I Am Love / The King's Speech

Intoxicating, rapturous cinema is back with I AM LOVE (IO SONE L'AMORE), made in 2009 starring Tilda Swinton and directed by Luca Guadagnino. This is a stunning, absorbing drama about a wealthy Milanese family and recreates the great cinema experiences of the early 70s with those extraordinary films like Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST or De Sica's GARDEN OF THE FINZI CONTINIS. Tilda has described the film as being "Visconti on acid" but there is also a lot of Antonioni influences here.

We start with some widescreen images of the wealthy Recchi family coming together to celebrate the founder's birthday as servants prepare the dining room at their opulent villa, and he is going to announce who is going to replace him (shades of Visconti's THE DAMNED) - to the family's surprise he names his son Tancredi and grandson Edo (whom the rest feel is not really ready for such responsibility). Grandfather is played by Gabriele Ferzetti (Sandro in Antonioni's L'AVVENTURA) and his wife is the still very elegant and beautiful Marisa Berenson - so we have all these assocations with Antonioni, Visconti and Kubrick. Tilda Swinton's Emma (Tancredi's wife) is Russian actually but now part of the Milanese high society and she looks trememdous here, as dressed by Jill Sander. The music too is rapturous and engrossing and has introduced me to John Adams. In fact I shall have to get the soundtrack as an introduction to his work.

Emma gets to meet Antonio, a chef - Edo's friend whom he is going to open a restaurant with and they become attracted to each other which, after years of her staid marriage, leads to a passionate affair which will have far-reaching consequences [rather like that other Russian housewife discovering passion, Anna Karenina]. Antonio is a bit of an enigma, we don't really get to know him. Complications arise with the sale of their textile factory after the grandfather has died, and Emma and Antonio try to keep their passion secret, but Edo begins to suspect and realises when at a banquet Antonio serves up his childhood favourite soup Oucha which Emma used to make for him. They quarrel but he falls and hits his head .... and it all begins to spiral out of control. Emma is also fascinated by her daughter who comes out as a lesbian and starts a passion of her own. There are lots of marvellous moments, with great images and sound and Tilda is totally in control here - it is her best role since THE DEEP END. There are some great locations too around Milan and San Remo, and those Italians in London. Swinton is regal and looks terrific. There is a wonderful scene where she experiences the rapture of food as she eats a dish which Antonio has prepared for her before they get together - one can feel the look and taste of the dish she is savouring. I also like little touches like the light shining on those green glasses at the dinner table among those stunning interiors.

It is all impeccably directed, elegantly shot and is a sleek, polished upper-class melodrama with a great music track which all makes for fascinating cinema full of references to Italian cinema at its best. Highly recommended and I can't wait to experience it again. There is also an interlude with Swinton on the roof of the Milan cathedral, which has been used in many films (like Visconti's ROCCO) and which I visited myself back in '74. And the title? It could refer to the power of love to unlock passion leading to tragedy: "I am love - behold my terrible power to change everything".

THE KING'S SPEECH - the hit of the year here in the UK - is pretty conventional by comparison (I saw it and I AM LOVE the same day), but is marvellously well done, as directed by Tom Hooper, great period detail both with the Royals and ordinary folk, showing that social life back then was sitting around watching the wireless, in those 30s decors. Colin Firth dominates as the stammering Bertie, Duke of York, later King George VI - once his brother has abdicated to marry Mrs Simpson - and his developing relationship with the unconventional Australian speech therapist Lionel Logue, well played by Geoffrey Rush. Their scenes are really the core of the film and around them a great cast play out the other parts: Helena Bonham Carter is spot-on as the later Queen Mother - the two little princesses and the corgis are just right, Claire Bloom has a few moments and is perfect as the unbending Queen Mary, Derek Jacobi, Timothy Spall, Anthony Andrews, Michael Gambon, Jennifer Ehle (Elizabeth Bennett to Firth's Mr Darcy back in that excellent '90s BBC version of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE) round out the cast, with Guy Pearce as the new King besotted with the American divorcee. It does show the fear facing the Duke waiting to make his first speech in public at Wembley Stadium and the isolated life with no friends which is a monarch-in-waiting's lot and the destiny which he has to face, without much help from unyielding parents.



I had a childhood/early teen stammer myself so was unsure how I would react to the King's problems but it is handled very well - and not depicted as painful to hear as a real stammer can be (I just don't like and can't use that word stutter). The end credits tell us it is all true but some liberties have been taken - I would imagine there weren't the crowds outside the Palace as the King makes the climactic speech - but some artistic licence has to be allowed to create a rousing finale! Not though since Helen Mirren as THE QUEEN has an actor been so on course for a certain Oscar win - Firth is perfect here, and of course after being nominated and losing last year for playing gay in Tom Ford's A SINGLE MAN as well as playing royal and overcoming a disability! He must now be the pre-dominant English actor of our time. It would be nice to see Helena get some recognition as well, she has turned into a fascinating quirky presence.

They had Names back then ....

A must have every spring is the latest VANITY FAIR Hollywood issue with their array of stars on the gatefold sleeve, shot by Annie Leibovitz. This one above is from 6 or 7 years ago with that terrific lineup including Sophia, Vanessa, Meryl, Catherine, Penelope, Nicole, Cate, Kate etc.

The latest one is below, but how many can you recognise ? - apart from Ryan, Jake, Anne or James - oh, and Robert Duvall! ????

Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean

I just missed James Dean. I was 9 in 1955 and just starting to get interested in movies and magazines and popular culture but I was too late for Dean's original impact but remember the fuss afterwards - magazines about him, the movies being constantly revived and how he influenced those who followed ... I was just in time though for Elvis (the first record I ever held was a cousin's 78 of "Jailhouse Rock" and I loved him in LOVING YOU and those early films and listening to his hits on the radio and those picture of him in the army etc .... my real 'moment' though came when I was 17 in 1963 and the arrival of The Beatles - I had the hair and the "look" with the boots, the black sweater etc and that first album was amazing. But back to the '50s and James Dean ...

EAST OF EDEN and GIANT were (and still are) monumental pictures helmed as they are by Kazan and George Stevens at their peak and have that rich Warner Bros look and feel, with great soundtracks too. When I was in London in my late teens revival houses always had good runs of Dean films - it was terrific to be able to see EDEN on the large screen. Dean has so many terrific moments in it (from that electrifying start with him waiting on the kerb for Jo Van Fleet (tremendous, as ever) to go by), he projects his vulnerability perfectly, I love his scenes with Julie Harris but those scenes where the father rejects his money and the climax can be cringe-inducing now. One feels for poor Richard Davalos - it is a good role but he is so over-shadowed by Dean... It is a handsome production using only part of Steinbeck's book and the captures the early California of Salinas and Monterey.

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE seems lightweight by comparison despite being brilliantly directed by Nick Ray and that red jacket image of Dean here is as iconic as Marilyn's white dress (see for instance how Joni Mitchell uses it and Jimmy in her SHADOWS AND LIGHT concert dvd). It is of course the essence of teen watching and relating to Jimmy, Natalie and Sal here. Dean though could be anything we wanted - was he gay? or bisexual? - you could just project your fantasies onto him... he was the lost little boy, the best friend one never had. One of the most iconic images is that one of him walking in the rain - he certainly knew how to project the image he wanted...

He looks amazing in GIANT too - he and Elizabeth together look timelessly iconic and beautiful. It is a perfect Warner drama from Ferber's book starting in lush Maryland as Bick and Leslie (Rock and Liz are iconic here too) meet and marry and travel back to Texas and the Reata ranch and Dean's Jett as the surly ranch-hand of Little Reata, left to him by Luz, where he strikes oil - the older Jett is certainly an oddity but Dean carries it off (as the film meanders on with the new generation of Carroll Baker, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo and their idea of the older Hudson and Taylor).

Back then it must have been a rite of passage to go through the whole James Dean thing in one's teens or twenties, just like one did about Marilyn Monroe: the books, the films, the posters ... the legends about him in New York and Hollywood. it is nice to remember all that now. For someone who died so young the amount of photographs is amazing - all those images by Dennis Stock back in Fairmount, Indiana; dance class with Eartha Kitt, playing his bongos, his apartment, clubbing with Ursula Andress, with Pier Angeli etc.

There is that amazing story too by Alec Guinness about when he went to Hollywood in 1955 (to make THE SWAN with Grace Kelly) and his meeting with Dean and going for a ride on his motorcycle and then seeing that car and having the premonition of the disaster ahead and warning Dean not to drive it.

It was good too to get the dvd editions of the films with all those extras: the screen tests (including that one with Newman), costume tests, documentaries etc. There are some Dean songs too - the best probably being The Eagles "James Dean" on their "On The Border" album.

It is still an amazing story how this strange young actor burst out of the conformist early '50s establishing his name in the theatre and then in little over a year making three big films and being gone before the second one even opens! Like Marilyn he will always though be forever young, unlike Brando and Clift growing older and disappointing us - but we will always have Cal Trask, Jim Stark and Jett Rink. And then of course we had Altman's film of the play about the GIANT reunion, COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME JIMMY DEAN JIMMY DEAN. Amazingly, he would be 80 now....

Perfectly '60s (1): Blow-Up + Performance

One of the few remaining London revival houses ran a double bill the other day of BLOW-UP and PERFORMANCE – surely the double bill that encapsulates the swinging 60s.

I have written about Antonioni’s BLOW-UP here several times, as per labels, for me it remains a key movie and is still endlessly fascinating with those set-pieces of the park, the studio, blowing up the photos, and that picture of London emerging in the mid-60s which for those of us who were there (and I arrived in 1964 when I was 18) is so realistic with the new buildings and how the city looked. (I later lived near that restaurant they lunch at, in Chelsea). David Hemmings here is like how we used to look and dress then… the soundtrack by Herbie Hancock is also part of the film’s fabric and appeal, I have been playing it for decades, on vinyl, cd and now ipod. It was just THE movie to see and be part of when I was 21 in '67.




PERFORMANCE remains the more problematic title – filmed in 1968 by Donald Cammell and Nicholas Roeg it was shelved by Warner Bros until 1970 as they did not know what to do with it's decadence. It is still a disturbing film with layers one could peel off and still not get to its mysterious core. In a way it symbolises the end of the hippie dream as the drugs and violence escalate out of control. It begins with razor sharp editing as hard nut gangster James Fox who enjoys the violent life and casual sex and the perks it brings going too far and killing the man (in an incredibly powerful scene, like the murder in the woods in Bertolucci's THE CONFORMIST) who has violated him and having to go on the run from the head honcho Johnny Flowers. Chas (Fox) takes refuge, with his blond hair painted red, in the run-down mansion of reclusive rock star Mick Jagger who has lost his mojo and lives in dreamlike seclusion with two women (Anita Pallenberg and newcomer Michelle Breton) who minister to his needs in an exclusive part of Notting Hill. Chas of course gets drawn into their games and begins to lose his sense of reality as he too takes those hallucogenics.



Cammell’s previous script (as directed by Robert Parrish) the psychedelic crime caper DUFFY (also with Fox, and reviewed here, at Fox/York labels) is an amusing jaunt among the rich hippes in North Africa, which is also referenced here with those mysterious tribes out in the desert, as well as that fashionable Argentine writer Borges (whose image appears tellingly at the climax). Chas and the rock star seem to be changing identities so when the gangsters arrive at the end which one is being taken away? That’s it in a nutshell but it is a lot more elliptical and mysterious than a resume can begin to do justice to. It is still one to see and re-see … Cammell (1934-1996) went on to direct DEMON SEED (the one about the computer wanting to impregnate Julie Christie) which is his other best known credit. Roeg of course went on to be one of the key British directors of his era with those classics like WALKABOUT, DON’T LOOK NOW, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, BAD TIMING etc after photographing the likes of THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH and FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.

James Fox was of course one of the golden new stars of the '60s [like David Hemmings, Terence Stamp, Tom Courtenay etc] and has had a fascinating career. A child actor, he was perfect for the master of that Chelsea house in Losey's THE SERVANT, and followed it with films like THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES, KING RAT, THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, an Italian one I have not seen ARABELLA, ISADORA, DUFFY and then PERFORMANCE - the filming of which was it seems so traumatic for him he left acting for over a decade, but returned married with a family and continued in lots of different roles, becoming one of England's most respected elder actors - his son Lawrence now carries on the tradition (in series like LEWIS).

A double bill to savour then. By the time PERFORMANCE made it into the cinemas that late 60s era of pushing the boundaries regarding sex and violence was in full swing (with MIDNIGHT COWBOY winning best film), as per the magazine covers below:

Movies I love: Minnelli's Designing Debutante

"Watch out for the ravioli, Greg"!

I have written here previously [as per labels below] on those terrific '50s treats like Cukor's LES GIRLS, or Minnelli's DESIGNING WOMAN, THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE and the like. We did not have television when I was growing up in Ireland in the '50s (it did not arrive until the early '60s) so from 1957 onwards (when I was 11) we just had the cinema for our doses of glamorous people wearing great clothes and doing exciting glamorous things ....
here are some nice new images of Greg and Lauren and Dolores (just before she tips the ravioli into his lap) in that swellegant '57 treat DESIGNING WOMAN, and Rex and Kay (those Balmain gowns!) and Angela in '58 THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE (Angela was also great that year in THE LONG HOT SUMMER with Orson, Paul & Joanne, Lee Remick & Tony Francoisa) - and Kirk and Cyd in 1962's TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN.

Another Year

Mike Leigh's new film ANOTHER YEAR is certainly an engrossing experience and it lingers with one afterwards, as one feels one has really spent time with these people. It is perhaps Leigh's TOKYO STORY or hommage to Ozu's 1953 masterpiece? Leigh's camera too dispassionately observes his characters over the course of a year, divided into the four seasons.

Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen are Tom and Gerri, the happily married contented couple sliding into their late middle years, happy with their work and home and each other, and working on their garden allotment. By contrast their happiness highlights and maybe exacerbates the misery of their friends, particularly Mary (Lesley Manville), Gerri's colleague from work whose loneliness and misery increases through the year as she despairingly latches onto them. It seems by the end though that Tom and particularly Gerri won't be tolerating her much longer ....or are they patronising her?



The films begins (and ends) with a closeup of a woman in misery - it starts with Imelda Staunton (Leigh's VERA DRAKE, but only here briefly) - with her doctor who passes her on to counsellor Gerri, who then gives her notes to Mary to type. Mary visits Tom and Gerri regularly and they seem very patient with her. Mary is 40 going on 17 - who cannot hold a relationship and drinks too much - as she does here and has to be put to bed for the night. Their diffident son then arrives on the scene and seems to be humouring Mary (at a Summer party) and agrees to go out for a drink with her, but of course he doesn't and at the next gathering he has a girlfriend of his own, driving Mary further into despair. Another friend Ken - a desperate overweight middle aged man who is a coronary waiting to happen, with his continual eating, drinking and smoking - expresses interest in renewing a relationship with Mary but that is not on the cards. The saga of Mary's car sums up her inability to get to grips with her problems. There is a birth (the doctor is pregnant) and a funeral - Tom's brother's wife dies up in Nottingham, so the family head up for a rather unnecessary funeral sequence which is rather laboured. David Bradley is Ronnie the shattered husband whom they bring back to London for a while - then while they are out at the allotment Mary turns up in a wretched state and tries to establish a rapport with Ronnie, but Tom and Gerri are not pleased when they return. Turning up out of the blue is not really tolerated .... we end as the camera circles the family table as Tom, Gerri, the son and girlfriend chat among themselves with Ronnie and an anguished Mary left really to themselves. Family life can be cruel too, leaving out those not in the inner circle... one is reminded a few times of Ozu's TOKTO STORY and its refrain of "Isn't life disappointing".

It is certainly Leigh's best and most engrossing film since that masterpeice SECRETS AND LIES - the actors as usual do not seem to be acting at all but totally inhabit their roles, which of course they create in a workshop with Leigh before commencing shooting. Lesley Manville is totally astounding and will have to clear her mantlepiece for all those awards she should be getting for the bleak life she unfolds here.

Movies I love: Heaven Knows, Mr Allison

Despite having the dvd I can always settle down and watch Johnv Huston's 1957 HEAVEN KNOWS, MR ALLISION whenever it appears on tv, so I did again this afternoon. It is simply an enduring pleasure and for me better than his previous THE AFRICAN QUEEN (of which is really a rethread, but somehow it works better), scripted as it is by veteran John Lee Mahin, and filmed in Tobago.

Ten years earlier Deborah Kerr had played Sister Clodagh when aged 26 in Michael Powell's enduring classic BLACK NARCISSUS - here she is Sister Angela, a much less complex novice Irish nun whom marine Robert Mitchum finds alone on the pacific island his boat drifts to - he being the only survivor from his ship. The war in the pacific rages around them, it is 1944. The interplay between the two characters is the story as they get used to each other and then as the Japanese get nearer and on to the island they do their bit to fight back, but just as they are on the point of being discovered in their cave ..... lovely moments along the way include the tough marine and not so gentle nun getting used to the island's hardships (eating raw fish etc) and its loneliness. The scene where they catch the turtle eches that similar scene with Mitch and Monroe catching the moose in RIVER OF NO RETURN. The marine develops feelings for Sister Angela but - they seem trapped by their respective roles. There is tension and excitement as he infiltrates the enemy camp for aid for the delirious nun who runs away into the rain resisting his drunken advances ... and the ending is just perfect. It is tough, it is gentle, it is perfect Huston the two stars shade their roles perfectly.

It is a two hander really and Kerr and Mitchum play it just right - the great rapport they have here is also evident in Zinnemann's 1960 THE SUNDOWNERS set in Australia and another enduring pleasure, Kerr really should have won the best actress that year (as indeed should have her friend Jean Simmons for ELMER GANTRY, it should have been a tie, as the culmination of their great years). Kerr and Mitch were also in the 1960 Donen souffle THE GRASS IS GREENER with Grant and Simmons making up the starry quartet - and they also did a later tv film REUNION AT FARNBOROUGH, which I caught a glimpse of once.

Beginning in the '40s the '50s was really Kerr's decade, averaging 2 films a year (3 in 1959) and she had some great roles in the '60s as well (THE INNOCENTS, Huston's NIGHT OF THE IGUANA) before her matronly era. I also saw her in a play (THE DAY AFTER THE FAIR from a Thomas Hardy story) in London 1972. Huston too had a good run in the late '50s and into the '60s, with this, his lean western THE UNFORGIVEN, THE MISFITS, and NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, classics all - and I still have to see his 1963 FREUD!

I caught up with Huston in 1972 [at the height of my obsession with THE MISFITS] at London's National Film Theatre when he was promoting his fascinating FAT CITY - it was marvellous just to watch and listen to this bigger than life character...