Film
BOOKS ROUND-UP
Edinburgh-based critic and academic John Orr's latest book.
Hitchcock and 20th Century Cinema (Wallflower Press
0.. ), isn't so much analytical as genealogical. as he searches out Hitchcock connections past and present. Orr finds plenty of links With Lang and Murnau, and others With Resnais. Lynch and Figgis. While this can lead to rather empty ingenuity. a fOrm of intellectual doodling, as eVidenced in a passage where he compares Resnais and Hitchcock's editing approaches at a certain stage in their careers. on other occasions it can lead to acute insight. Some of Orr's observations on various Hitchcock actors. including Cary Grant and James Stewart. are very useful. There is also a key conceptual chapter that pushes towards something mom. a comparison between Hitchcock's Cinema and David Hume's philosophy. based on some provisional claims made by philosopher Gilles Deleuze about a 'theOry of relations'. a British philosophical
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tradition to which Deleuze sees Hitchcock belonging. Maybe we COuId have mOre analySis here. and less compare and contrast. but that w0u|d probably make it a less acceSSible. more demanding tome than the writer w0uId. on this occasion, like.
Still. while less interesting than other Orr books. it is better than the DaVid Thompson edited Altman on Altman (Faber O. ). one of the most disappOinting of the Faber series on
filmmakers. Altman's never been the most articulate or intellectually original of directors. and this trudge through his numerous films fails to capture the significance of McCabe and Mrs Miller, The Long Goodbye. Nashville and others. There are. however. a couple of good observations on Altman's working methods.
Scorsese is better served in Scorsese: A Journey Through the Ame can Psyche (Plexus O... ). an intelligent collection of essays.
Reviews
SILENT FANTOMAS
(15) 335min
(ArtifiCial Eye DVD retaili 0....
Alain Resnais once observed that ‘the Cinema of Louis Feuillade is very close to dreams — therefore its perhaps the most
interviews and reViews on Scorsese's work from the early days through to The AV/(IfOf. This a must for Scorsese aficionados. and includes pieces by Jonathan Romney. Toni Milne. J l-loberman, and Scorsese interVIews With Gavin Smith and Peter Biskind.
There is also a new book Out for Zombie buffs — Book of the Dead (Fab Press .0. ) by List writer Jamie Russell. It‘s a splatter guide that details hundreds of zombie filnis With wonderfully gOry pictures: while attempting to Justify the genre in more than gut- wrenching terms - as when he says: ‘Violence against the eye becomes a metaphor for the loss of meaning that the zombie apocalypses of these films embody.‘ (Tony McKibbin)
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realistic'. A clear influence on the Cinema of Hitchcock and Lang. Feuillade was a prodigious talent. He was in his early 20s at the birth of cinema in 189.1 and went on to produce some 700 films in barely two decades. most of which were serials. These included
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escapades of the eponymous master of disguise Rene Nd‘.£tllirl as he skillfully dodges his nemesis. Inspector Juve lEdmond Beoni [-xtias on this excellent t‘.‘.o disc edition include the documentary l'.’ho is Ftiriforhas'."
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THE SAVAGE INNOCENTS (12) 109min IEureka DVD Retail) 0...
Nicholas Ray's lflf‘i‘.) film is one of those that always borders on the terrible. There's an over'einphatic perforriiance from Anthony Quinn as a
reckless Eskimo. and the film moves between studio shots. actual locations and a back projection that undermines its ethnographic focus. Yet Ray always seems to be getting at something as it brings out contrasting lifestyles. On the one hand he illustrates in some detail Eskimo life and on the other he sneeringly glances at the neurotic Westerner who's determined to superimpose his simultaneOLisly puritan
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DRAMA THE NAKED KISS
(18) 87min IMetiodome DVD retaili O...
A blond prostitute. facing camera in medium-shot. furioust attacks her drunken piinp to a whirling iax/ soundtrack. It remains one of the most explosive opening scenes ever committed to film. In The Naked Kiss. writer-director Sam Fuller tells the story of a high class working girl, Kelly IConstance Towersi. and her attempts to escape her past and integrate into mainstream society. Moving to a New England suburb. she starts a Job working in a children's hospital. However. buried deep beneath the gleaming facade of GrantVille. Franklin COunty. lies a deeply rotten core. a moral decay embodied by Kelly's lover. war veteran Grant (Michael Dantei.
Fuller's perverse pqu thriller benefits from the inspired cinematography of Stanley Cortez (The
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fllSlt“Hl.‘Al [‘H»\l\l»\ THE ASSASINATION (12) 104mm
lfflllltfint DVD Retaili O...
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ie fissassx/iat/iiri is a mind bendineg complicated take on a period in Japanese history when, after centuries of isolationism, the US in the ll-ii‘ills sent battleships to force .Japan to open itself up for trade With other nations. Ibis. though. is Just the backdrop to the tale of an impressive Samurai warrior, l-lacliiro Kiyokawa lltflfilllt) 'laiiibai. who so insists on being his own man that no one can quite work out his political D()f;|ll()ll. There are numerous flashbacks where other people explain and explore his character, but they don't lead either to narrative clarity. nor even character exposition, They seem instead part of director Masahiro Shinoda‘s modernist take on character and event. where truth can't ‘;£lf$ll'/ be ascertained. Assuredly filmed and never less than intelligei'it. the film includes a short but useful introduction by the great filmmaker and cineaste Alex Cox. (Tony McKibbin)
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