CCW Film Series - Film Review
The second film of the series, Robert Altman’s take on Raymond Chandler’s detective novel ‘The Long Goodbye’ (1973) see’s Phillip Marlowe, Chandler’s fictional character, played by Elliot Gould. At the time of release, the film was coming off the back of several lucrative movie ventures including the infamous ‘The Godfather’ , many films made shortly after this time where known as ’follow up’ films and seen as being produced in ’the year of the sequel’. Therefore placing the film in the proverbial backroom.
In relation to ’The Long Goodbye’, Roman Ploanski’s “showy, taut and engaging ’Chinatown’” superseded and overshadowed Altman’s re-make, which critics hated. However, in doing so Altman’s redefinition of Marlowe which so greatly contrasts those played by the likes of Bogart and Mitchum, ultimately helps illustrate the vast social changes that were taking place during the early 70’s.
In the fifth week we were shown Buster Keaton in ‘Sherlock Jnr.’ (1924). Despite the reference to Sherlock Holmes the film totally avoids the usual police detective ’good cop, bad cop’ style seen in ’The Long Goodbye’. Instead the film highlighted how greatly film has developed over the past 80 years. This was made even more prominent with the raising of the master Organ situated in the orchestral ‘pit’. The Organ itself was
originally installed in 1937 and is only one of four in London still in use. The Organist was really enthusiastic about his work and demonstrated after the film the variety of percussion instruments (including a train whistle) as well as the organ itself. The overall experience illustrated the importance of pairing sound and image to gain a greater apperception and understanding; not only just within the world of cinema but also contemporary Art and Design. In this way if we think of installation pieces which require more than one bodily sense e.g Ai Weiwei’s ‘Sunflower Seeds’ project at Tate Modern which, originally, played on both visual and audible senses through interaction with the installation . Through this we see that a strong connection between sound and image helps us to relate more willingly with both world cinema and art and design (http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unileverseries2010/default.shtm).
The final film of the series was Danish - ‘Festen’ (‘The Celebration‘) (1998). A rather controversial film directed by ‘Dogme 95 manifesto’ aka Dogme, based around a birthday celebration during which the controversial issues within the film are raised - incest. Many aspects of the films unique cinematography (handheld cameras, all natural lighting, no soundtrack) allowed me to capture some really good images for my FMP. With the theme of this being reflection I found that the film had a several good scenes in which water and mirrors are used to create or distort reflections (even the end credits where shown under water, picture bottom right). In many ways they help draw parallels to the image on the left, taken at the Saatchi - Richard Wilson, ’20:50’ which I’ve used as a reference in my work (http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/artists/richard_wilson.htm).
