Reviews
DOCUMENTARY RIVIERA COCKTAIL
(E) 97min
(Soda Pictures DVD Retail) .0
Hein/ Blitler's loving film is a subdued low—key look at the life of Irish society photographer Edward Quinn. who made his career in the South of France. The problem is that. even as Biitler talks to a few people about his photography. shows us montages of Ouinn's photos. or has jazz players in a studio playing against cinematic sized images of Ouinn's w0rk on a screen. the filmmaker never quite Justifies why we should watch the film. Who is Quinn and why does he matter? Beyond a few pictures of stars and starlets on the Croisette. and some photos of Picasso later in the great painter's life. Ouinn. unlike Cartier Bresson or Arbus. seems to be a photographer who doesn't quite justify a full-blown docwnentary. Minimal extras. (Tony McKibbini
DRAMA
SENSO
(PG) 116min (Optimum DVD retail) .0.
Made by one of the feiinding fathers of Italian neo-realist cinema. Sense finds Luchino Visconti mowng into more melodramatic territory with this Opulent
0
2:4 _.E§£
period romance set in mid- 19th century Venice. Born into an aristocratic family himself. Visconti is very much at home telling the story of a beautiful countess whose doomed affair with a young Austrian officer at the outbreak of the Austro-ltalian war of 1866 sees her betraying her moral conscience and political principles. Alida Valli. the IClly attractive Italian star from The Third Man who was dubbed ‘the next Garbo'. plays the countess. while foppish American actor Farley Granger is imported from Hollywood to play her lover. Visconti Subsequently cast and dubbed the voices of other English-speaking Western stars in arguably more distinguished films. including The Leopard with Burt Lancaster and Death in Venice with Dirk Bogarde. Though deeply flawed Sense remains testimony to Visconti's prodigious talent. No extras. (Miles Fielder)
MYSTERY DRAMA L’APPARTEMENT (15) 112min (Optimum DVD rental/retail) 000
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L'Appartement
It would be perfectly plausible to say that only the French could make a film like L'Apppartenient were it not for the fact that this mid-90s unromantic thriller feels like below par Hitchcock. one With our Alf choosing pervy over edgy. There's the spooky Bernard Herrmann-like orchestration and the central lead of a handsome yet gaunt man (for Jimmy Stewart read Vincent Cassel) who's trying to pack up his troubles and settle down only to make things worse by. at least. tenfold.
Then there's the beautiful. tortured women he’s involved
with: Monica Bellucci plays his one true love who has ghosted back into his life and Romaine Bohringer is a one-night stand who knows more about him than he'd care to learn. And finally. there's the finger- gnawing climax as our anti-hero's errors and obsessions come home to roost. While this has its own magnetic power. you'd really be better off revisiting Vertigo. Minimal extras.
(Brian Donaldson)
DETECTIVE THRILLER THE BIG SLEEP (15) 95min
(ITV DVD retail) 0.
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Dear Michael Winner. Why? Relocating a classic film noir from LA to London is bad enough. but to drag it kicking and screaming into the late 70s? Criminal.
American private dick Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is hired by the ailing General Sternwood (James Stewart) to catch a blackmailer. but becomes entangled with the General's daughters Camilla (Candy Clark) and Charlotte (Sarah Miles) as the body count rises and the plot thickens.
Unrestricted by the MPAA code that bound the 40s film. this 1977 version was freer to follow the sex. violence and homosexuality of the original novel. but proves all the less effective for it.
With the Sussex sun obliterating any vestige of atmosphere. the cast camp it up in an increasingly hysterical fashion — especially Oliver Reed as a sinister club boss — leaving laconic Mitchum alone with any credibility. although even he must have wondered what the hell he had signed up for. No extras.
(Dave Martin)
Film
DVD ROUND-UP K g. jg.
Summer is upon us. If freak storms. hay fever. ozone paranoia and the acrid waft of a million barbeques has driven you indoors. then you may want to hang out with two of the coolest men to ever stride this dying planet — Jean Paul Belmondo and Alain Delon. Having recently been brought out by French media giants Canal Plus. the distribution company Optimum Releasing now has one of the finest archives in the western hemisphere and these two collections delight and amaze with their mixture of the familiar and ‘hard to come by'. The Alain Delon Collection (oooo ) is pure class and features P/ein Sole/I (1960). L’Ec/isse (1962), Un F/ic (1972). Traitement de Choc (1973) and F/ic Story (1975). The Belmondo Collection (ooo of the quality of the individual films. but it does contain the Godard classics A Bout de Souffle (1960) and Pierrot Ie Fou (1965) and the insanely popular thriller Le Professionne/ from 1981 . Staying in France and with box sets, if only so we can kneel down before the plastic and resin shrine that is the H6 Clouzet Collection (Optimum ooooo). Clouzet. a true master of cinema (often tagged the ‘Gallic Hitchcock') was one of the greatest. This collection features three of Clouzet's most dyspeptic and sour works — his wartime poison-pen drama Le Corbeau (1943). reviled by the right-wing. left-wing and church alike, his classic film noir Ouai des Or‘fevres (1947) and of course The Wages of Fear (1952). It is not difficult to see why Clouzet became a pin up hero for British Free Cinema radicals (Lindsay Anderson. Karel Reisz. Tony Richardson and others) of the 19603. Back in the real world there’s a new collection of John Pilger Documentaries (Network oooo ), none of which have been available on DVD before. The twelve demanding and occasionally depressing films include Death Of A Nation — The Timor Connection and Year Zero - The Silent Death Of
Cambodia.
) is more uneven in terms
There’s a couple of long overdue solo reissues out as well — Monte Hellmen's superb 1971 drag racing drama No Lane Blacktop (Universal ooooo) finally gets to burn its hippy heart on the digital freeway. Saucier delight can be found in Serge Gainsb0urg's 1976 debut Je T’Aime Moi Non Plus (Optimum oooo . pictured) about the various sexual adventures of Johnny (Jane Birkin). a truck stop waitress. II is lascivious and shocking in equal measure and features Warhol acolyte Joe Dallesandro and Gerard Depardieu. Next time it's all about ‘the family’. Come together. right now. (Paul Dale)
SCI FI/ADAPTATION FORBIDDEN PLANET
(PG) 94min
(Warner Home Video DVD retail) ooooo
The best screen adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest (although Derek Jarman's punk opera 1979 version comes a close second) finally gets a decent DVD transfer with some formidable extras. Made in 1956. Fred M Wilcox‘s (Lassie Come Home. The Secret Garden) superb sci fi adventure film decants
Shakespeare's last solo authored play (often referred to by scholars as his ‘retirement play') into a space exploration mystery starring the mighty Walter Pidgeon as a tortured Prospero
(here named Dr Edward Moebius).
This is a marvellous multi-influential work that really begs revisiting. It is. however. the extras that are the real find here. Over two packed out discs there are some mind blownig deleted scenes and lost footage plus two follow- up vehicles featuring the film's real star Robby the Robot. and three documentaries on the film. On top of this there are excerpts from the TV series this film inspired. A treat.
(Paul Dale)
7—21 Jun 200/ THE LIST 43