THE FOUNTAINHEAD

 A classic of American literature, though some people think its florid style marks it out as a camp classic, Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" simply had to be filmed and yet perhaps it was always one of the great 'unfilmable' novels to begin with. It was King Vidor who finally did bring it to the screen and Vidor, more than anyone, knew what 'florid' meant and was probably the director most capable of capturing the novel's hysteria and there's certainly a lot of hysteria on show.

It's about an architect, Howard Roark, clearly modelled on Frank Lloyd Wright, but the real theme of the film is fascism and the freedom of the individual. It might seem to be about architecture but equally it could be about McCarthyism, (how it slipped under the radar of the HUAC is a bit of a mystery). Roark's played by a miscast, over-aged Gary Cooper. Vidor had wanted Humphrey Bogart for the part, (an even greater piece of miscasting in my opinion), but Rand insisted on Cooper and to be fair he does carry it off.

As the spoiled, over-wrought young woman who loves him, abuses him and, in turn, is abused by him Patricia Neal is excellent and there's also a superb performance from Raymond Massey as the newspaper magnate Neal marries. Visually, too, it's extraordinary; there are shots here that could have been lifted from "Citizen Kane" while, at the same time, being almost unbearably 'literate', (Rand also wrote the screenplay). There's nothing remotely naturalistic about it; this was as over-the-top, visually, verbally, in every way, as it was possible to get. A camp classic, then, or a masterpiece or maybe both? It's certainly one of a kind and it really should be seen.

BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING

 Jean Renoir's 1932 masterpiece, "Boudu Sauve des Eaux", which he made on location in Paris, is one of cinema's great humanist comedies that makes you totally forget that Paul Mazursky ever remade it as "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" or indeed that it was even remade in France with Gerard Depardieu as Boudu. The simple plot is about how the over-sexed, ageing and kind-hearted Monsieur Lestingois, (a superb Charles Granval), resuces the tramp Boudu, (a magnificent Michel Simon), from drowning in the Seine, takes him home where he wrecks havoc, seducing both Lestingois' wife and maid.

It's a film about what's come to be known as the milk of human kindness and how easily it can turn sour but Renoir never plays it for easy laughs; watching this film you can see why some people believe he may be the greatest director of them all. Boudu may embody elemental man but you would have to be a saint to embrace him. He's a rogue and remains so and your sympathies are always with poor, misguided Lestingois. Renoir may indeed be a humanist but he can see how our good deeds come back to bite us while at the same time saving a good deal of affection for the rascally tramp. Yes, this is a masterpiece and one of the finest of all French films.

SUEZ

 In "Suez" a lot of Americans pretend to be a lot of Frenchmen, or maybe just plain old 'foreigners', as they often did on the big screen. This 1938 20th Century Fox picture might qualify as an epic; it's certainly a very handsome, prestige production directed by Allan Dwan with Darryl F. Zanuck producing. As you may or may not guess from the title it's the story of how the Suez Canal came into being with Tyrone Power as Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who came up with the idea of a passage to link the seas of the East with the Mediterranean.

The large cast also includes Loretta Young as the Empress Eugenie, Leon Ames as Napoleon III and such stalwarts as Joseph Schildkraut, Henry Stephenson, Sig Ruman, Nigel Bruce and George Zucco. For a touch of authenticity the French actress Annabella was cast as the French girl Ty falls for out in Egypt. The Egyptian 'locations' were mostly shot in Arizona and California but an excessive use of sand helps us suspend our disbelief. It's also surprisingly entertaining and Power was as handsome here as he ever was on screen. A swan-necked Loretta Young also manages to live up to her given title as 'the most beautiful woman in Europe'. A huge hit in its day and a great way to pass a dull Saturday afternoon.

HARD PAINT

 Like "Stranger by the Lake", Filipe Matzembacher and Marcio Reolon's "Hard Paint" is both sexually explicit and set in a very specific gay milieu, in this case the world of gay chat-rooms where young Pedro works, mostly alone, but for a camera that records his every move as he dances and performs sex acts for the men watching. Unfortunately, Pedro is lonely, anti-social and sometimes violent, attracting the attention of 'Married Voyeur' who wants more than just to watch and Leo, another sex-worker who has 'stolen' Pedro's act.

When the film begins Pedro is living with his sister in Brazil's southern city of Porto Alegre but she leaves him for a job at the other end of the country; Pedro must cope on his own though he is clearly not cut out for it. As the sullen, sad hero who performs his 'act' under the name of Neonboy, applying different colours of luminous paint to his body, Shico Menegat is excellent while Bruno Fernandes is equally good as Leo, the sex-worker Pedro comes to depend on and possibly love.

As LGBTQ films go, "Hard Paint" is certainly a cut above; it's unsentimental and unapologetic, erotic but not sensational and sometimes surprisingly moving. Unfortunately the material itself is a bit on the thin side and at two hours it is overlong but it's also stylish and intelligent and clearly marks out its directors as talents to watch.

STRANGER ON THE PROWL

 "Stranger on the Prowl" is probably the one Losey movie most people haven't heard of. He made it largely on location in Italy in 1952 from a screenplay by Ben Barzman, (like Losey, Barzman was also a victim of the blacklist), and it gave Paul Muni a late starring role as a drifter on the run who strikes up a friendship with a small boy who comes to share his hiding place. Although technically an Italian film, it's in English and while hardly a masterpiece it's still a remarkable piece of work, a cross between Italian Neo-Realism and American Film Noir and it remains an essential part of the Losey canon.

It's a story the cinema has tackled many times with varying degrees of success. This one works in large part to the fine performances of Muni and Vittorio Manunta as the boy but mainly due to Losey's mostly unsentimental handling of the material and his brilliant use of his Italian locations. It may be difficult to see these days but it shouldn't be missed if you get the opportunity.

ULYSSES

 The one utterly 'unfilmable' novel was indeed filmed, and with a fair degree of success, by Joseph Strick in 1967. "Ulysses" is set over the course of one day, June 16th, 1904 in Dublin, now celebrated annually as 'Bloomsday' in deference to the book's central character, Leopold Bloom but Strick chose to update it to the time the film was made perhaps on the basis that the novel itself is 'timeless' or maybe on the basis that the events depicted could have happened at any time. It charts a journey through Dublin by Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, the young teacher and hero of Joyce's more accessible "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man".

It is, of course, the book that sits on the shelves of the intelligentsia, mostly unread, but essential to show off; the stream of consciousness novel to end them all. On the other hand, it may have gone unread for years as it was originally banned in most countries on the grounds of obscenity. That the film works at all is a great credit to Strick but mostly the critics didn't go for it feeling, perhaps, that the director over-simplified it, changing the text and that the updating was tantamount to sacrilege. He also chose to shoot it in widescreen when the material may have cried out for something more intimate but it is superbly shot by Wolfgang Suschitzky while the cast are mostly splendid. Milo O'Shea is a superb Bloom and Barbara Jefford is outstanding as his wife, Molly while the Dublin locations now add up to a great time capsule of what life was like there in the mid-sixties.

THE POWER OF THE DOG

 I hope the uncalled for comparisons with "Heaven's Gate" and, for that matter, "Brokeback Mountain" don't hurt the chances of "The Power of the Dog" doing well, either at the box-office or come awards season. This is Jane Campion's first feature film since "Bright Star" twelve years ago and it may be a masterpiece. It's a 'contemporary' western in that it's set in 1925 and is about two brothers, both ranchers, one 'good', (Jesse Plemons), and one 'bad', (Benedict Cumberbatch), and what happens when Plemons brings home a new wife, (Kirsten Dunst), and her teenage son, (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

It's a slow, visually stunning, (Ari Wegner is the DoP), character-driven piece written by Campion from Thomas Savage's novel and it deals with both the themes of revenge and redemption. Cumberbatch may appear to be the conventional villain but it's clear quite early on there are a great deal more shadings to his character and Cumberbatch is superb in a role he took over from Paul Dano. Plemons, on the other hand, never quite develops beyond being the decent family man though both Dunst and Smit-McPhee are excellent.

You could say the other major 'character' in the film is the house where they live. A great gothic pile standing in the middle of nowhere, (the film was shot in the vast open spaces of New Zealand standing in for Montana), this house is as memorable as those in "Giant" and "Days of Heaven". As with all of Campion's films nothing here is rushed. This is no more an action film than something Terrence Malick might turn out, (Malick is another point of reference), and consequently will be more suited to the art-house than the multiplex but in its simple, direct and unadorned way it's as good as anything you will see this year and it shouldn't be missed.

THE PHENIX CITY STORY.

 Probably the most brutal and certainly one of the best of the docudramas popular in the forties and fifties and dealing with crime in American cities, "The Phenix City Story" begins as a piece of pure photo-journalism as journalist Clete Roberts introduces some of the real-life people whose stories shape the events of the movie.

It's fundamentally a B-Movie that sets out to condemn vice and violence by showing it and it's photographed with enough documentary-like realism to hit home, mostly in the streets where the action took place. Also by using actors who were not exactly 'names', (John McIntire, in a rare leading role, was probably the best known face), adds to the feeling that everything we see is the Real McCoy. A critical success, (Martin Scorsese rates it among his favourite films), it has now achieved cult status.

AT LONG LAST LOVE

 Peter Bogdanovitch was on a roll when he made "At Long Last Love". He already had "Targets", "The Last Picture Show", "What's Up, Doc?", "Paper Moon" and "Daisy Miller" behind him and was building up something of a stock company of his own when he had the idea of a musical-comedy built around the songs of Cole Porter. Could this be his masterpiece? Well, let's start with the pluses. Firstly there are the songs which are some of the best ever composed so the musical part should have been a cinch but then Mr Bogdanovitch chose to cast it with performers who could act but not necessarily sing or, at least, sing to the level these songs demanded.

Another plus was the look; filmed in colour but with the black-and-white Art Deco style of a Fred and Ginger movie it looked fabulous so perhaps a combination of the look and the score should have been enough but in the end that's really all we get. Any decent musical-comedy needs jokes but unfortunately Bogdanovitch's gags mostly fall flat. Indeed, his script sucks so the best you can say is that this is a good idea that needed a writer. Between the songs, "At Long Last Love" dies a rather painful death.

Madeline Khan comes out of it largely unscathed and Cybill Shepherd is surprisingly charming but Burt Reynolds goes through the movie as if his trousers were pinching him down below while Duilio Del Prete shows he clearly deserves better. Eileen Brennan, on the other hand, is simply an embarrassment. The film flopped though it has now built up something of a cult, (some people really love it), but in the end even those great Cole Porter tunes can't save it and set beside 'proper' musicals it's a bit of a disaster. See it if you must but maybe you'd be better off staying home and listening to Ella's Cole Porter Songbook instead.

ENEMIES, A LOVE STORY

 Paul Mazursky's best film but then he was working with great material, in this case Issac Bashevis Singer's novel about a Holocaust survivor who, having moved to America after the war, finds himself with three living wives; he's a bigamist more by design than choice, believing his first wife died in the concentration camps, he remarried in America, (now wife number three is a whole different story).

This is a great tragi-comedy; the situation is farcical and sometimes very funny but the horror of the Holocaust permeates every frame and Mazursky treats the material with the respect it is due. This is a movie that comes close to perfection from the superb period design down to the faultless performances of the entire cast.

Ron Silver is superb as Herman, a man confident enough to try to balance three relationships at once, convincing himself he loves all the women in his life, Angelica Huston, the wife who returns from the dead, Margaret Sophie Stein as the simple servant girl he marries after the war and Lena Olin as the clinging beauty who emotionally blackmails him into marriage. Herman is a liar and a cheat and a shyster but Silver makes him hugely sympathetic, an amoral man who, nevertheless, wants to do right by everyone but who is constantly doomed to failure. This is a great movie that deserves to be better known.

THE DEVIL THUMBS A RIDE

 A Z-Movie classic. Hard to believe that "The Devil Thumbs A Ride" only clocks in at sixty-two minutes since there are enough characters for at least three movies, not to mention a great plot about a murderer, Lawrence Tierney, (the only real 'name' in the cast), who hitches a ride with somewhat inebriated travelling salesman, Ted North, picking up Nan Leslie and Betty Lawford on the road. Director Felix Feist also wrote the cracking script from a novel by Robert C. DuSoe and there isn't a wasted frame. If the cast weren't particularly well-known, Tierney excepted, the performances are surprisingly good and, best of all, nothing really happens quite the way you expect it to. This is, in fact, a gem that has built up a considerable cult reputation over the years and is infinitely better than many major studio pictures of the period.