Back in April we screened Caught (1948) – James Mason’s first role in Hollywood. This month (Oct 4), in Odd Man Out (1947), we see why Mason was such a catch for the American studios, after being directed by Carol Reed in a film that Paul Dehn of The Sunday Chronicle called “the best film…
The classic screening for Sunday Aug 2nd (at 5.30 for 6.00pm) at SouthBank is more than just a standard film noir. It won Oscars for Best Director (Otto Preminger), Best Support Actor (Clifton Webb) and Best Cinematography. It was also nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Art Direction. “That Laura continues to weave a spell – and it does –…
PLEASE NOTE: April’s Film Club will skip Easter Sunday and instead run on the second Sunday of the month: April 12th. Although some critics at the time found “Caught” to be a dime-store romance (Variety called it pulp fiction), more recent reviews have recognized its radical critique of capitalism. Its German-born director, Max Ophuls (1902-1957) fled the Nazis in…
Here’s something to keep you going after the festive season has run its course and 2015 has lumbered onto your exhausted post-yuletide horizons: January’s Classic film at SouthBank is Stray Dog (1949). DIRECTOR This film comes from the early work of probably the most well-known of all Japanese directors: Akira Kurosawa came to international attention…
The next Classic Film at SouthBank is on Sunday December 7th …No Man of Her Own (1950) Based on a Cornell Woolrich novel (I Married a Dead Man), this is not a typical Christmas film. Nevertheless, some of the plot takes place during the yuletide and its theme concerns family … So there, I made the effort for those…
In September’s Classic Film Club we celebrate the beautiful and unique Lauren Bacall, who died last month and was a feted icon not least because of her wit (“Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you’re alive, it isn’t.”) and her critical sensibility. When her granddaughter dragged Bacall…
A storyline concerning a man’s obsession with a mysterious woman would be taken by Alfred Hitchcock to the heights of its glory in the classic Vertigo (1958), but director Otto Preminger had already explored the obsession with a beautiful woman in Laura (1944) and also in Fallen Angel (1945). In Angel Face however, Preminger turned the tables and presented a woman (Jean Simmons) obsessed with a man (Robert…
This month’s film is a genuine classic of French cinema and a cultural landmark of Gallic sentiment. To fully understand characters created in Hollywood by Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Mitchum or even Al Pacino, you need first to be familiar with Jean Gabin’s archetype in Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier. 1937), a fledgling crime drama, made decades before the term ‘film noir’…
No doubt your yule log is ready to set ablaze for the next two weeks, so here’s something to put in your diaries for when the festivities are over … Praised for its use of London locations and stark lighting, Night and the City was produced in a post-war Britain that relied heavily on American…
October’s Film Club presents a classic of French cinema, Quai des Orfèvres, (Goldsmith’s Quay), a 1947 murder mystery directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot. Best remembered for his 1950s thrillers (The Wages of Fear 1953, Les Diabolique 1954), Clouzot is one of the few contemporaries of Hitchcock to have given the so-called ‘master of suspense’ a run for his money. PLOT…
Classic Film 