FILM PREVIEW
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I Hayley Mills: In town for the King‘s Theatre run of Richard Harris‘s play Dead Guilty. actress Hayley Mills will also make a guest appearance at the Glasgow Film Theatre on Monday 29 May for a screening of a newly restored print of Tiger Bay. The thriller. made in 1959 by J. Lee Thompson (director of
SCOTTISH FILM
the original Cape Fear). marked Mills debut as a young girl who is the only witness to a murder. After the screening. she will be interviewed on stage and take questions from the audience.
I Screenwriting Workshop: Following a successfully sold-out. no-to-iow- budget filrnrnaking seminar in Glasgow in April. Elliot Grove and the independent Film Workshop returns north for a repeat preformance on Saturday 17 June at the Glasgow's Cottier Theatre on Hyland Street. At the same venue on the following day. Grove will present a more detailed screenwriting workshop which examines story structure strategies. concentrated dialogue. characterisation and marketing scripts. Pre-registration costs £65 per day (£100 for both) or £75 per day on the door, if space is available. More details from 0171 437
13991.
While in some ways it must be a great honour to have your name live on in perpetuity. it can only have been slightly embarrassing for Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. who was still alive when the term ‘masochism’ was coined. For young Scottish fiirnrnaker Ewan Mon'ison. however. it was interesting to note that Sacher- Masoch’s scandalous novel Venus In Furs and relevant clinical psychological manuals emerged together during the 1890s. ‘80 you have the evolution of the perversion and the cure at the same time,‘ Morrison continues. ‘Masochism always plays about with the irony of using exactly the same kind of language as psychology — it talks about role-playing and behaviour correction and all that.’
Here lies the inspiration for Mon'ison‘s 27-minute short film. The Contract. A young man. calling himself Leopold. slips into a fantasy of 19th century seduction by signing into a modern-day clinic under the care of a psychotherapist. who becomes the incarnation of his fantasy's dominant female. The film has a dark Scottish humour and absurdist wit. but its look and overall conception heads for European arthouse tem'tory. Strikineg visual black-and-white photography and strongly composed frames underline the abstract. oppositional
20 The List 19 May-1 Jun 1995
laws of desire
The Contract: ‘absurdist wit’
themes of the narrative.
‘lt was always going to be rigidly constructed to the point where everything has a slight artifice about it.‘ admits the writer-director. ‘While it plays around with all these rules and regulations of sado-masochistic fantasy. it does something similar visually where there’s an over-fetishism of the image itself. and it just becomes a bit too repressive.‘
Morrison wrote the script two years ago while in Angers, France. courtesy of a Eurocreation Screenwriting Award. He then worked on other material. including Blue Christmas (which dramatist Elvis‘s short stop at Prestwick Airport). before completing The Contract. in the new film. Leopold is played by up-and-coming Scottish actor Henry lan Cusick. while the therapist is the perfectly cast Jacqueline Pearce. formerly of Blake 's Seven. ‘1 was looking for a slightly older woman who had a strange kind of sexuality about her. then 1 thought. “Why not go for someone who you used to think was sexy as a kid?". in the back of your mind. you see her and think. “That‘s Servalan. she wants to destroy the world in leather boots". And it just fits in.‘ (Alan Morrison)
The Contract will screen as part of this year 's First Reels programme at the Glasgow Film Theatre at 6.30pm on Thursday 25 May.
VIDEOS
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Britain’s Hammer Productions were as guilty as anyone when it came to shamelessly rehashing the same plot for an on-golng horror series, but Terence Fisher’s Frankenstein Created Woman (15) is a more interesting sequel than most. Here the Baron goes beyond creating physical lite and muses on how to conquer death on a metaphysical, spiritual level. The result is that the soul of a wrongly executed peasant ends up in the revitalised body of a landlord’s daughter and wreaks revenge on his/her local village. As ever, Peter Cushing is excellent as the super- intelligent man obsessed with pushing back the boundaries of science. Another Hammer stalwart, Christopher lee, blends mysticism with sexual allure in Rasputin, The Mad Monk (15). It’s a totally different performance from his aristocratic Dracula: here, Lee is a loud, swaggerlng, bearded bear ot a man who goes about building a power base in the Tsar’s court by using his hypnotic skills. Drawing parallels with the appeal of any cult leader, lee is
Rasputin: ‘rnysticism with sexual allure‘
has a stronger sense at authority. Using a structure of flashbacks within a court trial, the story of one of Britain’s most notorious murderers emerges. As played by Donald Pleasence, Crippen is a downtrodden mouse at a man, routinely humiliated by his sex-mad, undignilied wile (Coral Browne). A sweetly romantic ailair with typist Ethel le Heve (Samantha Eggar) brings about inevitable tragedy. This is a little-known, nicely acted British drama, shot in black-and-white by Nicholas Roeg in his early days as a
rather good (it a little melodramatic) in the wild Messianic stakes. Hammer’s approach to history might be a bit shaky with Rasputin, but Torchlight Productions’ Dr Crippen (15)
each.
cinematographer. (Alan Morrison)
All three titles are available on the Lumiere Video label, priced £10.99
RETAIL
I Aguirre: Wrath Di God (15) Werner Herzog‘s masterpiece is an epic on the scale of his own
F itzcarraldo. Klaus Kinski‘s conquistador. raging through the Amazon jungles in search of gold. is played like an Aryan Richard 111 (he wants to establish a master race by marrying his own daughter) — a powerful portrait of rnegalornania. with clear anti-Nazi overtones. Also on the tape is land Of Silence And Darkness. a remarkable documentary on deaf mutes. which is a testament to the courage of people who have found new ways to communicate their vivid inner lives. (Tartan £15.99)
I Woyzeck (15 ) Herzog and Kinski again. this time broadening out Georg Buchner’s fragmented study of a disturbed soldier. whose schizophrenic nightmares and jealousy lead to the murder of his wife. Kinski is brilliant. playing at an intense. yet not melodramatic pitch. Also on the tape is Heart 0! Class. a gothic fable about the dependence of a town on the secret recipe for ruby glass. given to a dying factory owner by an enigmatic wanderer. Again. Her'zog focuses on the mystic power of
outsiders to ‘normal‘ society. (Tartan £15.99) I Eastern Heroes Video Magazine (18) For years Eastern Heroes magazine has done more than any other publication to inform British fans of martial arts and eastern action pics. in its video format. it's even better. The presentation may be a little amateurish. but there‘s a real sense of passion and knowledge of the subject. Packed with film clips and interviews (Samo Hung. Chow Yun- Fat. Yukari Oshirna to name a few), it would be a bargain in itself: the addition of an early (albeit badly cropped) Jackie Chan movie. Young Tiger. takes the running time up to about 160 minutes and makes it a must for collectors. (Eastern Heroes £12.99)
I l, Camcorder (E) Selecting the most useful elements from the current Channel 4 series. this instructional video. hosted by Red Dwarfs Robert Llewellyn. comes over as an accessible. entertaining introduction to basic film grammar. The tips are imaginative and easy to follow. which should encourage wannabe Scorseses to extend the possibilities of home video. (Channel 4 Video £10.99)
I Babette‘s Feast (U) The irony of taking the winner of the 1988 Oscar
:‘or Best Foreign Language Film. then taking out all the foreign language and dubbing in American voices. shouldn’t be lost on anyone. The contemporary voices are completely dislocated from the period action; it's surely too slow and arty fora mainstream audience and. in this version. ruined for arthouse fans. (Odyssey £14.99)
I lady Di The Camelias (15) Unlike the above. the dubbing of this story (the basis of opera La 'l'raviata) isn’t fatally crippled. mainly due to the fact that the charm of Isabelle Huppert‘s performance emerges despite a tacked-on American accent. Her waif-like eroticism adds to the encroaching tragedy. while the production values give the film a sense of classic French period style. (Arrow £15.99)
I Testimony (PG) Once again. director Tony Palmer discovers the man within and beyond the music — in this case. Dmitri Shostakovich. played by Ben Kingsley. Like his Wagner. it uses the funeral as a starting point. but here there is a clearer sense of the dilemma between the artist and the political structure that surrounds him. (Connoisseur £15.99)