Billy Elliot could have been made specifically for Tony Blair, with his "meritocratic" fantasies and his contempt for the unions. Casino Royale is more Gordon Brown's cup of tea: a large-scale transfer of lottery funds to American studios, under the pretence of making a "British" film.

This duality of attitude is worthy of some examination, as the current BBC2 series, British Film Forever, resonates with early New-Labourspeak. We are told, in the Thrillers episode, that The Italian Job was "the ultimate in Cool Britannia-dom". If anyone really needs reminding, Cool Britannia is now a discredited and despised invention of New Labour. These late-1990s fantasies soon segue into something more sinister: an apparent loathing of the history, or the culture, of the country the series is supposed to celebrate.

We are told 10 Rillington Place "brilliantly embodies the seedy degradation of the real little Britain of the time". Get Carter depicts "a Britain paralysed by strikes and a failing economy ... in short, a nation on the skids". Get Carter was made in 1971. I was a teenager then, and can assure the promoters of this depressing vision that, despite strikes and IRA atrocities, Albion was a long way from skid row. When I went to college, the government paid for it. I incurred no debt. The state owned the water pipes, the reservoirs, the airline, the lecky, the telephone system and the railways, which ran on time and were reasonably cheap. We weren't engaged in two wars of colonial aggression. Muslims weren't our enemies. And the weather was great!

Get Carter is an excellent gangster film. But there is no way that Mike Hodges' fine script can be extrapolated into a condemnation of the unions, or of the economic policies of the time. Hodges would, I suspect, be offended at the suggestion. Both the choice of British films, and the condescending tone of the documentaries, push a very specific view of recent British history. To wit: the second world war, grit, duty and pluck, triumph over adversity. Good. The establishment of the welfare state and the development of trade unions. Bad. Thatcherite greed-years. Also bad. Blair and Brown greed-and-war-years. Excellent!

In this Film Council/BBC vision of the world, everything is multi-culturally marvellous. Asian girls play football. Thatcher's excesses have been put right. And Casino Royale is a British film.

Only it isn't. The James Bond franchise belongs to a US studio, MGM. Some British actors and technicians may get paid to work on the pictures, but the profits are repatriated to Los Angeles. The American Bond marque involves the biggest "movie-based gaming franchise" in history, and highly lucrative product placement (usually of German cars). The franchise also serves an outright propaganda purpose, as one of the US producers interviewed in British Film Forever, makes clear: "It's a more serious world. We expect our heroes to fight their battles with less frivolity."

Of the BBC2 season of films, once you get past the mid-Atlantic junk, there are some nuggets: Gumshoe, A Night to Remember, Dr Who and the Daleks. Not for the first time, one wishes the BBC had more of a budget for acquiring films. Then they could actually show Get Carter, instead of a minor Hodges work, Pulp. What they're screening is clearly limited by what they already have under licence; after all, the Beeb needs to save its money to buy the rights to the next James Bond movie, from the Americans.

The Summer of British Film is mainly notable for who, and what, is missing. There are no Derek Jarman pictures here, no films by Tony Richardson, nor Peter Greenaway, Mike Figgis, Jack Gold. Great British film-makers such as Lindsay Anderson, Nic Roeg and Ken Russell are represented by relatively trivial work: This Sporting Life, Bad Timing, The Rainbow. Maybe the BBC doesn't have their masterpieces under licence. Or maybe it's a deliberate part of this strange project: recasting history by misrepresenting British films.

This process of exclusion began in the last century, when the BFI decided to pick the "100 best British films" and sent out a list of "approved British features" for journalists and cineastes to vote on. The list was as skewed as the 2000 Florida voter lists; someone was clearly playing games. Who was missing from the BFI's best film-maker list? Peter Watkins, for one, and Stanley Kubrick. And it wasn't Kubrick's nationality that excluded him. There were other American directors on the BFI's list: Terry Gilliam was prominent. John Woodward (then head of the BFI, now of the Film Council) couldn't give me an explanation as to why Watkins or Kubrick had been excluded. But he assured me it wouldn't happen again.

Now it's happened again. And the reason is the same, I think: Watkins and Kubrick made two of the most artistically successful and politically powerful anti-war, anti-nuclear films ever: The War Game and Dr Strangelove. At a time when Britain is upping the nuclear ante, threatening a new generation of nuclear power stations and a new Trident weapons system, Watkins and Kubrick's films could not be more timely. So, once again, they are ignored.

Kubrick is dead, of course. And I'm sure Watkins doesn't care. But it is an act of criminal culturelessness to shut out these great film-makers.

Nukes, Jesus, MI5 and the Goons

How the Summer of British Film should have looked

Ten suggestions for an alternative film season, consisting of British films by independent British directors - films that, in the current reactionary climate, could never be made. The very fact of their exclusion from the official list shows how low the BBC and Film Council have set the bar - and how fast the rewriting of our cultural history proceeds.

The War Game
(Peter Watkins, 1965)
The best film the BBC ever commissioned, and refused to show.

Dr Strangelove, or A Clockwork Orange, or Full Metal Jacket
(all Stanley Kubrick: 1964, 1971 and 1987 respectively)
All made in Britain with British crews. All apparently unknown to the BFI, the Film Council and the BBC.

The Devils
(Ken Russell, 1971)
Who else would have dared such a thing? Who else but Russell - and his designer, Derek Jarman - could have pulled it off ? Warning: this film may offend people of a religious (especially Christian) sensibility.

The Old Crowd
(Lindsay Anderson,1979)
Made on video for Central TV; produced by Stephen Frears and written by Alan Bennett. Hated by the critics, who should prepare their mea culpas.

Performance
(Donald Cammell & Nic Roeg, 1970)
Original, extraordinary, unbelievable, ageless.

Sebastiane
(Derek Jarman & Paul Humfress, 1976)
Apt to offend Christians, and bigots of all denominations.

A Very British Coup
(Mick Jackson, 1988)
The real story of the "special relationship", by Chris Mullin. Mullin wrote about how an MI5 officer vetted BBC employees for promotion. He had his own office in Broadcasting House. (The film was made by Channel 4.)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
(Tony Richardson, 1962)
A great film about the class struggle, a lad with principles and the stupidity of sport. So it has to be suppressed.

Letter to Brezhnev
(Chris Bernard, 1985)
A small, original masterpiece of humanity and local pride.

The Goons
I know they never made a proper feature (Down Among the Z Men doesn't really count), but some effort should be made to preserve the TV tapes, if they still exist. The original Goons broadcasts influenced writers, actors, and film-makers for a generation or more, and set the stage for the Pythons.