Film Group Programme

January 12          

Death in Venice 

Dir Luchino Visconti  Italy  (1971)  130mins)

Adapted by Luchino Viscontithe film  'Death in Venice' captures the essence of the novel by Thomas Mann, but also powerfully supports its themes with superb visuals.  Visconti decided to focus on just the Venice chapter and to modify the occupation of the main protagonist, Gustav von Aschenbach, who becomes a composer (highly inspired by the composer Mahler).  The film is a reflection on Life, Death and Beauty and the search for Perfection.  In this Venice, marked by Death and cursed by the plague, the time is running out and the fascinating quest for Perfection finally appears to be a dangerous game to play.

January 19

Modern Life                       

Dir. Raymond Depardon  France  (2008)  (88mins)

Modern Life expresses a sentiment of admiration and nostalgia for a rural way of life that no longer exists.  Returning to the farming village of Le Villaret in the mountainous region of Cévennes in the Massif Central, Depardon first visits the remote farm of cattle ranchers, Marcel and Raymond Privat, who, both already in their 80s, find the physical demands of their livelihood an increasing challenge.  Depardon visits and interviews other locals, allowing us to see a rural community and the legacies that bind them to land and family.

January 26                       

The Magnificent Seven                       

Dir John Sturges  USA  (1960)  (123mins)

John Sturges, director of "The Great Escape" made this adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 action classic The Seven Samurai.  We had hoped to screen both versions but the original has been withdrawn from distribution.  It has become one of the most popular Westerns ever.  Instead of seven swordsmen protecting a Japanese farming village from bandits, there's seven gunslingers protecting a Mexican village.  Elmer Bernstein is the composer of its memorable musical score.  The Magnificent Seven belongs to an era when Hollywood strived to create bigger and bigger films - to compete with television.  This is a Western that insists on believing in heroism and its victory - and that heroism is available to all men.

February 2                       

Silent Light                       

Dir Carlos Reygadas  USA/Mexico  (2007)  (136mins)

From the opening scene of Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light, you know you're in for something different.  The lengthy shot of dawn breaking over the north Mexican plains gives you an inkling that this story, about a forbidden love affair in a rural religious community, is in no hurry to reveal itself.  But after the first few achingly slow scenes have insistently demanded your attention, you find yourself slowing your mental pace to match that of the film - and begin to enjoy the experience.  The mainly amateur cast draw you into their world forcing you to hang on their every word and action in each sparsely filled scene.

February 9                       

Witness for the Prosecution                         

Dir Billy Wilder  USA  (1957)  (116mins)

Under the direction of Billy Wilder, Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton give spirited performances in this adaptation of an Agatha Christie short story that first appeared in 1925 under the name of Traitor Hands.  The author subsequently wrote it as a play in 1953.  The film made in 1957 became the quintessential courtroom drama with all the requisite twists and turns.  The director’s reputation for creating films with unique characters witty dialogue and intriguing plots is fully maintained in this highly polished production.

February 16                       

The Tree of the Wooden Clogs                         

Dir  Ermano Olmi  (1978)  (180mins)

The Tree of Wooden Clogs is in the tradition of classic Italian neorealist cinema, a genre that reached its zenith with De Sica's 1947 masterpiece Bicycle Thieves.  Like that film, Clogs tells a harrowing, bleak story with sweet simplicity and a naturalism that few films have ever dared attempt.  It is a film that has been described as one of the most shattering, delightful and profound works of cinema.  Not to everyone’s taste but undoubtedly a very moving experience that deserves to be screened theatrically more than it is.  Olmi succeeds in creating a living documentary of late nineteenth century Italian provincial life.

February 23                       

The White Sheik                       

Dir. Frederico Fellini  Italy  (1952)  (90mins)

Based on an idea of Michaelangelo Antonioni, The White Sheik, Fellini's first solo flight as director, is a gentle lampoon of the idolatry heaped upon film stars.  An impressionable young bride, Wanda accompanies her husband Ivan on a dull honeymoon, full of meetings with family members and the papal father.  She fantasizes over matinee idol Fernando Rivoli, AKA The White Sheik, the hero of a photo strip comic.  She repeatedly drifts away from her husband and back, in periodic attempts to find The Sheik, ultimately repairing to the location site where Sordi's latest film, The White Shiek, is in production.  Her disillusionment with the vainglorious Sordi is intercut with her husband's comic (and desperate) attempts to explain his wife's absences at family gatherings to his disgruntled relatives.

March 2                       

Drifting Clouds                       

(Ahi Kaurismaki) Finland (1996)  (98mins)

A married couple struggles with the repercussions of unexpected unemployment in this wry comedy drama from Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismaki, whose film The Man Without a Past we showed successfully a couple of years ago.  Ilona, the wife, works as restaurant hostess and her husband Lauri drives a tram.  Though the couple has recently lost a child, they both seem at peace and happy.  One night Ilona comes home and finds that Lauri has purchased a beautiful television on credit.  Shortly thereafter disaster strikes when Ilona's workplace closes and Lauri gets caught in a maelstrom of downsizing.  Neither is able to find suitable work right away and as time crawls by, they become humiliated and testy with each other.

March 9                       

Inherit the Wind                        

Dir.Stanley Kramer  USA  (1960)  (128mins)

The Evolution vs. Creationism argument is at the centre of the Jerome Lawrence-Robert E. Lee play Inherit the Wind.  Their inspiration was the 1925 "Monkey Trial," in which Tennessee schoolteacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in violation of state law.  Scopes deliberately courted arrest to challenge what he and his supporters saw as an unjust law, and the trial became a national cause when The Baltimore Sun, represented by the famed (and atheistic) journalist H. L. Mencken, hired attorney Clarence Darrow to defend Scopes.  In the film version the names and places are changed, but the basic chronology was retained, along with most of the original court transcripts.  Spencer Tracy and Frederick March play the leading roles.

March 16           

The Damned United                        

Dir Tom Hooper  UK (2008) (97mins)

Following his portrayal of Tony Blair in The Queen and David Frost in Frost/Nixon, Martin Sheen has teamed up once again with the screenwriter Peter Morgan to create another drama based on fact as he plays the slick and confident Brian Clough.  One doesn’t have to be an avid follower of football to appreciate the nuances of this drama, which turns out to be equally as entertaining and satisfying as those earlier films.