Positif Mag - Londres au Cinéma

[moonfleet]

Improve your french ... This month, the very good french cine-magazine POSITIF contains a "dossier" about the city of London in films, here's the "éditorial" by Michel Ciment:

-'It is however the English cinema which will be the dominant note of this delivery with, in cover, Shame de Steve McQueen, and the praise of a director who belongs to the great revelations of these last years. With also a file on London which makes it possible to evoke, through the portrait of a large metropolis, prestigious stages of the cinema of on the other side of the channel, the documentary ones in time of war with the large contemporaries, while passing by the comedies Ealing or it Swinging London of the Sixties. Nevertheless, the importance of the British cinema is still not acquired for a certain tendency of French criticism. The weight of expensive conservatism to our country makes that the old ukases of Truffaut (“English cinema, two paradoxical terms”) and of Godard in its History (S) of the cinema (“the English never knew anything to make with their cinema”), perhaps had so that two of their weaker films (Fahrenheit 451 and One Plus One) were carried out on the edges of the Thames, continue to make flora near some. Thus Serge Kaganski in Inrockuptibles (September 28), exhausting We Need to Talk Kevin Butt, declared, while conceding some good films with our friends britons: “Force is to admit that the old polemical formula of Truffaut takes again relevance. ” These tough prejudices, in spite of Jennings, Powell, Reed, Lean, Fisher, Hamer, Mackendrick, Reisz, Boorman, Lester, Loach, Frears, Leigh, Greenaway, Terence Davies, Alan Clarke and so much of others, dismay us, coming from a weekly magazine which maintains certain requirements for the cinema. England, paragon of the colonizing country, treated like one colonized delayed, here is a beautiful paradox. Steve McQueen contributes to the fight against this stereotype. And we also like it that it of either only with its second film. Like Lynne Ramsay (our cover of October for its third opus), Pierre Schoeller, in high-speed motorboat last month for sound second (the Exercise of the State), and the next month Jeff Nichols (Take Shelter, our preview of December and our cover of January, second film), it testify to the renewal of the cinematographic creation to which us let us pay homage.'

Michel Ciment

[Steve Crook]

Is it only looking at Londres, or at the whole of the UK? There are some interesting films being made outside London as well.

The attitude of certain French critics and film-makers has always been strongly against British films. There's no real reason behind it. But France is the country that gave us the word chauvinism

It's that attitude that some people, like my friend, the lovely Natacha, are continually battling. Despite, as the article said, people like Truffaut and Godard saying nasty things about British films and then coming here to make films and so make use of the skills of British film-makers

Steve

[moonfleet]

It's focused on representations of London in Cinéma

- London in the XIXth century, with the mythics Jack the Ripper and Dr Jeckyll, the world of Dickens, Sherlock Holmes, Sweeney Todd, the figure of Elephant Man etc...

- The London of Ealing Studios

- Foreigners in the 60s, about foreign directors in London, with films like Blow Up, Bunny Lake is Missing, The Servant, Repulsion etc...

- London and the contemporan screen, with films like Hope and Glory, Match Point (Allen), Mona Lisa, It's a Free World etc...

- London represented in Chaplin's films

and

- Is London burning ??
About director Humphrey Jennings

I like this magazine since a long time, their comments are not that twisted that in Les Cahiers du Cinéma, they comment with feeling, that's the thing

[Steve Crook]

I like this magazine since a long time, their comments are not that twisted that in Les Cahiers du Cinéma, they comment with feeling, that's the thing

It is a good magazine, I have a few issues of it in my library. As you say, it is a lot better, a lot more positive, than that biased Notebooks of Cinema

Steve

[moonfleet]

But of course they're not only positive on films, they have opinions, I apreciated a critic comment who dislikes Spielberg's Tintin, for same reasons I do, as almost everyone here is "positive" (and concensual IMO) about this film, it's water in the desert

BTW, the POSITIF name comes from a cinema term, it's the opposite of negative (of film support)