One-Hundred Favourite Films - Part Six

Ongoing response to The Dancing Image "100 (of Your) Favourite Movies" meme-that's-not-a-meme, presented here in a loosely alphabetical order. I'm posting the series in reverse formation in an attempt to maintain the original continuity, from A to Z.

Jacquot de Nantes
Directed by Agnès Varda - 1991

The conventional coming-of-age story, which is used to foreground the more personal aspects of the film, is richly compelling. The atmosphere of these places and the interaction between characters, although vague in some respects, have a recognisable authenticity that comes from the close relationship between the director Agnès Varda and her subject Jacques Demy. In Jacquot de Nantes, the main narrative about childhood, first-love, the love of cinema and the general friction of family life, is used to create a context for this tribute to Demy, where the link between the experiences of his childhood and the later expressions of his art is created through a combination of dramatisation, documentary and personal dissertation.

What makes the film so appealing to me is not just the story, but the connection that is felt with the central character; this representation of the young Demy. Like the adolescent 'Jacquot' - the main protagonist of Varda's film - I grew up with the ritual of the cinema, with the escape of it; that dream of one day inventing stories of your own and adapting them with some friends and borrowed camera. I didn't grow-up to be Jacques Demy or anyone else of any great significance, but the passion was still the same. In the enthusiasm and the obsession of this character I recognise aspects of myself. It is this ability to identify with the central character that creates a feeling of devastating tragedy in the latter half of the film. As much as this is a story of life and exuberance, triumph and adventure, the final contrast - as we see images of the dramatised 'Jacquot' at the beginning of his journey, inter-cut with archival footage of the middle-aged Demy, already nearing the end - is absolutely brutal in what it communicates about life and death, and the role that art plays in documenting the two.

While the coming-of-age aspect of the story is as powerful as anything in films like I Was Born, But... (1932), The 400 Blows (1959) and King of the Hill (1993), it is the personal motivations of Varda that make the film unforgettable. Through her sensitive gaze, Jacquot de Nantes becomes more than just a story that unfolds for our entertainment, but an attempt by Varda to keep a part of her ailing husband alive through their art and his recollections of it. In this respect, it is difficult to imagine another film that truly captures - on a purely creative level - the love of one person for another; where the image of this man, frail and decayed, recorded without pity, speaks of life-long commitment that only the 'moving image' can convey.

JFK
Directed by Oliver Stone - 1991

The film, at its heart, is an investigation, full of arguments and conjecture, some truth and a lot of fiction. Though based loosely on fact it is important to see the film, not as a statement on how things were, but as a detective story; one that uses the basis of a real-life event and characters adapted from history to spin a work of paranoid fantasy; where the experimentation of the filmmaking 'form' creates a feeling of intense suspicion, as if every action or interaction is under close scrutiny or interrogation. As such, it is best to categorise the film as a work of "historical fiction", taking its various conspiracy theories with a grain of salt and evaluating its bold combination of genuine fact and audacious invention alongside the similar concocted 'truths' of those found in films like Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and It Happened Here (1966).

As a detective story, the film wastes no time engaging its audience in the machinations of its plot; beginning with the reactions to the event - the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, November 1963 - before following the investigation through a series of necessary complications, pointing out the major players (suspects, witnesses, truth-seekers) and eventually forming a rough outline for the argument that Stone and his co-writer Zachary Sklar are attempting to make. Naturally, one can dismiss all of this as complete speculation, if not outright invention, but Stone's fierce approach to the film and his commitment to the theories supported by his true-life protagonist Jim Garrison means that the actual dramatic development of the investigation is never less than thrilling.

However, JFK is not simply an investigation into the assassination, or even the various theories that surround it, but an investigation into how cinema works. The subject-matter necessitates this approach - Kennedy's death is forever caught within the frames of Zapruder's home movie (the camera lens and the rifle-scope forever entwined) - meaning that the power of the film is not in its courtroom speeches, nor in its political finger-pointing, but in its images and its editing; its use of sound, colour and movement. The scrutiny of the form is rigorous, closer to Brakhage or Godard in the creation of ideas, emotions, arguments and opinions via the use of associative editing, visual metaphors and repeated cross-cutting; the juxtapositions of footage, from colour to black-and-white, 8mm to 35mm, subliminal images, genre references and actual vérité, creating the feeling of a disorientating kaleidoscope of jostling interpretations.

Every shot, every cut, underlines some aspect of Stone's theory, the nature of his characters or the inherent "truth" or "untruth" of a situation, to expose the deceit of cinema - the lie, the construction, the manipulation - in order to create doubt and uncertainly; making the audience as attentive to the small details, the facts and figures, as the characters on screen. Even if we were to dismiss Stone's political ideas as pure hogwash, there is no denying the film's place as one of the most daring and technically audacious Hollywood movies of the last thirty years.

Judex
Directed by Georges Franju - 1963

As an adventure story, full of cloak and dagger mystery, rooftop wanderings and backroom conspiracies, Judex is as captivating as any recent comic-book picture or Hollywood "event." Though effectively a truncated remake of the 1916 silent serial by Louis Feuillade, this compelling reimagining of the original text is made more alluring by the imaginative direction of Georges Franju, who fills the film with the same lyrical gestures and the sense of fabled fatalism that made his earlier film Eyes Without a Face (1960) so effective and unforgettable. Like that particular film, Judex has the feel of 'poetic realism'; its striking images of masked avengers and deceptive cat-burglars attempting to outwit one another across a series of thrilling set-pieces feeling both "realistic" - in the sense of making a plausible logic within the world that is created - but also seeming in a way "dreamlike"; a subconscious adventure through the conduits of the mind.

If this sounds pretentious then I apologise. The film certainly doesn't require such affected elucidation, but the power of Franju's images is undoubtedly worthy of the strongest of superlatives. Make no mistake, the film is accessible, and functions primarily as a work of pure entertainment. Like Nuits Rouges (1974) - Franju's other great tribute to the silent serials of Feuillade - Judex is simply a great example of narrative storytelling. A proto-blockbuster that draws us into its sinister web of intrigue, murder and suspense, its conspiracies and the lives of its characters, only to confound us with images that resonate with a heavy influence of surrealism and the fantastique.

Kings of the Road
Directed by Wim Wenders - 1976

Though the title is most often presented in English as Kings of the Road - a reference to the 1964 song by Roger Miller, sung by the central characters towards the end of the film - it is the direct translation of the original German title, Im Lauf der Zeit - or In the Course of Time - that best captures the overall feeling of the film; its sense of loneliness and regret - a symptom of nostalgia - and the distance, as in memory, but also as reference to the journey that is taken. Wenders' fascination with the "road movie" sub-genre seems to be an acknowledgement of the progressive aspect of narrative cinema - which starts at the beginning and moves in a straight-line towards its inevitable conclusion - but also to the emotional journey that is shared by both the audience and the on-screen protagonists during the course of the film.

Like so many of the great masterpieces of cinema history, Kings of the Road is a film that asks the question: "how do we live?" Its characters - haunted by ghosts from the past; each attempting to escape from their own fears, failures and responsibilities - find a sense of freedom and connection in this journey that takes them through a country still marked by tragedy; from hopelessness towards something else. A new beginning maybe, where the characters, having taken this expedition and reflected on the course of their lives, are now able to put behind them the various emotional traumas that they've carried with them for so many years. Again, 'the journey', metaphorically, is both an escape and an arrival. As the characters hit the road in an attempt to evade some feeling of boredom or desperation, there is also a hope of arriving somewhere else - be it a place or a particular state of mind - that offers them the possibility of a second chance.

The themes of the film run much deeper than this meagre note might suggest. While the story of these two men at a crossroads in their lives might hint at the same existential observations of the best of Antonioni, the emphasis on place and the idea of reclaiming history is something that carries a far greater significance here. In a sense, this is a film about the tragedy of a lost generation with no fathers to look up to. This disconnection between the post-war generation and their own culture is implicit in Hanns Zischler's attempts to reconcile with his father, and to understand his intense feeling of hatred towards the man, which has worsened since childhood. Another aspect of this theme is inherent in the role of Rüdiger Vogler's cinema-projector repairman, whose part in the film hints at the sad decline of the small-town movie industry, replaced by the larger multiplexes, and the allure of the Hollywood machine.

Lady in the Water
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan - 2006

In many ways, Shyamalan's film could be seen as a remake of Steven Spielberg's E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982). The similarities are many. In both films a lonely misfit discovers a strange creature living in his back garden and is forced to become a kind of protector, aiding the creature in its quest. In both films the narrative hinges on an attempt to help this creature return to its own universe, before the experience of living leaves it too weak, emotionally and physically, to make the trip back home. In both films the creature dies only to be resurrected by the conviction of the central character, illustrating an act of faith analogous to that of religious belief, but more appropriately to the relationship between art and the viewer.

By changing the protagonist from a child to a middle-aged man, Shyamalan daringly takes the general narrative of Spielberg's film out of the realm of children's fantasy and places it squarely in a world that exists beyond the confines of our own imaginations. The world of the film is, on one level, a world of 'scrunts', 'narfs' and giant eagles soaring from the heavens; but it's also a world of loneliness, bereavement, sadness and regret. While the characters engage in the more recognisable fantasy element of the plot, the background of the film contains news reports on the war in Iraq, discussions of fear and suspicion, and that continual image of people locked away in apartment buildings that become like prisons; garrisons from the outside world. The function of the title character - this creature, fittingly named 'Story' - is to bring these characters out of their shared seclusion; to give them a purpose, a 'cause', something to believe in: the way stories generally do.

The supporting characters fall into two types: 'writers' and 'viewers.' The development of the plot mirrors the way stories (and by extension films) are generally constructed, developed and critiqued, culminating in an on-screen act of faith that describes, in visual terms, the role that audiences play in bringing these stories to life. It has always been my belief that a film, or any work of art, is essentially a dead object. It requires an audience to breathe life into it through the subjective act of viewing. It is this aspect of Lady in the Water that remains the most powerful. The image of the resurrection - which for me comes closer than any other film to recalling the spectacle of genuine transcendence found in Carl Theodor Dreyer's masterpiece Ordet (1955) - is possibly one of the most moving dramatisation of the relationship between 'author' and 'creation', 'viewer' and 'viewed.'

As Giamatti cradles the lifeless body of the titular character in his wounded arms, his outpouring of grief, heartache and personal regret reignites the spark of life within her. By engaging his own feelings and fears with such a painful and immodest vulnerability, he literally brings (this) 'Story' back to life. This act of faith, as much a metaphor for how fiction (literary and cinematic) is created - first by the writer's unwavering belief in his story, then by the audience's decision to invest a part of their own lives in the material - represents a moment of overwhelming optimism. An optimism that is intended to function, much like the appearance of Story within the midst of this turmoil, as a vessel, to bring hope to the hopeless.

L'amour braque
Directed by Andrzej Żuławski - 1985

Four masked-men in overalls decide to rob a bank. From the outset, chaos and confusion; men flying through the air, broken windows and clouds of coloured gas. One of the bank robbers steps forward brandishing a sub-machinegun and wearing the 'face' of Scrooge McDuck. He pulls a befuddled teller across the counter, points the gun at his head and whispers with a straight-faced intent: "quack, quack... quack, quack, quuuuack" Like almost everything in the film, this moment is both 'wacky' and disturbing, comic-like and insane. A jumble of contradictions, like the entire film, which throughout moves to the throbbing rhythms of its baroque-n-roll soundtrack, where the manic strings and grinding guitar seem to match the general volume of intensity depicted on-screen.

Like the majority of Żuławski's films, L'amour Braque is a work of shrieking physical hysteria. A tortured cry into the withering face of an audience too numb to the conventions of contemporary cinema to feel anything less than supercilious condemnation when presented with something beyond easy categorisation or critique. The intent of the film, like the intent of several other movies by Żuławski, is therefore to inhabit a particular mindset that defines the very core of the film; turning every scene, movement and frame into a subjective expression of the character's wants, needs, thoughts and desires. The unknowable connotations of the title - mad love, damaged love, a love without boundaries, destructive, consuming; a love strong enough to burn a hole through the screen - swirl around every sequence, infecting the characters who behave like dancers in a musical, intensely physical, but violent too.

Although ostensibly an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's 1869 novel The Idiot, the film - adapted by Żuławski and Etienne Roda-Gil - is more than a mere dramatisation; it is a subconscious explosion, as much an extension of the psychological atrocity of the director's debut work, The Third Part of the Night (1971), and the physical transmutations of his most famous film, Possession (1981). However, what is most fascinating about L'amour braque, beyond its audacious disregard for convention, is the relationship between the film and its audience. Throughout, characters address the screen, breaking the barrier between the viewer and the viewed as they plead with us, declare their feelings, rant, rave and eventually spit in our faces. As Chekhov's Seagull mounts the stage and the screen is turned to cinders, we're left to contemplate the significance of what we've seen.

Last Days
Directed by Gus Van Sant - 2005

The film begins with a contemplative scene of man against the elements; something primal, or primeval. In presentation, the protagonist is stripped of all modern accessories; at-one with nature. As he washes himself in the waters of the spring or fumbles through the forest, like a prehistoric figure on an endless quest for fire, the man appears strangely at ease in his surroundings, as if this excursion into a world without commitments offers the only respite from the noise and confusion of a life that has sadly lost all meaning.

It's a remarkable way to begin a film that functions, on the most obvious level, as a dramatisation of the death of Kurt Cobain, but it makes sense in establishing the state of mind of this character - which defines the very experience of the film, or our journey through it - where the solitary woodland trek presents a kind of literal escape from the trappings of the modern world, the responsibilities and the general bull-shit, towards something more innocent and pure. Throughout the film there is a sense that this character is someone bored by the experience of living; someone already dead. In Van Sant's depiction - and the intense portrayal of Michael Pitt - this is a character more like a revenant than a human being; an empty vessel drifting through the artefacts of an existence, unable to reconnect.

Though heavily criticised for its use of the Cobain mythology, Last Days is one of the finest works of subjective cinema; a film that places the audience right inside the narrative, alongside the character, making us conscious of the monotony and the emptiness of his lifestyle, or the inability to find pleasure in things. The boredom, the complete lack of awareness or connection to anyone or anything beyond marking time is communicated with such subtlety and sensitivity that the ending, when it occurs, seems less like a tragedy than a relief.

The Last of England
Directed by Derek Jarman - 1987

"Imprisoned memories prowl through the dark. No - fuck it! They scatter like rats. Dead souls, ratta-patta-patta, into the silence. Ashes drift in the back of the skull. A goblin parts the curtains with a slant-eyed chuckle - Panic! - I blink as he vanishes in the shadows. Hint of prophetic cat's eyes. The dust settles thick, so by five when I struggle to the freezing bathroom, I leave footprints for others to excavate. They say the ice age is coming. The weather's changed. The air stutters - tic, tic, tic, tic, tic - rattle of a death-watch beetle on the sad slate roof. Outside in the leaden hail, the swan of Avon dies a syncopated death..."

"A black frost grips July by the throat. We pull the curtains tight over the dawn and shiver by empty grates. The household Gods have departed. No one remembers quite when. Poppies and corn-cockle have long been forgotten here, like the boys who died in Flanders. Their names erased by a late frost, which gripped the village-cross. Spring lapped the fields in arsenic green. The oaks died this year! On every green hill the mourners stand and weep for the last of England."

It may seem like laziness to quote a large chunk of the film's narration as justification of this inclusion, but Jarman's film provides its own commentary. It is a film that demands the experience of viewing, the rush of colour, the sound and the fury. An impossible film to love in the conventional sense, but one that reminds me of the endless possibilities provided by film, as an artistic medium. The expression, like a voice - like a scream of anguish against the chill wind of indifference - is 'spoken' through the combination of sound and image; a mixed-media montage that attempts to express the state of England as a sensory hallucination, acrid and acidic; a meeting between Eisenstein and Woolf.

Lisbon Story
Directed by Wim Wenders - 1994

"We want to imitate God. This is why there are artists. Artists want to recreate the world, as if they were small Gods. They constantly re-think history, life, things that happen in the world and things that we think have happened, but only because we believe... Because, after all, we believe in memory, because everything has already passed. But who can be sure that what we think happened really did? Therefore, this world, this supposition, is an illusion. The only real thing is memory. But memory is an invention. Deep down, memory is... I mean, in the cinema, the camera can capture a moment, but that moment has already passed. What the cinema does is draw a shadow of that moment. But we're no longer sure that the moment ever existed outside the film. Or is the film proof that the moment existed? I don't know..."

Lisbon Story - the title suggesting the influence of Ozu, but also the rich heritage of Portuguese cinema; from Leitão de Barros and Manoel de Oliveira, to João César Monteiro and António da Cunha Telles - is, like most of Wenders' greatest films, about the allure of a place. The sights and sounds and the spirit of the people, which define the experience for those of us discovering a particular destination for the very first time. However, it's also a film very much concerned with the history of cinema and the potential future of it; bringing together the two great avatars of Wenders' career - Rüdiger Vogler's Phillip Winter from Alice in the Cities (1974) and Patrick Bauchau's tortured film-director Friedrich Monroe from The State of Things (1982) - and having them engage in a metaphorical discussion about the meaning of film, the necessity of it, the ability of films to draw a shadow around memories, or to give meaning to those memories beyond the 'objective', and the meaning of images at a time when viewers are no longer able to trust what they see.

In this respect, the construction of the film could be described as part-travelogue, part-character study and part-film about the nature of filmmaking; a presentation best illustrated by the title sequence, in which the protagonist travels from Frankfurt to Lisbon, observing the landscape through the car's windshield - which itself becomes a miniature cinema screen - with the radio - a mix of pop music and disk-jockey jargon - providing the soundtrack. It's an idea also reflected in the role of the protagonist - a sound-recordist - and his interactions with the local children, who swarm about him with their handheld video cameras, recording everything, while Winter creates his vast stories of Cowboys & Indians from the sounds of household items. A subtle and moving tribute to the great unsung magicians of the post-silent cinema, able to conjure images out of thin air.

The Marquise of O
Directed by Éric Rohmer - 1976

The name 'Éric Rohmer' tends to be followed by words like "talkative", "contemporary", "observational", "character-driven" and "naturalistic." Although these well-worn critical phrases do describe one facet of the director's work quite adequately - for instance his Six Moral Tales and the Comedies and Proverbs series - there is another side to Rohmer's work that is just as relevant but rarely discussed. A more ornate or theatrically-minded personality concerned with the use of form to create not only a framework but a deconstruction of the original text.

This approach is best illustrated by the grand 'artificial' facades of his two most eclectic films, Perceval le Gallois (1978) and The Lady and the Duke (2001), and in the comparatively more conventional stylisations of this film, The Marquis of O. One of Rohmer's earliest historical films, The Marquis of O is not as overly theatrical as his later entries in the genre, but compared to his more recognisable, naturalistic approach, as evident in films like Love in the Afternoon (1972) or The Aviator's Wife (1981), there is a noticeably more ornamental or perhaps even "painterly" focus on static, rigorously prearranged compositions, the placement of actors and an almost omnipotent golden hue (care of cinematographer Néstor Almendros) that saturates every scene; contrasting the surface beauty of the images with the emotional brutality of the book.

The film, which deals with the repercussions of a terrible crime that seems, in some respects, to hint at the possible occurrence of a miraculous event, benefits greatly from the mannered lead performances of Edith Clever and Bruno Ganz, who each present the various sides of characters that appear, from the outside, to be sympathetic victims caught-up in the machinations of a situation beyond their control, but at the same time creating a believable context for the more sinister psychological interpretation that suggests itself during the final act.

The approach of the film - in which the play of light, the texture of it, establishes a rich contrast between the influence of magical realism, religious belief, faith and also condemnation - makes The Marquis of O one of Rohmer's most beautiful films, cinematically speaking; but also one of his most powerful films about the human condition, and about the nature of fiction in general.

Wanted on DVD [Region 2 Edition]

In which the master-thief, Irma Vep, is enlisted by the author to help raid the vaults and offices of the world's major distributors, in a futile attempt to reclaim the missing treasures of the silver screen.

Inspired by the highly interesting "M.I.A. on Region 1 DVD Tribute Month", currently winding itself down at the five-star blogspot Moon in the Gutter, I decided to compile my own short list of currently unavailable DVD titles - albeit, in the PAL/Region 2 format. This was an obvious decision, simply for the fact that I'm not entirely sure what is and is not available in the NTSC sector, but also because I would like to highlight how comparatively ill-served the British home-cinema market has often seemed (in comparison to France, Germany, Canada and the United States) when it comes to the release of even the most mainstream of challenging, thought-provoking cinema. 

It goes without saying that viewers in the US get a far better deal than those of us in the UK. After all, this is a country that had to wait almost thirty years to see the likes of A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Exorcist (1973) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) find a release on VHS (by which time we were well into the age of the Digital Versatile Disc). However, the last few years have seen a massive increase in the number of previously hard to find works by filmmakers such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Leos Carax, Miklós Jancsó, Maurice Pialat, Nagisa Oshima, Kaneto Shindō, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Louis Feuillade and F. W. Murnau, to name a select few. The fact that you can now walk into any major high-street DVD retailer (or browse online) and pick up a copy of Bela Tarr's seven-hour masterpiece Sátántangó (1994), or the complete Les Vampires (1915), or Matsumoto's dazzling Funeral Parade of Roses (Bara no soretsu, 1969), or the uncut version of Histoire(s) du cinema (1988-1998) suggest to me that the release of such films discussed or alluded to in this particular post will someday become a reality. 

After all, it's hard to believe that as recent as six years ago there wasn't a single Fassbinder release on the UK market. Now, there are four box-sets available (comprising 25 films in total) from the companies Arrow Films and Artificial Eye. Not to mention the complete 15½ hour version of the television series Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) released by Second Sight Films Ltd. Likewise, the always interesting Jacques Rivette, who, for many years was considered the unsung member of the Nouvelle Vague/Cahiers du cinéma group, is now spoken of alongside Godard as the most remarkable filmmaker to emerge during that entire period (more so than the immediately successful Truffaut). Nine of Rivette's films are currently available on Region 2 release, including his best known film, the playful, surrealist mystery Céline and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont en bateau, 1974): a film that I will eventually be writing about on this very blog. The release of Rivette on DVD is a big deal; especially when we begin to see little-known gems such as Love on the Ground (L'Amour par terre, 1984) and The Gang of Four (La Bande des quatre, 1988) getting the full-blown director's cut treatment. It makes me hopeful that one day soon we may see a definitive release of the near-legendary L'Amour fou (1969), or the unwieldy, thirteen-part, made for television serial, Out 1 (1971).

For the time being, I have chosen to concentrate on only five films that rank (for whatever reason) amongst my personal favourites, and which I have enough of an opinion/understanding of to be able to write a short explanation that will better elucidate WHY these films (more than any) deserve the attention currently denied to them by the lack of domestic availability.

Possession (1981)

Directed by Andrzej Zulawski, this terrifying psychological drama remains one of the most unforgettable horror films produced during the period that would later become synonymous (at least in the UK) with the rise of the "video nasties". However, to compare Zulawski's film to something like The Burning (1981) or Lucio Fulci's The New York Ripper (Lo squartatore di New York, 1982) does, in my mind, a great disservice to the enormous power of Zulawski's work and to the film in question. Despite its reputation, Possession is a staggering experience worthy of discussion alongside the creative output of masters like Bergman and Antonioni; with Zulawski channelling that same feeling of internal, existential crisis and spatial alienation central to such films as Persona (1966) or The Red Desert (Il deserto rosso, 1964), to create a film that is rich with moments of unbridled cinematic expression, passion and imagination.

Drawing on the end of his own marriage to the actress Małgorzata Braunek for inspiration, Zulawski was able to document the breakdown in communication between his two central characters - Anna and Mark, the rapidly disintegrating couple brilliantly portrayed by Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neil - with a great sense of drama and compassion. He is smart enough to maintain focus on this particular thread of the narrative throughout; allowing it to define not only the interaction between the characters, but also those later shifts into darker, more surreal and disturbing territories, which remain the film's most talked about feature. To add to the overall tense, paranoid atmosphere, Zulawski shot the film on location in Berlin at a time when the wall was still standing: creating an eerie, suffocating feeling in a number of scenes made all the more impressive by the director's use of harsh, brightly lit interior and exteriors spaces to contrast vividly with the darker, more disturbing aspects of the plot. This particular approach would famously inspire the visual design of Italian filmmaker Dario Argento's Giallo masterpiece Tenebrae (1982) released the following year.

Despite being one of the most unique and provocative filmmakers of his generation, Zulawski's work has been largely neglected by DVD distributors in the UK: with only his debut film, the mesmerising The Third Part of the Night (Trzecia część nocy, 1971) getting a Region 0 release from the excellent Second Run. Possession was released on PAL VHS ten years ago by the company ILC Prime, and was also shown numerous times on the now defunct subscription channel Film Four Extreme, where it was preceded by the obligatory introduction by British film critic and television personality Mark Kermode. However, for some reason, the DVD release never went ahead. Hopefully we might one day see a box-set release of Zulawski's work, including (the also unavailable) The Devil (Diabel, 1972), The Most Important Thing: Love (L'important c'est d'aimer, 1975), La femme publique (1984) and Szamanka (1996), etc, etc.

Filled with the usual, grotesque visual abstraction and that underlining air of menace and paranoia that can be found in several of the filmmaker's most notable films, Possession is a truly startling piece of work that manages to move seamlessly from moments of heart-stopping terror, to violent dysfunction, to believable human drama, without ever compromising the overall mood or totality of the film as a complete, consistent whole.

Je vous salue, Marie (1985)

Although the vast majority of Godard's work from the 1960's is now available to own in the UK - including the often neglected features, Made in U.S.A. (1966) and One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil, 1968) - his more interesting (and by extension, challenging) work produced between the release of Week End (1967) and the climax of Histoire(s) du cinema (1988-1998) has, for some reason, failed to materialise. Although it should be noted that the company Optimum Home Entertainment has released the unconventional crime-thriller Détective (1985) alongside the personal masterpiece Hélas pour moi (1993), there is still very little else available from the period between Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980) - released in the UK by Artificial Eye under the title Slow Motion - and the more recent productions, Éloge de l'amour (2001) and Notre Musique (Our Music, 2004), again, released by Optimum.

This means no Le Gai Savoir (1969), no Numéro deux (1975), no Ici et ailleurs (1976), no King Lear (1987), no Soigne ta droite (1987), no Nouvelle Vague (1990), no Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991), no For Ever Mozart (1997), etc. If you're interested, many of these titles are available on Region 1 or in France (sans subtitles) or can be tracked down on second-hand VHS cassettes or through torrents (or other such slightly clandestine means).

In regards to the film in question, 'Je vous salue, Marie' (Hail Mary, 1985) is characteristic of Godard's creative peak of the mid 1980's; a period characterised by the preceding films, Passion (1982) and Prénom Carmen (First Name: Carmen, 1983). As with much of the filmmaker's work from this era, the central focus is on the juxtaposition of an archaic legend when updated to a contemporary setting and used as a platform to discuss the nature of life and creative expression. In the film, Marie (Myriem Roussel), an average student and keen athlete, finds herself mysteriously pregnant despite the continual assertion that she is still a virgin. Roussel, who had previously appeared in both Passion and Prénom Carmen, claimed that Godard had been planning the film with her in mind for several years. She is quoted as saying: "We worked with video. Godard forced me to write down a diary of my thoughts. Not regular writing, but from my depths. I had no religious education, so I had to study the Bible. I watched Pasolini's film, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, and also Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc. Godard loves that film, and I understand why he loves it. And I had to learn basketball. Godard wanted to do a basketball scene very much because basketball has symbolic, spiritual associations: "the moon, and the stomach when you are pregnant."

'Je vous salue, Marie' remains, to this day, one of Godard's most controversial films; drawing criticism from Pope John Paul II, who claimed that it "deeply wounds the religious sentiments of believers the world over", and inciting violent reactions from the general public. Famously, at its original showing at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival, a middle-aged man jumped security and hurled a cake topped with shaving cream at Godard, forcing the filmmaker to question whether or not it was wise to release the film in Rome as was initially scheduled. Godard maintained that the film wasn't really about the Virgin Mary, but about "a young woman named Mary who, at a certain moment in her life, finds herself part of an exceptional event that she would never have wished for herself." Contradicting himself somewhat, Godard later explained - "It's a real story; Mary's story about life coming down from the sky. We've had lots of films about Jesus and the Bible, but none about Mary. Why? The Church should have made this film."

Critical opinion of Godard's picture still remains divided; with some of the user-comments on the Internet Movie Database for example showing that even keen admirers of the director's work consider this film to be a mistake (one comment even describes it as "boring and laughable"). As with Possession, 'Je vous salue, Marie' has been shown on UK television in the past (the last showing was as recent as 2003), but its crying out for a DVD release from a company like Eureka/Masters of Cinema, who will not only take the film seriously enough to present it in the best possible form, but will also lend Godard's late-period work a sense of prestige that is unfortunately lacking. Too many professional critics choose to reduce the filmmaker's career to the level of a footnote that runs from 1959 to 1967, neglecting the brilliant and progressive work that he has produced since, and continues to produce to this day.

N.B. With the little-seen Une femme mariée (A Married Woman, 1964) getting a Region 2 release from Eureka video in April as part of their on-going Masters of Cinema series, one can only hope that this will pave the way for yet more Godard titles from the company; creating a relationship somewhere along the lines of their recent releases of the work of Kenji Mizoguchi and Maurice Pialat.

Kafka (1991)

Director Steven Soderbergh's follow-up to his massively successful, Palme d'Or winning directorial debut, Sex, Lies and Videotape (1989), was a self-consciously abstract project quickly dismissed by an audience no doubt looking for a more conventional film about the famed-writer and his work. Opting for a more expressionist, esoteric reading, Soderbergh himself has said that the film's critical and commercial failure confined him to the "art-house ghetto" for several years; with his critical reputation as a filmmaker (in the mainstream sense) only really restored by the surprise success of his excellent adaptation of the Elmore Leonard novel, Out of Sight (1998) (three years later he would be nominated for the Academy Award for two films in a single year).

As a biographical film, Kafka (1991) could be considered alongside Paul Schrader's (also unavailable) Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch (1991), Steven Shainberg's Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006) and the Todd Haynes film I'm Not There (2007). As with those particular films, the intention here is to take an actual historical personality and filter the biographical details of their life through the legend and iconography of their work. As a result the plot is intricate: filled with references to the books The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), as well as a number of casual references to Kafka's personal dissatisfaction with his own work; the indifference and lack of support from his friends and family; his relationship with Felice Bauer; his work as an insurance company representative; and the final revelation of his illness. As with the similar films aforementioned, the script by Lem Dobbs presents the writer's life as if he were a character in his own fiction, inventing himself and expressing his own silent anguish through the process of metaphor and abstraction.

Visually, the film draws on the combined influence of Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), the brilliant Orson Welles adaptation of Kafka's own iconic work The Trial (1962), and Terry Gilliam's dazzling, dystopian-set sci-fi satire Brazil (1985), while the incredible use of gothic, eastern-European locations, the exotic score, the incredible attention to period detail and the slowly unravelling plot ensure that Kafka is, above all-else, a great, surrealist experience. Added to this a fine leading performance by the actor Jeremy Irons and a supporting cast that includes Theresa Russell, Ian Holm, Jeroen Krabbé, Joel Grey, Brian Glover, Keith Allen, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Alec Guinness, and we have a film that stands as one the most striking and imaginative American produced motion-pictures of the last twenty-years.

Although subsequently he's admitted to being less than satisfied with the finished product (even announcing a radical re-edited director's cut that never saw the light of day), Kafka nonetheless remains one of Soderbergh's greatest achievements as a filmmaker; easily worthy of discussion alongside the director's greatest film, the brilliant, depression-set coming of age memoir, King of the Hill (1993).

The Butcher Boy (1998)

Although a contentious figure for some, Irish filmmaker Neil Jordan has produced several films that for me rate amongst the very finest of contemporary, English-language cinema; including amongst them the expressionist horror fantasy The Company of Wolves (1984), the dark, prostitution-themed character study, Mona Lisa (1986), the quiet, Irish-set youth-drama, The Miracle (1991), his passionate adaptation of the Graham Greene novel The End of the Affair (1999), and his highly underrated crime caper/Jean-Pierre Melville homage, The Good Thief (2002). However, none of these films rate as highly as the director's little-seen adaptation of the Patrick McCabe novel The Butcher Boy (1998); a twisted, coming-of-age, black-comic fantasy about the escapades of troubled Irish teenager Francie Brady.

Mixing humour, horror and nostalgic reflection to fantastic effect, The Butcher Boy is a film rife with 50's-style sci-fi paranoia, small-town ennui and the vivid imagination of a young boy rapidly losing his mind. Here, every aspect of the film - from the imaginative cinematography, authentic design and ironic use of music - is used to serve the story and create this slightly skewed perspective representative of the central character's spiralling state of mind. However, what really impresses, beyond Jordan's fantastic approach to the production, is the extraordinary lead performance from the young actor Eamon Owens in his first screen role. The fact that he has (so far, ten years on) failed to find a project that matches up to the depth and the calibre of the film in question, despite showing himself to be one of the most talented and naturally charismatic performers of his generation, is a tragedy of enormous proportions.

The esteemed supporting cast includes Jordan regular Stephen Rea as Francie's violent, neglectful father, Aisling O'Sullivan as his manic-depressive ma', Ian Hart as the boisterous Uncle Alo and Fiona Shaw as the monstrous (but never two-dimensional) Mrs. Nugent. There's also an eclectic line up of cameo appearances from Brendan Gleeson, Milo O'Shea, Tom Hickey, Ardal O'Hanlon, Sean Hughes and the pop singer Sinéad O'Connor, who gives a surprising turn as an incredibly earthy manifestation of the Virgin Mary in one of Francie's progressively more worrying hallucinations.

Again, Jordan's approach to the film is superb; perfectly evoking the idyllic moments of childhood fantasy and carefree bliss - as Francie and his best friend Joe (Alan Boyle) waste away summer afternoons by the river, reading comic books or stealing apples - before progressing into the darker, more depressing aspects that immediately follow. The balance between the gritty humour of McCabe's book and the sensitive lyricism of Jordan's direction is perfectly judged: moving back and forth from scenes of lively Christmas parties, to the boy's reformatory, to the animated moments of Cowboys and Indians, to frightening visions of the apocalypse that bring to mind John Schlesinger's brilliant Hollywood satire The Day of the Locust (1974). Once deemed worthy enough for a release on PAL VHS (pan and scan, naturally) in the late 1990's and currently available to buy on NTSC Region 1, The Butcher Boy remains one of the great films about childhood dysfunction, and the power of imagination in general.

I Want You (1998)

Released at the tail-end of the 1990's, at the end of the so-called renascence of UK film - after all, Trainspotting (1996) and The Full Monty (1997) had been huge hits - British director Michael Winterbottom's gloomy, colour-saturated murder mystery was naturally greeted by a majority of hostile and indifferent reviews (with the short write-up in the November 1998 issue of Sight and Sound claiming that "the over-stylisation of the piece ultimately sabotages what little narrative coherence there was in the first place"). However, if viewed with right frame of mind, Winterbottom's work can possibly be seen as an enthralling mosaic of shady characters and seedy situations; making great use of the film's atmospheric locations and the impeccable, other-worldly cinematography of former Krzysztof Kieślowski collaborator Sławomir Idziak.

At its most basic level, the film centres on a bizarre, tangled-web of relationships between four central characters in a fictional seaside-town (actually filmed in Hastings). The four characters can be broken up into two couples. The first, brother and sister Honda (Luka Petrusic) and Smokey (Labina Mitevska) are eastern-European immigrants. Honda has been left mute after witnessing the suicide of his mother and now spends his days secretly recording conversations and editing together the snippets of audio to create complex narratives of atmosphere and sound. Smokey is sexually promiscuous; looking for some kind of connection or validation of her own sense of self-worth from the variety of men that she takes back to the dilapidated beach-front home that she shares with her brother. Into this already complicated plot we have the appearance of Martin (Alessandro Nivola) and Helen (Rachel Weisz). Martin is a mysterious drifter, recently released from prison and hoping to make contact with Helen; his former girlfriend from the days when the couple shared an intense and dangerous pseudo-Badlands (1973) style relationship.

As the characters continue to intersect, the plot becomes more and more fragmented; drawing on several unreliable narrators and a fractured chronology, so that we're never entirely sure if what we are seeing is something from the past replayed, or something from the present. Added to this, we have Winterbottom's skilful handling of the character of Honda, and his habit of creating aural sketches from the sampling of everyday life. This particular device allows the filmmaker to blur the recognisable lines of the material even further; forcing the audience to ask themselves whether the film (as we see it, as it unfolds) is real, or perhaps some kind of mad collage-construction of Honda at his most quietly disturbed. It is also worth mentioning the incredible use of the song 'I Want You' by Elvis Costello & The Attractions - featured on the singer/songwriter's 1986 album Blood & Chocolate - which, in several scenes, is used as a counterpoint to the emotional intensity of Martin, and the duplicitous nature of Helen as she drifts through the lives of these lost and desperate characters.

Once again, this is another film that I own on VHS, which is unfortunately of an incredibly poor quality. However, the fact that one of the UK's leading movie channels recently broadcast the film in a pristine print, framed correctly in its original 2:35.1 anamorphic widescreen ratio, suggests to me that there must be a DVD release available somewhere, or perhaps there's one in the works?

****

These are just a few personal favourites that I would like to see released sometime before we begin to see the same wave of previously available films being re-released (yet-again) on Blu-Ray, or any other potential future formats. Certainly, you could also add to this list about 90% of the work of Ken Russell, particularly those of his extravagant period in the 1970's, when he produced the likes of The Music Lovers (1970), The Devils (1971), The Boy Friend (1971) and Savage Messiah (1972); the key films of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Youssef Chahine and Philippe Garrel; numerous releases from Juraj Herz, Walerian Borowczyk and the partnership of Straub-Huillet; definitive releases of High Heels (Tacones Lejanos, 1991) by Pedro Almodóvar, Four Flies on Grey Velvet (4 mosche di velluto grigio, 1971) and Inferno (1980) by Dario Argento; the second box-set of Mario Bava films already available in the US; Shinya Tsukamoto's Gemini (Sôseiji, 1999), and numerous films by the maverick Takashi Miike: including one of his greatest works, The Bird People in China (Chûgoku no chôjin, 1998).

I also wanted to mention (in depth) Lars von Trier's experimental version of the Euripides play Medea (1988) - shot on video from a script by the late Carl Theodor Dreyer, and featuring a number of creative abstractions that would be used again in his defining film of this early career stage, the mesmerising Europa (1991) - however, unfortunately due to constant rewrites, delays and re-evaluations, I just didn't have the time.

The Third Part of The Night

Guernica by Pablo Picasso, 1937:

Like Guernica, Picasso's extraordinary painting, Andrzej Żuławski's The Third Part of The Night (Trzecia część nocy, 1971) expresses, in a very immediate but also rather thought-provoking way, the concept of genocide. Here, the idea is developed through an incredibly frightening evocation of the period of German occupation in Poland during the Second World War, in which the general background of conflict and persecution is used, as in Guernica, not simply to establish a particular historical context, or to grant the audience a greater sense of perspective, but as a symbolic expression of the central character's own tortured descent into the depths of memory, identity, mortality and despair.

In this sense, the thematic design of the film is in some ways reminiscent of Russian filmmaker Elem Klimov's similar World War II allegory, Come and See (Idi i smotri, 1985), in which the more broadly recognisable conventions of wartime iconography - the conflict and the struggle - are used to express the disintegrating emotional perspective of its young central character within that almost apocalyptic vision of destruction and devastation that the Second World War would come to represent, both historically and creatively.

However, if Come and See was as much about the madness of war in the literal, ideological sense, then Żuławski's film goes beyond even that; offering what one character in the film refers to as a "complicated vortex", in which the madness of war can be seen as an extension of the devastating events that transpire during the film's shattering opening sequence. Here, grief and guilt circle around these characters, leading them to explore what the late British filmmaker Derek Jarman once referred to as 'an investigation of the past by way of the present', while simultaneously placing them within the recognisable dramatic context of what another character knowingly describes as "a medieval darkness."

As this dialogue might indicate, the film offers a strange and often hallucinatory narrative effectively about a character spiralling out of control; with the actual look and the texture of the film conveying this feeling of freefall by switching, almost at random, from elements of over-the-top surrealism to something almost resembling a conventional genre film. However, these half-formed, never fully developed tonal shifts serve a purpose in contextualising the uncertainly of the life and death theme that can be taken as the most obvious reading of the film's literally apocalyptic climax. As the events of the opening scenes create, not only a circular effect that ties both ends of the narrative together, but a kind of ripple effect that is followed all the way through the narrative, leading to the curious chronological structure, the exaggerated performances and the jarring shifts from violence to almost religious transcendence.

In keeping with this, the dialogue seems littered with clues that continually push us towards a more psychological or even allegorical reading of the text. For example, the early scenes between Marta (Małgorzata Braunek) and Michal (Leszek Teleszyński) - both doubles for other characters, both doppelgangers attempting to find the familiar in different beings - where the dialog is seemingly designed to express the issues of memory and identity that hang over the story, as these two characters attempt to identify one another; "one is a reflection" says Marta, "and you yourself are the mirror."

The Third Part of The Night directed by Andrzej Żuławski, 1971:

As Marta dresses Michal's wounds after their initial meeting, he opines "I've been finding you again". "Yes", she replies, "in other people who aren't us". The dialog is continually changing our interpretation of what we are experiencing; are we witnessing the last few seconds of life from a young man cut down in the film's opening massacre, or a psychological metamorphosis, supposedly illustrating how war can change a man, both mentally and physiologically? As the character Marta herself explains, somewhat self-reflexively, "such things often happens in the midst of war - amongst the lice and the blood and the muck", as the characters are forced to become detached from their surroundings and their situation, looking in on themselves as if observing the lives of others, while simultaneously "sinking into a world where all things have become alike". It is the expression of war, not just as the machine that turns the cogs that eventually lays waste to the human spirit, but as a veritable hall of mirrors, revealing and then distorting a series of revelations that not only leave the audience perplexed, but the characters as well.

As a result, it is a film that exists on the fringes of reality, blurring the lines between dream and certainty, memory and fiction; as holocaust imagery is placed alongside the use of deliberate religious symbolism to create an even more horrific atmosphere of dread and despair. Meanwhile, the development of a complex and emotionally fragile chronology of events, punctuated throughout by moments of intense violence and surreal abstraction, finds our character plunged headlong into a central mystery that blends elements of actual historical fact with more abstract ideas that seem to push the film further into the bizarre and often existentialist realms of writers like Kafka, Sartre or Borges.

All of this is apparent from the film's memorable opening sequences; in which a reading from the Book of Revelations is juxtaposed against a disquieting montage of early morning landscapes and stark, unforgettable violence. The series of shots that introduce the film also work towards establishing something of a tone, both visually and atmospherically, that will intensify throughout; with the dark, menacing shots of the Polish countryside - a veritable black mosaic of backlit tree branches reflected on murky, autumnal lakes that foreground a no doubt once opulent country manner house, where the characters have taken refuge from the continuing conflict and persecution - giving us the central location where the story will both begin and end with that scene of devastation played out from two very different perspectives.

The Third Part of The Night directed by Andrzej Żuławski, 1971:

The quality of the images presented in this sequence are contrasted perfectly by the reading of the text; as the themes of dread and destruction and the tone of the voice suggest a sense of fear and uncertainty. From here, Żuławski confronts us with the film's first and most penetrating depiction of violence; as the interior of the house is suddenly invaded by soldiers on horseback, who strike Helena (again played by Małgorzata Braunek) with the butt of their rifles, as Michal and his young son watch with horror from the neighbouring trees. Though again, captured in a very matter of fact approach, with the camera work of Witold Sobociński making great use of the handheld, pre-Steadicam style to exaggerate the drama and confusion, the scene has an undercurrent of abstract dream-logic. The simple image of a horse and guard charging into this quiet country manor house, combined with the look of sheer horror on the face of Helena, seems to exist somewhere between the fantastical realms of a Terry Gilliam film (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 1988 perhaps) and the devastating horror of a Pier Paolo Pasolini (cf. Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, 1975).

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975:

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen directed by Terry Gilliam, 1988:

The Third Part of The Night directed by Andrzej Żuławski, 1971:

According to an interview that accompanies the recent region 0 DVD, the initial genesis of The Third Part of The Night came from Żuławski's conversations with his father Mirosław about his own experiences during the Nazi occupation of Lwow, and in particular, his time with The Rudolf Weigl Institute, where Mirosław was one of the many Polish intellectuals - alongside figures like the mathematician Stefan Banach and the musician and conductor Stanislaw Skorwaczewski - who found protection in the institution as carriers for an experimental Typhus vaccine. Like Mirosław, the character of Michal uses the institute to hide out from the threat of oppression, as those closest to him are murdered, hounded or rounded up into the backs of trucks and trailers, never to be seen again.

Here he enters into what film critic Michael Brooke describes as an "inverted value system that assigns the highest social status to human guinea-pigs offering themselves as a food supply for laboratory bred lice". It is in these sequences that Żuławski's documentarian approach to detail is the most jarringly apparent. And yet, even as the camera lingers on the smallest of authentic details, the sheer absurdity and nightmarish undercurrent of this situation can't help creating a more surreal and ultimately distressing Kafkaesque nightmare; as Michal and his comrades become (essentially) no better than corpses - food for the insects - living an almost purgatory like existence as ghosts, neither alive nor dead.

The Third Part of The Night directed by Andrzej Żuławski, 1971:

This central concept of the void between life and death and the further blurring of perceptions and, more importantly, identities, is a key theme of The Third Part of The Night; with the vague shifting between time and memory - as if moving through the various layers of a dream - propelling the narrative towards its confounding and enigmatic final. Here, our protagonist must stare into the hollowed face of death to find only the bleak abyss staring back at him; illustrating that Żuławski wasn't simply prefiguring the ideas articulated in Klimov's great work, but those that would later be expressed in director David Lynch's trilogy of psychological metamorphosis - as represented by the films Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Dr. (2001) and Inland Empire (2006).

Like those films, The Third Part of The Night presents layers of both reality and reflection, in which a frenzied mystery is shaped by the contrast between the two strands of what we see and what we believe. A film where a character on the very edge of sanity, puts back the pieces of a tragic event that changed the course of his young life, and instead of finding a clear image, is presented with a fragmented patchwork of terror and uncertainty.

In this respect, it is a film is a work of layered interpretations; where images of doorways and staircases that represents the movement from one shifting reality to another, takes dominance over the mise-en-scene. The sense, of moving between words, memories and realities abstracts the drama even further, creating a bleak kaleidoscope of images and ideas similar in execution to the climax of Takashi Miike's masterpiece Audition (Ôdishon, 1999). As the film progresses, the tenuous hold that Michal has on reality becomes strained, and he is drawn, almost supernaturally, through layers of reflection. As the atmosphere of the third act becomes much more intense, the character is led into a literally hellish underworld; a Dante's Inferno, where a series of grisly discoveries in a literal hospital of horrors - filled with what author Daniel Bird refers to as "a Grosz-like gallery of the grotesque" and a series of "Francis Bacon-like bodies covered in lice cages in an otherwise darkened cell" - conspire to push the character further into the bowels of the institution, where the secrets of his fate will be revealed.

Triptych, May–June 1973 by Francis Bacon, 1973:

The Third Part of The Night directed by Andrzej Żuławski, 1971:

However, the answer to the film's most pertinent question evades both the character and the audience, obscured as it is by conflicting narrative perspectives; reducing the plight of this character to the level of a Rorschach construct, in which the answer to the most significant question of all can be found only as a reflection on the face of death itself. As a result, it will be a difficult film for many viewers, not simply in regards to the atmosphere and the imagery that is created, but in the film's often confusing disregard for logic and convention; where the whole film, for the most part, seems beyond the realms of easy categorisation, or even critique.

More than anything, it reflects the notion of a cinema of dreams (or nightmares); with the often ugly, ecstatic nature of Żuławski's direction and the heightened, almost exaggerated performances of his cast creating a tone that lingers long in the imagination. Where the characters ripple and convulse in irregular, epileptic spasms, while those unforgiving, wide-angle lenses are continually pushed right into the faces of the actors in order to capture every uncomfortable moment of pain and despair.

The Revelation of St John: 4. The Four Riders of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer, 1498:

The Third Part of The Night directed by Andrzej Żuławski, 1971: