The death of Terence Stamp, as mutterings had been flying about a sequel to Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, was a blow. It would have been a far better final role than his turn in the ignoble LastNightinSoho.
Terry meets Julie/Waterloo Station/Every Friday night
Stamp’s career was hard to take stock of properly because his leading man heyday in the 1960s was both scarce on the ground and lost to time – almost none of them regularly appear on TV save his turn as Julie Christie’s paramour in FarFromtheMaddingCrowd. BillyBudd, TheCollector, ModestyBlaise, PoorCow, Theorem, TobyDammit – all are basically lost movies in popular memory. In some sense the closest parallel is the career derailment of Colin Farrell. Getting attention for a role and working with notable directors (in Stamp’s case, Wyler, Losey, Loach, Pasolini, Fellini), only for these collaborations to not be their best work and the fallout to largely land on the actor. It is striking how Stamp’s old roommate Michael Caine took a firmer control of his career, developing The Italian Job as a showcase at the same time that opportunities for Stamp abruptly dried up.
The death of Tom Stoppard came as quite a bolt from the blue last weekend. He had been much in my thoughts this year, and, after the death of Terence Stamp in August, I had started writing what turned into a very long, incoherent and not yet-finished piece. As it is I shall simply publish the completed lead-in and first paragraph. It is tragic that my intention, to celebrate someone while they are still alive, should have been undone by time.
Tom Stoppard recently turned 88. It is startling that artists of the 1930s generation are still active. John Williams has just premiered his first piano concerto, Thomas Pynchon is about to publish a new novel, and Anthony Hopkins is still acting in high profile productions. Stoppard may not be actively working on a new script, but his Indian Ink received a high profile revival at the end of 2024, and he gave a contemporaneous interview to the Washington Post about his 2020 play Leopoldstadt which is still basking in adulation.
Tom Stoppard was entirely absent from my undergraduate studies in English. Harold Pinter was the 1960s playwright of choice. Looking back, twenty odd years later, one wonders if this was merely because Pinter so ostentatiously had the right politics for the prejudices of academia: left-wing and anti-Israel. Or because the ambiguities of Pinter were more fertile ground for journal articles than the dazzling jokes of Stoppard. Certainly even in Dramsoc there was more reverence for Pinter and Mamet than Stoppard. Stoppard can be damn hard to see in production. I’ve managed to get to After Magritte, The Real Inspector Hound (twice), The Real Thing, Arcadia, Travesties, and Every Good Boy Deserves Favour. And that’s it. Not all of these productions did him justice. Stoppard calls for exact timing, ambitious staging, and total deadpan commitment to absurdity both physical and intellectual. Some were ruined by corpsing, others by minimalism so extreme it was counter-productive, and, on occasion, jokes simply flew over the heads of the audience. (A memorable example being the Bosh!/Bosch pun in Travesties)
Eternal Recurrence, or Magnum Music Musings, Again
ITV 4 has once again cycled back to the beginning of Magnum PI, and the wrong theme tune. Back in 2022 when ITV 4 started showing Magnum PI from the beginning, only to ditch the iconic theme tune after the two-part pilot, I got annoyed. I complained hereabouts at the time that it was replaced by some smooth jazz muzak that might have served, had I not known what should have been there. Indeed as the action set pieces in season 1 then sometimes included that rousing theme that we were apparently not allowed to hear over the opening credits, I mistakenly assumed this was a House scenario, where different audiences heard a different theme tune because of international licensing issues over the Massive Attack song ‘Teardrop’. And then suddenly, as I said in 2022, it was back; and it really sets the show up as the fun blast that it is, in a way that the smooth jazz muzak surely did not. I think the pilot’s title had been recut after the fact so that explains that, but some words on the music of Ian Freebairn-Smith, who I may have been unjust to. There is charm in his theme tune, but it feels like it would work well for a different show, in the 1970s. Something like The Protectors, for instance. I can imagine the aristocratic female lead appearing as his Magnum theme brings in a delicately tinkled piano and strings, after its curious jazz funk intro to brass arrangements. But it is easy to see why Mike Post when he started scoring episodes decided to make only notional use of Freebairn-Smith’s theme and began incorporating a more muscular guitar riff leading into brass and strings, with a far punchier rhythmic feel. Auditioning his theme within episodes until execs accepted the obvious truth – this is what the title theme ought to be, because it more accurately reflects the freewheeling optimism of Magnum.
Miss Marple
What a joy it has been watching BBC Four re-runs of Joan Hickson as the definitive iteration of Agatha Christie’s spinster sleuth Miss Marple in the 1980s BBC adaptations. The memorable title credits, with gossiping neighbours and evil eyes aplenty, showcase what the Marple mysteries are all about – seething resentments underneath a facade of rural civility. And Hickson, who first played the role at 78, expertly conveys that Jane Marple’s true superpower here is observing. People forget she is there, but she notices everything. Over her long life she has seen so many vindictive crimes and sins that nothing can shock her. And she can sometimes get flustered and forget to properly explain to less than sympathetic policemen exactly what she means when she picks out a name from her mental rolodex of horrors past that precisely explains the motivation or nature of a criminal or act in the present. There is a moment of bravura construction in the three parter mystery A Murder is Announced, where, after showing her observing a key character in the opening sequence, she then disappears for a good forty minutes, before the stumped detective is advised by his superior that there is someone he should try for a fresh set of eyes on the case, and so John Castle’s very competent Detective Inspector Craddock finds himself having a late tea at a seaside hotel with a true consulting detective: who within minutes of glancing thru his files has upended his entire conception of the case – by dint of her experience. She has lived, noticed, and remembered. There is a mind of steel camouflaged by the comfortable cardigans.
The Decline of Poirot
I was watching re-runs of Poirot on ITV 3 recently when they abruptly abandoned the one hour episodes, and jumped forward over a decade to two hour mysteries; made after Clive Exton had left to run Rosemary and Thyme. It is not hard to see why a man in his early 70s would choose to prioritise something of his own creation starring Felicity Kendal after a decade of stewarding grand characters from the interwar years. But it was a loss. In the sense of the (apocryphal?) man who cried, in the discomfited presence of Gladstone, “Oh God! What a loss Palmerston was!” Exton had avoided, for good reason, adapting the likes of Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and Appointment with Death. He’d only dared approach Evil Under the Sun by reverting to its original setting, an English occasional peninsula just off the coast instead of an isolated Mediterranean islet, which set clear blue water between it and the 1982 Peter Ustinov film version. And so other people stepped in for what I now think of, par post-1989 Doctor Who, as Zombie Poirot. Yes, David Suchet is present, because he craved the signal distinction of playing the sleuth in every mystery Agatha Christie wrote. His flat is different, but there are still some period trappings in design and costume. The obvious difference is the lighting. Like the soft-focus of Murder, She Wrote, combined with an over-lit haze on everything. The lights turned up to 11 and vaseline smeared on the lens. It is not an appealing aesthetic. But aside from the visuals I think the real difference between early Poirot and late Poirot is affection for Christie. You can feel Exton is enjoying himself playing with her characters and her stories. Whereas Zombie Poirot feels like the screenwriters are embarrassed by her work, and twist themselves in knots to bring their own peculiar sensibilities to bear. After the Funeral needs to be, in the regrettable argot of its time, “sexed up”: let’s throw in some incest, and belabour an invented red herring about a will disowning a lead character. Appointment with Death always needed more nihilism, don’t you think? As always, if you don’t actually like something, maybe don’t take a job writing it? (It all anticipates the James Bond writers who clearly don’t want to use Blofeld; acting like sulky children that they have to bloody use Blofeld because they got the bloody rights back.) And attributing to themselves a greater intelligence than the disdained Christie.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect
The Dunning-Kruger Effect is one of those curious zombie ideas. It seems to have fallen on the sword of the replication crisis, and yet the notion of it as a truth persists. Perhaps because the world is replete with so many examples that seem to prove it. For instance the Dublin Theatre Festival trumpets an adaptation of Garcia Lorca that says of its mapping of Franco’s Spain onto DeValera’s Ireland – “Catholic Fascism = Catholic Fascism = duh”. This is wrong. Objectively wrong. Quite hysterically so, in fact. Because Franco didn’t hold elections. He certainly didn’t lose one, cede power, win a return to office, lose again, cede power again, and then win a return to office briefly, before ceding power to a trusted lieutenant to assume a ceremonial position. DeValera also foolishly forgot to murder tens of thousands of his political opponents to try and get even that bit closer to making the comparison work. Being wrong is one thing, but there’s the confidence – “duh”. To paraphrase Josh in The West Wing, “It’s the Duh that makes it Art”. That is why Dunning-Kruger lives on as an idea: People feel its “truthiness”. Because people are objectively wrong, hysterically wrong, yet supremely confident in the obviousness of their being right.
It is 55 years since one of the most seminal of films was released. As its own genre disappeared it was arguably the archaeopteryx of the Western.
William Goldman’s reputation as a master of screenwriting largely rests on this original screenplay. From the first words spoken, “What happened to the old bank? It was beautiful!” “People kept robbing it” “Small price to pay for beauty”, we are in a distinct world. There is a slangy quippy way to these characters that is qualitatively different to the people in the films of Ford and Hawks. Buddy movies of the 1980s can be traced in a straight line from this style.
But this is also a movie that is surprisingly experimental. Burt Bacharach does not score most of the movie. Instead he scores montages, and casually drops ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head’ over one of them. It is almost a synecdoche for the film, very memorable, though not following the normal rules. After 1969’s other unforgettably overpowered explosion by charming criminals the film becomes a chase for 30 minutes as a posse unexpectedly hunts Butch and Sundance. “Who are those guys?” they keep wondering, before eventually realising they have irked the Union Pacific so much that trackers who only operate in Oklahoma and marshalls who only work in Wyoming have assembled as a veritable Avengers of law and order.
It is quite bizarre to see stock footage from old movies pop up in MacGyver repurposed as action sequences. I had been intrigued by an old Charlton Heston movie on FilmFour recently (which I then kept missing) because it reminded me of an old MacGyver plot. And then watching the MacGyver episode realised that’s because it was the same plot. The entire MacGyver episode had been constructed around the explosive finale of that film – and you could plainly see that it was one Charlton Heston and not Minnesota’s own Angus MacGyver getting hit by water as he flooded his own plantation to defeat the invading army of killer ants. But that was in the ha’penny place to an episode ending with MacGyver leading some people toward freedom outside the Warsaw Bloc by means of stock footage from The Italian Job. I know that movie well enough to tell from even obscure clips that it is it, and these were not obscure clips, but some of the centrepiece stunts of the finale, with the minis plainly decked out in the colours of the Union Jack. What the hell? This was one of those moments when you realise that The Italian Job may not be that beloved in America. In fact they may not know it.
The Gravity of Bruce
The 1960s TV show TheGreen Hornet has a disconcerting habit of doing night scenes that are so dark they must have been shot not as day for night but as night for night. With his back to camera Bruce Lee simply becomes invisible. But that’s when something amazing happens. Villainous henchmen start to fly thru the air with the greatest of ease, apparently of their own free will, and you realise that somewhere in the dark unknowable centre of these violent movements must be Kato. (The man who put the side kick in sidekick) He cannot be seen, but like mathematical renderings of gravity in space, his presence can be deduced from the altered behaviour of the bodies around him. Amusingly enough The Engineer noted that there is just such a moment in the explosive finale of the 2011 movie version. A homage, one hopes.
That’s the Power of Verse
It’s unpleasant to see a proper critical pile-on in action. You begin to sympathise with the person being attacked, much like the victims of the two-minute hate on Twitter, thinking nothing could justify this kind of carry on. In this instance poor Sigourney Weaver is in the stocks while every yahoo in London who’s ever written 475 words about a play comes forward to pelt her with rotten fruit. I simply do not believe that Weaver is unable to do Shakespeare. Keanu Reeves has freely admitted his opening night as Hamlet was not good, but he managed to get the verse flowing for the great majority of that run. In the case of Weaver, who has done Shakespeare on Broadway, I don’t think it’s a case of not being able to deliver the lines. I have seen the spectacle of a man wrestling Shakespeare to the ground iamb by iamb in a tragic lead and declaring a bloody draw at the end. I think it’s far more likely you are watching a 75 year old woman struggle to remember a volley of complicated dialogue. And the sound of knives being sharpened in the stalls by critics surely can’t be helping.
The Engineer and I recently watched the entirety of The Green Hornet, the 1960s TV show that introduced Bruce Lee to viewers. The Engineer became puzzled by the opening narration which repeatedly mentioned that Britt Reed’s vigilantism as the titular superhero was a secret known only to his secretary Lenore Case and the DA Frank Scanlan. But what about Kato? Why is he not mentioned in this inner circle when he buttles by day and drives by night to protect the rights and lives of decent citizens? It hit me that the opening narration is akin to TB Macaulay’s infamous formulation ‘As every schoolboy knows’ which would shame grown Victorians into rummaging thru books and periodicals to find out something they hadn’t the slightest idea about lest they be shewn up as an ignoramus. Why of course Kato is not included in the inner circle by the narrator, because he assumes that we know our proverbs invoked by Thomas Carlyle, as he does, and are familiar with the sentiment that no man is a hero to his valet. Even the Green Hornet.
English as she was spoke
I was watching Ten Little Indians on Sky Arts last week and within 30 seconds Richard Attenborough and Herbert Lom contradicted each other. Attenborough said macabre as if it were macaa-bre, then Lom said macabre as if it were macaa-ber. And I’m fairly sure I remember Jeremy Bretty rendering the word macabre as macaarrbb~~~, dissolving into faux Frenchness on the word. Something similar of course happens whenever people stumble across the word timbre. Is it tom-bre, tom-ber, or tommrrbb~~~? The more 1960s television you watch in the 2020s the more you can pick up seachanges in approaches to pronunciation. While Steed and Mrs Peel will speak of things being viz-ual or lugs-urious it sounds bizarre now to think of these as anything but vizh-ual and lugsh-urious, blurring the two parts together. And if, after watching one too many episodes of The Avengers or The Saint, you find yourself making one of these archaic verbal mannerisms in company unused to the context you will find people looking oddly disoriented, and not knowing why. It’s great fun.
Werner Herzog strains to see the limits of his audacity
The Audaciousness of Young Werner
I was thinking about Werner Herzog recently, as his 2022 memoir Every Man for Himself and God Against All has now been joined on the bookshelves of film buffs everywhere by Mexico; the screenplay of an unrealised 1990s project about the conquest of the Aztec Empire. Years ago I remember watching Herzog describe his youth in rural Bavaria and to my Dad it oddly chimed with life in 1940s rural Ireland – a world still to some degree in the 19th century, without running water, where a horse and cart took an hour to reach a town where the family Herzog could request a phone call to be placed to a city, and then come back to make said phone call days later. This was normal, there. And it made me think again now about whether it has any connection to the audaciousness and fearlessness of Young Werner. The window of tolerance, according to its formulator Dan Siegel, is the state at which we can operate normally. People usually talk of it in terms of stressors. But I think there is also a component which rubs shoulders with Jose Ortega y Gassett’s “I am myself, and my circumstances”. It is hard to see beyond the limits within which you were raised, and it takes much effort to then expand your window of tolerance to encompass activities and dispositions which you did not think were possible for yourself, because they were never anywhere near to being within your field of experience. But when it comes to Werner Herzog it seems he never had any limits. The window of tolerance simply is not there. Getting shot by an air rifle does not faze him. Walking from Munich to Paris is a mere bagatelle. He can read news reports about the Congo in the early 1960s and decide to go there because it sounds interesting. He can decide to head into Peruvian jungles to make a film because he wants to capture the impact of the landscape on unprepared Europeans. To other people these projects would give pause for thought. They would start to worry about things that could go wrong. They would feel outside their comfort zone, and doubt their ability to carry out the coup. But for young Werner, somehow, these were all eminently practical endeavours. If you need a movie camera, you take it. If you want to shoot a film in Peru, you go there. Herzog’s Rebel Film Schools try to teach people to be more like Werner Herzog. But in a way he himself is like a character of the 19th century. He would dislike the regional marker, but one thinks of the Prussians who did damn good Egyptology during a brief hiatus from wars.
Writing on the move
Apropos of nothing recently I found myself on a deep dive into the trivia of Bill Murray’s rarely screened other film from 1984 – a remake of Somerset Maugham’s philosophical novel The Razor’s Edge. One titbit in particular caught my eye. Murray and his director John Byrum felt it absolutely necessary to write the screenplay on the move. In diners and lobbies across America as they hopped in a car and just drove, for all the world like a Raoul Duke and Dr Gonzo trying to track down the American Dream not in Las Vegas but in a transcontinental Development Hell. I’m not sure I’m convinced that there was any actual need for such an approach to the writing, but it does sound like an awful lot of fun. Given my own comments on this blog many years ago about the perfect way to read The Great Gatsby, I’ve since been wondering are there any books that, following Bill Murray’s lead, one could say must absolutely be read on the move – always in buses and trains, on beaches and in cafes in far flung places – never while sedentary, and never at home. (Don’t say The Razor’s Edge.)
“Judo Chop!”
I’ve been wondering where exactly the delirious “Judo Chop!” in the Austin Powers films comes from. Mike Myers’ trilogy is heavily indebted to the Connery Bonds, but Connery isn’t necessarily an exponent of the judo chop. By contrast Roger Moore in the opening sequence of Octopussy delivers a martial blow that might as well have the Austin Powers dialogue sampled over it. Moore I’ve been noticing lately in reruns also delivered some very fine judo chops in colour episodes of The Saint. And yet, watching old movies and television, I’ve come to think that an addled Mike Myers may have got muddled up with some other 1960s spies. Because the cast of Mission: Impossible almost seem to take turns in judo chopping their foes, and it is often with barely concealed delight at a judo chop well delivered.
Phase IV Revisited
The dust has had time to settle, and another comic-book movie has gone down in spectacular flames, since Robert Downey Jr’s surprise return to the MCU was announced. I have to admit I am still disappointed. While someone on YouTube amusingly conjured the image of a fleet of dump trucks unloading endless bales of Benjamins into his driveway to convince him to return, I wish he’d held out against the filthy lucre. Playing Iron Man diverted RDJ away from the really interesting work he’d been doing just prior to donning the suit. I can’t help but sigh about the unrealised equivalents of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Good Night, and Good Luck, A Scanner Darkly, Zodiac, and Tropic Thunder that we did not get between the years 2012 and 2020. And just as he’d excelled in Oppenheimer now he’s dragged back to play another masked man. Although having got his Oscar at least he won’t have to make films like The Judge anymore. Disney are clearly panicking, as this stunt casting really does have all the feel of a Hail Mary pass spiralling high into the air.
It is now 55 years since a trio of minis roared around the crowded streets of Turin to the strains of Quincy Jones.
The Italian Job is a caper film that zooms along on a whirlwind tour of swinging 60s London preparatory to a daring heist in Italy. The soundtrack by Quincy Jones deserves its own spotlight. It’s a funky, jazzy mix that perfectly captures the cool confidence of the era. The electric guitar riffs and soulful vocals propel the action sequences, while the laid-back grooves simmer with anticipation during planning scenes.
Michael Caine gives perhaps his definitive screen performance as Charlie Croker, the mastermind thief. Caine’s effortless charisma in the role keeps the audience onside with his gang of villains throughout. He leads his team of specialists – including a getaway driver, an explosives expert, and a computer whiz – with brio. Caine’s delivery of lines like “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” is iconic.
Opposite him is the legendary playwright, songwriter and actor Noel Coward. He is the incarcerated crime boss Bridger, lured into financing the Italian Job by Croker’s purported concern for the balance of payments, a topic over which Bridger frets. Coward’s signature dry wit and impeccable timing add a layer of sophistication to the film. The contrast between Caine’s youthful energy and Coward’s world-weary cynicism is a highlight.
The Italian Job portrays a London bursting with miniskirts, pop music, and a general sense of rebellion against the establishment and sexual mores. This backdrop adds context to the film’s themes of loyalty; Croker lists one team mate’s prison record and then praises him for being as honest as the day is long; and the allure of the criminal life. There is also a number of gay characters, from Bridger and his lieutenant on the inside to Bridger’s man on the outside – Camp Freddie. Not everyone would have the confidence to stand on a balcony in Turin wearing a bright pink suit. Camp Freddie does.
The heist is of course the centerpiece of the film. Croker’s plan to create the mother of all traffic jams in Turin and then stage a smash and grab on a shipment of gold bullion is Turin is audacious and brilliantly executed. The sequence involving Mini Coopers weaving through the chaotic streets of the city is a masterclass in car chase choreography. And then when the police have been eluded Quincy Jones unveils the ace up his sleeve – ‘The Self-Preservation Society’. The Italian Job is more than just a heist film. It’s a time capsule of a bygone era, a celebration of 60s cool, and a testament to the power of a well-assembled cast and a killer soundtrack. It will make you want to drive around Italy lilting “On Days Like This, da da, da da, da da da da”.
It seems like I will always get hung up on some idiotic detail when I watch the 1960s Mission: Impossible series. When Channel 4 re-ran it on Sundays in the 1990s I could not stop from alternating between laughing and rolling my eyes at how every episode began with Mr Phelps flicking thru a thick folder of potential agents to assemble his team, but somehow always choosing the same four people most every week. I’ve made peace with that now. But instead, watching episode after episode of behind the Iron Curtain derring-do, as well as adventures in French colonies and South American banana republics, now I’ve started asking – what language is everyone meant to be speaking? They can’t all be speaking English. But sans the celebrated cut on the word ‘Apocalypse’ in TheHuntfor Red October it’s hard to know what convention is meant to be in play here. Or are the entire team actually fluent in French, Spanish, Russian, German and a handful of Slavic tongues? And with no trace of a tell-tale Yankee accent. In which case no wonder Mr Phelps always went for the walking Berlitz books among his staff most every week.
It’s called DEADPAN
I’d heard mention of this sketch only recently, but was impelled to hunt it down after watching Ryan Gosling’s episode of SaturdayNightLive. Which was something of a disaster as professionalism went. The Beavis and Butthead accidentally in real life sketch in particular I was annoyed by; because it felt like this could have been much funnier if everyone had actually done their job, instead of which Heidi Gardner went to pieces when she should have been deadpan, undermining her character, the premise, and the execution. Looking at the ‘President Reagan: Mastermind’ sketch, it becomes obvious it is funny because it snaps back and forth between the two modes of Reagan. This would not work at all if anyone laughed at any point. Now look at your average week of SNL sketches. The endlessly overpraised Bowen Yang is constantly corpsing, and he is not the only offender. And most of the cast seem so hopelessly dependent on Wally, the cue card guy known and loved from Late Night with Seth Meyers, that they cannot get their eyes to go in anything approaching the right direction from an acting standpoint most of the time.
Gresham’s Law Strikes Again! That sounds not unlike the title of a pulpy 1930s B-movie. Which is somehow entirely appropriate.
I’m kind of a big deal…
I can’t be the only one who with monotonous regularity sees Ghostbusters pop up on the TV schedule, goes ‘Oh cool!’, and then when clicking to set a reminder discovers it is not the beloved 1984 comedy but instead the 2016 movie that has been universally memory-holed without most of us even having to suffer thru the indignity of watching it first. In the distant past I always wondered why on earth TV channels, with the gamut of cinema to choose from, insisted on showing bad new films instead of good old films. The Film Editor had to sit me down and explain the concept of bundling. A studio knew the networks wanted to show the big new film, so they insisted that if they wanted to show the big new film they must also show their lame new film.
And so we get ‘Ghostbusters’ floating around TV schedules like a spectre of such low-level irritation that nobody is even bothered capturing it in a trap. Pick any godawful flop (RIPD) that mooches around mysteriously and you have the explanation; it is there because it has to be so Top Gun: Maverick can draw in viewers for the network. The only problem is that there is only so much space, and there are a lot of films competing for it. Every time a bad movie is legally obliged to be shown, a good movie cannot be shown in its stead. There is a good business reason, from the studio side, for this. But it might be self-harming. If people only saw good movies, wouldn’t it make them more interested in movies per se? Is that not worth accepting flops flopped?
And from the 1990s to the 2020s we have added a lot of stuff to the list of circulating titles. It is getting harder to watch 1960s titles on TV, because that decade is now as distant as the 1930s were to the 1990s. As for getting 1930s movies on TV right now… It’s getting harder to even see the Marx Brothers on TV after the loss of TCM. As specialty movie channels shutter, and the competing walled-garden streaming services simply will not host old movies, all we have left are the networks – who are swamped with dreck. Off the top of my head these are the 1930s movies I actually expect to see on TV over a year: Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, The Adventures of Robin Hood, King Kong, The 39 Steps, The Lady Vanishes.
It’s not enough. It shouldn’t be the case that Back to the Future is considered a very old film and The Lord of the Rings is viewed as an old trilogy. (Not least because LOTR somehow has better VFX than nearly all current blockbusters). In the late 1990s the Man with No Name trilogy of Sergio Leone from the 1960s held considerable cultural cachet, the way that the great 1990s flowering of crime movies still holds much esteem now. But this is something that should be compounding not substituting; For a Few Dollars More and Heat should both have a place in the firmament, not just Heat. And the further we get away from the beginning of cinema the worse this problem is going to get. We also move further from a recognisable conception of cinema, but that’s another piece.
In 2007 I saw Zodiac in the cinema and M on DVD from the college library, and as a result the two movies are bound together in my memory; because of the great continuity displayed between Fritz Lang and David Fincher working in the same territory. The dearth of 1930s movies on television deprives us of that sense of continuity. Which I fear leads to the contempt I witnessed in the 2016 screening of Halloween at the Lighthouse, which has now been referenced so many times on this blog as to constitute its own Boogeyman. In this instance I think it is lack of familiarity that breeds contempt. People are too used to sitting in smug judgement of the past, which increasingly seems to mean the first thing they encounter that they don’t remember personally. Because they don’t know it.
Talking Movies 