The Crime is Mine at the Rex Cinema, Berkhamsted

 

The full page review in September's Sight and Sound Magazine was enough to take me to Berkhamsted and the Rex Cinema. Based on the 1934 play Mon crime by Georges Berr and Louis Verneuil, it is the kind of farce in which the French specialise. Although it does start with someone being shot. The suspect is beautiful blonde Madeleine (Nadia Tereszkiewicz) who lives poorly in a tiny Paris apartment with budding lawyer Pauline (Rebecca Marder). Her trial is a farce as the two women turn it into a story about the oppression of women. 

Director Francois Ozon has adapted the book with Phillipe Piazzo. It is fast and clever. There are lots of laughs to be had along the way. And who should turn up over half way through but the wonderful Isabelle Huppert as the faded silent movie star Odette Chaumette. The men are far less sympathetic. From the lawyers, to the judge, the boyfriend, his father and an industrialist. It's all great fun. The scenery from the 1930's is wonderful, as are the costumes and cars. I loved it.

There is one very subtle idea of a one way relationship. Look at the lawyer Pauline's eyes as she looks up at Madeleine in the dock. Unrequited love that is never explained. Thank goodness. 

Sight and Sound Magazine - December 2024

 

EDITORIAL

Mike Williams tells us about film magazines and the loss of one of them, Total Film. "Magazines need a lot to go their way to survive".

OPENING SCENES

Guy Lodge describes how the Best International Feature at the Oscars is limited to one per country. (It used to be called Best Foreign Language Film). India has a controversial history , none more so than this year when All We Imagine As Light was dumped in favour of a comedy Laapataa Ladies. All because it was a European film taking place in India. There was an interesting section about six big movies that were not chosen by their country, including Anatomy of a Fall, Ran, Talk to Her and Three Colours Red. All these are great.

There was little interest in EDITOR'S CHOICE, IN PRODUCTION, NEWS, IN CONVERSATION, MUSINGS (David Lynch on music), MEAN SHEETS, and READER'S LETTERS.

THE LONG TAKE

The four regular articles in the Talkies section are always interesting. With the death of Maggie Smith, Pamela Hutchinson looks at her career in film. From winning the best actress Oscar for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and much later a best supporting actress win for California Suite. Some of her other films include The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (1987).

FLICK LIT

Nicole Flattery calls The Substance "tedious, over explanatory body-horror". She was far less impressed than I was.

TV EYE

Andrew Male talks about Alan Plater's three part adaptation of Chris Mullins' 1982 novel A Very British Coup. He asks "what would happen if a Marxist working class Labour leader came to power after a decade of  corrupt Tory rule". Ray MacAnally plays the left wing PM. 

THE MAGNIFICENT '74

Jessica Kiang recommends Gena Rowland's performance (dazzling and dangerous) in A Woman Under the Influence. "It's a film so singular, so cataclysmic and transcendent etc". "The riskiest screen performance of all time". "It disturbs still". Gena was nominated for best actress at the Oscars and won the Golden Globe. Directed by her husband John Cassavetes, it also starred Peter Falk.

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT

Six pages on the new film by Payal Kapadia (also on the front cover). It won the Grand Prix at Cannes this year. A portrait of Mumbia with three generations of women and the complications of arranged marriages. The first time an Indian film maker made it to Cannes in thirty years.

CONCLAVE

Another six pages, this time on the adaptation of the Robert Harris 2016 novel. A pope has died and Cardinal Thomas Laurence (Ralph Fiennes) has the unenviable task of organising his replacement. I didn't read any more as I want to see it in a couple of weeks. Looking forward to it.

BIRD

A long article on Andrea Arnold's new film "blending social and magic realism". Not sure.

DECONSTRUCTING BARRY

Barry Keoghan talks about his role in Bird. See my reviews of The Banshees of Inisherin and Saltburn.

SING THE CHANGES

The director of the musical drama Emilia Perez Jacques Audiard explains this trans "heavy metal-meets-hiphop-inflected musical". Am I too old for this? No nationwide release so would have to wait for maybe The Rex. 

FILM REVIEWS

These include All We Imagine As Light (see above), Christmas Eve at Miller's Point (Long Island stories), Heretic (I gave Hugh Grant's horror a miss even though it has The Hollies' best song), The Piano Lesson (no general release), Conclave (see above), In Her Place (1950's Chile looks interesting), Joy (only a short review but any Jack Thorne screenplay might be worth a lookout, especially starring Thomasin McKenzie, Bill Nighy and James Norton.) Steve McQueen's Blitz is all over the cinemas but Bird isn't.

DVD'S ETC

I may have seen a long tome ago The Oblong Box (1969 with Vincent Price. David Lynch's 1997 Lost Highway is the first in this trilogy.

Nothing in LOST AND FOUND, WIDER SCREEN or BOOKS.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

An interview from 2016 with one of my favourite actresses Isabelle Huppert. "Acting should always be less than more". She hates rehearsals, spontaneity being the key. Not sure about that seeing her in yesterdays The Crime is Mine at The Rex. She appeared on the cover of Sight and Sound Magazine in September 2016. But I have seen many of her movies and am looking out for more.

Nothing interesting in THIS MONTH IN .... 1953. 

ENDINGS looks at 1924's The Last Laugh. About a doorman at a grand city hotel.

The Garden in November

 

Very few flowers left in the garden at this time of year. Just the odd rose.

The campanula around the conservatory.

And a couple of flowers left on the Hypericum Hidcote can be seen now the surrounding low Hypericum has been pruned.

The Hostas at the side are a lovely colour before they lose their leaves.

The Beaver Moon

 

This photo was taken a couple of days before the full moon, this one being the Beaver Super Moon. Lots of photos on the internet, but this one peeks out behind the Pseudo Acacia behind the far fence.

Lee, Anora and The Wild Robot

 

I knew nothing about Lee Miller before I read the first review of this amazing film. So before I watched it I was aware of her wartime photography, but unprepared for the final harrowing act. Kate Winslet is excellent in the title role, an Oscar worthy performance, as is Andrea Risborough as Audrey Withers who was, at the time, editor of Vogue magazine and Lee's boss but also a close friend. But it's when Lee gets to the front line in Europe we find that is so unusual for a woman. Critic Wendy Ide says she is "fierce and committed". In the October issue of Sight and Sound, Sophia Satchell-Baeza confirms that "Winslet perfectly captures Lee's indominable spirit, foolhardy bravery and sense of righteous indignation". But I completely disagreed with one review that said it was "just a shame that such an unconventional life must be so conventionally told". American cinematographer Ellen Kuras in her first major directorial role was a wise choice.

One way to describe Anora is if you take the plot of Pretty Woman, but make a much younger version of Julia Roberts working in a club where she meets and performs for an even younger and stupider Richard Gere. So Ani (a brilliant Mikey Madison) works in a Brighton Beach dive where one of her clients is Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) the dissolute son of a Russian oligarch. He pays her $15,000 to be his girlfriend for a week. What follows gets the film it's eighteen certificate. But not just their crazy wedding in Las Vegas. Can she not see how stupid a person he is (constantly drunk or on drugs) or is she just thinking of the money. Probably.

But it's what happens after their return that turns the film into some kind of grand farce. Vanya's family heavies turn up to sort out the mess the son had made. But Vanya disappears leaving Ani to face the men alone. In the lead is Karren Karagulian as Toros, the Armenian fixer for the family. They all leave the luxury mansion in Brighton Beach in a search for Vanya that takes us to places such as Coney Island.  

The editing is occasionally so sharp as if there is so much to get through and the director needs to ensure this is not a three hour film. Sean Baker has created a brilliant film. Nobody dies, only one of the heavies is hurt (what did I say about a farce? A touch of Tarantino perhaps.) I have a whole page of notes about the final scene, but all I can say is that there are feelings from the last pair that are so subtle you cannot stop wondering. The very final scene in the car has all sorts of interpretations in the reviews. My view is that Ani is a complicated woman (especially given her job) and is just not used to a man being that nice to her. But maybe he isn't. 

One final note. The film is "shot in glorious widescreen". A treat to see in the cinema. No wonder it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Tom Shone in the Sunday Times gave it five stars and "The best film of the year so far". Oh yes, with added Take That. I must look out for the director's previous films of which Tangerine might be the best.

It must be years since I went to see an animated feature film. But it was the five star review in the Sunday Times (and other publications) that encouraged me to try. A Chris Sanders classic I was told. I have to say that the animation was superb. Of course there are no humans to compare, but all the animals are so life like, and very funny. I'm so glad I saw it on a really big screen. There is the odd scary bit where I can imagine some very young might get upset, but overall a good story about parenting and friendship. Of all the cast, I just loved Bill Nighy who only comes in later as Longneck, the elderly and wise Canada Goose. I even liked the big song Kiss the Sky by Maren Morris. Surprise, surprise.

Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe

 

We are in March 2022 so only a couple of years ago. Nina Stibbe is sixty, forty years since she was last in London as a twenty year old Au pair. Writing home to her friend in Leicestershire that became her first book "Love, Nina". Five more novels, all on my shelf, the last being "One Day I Shall Astonish The World" for which Nina attends quite a few book events and literary festivals. But Nina has left her home in Cornwall, maybe for good, at least for a year. That's the time she sets herself for her stay with the seriously successful writer Deborah (Debby) Mogach. Another nine of her novels on the shelf. She finally leaves Truro on 18th April (possibly for ever". No word about her husband, although lots about her children.

I have to say that I found this book mainly tedious. This is not the cheerful young writer from forty years ago. This is a diary of sorts, most of which is completely boring. There is some introspection about her relationships with men, some description of how London has changed from the litter to construction work everywhere and how much everything costs. There is one note that made me laugh about Debby's garden: "her potting compost is actually a bark chipping soil improver which means it drains instead of holding the moisture".

But the book rambles on and on about her daily life. Going to a preview of the theatrical adaptation of Debby's "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" is about as good as it gets. By page 130 (and we are not halfway) Nina tells us she is "not settled in London ....... might be time to go back to Cornwall". I just wish someone could have cut out at least two thirds. We do hear about her writing a new novel, but nothing I can find about any future publication. Although there was talk about the jacket design!
By the end of January she is talking about her "year in London almost up".

Then suddenly on 14th March 2023 her last quiz night at the Grafton Arms in Kentish Town. All rather sad. "I'm going to miss my team". Debby tells her "that's the thing about life. It gets good just as you're about to f... off". A last sad bit about getting a reminder from Hampstead Heath Swimming Pools that her season ticket is about to expire. On the 19th March Nina is packed to leave the next morning, but instead heads off so as not to have to say goodbye to Debby. First to the University of Leicester for a literary event and then on the 23rd at Gloucester Services on her way back to Cornwall, thinking about this "eventful" year.

Deborah Moggach and Nina Stibbe.

Art of Film on Sky Arts - The Birth of the Moguls

 

This is the story of the guys who started the big studios in Hollywood. Ian Nathan tells us about the light of California, and these figureheads who had huge control over everything that went onto film. One after another, the presenters gave us their stories. Kim Newman says that so many were from Europe: Russia, Poland, Germany and were predominantly Jewish. They seemed to all start owning cinemas in New York. 

Ian Nathan talks about German born Carl Lemmaele who officially created the first studio called Universal in Los Angeles in 1916 in the San Fernando Valley. All because of the light. He built the studio on farmland. Next came the big producers, Cecil B DeMille and Samuel Goldwyn. They started in the theatre and set up a film making business as an offshoot. The first feature film was The Squaw Man in 1914 directed by DeMille. 

In 1912, Adolf Zukor founded The Players Film Company. After building up a chain of cinemas, they started in film production with Paramount Studios. Ian Nathan then tells us about Louis B Mayer "the most famous of them all". Born in Russia, he bought his first movie theatre and in a few years had the largest cinema chain on the East Coast. After getting into film distribution, he set up his studio in Hollywood. Neil Norman said he was a real bully, a loud brash hustler. With his partners he founded MGM, or Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Mayer's partner was Irving Thalberg, an opposite to Mayer. A quiet creative producer who wanted better pictures even if that meant less of them. He even shied away from having his name on the credits. A great shame he died at 37.

We then hear about the Warner Brothers story. The three brothers (see photo above) opened a studio in Hollywood, the first to get sound. The fourth younger brother was Jack, the best production chief in Hollywood. By the 1930's he was running the show. But he was the most ruthless of the moguls, tyrannical and ruthless. In the end he even stitched up his own family.

Neil Norman talks about another bully, Harry Cohn. He was instrumental in the setting up of Columbia Studios, making lots of cheap films on a low budget. He had microphones everywhere so he could listen in to all that was going on. His big success was It Happened One Night". Next came Daryl Zanuck who was writing scripts from a very young age. He left Warners to set up 20th Century Pictures which eventually merged with Fox to become 20th century Fox. Zanuck made some big independent films, he was more of a collaborator with his directors than any of the other producers. 

Finally we are told about Walt Disney, how he pioneered animation, set up his own studio and eventually went into theme parks. Walt actually started out as an artist but always insisted his name was stamped on the top of every picture. Christina talked about his family orientated movies, and how he set up a team of animators to make the first animated feature in 1937 - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.