David Allison Reviews

Brighton Rock (1948)

Pure celluloid genius

[10/10 · 23 September 2002]

Every frame, every second of this delicious film is to be savoured. The Boultings' mastery of black and white, their framing and their storytelling are second to none.

I struggle to think of a better adaptation of a novel - everything, from the spot-on characterisations to the beautiful twist at the end, are handled with such assurance that it takes your breath away.

I've watched this film too many times to mention. If you never have, walk, no run to your nearest retailer and grab yourself a copy. You won't regret it.

Toto the Hero (1991)

The Genius of Small Things

[3 August 2001]

Jaco van Dormael, I love you. When I first saw this film in a dilapidated arts cinema in Cambridge on a cold winter's night, I wasn't expecting much. The only review I'd read was mildly sniffy. It was French, it was about la condition humaine. I thought it'd be a reasonable way to pass a couple of hours.

When I emerged from that dark pit of a cinema, I felt, at least for a while, as if my eyesight had been transformed. As we walked back to my friend's flat, I became fixated on one thing after another - the rain upon the cobbles, the light on the church, the darkness of the sky - I felt about five years old all over again. Since then, this film has never been out of my top five. And probably never will.

That is not say it's perfect. It's message is perhaps a little too bleak for my liking, and it does indulge itself in the precept that life it utterly meaningless. But how the visuals of the film contradict that sentiment! Every shot filled with colour, with life, with imagination.

In a way, Toto is an old-fashioned film - a thriller in the Third Man/Citizen Kane mold - a complex story unfolding in a semi-linear fashion, in this case throughout one man's whole life. Dour realism this certainly ain't. A wonderfully naive 40s (?) style chanson reappears, as the adult 'Van Chickensoup' watches his dead father sing from the back of a truck in front of him. Flowers sway in time to the song. The child truly believes that his father met his mother by landing in the garden from a parachute. Scene after scene of joyful play follow each other.

But this is no art-house foppery. This is a tight, mean, well-constructed tale about the feeling that dogs us all - is this all life is? Could I have been happier as someone else? Are they happier than me? Am I lucky or unlucky? And most importantly, this: Why, when life seems so hard at times, can we find so much joy in small things, in a flower, or a kiss, or crazy weather, or new clothes?

Forget the French subtitles, a fact that seems to put off so many North American and British viewers, forget the 'art-house' tag. I own this film and have shown it to scores of friends, all of whom have walked away astonished at its vision. I assure you that you will love this film.

It's alright, you don't have to thank me, spreading the word is enough. ;-) Watch it today! And then watch the Eighth Day, Van Dormael's astonishing second feature.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Over-hyped Cold War baloney

[1/10 · 31 July 2001]

Having heard so much about this film, I was delighted to receive a DVD copy as a birthday present. Imagine my horror when myself and four friends sat down to watch a noir classic, only to discover it was a badly-written and overwrought piece of froth.

Time and time again, I've seen 'Candidate' in best of lists. I cannot imagine why, unless, a la Citizen Kane, the myth about the film becomes greater than the film itself. It is ponderous, long, stifling, claustrophobic and unpleasant. It's an obvious product of the Cold War, but as a complete antithesis to say the wonderful 'Dr Strangelove', it has nothing to say about the period and serves only to reinforce the awful anti-Communist prejudice of that dark era.

Sinatra gives a heroic performance but is let down by a ham-fisted script and some hyperbolic direction. The only nomination I'd give this candidate is 'Most Over-rated Film of All Time'.