Culture Watch
Kind Hearts and Coronets
1949, UK, 106 min., B/W, Criterion Collection
Director: Robert HamerRecognitions:
National Board of Review award for Best Actor (Alec Guinness), 1950; Nominated for Golden Lion, Venice, 1949 and for BAFTA for Best British Film in 1950This witty British study of the gentle art of murder centres on the illustrious, ancient and snobbish D'Ascoyne family.
Louis Mazzini (Dennis Price), is the son of a D'Ascoyne daughter, who eloped with an Italian commoner — an opera singer to be precise — causing the family to shun her. When she dies and is refused burial in the family crypt, Louis vows revenge, and hits on the idea of murder as a way to remove all the D'Ascoynes who stand between him and the Dukedom.
Everyone in the way is played by Alec Guiness whose portrayal of eight different members of the same family, of both genders, across a six-decade age span, are created by doing relatively subtle things with makeup, posture and behaviour. Every death is fresh, inventive — and horribly funny. However, his affair with one of the newly minted widows (Valerie Hobson) may have been ill-advised ... things do have a tendency not to work out as planned, don't they ....
Editorial Note: Valerie Hobson was my god-mother, and as a young child I treasured a photo of her as Edith — although I was too young to see the movie, and probably wouldn't have understood the plot. Laughter at "complications" came later!
Tous les matins du monde (All the Mornings in the World)
1991, France, 115 min., subtitles
Director: Alain CorneauRecognitions: Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, Golden Globes, 1993; Nominated for Golden Bear, Berlin, 1992
Based on the novel of the same name by Pascal Quignard
In France, in the late 17th century, Monsieur de Sainte Colombe, a composer and viola da gamba player of unsurpassed brilliance, comes home to find that his wife has died.
His grief drives him to become a recluse whose life is devoted to music and his daughters, Madeleine and Toinette. But his peace is disturbed by the arrival of Marin Marais, a young composer and musician so gifted that Sainte Colombe agrees to take him on as an apprentice.
Marais falls in love with Madeleine, is evicted from the house by her father, and then abandons the girl to make his fortune at the Versailles court of Louis XIV. As the film opens, he is a bloated old man, weeping at the thought of his memories from a youth when it seemed that new days were infinite; now there are a limited number of "mornings" left to him and his life is filled only with regret. These are the bare bones of a story that explores the intense link between love and artistry and our capacity for regret when we do not follow our hearts.
Highly recommended.
Port of Last Resort
1998, Austria, 80 min., subtitles, documentary
Directors: Paul Rosdy, Joan GrossmanRecognitions:
Centaur Award, Message to Man Film Festival, St. Petersburg, 1999; Nominated for the Video Source Award, International Documentary Association, 1999In the late 1930s, there was one place a Jewish refugee could go without a permit or visa, a 'place of last resort': Shanghai, China.
This is the little-know story of the 20,000 or so desperate European Jews who got there. Through the recollections of four former refugees, we see the Europe they were fleeing, the month-long ship voyage and the city of four million where they arrived. This is not so much a Holocaust movie — as many Jewish refugees were much worse off than the ones in Shanghai — but it is incredibly interesting in terms of place.
Shanghai was the most cosmopolitan city in the Far East at the time, and the filmmakers give us many unusual views of Chinese life as well as the story of the refugees. The film features personal and published writings by refugees, relief reports and secret documents, rare home movies, photographs, news-reels and propaganda films — both Japanese and from the Allied countries.
The Last Victory
2003, Netherlands, 88 min., subtitles, documentary
Director: John AppelRecognitions:
Golden Calf, Best Cinematography and nominated for Best Documentary, Nederland Film Festival, 2004; Nominated for Best Documentary, European Film Awards, 2004For the past 721 years, June has been the month of Il Palio, the world-famous horse race that takes place in the renaissance Italian town of Sienna. In recent times, approximately 100,000 people gather in the Piazza del Campo to watch this colourful, nerve-wracking, and spectacular, 80-second event in which all seventeen town districts, or contrade, compete yearly to win honour and respect for their respective areas.
The film follows the situation in the Civetta, an area which hasn't won the race in 23 years. Along the way, it presents us with the moving story of the residents' hopes, personal convictions and craving for good fortune. A fascinating insight into one of Italy's oldest customs — and it looks beautiful, too.
Page One of Angela Pressburger's March DVD Reviews<<
Angela Pressburger grew up in the film industry (father Emeric Pressburger made The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and Stairway to Heaven). She has been been an international program consultant at the Vancouver International Film Festival for the past ten years, and has spoken about film and sat on festival juries in both Europe and North America. She has recently written Show It in Public! — a grassroots guide to showing film in public (www.showamovie.ca) and keeps busy writing reviews for her home video for discerning viewers website, MapToMovies.com
