Being Julia

CA/GB/HU © 2004 2024846 Ontario, Inc. / Being Julia Productions Limited / ISL Film Kft. Serendipity Point Films presents. P: Robert Lantos. D: István Szabó. SC: Ronald Harwood – based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham (Theatre, 1937, in Finnish Näyttelijätär 1951 J.A. Hollo / Otava, 5. ed. 2005). DP: Lajos Koltai – colour: DeLuxe – 1,85:1. AD: Luciana Arrighi. COST: John Bloomfield. Make-up: Erzsébet Forgács. M: Mychael Danna. S: Jane Tattersall. ED: Susan Shipton. CAST: Annette Bening (Julia Lambert), Jeremy Irons (Michael Gosselyn), Bruce Greenwood (Lord Charles), Miriam Margolyes (Dolly de Vries), Juliet Stevenson (Evie), Shaun Evans (Tom Fennel), Lucy Punch (Avice Crichton), Tom Sturridge (Roger Gosselyn), Maury Chaykin (Walter Gibbs), Sheila McCarthy (Grace Dexter), Rosemary Harris (Julia's aunt), Rita Tushingham (Aunt Carrie). 103 min. A print with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Sanna Manninen / Hellevi Raita. Viewed at Cinema Orion, 11 June 2009. - A print without joins or scratches but with a digital intermediate look. - A great satire about the theatre, show business, and actors. - Annette Bening is wonderful as the narcissistic theatre diva approaching the age of 50. There is a grand finale in which she faces all the disasters and overcomes them (for the time being) in magnificent theatrical manner. - Mychael Danna's music is very appealing, spiced with 1930s hit songs. - This film belongs to the same tradition as All About Eve: Annette Bening invites comparison with Bette Davis, and Lucy Punch gets the role of Eve. - The victory belongs to Julia Lambert, the character played by Annette Bening. But the most cutting criticism Julia receives from her own son, who accuses her mother that she "does not exist", and that all that she has to say is second hand.

Oliver Twist (Roman Polanski 2005)

Oliver Twist / Oliver Twist. FR/GB/CZ (c) 2005 Oliver Twist Productions LLP. P: Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde, Roman Polanski. D: Roman Polanski. SC: Ronald Harwood - based on the novel by Charles Dickens (1838). DP: Pawel Edelman - shot on Super 35mm - digital intermediate - 35mm print 2,35:1. PD: Allan Starski. M: Rachel Portman. ED: Hervé de Luze. Studio: Barrandov (Prague). CAST: Barney Clark (Oliver Twist), Ben Kingsley (Fagin), Jamie Foreman (Bill Sykes), Harry Eden (Artful Dodger), Leanne Rowe (Nancy), Edward Hardwicke (Mr. Brownlow), Ian McNeice (Mr. Limbkins), Mark Strong (Toby Crackit), Jeremy Swift (Mr. Bumble). 130 min. The NFI / Columbia Norway release print with Norwegian subtitles by Harald Ohrvik viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 7 Dec 2008. - A print without signs of wear, the image slightly too dark and soft. - Film Indexes Online synopsis: "Adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic novel. Young orphan Oliver Twist escapes from the workhouse and working for an undertaker and runs away to London. There he is taken under the wing of Fagin, who operates a gang of young thieves, and is taught to steal." - In Polanski's oeuvre, this can be seen as a companion piece to The Pianist: the ordeal of the protagonist, the survival against all odds. - In Ronald Harwood's oeuvre, this can be seen as a part of a trilogy with Ivan Denisovich, and The Pianist; all share similarities of imagery and situations of humiliation and terror. - Charles Dickens' second novel has been filmed some 20 times. David Lean's version (1948) is still superior. - Both Lean and Polanski were inspired visually by Gustave Doré's London: A Pilgrimage (1872). - The lush Romantic score by Rachel Portman can be compared with the composers of Hollywood's Golden Era. - Polanski's special emphasis is on the terror of the 10-year old protagonist, with which he could identify, having been a Holocaust fugitive in Nazi-occupied Poland at the same age. - Another special emphasis is Fagin's death row agony. No clue to Fagin's Jewishness.

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Päivä Ivan Denisovitshin elämässä / En dag i Ivan Denisovitsj' liv. GB/NO 1970. PC: Group W Films LLC / Leontes / Norsk Film. P+D: Caspar Wrede. SC: Ronald Harwood - based on the novella Один день Ивана Денисовича (1962) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. DP: Sven Nykvist - Eastmancolor. Starring Tom Courtenay (Ivan Denisovich Shukhov). Original in English. 105 min. Print without subtitles. Memorial screening of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) in the presence of the Wrede family in Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 8 September 2008. - A fine print with colour intact. - The film had no premiere in Finland, as it was banned during the Cold War. - I revisited the first reel of the film. It shows the morning of the day in the grim Stalinist concentration camp after WWII, Ivan Denisovich's sickness, the appalling food. - I remember first having read Solzhenitsyn at the age of 16 in 1971, it was The First Circle. Solzhenitsyn's books had been published so far in the most prestigious books series, the Yellow Library of the Tammi company. Reading Solzhenitsyn was very moving, but I knew about the Gulag already from other books, even from left-wing memoirs, and the theme was well represented in the media, particularly in the main newspaper Helsingin Sanomat. The banning of the film was ludicrous, an insult to the liberty of freedom and it certainly contributed to a general hatred of the Soviet Union. - In the 1970s Solzhenitsyn's most famous book, The Gulag Archipelago, was not published in Finnish by Tammi but by Wahlström & Widstrand in Stockholm (the first volume) and Kustannuspiste in Tampere (the rest). It was easily available in Finland. - It has been stated that Solzhenitsyn's books contributed decisively to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Certainly so, but as Solzhenitsyn's books focused on the crimes of the Stalin era, also officially condemned by the USSR, one might add that the persecution, banning and exile of Solzhenitsyn weighed even more. - The noble Wrede family dates to 13th century Germany, and since the 17th century it has been prominent in Finland. - The age of political bans of films in Finland ended with the glasnost of the USSR in the 1980s. Finnish film censorship was abolished in 2001.