Taking a break from shooting a movie in the late Sixties, Richard Harris chartered a private plane. The actor and his entourage travelled to Hamburg to visit the brothels, and then went on a day trip to Ireland, spending an afternoon at one of Harris’s favourite pubs. They weren’t sober for a moment of the jaunt, which was chronicled by a photographer sent along for the ride.
The story of their antics is told in Adrian Sibley’s new feature documentary The Ghost of Richard Harris, a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this week. What is most extraordinary about this particular episode is that it was nothing out of the ordinary for the Limerick-born star. Zigzagging across Europe in search of adventure, sex and alcohol was simply what Harris – at that stage of his life, at least – did.
His various paramours could likely attest to that.
The story of their antics is told in Adrian Sibley’s new feature documentary The Ghost of Richard Harris, a world premiere at the Venice Film Festival this week. What is most extraordinary about this particular episode is that it was nothing out of the ordinary for the Limerick-born star. Zigzagging across Europe in search of adventure, sex and alcohol was simply what Harris – at that stage of his life, at least – did.
His various paramours could likely attest to that.
- 9/2/2022
- by Geoffrey Macnab
- The Independent - Film
John Schlesinger decided not to attend the Academy Awards in 1970, even though his film “Midnight Cowboy” had been nominated for Best Picture and he was up for Best Director. On the evening of April 7, 1970, otherwise known as Oscar night, the British director remained in London with his American boyfriend, the photographer Michael Childers. Schlesinger didn’t want to make the brutal 24-hour roundtrip flight to Hollywood and back, and besides, he was well into production on his follow-up film, “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” For him, it was a very personal project, and, in some ways, an even more controversial film than “Midnight Cowboy.”
As Schlesinger explained it, the genesis of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” went back to the early 1960s when he was directing his first play for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “At the time, I had a very intense affair with one of the actors, a man who was bisexual,” Schlesinger recalled.
As Schlesinger explained it, the genesis of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” went back to the early 1960s when he was directing his first play for the Royal Shakespeare Company. “At the time, I had a very intense affair with one of the actors, a man who was bisexual,” Schlesinger recalled.
- 6/2/2021
- by Robert Hofler
- The Wrap
Häxan
Blu ray
Criterion
1922/ 1.33:1 / 105 min.
Starring Benjamin Christensen
Directed by Benjamin Christensen
Fine art joins forces with the dark arts in Häxan, an impeccably crafted docu-drama with the lurid kick of an exploitation film.
The influence of Benjamin Christensen’s silent horror show can be found far and wide, from movies as beloved as The Wizard of Oz and reviled as The Devils. Variety was certainly conflicted when Häxan was turned loose in 1922 – “Wonderful though this picture is, it is absolutely unfit for public exhibition.”
It’s not Intolerance but Häxan boasts both a sizable cast and elaborate settings (at the time it was the most expensive film ever produced in Denmark). Yet the credits suggest it was something of a one man show – Christensen wrote and narrated (his hypnotic glower is the first thing the audience sees) and he acts up a storm – he plays the devil who...
Blu ray
Criterion
1922/ 1.33:1 / 105 min.
Starring Benjamin Christensen
Directed by Benjamin Christensen
Fine art joins forces with the dark arts in Häxan, an impeccably crafted docu-drama with the lurid kick of an exploitation film.
The influence of Benjamin Christensen’s silent horror show can be found far and wide, from movies as beloved as The Wizard of Oz and reviled as The Devils. Variety was certainly conflicted when Häxan was turned loose in 1922 – “Wonderful though this picture is, it is absolutely unfit for public exhibition.”
It’s not Intolerance but Häxan boasts both a sizable cast and elaborate settings (at the time it was the most expensive film ever produced in Denmark). Yet the credits suggest it was something of a one man show – Christensen wrote and narrated (his hypnotic glower is the first thing the audience sees) and he acts up a storm – he plays the devil who...
- 10/12/2019
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
One of the leading British film critics of the postwar years who went on to write crime novels
iThe writer Margaret Hinxman, who has died aged 94, was one of the influential band of female critics who did much to encourage film in postwar Britain. She enjoyed a long and productive career on numerous magazines, including the influential Picturegoer, two national newspapers, the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Mail, and as a writer of fiction.
Following the doyennes of the profession Dilys Powell and CA Lejeune, who came from a slightly earlier generation, Hinxman’s contemporaries included the Sight and Sound editor Penelope Houston, Nina Hibben of the Morning Star, the magazine contributors Isabel Quigley, Virginia Graham, Maryvonne Butcher and Freda Bruce Lockhart, and the essayist Penelope Gilliatt. However, in later years their influence was blunted by a rise in testosterone-fuelled violence and numbing special effects in popular cinema.
iThe writer Margaret Hinxman, who has died aged 94, was one of the influential band of female critics who did much to encourage film in postwar Britain. She enjoyed a long and productive career on numerous magazines, including the influential Picturegoer, two national newspapers, the Sunday Telegraph and Daily Mail, and as a writer of fiction.
Following the doyennes of the profession Dilys Powell and CA Lejeune, who came from a slightly earlier generation, Hinxman’s contemporaries included the Sight and Sound editor Penelope Houston, Nina Hibben of the Morning Star, the magazine contributors Isabel Quigley, Virginia Graham, Maryvonne Butcher and Freda Bruce Lockhart, and the essayist Penelope Gilliatt. However, in later years their influence was blunted by a rise in testosterone-fuelled violence and numbing special effects in popular cinema.
- 10/17/2018
- by Brian Baxter
- The Guardian - Film News
The Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival — co-presented by Cinema St. Louis and the Webster University Film Series concludes this weekend. — The Classic French Film Festival celebrates St. Louis’ Gallic heritage and France’s cinematic legacy. The featured films span the decades from the 1920s through the mid-1990s, offering a revealing overview of French cinema.
There are three more events for the Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival happening this weekend:
Friday, March 23rd at 7:00pm – Le Samourai
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trenchcoat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, “Le samouraï” is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American...
There are three more events for the Tenth Annual Robert Classic French Film Festival happening this weekend:
Friday, March 23rd at 7:00pm – Le Samourai
In a career-defining performance, Alain Delon plays Jef Costello, a contract killer with samurai instincts. After carrying out a flawlessly planned hit, Jef finds himself caught between a persistent police investigator and a ruthless employer, and not even his armor of fedora and trenchcoat can protect him. An elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool by maverick director Jean‑Pierre Melville, “Le samouraï” is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American...
- 3/19/2018
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
+“Sometimes the class struggle is also the struggle of one image against another image, of one sound against another sound. In a film, this struggle is against images and sounds.”
- British Sounds
There was something in the air when Jean-Luc Godard took up the political banner of the late 1960s and shifted his filmmaking focus in terms of storytelling style and stories told, and in a general sense of formal reevaluation and reinvention. Always considered something of the enfant terrible of the French Nouvelle Vague, Godard was keen from the start to experiment with the conventional norms of cinematic aesthetics, from the jarring jump cuts of Breathless (1960), to the self-conscious playfulness of A Woman is a Woman (1961), to the genre deviations of Band of Outsiders (1964) and Made in USA (1966). But Godard was still, at a most basic level, operating along a fairly conventional plane of fictional cinema, one with...
- British Sounds
There was something in the air when Jean-Luc Godard took up the political banner of the late 1960s and shifted his filmmaking focus in terms of storytelling style and stories told, and in a general sense of formal reevaluation and reinvention. Always considered something of the enfant terrible of the French Nouvelle Vague, Godard was keen from the start to experiment with the conventional norms of cinematic aesthetics, from the jarring jump cuts of Breathless (1960), to the self-conscious playfulness of A Woman is a Woman (1961), to the genre deviations of Band of Outsiders (1964) and Made in USA (1966). But Godard was still, at a most basic level, operating along a fairly conventional plane of fictional cinema, one with...
- 10/17/2014
- by Jeremy Carr
- SoundOnSight
Do you want to quiz the Observer film critic before he retires? Here's your chance
For decades Philip French has been a fixture of British Sundays, "a heavyweight of film criticism", "an exemplar of the very best". ("I tend not to read reviews," said director Kevin Macdonald in 2008, "but I do read his.") Next month Philip retires, 50 years and thousands of reviews since he first wrote for this paper in 1963, taking in a dozen Martin Scorseses, 30-plus Woody Allens, three cinematic releases of Apocalypse Now, seven Batmans… To mark the end of an era we've invited Philip to take part in our "You ask the questions" series, and we need your input. Do you have a burning question for Philip French? Let us know.
Perhaps you'd like to ask him what it can possibly be like to absorb so much film over the hours (days, weeks – years?) he's spent in screening rooms.
For decades Philip French has been a fixture of British Sundays, "a heavyweight of film criticism", "an exemplar of the very best". ("I tend not to read reviews," said director Kevin Macdonald in 2008, "but I do read his.") Next month Philip retires, 50 years and thousands of reviews since he first wrote for this paper in 1963, taking in a dozen Martin Scorseses, 30-plus Woody Allens, three cinematic releases of Apocalypse Now, seven Batmans… To mark the end of an era we've invited Philip to take part in our "You ask the questions" series, and we need your input. Do you have a burning question for Philip French? Let us know.
Perhaps you'd like to ask him what it can possibly be like to absorb so much film over the hours (days, weeks – years?) he's spent in screening rooms.
- 7/18/2013
- by The Observer
- The Guardian - Film News
Our critic has been awarded an OBE for services to film. Here he reflects on a life of cinema and chooses extracts from five of his movie reviews
Casting my mind back to my Observer debut, it occurred to me that, had I been celebrating half a century of writing on films for the paper in 1963, I would have been reflecting on a career begun by reviewing the arrival of Charlie Chaplin and going on to Dw Griffith's Birth of a Nation. But the Observer didn't have a movie critic until the mid-1920s, when the Honourable Ivor Montagu (a peer's son, table tennis champion, lifelong communist, the man who saved Hitchcock's bacon by re-editing The Lodger) joined the paper. He was succeeded in 1928 by the Manchester Guardian's critic, CA Lejeune, who helped create the view widely held in Fleet Street that reviewing films was women's work. Indeed, her first...
Casting my mind back to my Observer debut, it occurred to me that, had I been celebrating half a century of writing on films for the paper in 1963, I would have been reflecting on a career begun by reviewing the arrival of Charlie Chaplin and going on to Dw Griffith's Birth of a Nation. But the Observer didn't have a movie critic until the mid-1920s, when the Honourable Ivor Montagu (a peer's son, table tennis champion, lifelong communist, the man who saved Hitchcock's bacon by re-editing The Lodger) joined the paper. He was succeeded in 1928 by the Manchester Guardian's critic, CA Lejeune, who helped create the view widely held in Fleet Street that reviewing films was women's work. Indeed, her first...
- 12/30/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Chicago – Relate the now iconic term “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” and most likely a off-tune rendering of the famous rock song by U2 will follow. But the title was originally expressed in director John Schlesinger’s groundbreaking film of 1971, “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” recently released on Blu-ray through The Criterion Collection.
Blu-ray Rating: 4.5/5.0
The film has notoriety because it featured the first same-sex kiss between men in movie history (Peter Finch and Murray Head), but put aside that then-shocking expression and there is a psychologically complex film about unresolved relationship issues and identity. The drama is exquisitely cast, set against a post-Swingin’ 1960s London, when it seemed like the whole culture was waking up with a hangover from all that social change. Peter Finch, best known for his final role in 1976 of the mad news anchorman in “Network,” anchors this film with a passionate communication of middle age in both progress and regress.
Blu-ray Rating: 4.5/5.0
The film has notoriety because it featured the first same-sex kiss between men in movie history (Peter Finch and Murray Head), but put aside that then-shocking expression and there is a psychologically complex film about unresolved relationship issues and identity. The drama is exquisitely cast, set against a post-Swingin’ 1960s London, when it seemed like the whole culture was waking up with a hangover from all that social change. Peter Finch, best known for his final role in 1976 of the mad news anchorman in “Network,” anchors this film with a passionate communication of middle age in both progress and regress.
- 11/12/2012
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
By Allen Gardner
Prometheus (20th Century Fox) Ridley Scott’s quasi-prequel to his 1979 classic “Alien” has an intergalactic exploratory team (Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba) arriving on a uncharted planet, where they discover what appears to be a dormant alien spacecraft and what might be the first discovery of intelligent life outside of Earth. Of course, everything goes straight to hell before you can scream “Don’t touch that egg!” Sumptuous visuals and strong performances from the cast (not to mention a nearly-perfect first half) can’t compensate for gaping plot and logic holes that nearly sink the proceedings in the film’s protracted second half. It feels as though some very crucial footage wound up on the cutting room floor. Perhaps, as with “Alien” and “Aliens” we’ll see a “Director’s Cut” of “Prometheus” arriving on DVD within the next year. In the meantime,...
Prometheus (20th Century Fox) Ridley Scott’s quasi-prequel to his 1979 classic “Alien” has an intergalactic exploratory team (Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba) arriving on a uncharted planet, where they discover what appears to be a dormant alien spacecraft and what might be the first discovery of intelligent life outside of Earth. Of course, everything goes straight to hell before you can scream “Don’t touch that egg!” Sumptuous visuals and strong performances from the cast (not to mention a nearly-perfect first half) can’t compensate for gaping plot and logic holes that nearly sink the proceedings in the film’s protracted second half. It feels as though some very crucial footage wound up on the cutting room floor. Perhaps, as with “Alien” and “Aliens” we’ll see a “Director’s Cut” of “Prometheus” arriving on DVD within the next year. In the meantime,...
- 10/8/2012
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Oct. 23, 2012
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Glenda Jackson stands between Peter Finch (l.) and Murray Head--or does she?--in Sunday Bloody Sunday.
British filmmaker John Schlesinger followed his Academy Award–winning 1969 film Midnight Cowboy with 1971’s Sunday Bloody Sunday, a sophisticated and highly personal drama about love and sex.
Sunday Bloody Sunday depicts the romantic lives of two Londoners—a middle-aged doctor (Peter Finch, Network) and a prickly thirty-something divorcée (Glenda Jackson, Women in Love) —who are sleeping with the same handsome young artist (Murray Head, TV’s Heartbeat).
Written by novelist and critic Penelope Gilliatt, the R-rated Sunday Bloody Sunday was considered to be quite a racy revelation way back when. Looking back on the film now, it’s definitely one of the 1970s’ most intelligent, multi-textured films about the complexities of romantic relationships.
The Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film contains...
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Glenda Jackson stands between Peter Finch (l.) and Murray Head--or does she?--in Sunday Bloody Sunday.
British filmmaker John Schlesinger followed his Academy Award–winning 1969 film Midnight Cowboy with 1971’s Sunday Bloody Sunday, a sophisticated and highly personal drama about love and sex.
Sunday Bloody Sunday depicts the romantic lives of two Londoners—a middle-aged doctor (Peter Finch, Network) and a prickly thirty-something divorcée (Glenda Jackson, Women in Love) —who are sleeping with the same handsome young artist (Murray Head, TV’s Heartbeat).
Written by novelist and critic Penelope Gilliatt, the R-rated Sunday Bloody Sunday was considered to be quite a racy revelation way back when. Looking back on the film now, it’s definitely one of the 1970s’ most intelligent, multi-textured films about the complexities of romantic relationships.
The Criterion Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film contains...
- 7/20/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
by Vadim Rizov
"How does a foreigner know, for instance, what a particular character does when he is alone?" novelist, screenwriter and film critic Penelope Gilliatt asked in 1971 about Jerzy Skolimowski's English-language debut Deep End (screening Dec. 16 - 22 at BAMcinématek). "It seem stirring that Skolimowski should have managed it at all, and that his London should seem so nearly like London when a lot of the film was actually made in Munich, with German-speaking actors in the small parts. The slightly off-note ear, the gaps in knowledge don't so much muddy the film as give it a peculiar asymmetry and lack of repose." Despite Gilliatt's mildly offensive tone of reductive national diagnosis ("Poles often serve an ethic of not seeming to try," she also notes), her question makes for a useful analogy. In the film, Mike (John Moulder-Brown) is a 15-year-old foreigner to the land of adult sexuality, for...
"How does a foreigner know, for instance, what a particular character does when he is alone?" novelist, screenwriter and film critic Penelope Gilliatt asked in 1971 about Jerzy Skolimowski's English-language debut Deep End (screening Dec. 16 - 22 at BAMcinématek). "It seem stirring that Skolimowski should have managed it at all, and that his London should seem so nearly like London when a lot of the film was actually made in Munich, with German-speaking actors in the small parts. The slightly off-note ear, the gaps in knowledge don't so much muddy the film as give it a peculiar asymmetry and lack of repose." Despite Gilliatt's mildly offensive tone of reductive national diagnosis ("Poles often serve an ethic of not seeming to try," she also notes), her question makes for a useful analogy. In the film, Mike (John Moulder-Brown) is a 15-year-old foreigner to the land of adult sexuality, for...
- 12/14/2011
- GreenCine Daily
"It's not uncommon for movies to drop out of circulation and simply disappear, as fans of Deep End will attest," begins Ryan Gilbey in the Guardian. "Barely seen since its release in 1971, the film concerns Mike (played by John Moulder-Brown), a floppy-fringed 15-year-old who becomes dangerously infatuated with Susan (Jane Asher), his co-worker at the public baths. What's unusual about this prolonged absence is that it should have befallen a film so passionately admired. The influential critic Andrew Sarris thought it measured up to the best of Godard, Truffaut and Polanski. The New Yorker's Penelope Gilliatt called it 'a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts.' If something as venerated as Deep End can sink, what hope for the rest of cinema?"
Some, at least. After all, Jerzy Skolimowski's film, kept off screens for decades due to rights issues, has been restored and will screen tomorrow night at London's BFI Southbank,...
Some, at least. After all, Jerzy Skolimowski's film, kept off screens for decades due to rights issues, has been restored and will screen tomorrow night at London's BFI Southbank,...
- 5/3/2011
- MUBI
Deep End was acclaimed by critics. Then it all but sank out of view. Ryan Gilbey on a newly salvaged British classic
It's not uncommon for movies to drop out of circulation and simply disappear, as fans of Deep End will attest. Barely seen since its release in 1971, the film concerns Mike (played by John Moulder-Brown), a floppy-fringed 15-year-old who becomes dangerously infatuated with Susan (Jane Asher), his co-worker at the public baths. What's unusual about this prolonged absence is that it should have befallen a film so passionately admired. The influential critic Andrew Sarris thought it measured up to the best of Godard, Truffaut and Polanski. The New Yorker's Penelope Gilliatt called it "a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts". If something as venerated as Deep End can sink, what hope for the rest of cinema?
After years of being mired in rights issues, this vivid, rapturous film is about...
It's not uncommon for movies to drop out of circulation and simply disappear, as fans of Deep End will attest. Barely seen since its release in 1971, the film concerns Mike (played by John Moulder-Brown), a floppy-fringed 15-year-old who becomes dangerously infatuated with Susan (Jane Asher), his co-worker at the public baths. What's unusual about this prolonged absence is that it should have befallen a film so passionately admired. The influential critic Andrew Sarris thought it measured up to the best of Godard, Truffaut and Polanski. The New Yorker's Penelope Gilliatt called it "a work of peculiar, cock-a-hoop gifts". If something as venerated as Deep End can sink, what hope for the rest of cinema?
After years of being mired in rights issues, this vivid, rapturous film is about...
- 5/1/2011
- by Ryan Gilbey
- The Guardian - Film News
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