Hello and welcome to Director of the Month, your cut-out-and-keep guide to the very finest auteurs in filmland…

This Month: Roger Corman

Nationality: American

D.O.B: 05/04/1926

Years active: 1955 – 1971, 1990

Number of films (as director): 50

Do say: “Wow! You’re the undisputed Godfather of Modern American Cinema. And you’re a really nice guy!”

Don’t say: “You’re the King of the Bs.”*

*This is a title that Corman has long disputed, but never been able to fully shake free from. His gripe is that the B-movie system was actually long gone by the time he began his career and he considers himself to be an honest independent filmmaker, as opposed to a studio-funded schlock peddler.

Who Hell He? Jack Nicholson, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, Robert Towne, Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Peter Fonda, Joe Dante, Monte Hellman, Jonathan Demme, Jonathan Kaplan, and if you insist, James Cameron and Ron Howard. These are just some of the many talents that Roger Corman has discovered (either completely or in part) and nurtured during his career. Not bad, eh?

But it seems that whenever Roger Corman crops up in discussion these days it’s almost always as a footnote in the career of one of the more rich and famous directors/actors/producers he gave a big break to, and very rarely is he celebrated as a talented director in his own right. I acknowledge that the sheer influence of the famous ”Corman School” is immense, and the effect that it would have on modern American cinema cannot be ignored. But most people seem to miss the point; it’s not just the subsequent fame of his proteges that’s impressive, it’s the fact that Corman was bold, brave and pragmatic enough to give untried talent a crack of the whip in the first place. And that’s representative of a lot of what makes Roger Corman a really special filmmaker. He was industrious, resourceful, and not least of all, irrepressibly enthusiastic about filmmaking. How we could use a few more like him today!

When he’s not being talked up as a svengali and starmaker, the name Roger Corman is almost exclusively associated with cheap ‘n’ cheerful exploitation cinema. And while the great man (with much pride it must be said) has never worked with a budget much larger than what Richard Gere probably spends on hamster food, and his filmography is not shy of the odd monster movie, anyone familiar with his output will tell you that it’s actually impressively varied. There are complex crime dramas here, World War II adventure romps there, several eerie period horror films, and even a years-ahead-of-it’s-time racial melodrama. In fact, Roger Corman made so many films (50!) in the space of just 17 years that it’s safe to say there’s something for everyone!

Six of the Best:

Machine-Gun Kelly (1958)

Film number 19 from Roger, but this is where things start to get interesting, and the prolific pulp peddler scores his first big critical hit. Charles Bronson (oh, yes) stars as the depression era gangster of the title, and Corman does a great job of remoulding the myth as his Kelly (when parted with trademark machine-gun) develops into a blubbering coward with a morbid death obssession. This was the legendary Bronson’s first lead role, so I suppose you could say that he graduated from the Corman School too.

Teenage Caveman (1958)

“The Best Worst Film Ever Made” according to star Robert Vaughan (later The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and another Corman find), and he’s sort of got a point, as this deceptively typical prehistoric romp reveals itself to be rather highbrow by way of it’s profound twist ending. Vaughan plays a rebellious member of an ancient tribe, who breaks a long-held oath and goes in search of pastures new, only to be shocked by the strange things he finds there. It’s simply remarkable that Corman completed this mini-epic (along with three other feature films) in the same year he made Machine-Gun Kelly!

A Bucket of Blood (1959)

My personal favourite of all Roger Corman’s films, and I’ve chosen to include it on this list at the expense of it’s more famous horror-comedy cousin The Little Shop of Horrors. Corman regular Dick Miller stars as a put-upon waiter who turns to murdering folk and embalming them in clay in order to make it as a sculptor and impress his pretenious, arty peer group. Like Little Shop, this was written by ace screenwriter Charles Griffith and filmed in a small handful of locations over a couple of nights, although unlike the more well-known film, it has yet to form the basis for an internationally famous musical. More’s the pity!

X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)

Corman’s finest ever foray into one of his more frequently visited genres, this ingeniously put-together science fiction parable stars the great Ray Milland as a scientist who develops X-Ray vision for the proposed good of mankind, but ends up driven to the edge of insanity by his new powers. This is sci-fi as mystic parable, and a shock ending of Biblical proportions provides a neat twist. The special effects on display here have aged remarkably well, and Corman uses them to dazzle us with great invention, even managing to wring out the odd dash of wry humour here and there.

The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

A huge fan of Edgar Allan Poe since childhood, Corman would famously adapt eight of the legendary horror scribe’s tales for the big screen. The pick of the bunch is most certainly this, the penultimate film in the series, which sees Vincent Price on top form as a wicked, Satan-worshipping prince, holed up in a gothic castle in plague-ravaged medieval Europe. Future auteur Nicolas Roeg served as Director of Photography here, and the film boasts a colour scheme so rich, dark and bewitching that a young Dario Argento was surely taking notes.

The Wild Angels (1966)

“Just what is it that you want to do?” “We wanna be free… We wanna be free to do what we wanna do… And we wanna get loaded… And we wanna have a good time… That’s what we’re gonna do… We’re gonna have a good time… We’re gonna have a party.” So that’s where they got it from, and now you know and we can move on. Corman shows once again what a shrewd anticipator of trends he was by casting Peter Fonda in a successful motorbike movie a good three years before Easy Rider. Mind you, the bikers in the later film are of a much more gentle, freespirited stripe than the savage, antagonistic rabble captured in this still rather shockingly nihilistic exploitation classic.

What about the rest?: Well, I hope you’re sitting comfortably, as we’ve got rather a lot to get through… Swamp Women (1955) was Corman’s directorial debut, and is a surprisingly scintillating tale of a rabble of female cons who break out of a Louisiana jail… Five Guns West (1955) is a fairly unspectacular western in which several of the cast double up as extras… Apache Woman (1955) is more of the same, but with added proto-feminism… Day the World Ended (1955) sees Corman dabbling in sci-fi for the first time and stars a not wholly convincing rubber monster (we’ll meet a few more of those before we’re through)… The Oklahoma Woman (1956) is another unusually feminist western… While Gunslinger (1956) is the last western Corman would make… It Conquered the World (1956) is a return to science fiction which stars both Lee van Cleef and probably the worst rubber monster of them all… Naked Paradise (1957) is anything but, and sees a bunch of crooks holed up on a tropical island… Carnival Rock (1957) is a Rock ‘n’ Roll movie set in a travelling show, the bankrupt owner of which attempts to destroy after he is rebuffed by the girl of his dreams… Actually, Not of This Earth (1957) features probably the worst rubber monster of all, but it’s a pretty engrossing tale of vampire-like aliens, nevertheless… Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) is, rather unsurprisingly, about a scientific research expedition that gets attacked by giant, telepathic crab monsters… The Undead (1957) sees Corman move into gothic horror for the first time, predating the Poe cycle by three years… Rock All Night (1957) represents Dick Miller’s finest hour in a Roger Corman film as the wimp who stands up to the bad guys in a hostage situation… Teenage Doll (1957) is another Rock ‘n’ Roll movie, this time about a female tearaway… and Sorority Girl (1957) is a bit more of the same… The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957) possibly wins the prize for the longest title in film history, but that’s probably the most memorable thing about it… I, Mobster (1958) is a fine gangster picture which points the way towards the psychological approach Corman would take to the genre with Machine-Gun Kelly… War of the Satellites (1958) is pretty unmemorable sci-fi, though topical at the time… She-Gods of Shark Reef (1958), meanwhile, repeats the “gangsters-on-a-tropical-island” format with little in the way of improvement… The Wasp Woman (1959) is surprisingly prescient science fiction, as strange chemicals put into cosmetics result in some very bzzzzzzzzarre (geddit?) and unfortunate consequences… Ski Troop Attack (1960) is a fairly good, snowbound action romp… House of Usher (1960) sees Corman turn to Poe (and Price) for the first time… and The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) surely requires no introduction (“Feed me Seymour!” etc.)… Last Woman on Earth (1960) concerns a post-apocalyptic love triangle, and was the first of three Puerto Rico-based films Corman would make in collaboration with writer Robert “China” Towne… Atlas (1961) is a sword ‘n’ sandals romp about mythical strongman Charles Atlas… Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) finds us back in Puerto Rico, evading both gangsters and a rubber monster and on the hunt for treasure in one of the wittiest, most anarchic films Corman ever made… The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) is another serving of perversely poetical Poe ‘n’ Price (and that’s a lot of P’s)… While The Premature Burial (1962) is Poe meets Milland, with a Les Baxter score… The Intruder (1962) is an excellent drama about a conman who instigates race riots for his own ends (believe it or not, none other than William Shatner is spectacular in the lead)… Tales of Terror (1962) is a Poe portmanteau film, featuring the writer’s famous tale ‘The Black Cat’… Tower of London (1962) sees the story of Richard III remoulded into gothic horror… The Young Racers (1963) is a Grand Prix-set drama on which the young Francis Ford Coppola served as soundman… The Raven (1963) is Poe played for laughs a good 30 years before The Simpsons did it… The Terror (1963) is a disappointingly dull gothic potboiler, the finale of which would be reused by Peter Bogdanovich for the sublime Targets… The Haunted Palace (1963) sees Corman splicing the work of Poe with that of another horror bard, H.P. Lovecraft… The Secret Invasion (1964) is a World War II desperate-men-on-a-deadly-mission film that came out three years before The Dirty Dozen… And The Tomb of Ligiea (1964) sees Corman bid farewell to Poe, whilst Vincent Price sports some rather fetching Roger McGuinn-style glasses… The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) is another great gangster film, with Jason Robards maniacally great as Al Capone… The Trip (1967) is a possibly pro-LSD freak-out fest that was banned for many years following it’s release… Target: Harry (1969) is Corman’s crack at a shaggy detective story, but it doesn’t quite come off… Bloody Mama (1970) is another depression era gangster romp, but one that manages to be even more freaky and violent than Machine-Gun Kelly… Gas-s-s-s (1971) is about a gaggle of freewheeling hippies making their way through an America which has mistakenly exterminated everyone over the age of 25, and resembles what the end result may have been like had Robert Altman directed Easy Rider from a Kurt Vonnegut script… and Von Richthofen and Brown (1971) is a tragically underseen World War I adventure drama, that sadly proved to be Corman’s final film as a director… Until that is he briefly returned behind the camera for the flawed, but still sufficiently intense and interesting, Mary Shelley rewrite Frankenstein Unbound (1990)…

Roger Corman continues to work this day as a producer, but it’s as an endlessly colourful and creative director that we’ll always love him best. And yes, he is a nice guy, a really nice guy. Just read his autobiography, How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime. It’s the greatest book of all time.

Hello and welcome to Director of the Month, your cut-out-and-keep guide to the very finest auteurs in filmland…

This Month: Jean-Luc Godard

Nationality: French-Swiss

D.O.B: 3/12/1930

Years active: 1957 – present

Number of films (as director): 32 (excluding various art and video projects)

Do say: “It’s highly possible that no one individual has had as much influence on cinema as an artform as you have. You are one of the few surviving innovators of filmmaking, and your body of work will continue to enthrall as long as there are girls, guns, and movie cameras.”

Don’t say: “You are nothing but a shit on a pedestal.”*

*That’s exactly how JLG’s former friend turned bitter rival Francois Truffaut addressed him once in a letter. Oo-er.

Who Hell He? I can’t quite bring myself to call Jean-Luc Godard a “Marmite” filmmaker, so instead I’m going to go with the more appropriate adage that one man’s poisson is another man’s poison. It might seem a bit unusual to begin a Director of the Month by drawing attention to the fact that an awful lot of people don’t like Jean-Luc Godard, but in a strange way it’s almost key to understanding his work. Godard and his French New Wave cohorts were the first people to really grab popular cinema by the scruff of the neck and harnass it’s power to be dangerous, unsettling, and radical; both real and surreal. As a result of taking this revolutionary approach to his chosen field, Godard has the power to alienate people as often as he stimulates them, and accordingly he is regularly referred to as the “Picasso of cinema”. Today, however, I’d like to put across an altogether more crude simile; Godard is The Sex Pistols of cinema.

Picture the scene… Cinema in the mid-50s is like music in the mid-70s, it’s glory years are seemingly behind it, and the current product is bloated, unimiginative and failing to win over audiences. Cue a snotty bunch of upstarts, who appear just in time to give cinema the kick up the arse it needs by setting to it with a new DIY ethic that both thrills and inspires. Of course, just like the punks had been listening to garage rock, The Velvet Underground, and The Stooges, so too had the French New Wave-rs been watching Italian neorealism, Alfred Hitchcock, and Samuel Fuller, but that’s besides the point. Both groups managed to channel their collective influences into the zeitgeist, and Godard in particular will forever be associated with the raw energy of the French New Wave, his 1960 debut A bout de souffle being the movement’s Nevermind the Bollocks. Speaking of which…

Six of the Best:

A bout de souffle (1960)

I’d like to stress at this point that, contrary to popular opinion, it’s not essential to have an academic guide to film history handy in order to enjoy a Jean-Luc Godard film. Much of the director’s output (particularly his early work) should appeal as much to fans of cool, off-kilter crime cinema as it does to theorists and pseuds, and A bout de souffle is almost certainly the most famous example of Godard at his gun-toting, existential best. It’s also almost certainly the greatest directorial debut of all time, and with fellow Nouvelle Vague legend Francois Truffaut on co-writing duties, who could possibly argue otherwise?

Vivre sa vie (1962)

In typically provocative fashion, the newly-famous Godard posted an ad in a magazine advertising for a wife, and got a response in the positive from Danish model Anna Karina. Karina would go on to play the lead in eight of her husband’s films, with her role as doomed prostitute Nana in this avant garde melodrama often considered her finest performance under his direction. The sequence in which she narrates the sordid details of her day-to-day business over a shockingly formal and methodical montage is perhaps the greatest single moment in the entire Godard canon.

Le Mepris (1963)

In which Godard temporarily eschews his wife in favour of that ultimate icon of 60s France, Brigitte Bardot, Le Mepris sees the director working with a major budget for the first time, and turning in a simply astounding film that manages to satirise the workings of mainstream filmmaking whilst simultaneously reaping the benefits of the process. Michel Piccoli plays BB’s screenwriter husband, and the pair’s already strained relationship is further threatened as the film he is currently working on is savagely picked apart by tyrannical producer Jack Palance. The photography in this film, by regular Godard collaborator Raoul Coutard, is absolutely stunning, a feat matched by the performances, Godard’s mercurial direction, and Georges Delerue’s breathtaking score.

Bande a part (1964)

The film which gave Quentin Tarantino not only the name of his production company, but also, more famously, the dance sequence for Pulp Fiction, and it’s not hard to see why Bande a part holds so much appeal for the uber-film geek. An ingenious splicing of raw crime aesthetic with witty knockabout humour, this is most likely Godard’s lightest moment, and it’s easy to identify the same zany zip in all of Tarantino’s efforts. Karina returns as a simple housemaid who turns against her wealthy employers at the behest of two smalltime crooks, and Godard keeps us giggling and guessing with any number of gimmicks, surprises and the (sadly never fulfilled) promise of a sequel.

Pierrot le fou (1965)

My personal favourite of all Godard’s films, and perhaps his most definitive, Pierrot le fou has a foot in the director’s “girl and a gun” past and an eye on his Marxist, agitprop future. Anna Karina takes her penultimate Godard bow here, teaming up with A bout de souffle’s Jean-Paul Belmondo as a pair of on-the-run lovers engaging in a bizarre and colourful crime spree along the French Riviera. Raoul Coutard’s photography here manages to top even his work on Le Mepris, showing that even if Godard’s films don’t always necessarily make sense (and Pierrot le fou certainly doesn’t), at least he always gives you something that’s never less than visually bewitching.

Week End (1967)

Those people I mentioned at the beginning, the one’s who don’t care much for Godard? Well, Week End is a prime example of the sort of Godard film that these people really can’t stand. Continually convention-busting, freewheeling, loose, lucid, shocking, anarchic, frequently bewildering, and featuring the longest, most intense traffic jam sequence in film history, if you insist on your films being strictly narrative, then this admittedly probably isn’t one for you. However, if you’re feeling a bit adventurous then come along for the ride, and don’t forget to note Godard’s subtle, yet winningly saucy, sense of humour which perfectly counterbalances the film’s experimental shock-tactics, and never lets things get too serious (“What a rotten film, all we meet are idiots”, bemoans a leading character at one point… I say LOL).

What about the rest?: Le Petit Soldat (1960) is a political reboot of A bout de souffle, featuring a torture sequence which got it banned on release, and remains shocking to this day… After shooting in black and white on his first two films, Godard explodes into colour with Une Femme est une femme (1961), a bawdy and typically oddball tribute to the Hollywood musical… Les Carabiniers (1963) is a fable-like denouncement of the moral futility of war, and marked a rapidly developing interest in ever-more experimental filmmaking techniques… Une femme mariee (1963) is the sensual and provocative tale of a love affair which shocked Godard’s loathed French bourgeois society on it’s release… Alphaville (1965) is one of Godard’s most influential films, an icy and avant garde marriage of fiction of both the science and detective variety… Masculin, feminin (1966) is another step in the experimental direction, but it’s plot concerning a disgruntled intellectual’s troubled relationship with his optimistic, aspirational girlfriend is still relevant today… Anna Karina took her leave as Godard’s muse in Made in USA (1966), which feels like a less stimulating retread of Pierrot le fou… 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle (1967) sees Godard at his most anarchic and experimental, following the daily life of a housewife doubling as a prostitute… La Chinoise (1967) deals with a small cell of student revolutionairies in Paris, pointing perceptively towards events that would engulf the French capital the following year… One Plus One (1968) is a rather notorious meeting of two 60s icons as Godard films The Rolling Stones rehearsing ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, but rather than show us them doing finished song (which we never even hear!), he instead has his wife hung off a crane by the Black Panthers… Le Gai savoir (1969) is yet another pop-art tinged rumination on politics and modern society, starring Truffaut alter-ego Jean-Pierre Leaud, who by this point was beginning to notch up a similar number of appearances in Godard’s films… The strike drama Tout va bien (1972) pairs Jane Fonda with Yves Montand, and boasts a tracking shot across the aisles of a supermarket that almost matches Week End’s traffic jam sequence for verve and audacity… Numero deux (1975) utilises a revolutionary, pre-De Palma split screen technique to detail the nuances of everyday French family life… After spending most of the 70s working on experimental projects, Godard returned to commercial, narrative filmmaking with Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980), in which pop star Jacques Dutronc plays a recognisable caricature of the director himself… Raoul Coutard returns for the first time since Week End to shoot Passion (1982), a suitably elegant film, yet one that ultimately lacks any real punch… Just as well, then, that he hung around to work on the much better Prenom Carmen (1983), which sees not only Godard’s fascination with robbers and terrorists return to the fore, alongside that old staple classical music, but also the director himself make his acting debut as a dirty old uncle… Je vous salue, Marie (1985) is a modern retelling of the Virgin birth, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Godard’s most controversial modern film… Detective (1985) is an excellent neo-neo-noir about an estranged couple, the washed-up boxing promoter who owes them money, and the bungling hotel detective who is watching them all, and it might well be Godard’s most underrated film… Unfortunately he chose to follow it up with a vapid arthouse take on King Lear (1987), which is nevertheless memorable for boasting a bizarre cast featuring Woody Allen, Norman Mailer, and Molly Ringwald… Nouvelle Vague (1990), despite it’s self-referrential title, is sadly not a return to form, but it does star the great Alain Delon… For Ever Mozart (1996) touches on the conflict in the Balkans, but the intense political passion of yore has mellowed, and you just might find yourself drifting off… Much better is Eloge de l’amour (2001) a series of episodes on reminiscence and regret, culminating in an insightful account of an unscrupulous film company’s attempt to purchase a WWII memoir, that is almost certainly Godard’s most emotionally moving film… Notre musique (2004) is a similar effort which this time focuses on the impact of modern terrorism, and is equally rewarding… And Film Socialisme (2010) has only just come out and I ain’t seen it yet… And yes I did choose to refer to all the films by their original, French titles because I’m pretentious… I mean, “a purist”… Au revoir…

Pssst! If you wanna see some of these great Godard films yourself, then get down to the Barbican between July 16th and 20th, when they’ll be showing a handful as part of their great Directorspective series! 

Surreal. Surreal. It’s one of those words, isn’t it? It seems to me that often people aren’t 100% sure of what it actually really means exactly, but it still gets used an awful lot. A bit like “ironic”. However, a quick glance in the dictionary tells us that surreal means: 1.  Having qualities attributed to or associated with surrealism, and 2. Having an oddly dreamlike quality. Of course, dreams are strange, bizarre and often unsettling, so it’s little wonder that the word surreal is often attributed to things that bear one, or all, of these qualities.

When I came to chose which films I would cover for Days Are Numbers’ Surreal Week, I was a little bit daunted not only by the exact definition of the word surreal, but by the sheer number of films that could potentially be classified as surreal. With that in mind, I’ve decided instead to look at some of the kinds of films that are often described as surreal, and we’ll see how many of them actually cut the mustard (which is a pretty surreal saying in itself, if you think about it… You can’t really cut mustard, can you?). This method will also handily double as a whistle-stop tour of surrealism’s influence on film in general.

So, follow me now through the looking glass, and don’t dilly-”Dali”! Groan.

The Surreal Deal

If we refer back to the first part of the definition of surreal, we may want to clarify what exactly surrealism itself is supposed to be. Well, as I’m sure you’re all already aware (but I’m going to tell you anyway!), surrealism was an art and literature movement started in the 1920s by the likes of Andre Breton, Man Ray, Antonin Artaud, and yes, Salvador Dali. Surrealism was all about creating a forum for the mind-boggling, the eccentric and the shocking in the arts, and while this was easily achieved on canvas and paper (provided you had the talent, of course), nascent film technology was a bit more difficult to master. Many of the movement’s founding members gave it a go however, and with some very special results.

Early cinema was often pretty bloody strange anyway, as anyone who has seen George Melies’ A Trip to the Moon or anything from the German expressionist movement can testify. Surrealism proper takes it’s bow onscreen in 1928 with The Seashell and the Clergyman, directed by the largely overlooked Germaine Dulac, and scripted by Artaud. This was overshadowed the following year, however, by the infamous Un Chien Andalou, a collaboration between Spanish director Luis Bunuel and his fellow countryman Dali. Anyone who’s ever done any kind of film studies should be intimately familiar with Un Chien Andalou, featuring as it does several of the most pored over sequences in cinema history, including the notorious “razor slitting eye/moon passing cloud” opening. Un Chien Andalou is a fine and important film, but how much you enjoy it may well depend on how interested you are in the surrealist movement, as it is a film that almost exclusively reflects their aims and interests.

Bunuel would go on to have a long and varied career without ever fully losing interest in surrealism, and traces of it can be found in much of his later work, including such critical triumphs as The Exterminating Angel, Belle de Jour, and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Dali, on the other hand, will always be remembered primarily for his painted work, but his adventures in, not to mention influence on, cinema would continue…

Dali Goes to Hollywood

The influence of surrealism on mainstream culture would be profound, if not always immediately traceable, and among it’s keenest students were some of the most widely watched American cartoonists of the 30s and 40s. Animators at Warner Bros.’ aptly named Looney Toons, home to many beloved characters including Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, gleefully lapped up the more zany elements of surrealism and applied them to their cartoon frolics. Even their more traditionally straight-laced rivals at Disney began taking their cue from Dali et al, with nutty ol’ Walt himself even beginning, but sadly never finishing, a direct collaboration with Dali on a short called Destino.

One Hollywood assignment that Dali did manage to finish, however, was his contribution of a frankly incredible, and still powerful, dream sequence to Alfred Hitchcock’s psychological thriller, Spellbound. Dali concieved and designed the revolutionary sequence, the direction of which was overseen by Things to Come helmer William Cameron Menzies, rather than Hitchcock himself, whose relationship with producer David O. Selznick was rather frayed at the time. Indeed, Spellbound itself is far from Hitchcock’s best film, and is probably best remembered today for Dali’s dream sequence alone. A startling addition to the film, it sees Gregory Peck trapped in a nightmarish, recognisably Dali-esque world of gigantic, staring eyes (which get sliced in two, a la Un Chien Andalou), mysterious figures, and bizzaro landscapes.

Spellbound was released in 1945, the year the Second World War ended. It’s at this point that the shadow of surrealism begins to fade away in mainstream American culture, at least for the time being. It’s not difficult to see why, either. Following their horrific experiences, a generation of war-hardy Americans decided to move away from the strange and unknown, instead reaffirming their national identity as wholesome, pure, and rather sterile, traits reflected in the popular entertainment of the time (think Leave it to Beaver etc.). In order to keep track of surrealism, we’re going to have to head elsewhere…

The Surreal World

Of course, Europe also experienced some “difficulties” during the Second World War, and while surrealism was pushed down on the agenda on that continent also, it was for slightly different reasons. From the early 50s onwards, European directors would begin to work with newly available light-weight equipment and very soon a “new wave” of independent filmmaking was developing in almost every country. Initially at least, and led by Italian neorealism, these movements were influenced by the very leftist, Soviet notion that all true art should possess a poetic realism, and ideally focus on the day-to-day lives of the proleteriat. Not much scope for surrealism there, of course, but within time almost every director of the Italian neorealism movement would add a splash of the fantastical to their filmmaking, most notably Federico Fellini.

 Ah, Fellini. Possibly the only film director to have warranted his own word; Felliniesque. But what does it mean? Well, it’s a catch-all adjetive used to describe the great man’s most famous films, including the likes of La Dolce Vita, 8 1/2, and Juliet of the Spirits, all of which could be described as colourful, fanciful, and peculiar. Surreal, in other words? Certainly to some extent, but I personally believe that Felliniesque should be interpreted as having one major difference from straight-up surrealism; namely that Fellini’s fantastical occurences usually take place in an everyday, perfectly explainable context. Think of the gigantic fish pulled from the sea at the end of La Dolce Vita. Yes, it’s strange, but it could probably happen. The record player blaring out the sound of church bells sat beside a real, disused church bell in Nights of Cabiria also springs to mind. It would seem that Federico rather ingeniusously found a way to import the surreal into everyday life.

The French New Wave is probably the post-war film movement most widely regarded as being somewhat surreal, but it too began under the influence of social realism, with the rural dramas of Agnes Varda and Claude Chabrol leading the way. It is possible to see traces of surreal humour in many of it’s later films, however, and efforts from Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad) and Louis Malle (Zazie dans la metro) are as straight-up surreal as cinema gets; although I would argue that the output of the movement’s most famously “out-there” director, Jean-Luc Godard, couldn’t be described as truly surreal (too cynical and satirical, if ya ask me). Interestingly, possibly the most surreal international film movements of the era sprang from the east, the same breeding ground as social realism. Anyone who supposes that filmmaking under communist regimes was always drab or stilted should check out such fare as Czechoslovakia’s bonkers anarcho-feminist caper Daisies, or the East German children’s classic The Singing Ringing Tree and have their minds duly blown.

Feed your Head

When I started thinking about what films to include in this here surreal special, I instinctively decided that I should shy away from anything that could be percieved as psychedelic. But now that I’ve decided to take a more general look at the influence on surrealism in cinema, I’m going to attempt to explain why. Namely, that I think psychedelia is a completely different, albeit superficially similar, school of thought to surrealism. In much the same way that I find Godard a bit to calculating to be considered a genuine surrealist, I also find the movers and shakers of the Swinging 60s a bit too loose and, quite often, too vacuous. It was a movement primarily based on getting out of your skull, was it not?

That’s not to say that I don’t love psychedelic things, as I very much do, and I also concede that the aforementioned superficial similarity between all things psychedelic and surreal at least permits us to have a look at a handful of films from the era. My own personal all-time favourite psychedelic film is probably The Monkees’ vehicle Head, a freewheeling, almost sociopathic attempt to deconstruct the public image of the manufactured mop tops by having them mock a disabled cowboy, fraternise with Frank Zappa’s talking cow, and battle a giant Victor Mature, among other activities. Bob “Five Easy Pieces” Rafelson directed and co-wrote the script with none other than Jack Nicholson, who also contributed lyrics to the film’s fine soundtrack. Of course, you can’t talk about great psychedelic music without mentioning The Beatles, and their 1967 TV special Magical Mystery Tour is also a treasure trove of bizarre delights, even if it is notoriously uneven and lacks Head’s dark edge.

So intrinsically linked were psychedelia and music that it’s hard to find a psychedelic film without some kind of popular musician attached to it somewhere. Kooky Brit drama Wonderwall (yes, that’s where he got it from) had George Harrison twanging the soundtrack, and Nic Roeg and Donald Cammel’s dark crime drama Performance famously boasted Mick Jagger in the lead. In fact, the only psychedelic films I can find that don’t have some immediately obvious rock ‘n’ roll connection are the ultra-strange, and often completely mindblowing, westerns and fantasy fables of mad Chilean mystic Alejandro Jodorowski. But even then a little research shows that both of his most famous films, El Topo and Holy Mountain, were made with the help of late-era Beatles manager Allen Klein and that both were also enthusiastically supported by messrs Harrison and John Lennon! Still, they’re both great films, and due to their allegorical and philosophical stylings, they’re probably the closest psychedelic cinema comes to true surrealism.

A Nightmarelike Quality?

I would argue that the most surreal of all genres is horror. Yes, there are probably surreal variants of films from every genre, from comedy (Jacques Tati, Jerry Lewis) to westerns (generally those of the spaghetti variety, most notably Giulio Questi’s staggering Django Kill… If You Live, Shoot!). But horror, by it’s very nature, is the genre that most readily relies on the uncanny, the otherwordly, and the unusual to do it’s job, and these traits serve to align it closely with many fundamental aspects of surrealism. Just think of how many renowned horror films contain surreal elements, and you’ll find that the list is almost endless; The Wicker Man, Don’t Look Now, Dawn of the Dead, Rosemary’s Baby etc.

More than anything else, the one motif regularly used in horror that links it to surrealism is it’s use of dreams, or rather nightmares. The Nightmare on Elm Street series is undoubtedly the most famous example of this, but a personal favourite of mine is the framing device used by Ealing’s celebrated portmanteau film, 1945′s Dead of Night, which sees the narrator trapped in a recurring nightmare. Another great example of this is The Slayer, a little known slasher film from 1982, which contains a number of similarities to A Nightmare on Elm Street, but was in fact made two years before. In it a mysterious, barely glimpsed killer stalks his victim in both her dreams and her everday reality, and very fittingly, his victim just so happens to be a surrealist painter by trade!

In fact, of all modern filmmakers I can think of, the one who strikes me as having arguably the most surrealistic bent is none other than Italian horror maestro Dario Arento. Practically every film Argento has made since returning to the horror genre in 1975 (following a brief detour into westerns) has come with a generous side order of dark surrealism. Consider the schizophrenic logic of Profondo Rosso, Suspiria’s dark fairytale theatrics, or 1980′s Inferno as a whole, which almost feels like Spellbound’s Dali dream sequence feverishly stretched to breaking point over the duration of an entire film. As dazzling as Inferno is, however, I suspect Argento’s most authentically surreal film may be one of his most maligned; Phenomena. Appearing five years after Inferno, and initially released in many territories as Creepers, Phenomena boasts a beguiling plot that is so multi-faceted it is scarcely believable. Featuring sleepwalking, telepathic communication with insects, a razorblade-weilding chimp, and a murderous dwarf, it might require a few viewings of Phenomena for you to take it all in, but surely that’s the way any surrealist worth his salt would want it.

Back to Sur-reality

So, what lasting influence has surrealism had on modern cinema? Well, it’s hard to gage. It can’t be denied that we live in a time when bizarre images and juxtapositions are more prevelant in mainstream media than ever before, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. It would seem that even surrealism has been harnessed as yet another stylistic weapon of choice in our ever more corporate culture, and you only have to switch on your television set to see any number of bizarre advertisements selling any number of dull products.

What you won’t see, however, is anything really, genuinely, dangerously strange. Modern surrealism may be pervasive, but it has also been sanitised. That’s why I can’t really think of any modern films that I could really bring myself to describe as thoroughbred surreal. I could mention either of Michel Gondry’s popular efforts Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or The Science of Sleep, but aside from the fact that I don’t particularly like either film, they also smack somewhat of false surrealism. It seems to me that the point of both of those films is that they’re supposed to be surreal, so therefore they can’t really be properly surreal, can they? It all seems a bit forced. The same goes for the films of David Lynch, although I’ll give him the sublime and disturbing Eraserhead, which also helps back up my horror-as-surrealism theory. Thanks, Dave!

Really, one of the few modern films I can think of that I would unequivocally classify as being surreal is Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, and that was made over 25 years ago! Perhaps still best known as the man behind the madcap animations on Monty Python, Gilliam’s most recent films may have a tang of whimsical surrealism about them themselves, but Brazil remains as razor-sharp as the very razor that Bunuel and Dali dragged across an eyeball all those years ago. A kind of Fritz Lang-directed revue of George Orwell’s 1984, the film depicts a dystopian future in which human life is very cheap and all the better for it, as bungling bureaucracy is steadily swallowing it up. It’s this grotesque humour, combined with Gilliam’s off-kilter visual style, that marks Brazil out as not only a great film, but a truly surreal one, also.

I’ve just heard the terribly sad news that Britain’s greatest all-round entertainer Frank Sidebottom (or rather creator/man behind the mask Chris Sievey) has passed away.

Frank has always been a firm favourite here at Days Are Numbers, from his days as a wonderfully weird fixture on kids’ TV, to his most recent incarnation as the most top-notch comedy live act around. His colourful, witty and madcap songs and japes will be greatly missed.

Here, to help bring a smile back to your face, is a typically charming and bonkers clip from Frank’s should-be legendary Proper Telly Show on Channel M, showing the great man himself performing The Fall’s ‘Hit the North’ with David “Hutch” Soul and Paul Ryder from The Happy Mondays. And without wanting to do too much axe-grinding on this saddest of days, it’s criminal that he didn’t feature more regularly on terrestrial television in these dark times for British comedy.

Anyway, here’s to you Frank. We’ll always remember you. You know we will. We really will.

Dennis Hopper 1936 – 2010

Days Are Numbers was of course very sad to learn of the death of Dennis Hopper over the weekend. Since the sad news was announced the papers have been full of obituaries and retrospectives, as well they might, as Hopper was a true Hollywood legend. And there aren’t too many of those left, are there?

One of the original method actors, and one who was lucky enough to play opposite James Dean twice, Hopper became one of the trailblazers of the New Hollywood movement of the 70s, after he directed, co-wrote and starred in Easy Rider. Following that his career fluctuated wildly between the Good (The Last Movie, The American Friend), the Bad (Space Truckers, EDtv), and the Just Plain Daft (Human Highway, Super Mario Bros.), but at least he was never less than watchable.

Much has been made of his legendary scenery-chewing supporting turns in the likes of Apocalypse, Now (pictured above) and Blue Velvet, but in true Days Are Numbers style, we’d like to draw your attention towards The Best Dennis Hopper Film You’ve Probably Never Heard Of… Cast your eyes below for the trailer for demented Aussie exploitation romp Mad Dog Morgan, and remember him this way!

Hello and welcome to Director of the Month, your cut-out-and-keep guide to the very finest auteurs in filmland…

This Month: Martin Scorsese

Nationality: American

D.O.B: 17/11/1942

Years active: 1963 – present

Number of films (as director): 21

Do say: “Alfred Hitchock aside, there’s probably never been a film director to have enjoyed both critical and popular success in quite the way you have. You are surely the most influential filmmaker of the modern era and, at a conservative estimate, no fewer than three of your films would be glaring omissions if absent from any list of the greatest films ever made.”

Don’t say: “That Leo DiCaprio… He’s no De Niro, is he?”

Who Hell He? As if you had to ask! Is there anyone out there who doesn’t love Martin Scorsese? Even if you’re not given to hyperbole, superlative, and all that shite, it is doubtful that anyone would seriously dispute that, all things considered, Scorsese is probably The Greatest Living Film Director in The World Right Now… Or something like that, anyway. Let’s consider the evidence.

While not an initiator of the New Hollywood movement of the 1970s (it pretty much all began with Corman, Coppola, and yes, Warren Beatty), Martin Scosese quickly became it’s key talent. If the New Hollywood was consistently about anything, it was about taking everything that was great about classic American cinema and filtering it through a bolder, braver European aesthetic, learned from the likes of Bergman, Fellini, and the directors of the French New Wave. Scorsese was the master of this, and his raw, energetic crime-dramas would have a lasting influence on filmmakers the world over. He was also one of the few directors to survive the bitter fall-out of the New Hollywood, and to this day, “Marty” continues to prolifically pump out his own projects in a way that none of his contemporaries have the clout to match. Except Steven Spielberg, of course, but he’s shit. Unlike Martin Scorsese, as we shall see…

Six of the Best:

Who’s That Knocking at My Door (1967)

Scorsese’s feature debut, and in my opinion his most underrated effort, Who’s That Knocking at My Door is very much a film of it’s time, and is Marty’s most overtly French New Wave influenced film. Despite some often heavy-handed aesthetic indulgence, the film wins through with it’s involving emotional core, as streetwise youth Harvey Kietel struggles to come to terms with an unfortunate incident from his new girlfriend’s past. Many recurring Scorsese motifs are already beginning to take form here including Catholic guilt, the dire consequences of failed communication between the sexes, and of course, the pulsating use of popular music; almost certainly Scorsese’s most enduring gift to contemporary cinema.

Mean Streets (1973)

The moment where it all comes together, and Martin Scorsese simply explodes as the most accomplished and original filmmaker of the 1970s. Mean Streets is American crime cinema at it’s finest, but with added wit, vibrancy, and poignancy, as we follow the ultimately tragic tale of petty crook Charlie, and his attempts to juggle his troubled family life with his burgeoning mob career. Two stars were born here for the price of one, as Mean Streets marks Scorsese’s first collaboration with Robert De Niro, who is absolutely breathtaking in his breakout role as Charlie’s wildfire cousin Johnny Boy.

Taxi Driver (1976)

De Niro triumphs again as the mysterious, mentally disturbed, NYC cabbie of the title, in what could well be cinema’s greatest ever character study. More than thirty years on, nothing has really come close to matching the intensity of Taxi Driver, and it still manages to shock and mesmerise in equal measure today. For my money this is not only Scorsese’s finest hour, it’s quite simply the finest American film of the 70s, too.

Raging Bull (1980)

You might have gathered by now that I think Martin Scorsese is pretty great, but like a lot of great talents, it’s sometimes easy to take him for granted. I extracted immense enjoyment from re-watching all these films before writing this, but for some reason, the one that really stood out for me this time round was Raging Bull. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always loved Raging Bull, but this time it really got to me how overwhelmingly sad it all is, as De Niro’s troubled boxing champ wrecks his career and alienates everyone around him in the process. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older?

Goodfellas (1990)

Although, as already noted, Scorsese managed to ride out the 80s successfully and in some style, Goodfellas can still be seen as something of a return to form, as he really hadn’t made anything this good in the ten years since Raging Bull. It can also be seen as an act of reinvention, as it is here that he mints the fast-paced, rollicking, scene-jumping style that would influence pretty much every crime film of the next 20 years. De Niro returns and a superb Ray Liotta takes the lead, but it is Joe Pesci (practically discovered by Scorsese for Raging Bull) who deservedly won all the acting plaudits as the most bloodthirsty of a band of hoods growing up in mob-run New York.

Casino (1995)

More of the same, really, but I – whisper it - have to say that I prefer Casino to Goodfellas. Of course, they’re both absolutely brilliant and you should love them both, but this thundering tale of mob warfare in Vegas is it’s predecessor cranked up to 11, and then some; it’s louder, angrier, swearier, and even more fast-paced and flamboyant. It also manages to balance this with some of Scorsese’s most involving writing, as he develops a dangerous and heartwrenching love triangle between boss (De Niro), enforcer (Pesci), and freespirited grifter (Sharon Stone, simply superb).

What about the rest?: Boxcar Bertha (1972) is a Corman-produced, depression-era shoot-em-up, that producer and director manage to lift above most similar efforts of it’s time through a mix of wit, genuine thrills, and social commentary… Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) saw Scorsese hired as a jobbing director by star Ellen Burstyn, but it’s still a warm and winning melodrama… New York, New York (1977) is an edgy neo-musical, that was the director’s first major failure, and is perhaps best remembered today for it’s world-conquering title song… The King of Comedy (1983) could almost form a trilogy of intense character studies from De Niro/Scorsese (along with Taxi Driver and Raging Bull), but although it is a very fine film, it’s certainly the weaker of the three… After Hours (1985) is an exceptionally enjoyable romp through an 80s NYC yuppie’s nightmare, as a prissy office worker finds himself lost and hounded in SoHo… The Color of Money (1986) is a largely forgettable sequel to legendary pool film The Hustler, notable only for some superbly rendered green blaize shoot-outs, and a surprisingly fine performance from Tom Cruise… The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) may well be devout Catholic Scorsese’s most personal film, and it is certainly his most controversial, as Willem Dafoe’s Jesus struggles with some very human issues… Cape Fear (1991) is a startlingly dark and existential reimagining of an earlier Robert Mitchum/Gregory Peck film noir… Lush period drama The Age of Innocence (1993) ties with The Last Temptation of Christ as Scorsese’s most untypical film, but it’s still highly watchable… Actually, Dalai Lama biopic Kundun (1997) is pretty untypical, too, although how watchable it is depends on how interested you are in the Dalai Lama… Bringing Out the Dead (1999) is a largely unsuccessful attempt to recapture the intensity of Taxi Driver by following Nicolas Cage’s burned out, erm, ambulance driver… Gangs of New York (2002) is a slick, sprawling epic concerning the Big Apple’s violent beginnings which doesn’t quite work either… And nor does Scorsese’s long-cherished Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator (2004)… He may have finally got an Oscar for Hong Kong crime thriller remake The Departed (2006), but Taxi Driver (which the Academy, in their infinite wisdon, decided was not as well directed as fucking Rocky) it ain’t… I’ve not seen Shutter Island (2010), although I am excited at the prospect of a Scorsese-helmed horror film… And I’ve not seen Hugo Cabret (2011) either as it’s from the future…

…as are hopefully many more fine Martin Scorsese films! Sir, we salute you.

Hello and welcome to Director of the Month, your cut-out-and-keep guide to the very finest auteurs in filmland…

This Month: Aki Kaurismaki

Nationality: Finnish

D.O.B: 4/4/1957

Years active: 1983 – present 

Number of films (as director): 16

Do say: “Having produced a steady stream of distinctive, deadpan, downbeat and strangely iconic comedy-dramas for nearly thirty years, you are truly one of the most successful independent film directors of modern times. You are also almost certainly the greatest film director ever to hail from Finland.” 

Don’t say: “Are you from Sweden?” 

Who Hell He? It’s admittedly somewhat hard for me to gage just how much of a big deal Aki Kaurismaki really is. You see, that’s because Aki Kaurismaki is probably my favourite film director. Ever. And as a result, my sense of his importance and standing and all that jazz is a little bit warped. What I can say for certain, however, is that Kaurismaki has been acknowledged (at least by those who are aware of him and his work) as one of the most unique talents currently working in world cinema. His films are noted for their desert dry humour, prickly loser protagonists, and moody Helsinki locales. That’s not to say they don’t possess any heart or romance. They do, just heart and romance Kaurismaki style.

It’s tempting to refer to Aki Kaurismaki as exclusively a “cult” film director, which he undoubtedly is to a certain extent, but he has enjoyed the odd brush with mainstream popularity throughout his career (although the grumpy Finn probably didn’t actually “enjoy” them as such). If the man on the street is going to have heard of Kaurismaki for anything, it will have been for either of his two best known films; one-of-a-kind Soviet Rock ‘n’ Roll road movie Leningrad Cowboys Go America or his Cannes award winning drama The Man Without a Past. But then, who could watch only one or two Kaurismakis and not be inclined to seek out the rest? I certainly couldn’t, and who knows, maybe you’ll find yourself hooked, too (if you’re not already). Read on!

Six of the Best:

Crime and Punishment (1983)

Almost certainly the least typical film in the Kaurismaki canon, Crime and Punishment would be easy to overlook if it weren’t so brilliant. Ol’ Aki said he chose to adapt the seminal Dostoevsky novel as he wanted to aim high and fall far, but that’s just the characteristically dour self-deprecation talking as this is an astoundingly assured debut. A comic supporting turn from future Kaurismaki regular Matti Pellonpaa, as a blue collar Finn struggling to learn English, would hint at the director’s developing distinctive style.

Shadows in Paradise (1986)

Pellonpaa is still trying to get his head around the English language in Kaurismaki’s third feature, although this time he’s playing the lead as a lowly rubbish collector who strikes up an on/off relationship with a perennially fired shopgirl. His petulant flame is played by another Kaurismaki favourite, Kati Outinen, and together they form the director’s typically down-at-heel golden couple. Kaurismaki really had established his voice by the time of Shadows in Paradise, and the film shows many of his favoured themes coming fully to the fore; loneliness, loss, rotten luck, and unexpected redemption.

Ariel (1988)

Kaurismaki hits the road for the first of four road movies he has made thus far, each one as odd a variation on the genre as I’m sure you can imagine. Ariel tells the tale of Taisto, a miner whose father committs suicide, but not before bequeathing his son his prized Cadillac. It’s not long before Taisto and his new wheels are violently parted, however, and our hero chances upon an opportunity for revenge that may endanger his future hapiness further still should he take it.

Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989)

We’re on the road again, this time with none other than the Leningrad Cowboys, a Soviet rock group trying to break America under the shaky guiding hand of their shady tyrannical, alcoholic manager (Pellonpaa again, genius). Leningrad Cowboys Go America is certainly surreal and decidedly episodic, but the film still manages to be accessible due to its high count of top-notch visual gags and barnstorming (quite literally at one point) Red Army Rock ‘n’ Roll numbers. The Cowboys would prove to be Kaurismaki’s most enduring creation, and they bizarrely became a real band that still tours the world to this day.

I Hired a Contract Killer (1990)

Next stop London for a blacker-than-black comedy which sees a laid-off and lonely Frenchman turn to a professional hitman after he finds that, despite all his despair, he can’t quite muster the guts to do himself in. However, our hero has a change of heart after he finds love, but to his horror he also finds that he might have left it too late to call off the hit that he’s put on himself. Some wag once described this as an “Ealing comedy on downers” and that’s good enough for me, it also boasts a startlingly eclectic cast, which includes Truffaut’s onscreen alter-ego Jean-Pierre Leaud, British TV personality Margi Clarke, Performance/Star Wars character actor Kenneth Colley, and even a cameo appearance from Joe Strummer!

The Man Without a Past (2002)

Drawing on personal experience, the once homeless Kaurismaki bravely depicts Helsinki’s destitute community with both realism and warmth, as a man is badly beaten and wakes up without his memory or anywhere to go. Luckily, he befriends a loveable dog and finds love with a stern, yet kindly Salvation Army worker, so when his previous life eventually catches up with him, he finds that he wants to stay where he is. Without question The Man Without a Past is the greatest critical success of Kaurismaki’s career, winning the Grand Prix at Cannes, where Kati Outinen also desevervedly picked up Best Actress. They even gave a special award to the pooch!

What about the rest?: Calamari Union (1985) is a freewheeling, low-key surrealist oddity that represents Kaurismaki’s oddest hour… Without bearing quite as impressive results as his earlier take on Crime and Punishment, the director turned to literature again for the still enjoyable Hamlet Goes Business (1987)… The Match Factory Girl (1990) is the story of a blue collar girl’s quiet, sadistic revenge, and boasts Kati Outinen’s best performance to date… La Vie de Boheme (1992) is another literary adaptation, a charming tale of starving artists in Paris… and Take Care of Your Scarf, Tatiana (1994) is another road movie, in which two Finns pick up a couple of Russian girls and bond over vodka, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and as few words as possible… Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses (1994) is an inferior second instalment in the unruly rock ‘n’ roll saga, and sadly turned out to be the last Kaurismaki film Matti Pellonpaa would appear in before his death… Drifting Clouds (1996) is a beautifully put together tale of unemployment and heartache in Helsinki… and hats off to Kaurismaki for making a modern day silent film with the unusual Juha (1999)… Lights in the Dusk (2006) is a riveting, yet still typically melancholy, neo-noir… and the forthcoming Le Havre (2011), concerning a lost immigrant child’s adventures in France, looks very promising indeed.

In addition to all of the above, Kaurismaki has also (like most film directors) helmed a number of shorts, in addition to many videos for the Leningrad Cowboys. He has also worked on and acted in several films for his almost equally talented director brother Mika, but that’s a story for another month…

Hello and welcome to Director of the Month, your cut-out-and-keep guide to the very finest auteurs in filmland…

This month: Roman Polanski

Nationality: French/Polish

D.O.B: 18/08/1933

Years active: 1955 – present

Number of films (as director): 18

Do say: “With your beady eye for the macabre, and your cackling delight in the absurd, you are certainly one of the most distinctive directors of the latter half of the last century.”

Don’t say: “So, why didn’t you to go to America to pick up your Oscar that time?”

Who Hell He? Roman Polanski is one of a surprisingly small handful of living film directors whose name and persona are both widely known to the public at large. Of course, the more controversial aspects of his personal life are probably as much a reason for this fame as his actual films, but let’s not deny him his due as an auteur who has enjoyed both commercial and critical success on an almost equal level. Witness Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, for example; more than 40 years on, few films have managed to be quite so dark and cerebral whilst simultenously scoring so big at the box-office.

Influenced himself by some of cinema’s greatest cryptic visionairies, including  Hitchcock, Bunuel, and his fellow Pole and mentor Andrzej Wadja, Polanski has come to cast as large a shadow on cinema as almost anyone before or since. Few directors could claim to have inspired talents as seemingly disperate as family-friendly fantasist Tim Burton, and troubled, left-field dramatist Lars Von Trier, to name but two. Still, Polanski’s style remains resolutely his own, and while he hasn’t really performed anywhere near the peak of his powers since the late 70s, the cream of his filmography will always make for strange, intense and truly unique viewing.

Six of the best:

Knife in the Water (1962)

One of the great debuts in world cinema, Knife in the Water’s reputation has only been diminished by the strength of the work that immediately followed it. Setting out his stall with confidence, Polanski brings us a tale soaked through with the same queasy sense of threat and paranoia that would prevade all of his best work, as an unhappy couple invite a potentially dangerous stranger to join them on a boating trip. A nomination for Best Foreign Film at the 1963 Academy Awards would pave the young director’s way out of communist Poland.

Repulsion (1965)

Relocating to London, Polanski made an even greater splash with this entrancing, psycho-sexual chamber piece. Catherine Deneuve stars as a terrified young woman tormented by grotesque nightmares which slowly seep into reality after her jet-setting sister leaves her alone in their shared flat. A truly striking sequence in which pallid, deathly hands tear through a stone wall and grasp our heroine has become a much copied staple of the horror genre.

Cul-de-Sac (1966)

My own personal favourite Polanski film, and the one I think best displays his bizarre, beguilling style, with plenty of nods to literary influences such as Beckett and Pinter. Lionel Stander plays a thuggish, wounded criminal on-the-run, who hides out in the home of warring couple Donald Pleasance and Francoise Dorleac, before deciding to hold them hostage. Polish composer Krzysztof Komeda contributed four impeccable scores for Polanski before his untimely death in 1969, and the fuzzy, melancholy jazz in Cul-de-Sac represents the peak of their collaboration.

The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)

Originally entitled Dance of the Vampires, this somewhat light and frothy Hammer spoof rarely sees the light of day (no pun intended!) under that title, despite it’s director’s wishes to the contrary. I emphasise the somewhat when it comes to the light and frothy, as this is still a Polanski film, and for all the slapstick shenanigans featured therein, The Fearless Vampire Killers is still a typically offbeat effort complete with a memorably sour finale. Also, has there ever been another spoof that you could describe as truly haunting, visually dazzling, and masterfully orchestrated? Certainly not Hot Shots Part Deux, anyway.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

For his American debut, Polanski turned in this bona fide horror classic, which remains quite posibly his most famous film to this day. Mia Farrow stars as the New York apartment-dwelling mum-to-be, who wakes up to a living nightmare when she discovers her unscrupulous actor husband has sold both her womb and unborn babe to some local satanists! Ruth “Harold and Maude” Gordon brilliantly supplies the standard gallow’s humour as a doting, interfering and possibly demonic old lady next door.

Chinatown (1974)

Forever billed as the writer of “The Greatest Screenplay of All Time” as a result of Chinatown, Robert Towne in fact lobbied long and hard for this seminal neo-noir tragedy to have a happy ending! A mere five years after the notorious murder of his actress wife Sharon Tate, Polanski wouldn’t hear of it, and it was he who dreamt up the gloomy and nihilistic finale for this legendary film. Not to do Towne too much of a disservice, and his tale of a private investigator uncovering untold corruption in depression-era LA is a work of genius, but by refusing to compromise his enduringly dark world view Roman Polanski seized ownership of this film first and foremost.

What about the rest?: Macbeth (1971) is a handsome, if not quite brilliant, literary adaptation which may or may not refer to tragic events in Polanski’s real life (the Sharon Tate murders)… What? (1973) is the least acknowledged effort in the Polanski canon, a surreal, meandering sex comedy, starring Fellini’s onscreen alter-ego, Marcello Mastroianni… The Tenant (1976) is a fine, if slightly below-standard, film which forms a loose trilogy with Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, as Polanski himself stars as a psychologically tormented flat-dweller… Tess (1979) is a handsome, if not quite brilliant, literary adaptation which may or may not refer to unfortunate events in Polanski’s real life (the sexual assault case brought against him in America)… Pirates (1986) is a fun, historical romp that recalls aspects of The Fearless Vampire Killers without being anywhere near as good… Frantic (1988) is a not-bad-at-all mainstream thriller, written with long-time collaborator Gerard Brach and boasting a Morricone score… Bitter Moon (1992) is not to be confused with Button Moon, while to many it should be called Boring Moon, but this pre-Four Weddings Hugh Grant-starring drama ain’t all that bad… Death and the Maiden (1994) is another rather staid and heavy drama, this time with even less to recommend it… The Ninth Gate (1999) is a competent occult thriller, and a bit of a curate’s egg, being neither full return to form nor embarrassing attempt to relive former glories… The Pianist (2002) is Polanski’s most famous recent film, and sees him revisiting the occupied Poland of his youth via the best-selling autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman… Oliver Twist (2005) is yet another handsome, if this time rather far from brilliant, literary adaptation which presumably has little to do with any events in Polanski’s real life… and finally, The Ghost Writer (2010) is an upcoming adaptation of Robert Harris’ Blair-spearing political novel, The Ghost.

Pssst… Now you know all about Roman Polanski, why don’t you check out his Directorspective at the brilliant Barbican this month? Go on!

Yo, dudes! Ahem. I’ll bet you’re enjoying Downtown Week, ain’t ya? And, why not; after all, you’ve never seen anyone wear a T-shirt with ‘I Hate New York’ written on it, have you?

Part of the allure of the Big Apple is that it’s such a cinematic city. I really can’t think of another place that has been so frequently and so lovingly captured on celluloid. Walking around the place you often feel like you’ve wandered onto a humongous film set!

With that in mind, let’s take a look at the 15 greatest NYC films. I’ve decided to judge these films as much for their “New Yorkieness” as for their overall quality, so grab a Nathan’s hot dog and enjoy!

Why 15? Who wants to know, buddy?

15. The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979)

I’ll be straight with you, kids. I’ve got a bit of a love/hate thing going on with The Warriors. On the one hand, I can’t help but find it ever-so-slightly tiresome (it’s just one protracted fight sequence after another, is it not?) and as knuckle-headed as anything else this side of Star Wars. On the other hand, however, it’s vision of a semi-futuristic NYC overrun by tribalistic street gangs is occassionally enthralling; the foreboding opening shot of a subway train snaking past Coney Island’s famous Wonder Wheel, being a case in point.

14. Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984)

Quite possibly most 80s kids’ first introduction to New York on screen, and a real treat from a time when mainstream films still managed to be both witty and spectaculor (see also Gremlins and Raiders of the Lost Ark). King Kong atop the Empire State Building may be more famous, but for folk of my generation the only monster on the rampage through Downtown Manhattan that matters is the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man!

13. Manhattan (Woody Allen, 1979)

Again, another film I can’t claim to be the BIGGEST fan of, and I’d be surprised if there weren’t a few other people out there who find Woodsy’s in-film relationship with a 17-year-old schoolgirl a little bit, well, ewww. The famous opening montage of Manhattan itself, however, accompanied by George Gershwin’s evocative ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, is Allen’s finest moment as a “pure” filmmaker, and an unforgettable tribute to his beloved hometown.

12. The Naked City (Jules Dassin, 1948)

Rather unsurprisingly, the city known to many as “Gotham” always made a great location for Film Noir, and while The Naked City is far from the genre’s finest hour, it’s the one in which New York looms largest, near-title character as it is. While the plot is a little muddled and limp, the pulp verite shooting-style still looks electric, and a thrilling climax on the Williamsburg Bridge is well worth hanging around for.

11. Q: The Winged Serpent (Larry Cohen, 1982)

An unfairly overlooked film from an unfairly overlooked director, Q is a brilliantly written, tautly directed mini-horror-masterpiece which sees a deadly, ancient dragon picking off New Yorkers for it’s dinner. Imagine Jaws remoulded with the Manhattan skyline doubling for the deep blue sea, throw in a pair of fine performances from Michael Moriarty (jive-talking crim) and the late David Carradine (tough-talking cop), and off you fly!

10. Permanent Vacation (Jim Jarmusch, 1980)

The once near-immpossible to get hold of debut feature from Jim Jarmusch, this is scuzzy and meandering even by his standards. But then, if you don’t like that sort of thing, what are you doing watching a Jim Jarmusch film? A big noise on the NYC hipster scene at the turn of the 70s, this is a vivid snapshot of those times from a truly unique director.

9. Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)

What stay in New York would be complete without a trip to the Dakota Building? A breathtaking, neo-gothic apartment complex, the Dakota served both as the setting for Rosemary’s Baby, and the scene of John Lennon’s murder… Erm. Golly, Rosemary’s Baby is a great film, and the New York high-life has never been rendered in quite such a terrifying fashion as fashionable fawn Mia Farrow finds herself impregnated by the bloody devil himself! Imagine that as a storyline on Sex and The City!

8. Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)

Next time you find yourself being harassed by the parping horn of an in-coming NYC taxi, please don’t forget to smack both hands down on it’s bonnet and bellow “HEY! I’M WALKING HERE!” a la Dustin Hoffman’s would-be pimp Ratso Rizzo in a famous (improvised!) scene from Midnight Cowboy. Furthermore, should you happen across a happening party with various members of the Warhol Factory crew, as Rizzo and his naive charge Joe Buck (Jon Voight) do here, then award yourself some extra NYC brownie points.

7. Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick, 1957)

While not quite as fully Film Noir-y as The Naked City (there is a distinct lack of “broads” and guns, for starters), Sweet Smell of Success nevertheless does a better job of capturing post-war New York at it’s jazzy, smokey, dangerous best. Burt Lancaster is at the top of his game as the unscrupulous press columnist out to ruin his sister’s beau, and Tony Curtis is equally impressive as the conniving talent agent who hits the seedy clubs and dive-bars to dig up the dirt.

6. Smithereens (Susan Seidelman, 1982)

While Jim Jarmusch’s post-punk New York was a low-key, comic, and existential playground, future Desperately Seeking Susan director Seidelman had a more wary view of the same scene. That’s not to say Smithereens isn’t charming or witty (it’s both!), but it definitely bears the mark of a cautionary tale as a directionless punkette finds herself in a pickle following an attempt to piggyback to fame via a low-rent rock star played by original punk Richard Hell.

5. Dog Day Afternoon (Sidney Lumet, 1975)

In which Al Pacino plays a bank robber, engaged in an fastly unravelling hold-up on a sweltering Brooklyn afternoon in the hope of being able to raise enough funds to finance his gay lover’s sex change operation. It’s certainly a synopsis that makes you go “uh?”, and Dog Day Afternoon is a sassy, oddball delight from start to finish. Sure, most of the action is bank-bound and we don’t get to see too much of the city outside, but this corking ensemble piece is charged with enough electric Noo Yoik dialogue to light up Shea Stadium.

4. Johnny Suede (Tom DiCillo, 1991)

It’s those New York hipsters again, and although this lot are of an early-90s vintage, we soon see that they’ve not really tidied the place up much since the days of Siedelman and Jarmusch. Around the run-down environs of Williamsburg stalks 50s throwback Johnny Suede, searching in vain for fame and fortune, but forced to work by day as a painter and decorator in trendy local art galleries. DiCillo’s film is possibly the best film made yet about NYC trendies, thanks in no small part to the obvious glee it takes in pin-pricking their painfully affected personas, while still retaining enough heart to hope for their ultimate happiness.

3. Mean Streets (Martin Scorsese, 1973)

“You don’t make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets.” And not just any old streets, but the Mean Streets of New York. Look, you know it and I know it, Martin Scorsese (not Woody Allen, not Spike Lee) is NYC’s greatest celluloid poet. I could have put almost every one of the great man’s films on here (barring such non-Big Apple-based efforts as Casino, naturally), but it wouldn’t have been fair on everyone else. Mean Streets does deserve an extra-special mention, however, set as it is in the Little Italy locales of Scorsese’s own childhood.

2. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Joseph Sargent, 1974)

The story of a band of robber’s audacious attempt to “steal” a subway train, this is similar to Dog Day Afternoon in that it’s a New York film in which we get to see very little of the city’s streets. But since we get to spend most of our time down in the subway, kinda quite literally the “core” of the Big Apple, this white-knuckle thrill-ride of a film more than makes up for what we don’t get to see above ground. Also like Dog Day Afternoon, the authentic New York dialogue is hilarious and highly quotable, with practically every conversation an argument. “Put your pants on, Al. We’re goin’ Downtown!”

1. Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976)

Ok, so it’s that man Scorsese again, but how could it not be? The first time I ever went to New York, I watched Taxi Driver mere hours before my flight to get me in the mood. And although it is admittedly a rather sour view of the city, Taxi Driver is the ultimate New York film. I can’t think of the city without picture Travis Bickle’s taxi gliding through a cloud of steam. Then there’s Bernard Hermann’s eerie, dreamy score, which is in turn both unsettlingly relentless and moodily romantic… Very much like New York itself.

Oh, hello. Got any plans for Valentine’s Day? No? Yes, it is a bit vacuous and overly commercialised, isn’t it? And what’s that? You don’t have a girlfriend/boyfriend (cross off where apropriate)? What a shame! So you were thinking of watching 500 Days of Summer? Because it says in the trailer that it’s “not a love story”?

Well, don’t bother! Because a) It’s a pile o’ shite and b) It is a fucking love story, with a moronically contrived happy ending and everything. He meets another girl. She’s called, wait for it… Autumn. No shit.

So if you are really miserable this Valentine’s Day, and you want to watch something genuinely depressing, authentically despairing and 100% down on all that lovey-dovey stuff, steer well clear of that clap-trap and check out one of these ten gloomy films about failed affairs of the heart. Enjoy!

The Red Shoes (Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, 1948)

Young Vicky wants to dance, and ballet-master Lermontov sees no reason why she shouldn’t achieve her dream. But, he warns her, there is no time for hanky-panky, as dancing is a serious business which requires all of one’s attention. When Vicky falls for a young composer, Lermontov mercilessly wrenches them apart, and it all ends up with Vicky dancing her way off a hotel balcony and getting squished by a train. Ouch!

Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950)

Penniless Hollywood scribbler William Holden accepts a desperate gig as the in-house writer for mad, monkey-burying, washed-up silent screen star Gloria Swanson. Appalled to discover she has fallen in love with him, he runs away and attempts a nibble at his best mate’s bird instead. It’s not long before Swanson finds out and our hero finds himself floating face down in her swimming pool. Ouch again!

La Peau Douce (Francois Truffaut, 1964)

That’s French for “silken skin”… Oh-la-la! Truffaut delved into his own real-life experiences for this tale of a brainy writer who embarks on an affair with a naive young air hostess before his wife shoots him dead in a crowded Parisian cafe. Truffaut DID have an affair, but he DIDN’T get shot in a cafe. In case you were wondering.

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (Roger Corman, 1967)

Nothing much about romance here, but this cracking gangster film recounts the events of the bloodiest day of Al Capone’s tenure as America’s most notorious mob boss. However bad your Valentine’s day may be, at least you’re not being gunned to death in a mafia turf-war, eh? Jason Robards cackles his head off as Capone, and Dick Miller, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern fulfill the obligatory ”ooohhh! It’s him!” Corman quota.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (Robert Fuest, 1971)

“Love means never having to say you’re ugly” - This is worthy of inclusion on the grounds of that tagline alone, which is of course a nice, tongue-in-cheek twist on 70s weepie phenomena Love Story’s “Love means never having to say you’re sorry“. The legend that is Vincent Price is on over-the-top form here as the deformed Doc of the title, despatching those he holds responsible for the death of his wife in jaw-droppingly grisly and grandoise fashion. Basil Kirchin’s score is an absolute belter, too.

Innocents with Dirty Hands (Claude Chabrol, 1975)

I’ll be straight with you, this is far from Chabrol at his best. But, if you’re in a suitably sour mood, you may well enjoy watching a dangerous menage-a-trois unfold as Romy Schneider and her hunky bad boy lover plot to do away with hubby Rod Steiger and make off with his fortune. If not, at least you’ll always remember said bad boy lover first encountering la Schneider by mistakenly landing a kite on her arse in one of cinema’s most bizarre opening sequences!

Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)

Lots of witless critics caused me no end of irritation last year by continually comparing the dire 500 Days of Summer (no, I don’t care for it much) to the sublime Annie Hall. A tried and true testament to Woody Allen’s bittersweet genius (which he apparently misplaced the moment filming wrapped on this), nothing beats the scene in which our unlucky-in-love hero approaches a beamingly happy couple in the street and asks for the secret of their success. “I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say”, says the lady, before her male companion adds; “And I’m exactly the same way!”

From the Life of the Marionettes (Ingmar Bergman, 1980)

The miserable old Swede was bound to turn up at some point, wasn’t he? And, boy-oh-boy, had he jumped the shark by this stage! Still, this is a rather touching love story that should be just right for Valentine’s Day. It’s the age-old tale of boy meets girl, boy marries girl, boy and girl grow to resent one another, girl takes on multiple lovers, boy finds prostitute with same name as girl, boy murders prostitute, boy has sex with prostitute’s dead boy. Lovely!

My Bloody Valentine (George Mihalka, 1981)

A slasher film that uses Valentine’s Day as the seasonal backdrop to a series of gory murders? There simply had to be, after (Black) Christmas, Halloween, and Friday the 13th had all been taken. Like those other three, this has been remade (in grossly inferior fashion) in recent years, and it has often amused me to imagine that a horde of trendy youngsters who are none too clued up on their horror history may well have pondered; “Why did they name this horror film after a seminal  early-90s indie band?” Let’s make a slasher film called Shonen Knife and confuse ‘em even more!

Romeo + Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996)

“The Greatest Love Story of All Time”? No it’s not! If Romeo and Juliet were around today, they’d be a pair of moping, sad-sack emos, not the funky gang kids that Baz Luhrmann reimagines them as here. Take Romeo, he’s obsessed with that Rosalind bird at the start; who’s to say Juliet wasn’t just another passing fancy? And as for her, she’s prepared to abandon her mother and father for a bloke she’s only just met! Bloody kids!

Well, that’s your lot. Hope you have an UNhappy Valentine’s Day, if that’s what you’re after. If not, why not watch Dirty Dancing or something? Or Eyes Wide Shut?

x.