The underground between Purgatory and Paradise is still suffering severe delays

Apologies for the quietness of this site over the last few weeks but I’ve been battling with neighbours to less stressfully exit the hallway of my castle. Dominion House Group (about time I named them) are the ones more interested in playing Monopoly with properties than helping tenants. Someone should tip their board over and show them reality. I'm even battling with so-called Buddhists to do my Iyengar yoga class without allegations of being a malign invader into their realm. (That’s the Iyengar Yoga Institute in Maida Vale if you want to form an orderly protest!) London transport is, and will always, still be a battle. 40 Tube ticket offices to shut
Passenger anger over 'unfair' ticket penalty
Two trains almost collided on the Northern Line in Camden a week ago. History repeats itself? But it was only almost, so people soon forget. We also had massive criticisms of the new London 2012 Olympic logo. I can’t say that I disliked it as much as everyone else seemed to. Unusual for me I know. The irony of the logo, though, is that it seems to represent the different realms of London with large gaps between them. And the internet animation (that apparently caused suffering to epileptics) was akin to the tectonic plates of earthquakes that never seamlessly connect. As will be the state of the transport system in 2012, I guess: ‘Mind the gap’ on the underground as the announcement cum T-shirt goes. So a logo quite representative of London I thought. Richard Rogers,architect and head of the Mayor of London's urbanism and architecture unit, threatened to boycott the London 2012 Olympics last year in protest at the ways in which building contracts are being awarded. I have to quote Rogers from a Rowan Moore article (13 June, 2007) in The London Evening Standard as there's no link:

"London's bigger than Barcelona and as a city we've got more than them, but for some reason the British always start on the back foot. The structure for delivering the Olympics is "too dissipated". It's defensive rather than visionary...They will cost what they cost. We're moderately well-organised. But design is not at the top of the agenda. And I don't believe that good design has to cost more...We're not using the amazing ability that we have. There is no architect on the board of the Olympic Delivery Authority, or developer, or someone who knows about sustainability."

Film world at loggerheads over the future of the nation's unique cinematic heritage

For more on the state of London ‘youf’ watch BBC Newsnight- Broken Society: Hackney's kids or Channel Four News - Operation Trident, a special report on the police operation targeting black gun crime in south London where several high profile shootings have occurred recently. You can also still catch the last couple of events at Tate Modern of Debate London. Today(25 June) is Can London be Both Big and Beautiful?

Yesterday was weekend engineering work on several tube lines. On the Jubilee line, for once, there were adequate announcements, the train stopping short at Green Park as advised, but the platform remained full of people just standing there like zombies. So is there really any hope? As I publish this, both Paddington and Kings Cross National Rail Services are suspended, if you can believe the announcements on the tube!

Speaking of zombies, if you have never seen Peter (Lord of the Rings) Jackson’s 1992 Braindead? You must. It is one of the ickiest, disgusting comedy horror flicks around. Think John Waters meets Babette’s Feast meets Night of the Living Dead in New Zealand on a Sunday morning. It was on Film 4 last night (which is now free on Freeview, of course). Two Brit pics directed by Sidney Hayers open Optimum’s new Horror Classics series out next week. Night of the Eagle is a beautifully shot black and white witchcraft story about a university professor and his good-natured, well-meaning Lady Macbeth wife. The chilly orchestral score is by the somewhat overlooked William Alwyn. Circus of Horrors is in glorious Eastman colour about a plastic surgeon who botches an op, then endears himself to a circus owner for saving his daughter’s face only to become an obsessive Svengali to a string of damaged, healed, then dead women in his Schuler Circus. It’s not quite as horrific as Franju’s Les Yeux sans Visage released at the same time or Peeping Tom (recent optimum DVD) of the following year but more than spine-tingling enough for a night in.

I spent Friday night with the beatific Björk as a futuristic barefooted pagan warrior princess, her female brass neo-Medieval pageantry, banners waving with independence, in her hour-long Glastonbury spot. Fantastic. BBC Four, I must qualify, but it almost made me don my Wellington boots up onto my comfy sofa in solidarity. Dr. Jonathan Miller was on Saturday night tele Michael Parkinson’s talk show, no video there yet of Miller,though - what an exciting life I lead. Had the marvellous fortune to be his assistant many moons ago on his staging of Bach’s St.Matthew Passion and if I were you, I’d listen and read every word he utters. Bach oratorio stagings seem to be all the rage now. Katie Mitchell’s at this year’s Glyndebourne, Anthony Minghella for ENO (English National Opera) next summer. What was and is always wonderful about Jonathan Miller though, is his ability to brush away the cobwebs and see the wood for the trees. A confessed atheist, he nonetheless finds the Bible a fascinating set of historical documents. Add a large dose of ‘Beyond the Fringe’ humour in rehearsals and the result was really quite revelatory.

Someone else on the tele who seems to have their head properly screwed on and neurons firing was Biddy Baxter, retired producer of the long-running series Blue Peter who spoke with Mark Lawson for BBC4. It was screened as part of their look at children’s’ TV week and she debunked most of the tabloid newspaper myths about her presenters. So did the controversial doco about the photographers and Princess Diana’s death debunking the myth that they were all one big paparazzi piranha. The Americans had trouble with photos of Twin Towers 9/11 suicide jumpers, and the Brits trouble with ‘far from forensic’ photos of the Diana crash scene (her face was obscured for the TV transmission). Mind you, for decades, many Americans had much trouble with Noam Chomsky’s books that simply pointed out that the truth is always there and usually freely available if you so choose to find it.

There’s a plethora of films that have just appeared on DVD this month - a real-life antidote to the many Hollywood studio offerings (sorry Mel, I did like Apocalypto and the studios didn’t really help you much with that!). Oh, and the first-rate Brit comedy Hot Fuzz and is just out on DVD in the US. Its premise that most towns are ruled by a cloaked clique isn’t that far from the truth, either. Optimum Releasing have a large DVD share of this blog simply because they have the vast and wonderful Canal Plus back catalogue, a veritable university of film education living up to their nomenclature. First up, is Ken Loach’s Family Life (1971) part of his astonishing Brit oeuvre of quite depressing but incredibly contemporary docu-dramas. In fact Family Life could have opened last week given the current political mental health climate. “Are we going to be dictated to by the rising generation?” says one of the young girl’s parents. “The behaviour is so foreign to me. Making love in the middle of the pavement,” her mother says to the social worker, “and calling you [the social worker] by his first name,” admonishing her daughter. The social worker has adopted the recent theories (The Divided Self, 1960; The Politics of the Family, 1971) of Scottish psychiatrist RD Laing ‘madness as a journey of self-discovery’ and is asked by the institution to move on. “Families are training camps to get you to do the same thing [as everybody else]”, says the girl’s boyfriend as he looks out over the rows of identical terraced houses. The girl is put on drugs and wheeled out at the end of the film as a zombie for medical students’ research. Not that drugs aren't a good solution in some cases but look at BBC Panorama's programme on Seroxat.
The Secrets of Seroxat

The producing/directing pair of Boulting Brothers (John and Roy) is more of Brit film bedrock. Twisted Nerve (1968) is penned by Peeping Tom writer Leo Marks and is the haunting story of Martin (Hywel Bennett) who has split personality and adopts the guise of the retarded Georgie. He is befriended by Susan (the mouth-watering Hayley Mills) who almost becomes his final murder victim. The ingenious, haunting Bernard (Psycho) Herrmann score is based on a whistled 4 notes, later hommaged by Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill 1. Just the sort of film the British establishment don’t want one to make. Magic Box (1951) is a bio-pic of the unsung inventor of cinema William Freise-Greene (Robert Donat) with a who’s who of the British acting pantheon at the time. In 1890 he was given the patent for the first motion picture camera and in 1889 wrote to Edison suggesting it should be combined with the phonograph to make ‘talkies’. Like most English talent over the years and today, he lived off the ‘smell of an oil rag’. A little old man shuffles into a London meeting of duelling American studio honchos and Brit distributors fighting for British screens for British films and then collapses. Not much has changed. His historical rival Louis Le Prince didn't fare much better. And still the name of William Freise-Green is barely known by most public today. Wonderful cinematography from the legendary Jack Cardiff, script by novelist Eric Ambler, and music score by William Alwyn (mentioned earlier for Night of the Eagle). Also check out his son's archive The Lost World of Friese-Greene.

The Family Way (1966) explores the problems of a newlywed couple Hywel Bennett and Hayley Mills again, whose honeymoon goes up the spout because of a travel agent confidence trickster and are forced to live in a paper-thin walled room next to parents. The scene where they try to get housing help from the local council could, like Loach, also have been written last week. Score is by Paul McCartney.

More individuals wrestling with the confines of society are to be found in the NFT’s retrospective of American indie Godfather actor/director John Cassavetes until the weekend. Alternatively, Optimum issued a DVD set a few years ago. The highlight is the self-financed Opening Night (1977) with Gena Rowlands as an ageing stage actress haunted by visions of a young fan killed in a car crash, and in the words of Cassavetes: “she fights a terrifying battle to recapture hope.” It’s just under two and a half hours but absolutely engrossing. “Let’s take this play, dump it upside down and see if we can’t find something human in it,” she says.

Rowlands can also be seen this week in a new film comprising 18 shorts Paris, Je t’aime, one of which she’s also scripted Quartier Latin. Co-starring Ben Gazzara and co-directed by Gerard Depardieu and Frederic Auburtin, a couple meet the night before their divorce. This collection is a fascinating if flawed experiment, with the most memorable contributions from Alexander Payne (About Schmidt, Sideways), Christopher Doyle (cinematographer for Chen Kaige, Zhang Yimou, Wong Kar-Wai), the Coen Brothers, and perhaps my favourite Sylvain Chomet (the animated Belleville Rendez-vous) about a kid telling how his mime artist parents met in a prison lock-up and found true love.

A less happy couple, but essential viewing, is found in Eric Zonca’s 1998 The Dreamlife of Angels (La Vie rêvée des anges). I haven’t seen the DVD, looks like no extras which is a real shame, but it’s such a sad, haunting film about a couple of odd matched girls who befriend each other in a small French town. One finds the light inside herself; the other fails to see, resulting in tragedy. I saw this film in the cinema again a few months ago and was just as devastated as at the first viewing. Toss out the education targets and make this required viewing for 16-18 year olds, especially the girls together with most of the other films mentioned so far!

Another two essential DVD sets this month, again from Optimum, are Jean Renoir and Godard, Vol.1. The Renoir differs radically from its Lionsgate US counterpart (only 3 discs) by omitting his two first, self-financed films, La Fille De L'Eau (Whirlpool of Fate,1925) and Nana (1926). It gains, though, in having 7 discs most particularly with Le déjeuner sur l'herbe(1959) about a scientist Dr Etienne Alexis (Paul Meurisse) involved with the radical pioneering use of artificial insemination. The project is inevitably linked with wealth and politics as Alexis is a candidate for the European Presidency, “I had imagined a parallel between the development of the European conscience and chromosome activity." But a picnic celebration of the project turns into a romantic farce when Dr.Alexis has his head and everything else turned by the farm girl Nenette (Catherine Rouvel),“down with science” he exclaims. It’s exquisitely shot by Claude Renoir in pastel colours on the family estate in Cagnes-sur-Mer in southern France (Jean was the son of painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir) and it really is a relatively unknown gem. Maybe it should always be required viewing for politicians midway through any EU talks!

In the same year, Renoir shot a version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde story, Le Testament Du Docteur Cordelier switching the action to 1950s France and using multi-camera techniques on a TV soundstage. He wanted to use the same technique for Dejener, but it proved too expensive. He also wanted a simultaneous release in both cinemas and on TV (starting to catch on more widely in France) but the unions prevented him. French stage legend Jean-Louis Barrault stars as Dr Cordelier, whose experiments turn him into the murdering Opale with cheeks so full of cotton wool you’d swear Brando modelled his Godfather performance after him. There’s also a touch of what might have influenced Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape with the doctor recording his experiments. You never know, but the film remains more fascinating curiosity than a satisfying horror movie. Eléna et les hommes(1956) doesn’t really excite either as much as one would hope, but the print of Claude Renoir’s cinematography is gorgeous and it’s hard to take one’s eyes off Ingrid Bergman as a Polish countess always falling in love. The political comedy is better served and poignant in Dejeuner, I think.

As with most Optimum sets, the extras here are copiously informative (3 x 30min documentaries including two early shorts Sur Un Air De Charleston & La Petite Marchande D’Allumette. Charleston is quite surreal and politically astute, and you wonder what else Renoir would have come up with if he’d continued in this vein. As it was, he became one of the great universally acknowledged humanist directors with La Grande Illusion (1937) and La Bête Humaine (1938) also in the set. Rarely seen in cinemas or TV now (his later The River ,1951, and The Golden Coach, 1953, fare better), are La Marseillaise (1938) and his last film Le Caporal épinglé (The Vanishing Corporal) (1962) with an extra documentary where director Bertrand Tavernier tells of how Renoir “made the actors breathe in the set”. “The technique should serve the actors when at that time it was serving more the director,” notes Tavernier. The WWII story of Le Caporal had mixed reviews because it wasn’t really about class (as in the WWI La Grande Illusion) or heroes. Cahiers du Cinema wrote that it was about “the collapse of civilisation and its rules”. It should be remembered that anti-hero films were always seen to be difficult in France, and even Renoir’s idea to finance La Marseillaise by asking audiences for an advance purchase of 2 francs per ticket never worked. And newsreels of Hitler were being applauded at the time.

In the same year, Marcel Carne’s Le Quai des Brumes (Port of Shadows) opened. And a few days before shooting, the head of the French studio tried dissuading Jean Gabin to participate because it was too down beat a subject. Optimum released a beautiful DVD print of Quai in May. Set in the docks of Le Havre, with a script by poet Jacques Prevert, its tone is that of Dreamlife of Angels: people on the edge of society almost, but not quite, finding a way out. Panama, the owner of a makeshift bar by the water, nails down the needle of his barometer and wants no talk of fog to make him sad like Krauss, the painter and his thoughts: “For me a swimmer is someone who drowns. I’m the fool. You’ve really got to be a fool to live in a state of discomfort and anxiety.”

Renoir supported the Popular Front in France but wasn’t a Communist. By making La Marseillaise, a historical film about the French Revolution, he wanted to give “an accurate reflection of the human spirit by stressing the importance of the individual in a story about the masses”. There’s a great scene in a fishing boat off Marseille where they’re arguing about the origins of the Marseillaise tune. “It’s brash and has no harmony,” says one. "Your rules of harmony are for the aristocrats,” says another. Renoir was struggling with the same thing as Godard was to struggle with but ended his days in Hollywood with an honorary Academy Award in 1975 for "grace, responsibility, and enviable competence." It wasn’t really about being left or right, but about being human and having an ability to see the light. Godard’s 1982 Passion explores this with his story of an expensive arty film being made right next to a working class factory. But more of that and other French DVD’s next time. Faites de beaux rêves...