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Wrong Turn. Wrong, Wrong, Wrong...

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There's Dark cinema and there's dark cinema. The term Film Noir was originally applied to American cinema in 1946, and seems to have been used by two French film critics at more or less the same time. The critic Nico Frank described a recent batch of American imports as "belong[ing] to what used to be called the detective film genre, but which would now be better termed the crime, or, even better yet, the "crime psychology film."  Fellow critic Jean-Pierre Chartier was less charitable in his take on the subject, condemning what he called Film Noir's "pessimism and disgust for humanity." It is Chartier's take on Noir that feels most relevant to this week's film, although personally I would challenge the value judgement implied by his attacks. One of the characteristics of the "dark cinema" of this era was that it didn't necessarily need to have anything to do with crime. Or sex. It's possible to have a Very Bad Day for enti...
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Post-Depression Tragedy

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____________________________________________________ The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means. Oscar Wilde; The Importance of Being Earnes t ____________________________________________________ Depression/Comedy Part II: Are you Being Funny? Last January (a year ago!) I launched a film series that I called Depression/Comedy . As I said at the time, film-makers of the 1930s made a conscious decision to make their films as positive and enjoyable as possible, in an effort to help the country get through a very difficult and painful decade. Putting that series together was a genuine pleasure for me, and allowed me to showcase some of my all-time favourite films.  This year, I want to look at what happened next . You might think of this as Depression/Comedy without the Comedy. Not that this season is going to be depressing . Not remotely.  Like Depression/Comedy , this is going to be a celebration of a very specific period in the history of Cinema. ...
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The Feast of "Stephen"

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If you're a Christian, you might know "The Feast of Stephen" as St. Stephen's Day (the 26th of December) when young men dress up in vaguely nightmarish straw costumes and wander around the town playing alarming music while carrying a dead bird. This is not about that. If you're a Doctor Who fan, you might know The Feast of Stephen as the first ever Doctor Who Christmas episode (broadcast on Christmas Day in 1965).  This is not about that either. For our purposes this week, The Feast of Stephen  concerns a small but pivotal character in the beloved Noël Coward/David Lean classic Brief Encounter .  Brief Encounter is remembered today as perhaps the most famous unconsummated love affair in cinema history. Released in 1945 (but without so much as the slightest hint of a war or its effects) it tells the story of two (married) individuals who meet by chance on a train platform and proceed to teeter on the brink of having an affair for a few weeks. They do not, in fac...
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Exit, Pursued by a Bear: the Movie

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The Winter's Tale is not Shakespeare's most famous play. It doesn't have a balcony scene, and no one gets turned into a donkey. There are no introspective graveyard scenes with human skulls, and no one, at any point, longs for a horse at any price. But The Winter's Tale secures its position in the Shakespearian canon for at least one reason. It features what is beyond a shadow of doubt the most exciting, nerve-tingling, action-packed edge-of-your-seat, adrenaline-pumping Stage Direction in the history of theatre. ANTIGONUS Come, poor babe: I have heard, but not believed, the spirits o' the dead May walk again: if such thing be, thy mother Appear'd to me last night, for ne'er was dream So like a waking. To me comes a creature, Sometimes her head on one side, some another; I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, So fill'd and so becoming: in pure white robes, Like very sanctity, she did approach My cabin where I lay; thrice bow'd before me, And gasping...
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