Three British Biopics of Musicians (2019, 1975)

Some fisherfolk, cavorting

Fisherman’s Friends (2019)

‘Fisherman’s Friends’ is a lively but very by-the-book story of an unlikely rise to fame. It’s the true story of a band of Cornish fishermen who sing folk music, are discovered, and then sell a lot of records. The music is good and the group’s performances have plenty of sparkle, but the script gave me no joy. It seemed such a film-shaped film, with its plot’s rises and falls following the pattern of the genre too lifelessly.

The A&R agent who discovers the band gets into some contrived conflict which blossoms into a romance. Not because that’s what really happened, but because there’s always a romance in a film like this, playing out the same way. (There’s nothing wrong with changing the truth to make a better film - as the others on this list will show, but here it had no magic and no surprise, just formula).

The romance is between Daniel Mays and Tuppence Middleton, good actors who do what they can with the material. Without Tuppence, ‘Fishermen’s Friends’ would be quite the sausage-fest. I bracket it together with ‘Dawn of the Battle of the Apes’ (2014) in that it’s obviously set after a female extinction event that left them at a 1:20 ratio with men, but nobody mentions it.

I saw it with my parents and none of us had cause to regret it, but I doubt we’ll ever seek it out again. It’s a passable film - passable in that it fulfilled my baseline criterion for an okay movie (that being, did two hours pass without me thinking of Donald Trump?).

My love for this shoe cannot be adequately stated

Rocketman (2019)

This is a far more interesting sort of biopic! The tagline, ‘based on a true fantasy’ sums it up perfectly. The film-making matches the real Elton John’s flamboyance, and his sincerity. I’ve heard ‘camp’ defined as being a jaunty exterior which masks the more complex, vulnerable humanity inside, and this dramatises the idea wonderfully.

It’s sort-of a musical, told within flashback. Young Elton, and others in his life, put their situations into the familiarest of his songs. I reckon this aspect is likely to divide audiences - if you’re expecting Elton John to sing The Bitch is Back, it’s disconcerting to pass from modern Elton to child Elton, to a full chorus of 1950s neighbours singing - it was certainly more Disney than I was expecting (and the second song of the piece ‘I Want Love’ was so straight and sober that I worried the movie was haemorrhaging all its glee - I was proved very wrong on this). The songs in this style work because this is a story of Elton’s imagination, his fantasies, and how he moves from imagining the absurd to really living it.

I don’t normally like flashback settings, but it really worked in this case. Adult Elton John’s storytelling wasn’t just narration to move things on - the act of telling the story challenges and changes him. The segue between different ages (and thus, different actors) of Elton John in Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting manages to satisfy, rather than annoy. I already liked Taron Egerton in ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service’ (2014) - he has a cocky, likeable quality that makes him satisfying to watch, and in that film he manages to anchor absurd situations. Elton John is inherently absurd, and so he was a great choice. As full-blooded as the real thing, without becoming comical. He did all his own singing in the role (including a duet with real-life Elton John for the closing credits) and it has the energy, and style style you'd hope for, but manages to preserve its own freshness. This is not just imitation.

The film takes its liberties with chronology, cause and effect to give neater resolutions, but it’s a no hagiography! At one point I wondered if the real Elton John would ever see the movie, or whether its portrayal of him and his upbringing would seem too raw, too ugly - but when the end credits came round I discovered he and his husband David Furnish were producers, and had worked closely to bring this true fantasy to the screen.

I liked this movie a lot, and it makes me want to make movies.

I would be misrepresenting 'Lisztomania' if I didn't show you this big willy

Lisztomania (1975)

Back in the 19th Century, Europe went wild for Franz Liszt. Screaming crowds, a cult of personality, the whole Beatles Schtick. This is an immensely energetic and peculiar film about the man and the myth. Roger Daltrey is Franz Liszt, galavanting around with (at one point) a ten-foot long penis which is sent to the guillotine. Rick Wakeman is Thor, and his songs make this a musical. Ringo Starr is the Pope, for some reason.

I tremendously enjoyed this film. It joins ‘Casino Royalo’ (1967) in being so unpredictable that I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t dreaming it. I’m glad I watched it alone, though. So many scenes of bare-breasted women, their bosoms very much for the viewers’ pleasure! Astonishing titillation. It’s a full-on sex-comedy - very dated, very of its time - but in other ways audacious, finding a uniquely absurd take on the life of Liszt. To give you a sense of it, the movie culminates in Liszt dying, going to Heaven, but returning in a space rocket to kill Richard Wagner, who in this movie is both a literal vampire and a kind of a Hitler Frankenstein, blasting people with his murder guitar.

I like to find films like this.



Those were some films

Yes, those were some films, and together they’ve given me a desire to make a music biopic of my own (perhaps in the vein of ’Some Deaths of Vincent van Gogh’ which I made in 2018, and which you might, for eight minutes, enjoy). It’s good when books make you want to write, when clothes make you want to sew, and when movies make you want to move … pictures! I hope I’ll actually do this at some point, once I find a good candidate, a good story and a visual angle that can be made loudly and colourfully in a bedroom. We shall see!

I didn’t have an appetite to see ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (2018), but I’m sure you’ve heard plenty about it already. I hope the trend of music biopics continues in cinemas - I hope to see some which aren’t so male. Alas, the only biographical film of a female composer's life that leaps to mind is ‘Hildegard of Bingen’ (1994), a one-off BBC drama starring the wonderful Patricia Routledge. I enjoyed it a whole lot, but it ticks my boxes more than it may yours.

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Apologies for the larger-than-usual gap between Penciltonian posts. If you missed me, you can find most of the art I'm up to over at swithen.uk

The Robe (1953)

There was, in the olden days of fifties cinema, a brief fad for Biblical films and, what's more, for Bible spin-offs - adventures about characters who don't appear in the Bible at all, or who only get cameos in the gospels.  Thus we have 'Quo Vadis' (1951), about Peter and the early church, 'Ben-Hur' (1959) about a young Jewish Prince, and 'Barabbas' (1961) about the murderer Barabbas who was freed by Pilate on the eve of Jesus' crucifixion.  Since the stories only need to touch very briefly on Biblical events they're freer to be more visual, less religiose, and where possible allow the heroes to be violent, deceptive and all-in-all conventional heroes before last-minute conversion to Christianity, whereupon they renounce their (hitherto very useful) violent ways.  Crucially, if your main character is Jesus it's hard to have him kill the villain at the end, and movie-goers like to see the villain trounced.  In an adventure story, forgiveness looks less exciting than revenge.  'Ben-Hur' probably does it the best, but 'The Robe' is shorter, so gets plenty of TV repeats.

The film follows a Roman soldier, Gallio, who turns out (eventually) to be the centurion who crucified Jesus.  Here, he happens to inherit Jesus's robe (it's red, as per the gospel of Matthew); anyone who's read the book of The Trial and Death of Pontius Pilate (Bible fanfic from the second century, and plenty of fun) may recall that Jesus' robe was considered to be a relic of unpredictable magical powers (with, as they say, hilarious consequences).  It's similar here, though that makes the film sound considerably more entertaining than it actually is.  What we get is a film about a soldier sent to destroy the early church, who, seeing God's work in the lives and hearts of the early Christians, comes to faith.  At points its rather too earnest, but at times it's rather exciting, as the loving pacifists find in Gallio a mighty defender, skilled with sword and political rhetoric.

Turns out this widescreen thing is really good for sword-fighting

The film is one of the earliest examples of anamorphic widescreen, and was shot in the super-widescreen of Cinescope which leaves ample black bars even on a widescreen TV.  It gives impressive scope, especially to landscapes and crowd scenes.  It's still not quite right, with long shots looking rather distorted around the edges.  Unlike the later 'Ben-Hur' (1959), there seems a reluctance here to use facial close-ups, meaning we're never really given actors expressions to scrutinise.  (The first time we get to see the pores in anyone's skin cones after two hours and two minutes).  Coupled with Richard Burton's habit of wearing a helmet in as many shots as possible, we get to see far too little of his performance, and his dialogue is too functional to allow him much freedom of expression.

His opponent, the Emperor Caligula, is, as they say, worth the price of admission.  I've seen him described as 'unforgettably camp', and he has an amazing delivery, rendering 'Christians' as 'kress-chuns', and getting more vowels out of Gallio than one might think believable.  This is Caligula as he might have been played in sixties 'Batman'.

The film makes slightly too much use of characters being inspired by simply
looking at Jesus, rather than being inspired by (say) his words or actions.

The real surprise, which I mean now to spoil, is the ending of the film.  The genre would seem to expect a daring escape, and Caligula defeated.  Instead, the villainous Caligula prospers and sentences our heroes to death, and they are taken outside to be executed, and this martyrdom is treated as a happy ending, with the hope of resurrection the real reward.  I was taken aback to see an adventure film, and a schlocky, campy one at that, giving us life in Christ as the true prize, rather than something's more tangible, crude or conventional.  I can't imagine a modern film presenting such a martyrdom as a happy triumph.  I suppose 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' (1928) and 'The Last Temptation of Christ' (1988) come close, but we know those stories so their endings seem inevitable.  As it is, Caligula has to wait for the sequel, 'Demetrius and the Gladiators' (1954) to get his comeuppance.


P.S. This film has the rubbishest Pontius Pilate.  My Pilate of preference is Frank Thring, but I'll also speak up for David Bowie.

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Party Monster (2003)

James St James meets an impressionable Michael Alig

I'm coming around to the idea that interesting movies will generally be good movies, or at least worth the watching, so when my lodger Saskia described 'Party Monster' as interesting (indeed, as 'interesting') I knew it had to be Penciltonized.

The film is set in the club scene of '80s New York, but manages to look and feel, in some rather bizarre ways, timelessly modern rather than dated to that era.  It regards two extremely flamboyant and bitchy young socialites, Michael Alig (Macaulay Culkin, who surprised me by being excellent here) and James St James (Seth Green, an actor I always enjoy) - their club nights and their domestic life.  Michael and James live wilfully grotesque lives, never resting from their highly-strung, drug-frenzied Noel Cowerd schtick, all played out in drag and magnificent clubwear.  As the movie starts, the pair bicker self-consciously, quite aware that they're on camera, each vying to narrate their version of the tale.  Michael mentions, casually and without regret, that he's committed a murder, and as per 'Double Indemnity' (1944) the body of the film is in flashback, showing how the murder came to occur.  It's a true story, by the way.

Michael in characteristically alarming array.

The film was made on a tiny budget, its resources wisely spent on a strong and witty script, good actors who manage to make potentially shrill characters sympathetic, and a huge bevy of excellently alarming costumes.  Indeed, while I call it a film, it appears to have been shot on videotape rather than film, and with next to nothing in the lighting department, meaning that any keen amateur could have made their own version with a remarkably similar look.  It's rather disconcerting, as a maker of amaeur motion-pictures, to see a cinematic release so similar in picture quality and colour to my own crude works, and it lends the thing an air of a home-movie, as if Michael and James are not just narrating their own history, but have put together a video presentation about their adventures.

Michael and James are intriguing characters, and, presumably, people.  They're on all the time, always in costume and putting on characters, for themselves as much as for their peers, who they treat as an audience.  It's like 'Withnail and I' (1987), but with two Withnails and no I.  I felt for them in their superficiality; I wanted to see them relax, to be themselves rather than exhausting themselves with masks.  I didn't want to see them be normalised or become mundane, just to relax, to be honest with themselves.  It's the difference between being naturally eccentric (which is commendable) and being an eccentric.  Imagine being John Mccrirrick.  Now imagine being John Mccrirrick every day for the rest of your life.  It could be a wild novelty, but pursued as a lifestyle it would be exhausting, and would soon be no fun at all - a cry for help, and one that could lead to a tremendous breakdown.  Now, there's much to be said for dressing up, and far too few people dress interestingly; I'm a great advocate of all manner of fancy-dress antics, but there have to be some moments of some days where you dress for yourself, and as yourself, rather than merely to impress, alarm and intimidate your audience.  The only time Macaulay Culkin ever seems truly relaxed here, he isn't wearing anything at all.  For a brief scene towards the end of the movie, he takes a bath, and seems blissfully, innocently happy.  He loses nothing of his character, his mirth or habitual androgyny here, but seems to have a peace he's spent the rest of the film avoiding.

Angel, the dealer, starts as a leatherman but is encouraged to dress up to his name and station.
He was the victim of the aforementioned murder.

It is an interesting film, and I'm tempted to say it's also an excellent one.  It's aesthetically thrilling, has an fine soundtrack, and as I've noted, a script and cast worth hearing and watching.  It's also a world away from the other films I've written up to represent the early 2000s.  The Club Kids, those persistent and obsessive clubbers who formed Michael's entourage, come across like an anti-political Baader Meinhof gang, and their story is as fascinating as it is colourful, and this film's telling is simultaneously great fun and disconcertingly serious.

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...and here it is on shiny disc, though I watched it on Netflix meself.

Persepolis (2007)

Of the animated films I've so far watched - 'Yellow Submarine' (1968), 'Up' (2009) and this, 'Persepolis' is comfortably my favourite in animation style and in content too.  This is an adaptation of Majane Satrapi's graphic novel, and co-director Vincent Paronnaud borrows her occasionally Hergé-esque 'ligne claire' style and puts it in motion.  Most of the film is told in monochrome flashback.  The individual shots are clear, handsome and often striking.

I understand the original book was at least semi-autobiographical.  It's a story of young Marji growing up in Iran of the 70s and 80s, a country torn by war and revolution.  The children don't take it especially seriously, accepting only that people get arrested, soldiers march around with guns, and it's a fine time to lark around.

Things get grimmer as she grows older.  People die, or are imprisoned, and nobody can openly speak the truth.  It's still not a bad place to have a party, but it can end badly.  The revolution makes matters worse, not better, and the new government obliges women to wear veils.  A lonely education in Europe seems the only escape.  She grows up, endures a number of unenjoyable romances, and is left without any clear idea where she can call home.

It's sad, and difficult, and often great fun, so feels very much like real life.  The animation style is excellent, fascinatingly watchable, giving a stylised, childlike view of the world.  It's a very good film, and I found it to be quite an education.  'Persepolis' gives a picture of an interesting country of real, ambitious people, marred, oppressed and set back by a theocratic government of extremely conservative Islamic fundamentalists.  I've realised my knowledge of modern Iran is terribly limited, and though I used to work for an Iranian woman, I never really asked about the country she seemed glad to leave behind.

I'd be curious to seek out the original comic from which the film was adapted, and Marjane Satrapi's other writings, to learn more.  Since she co-directed the film, I can well believe it captures the spirit of the original.  I'd recommend it to almost anyone, though some of the language is sufficiently strong, and the themes mature, that I'd err away from showing it to a weakly child.  And since it's animated, you have the choice to watch it with either French or English audio.  Both seem equally legitimate, and I only went with the French because so much was actually set in France.

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I'd say it was worth your time.  Someone's borrowing my copy at present, or I'd lend it to y'all myself.

GoodFellas (1990)

This is a story about a guy who gets into crime - organised crime and killing people crime - not reluctantly or through necessity, but because he thought that life would be cool, fun and easy.  And it turned out he was entirely right.  It's an appealing story, and a true one.  He and his wife would have gotten away with it for as long as they lived, had they not grown so very careless and full of drugs.

Rob Reed gave me his copy of the film at the same time he passed me 'Taxi Driver' (1976), and since I've also watched 'The Last Temptation of Christ' (1988), Martin Scorsese joins Peter Jackson, Peter Greenaway and Fritz Lang in the circle of most-watched directors on this blog.  This is probably the longest of the three films, and the one with the most humour and the most violence.  It's a toss-up, though, which of the three is the bloodiest.

Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) borrows a knife from his mother (Catherine Scorsese)

Ray Liotta plays Henry Hill, who throws himself into the criminal lifestyle, and finds that it pays exceedingly well.  Unlike 'The Baader-Meinhof Complex' (2008), there's no suggestion here that the crimes are particularly benign or well-motivated, but it's clearly a better career move than brick-laying.  For the most part he seems a nice guy, but he laughs too long at acts of unprompted brutality - indeed, he seems to laugh almost deliberately at these, not with mirth, but to be seen laughing.  He works his way up from errand boy to crime boss, reluctantly goes on an awful date with a woman called Karen (Lorraine Bracco), who, since she's far more bold and interesting than she first appears, goes on to be his partner in crime and wife.

Like Hugh Griffith in 'Ben-Hur', Joe Pesci got the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor here simply by being fantastically entertaining.  His role seems at times like the comic relief, but is really more exciting and disturbing than that.  He's persistent, almost flamboyantly vicious, and enjoyably short, and seems to speak constantly and magnificently.  As you may tell, I found him to be the film's great highlight.  Robert de Niro and Samuel L. Jackson are in there too - indeed, it's a very good cast all-round, made up of people who are rightly famous, or ought to be more so.

It's directed with pace, style and tension, of course, and the script finds some exciting ways to tell the story.  I'm sure I could have gone on for another four paragraphs, had I written this up immediately after watching it, but you got lucky as I left it so long, dear reader.  Most of what I now remember are twists, lines, images.  In short, the things you'd be better off discovering for yourself by watching the film.  I try not to spoil these things for you.

P.S. I'll be back this weekend with 'Persepolis' (2007), and then I'll probably have to watch some more movies, or I will have run out of stuff to tell you about.

P.P.S. This isn't strictly-speaking true.  I could tell you about 'The Last Remake of Beau-Geste' (1977) or 'The Baby of Macon' (1993) or 'Das weiße Band' (2009) or 'Ted' (2012), but we've done those years already, and I'm keen to push on towards the hundred-different-years goal.

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So, yeah.  Here's the bit where I show you how you can legitimately watch the thing.

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)

This film was exceedingly controversial when it came out in the late eighties.  It's based, not on the gospels, but on a novel about Jesus, and does the two things one can always expect from New Testament fan-fic: Jesus is romantically linked to Mary Magdalene, and he asks Judas to betray him.  And then, of course, there's his last temptation, but I'll get to that.  In spite (or even because of) this portrayal of a remarkably weak, human and troubled Christ, this is an excellent film and worth the watching, both for style and content, and one that I'd recommend with the warning that the crucifixions (of which there are several) are very unpleasant indeed (hence its inclusion in this blog's 'horrible films' tag).

From the off, this Jesus is not the confident and charismatic crowd-winner we're used to.  He's wracked by conflict, as God calls him to fearful duties and Lucifer puts to him, again and again, the idea that he's mistaken, that he's no messiah and should simply live his life.  The crowds simply aren't convinced by his speeches, and familiar sermons meet with derision and doubt, rather than open-eared adoration.  As it becomes clearer to Jesus that he really is the son of God, he's dismayed and terrified, as he knows where it will lead.  This Jesus is the only carpenter who'll make crosses for the Romans, and he's despised for it, by himself, as much as the other Jews.

Judas, comforted by Jesus

Rather than praise everybody involved in the making of the film for their style and quality of their performances, I'll save time and name some names.  Martin Scorsese is directing, Peter Gabriel composing, with Willem Dafoe as the Christ.  His lack of physical beauty and easy charm probably makes him the closest screen Jesus to the one Biblical description of Jesus' looks, which crops up in Isaiah: 'he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him'.  Harvey Keitel is a flame-haired and muscular Judas, the only person Jesus can really rely on.  As usual, it's a fairly white cast for something set in Israel, but unlike most Jesus biopics, the Jews here look and sound Jewish, Jewish-American, to be precise, which works very well.  I feel obliged to mention that there's a single scene cameo by David Bowie as Pontius Pilate, and he's good, quiet, pensive, but is given very little to do here, so my favourite screen Pilate remains Frank Thring in 'Ben-Hur' (1959).

What of the Last Temptation of the title?  It's the whole point of the film, but is constrained to the final fifth of a two-and-a-half hour movie.  I'll be sauntering somewhat into spoiler territory here, but since you may have already seen that screen-cap down there it's already sort-of too late, but this really isn't a film that relies greatly on twists, so I don't think your viewing experience will be diminished.  So, as you may know, Jesus goes out into the desert for forty days to fast and meditate, and while there is thrice tempted by Satan.  It's brilliantly realised in this film, which paraphrases events as well as words, and so makes both dialogue and visuals engaging and surprising.  Satan says that Jesus will see him again, and it's at this point that Jesus takes up the main body of his mission.

Aged Jesus and his guardian angel

As per the Bible, after the Last Supper, Jesus begs God to release him from his fate, to save him from dying on the cross.  Despite this, he's nailed up to die, but just as he's on the cusp of perishing, he cries out, asking why he's been forsaken.  At this point, a young English-accented girl, his guardian angel, tells him God has had mercy and released him from this terrible fate.  He climbs down from the cross, though the crowd still see him there, and he goes on to live a long and mainly happy life.  He marries, has children, grows to old age.  This, though he doesn't see it, is his last temptation.

It's highly likely this film inspired 'Human Nature' that Tennant-era Doctor Who classic: in each, our hero is offered a vision of a normal human life, the delight of love, family, and a good, natural death of old age - and each has to choose whether to live the life they yearn for, that they've certainly earnt, or to die unjustly and save the world.  Eventually Jesus begins to hear people condemn him for failing to be the crucified and resurrected Jesus they're preaching, and who the people need to save them.  For me the film's highlight is a scene in which old Jesus runs into a highly animated Paul of Tarsus, given the film's most enjoyable performance by Harry Dean Stanton, and condemns him pretending that there had ever been a crucifixion, let alone a resurrection.

I suspect the film's ongoing controversy arises largely from the idea (all in the fantasy of this last temptation, and largely, though not wholly, implied rather than shown) that Jesus had sex.  With, y'know, women.  The weakness and doubt shown in this presentation of Jesus is likely another factor, as well as the role of Judas and the notable amount of casual nudity. (My friend Tom Hagley described this as a 'nipple film', venturing that a high percentage of shots contain at least one visible, often Willem Dafoe's).  I don't think these things should count against a very good film about Jesus, which really gets to the core of why the crucifixion was necessary to reconcile man to God, and why God didn't relieve Jesus of this burden even when he begged for another solution.  If you want a modern, well-shot and horribly bloody film about Jesus, his mission and his death, 'The Last Temptation of Christ' is a far more interesting, enjoyable and helpful film than 'The Passion of the Christ' (2004).

Pondering it over the week, I'm tempted to venture that this might even be the best film yet made about Jesus of Nazareth.  Feel quite at liberty to disagree in the comments.  For another film of a novel about Jesus, albeit one in which he hardly features, tune in on Easter Sunday for my comments on my favourite ever film, 'Ben-Hur: a Tale of the Christ' (1959).

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Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993)

Until a week before I saw this film (or should I say, 'these films') I had never heard of Glenn Gould.  I received many recommendations during a merry weekend, but the title and the very brief description I heard from my friend and scientific advisor Fnord meant this was one of only two films I sought after from the ten or twenty titles I solicited.

Glenn Gould was a concert pianist and this is a set of 31 short films (averaging 3 minutes apiece, plus or minus three minutes) about him and his life.  Being a few years dead, he himself does not appear, not even in photo.  What we have are dramatisations, vignettes, monologues, snatches of animation, and interviews (in English and French) with those who knew or met him.

Glenn Gould coming to a resolution

Since the movie is divided so clearly into many short segments, it has the feel of one of my favourite novels, 'Bear v Shark' (Chris Bachelder, 2002) which is made up of 100 very short chapters, typically only one or two pages in length.  Snippets and snapshots, ideas rather than full scenes.  Each of the 31 films here is given a chapter-heading.  Few if any of the dramatisations give us major events in Gould's life, preferring to show us quiet or private moments, one side of a telephone conversation or, on several occasions, Glenn Gould listening.  Almost the whole soundtrack is Glenn Gould on the piano, either supporting or competing with the contents of the scene.

I like this, as a way of telling the story of a person, more than any biopic I've seen.  In my comments on 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' (1928) I talked about how 'I'm Not There' (2007) broke Bob Dylan into seven characters to examine his different facets.  This managing something similar, but without divorcing the parts from the whole.  The scenes point in from myriad directions but in a manner less fanciful than that other film.  A lot, perhaps everything, can be shown about Glenn Gould in these 31 attempts far more quickly and economically than if these 90 minutes were given over to more straightforward structure.  For one thing, that would require more characters than one; in this form Glenn Gould is the film's only focus, and any other face or voice is likely to enter and leave his life in under six minutes, never to be spoken of again.

Glenn Gould on the telephone again

It's remarkably solitary.  Many scenes with the one character, thinking, listening, often being highly sociable and articulate but only over the telephone.  Refusing to speak about his music, which speaks for itself.  The only extended dialogue in the film, and my favourite of the chapters, is 'Gould Meets Gould', a dramatised interview in which both sides were scripted by the real Gould.  It shows Glenn, his voice as sonorous and pedantic as ever, leading a highly-strung interviewer (of the same voice) through certain fascinating ideas, theories of art, the ways he thinks and works - his insistent dislike of the ratio of one performer to a whole roomful of audience, for instance; Gould favoured a more intimate relationship with the audience-member, and so abandoned public performances in favour of studio recordings.  The interview is conducted at break-neck pace in a wired-up church, and the two parties (Glenn Gould pacing, the interviewer head in hands) are lit only from behind, their faces in so much shadow as to be invisible to the viewer.  All this dominated by his thunderous piano.

I feel I have rather a lot in common with Glenn Gould.  Perhaps anybody watching this film would come away feeling equal affinity with the man (as is so readily the case with any biography which really gets of the heart of a real person in favour of caricature or easy answers).  Nonetheless, I feel compelled by Glenn Gould's thoughts and philosophies, ways of working and talking; I feel some kinship with his troubled hair; his habitual solitude balanced against a capacity to be extremely talkative and rhetorical, away from people.

'Gould Meets McLaren'

An animated sequence of spheres

Something I always forget about biographies is that the main character dies at the end.  I once made the mistake of reading a biography of Gilbert and Sullivan, in which they both died, which was more than I was prepared to deal with.  The films hardly seemed arranged chronologically, but they did begin with Glenn Gould's beginning and ended with his death and legacy (the latter of which was some consolation, at least), and though I'd only known him for an hour and a half I was more upset than I'd expected.

This might be my favourite of the films I've watched for this project so far.  I once made a video documentary about a singer-songwriter friend of mine, Tom Hollingworth, and wish I'd had the sharpness of mind to have made it in the fashion of these 31 films.  I might actually have been able to say something interesting about him.

P.S. When I made mention of this film to my mother she gave a nostalgic cry of 'oh, Glenn Gould,' so my dearth of knowledge of the man is probably down to my ignorance rather than his obscurity.  In my defence, there was never a year when we both of us walked the Earth.

P.P.S. I know I've already covered 1993 with 'Jurassic Park', but this film was something special, and I was unwilling to ignore it.  Since it seems quite as much documentary as dramatic biopic I'm content to count it toward Achievement 6, my intent to see documentaries from ten decades.

P.P.P.S. Come back this weekend when I'll be commenting on a documentary about the life and work of another Canadian artist, 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr Leonard Cohen' (1965)

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The DVD isn't so Region 1 as Amazon might claim, and I'd recommend it gladly.  It's pretty cheap, too.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

There was a film about Bob Dylan a few years ago (I'm Not There, 2007) in which a cast of fairly notable actors played different aspects of the real man in different settings and eras.  Cate Blanchett seemed to me the most obviously excellent, though since the Bob Dylans also included Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw and Christian Bale it seems wrong to single only one out for praise.  It seemed a very good format for a biopic about anybody complicated, or who gathered many stories.

I thought afterwards that you could use a similar set-up for a film about Jesus - except, I thought, dividing him up (as he were Earth in the time of Peleg) and relocating his portions throughout time and space would necessarily mean telling the stories of various Christ-like people (which is already done in the movies, lots), as to do it properly you'd end up showing your audience several only-son-of-Gods in places less appropriate than 1st Century Jewry, and it would just look odd (or, you know, really Mormon).

'La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc' (to give its French title, though it seems to be claimed equally by the French and Danish, with the actors silently voicing one language while the intertitles use the other) would fit well into such a biopic of myriad Jesuses.  As a glimpse at the title and screen-caps will tell you, this is a story with an extraordinary similarity to Jesus' last hours before his crucifixion.

With its script drawn from contemporaneous reports of the trial, this is the story of Joan of Arc's condemnation and execution by the fifteenth century version of the Sanhedrin.  She's questioned, mocked and condemned, and she holds to the truth, or to silence, refusing to speak the answers that would easily save her life - holding tight to a hope of the resurrection.  It's a harrowing film of extreme close-ups, as we watch horror, fear and alarm creep across Joan's gaunt face.  There's really no hope that the trial will end anywhere but death.

When I was watching German talkies of the 1930s, I wondered at the static shots, and speculated that moving cameras may not have caught on so early as that.  It was a surprise, seeing this film from half a decade earlier, to find the camera moving ceaselessly, tracking over the long bench of the prosecutors, pursuing faces, swinging up and down to follow maces thrown down from a window in the violent finale.  It's a visually interesting film, with the trial conducted and guarded by scowling lawyers and characterful grotesques, set against the plain, androgynous face of the suffering Joan.  Though the locations and characters are few, the camera never shows us anything that isn't worth seeing and examining.  An extraordinary performance, and a horrible occurrence.

P.S. I worry sometimes that my posts are growing unreadably lengthy - and since this is one of the first I watched and wrote about (though held off in a backlog) it's mercifully shorter than some, though it occurs to me I've only dedicated two paragraphs to the film itself.  Whoops!

P.P.S. The next film I'll post about here will be 'The Lord of the Rings' (2001-2003), and the next film I watch?  Gosh, I've no idea.  I'm spoilt for choice.  'King Ralph' (1991), perhaps?  Yes, I like that idea.

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It's a fascinating film, and in pretty good nick.  If you fancy trying a silent film I'd recommend this as a fine start.

Finding Neverland (2004)

My friend Charlotte recommended me this movie, and I was especially glad as it meant my 2004 viewing wouldn't have to be 'Downfall', and so I've been looking for the time to watch it for a fortnight now, but things have kept looming up to put it off.  Anyway, I found myself agitated for no interesting reason on Saturday, and needed some cheering up, and reasoned that any film that has a credit for Toby Jones as Mr Smee (an actor and role, however small, that always bring me joy) couldn't help but gladden me.  As it was, 'Finding Neverland' made me happy, but then made me sad again, and though I anticipated it bringing me back up to happy at the end, it confounded my expectations, leaving me both.

This is the story of how J. M. Barrie came to write Peter Pan, a writer, play and character who've had my attention of late.  I recently read a lengthy piece on why Peter Pan is a played by a woman - a chapter which I must say came to some extraordinary conclusions - so this recommendation was fortuitously timed.  J.M. Barrie was a fascinating fellow, and I like to think I share his capacity for turning up in a hat.

J.M. Barrie dressing up, and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies

(sadly not so)

This film manages to be three things: first, a story about the children who inspired Peter Pan and his fellows, secondly, it's a story about writing and staging a play - always exciting and terrifying to watch if you've written plays or acted on stage, and finally (unless I've missed one) it's a romance, though a slightly unusual one, between J.M. Barrie and the Davies family.

The heart of the story is a touch comparable to 'Miracle on 34th Street' (1947).  A single mother (Kate Winslet on this occasion) is struggling (as single mothers do in the movies) to raise a child who doesn't know how to use their imagination - at which point a charismatic champion of the imagination arrives, tries to teach the child how to enjoy their childhood, and in general aims to make all well, with mixed results.  The child at the centre is Peter, who shows great potential but needs to be encouraged greatly to delight in his imagination.  There is also his brother Michael, who grows up; for J.M., this was always something of a tragedy.  History records more Davies children than just these two, but if they were in the film they made themselves anonymous.

The romance between J.M. (is this really how people addressed him) and Sylvia, which more accurately is a great love of the whole family, is an intriguing thing.  It's denied with some frequency, and for a while it seems he's just a family friend very generous with his time.  In an effort to make J.M.'s actions a little less adulterous, the film goes out of its way to make his wife Mary as loveless, unimaginative and mercenary as possible, so we're obviously meant to boo her and cheer on J.M.'s move into the Davies family.  It turns out quite well for everyone, and Mary has an affair of her own, which pretty much legitimises J.M.'s antics, though too late, as Sylvia has a cough, which in cinema as in life means she will surely die.

Magnificently stylised special effects live in the imagination of us all

I finally got myself a kilt this week, after some years of yearning.  Having listened twice to 'Donald Where's Your Troosers' to get myself in kilt-wearing mood, I thought it a pity that none of the films put to me seemed in any way Scottish - and I particularly didn't want to watch 'Brigadoon' (1954) - so I was pleasantly surprised to discover, when watching 'Finding Neverland', that J.M. Barrie was very much Scottish (though, despite a certain flair, he never affects Highland dress).  It may have been the fact that he is played here by the American and generally magnificent Johnny Depp that made this seem unlikely, but the man has a way with voices as he has with faces.  Even more than Michael Sheen, he manages to remain obviously the same person on the inside while exuding full other characters out through his face and mouth.  Perhaps I just mean that he's a good actor, but I think he's probably something else as well.  Like Peter Pan or Michael Jackson, he seems to exist between, or without, age, race or gender.

I feel I'm trailing off rather here - there's nothing very exciting to note about the other performances, which were fine and dandy.  Freddie Highmore, playing Peter, went on to be Charlie Bucket in 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' (2005), a film that only I enjoyed; Toby Jones (Smee turned out to be a very small role here, but all enjoyable) has continued to pop up in many things I'm glad to watch; Kate Winslet I haven't seen in anything more recent - I'm not a great fan of her stylings (she was terrible in 'Dark Season' (1990), but it was her first TV so it's to be expected), but she's very likeable here, her exit proving suitably beautiful and upsetting.  Director Marc Forster went on to make differently-popular Bond-film 'Quantum of Solace' (2008), and Jan A.P. Kaczmarek's wholly agreeable score to this film won an Oscar, so there's a happy ending on that front.  For the story and the main character, the unusual effects for Neverland, and the elation of imagination, I commend the film.

P.S. The next blog will regard 'Laurel and Hardy Way Out West' (1937), and the next film I watch might be 'Na Srebrnym Globie' (1987) but I'd sooner it was 'How Stella Got Her Groove Back' (1998)

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It's a pleasing and interesting film, and I may revisit it soon to grasp it better.  Oh, but perhaps you haven't seen it?

La Vie et la Passion de Jesus Christ (1903)

I first saw this film a couple of Easters ago, and recalled it last week thinking it might have belonged to the hard-to-populate 1910s.  As it is, it hails from 1903, and is thus a full decade outside the terms of this blog's purpose.  The film is so extraordinary, though, that I don't feel I can neglect it.

For one thing, despite being a hundred and ten years old, it's in colour; hand-coloured at the time, I hasten to add, rather than being daubed more recently - and in highly exciting and thus pleasingly stylised tones.  The boy Jesus in radiant yellow, maturing to an earthy salmon (if there can be such a thing as an earthy salmon), and the angels standing out in monochrome.  It's easy to forget that colours existed at all in the early 1900s, but the hills here are such a vivid green, the characters each carrying their allotted tint.  It's a very different experience both to watching a film in monochrome and to watching a film shot in colour.

The only Jesus biopic I've seen to feature the Transfiguration

I first became interested in Biblical films in 2004 after watching Ben-Hur (1959), and realising how much pictures and performances could do to bring 1st Century Judea to life, and, crucially, to help me get my mind around the order of events of a several-thousand-year-long story.  Six or seven biopics of Jesus, films about Moses, Solomon, Brian, Noah and the rest.  If you want to locate the time and place within the world you know, it's cheaper than visiting Jerusalem.

Despite its short duration (either 44 or 52 minutes, depending on the speed it's screened - but then any film could run for either of those if you screened it fast or slow enough), this one manages to cover a lot of material longer films neglect -  it spends most of its first half on Jesus' nativity and childhood, before giving us a number of single scene tellings of Jesus raising Lazarus, the Last Supper, and Jesus talking the Samaritan woman at the well, for instance, and more special effects-heavy pieces as Jesus walking on water, the transfiguration (an event I've never seen depicted in any other film), and Jesus' baptism (brilliantly described in the Dutch-language intertitles as 'DOOB VAN JEZUS'), with a gleaming pigeon superimposed as the Holy Spirit.

Amazing special effects from 1903

The scope and ingenuity of the thing is amazing for its era.  A complex film replete with effects shots - lots of superimposition and roll-back-and-mix to let characters appear from thin air, lighting effects and cunning use of scenery and cranes.  When cinema came into existence, the theatre was already so advanced that even with crude cameras, the directors and technicians had the experience to make such improbably ambitious works as this.

Despite this film's up to-the-minute techniques and  bold use of the medium, the close-up had only been invented a few years previously, and had yet to catch on.  The vast majority of this film lets the scenes play out in a single shot (the intertitles principally being used to introduce the scenes rather than report dialogue), with the actors all visible in full-frame, head to foot, and with ample empty space above their heads for us to admire the sets, stars, angels and the occasional Sphinx.  Only twice are we blessed with a medium close-up, and I reproduce both here: Christ regarded by Pontius Pilate, and (since this is a French film) St. Veronica and her famous tea-towel.  Women have been rather neglected in my screen-captures so far - though I'm content to blame the films for this more than my own bias in selection - but I'm glad that a hundred and ten years ago a film with only two such shots got something of a gender balance in there.

Behold the man

The patron saint of laundry-workers and photography, apparently.

Though it's a French film, the copy I found on Youtube (and you can watch it here) has the intertitles in Dutch, so it helped that I had more than a little familiarity with the events shown - though I'm sure you could enjoy either guessing or making up your own interpretations, peace be upon them.  Confusingly these intertitles called the film 'Van de Kribbe tot het Kruis' (a translation, not of this film's title, but that of a different and slightly less exciting film on the subject from 1912), while the Youtube page called it 'La vie et passion de notre seigneur Jesus Christ', which isn't quite right either.  Some research to make sure I wasn't confusing two or more films assured me that this is indeed 1903's 'La Vie et la Passion de Jesus Christ'.

So, despite its strangely watchable quality, its innovations of colour and effects, it is truly ancient - made only two years after the Victorian era came to a close, and in the cinemas just before Peter Pan reached the stage, before Dr Seuss, Greta Garbo or Albert Speer were born or the Panama Canal was begun, and during the life-time of Dvořák, Chekov, Jules Verne and Calamity Jane.  Almost everybody alive on Earth when this was in the cinemas is now dead.  So, isn't that exciting.

P.S. 'Doob van Jezus' sounds like it needs to be a band name, or at least a pseudonym.  'Jezus', perhaps because of its novelty, is immediately a more exciting spelling.

P.P.S. In past I've given early films far too little credit.  I'm sure when I reach the 1910s I'll end up using the innovation and quality of this movie as a stick with which to beat backwards and technically wretched pieces which ought to be as good, if not a full decade more advanced.