SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON

This is probably Bryan Forbes' best film. It's an extremely taut, bleak and downbeat piece of work, the kind of thriller that truly merits the adjective 'clammy'. It is set in one of those London suburbs you really wouldn't want to live in, certainly not with a neighbour like Kim Stanley's demented medium who hatches a plot, (her weak-willed husband, played by Richard Attenborough, forces himself to go along with it), to kidnap a child then reveal the child's whereabouts to the police so she can achieve a kind of fame. But you know instantly that the woman is dangerously unstable and things can only go from very bad to much worse. Both Stanley, (much underused, at least so far as the cinema was concerned), and Attenborough give terrific performances and Forbes handles the unsettling material, (from a novel by Mark McShane), with considerable brio.

BONNIE AND CLYDE

When Arthur Penn's Thirties-set gangster movie first appeared in 1967 it was like a breath of fresh air in the American cinema, (though to be fair, on hindsight, the American cinema in the previous few years, particularly in the Independent sector, wasn't doing too badly). Still, Penn's movie seemed to break new ground and not just in it's depiction of violence. It had a lyrical intensity that belonged more to the French New Wave, (and at one time Truffaut's name was associated with the project), and, in that it took back to the American cinema the trappings that the French had originally borrowed in films like "A Bout De Soufflé" and "Shoot the Pianist", seemed to square the circle.

In the intervening years it has fallen somewhat out of fashion. It now almost seems quaintly old-fashioned, it's form more classically structured and narrativley driven than might first appeared. But there are virtues that have largely been overlooked. Like "The Graduate" which came out in the same year, it is a young person's film yet it burns with a fierce intelligence that is conspicuously absent from similar films today. I suppose you could say  the film has a pop-art sensibility, (a close-up of Faye Dunaway's face, lips burning bright red, could come from a Lichtenstein poster), and its cast seem unnaturally young, (only Beatty had  established a persona for himself at the time; the others had yet to establish a reputation), but they became stars because of it. (Gang members Parsons and Pollard didn't make the leap; they were character actors from the start). Arguably you could say Beatty, Dunaway, Hackman, Parsons and Pollard were never to better their work here. They may have equalled it but their performances were definitive.

Arthur Penn, too, was never to make another movie as good. The film's extraordinary critical and popular success gave Penn the freedom to tackle 'weightier' material, but "Little Big Man" and "Georgia's Friends" now seem misguided attempts at solemnity, while even his brilliant western "The Missouri Breaks" seems to succeed more for it's oddness rather than it's originality. Perhaps "Bonnie and Clyde" was a one-off though it did spawn an awful lot of break-neck thrillers and up-dated film-noirs, and was more responsible for the baby-boom in movies in the seventies than "Easy Rider" which followed it two years later. It remains a film ripe for reassessment.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

First of three masterpieces by the great Italian director Sergio Leone and the last of a trilogy of westerns which he made with Clint Eastwood, this marked a significant step-forward on the two previous films on which they had collaborated, ("A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More"). The 'Once upon a time ...' movies would see Leone's films take on a much darker turn but although there is quite a lot of violence and death on display here, this is an almost jovial epic, (the humour comes from Leone's subversion of traditional western clichés). Almost every sequence feels, and looks, like a classic, (the climatic gunfight has the choreographed precision of a ballet), Tonino Delli Colli's widescreen cinematography is magnificent, and although dubbed, (very effectively), the English translation of the Italian script is first-class.

The plot is simplicity itself as Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef search for some buried gold but the plot is only the thread of a much richer tapestry centred around events in the American Civil War. Stylistically and thematically this film would later influence Eastwood as a director. At a time when, in America, the western seemed long past it's sell-by date, in Europe Leone's homages single-handedly revitalised the genre paving the way for a whole new breed of post-modernist classics.

TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT

Howard Hawks made "To Have and Have Not" in 1944 and Bogie made it two years after he made "Casablanca", (his character and the plots of both films are very similar), and like "Casablanca"it's a masterpiece but like many masterpieces that came out of Hollywood during the studio years it's one almost by default. It's not deep or profound or particularly artistic but it's absolutely perfect; as good as movies are likely to get. The story goes that Hawks bet Ernest Hemingway that he could make a good film out of Hemingway's worst story and "To Have and Have Not" was what came up. There isn't too much of the original story left. The writers were Jules Furthman and William Faulkner and they expanded and greatly improved Hemingway's short story. In fact, "To Have and Have Not" has some of the best dialogue ever written and it's delivered by a dream cast.

This was the film that introduced a strapping 19 year old called Lauren Bacall to the world and introduced Bacall to Bogie. She's magnificent; she acts as if she was born into the role and maybe she was. Unfortunately she never got a part as good again but, at least, she got Bogie and kept him until he died a dozen or so years later, (you can see them falling in love). There's also Walter Brennan as the rummy; this, too, was probably his finest hour. The piano player is Hoagy Carmichael and the songs include "Am I blue" and "How little we know". It's similarity to "Casablanca" almost certainly did it no favours but in no way lessens it; it's greatness is definitely not in question.

M

Films about child murderers are reasonably rare perhaps because the subject of child murder is so repugnant. The definitive movie about child murder, (Fritz Lang's "M"), kept the killings off-screen and concentrated instead on the psychopathology of the killer, (a superb Peter Lorre), whose final speech, ("I can't help myself..I have no control over what I do..."), brought the nature of his actions into sharp focus. Like many great movies, then, it seemed inconceivable that anyone would want to remake it, particularly in view of the subject matter, and yet in 1951 Seymour Nebenzal, who also produced the Lang version, decided to do just that.

The 1951 version of "M" was not a success. It dealt with a subject much too dark for an American audience and, furthermore, its director Joseph Losey was on the cusp of being black-listed and yet I think it is as much a masterpiece as the earlier German movie. The setting was moved from Berlin to Los Angeles, (superbly shot and making great use of LA locations by Ernest Laszlo). The plot remained very much the same with a few noticeable changes, (both the police and the criminal underworld are more 'enlightened' here), while the pivotal role of the murderer, seen for most of the picture as a mostly silent, shadowy figure was given to David Wayne, who up to that time was seen as a light comedy actor.



Casting Wayne may have been a risky strategy but it certainly paid off. There was something simple and unobtrusive about his presence, the ease with which he moved about children easily explainable as he seemed so childlike himself. When finally he is tracked down and brought to a large underground car-park for 'trial' his fear and panic are palpable and, like Lorre's, his long speech direct to camera is heart-breaking as well as a stunning example of the actor's art. If in the end there is the tiniest touch of melodrama introduced into the climax, it is forgivable in view of all that has gone before. This is an "M" for the McCarthy age, a genuinely frightening picture of an America where even the murder of a child isi viewed as collateral damage in a society where criminality is corporate. It's failure is both understandable and troubling; it is certainly Losey's best American film and one of the finest things he was ever to do. It is long overdue a re-release and a reassessment.

THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN

The greatest of all monster movies and a classic of its kind, this hoary old melodrama, a superior sequel to "Frankenstein", has become something of a legend not least for the performances of Karloff, (billed without the 'Boris'), magnificent as the monster, Elsa Lanchester in the dual role of his 'bride' and in the prologue as Mary Shelley and Ernest Thesiger going completely over the top as the mad, bad and dangerous to know, Dr. Pretorius, offering the monster a cigar, 'It's my only weakness'.

Despite being often preposterous it completely transcends camp and is visually extraordinary. It also had a great script by William Hurlbut and John L Balderston that is far more complex than anything else in the genre. Mel Brooks may have lampooned it perfectly in "Young Frankenstein" but this James Whale movie is the real
McCoy. Gods and monsters, indeed.

THE YARDS

Another tale of family living and operating on the wrong side of the law. "The Yards" of the title are the railway yards in Queens and James Caan is the crooked and corrupt operative who supplies the rolling stock, bribing the city officials in the process. Other various family members include Mark Wahlberg and Joaquin Phoenix, Ellen Burstyn and Faye Dunaway and Charlize Theron while singer Steve Lawrence turns up as one of the corrupt officials. When a strong-arm operation goes wrong, ending in a killing, things go downhill very quickly for everyone concerned.

On the surface, James Gray's movie might read like any other crime drama but this magnificent film is much more complex and intelligent and the relationships between the characters are beautifully delineated and totally believable, (even a fight sequence looks like the kind of fight that would happen in real life and not in the movies). There's a depth here rare in a film of this kind. Superbly written by Gray and co-scenarist Matt Reeves and brilliantly acted by everyone, (Wahlberg is particularly good), "The Yards" has all the makings of a bona-fide American classic and is certainly one of the best American films of the last 20 years and yet it wasn't really that big a success and today is virtually forgotten. Do yourself a favour and seek it out; you won't be disappointed.

THE COUNSELLOR

Ridley Scott's "The Counsellor" is a mess, particularly in its extended cut, but it's a magnificent mess. It's virtually plotless or rather it has a plot so complicated it's virtually impossible to figure out what's going on or who's doing what to whom, suffice to say it has something to do with drug cartels operating along the US/Mexican border. The counsellor is Michael Fassbender who's a kind of go-between between the various parties, one of whom is Javier Bardem's over-sexed drugs lord. Another is Brad Pitt's mysterious cowboy who claims he can walk away from it all as needs be. There are two women involved as well; Penelope Cruz as the counsellor's long-suffering girlfriend and Cameron Diaz as Bardem's woman and the one who totes the guns and wears the pants in that relationship. Other sundry characters drift in and out and there are some brilliantly staged action sequences but mostly this is a talkative picture comprising long stretches of dialogue between just two characters. Luckily the script is by Cormac McCarthy so the talk is always good even if we think it's not always leading us anywhere.

The acting, too, is all over the place. Fassbender may be the central character yet his role feels underwritten; it's an awkward and unconvincing performance. A better actor could have worked wonders with this part, Cruz, too, is simply wan. On the other hand, both Bardem and Diaz have a lot of fun as a couple of nut-jobs and Pitt walks off with the movie as the philosophising gangster. It also looks magnificent thanks to Dariusz Wolski's superb cinematography. For the most part the critics hated it, (my friend Murtaza Ali being a rare exception). It's certainly hard work; with a more comprehensible plot it might have been a masterpiece. As it stands, it's a failure but it's still a lot better than many more 'successful' films I've seen this year and it really shouldn't be missed.

LE SOLEDAD

Third World poverty is a subject the cinema seems unwilling to tackle, perhaps understandably so since the movies are fundamentally a commercial enterprise and 'entertainment' is the name of the game. When 'western' cinema tackles the subject, (and I am thinking here of Hollywood cinema), it tends to romanticise it or make it the subject of a thriller so it's often left to 'native' cinema to deal with their own issues and a lot of the time, when they do, the subject is turned around and treated as an 'action' flic or simply ignored altogether. "La Soledad" is mercifully, and thankfully, the exception.

Jorge Thielen Armand's film hails from Venezuela where poverty and crime are debilitating issues. In a society ruled by violence Negro and his family have virtually nothing, living on the edge and with the likelihood of being thrown out of the crumbling mansion where they are virtual squatters. There is no melodrama in the telling of their tale and little drama either. Armand simply observes his characters as they struggle from one day to the next. This could be a documentary and his cast, all playing themselves, respond with extraordinarily naturalistic 'performances'. The tragedy lies in our knowledge that for many people in Venezuela life is unlikely to get any better than it is shown here. 'Action', for want of a better word, when it happens does so off-screen and yet, never for a moment, could you describe this film as boring; the potential for violence never actually seen is never far from the surface. Let's hope this extraordinary film finds the audience it deserves.

SILENT SOULS

Clocking in at a very economical 78 minutes Aleksey Fedorchenko's "Silent Souls" is a remarkable and remarkably beautiful Russian film dealing with both grief and identity but in a manner that is both uplifting and almost surrealistically comic. It is the kind of film that Abbas Kiarostami might make or, in a much broader fashion, the Coens. The plot is both simple and minimalist. A man's wife has died and he wishes to take her body to be buried in the spot where they had spent their honeymoon, and in the custom of their race, but he does not want to involve the authorities so he enlists the help of a colleague, Aist, the film's narrator and its central character and it becomes a road movie unlike any other.

Almost nothing happens and yet there is a great feeling that in the midst of death life goes on and that people continue to struggle for happiness at all costs. It's a melancholy subject but it isn't treated in a melancholy way. Little is actually said; these are indeed silent souls and what little story there is unfolds in almost totally visual terms and the cinematography of Mikhail Krichman is superb. An outstanding film that certainly doesn't deserve to get away.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD

"There will be Blood" confirms my long held belief that Paul Thomas Anderson is the finest director of his generation working anywhere today. His achievement is all the more remarkable from being so different from what he has done before. Well, maybe not that different; in adapting Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil" for the screen, Anderson has zoned in on the relationship between the central character, Daniel Plainview and his nemesis, the young preacher Eli Sunday, and on the inner turmoil that drives Plainview, in a way that recalls the fundamental relationships in his own movies, "Hard Eight", "Boogie Nights", "Magnolia" and "Punch Drunk Love". However, this is the first time he has gone to another source for his material and the end result is electrifying.

This is an epic full of expansive, large-scale spaces marking it out as a different kind of epic from "Magnolia" or "Boogie Nights" but it is an intimate epic often told in close-up and with dialogue divided between only a very few characters. (It's like "Giant" but pared down to its very basics). It may also remind you of Huston's "The Treasure of Sierra Madre", (men, who in a different set of circumstances might be deemed as 'good', driven to terrible acts through greed), and "Greed" itself, Von Stroheim's great silent 'epic' also comes to mind. The first fifteen minutes or so are wordless and it comes as something of a shock when we first hear Plainview speak. It sounds like a narration in which he is addressing us, the audience, before the camera reveals him addressing a room full of people whose land he needs so he can drill for oil.

The comparison, too, with "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" is driven home when we first hear him speak. Surely, this is the voice of Huston himself. I am not sure if the decision to play Plainview in the vocal style of Huston was the director's or the actor's choice but in doing so Daniel Day-Lewis creates a singularly memorable character whose vocal tics, nevertheless, don't distract from our appreciation of him. It is a performance that, once-and-for-all, establishes Day-Lewis as the premier actor of his generation. He isn't above playing to the gallery or revelling in the role to such an extent that his pleasure becomes somewhat contagious but like Brando and Olivier before him he can now afford to wink at and nudge his audience in the sure knowledge it's the character and not the actor who is hamming it up. Plainviw is one of the screen's great mad men and Day-Lewis imbues that madness with a Lear-like intensity.

So good is his performance there is a danger that Paul Dano, (the only other actor to really register), will be over-looked and this was certainly the case when the Oscar nominations were being dished out. Dano is superb as the sanctimonious 'false prophet' Eli Sunday and there are a few scenes when both actors are squaring up to each other that are master-classes in the art of acting. Dano disappears from the film about two-thirds of the way through only to return for a coda that brings the film to a memorable, if abrupt, close.

Like "Magnolia" and "Boogie Nights" this is a long film but it never seems so and I could have been doing with more of it. It is a beautiful film to look at, (Robert Elswit winning an Oscar for his cinematography), and Jonny Greenwood's ominous, symphonic score greatly adds to the drama. It has also been called a classic in the making but it is not self-consciously so. Rather it feels like a natural progression for its director, delving further into the psyches of his protagonists to discover what it is that drives them to do the things they do. Plainview may be a figure from an historical past but he could just as easily have been the father of Jason Robarts or Philip Baker Hall in "Magnolia" or the grandfather of Cruise in that same film or of Adam Sandler's quirky, volatile and maybe just slightly insane Barry Egan in "Punch Drunk Love".