Popular Features
100 Years of… Die Nibelungen: Siegfried
Long before techno or Kraftwerk there was Richard Wagner, and in 1924 director Fritz Lang and his writer wife Thea von Harbou decided to put a story the German headbanger had popularised onto the screen. Die Nibelungen: Siegfried is the first of a two-part phantasmagorical medieval epic “dedicated to the German People”, a Tolkien-before-Tolkien, Game-of-Thrones-before-Game-of-Thrones tale of hair, helmets and hunting horns. Plus invisibility, dragons, fair damsels, derring-do, treachery and death. George Lucas clearly watched this first film (at least) before making Star Wars and the debt owed visually by Game of Thrones is also obvious here and there. What’s remarkable is how technically accomplished it is given given the crudity of the … Read more
100 Years of… Salomé
Salomé, a notorious enterprise for the Russian-born, now-forgotten Hollywood great Alla Nazimova, its star, co-writer, co-director and producer, is the film that ruined her financially and brought an end to her time as a Hollywood player. It needs to be bad to justify the damage it caused to such a glittering career. It is. The original story is from the Bible, as retold by Oscar Wilde, then retold again by adapter Nazimova and co-writer Natacha Rambova (Rudolph Valentino’s wife and possibly Nazimova’s lover). But in spite of the reworkings it’s still the story we all know, of the young and beautiful Salomé demanding that Herod bring her the head of John the Baptist. … Read more
The Razzies – Winners Who Showed Up
One supposedly represents the best of the best and the other the worst of the worst. In theory the Oscars and the Razzies are polar opposites, yet they have something in common. Each loves a pile-on. Every year as awards season comes around again, a fog seems to descend on the members of the voting academies, groupthink sets in and some perfectly OK but largely unremarkable movies start mysteriously migrating – up to become Academy Award contenders, or down to where the Razzies await. If a bona fide celebrity is involved, the movement can be quite dramatic. Was Driving Miss Daisy really the best picture of 1990? Against, say, Do the Right Thing? Did … Read more
100 Years of… He Who Gets Slapped
It’s 100 years old, at least, He Who Gets Slapped. Which helps explain a title that would be laughed out of the first production meeting these days. “He Who…? He Who?” Sounds like an old car changing gear. As for the rest of it, it wouldn’t pass muster either. Way, way too unsettling, grim and dour for our times. Though it might make a nicely dark horror movie. Here’s a film that was praised to the skies when it came out. The New York Times thought it was “perfect”… and a “faultless adaptation” of the original hit play (which had transferred from Russia to Broadway and become a hit all over again), and that … Read more
The Brooding Intensity of Michael Fassbender
Passion, power and emotional ferocity are all hallmarks of aMichael Fassbender performance. But is he just a kitten in real life? Here’s a funny thing. I’m in the audience at the New York Film Festival. On stage director Steve McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender are answering questions about the disturbing, brilliant film that’s just been shown. Shame, McQueen and Fassbender’s follow-up collaboration to the gruelling Hunger has Fassbender delivering a volcanic performance as a sex addict who’s either dialling rent-a-hooker, beating off at work or devouring porn at home. Intense, dark stuff. Someone from the floor asks Fassbender a question about the relationship between the two damaged lead characters, a brother and sister … Read more
I Became a Ukrainian Vodka Baron
Meet Dan Edelstyn. He’s made a film, he’s resurrected a vodka brand and he’s reviving the fortunes of a faraway Ukrainian village Halfway through making a documentary about his grandmother, director Dan Edelstyn realised he was going to have to start all over again. The film he’d been shooting since 2005 – working title From Bolshevism to Belfast – had been a great story. It told of his Jewish grandmother’s sudden exit from Ukraine in the aftermath of the Russian revolution. How privileged, pretty Maroussia Zorokovich had wound up in Belfast, where her husband, Dan’s grandfather, had promptly gone native and become more staunchly Orange than the Paisley family. It was the story of … Read more
100 Years of… The Eagle
Rudolph Valentino made The Eagle in 1925 and while it wasn’t a smash along the lines of Blood and Sand or The Sheik, it did better than his previous four films – it was a comeback of sorts, and came not long before Valentino was whisked to the place from which no comeback is possible, after contracting peritonitis and dying. Death is on the cards in The Eagle too, an adaptation of a Pushkin story about a young hussar who is spotted by the libidinous Czarina Catherine II and offered a place in her bed. But young, handsome and proud Vladimir Doubrovsky (the name is spelt a number of ways on screen) doesn’t … Read more
100 Years of… Blood and Sand
1922’s Blood and Sand was Rudolph Valentino’s third big hit movie in two years and it deserved to be. A grand, well-appointed, beautiful-looking, subtly-acted adventure rippling with themes and sub-themes and with properly fleshed-out side characters, it’s got more going on under the hood than at first appears. Famous Players-Lasky (later to become Paramount) had been caught on the hop by Valentino’s success and insisted that he carry on with the schedule already mapped out for him – which is why you’ll find a number of B movies sprinkled along the way between The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, his breakthrough, and Blood and Sand. Though Valentino was hot stuff (and knew it), … Read more
100 Years of… Secrets of the Soul
Is it Secrets of a Soul or Secrets of the Soul? Both variations of the title seem to be in play. It was Geheimnisse einer Seele in the original German, which suggests it’s the indefinite article – do with that what you will. Either way this is a strange film from the silent era. Expressly designed to take key concepts of psychoanalysis and give them cinematic life, it was directed by GW Pabst, who really wanted Sigmund Freud to contribute. Freud was less keen – his work was more than mere entertainment – so declined, but Pabst did persuade a couple of Freud’s collaborators to take part at the writing stage, including Karl Abraham, … Read more
100 Years of… Visages d’enfants
If you’ve heard the name Jacques Feyder but never seen any of his films, Visages d’enfants is a prime place to start. A beautiful example of simple and direct storytelling done with more technique than you’d expect for a film from 1925, it demonstrates what a master Feyder was, particularly of the language of film – in fact he’s creating some of it as this film is running through his camera’s sprockets. The title translates into English as either Mother or Faces of Children and that difference of emphasis sums up the plot. A young boy is orphaned and his father remarries – how does little Jean fit in now, with the new … Read more
100 Years of… Go West
Because Go West came out in in the middle of Buster Keaton’s hot run, it’s often bracketed with the rest of them – The Three Ages, Our Hospitality, Sherlock Jr, The Navigator and The General. But Go West isn’t conceptually brilliant, like Sherlock Jr is. Nor is the 1925 feature a compendium of brilliant sight gags, like The General. Instead, Keaton settles for making relentless fun of his character, billed only as Friendless, in a story following a hungry and penniless man initially to New York City. New York turns out to be a bad idea – Friendless is literally crushed underfoot by the teeming crowds – and so he decides to heed the advice … Read more
All the Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranked
The good, the bad and the ugly, from the very first one to the most recent, here’s the what and the why of Marvel’s web-spinning, hammer-throwing, shield-tossing, Groot-uttering heroes and superheroes in one handy chunk Who’d have thought, when Iron Man gave birth to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in 2008, that more than two decades on it would still be flying and still pulling in enthusiastic audiences? Even Kevin Feige, who has produced every single one of them, cannot have expected a run of so many successful films – pushing $30 billion at the box office and counting. As I write, in September 2022, Marvel are planning releases as far as ten years … Read more
