Towers Open Fire

Anthony Balch: Towers Open Fire! (GB 1963). William S. Burroughs. Screenplay from Film, Autumn 1963. From: RealityStudio. Do click to enlarge the pages.

GB © 1963 Armorial Film Services. PC: Antony Balch Films. P+D+DP+AN+S+ED: Antony Balch – in black and white with colour in the end. SC: William S. Burroughs. C: William S. Burroughs, Antony Balch, David Jacobs, Bachoo Sen, Alexander Trocchi. 11 min. A vintage KAVA 35 mm print viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (50 Years Ago, screened before Naked Lunch), 20 June 2013 

Tony Rayns (1972) at the LUX website: "Towers Open Fire is a straight-forward attempt to find a cinematic equivalent for William Burroughs' writing: a collage of all the key themes and situations in the books, accompanied by a Burroughs soundtrack narration."

"Society crumbles as the Stock Exchange crashes, members of the Board are raygun-zapped in their own boardroom, and a commando in the orgasm attack leaps through a window and decimates a family photo collection... "

"Meanwhile, the liberated individual acts: Balch himself masturbates ("silver arrow through the night..."), Burroughs as the junkie (his long-standing metaphor for the capitalist supply-and-demand situation) breaks on through to the hallucinatory world of Brion Gysin Dream Machines."

"Balch lets us stare into the Dream Machines, finding faces to match our own. "Anything that can be done chemically can be done by other means." So the film is implicitly a challenge to its audience. But we're playing with indefinables that we don't really understand yet, and so Mikey Portman's music-hall finale is interrupted by science-fiction attack from the skies, as lost boardroom reports drift through the countryside..." (Tony Rayns, "Interview with Antony Balch", Cinema Rising No.1, April 1972)

"Installations shattered – Personnel decimated – Board Books destroyed – Electronic waves of resistance sweeping through mind screens of the earth – The message of Total Resistance on short wave of the world – This is war to extermination – Shift linguals – Cut word lines – Vibrate tourists – Free doorways – Photo falling – Word falling – Break through in grey room – Calling Partisans of all nations – Towers, open fire" (William Burroughs, Nova E, 1964) – See more at: http://www.lux.org.uk/collection/works/towers-open-fire#sthash.eS6vYQdN.dpuf - From the LUX website

AA: Towers Open Fire belongs to the top examples of cinema as an expression of the poetry of a major literary figure – comparable to the presence of Jean Cocteau, Jean Genet, and Samuel Beckett in the cinema. All worthy, part of the essence of their art.

The presence of William S. Burroughs and his creaking voice in Towers Open Fire is so commanding that Antony Balch can incorporate anything in his movie without losing a sense of unity.

We have extreme close-ups of Burroughs, his eyes at half-mast. White white white. The recitation of his prose poetry is hypnotic. There is a masturbation scene like by Warhol, only the face of the man visible. There is TV static like in a work by Nam June Paik. There is found newsreel footage of the 1929 stock market crash. There is pre-cinema imagery of a Zoetrope. There are ultra fast edits like in the movies of Gance or Vertov. 

There is op art, kinetic art, and experimental music while Burroughs injects himself with his shots. There are subliminal edits like in Scorpio Rising. Exposed to Burroughs' raygun people are reduced to radiation like in Star Trek. Hieroglyphs vanish in the wind. The black and white movie turns into colour in the Len Lye style flicker passage in the conclusion. A history of the experimental cinema, yet it's all William S. Burroughs.

There are signs of wear in the start, but essentially top visual quality.

The Intruder (1962)

Kiihotus / Uppvigling / I Hate Your Guts (Cinema Distributors of America release title) / The Stranger (GB) / Shame (1966 rerelease title). US 1962 © 1961 Los Altos Productions. PC: Filmgroup Inc. EX: Gene Corman. P+D: Roger Corman. Ass. D: Lou Place. SC: Charles Beaumont – based on his novel (1959). DP: Taylor Byars (b&w, 35 mm). Cameraman: Haskell Wexler. M: Herman Stein. S: John Bury. ED: Ronald Sinclair.  C: William Shatner (Adam Cramer), Frank Maxwell (Tom McDaniel), Beverly Lunsford (Ella McDaniel), Robert Emhardt (Verne Shipman), Jeanne Cooper (Vi Griffin), Leo Gordon (Sam Griffin), Charles Barnes (Joseph "Joey" Green), Charles Beaumont (Dr. Harley Paton), Katherine Smith (Ruth McDaniel), George Clayton Johnson (Phil West), William Nolan (Bart Carey), Phoebe Rowe (Mrs. Lambert), Bo Dodd (Sheriff), Walter Kurtz (Gramps), Ocee Ritch (Jack Allardyce). Loc: Sikeston, Charleston, and East Prairie (Missouri). Premiere: New York 14.5.1962. Helsinki premiere: 4.9.1964, Arita, released by Lii-Filmi with Finnish / Swedish subtitles n.c. - tv: 6.10.1967, 13.11.1995, YLE TV2 - VET 68744 – K16 – 2280 m / 84 min. A vintage KAVA print, deposited by Lii-Filmi, viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (Carte blanche à Tapani Maskula), 20 June 2013

AFI Plot Summary: "Adam Cramer, a member of the reactionary Patrick Henry Society, arrives in a small Southern town to instigate a campaign of hatred designed to arouse white citizens into opposing integration of local schools. Full of surface charm, he ingratiates himself with the townspeople and persuades them to harass black youngsters attending the previously all-white high school; his only articulate opponent is newspaper editor Tom McDaniel, who feels bound to obey the law. Cramer makes an enemy by seducing Vi Griffin while her husband, Sam, a traveling salesman, is out of town; later, when the guilt-ridden Vi runs away, Sam senses that Cramer is responsible. Meanwhile, the town's mood becomes increasingly violent as a black minister is killed by a bomb tossed into his church; in addition, McDaniel loses an eye in a confrontation when he leads black students into school. Cramer then warns McDaniel's teenaged daughter, Ella, that he will kill her father unless she accuses a young black, Joey Green, of attempted rape. The frightened girl agrees, and a lynch-hungry mob lashes the boy to a schoolyard swing; under the prodding of Griffin, however, Ella arrives and publicly confesses her lie. Ashamed and furious at having been deceived, the crowd withdraws, leaving Cramer without support."

Roger Corman's best film, at least of the ones I have seen. A mature film on an inflammatory topic, still resonant over 50 years later. Racism, alas, is still topical, and discussed in films like Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained. Mass hysteria and persecution of innocents are still topical questions, recently discussed by Thomas Vinterberg in Jagten / The Hunt. In a comparison with Tarantino and Vinterberg Roger Corman copes very well.

Similar themes had been discussed by John Ford, Clarence Brown, Jacques Tourneur, and Otto Preminger, among others.

The Intruder is original in many ways. The protagonist is an agitator against the integration of black citizens in society, particularly in schools. The Intruder is a study in the psychology of Adam Cramer, a racist - an intelligent, yet deranged character, brilliantly played by William Shatner. Also the other characters are interesting and surprising. Sam Griffin the salesman (Leo Gordon) seems like a slightly sleazy character, but his integrity surprises us both in a private confrontation and in the climax of the lynching hysteria, which he stops in a way very different from the characters played by Will Rogers and Joel McCrea in films by John Ford and Jacques Tourneur.

Interesting characters are also the courageous newspaper editor Tom McDaniel (Frank Maxwell) and his daughter, the schoolgirl Ella (Beverly Lunsford), whom Adam Cramer seduces to use her in a diabolical plot to compromise the black youngster Joey Greene (Charles Barnes). All these performances are convincing.

Charles Beaumont, the author of the novel and the screenwriter, plays the schoolmaster who tries to prevent lynch "justice".

Katherine Smith is interesting as Ruth McDaniel, Sam's wife. She is not just a nymphomaniac, she is apparently a sex addict, but this trait is not played for sensation. Due to her weakness Adam is able to seduce her, too, although she despises him ("I don't consider you my friend"). 

The film is visually intensive with its scenes of lynch patrols, KKK hoods, nocturnal car caravans, and the burning cross putting a new perspective into everything, including the scene where Adam seduces Ruth. The train is pounding away, and we see Ruth's bare back in the mirror. The lynch mob commits arson in the church of the black neighbourhood, and they murder the priest in the process.

Further climaxes include the one where Sam confronts Adam and exposes him as a coward. On the first school day Tom escorts the ten black students to the school, and he is battered so terribly in the head that he loses an eye. Also the story of how Ella gets to pretend that the black guy Joey has tried to rape her is very well developed.

Well written, well directed, well performed, and well shot. It's too bad that Roger Corman did not continue in this straight, mature and daring vein, but it's good that he made this one great, serious work.

The vintage print has been used quite a bit: there is rain in the starts and the tails of the reels, but the print is complete, and the visual quality is good to ok.

Suomalainen ratsuväki / [The Finnish Cavalry]

Kari Uusitalo: Suomalainen ratsuväki / [The Finnish Cavalry] (FI 1963).

Kari Uusitalo: Suomalainen ratsuväki / [The Finnish Cavalry] (FI 1963).

Suomalainen ratsuväki 1500-luvulta nykypäivään / Finska kavalleriet / [The Finnish Cavalry from the 16th Century to the Present Day].
    FI 1963. PC: Veikko Laihanen Oy. P: Veikko Laihanen. Commissioned by: Hakkapeliitat-elokuvatoimikunta r.y. – chairman: major general Gustaf Ehrnroth – members: colonel Yrjö Keinonen, lieutenant colonel Jaakko Savilahti, and captain Heikki Pohjanpää.
    D: Kari Uusitalo, Veikko Laihanen. [Two directors are credited, but Kari Uusitalo was the main director. Veikko Laihanen was the producer and Kari Uusitalo the real director.] SC: Kari Uusitalo, Heikki Pohjanpää, Jaakko Savilahti – commentary written by: Heikki Pohjanpää. Cinematography: Erkki Eronen, Mauri Laaksonen, Reijo Hassinen. M: arranged and conducted by Martti Parantainen - performed by Helsingin Varuskuntasoittokunta – see listing beyond the jump. ED: Kari Uusitalo. S: Heikki Laakkonen, Reijo Hassinen. Commentator: Carl-Erik Creutz.
    A documentary film based on – archival footage at the Finnish Defense Forces Film Archive (Saimaa Canal, Tali Field, Ypäjä Riding School, Karelia Peninsula, Vyborg, Raatteen tie, Punkaharju, Ilomantsi, Äänisniemi, Kontula, Sungu, Mikkeli, Taipale: Terenttilä Hill, Tolvajärvi) – location footage in Sweden, the Federal Republic of Germany (Rotenburg, Lech River, Neuburg), the German Democratic Republic (Breitenfeld, Lützen) – and in Finland: Lappeenranta, Tammela, Loviisa,  Iitti: Tillola, Porvoo, Kouvola, Helsinki, Lahti, Hollola. [The Porilaisten marssi footage of the Finnish War 1808-1809 is from Fänrik Ståls sägner, SE 1926, n.c.]. [Lappeenranta footage from Rakuuna Kalle Kollola, 1939.] [The dismounting of the Finnish Cavalry on 1 March 1947 was reconstructed for this movie, with Adolf Ehrnrooth, then a colonel, now a lieutenant general, appearing as himself, but refusing to wear the colonel's insignia. Source: Kari Uusitalo: Elämäni Karina, 2001, p. 158.]
    Helsinki premiere: 7.7.1963, Kino Käpylä – Finnish premiere: 5.5.1963 Lappeenranta: Jukola – distributors: Veikko Laihanen, Suomen Osuuskauppojen Keskuskunta – tv: 6.12.1963 Yle TV1 – VET A-16106 – S – 1480 m / 54'06''. A KAVA print viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (50 Years Ago, Kari Uusitalo's 80th Anniversary), 19 June 2013

AA: In the presence of the director-screenwriter-editor Kari Uusitalo, primus motor and grand old man of the research of the Finnish cinema, celebrating his 80th anniversary this year. Mr. Uusitalo told that he belonged to the last class of the defense forces still getting to wear the cavalry's red pants; the cavalry as such had been dismounted, but certain traditions still persisted.

I was expecting a well-made documentary film made to order of Suomalainen ratsuväki, the history of the Finnish cavalry, made 50 years ago and not screened to the general audience in 50 years.

I was positively surprised. Made with full resources and the official backing of the Finnish Defense Forces, Suomalainen ratsuväki is a movie with lasting value. Ambitiously, the camera was taken to the sites of the historical battlegrounds of the 30 Years' War, WWII, etc.

The Finnish Cavalry was dismounted in 1947, 16 years before the production of this film, yet still within the scope of vivid memories, and the movie has thus Flahertyan value as an account of a lost way of life which, however, could still be reconstructed. Paintings, drawings, portraits, monuments, and maps have been used to cover the centuries before the cinema. Even caricatures are included. There are moments of amazing derring-do in the cavalry exercise sequences. More relevant to reality are memorable shots of deep snow exercises, crucial in the Winter War. Adolf Ehrnrooth gets to reconstruct the dismounting ("Olen saanut käskyn jalkauttaa ratsuväki. Teen sen nyt" ["I have been given the order to dismount the cavalry. I do it now."]) President Kekkonen unveils the equestrian statue of Marshal Mannerheim.

The excellent compilation score, arranged by Martti Parantainen, Chief Conductor of the Defense Forces, played by the Helsinki Garrison Band, has also documentary value, its full repertoire starting with the Finnish Cavalry March of the 30 Year's War.

In his memoirs, Elämäni Karina, Mr. Uusitalo offers juicy and satirical backstory material relevant to the production (p. 158–159).

Recommended viewing for those interested in military history. John Ford would have liked this. 

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK:

Les Salauds / Bastards

FR 2013. D: Claire Denis. 2K DCP with English subtitles from Wild Bunch viewed at the School / Kitisenrannan koulu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 15 June 2013

Introduced by Claire Denis, presented by Satu Kyösola.

The Festival Catalogue: "The captain on a container-ship, Marco Silvestri, is called urgently back to Paris. His sister, Sandra, is desperate… her husband has committed suicide, the family business has gone under, her daughter has gone adrift. Sandra accuses the powerful businessman, Edouard Laporte responsible. Marco moves into the building where Laporte's mistress lives with his son. What Marco hadn't foreseen are Sandra's shameful, secret manœuvres… and his love for Raphaëlle which could ruin everything."
   "Bastards - Claire Denis's latest and the first full-length film since his 2009 White Material recently competed at the Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard selection. A lot of Denis's recurring cast and crew are present, including the actors Michel Subor, Grégoire Colin and Alex Descas. The two main protagonists are portrayed by Chiara Mastroianni and Vincent Lindon."
   "We may only speculate on the extent of the emotional impact made on the Midnight Sun Film Festival crowd by the one of the most anticipated new releases of the year: a film by a director known for her masterful depiction of hidden emotions, repressed instincts and the smallest nuances of human communication." (Lauri Timonen)

In her introduction Claire Denis, who had been fine-tuning the final release edition of Les Salauds until yesterday, told that not until the film was finished did she realize how desolate it was.
...

Like Pedro Almodóvar's Los amantes pasajeros / I'm So Excited, Les Salauds is a poet's vision about the status of the world: epic financial fraud and sexual abuse in DSK style in the highest circles of society. Almodóvar plays it for a crazy farce, Claire Denis creates a horror film.

The main viewpoint is that of Captain Silvestri (the sad-eyed Vincent Lindon), and the female protagonist is Sandra (Chiara Mastroianni), married to a financial tycoon (Michel Subor).

The narrative is enigmatic, the storylines are broken, but it all adds up towards the conclusion.

There are many kinds of violence. There is a horrible car accident with gore and bloody carnage. There is a gunfight, where the most innocent one is the casualty. There is a dimension of sadism with explicit references to torn and badly wounded vaginas. There is even a corncob in the sadists' lair, like in William Faulkner's Sanctuary. "That bastard turned her into her sex object".

The cinematographer is Agnès Godard, and the music is by Tindersticks. It's all well made, but, yes, utterly desolate, without a ray of hope. Even the infinite sea seen in the captain's seafaring sequences in the beginning is desolate.

My favourite Claire Denis films remains 35 rhums.

Visual quality: no problem with the 2K DCP.

Mudar de Vida / Change of Life

Change One's Life. PT 1966. D: Paulo Rocha. This print 95 min. A Cinemateca Portuguesa print with e-subtitles in English viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 15 June 2013

Masterclass with José Manuel Costa, introduced by Peter von Bagh.

Peter von Bagh: "José Manuel Costa has worked for decades in leading posts of the famously excellent Portuguese Film Archive and also in various international cinema-related positions. What is essential in our view is that he is a remarkable film critic with the soul of a cinephile. Of the two areas close to Costa's heart – documentary, Portuguese cinema – we have chosen the latter, because so little of it is known in Finland. So, thanks to José Manuel Costa we now have the privilege to present wonderful director Paulo Rocha (1935–2012) and one of his greatest works, Mudar de vida (Change of Life, 1966)." (PvB)

The Festival Catalogue: "Paulo Rocha, (1935–2012) who passed away last December, was one of the leading figures in the Portuguese Cinema Novo movement (1963–1974). Change of Life, Rocha's second full feature is meant as a response to Manoel de Oliveira's Acto da Primavera (1963). The film observes and captures the life of the remote fishing village Furadouro, where a veteran of the Angolan war returns home to a changed world."
   "Rocha cleverly combines documentary form with melancholic poetry. Dressed in the many shades of gray, Change of Life shares many visual aspects not only with the British 1950/60 Kitchen Sink movies but also with the dreamy, mysterious landscapes of Dreyer's Vampyr. As a stylized, archaic depiction of work and everyday life, the film also resembles the Visconti classic The Earth Trembles, as well as many of the works of Vittorio De Seta, a guest at the Midnight Sun Film Festival in 2007."
   "A number of local villagers are cast as themselves, but among them we see also the work of professional actors such as Isabel Ruth, who subsequently became a recurring face in de Oliveira's films. This illusionless movie with a strong sense of nature has become a classic of Portuguese cinema. The impact of Change of Life can now, for example, be witnessed in the works of a newer master, Pedro Costa." (Lauri Timonen)
...
 
José Manuel Costa gave an enthusiastic presentation of Mudar de Vida.

"Paulo Rocha died during the very last days of last year. Since his debut feature film he was a key figure in Portuguese cinema, in the European film heritage. He was a friend with Glauber Rocha who led a parallel movement in Brazil. The leading actor of Mudar de Vida had also had the lead in Glauber Rocha's Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol / Black God White Devil; in Mudar de Vida he was dubbed by a Portuguese actor."

"Born in Porto, Paulo Rocha studied law and went to Paris where he studied at the IDHEC in 1959–1962. It was the key moment of la Nouvelle Vague, but Rocha had already been influenced by other things more than Godard and Truffaut, he had a wider sphere of influence including Renoir, Grémilllon, and Becker."

[Porto, in Portuguese also spelled as o Porto, or Oporto. It means "the port", and it is the root of the name of the country of Portugal. Also port wine is named after Porto. Porto lies in the valley of the river Douro.]

"Italian cinema, even Italian popular cinema, influenced Rocha. He was also close to the classical influence of Lang and Dreyer. He was attracted to the Japanese cinema, too, and for him Japan was also "my country". He went to Japan in 1975 and stayed for almost a decade as a cultural attaché. His movie A Ilha dos Amores / The Isle of Love was inspired by the Portuguese writer Wenceslau de Moraes who went to Japan and died there."

"Paulo Rocha directed the very first Novo Cinema movie, Verdes Anos / The Green Years. It was the era of the dictatorship of Salazar, and there was some kind of a film industry and a film movement. The 1950s had been a difficult decade; little film production existed. Now it was the beginning of a new world, and the cultivated Rocha was one of the leaders. In Paris he had frequented the mythical La Cinémathèque française, and he had come back with a new sense of a flim culture."

"Rocha's second film was very different. Verdes Anos had been shot in urban Lisbon. In Mudar de Vida, again, Rocha was set to tell a story about a man who doesn't fit – about a man who comes back and doesn't fit anymore."

"It all started with an idea of a place, a fishermen's place. Coming from Oporto, Rocha had come to see the fishermen as working heroes, big guys with their big boats, which were very hard to handle. The era of such boats was coming to an end. There is a documentary side in this movie. Although Rocha is a fiction director, he was also inspired to do anthropological research."

"The movie was shot in the Douro valley, and it showed the actual work of the fishermen during a time of transition, when there was already a bit of a crisis in the traditional profession. There were no jobs in agriculture, and industrialization was still in its early stages. The dictatorship meant censorship, and the very first thing affected was reality, which could be shown only in an indirect way, via ellipsis, via metaphor."

"Adelino, the protagonist, comes from military service in Africa. Contemporary viewers knew that he comes from the war in Angola in 1961, from fighting the liberation movement. The word 'war' was not uttered except in the Salazar propaganda. His mental state has changed in the war. He does not fit anymore."

"His love story has remained unfulfilled. His ex-fiancée Júlia (Maria Barroso) did not wait, and instead, has married Adelino's brother. Maria Barroso was a theatre actress, the wife of a Socialist leader, Mario Soares, who later became Prime Minister."

"Isabel Ruth, playing Albertina, had been the star of Rocha's first film. She had a dance career, and she was the main inspiration for Rocha. She was cast in the role of the new woman, the rebel, who does not accept the conditions, who wants to get out".

"The final line of dialogue: 'Let's stay, we still have our arms' was very significant. The question 'to stay – or to leave?' had a larger meaning."

"The key scene is the one where the fishermen try to catch the remains of a house by the seaside. It was a real thing, a real event, real scenery. The sea took so much. There is the old well which now looks like a chimney – things like that happened a lot. The dialogue concerns that key moment but is really also about something else, it is about the country which is like a shipwrecked people. The sequence of the people singing together in a very large circle has anthropological value."

"The Mudar de Vida score was composed by the Portuguese guitarist Carlos Paredes, our biggest ever guitar player, playing in the unique Portuguese style, different from the Spanish classical guitar."

"It is the portrait of a country, Portugal in the 1960s." (End of the José Manuel Costa introduction, notes by me).
...

A masterpiece, for me the finest discovery of this year's Midnight Sun Film Festival. With affinities with Visconti (La terra trema), Antonioni (Il grido), and Grémillon (Pattes Blanches), but fully original, a vision of landscapes familiar to the director Paulo Rocha since childhood, with contemporary relevance about a country in transition: facing a structural change from tradition to modernity, and from colonialism to liberation.

Mudar de Vida is a character-driven and a landscape-driven film. While the folkloristic value is great, the authentic detail is never decorative. The spirit of nobility and dignity is comparable to Visconti.

We have seen similar images of fishermen in films by Flaherty, Ruspoli, Perrault, and most recently by our own Kira Jääskeläinen, but Paulo Rocha has his own stark, rich approach in the scenes of the heavy boats being launched and trawls being pulled. "The sea is getting rougher, the catch is getting scarcer." The houses are collapsing by the seaside. There are no jobs in Portugal, and people are going to factories abroad.

The protagonist is a war invalid. He has experienced a severe jeep accident in the military service. His back is permanently injured, and he is no longer fit for heavy work in the trawlers. He faints, he falls ill.

There is a primitive chapel, a place of worship, and there Adelino meets for the first time Albertina, who has come to steal the collection (a connection with Risate di Gioia seen yesterday!). She works at a textile factory and has had an unhappy affair with an engineer. She has tried to commit suicide by jumping down a well. "I was born here but I'm a rolling stone. The world is a big place".

Also Julia has been suffering more than we can imagine (she has aged a lot in a few years), and on her deathbed she demands to be incinerated. "Make a huge bonfire on the beach, then forget".

The movie is about to become a story of fugitive lovers in the tradition of You Only Live Once and High Sierra, but Adelino and Albertina refuse to accept the outlaw status. They have nothing... except "a good pair of hands".

The cinematography by Elso Roque and Manuel Carlos da Silva is rich and powerful.

The print is superb.

Centro Histórico / Historic Centre

PT © 2012 Guimarães 2012, etc. D: Aki Kaurismäki (O Tasqueiro / Tavern Man), Pedro Costa (Lamenta da Vida Jovem / Sweet Exorcism), Víctor Erice (Vidros Partidos / Broken Windows), Manoel de Oliveira (O Conquistador, Conquistado / The Conquered Conqueror). 90 min. 2K DCP with English subtitles from Urban Distribution viewed at Iso Teltta / The Big Top, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 15 June 2013

Peter von Bagh introduced the movie, all four directors of which are Sodankylä veterans.

The Festival Catalogue: "Commissioned by Guimarães, the 2012 European Capital of Culture, Historic Centre is an elegiac portmanteau film with political overtones, set in multi-dimensional Portugal and made by four luminaries of world cinema, all familiar faces to previous Sodankylä audiences."
  "In Aki Kaurismäki's Tavern Man, the wordless and picturesque opener, a Portuguese man played by Ilkka Koivula (!) keeps a restaurant on the dark side of the street. His own business mostly devoid of customers, he scrounges for ideas at a more popular neighbourhood venue."
  "Pedro Costa has a rather more flexible approach to the urban assignment, setting his segment in the claustrophobic space of a lift, where Ventura, a familiar protagonist from his previous work, has a conversation with a soldier painted into a statue."
  "A rare work from Spanish master Victor Erice, the third episode employs the testimonies of former workers of a textile factory, shut down in 2002. The second largest in Europe during its heyday, its history is documented with warmth and nostalgia."
  "Manoel de Oliveira, still active at 104, closes the film with a brief segment featuring a tour guide who gives his group a recap of Portuguese history while roaming the deserted city streets. The present glides over the past, disregarding all boundaries of time." (Lauri Timonen)

O TASQUEIRO / TAVERN MAN. Aki Kaurismäki's Laitakaupungin valot / Lights in the Dusk was for me a delta blues. O Tasqueiro is a fado. This restaurant-centered short resembles Dogs Have No Hell, among others. Ilkka Koivula plays in dead pan, but his eyes are alive. The colour, including the signature blue, are expressive. The story of a loser, a study in solitude. The fado music is haunting.

LAMENTA DA VIDA JOVEM / SWEET EXORCISM. Pedro Costa has also brought a favourite actor to this movie: Ventura from Cape Verde. There is a skirmish at night, then Ventura is in prison, and the movie proper takes place in an elevator, in tableau style, in long takes and long shots. The soldier guarding Ventura is a living statue, and the elevator becomes a place for a political discussion, although the other speakers besides Ventura remain invisible.

VIDOS PARTIDOS / BROKEN WINDOWS by Víctor Erice is an oral history of the Rio Vizela textile mill. It used to be one of the largest in Europe, established in 1845 and shut down in 2002. (I can understand something of this since I lived in Tampere, "the Manchester of Finland", in the 1960s and the 1970s, when there were still many textile mills there. All that production is now in the cheap labour countries of Asia.) There are some nine interviews, all done with the concept of one shot - one person. In the conclusion each one comments on an old photograph, seen in a huge enlargement, of the factory cantina: "they are looking at us". I like: the soulful faces, eyes and voices in these deeply felt reminiscences. While admiring the film I cannot relate to the resigned and melancholy atmosphere, as little as I could in Bill Morrison's The Miners' Hymns.

O CONQUISTADOR, CONQUISTADO / THE CONQUERED CONQUEROR, the final segment, has been directed by Manoel de Oliveira, who turned 104 in last December. A group of tourists "conquers" the historical center of Guimarães, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The camera shares the tourist's low angle viewpoint. The soundtrack includes J.S. Bach's concertoes played by Glenn Gould.

The visual quality of the DCP is fine.

Film concert Blackmail silent version, The Hitchcock 9 version (2012), music composed by Neil Brand (2008), played by Oulu Sinfonia, conducted by Timothy Brock

GB 1929. D: Alfred Hitchock. A BFI 35 mm print [The Hitchcock Nine, BFI 2012, 2K restoration, printed from DI to 35 mm] with e-subtitles in Finnish, viewed at Iso Teltta / The Big Top, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 14 June 2013

In the presence of Neil Brand, introduced by Peter von Bagh.

The Festival Catalogue: "Blackmail (1929) was Hitchcock's second breakthrough film and thereby confirmed what his “right” and “chosen” genre was. At the same time it masterfully integrated some main elements from his earlier, non-criminological works into a functioning form that signified an understanding of the ambivalent basic nature of an “unambiguous” domain."
   "The original layout is a classical one, even Simenonian in its plainness: despite having a police for a boyfriend, a woman ends up flirting with an artist she has met at a café, things get out of hand, and the artist gets semi-accidentally stabbed in the twilight of his studio. A coincidental bystander witnesses the homicide committed by the woman and starts blackmailing her."
   "Hitchcock's enduring obsession, the topic of “the wrong man” is an exceptionally ambiguous theme in this film. The police start chasing an innocent, yet otherwise dubious male character despite the fact that the actual murderer is the detective's girlfriend. The detective knows this all too well but at the same time allows his colleagues to chase the blackmailer and scapegoat straight to his death."
   "What is present at the very beginning with almost a documentary thoroughness is the sense of teasing that always interested Hitchcock. Picking someone up at a restaurant, flirting, mutual participation (the director clearly shows male chauvinist compassion: the man is entitled to his putt!), climbing up stairs (which later become a similar skeleton of guilt and an abstract summary as in Vertigo), and the geometry of human relations: this and only this is how it is supposed to happen."
   "The minute details and trivial settings are counterbalanced for the first time by a national monument, the British Museum, or as Raymond Durgnat put it, “an arcanum of timelessness, omniscience, and eternity - an absolute”. In view of the beginning of the film as well as its basic theme, this is the only proper culmination, as the institution is a greater embodiment of the fiction that man has constructed in order to hide his own limitations and moral volatility from himself as well as his fellow human beings."
   "The “execution” itself is like a scientific discovery that has the same kind of coldness as a fighter pilot's performance or Harry Lime's observations. In the final, comic elaboration with the ironic use of a public building, the sorry excuse for a human being - the small-time blackmailer and son of the streets - finds himself in the midst of the props of civilisation probably for the first time in his life."
   "In this sense, all subsequent similar sequences have been more abstract by nature. Hitchcock's vision personifies the humour of the situation - and the maximal unreasonableness of all human activity, in which the true culprits are always somewhere else." (Peter von Bagh)

I had seen Blackmail the silent version with the magnificent score by Neil Brand in its premiere screening in Bologna (Il Cinema Ritrovato, 2008).

In 2008 the Orchestra del Teatro Comunale played the score at the strength of 56 players. Now the Oulu Sinfonia interpreted it at a strength of 15 players. It still sounded great - and unique due to the Sodankylä Big Top experience. It was raining outside, but the screen was shining inside. Admittedly, the score is even more magnificent at the full strength of a big orchestra.

In 2008 the print of Blackmail the silent version was still the familiar all-photochemical one. Here I got to see for the first time the celebrated The Hitchcock Nine version (BFI 2012), digitally restored in 2K, and shown here in a 35 mm film print struck from the digital intermediate. The quality looked superb. The circumstances in the Big Top are not ideal for visual quality due to the orchestra lights, but the total experience more than compensates.

Blackmail has always looked good, and now it looks even better.

The true Hitchcock music sound started first in 1940 in Hollywood in Rebecca, after Hitchcock had already directed 24 films. David O. Selznick had to push Hitchcock into a full-blooded musical mood. Hitchcock still had misgivings about romantic emphases in movies... But probably Hitch liked Franz Waxman's work in Rebecca since they collaborated four times. Dimitri Tiomkin, Alfred Newman, Frank Skinner, Miklos Rozsa, Roy Webb, Richard Addinsell, Leighton Lucas, Bernard Herrmann, John Addison, Maurice Jarre, Ron Goodwin, and John Williams were composers with whom Hitchcock collaborated later, all good, but the best-known is deservedly Herrmann able to reach both Wagnerian depths in Vertigo and contemporary minimalism in Psycho.

It is a formidable bunch who created the Hitchcock sound, but Neil Brand rises to the challenge in this imaginative Blackmail score. It is very good music for this movie for someone who has never seen a Hitchcock film before, and it is also a fascinating reflection on the Hitchcockian music legacy for those who know their Hitchcock well. There are some quick coups d'œil: the famous Charles Gounod theme adapted to Alfred Hitchcock Presents when Hitchcock himself appears in the subway, harassed by the little rascal boy and some Herrmannian strings when Alice (Anny Ondra, the first true Hitchcock blonde) grabs a big kitchen knife to protect herself from the artist who has invited her to his studio and soon tries to have his way with her.

My only complaint: the Neil Brand score should also be available on the soundtrack of The Hitchcock Nine DCP's and prints of Blackmail, and it should be released on dvd.

The movie itself remains haunting and efficient. Alice has killed the artist in self-defense. Even today women cannot trust in justice in cases of sexual violence, much less then. Alice did what she had to to protect herself. In the movie-viewer's opinion she is guilty only of a minor thing: she had booked a double date both with her policeman boyfriend Frank and the artist.

But Alice is a woman with a conscience. She would want to confess, but Frank prevents it, and a blackmailer who falls to his death in British Museum becomes the culprit.

Blackmail is already an essential Hitchcock movie because of its sense of ambivalence and its unresolved sense of guilt.

The visual quality: this restoration looks great.

Risate di Gioia / The Passionate Thief (2013 restoration Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna)

Mario Monicelli: Risate di Gioia / The Passionate Thief (IT 1960).

Lemmenvaras. IT 1960. D: Mario Monicelli. Based on Racconte romani by Alberto Moravia. This print ran 106 min. A Fondazione Cineteca di Bologna print viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu with e-subtitles in English, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 14 June 2013

A Gian Luca Farinelli masterclass with consecutive interpretation into Finnish by Elina Suolahti

From the Festival Catalogue: "The Passionate Thief by Mario Monicelli (1915–2010), one of the great masters of Commedia all'italiana who visited Sodankylä in1994, is a brilliant choice for one's screening list just because it is, uncannily, the only screen encounter of Totò and Anna Magnani – the two captivating superstars of Italian cinema! One can only guess at the reasons because the two friends often worked together on the stage. Perhaps the production crowd were inclined to consider that casting two box-office magnets for the same projects would be overdoing it?"   "Gioia “Tortorella” Fabbricotti (Magnani) is an underemployed run-of-the-mill film extra, Umberto “Infortunio” Pennazzuto (Totò) an unemployed and unlucky veteran actor, and Lello (Ben Gazzara) a young and virile pickpocket. The paths of the three cross during the New Year chaos that creates an excellent setting for both crime and romance. Besides the glamorous, glittering flurry of festivities in the prosperous salons, the magnificent (we are treated to a freshly restored top quality print!) the black-and-white cinematography also reflects many scenes of nocturnal Rome. Even at the Fontana di Trevi witnesses – only some months after Fellini's more famous contribution – a passionate nighttime incident."
   "The scriptwriting department – the story is based on two stories by Alberto Moravia – also employs the best forces in the land; besides Monicelli himself, both the legendary Age & Scarpelli team as well as Suso Cecchi d'Amico, whose filmography contains an amazing number of the top titles of Italian cinema."
   "Still, Monicelli's film is a supreme celebration above all because of its two leading stars. Wearing a blonde wig, Magnani as usual uninhibitedly puts in all her soul, her charisma, and her built-in pandemonium to serve the silver screen, and Totò shines in his older years' mode as the sorrowful clown where one can, even amidst the laughs, always sense a touch of authentic despair." (Lauri Timonen)

Peter von Bagh on Gian Luca Farinelli: "If the world's film archives are a solar system with increasing influence on the significant presentation of films, then Gian Luca Farinelli, the head of the Bologna film archive, is one of its centres of gravity, perhaps even the most important one of the moment. His archive and its laboratory are an important centre for the restoration work that is crucial for the preservation of film culture. The Chaplin estate entrusted them with the new prints of the master's works, and Bologna also houses the archives of Pasolini, Scorsese, and many other masters. The archive's publishing output – both in the form of books as well as DVDs – is broad: the activity forms a whole where working within the city and the surrounding province on the one hand and internationally on the other are inseparably one. The festival Il Cinema Ritrovato, which in June and July gathers together the world's leading film experts, archivists, historians and critics to view unknown and rarely seen film treasures, began in 1988 when both founders, Farinelli and Niccola Mazzanti, were in their twenties – a prime example of how film history has often been made by the very young, and on the other hand, of how many initiatives in film culture can be as important as the best films. A recent example of Bologna's restorative work is The Passionate Thief (Risate di Gioia, 1960), a masterpiece by Mario Monicelli – a director of importance to the archive, and a Sodankylä guest." (PvB)

The Festival website on the Masterclass with Gian Luca Farinelli: "As the subject of his Friday Master Class at the Midnight Sun Film Festival, Gian Luca Farinelli had chosen Mario Monicelli’s The Passionate Thief (Risate di Gioia, 1960). Farinelli is the director of Bologna’s film archive and this is his first time at the Midnight Sun Film Festival."

"Monicelli is a pioneer of Italian comedy films. Set in Rome, The Passionate Thief revolves around three characters: movie extra Tortorella (Anna Magnani), unemployed actor Umberto (Totò) and pickpocket Lello (Ben Gazzara). The three characters keep pumping into each other in various situations and dazzling parties on New Year’s Eve."

"According to Farinelli, The Passionate Thief has retained its power to amaze the viewer. He especially praised the fine acting in the film. Monicelli was a master at working with actors, Farinelli said. There were a lot of actors whose careers were greatly influenced by Monicelli. Gazzara, for instance, was considered more of a tragedian before The Passionate Thief, but Monicelli was able to see his comedic side. "

"Monicelli also discussed Totò, whom he considers one of Italy’s greatest actors. “Totò represents something that runs deep in the tradition of Italian performing. On one hand, seeing Totò act is like watching a documentary about a farce, but on the other hand there is something very tragic and mysterious about his humour.” Totò was an extremely popular theatre actor before Monicelli introduced him to movie-goers. “After seeing The Passionate Thief, Pasolini realized Totò’s movie star potential and cast him in Hawks and Sparrows (1966).”"

"Magnani was very pleased to get an opportunity to act in a Monicelli film, but he didn’t like acting alongside Totò, who reminded him of his own period in variety theatre. Still, Farinelli thinks there are some absolutely wonderful scenes in the film especially between Totò and Magnani: “It is like watching traditional variety theatre.”"

"Magnani was a son of a socialist, and he himself was also one. His journalist father wrote openly about the fascists’ wrongdoings, which led to the father being beaten up while his small son was present. “His whole life Monicelli strived to make films that would benefit Italy, which was being torn apart by contrasting factions,” Farinelli told the audience. In his films Monicelli attempted to show how Italy has repeatedly been led to the brink of destruction by crooks and villains. “Monicelli realizes this depiction in his movies in an extremely disciplined but very enjoyable fashion.” Farinelli discussed Monicelli’s fantastic ability to express tragedy in a comedy. The tragic veins in his films make it possible to deepen the characters’ attributes and humanity. "

"Before The Passionate Thief, Farinelli showed Daniele Ciprì’s and Franco Maresco’s short film A Silvio. Ciprì and Maresco hold Monicelli in high regard and according to Farinelli the “monsters” in their films can be seen as direct descendants of Monicelli’s characters." (The Festival website)
...

Further notes, by me:

Gian Luca Farinelli's introduction was excellent. Besides the remarks above he highlighted Mario Monicelli as "one of the great directors of the golden age of Italian cinema with works such as I soliti ignoti, La grande guerra, and Amici miei. He had the talent to get together an incredible cast, he was a master in casting, even to the point of directing career-changing performances."

"For instance Vittorio Gassman was known as a dramatic actor in Shakespearean roles for Luchino Visconti et al, an actor in the grande teatro di traditione. In Monicelli's direction there was the revelation of an extraordinary comedian."

"Monicelli combined for the first time Magnani and Totò – the greatest Italian actor. Ben Gazzara, from Actors Studio, had apparently nothing in common with them. He had done some alert roles for Otto Preminger, for instance. But together they were a terrific trio."

"Magnani had distanced herself from the tradition of the variety, and she had little desire to go back, having been the muse of Rossellini in L'amore, and having made an important Hollywood career."

"With Totò we go deep into the Italian culture of performance – it is like watching a documentary on the history of farce – going back to ancient Rome, Plautus – into something profound, tragic, mystic, and eternal. He was enormously successful in variety. No director before Monicelli really grasped his resources. The true breakthrough was Totò i Carolina, Monicelli's debut film as a solo director, the most censored film in the history of Italy."

"With Magnani Monicelli needed to work. He had to detach the mental structure Magnani had acquired in Hollywood. Even the colour of her hair had to be changed. Monicelli asked Totò to restrain himself in order not to leave Magnani in his shadow. The combined result is miraculous, like a documentary on variety theatre."

"The screenplay was strong, based on two stories by Alberto Moravia. Goffredo Fofi has remarked that the majority of Italian movies were based on Moravia - openly or not. Suso Cecchi d'Amico and the duo Age & Scarpelli wrote the script. Monicelli had an innate capacity to condense the subject to a few lines of dialogue, like: 
Totò: May I invite you to a pizza?
Magnani: Got any money?"

"Monicelli had the talent to keep the rhythm going, the whole, the flow."

"Monicelli was 8 years old when the Fascists murdered the MP Giacomo Matteotti. When the newspaper edited by Monicelli's father exposed them, the Fascists destroyed its printing house and beat up the father. – After WWII the father committed suicide, and the corpse was discovered by Mario."

"Monicelli had a marvellous talent to bring tragedy inside comedy, to show profoundly a character's traits."

"He had on his desk a motto from I pensieri by Giacomo Leopardi, the greatest name in Italian poetry:"

"Terrible and awful is the power of laughter: who has the courage to laugh is the master of others. Nobody can find an inner shelter from such laughter. Who has the courage to laugh has all the power on earth". [What I was able to jot down; the original text is in Pensieri / passage 4391 / 23 Settembre 1828]

"Mario Monicelli committed suicide two years ago, and the epitaph he ordered on his grave is: 'Mario Monicelli has never visited the Maldives."

"The surprise short before the feature film is made by two Sicilians, Marisco and Cipri, who had made movies together for a long time. Cinico TV was a special break that used to be shown after the news, presenting only monstrous figures. Marisco and Cipri received a letter from Mediaset, Berlusconi's company, suggesting a short congratulation when Berlusconi had been appointed Prime Minister. The name 'A Silvio' is a variation on Giacomo Leopardi's famous poem 'A Silvia'".

Cinico TV: A Silvio. 1992. A greeting to Berlusconi in the style of Le Pétomane.

Peter von Bagh reminisced on Mario Monicelli's visit to Sodankylä in 1994.

"He seemed sad. It was raining. For the first time with a major guest everything had been ruined, I thought. Years passed. I evaded him. Four years ago Paolo Mereghetti wrote two whole spreads about him in Corriere della Sera, and there Monicelli stated that Sodankylä had been 'the best event where he had ever been in his life'. I met him for lunch one year before his death. This was further proof of the fact that great humorists are extremely melancholy."

A further remark from Gian Luca Farinelli:

"Risate di Gioia was made one year after La dolce vita. It was shot in the summer, but it was supposed to be December. Monicelli had a high regard for Fellini, and in his movie he created a humoristic riposte to Fellini in his scenes at the two fountains, including the Fontana di Trevi, already showing the influence of La dolce vita on American tourists. There is something in common – the night, Rome – yet contrary."

A great comedy about Lello the master thief (Ben Gazzara), his absent-minded partner Umberto (Totò), and Gioia (Anna Magnani), who always makes a mess of Lello's perfect plans.

All the events of the night of the New Year celebrations – a dance, a dinner, a fine party at a palazzo of Germans, a spree with an American tourist, even a visit to the church – are for Lello but opportunities for theft. Either the inept Umberto or the exuberant Gioia – or both – manage to spoil everything for him.

The most devastating humiliations take place in front of the Germans and again at the church ("stolen from the Madonna!"), and it is Gioia who gets to carry the blame and the guilt although it is the wily Lello who has used her as his scapegoat. It is Gioia who goes to jail.

There are satirical scenes from the subway train conductor's home (his lunch box being prepared), a laundry, Cinecittà (Anna Magnani as an extra in a Biblical epic with a single line of dialogue: "Miracolo! Miracolo!"), and in Umberto's home (Umberto is a professional in insurance fraud).

A wonderful and surprising comedy, which in the true tradition of commedia all'italiana is often more serious and disturbing than drama.

The print is excellent.

3X3D

FR/PT 2013. D: Peter Greenaway (Just in Time), Jean-Luc Godard (Les trois désastres / The Three Disasters), Edgar Pêra (Cinesapiens). 2K DCP from Urban Distribution in 3D viewed with Dolby 3D glasses with English subtitles at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 14 June 2013

The Festival Catalogue: "Jean-Luc Godard's (born 1930) career spans through some of the most visually beautiful shots in cinema (Jean Seberg's face that conveys every possible Faulknerian nuance of happiness and suffering, Brigitte Bardot's proudly perky and rebellious but patriotic bottom clad in Tricolor... ), but, on the other hand, also a lot of the most appalling, provoking and senseless video musch one could produce with 'My First Sony'. The thought of him stepping out of his heavy cloud of cigar smoke to coquet around with the neo-retro 3D medium that is mainly a machine gun for capitalist, commercial spectacles (of course we do remember for example the wonderful contributions by Vincent Price and Alfred Hitchcock) is both a painfully logical and a disturbingly perverted twist."
    "Naturally also involved is Peter Greenaway (born 1942), another amiable nutcase snob par excellence. He, too, has questioned the classical forms of cinema in his works as well as many of his even more theoretical comments for a long time, but, besides, he happens to be also one of the most cultured people when it comes to a more comprehensive and profound knowledge of the history of visual arts."
    "The Portuguese Edgar Pêra (born 1960) is a multi-talent who has made more than a hundred productions not only in film but also in the fields of television, dance, art galleries, the Internet, film concerts, and other media. He is a more unknown character to us who still know so little about the world of cinema, but this does not mean he is not a force to reckon with. A telling fact is that he is known in cinema circles as 'the most stubbornly individualistic Portuguese film-maker'."
    "Anything can be expected from this threesome and their new wild joint venture in three parts and three dimensions. Godard's episode The Three Disasters studies the historical memory of 3D. Greenaway's Just in Time criss-crosses in historic connections spanning over 900 years. And Pêra's Cinesapiens sums up in fast-forward the various formats of film watching from cave paintings through the introductions of sound and colour to the very latest technological developments."
    "So here is a treat with special dimensions - of which there are certainly more than three - and it is fresh out of Cannes!" (Lauri Timonen)

Three explorations into 3D.

Peter Greenaway's Just in Time is a space odyssey: a journey into the depth of architecture, surrounded by virtual reality, with a sense of sacred space, "an immaterial church". Flying transparent writing is a central element in this expensive spectacle which is also a voyage into history. I failed to get this beyond the superficial level.

Jean-Luc Godard's Les trois désastres is a 3D essay into the fabric of Les Histoire(s) du cinéma. The theme: Mémoire historique (holocaust, revolution). There is a low definition, even denatured, video look in the images themselves, and the 3D effect is used for the collage in depth: several images are superimposed on top of each other. The images and the sentences are like incantantions, and a figure like Godard, himself, appears in extreme close-up as a mad sage.

Nanook of the North - Ivan the Terrible - Nuit et brouillard - Nosferatu - Othello (Welles) - The Great Dictator - Madame de... - splatter - Tystnaden? - Tarkovsky? - It's Always Fair Weather - Il deserto rosso - Johnny Guitar - cave paintings - Barefoot Contessa - Arsenal? - The Lady of Shanghai

Mémoire historique - Passeport du réel - Reality lingers between ghosts - Les dés-astres - Lettres et néant - Les mots sont la présence, n'est pas - Reality in reality - Vol la Wittgenstein - Numérique une dictature - Tale told by dogs - Le temps mort - The vain glory of command - Happy times - Pages blanches

Edgar Pêra's Cinesapiens is a lightweight coda to the episode film, from cavemen to the train coming to the station until today.

A playful collection of approaches and experiments. Godard's multi-layered 3D superimpositions can become an interesting model for a new kind of collage.

No problem with the technical quality of the 3D presentation.

Silmäterä / The Princess of Egypt

Jan Forsström: Silmäterä (2013) with Emmi Parviainen (Marja) and Luna Leinonen Botero (Julia).

Ögonstenen.
     FI 2013. PC: Making Movies Oy. P: Kaarle Aho, Kai Nordberg.
     D+SC+ED: Jan Forsström. DP: Päivi Kettunen - DCP: James Post, Tommi Gröhn. AD: Vilja Katramo, Okku Rahikainen. Cost: Kirsi Gum. M: Lau Nau. S: Micke Nyström, Mika Niinimaa, Svante Colerus.
    C: Emmi Parviainen, Luna Leinonen Botero, Ylva Ekblad, Mazdak Nassir, Bahram Peivastegan, Miika Soini, Terhi Suorlahti.
    Loc: Siilitie 9 and 13, Helsinki.
    90 min.
    Distributor: Atlantic Film.
    2K DCP with English subtitles viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 13 June 2013

In the presence of Jan Forsström.

The Festival Catalogue: ""The centre of 25-year-old Marja's (Emmi Parviainen) life is her 7-year-old daughter, Julia (Luna Leinonen Botero). Marja works nights, so she can spend her days with Julia, playing, being silly and telling stories about The Princess of Egypt and her mother."
    "The harmony of the pair's home is disturbed when they come across Kamaran (Mazdak Nassir), an Iranian immigrant who realizes that he must be Julia's father. Kamaran and Marja have had a brief affair after which Marja didn't tell him about her pregnancy. Kamaran wants to connect with his daughter and, together with his brother and his wife, begins to pressure Marja."
    "Marja fears that Kamaran is planning to abduct Julia. To protect her daughter Marja is ready to go to extremes."" (Press material).
    "The Princess of Egypt is the debut feature film of the director, Jan Forsström, previously known for his screenwriting talent (The Visitor, Last Cowboy Standing, The Good Son). The film, inspired by true events, is a story of a mother's love and xenophobia stemming from insecurity. Fresh acting faces bring to the film a documentary-like realness that the subject calls for. Emmi Parviainen throws herself amidst issues of motherhood with strength and sensitivity. Mazdak Nassir, an award-winning film-maker who some might also recognize as the interpreter of our festival's morning discussions, is also convincing as the 'familiar stranger' who rattles the family balance." (Lauri Timonen)

Jan Forsström told in his introduction that the film was finished on Wednesday last week, and the premiere will take place in September.

In the Q&A after the film Jan Forsström answered to the question whether Silmäterä has been inspired by the recent family killings. A: Here nobody dies. Q: Why did you direct yourself this time, why could you not give this script to someone else to direct? A: It is based on details in true life cases of over ten years ago. They have been in my rear pocket. They have been brewing little by little. Q: Casting? A: Emmi Parviainen was able to project the warmth of motherhood. The seven-year-old Luna Leinonen Botero is a natural talent, and both her parents were supportive. We spent a lot of time together before the film was shot. There are a lot of friends and acquaintances. I see myself more as a screenwriter. Q: The location of Siilitie in Eastern Helsinki? A: The location was selected because of budget reasons. It is the same one as in 21 Ways to Destroy a Marriage, but you cannot recognize it. Q: Editing? A: The editor in me is more severe than the director. I cut the beginning. I take breaks to keep a distance. - We did a lot of rehearsing. The film was shot in chronological order. Emmi also played the police (seen from the back) to make Luna feel more comfortable.

Marja's work as a newspaper deliverer at night and in the early morning hours before dawn brings her into fleeting contact with many kinds of night people. Finland is one of the most or maybe the most newspaper-driven country of the world. We get to see Marja delivering Helsingin Sanomat in broadsheet; in January 2013 that newspaper shrunk, alas, into the tabloid format.

Marja is a single mother, the parent of Julia. The Finnish title of the movie, Silmäterä, is in translation The Apple of the Eye, meaning Julia. The English title, The Princess of Egypt, refers to Julia's favourite fairy-tale, one that her mother has invented for her. (But her father is Iranian).

The movie starts from Marja's viewpoint. We are alarmed when Julia speaks with Kamaran, an Iranian, who starts to realize that he is Julia's father.

Little by little we get to realize the diminished circumstances of Marja and Julia's life. It is full of love and little else. Dinner: fries and ketchup.

There is a friendly lady (Ylva Ekblad) upstairs; apparently a stewardess. She lets Marja and Julia stay in her apartment understanding their concern for Kamaran. She may be in love with Marja.

Our viewpoint starts to change when Marja buys an illegal handgun and when Marja and Julia run rampant in the elegant apartment of the stewardess.

Slowly we realize that Marja is deranged, and working night shifts does not make her condition any better. Marja is losing control of her life. She starts to resort to her gun. She brings home a canister of petrol, spreads it all over the hall and starts a vigil, believing Kamaran's people are out to get Julia.

But even Julia gets afraid of her mother, and in the finale Marja herself realizes that she needs professional help and brings Julia to the police, to safety from herself.

There seems to be a trend of portraits of crazy women in Finnish cinema.

There is a fine sense of rhythm and tension in Silmäterä. The flow is compelling, the editing is assured. The sound design is captivating.

I like the natural, lively colour design in the cinematography. I have little to complain in the digital presentation. Only in the forest footage the limits of digital are displayed.

La Cina è vicina / China Is Near

IT 1967. D: Marco Bellocchio. This print 109 min. A Cineteca Nazionale (Roma) print viewed with e-subtitles in English at Koulu / The Kitisenranta School, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 13 June 2013

In the presence of Marco Bellocchio interpreted by Elina Suolahti.

The Festival Catalogue: "Like Fists in the Pocket, also China Is Near features a chilling landscape that reflects a petty, unwell and introverted community, in which the modes of behaviour repeat themselves with a viral resilience. All rebellion is doomed to fail and there is no room for revolutionary thought."
   "The film tracks the efforts of middle-class Vittorio to succeed in the local election. Perhaps the greatest of all adversaries is his underage little brother. Camillo is a profound supporter of the Maoist ultra left wing, but still he does not manage to shake the foundations of power by violent means. Bellocchio gives the theme of a failed revolution - a kind of an impotence of the ideological side of life - a pronouncedly satirical form, which is coloured by radical shock effects, such as the idea of an ailing, underage girl being gang raped as a politically justifiable manoeuvre. During the making of the film, Mao's ideology was strongly present also in Italy as a consequence of the Chinese Cultural Revolution that began in 1966. The dual plot of the film is partly melodramatic and partly political, concerning both class divisions and party politics."
   "Clodagh J. Brook wrote a book on the director, defining the fascinating and multi-dimensional result as follows: ”If we did not know that Bellocchio was a left-wing sympathizer, this film could easily be read as a piece of anti-left propaganda - showing the left as fragmented, ineffectual, and morally hypocritical.”" (Lauri Timonen)

In his words for introduction Marco Bellocchio stated that "this film is entirely different than Fists in the Pocket. It is about politics, in modo diverso, in another way, quasi farsesca, farcically. Fists in the Pocket is a tragedy, China Is Near is a farce. From the Italian political parties it deals with the entire Left. Around 1966 there was a Socialist party, a Communist party, and a Maoist extremist party. I hope you will be able to navigate. I hope it will not be boring."

Bellocchio stayed to see the film, and commented afterwards: "It has been a long time since I have seen this movie myself. The events discussed here may be rather unknown for you. At that time there was still class struggle in Italy. There was a petit-bourgeoisie, a working-class, and an aristocracy. The situation has changed. The political parties reflected the current class struggle which hardly exists anymore. This comedy farce deals only with the Left, the four Leftist groups. It was released in 1967, shortly before the great protests of the student movements, which also led to terrorism among certain groups. The Maoist group was tiny and had rather a folkloristic character back then. First later came the period of violent terrorism."

Q: The reception? A: "It was a success with the audience. It dealt with political conflicts in a juicy fashion. Also critics lauded the movie. Outside Italy the success was more limited than had been the case with Fists in the Pocket".

Q: The name of the movie? A: "It was the name of a book, written by a journalist, and I asked for permission to use it. It was a slogan of a tiny group. The Maoist slogan does not correspond to reality - it is irrational, absurd, paradoxical - it was not a threat. And of course, in Italian prononciation, the title is a rhyme - La CINA è viCINA."

"The Miniature Schnauzer was in fashion with sophisticated families. The actress who played Elina had brought her own dog to the set, and that's how it was introduced into the movie."

"The Leftist parties had already given up on their radical, revolutionary demands, and become more focused on matters of administration."

"The entire party system has changed in Italy. There is not a trace of the traditional party system. Partito Democratico is the only traditional party, founded after the Communist Party."

"A social mission for a film was a way of thinking in the 1960s, but I think differently. For instance in Bella addormentata I was not thinking about a message about euthanasia."

Q: Did the print do justice to the film? A: "Unfortunately it was very mediocre, and did not convey the work of the great cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli."

I have no way of knowing how much of this movie is a caricature and how much it reflects reality. The central figure, Vittorio, is a Socialist professor who seems to be a stranger in his own life. The middle-class compagno openly admits in a party event that he has already been active in four parties.

Much of the action is sabotage. There is a riot in a political speech event; the professor loses his temper in a revelatory way when a rascal boy steals his notes; in the ensuing riot the professor's car is demolished. There is a sequence with a time bomb; it explodes without harming people. In the conclusion big dogs are introduced into the party conference, and a cat is installed on the professor's shoulder...

The private lives of Vittorio and his sister are a mess. Vittorio seduces his secretary Giovanna. Elena is well-known for her ways of free love, but their accountant Carlo makes her pregnant, and although there is a sequence in an abort clinic, Elena decides to keep the baby. Inspired by this, Giovanna gets pregnant, too (by Carlo), and lets Vittorio think the baby is his. Thus both Giovanna and Carlo marry themselves into the family mansion.

Camillo, the teenage brother of Vittorio and Elena, is a Maoist, but it is rather a matter of pranks and quirky ideas about "sex as politics". There is an affinity with the world of Godard's La Chinoise in this dimension of the movie.

In the character of Vittorio there are affinities with Tony (Edward Fox) in The Servant. Also here the "servants" are the more vital and focused characters.

In the funny conclusion Elena and Giovanna perform exercises for expecting women together.

Like in Fists in the Pocket, the commento musicale by Ennio Morricone introduces an interesting dimension, and also here there is a strong opera theme, a big crowd scene from one of the epic operas of Giuseppe Verdi as Vittorio and Elena visit their opera box. The room echo of the post-synchronization has a distancing effect.

The visual quality of the print: low definition, duped look, not quite sharp.

Romanssi / Romance (2013)

FI © 2013 Reppufilmi. D: Anssi Mänttäri. A Reppufilmi 2K DCP with English subtitles by Mikko Lyytikäinen viewed at Iso Teltta / The Big Top, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 12 June 2013

Presented by Anssi Mänttäri. "Vielä yöllä tietokone raksutti" - last night the computer was still rattling away with this movie. There was a technical glitch with the first file, but another one was soon on its way and quickly installed. "I imagined this would be a romantic comedy, but then we realized it is not romantic neither a comedy. The genre is Mänttäri genre."

The Festival Catalogue: "The founding father of the brainchild that is the Midnight Sun Film Festival and also the King of Finnish alternative cinema, Anssi Mänttäri, gazes into the mysteries of love in his most recent film, Romance."
   "A man meets a woman on the street and is convinced that they've had shared moments of happiness several years ago. However, the woman can't recall their common past and is forced to play a guessing game with the stranger."
   "The setting of several encounters between the couple is Bar Mendocino, which is located in downtown Helsinki. It appears nestled in the light of neon signs and snow that slowly descends. Mänttäri's blues-filled world is constructed upon subtle snapshots of some philosophical moments. It follows the path of the protagonists, but dares to digress occasionally."
   "The harmonious swing of this movie sneaks under the skin of the spectator in quite a seductive manner. The essence of love is likely to remain yet a mystery but as always, Mänttäri's approach on the subject is warm and humane." (LT)

The male protagonist has a surefire pick-up line: "we have had an affair years ago". The movie is based on flashbacks of memory exercises about various affairs over the years, but finally there is no memory match between the man and the woman. In the conclusion the female protagonist overhears the man applying the pick-up line to the next woman. Herself, she has been obsessed by a memory of a pianist in Bar Mendocino ten years ago, and as she is leaving the place in a disillusioned mood she suddenly overhears the familiar sound of the pianist ("Tuuli tuo unohduksen" = "The Wind Will Bring Oblivion"). There is a ray of hope in the unhappy ending.

I liked: - The unique Anssi Mänttäri approach. - The funny memory sketch flashbacks. - The interesting cast of characters. - The witty dialogue. "You know nothing about solitude until you have married."

Until the recent digital turn Anssi Mänttäri's movies had a good visual quality. Now it is low definition digital.

I pugni in tasca / Fists in the Pocket (in the presence of Marco Bellocchio)

Marco Bellocchio: I pugni in tasca / Fists in the Pocket (IT 1965) with Lou Castel (Alessandro) and Paola Pitagora (Giulia).

IT 1965. D: Marco Bellocchio. Print: 108 min. A Cineteca Nazionale print with e-subtitles in English viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 12 June 2013

The official opening screening of the Festival, presented by Marco Bellocchio and Marino Masé introduced by Peter von Bagh.

The Festival Catalogue: "Marco Bellocchio's Fists in the Pocket is still an amazing debut that strikes mercilessly into the core of bourgeois family values and Catholic moralism. A family living in the isolation of Northern Italian mountains is thoroughly decadent. One of the children - young, rebellious and epileptic Alessandro as played by Lou Castel - decides to clean up the mess and gradually starts eliminating the other family members, so that his big brother, who is the only sane person in the group, could have a normal life."
   "The built-in cold provinciality of the director's own childhood landscape (the Emilia-Romagna region) created the canvas for the themes of incest, suffocation, madness and death that the director paints with harsh strokes: brother Leone is feebleminded, Ale and his mentally fragile sister Giulia flirt incestuously, the whole scheme is getting out of hand…"
    "Common family dinners are the focal point of the satirical attack, and the family's cold and insensitive mother - a character that appears also in many subsequent Bellocchio films - is blind (in this case also concretely, not forgetting the power of the allegory)."
   "Despite its small budget, Fists in the Pocket received some of the best reviews of the year of its release, being a success also at the box office. Tellingly, the film's original working title was “Igiene familiar” (“Family Hygiene”). Its candid touch carries a rebellion against institutions and authorities, a trait that was strong with so many other coeval 60s filmmakers (Bertolucci, Ferreri, Godard, etc.)" (Lauri Timonen)

AA: I see for the first time Marco Bellocchio's explosive and anarchic debut film about the mad son Alessandro set to destroying his own family, starting with murdering his blind mother and then killing his little brother suffering from epilepsy (like Alessandro) and mental retardation. Meanwhile, Alessandro cultivates an incestuous affair with his mentally unbalanced sister Giulia.

This movie is like a spell, an incantation, an act of exorcism. Evil spirits run rampant. The Dostoyevsky connection would be Demons (Besy); its Swedish title is Onda andar (Evil Spirits); the Finnish title is Riivaajat (Tormenting Spirits). 

Bellocchio stages his horrible tragedy with great psychological power yet without exaggeration. In fact, the characters suffer from lethargy. The post-synchronization provides a perhaps unintentional distancing effect. Ennio Morricone's music brings a haunting special dimension, and the climax is dominated by Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata.

In the history of Italian cinema Bellocchio's film stands out as an extremely harsh attack towards conventional, pretty, and idealized views of family life. Bellocchio is a contemporary of Bertolucci and Pasolini, but there is more fury in Bellocchio's cinema. There is an affinity with the contemporary movies of Nagisa Oshima.

The print is complete and clean but with a duped and low contrast look. I hesitate to say this, but the Criterion Collection dvd looks superior.

Ajomies / The Driver / [The Trackmaster] (2013)

FI 2013. PC: Aamu. D+SC: Jarkko T. Laine, Jani-Petteri Passi. Digital intermediate: Generator Post. 2K DCP with English subtitles by Aretta Vähälä viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 12 June 2013

The Festival Catalogue: "The leisurely environment of an almost lethargic horsetrack provides a superb setting to Jarkko T. Laine and J-P Passi's Ajomies, which premieres at this year's Midnight Sun Film Festival. The filmmakers have bravely left their story - centring on a trackmaster (Matti Laine) caught between two women - clean of any superfluous modern frills. At home plans are being made for a shared future, while at the track's maintenance pit passions flare, and in no time the fumbling trackmaster finds himself at the centre of a slowly developing chaos. On top of everything he is plagued by that most Finnish of maladies: indecision."
   "Laine and Passi have cast Ajomies with newcomers and the film achieves a charmingly languid atmosphere that can without a doubt be partly contributed to Auli Mantila, who also worked on the film. The loop of the racecourse almost seems to become a visual metaphor of those circular arguments that rattle our everyday lives, and which are also shaken by many signs of the insufficiency of time as the story progresses." (Lauri Timonen)

I liked: - The documentary account of the professionalism at the horsetrack and at its maintenance garage. - The authentic detail of the milieu and the lifestyle of the protagonists. - The authors have a good ear for dialogue.

The movie is anti-dramatic due to the male protagonist who is helpless, passive, and mostly reacting to circumstances. The two women are the active ones, yet this is the man's story. Also the other male characters seem lost, and their almost fatal crash seems symbolic.

There is a disregard to visual quality in this movie which is in low definition.

Käsilaukku / The Handbag

FI 2013. PC: Elokuvayhtiö Aamu. P: Jussi Rantamäki, Auli Mantila. D: Mikko Myllylahti. SC: Auli Mantila. DP: Juice Huhtala. Digital post: Generator Post. Cost: Sanna Levo. M: Antti Tuomivaara. S: Jussi Rantala. ED: Tuula Mehtonen. C: Sinna Virtanen, Elias Keränen, Auli Mantila, Hannu-Pekka Björkman, Heikki Vilja, Jenny Dahlström, Konsta Väänänen, Patrick Mitzner, Tea Selin. 27 min. 2K DCP from Elokuvayhtiö Aamu with English subtitles by Aretta Vähälä viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 12 June 2013

The Festival Catalogue: "The new filmic short story by Mikko Myllylahti (b. 1980), known as a poet and short film maker, is about a hotel cleaner who finds a handbag. The young woman, whose own romantic aspirations happen to be shattered, finds herself clinging to a letter found inside the bag. The next phases of this leading motive, which has repercussions in many directions and many people's lives, drive the cleaner to see an older woman, the owner of the handbag. The troubles of a more mature relationship and betrayals criss-cross captivatingly in the web of coincidences..."
    "Auli Mantila, who wrote the screenplay and, once again, gives a subtly intensive performance, brings to a fairly ordinary story a dramaturgic wit, freshening up the narration and wiring up the tensions between characters with electricity and sparks."
    "Why do people write each other letters anyway? Aren't words basically just knives hidden in a piece of paper?" (Lauri Timonen)

What I liked in this movie belonging to The Finnish Short Film Story Project (2012): - The feeling of tension is skillfully developed. - The performances are fine. - The sound world is intriguing.

The key scene is the intervention of the husband (Hannu-Pekka Björkman) to the action of the young hotel maintenance woman (Sinna Virtanen) who has had the notion of intervening in the lives of the married couple by exposing the husband to the love letter she found in the wife's (Auli Mantila) handbag. "Rakkaus ei ole mitään romantiikaa. Toinen ihminen on aiheuttamansa tuskan arvoinen." ("Love has nothing to do with romanticism. Another person is worthy of the pain she's inflicting.")

There is a trend of portraits of unbalanced young women in the Finnish cinema.

The visual quality: low definition look.

Los amantes pasajeros / I'm So Excited!

Matkarakastajat / I'm So Excited! ES 2013 © 2012 El Deseo. D: Pedro Almodóvar. 90 min. Preview of a Future Film release with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Janne Kauppila, Sofia Deniz / Heidi Nyblom Kuorikoski. 2K DCP viewed at Cinema Lapinsuu, Sodankylä (Midnight Sun Film Festival), 12 June 2013

The English title is from the song "I'm So Excited" by Pointer Sisters.

The Festival Catalogue: "Screening in Sodankylä before its official Finnish premiere, Spanish maestro Pedro Almodóvar's new absurd comedy takes place on board a plane flying from Madrid towards Mexico City. Up in the air it becomes apparent that the plane is headed for trouble. Fear of death takes over the cabin, along with liquor. Soon enough both passengers and crew members alike begin to open up with irrevocable honesty about their feelings as well as their secrets…"
   "I'm So Excited, filled with Almodóvar regulars such as Cecilia Roth and Lola Dueñas, has been called the Spanish director's return to the world of his anarchistic, hilariously funny and uninhibitedly profane 1980s comedies, where all flowers had equal right to bloom brightly. Naturally, well-established stars Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas also pop by for a cameo."
   "Almodóvar has always had the charming ability to combine moments of soulful melodrama and high octane emotion with cheeky, palate-cleansing adult humor straight from the heart of alternative culture. Every now and then the film flies near the beloved airplane movies of the Zucker/Zucker/Abrahams group, but on the other hand, Almodóvar's crashlanding-bound aircraft can also be taken as a metaphor for Spain's current struggle to stay economically afloat."
   "And naturally, while gasping for their last breaths, the passengers put together one last orgy in true Almodóvarian spirit: death is best faced with the happiest facets of life, preferably with your pants around your ankles!" (Lauri Timonen)

A sex comedy with a musical production number inspired by the ZAZ Airplane! movies with parodies of gay stereotypes like in La Cage aux folles, this is something new from Pedro Almodóvar. Not one of his movies of the most profound substance but a genre piece like The Skin I Live In. We were laughing out loud in this first screening of the Midnight Sun Film Festival.

I liked: - The limited animation credit sequences. - The hyperbright colour schemes. - The funny repartee. - Visual inserts such as the close-up of the rotating turbine. - The facial studies of the sleeping passengers. - The "I'm So Excited!" production number. - The emergency landing conveyed only via sound and shots of the empty airport halls. - The sequence of the emergency evacuation of the airplane in the giant foam bubbles along a rubber landing gear.

In a farcical and parodical way this movie is also about the situation of Europe with references to the recent revelations of epic financial fraud, the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandals and the Russian (and Mexican) way of disposing with enemies. - On board the plane to Mexico there is a bank director trying to elope after the criminal circumstances of his bankruptcy have been exposed. - There is also an infamous dominatrix Madame who has started right after the Franco era and has reportedly collected a video library of the top 600 of Spain (but says later it is but a rumour that she keeps spreading). - Further there is a hitman who says his next hit would be the last; the hit should be the Madame, but he "never kills a woman". After retirement he plans facial surgery ("I'll miss my nose").

Steven Soderbergh has made a Liberace movie, Behind the Candelabra. Even more I would have looked forward to Pedro Almodóvar's view of the pianist. "Martha, Martha, you worry so much, but only one thing counts". Love. Tenderness is the Almodóvar hallmark behind the candelabra, the surface glitter, the madness, the twisted plots, the brilliant colour, the fathomless sex drive. Nothing else matters.

The digital look is used as a means of expression. Pedro Almodóvar is reinventing his bright, loud and bold colour world in digital.

The Great Escape

Gesprengte Ketten / Suuri pakoretki / Den stora flykten.
    DE/US © 1963 Mirisch-Alpha. PC: The Mirisch Company, Inc.; Alpha Corp. Original distributor: United Artists Corp.
    P+D: John Sturges. SC: James Clavell, W. R. Burnett – based on the non-fiction book (1950) by Paul Brickhill. DP: Daniel L. Fapp – colour by DeLuxe – Panavision. AD: Fernando Carrère. Set dec: Kurt Ripberger. Props: Frank Agnone. SFX: Paul Pollard. Cost: Bert Henrikson. Makeup: Emile LaVigne. M: Elmer Bernstein. S: Harold Lewis – Westrex Recording System. ED: Ferris Webster.
    Production: 4.6.–late October, 1962, Bavaria Studios, Geiselgasteig, Germany. Technical consultants: C. Wallace Floody, Paul Brickhill.
    C: Steve McQueen (Captain Virgil Hilts USAAF, "The Cooler King"), James Garner (Flight Lieutenant Bob Hendley DFC RAF, "The Scrounger"), Richard Attenborough (Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett DFC RAF, "Big X"), James Donald (Group Captain Ramsey DSO MC RAF, "The SBO [Senior British Officer]"), Charles Bronson (Flight Lieutenant Danny Velinski DSC DFC RAF, a "tunnel king"), Donald Pleasence (Flight Lieutenant Colin Blythe RAF, "The Forger"), James Coburn (Flying Officer Louis Sedgwick RAAF, "The Manufacturer"), Hannes Messemer (Oberst von Luger, "The Kommandant"), David McCallum (Lieutenant-Commander Eric Ashley-Pitt DSC RN, "Dispersal"), Gordon Jackson (Flight Lieutenant Andy 'Mac' MacDonald RAF, "Intelligence"), John Leyton (Flight Lieutenant William 'Willie' Dickes RAF, a "tunnel king"), Angus Lennie (Flying Officer Archibald 'Archie' Ives RAF, "The Mole"), Nigel Stock (Flight Lieutenant Denis Cavendish RAF, "The Surveyor"), Robert Graf (Werner, "The Ferret"), Jud Taylor (First Lieutenant Goff USAAF), Harry Riebauer (Hauptfeldwebel Strachwitz, "The Security Sergeant"), William Russell (Flight Lieutenant Sorren RAF, "Security"), Robert Freitag (Hauptmann Posen, "The Adjutant"), Ulrich Beiger (Preissen, Gestapo), George Mikell (SS-Obersturmführer Dietrich), Lawrence Montaigne (Flying Officer Haynes RCAF, "Diversions"), Robert Desmond (Flying Officer 'Griff' Griffith RAF, "The Tailor"), Til Kiwe (Frick, "The Ferret"), Heinz Weiss (Kramer, "The Ferret"), Tom Adams (Flight Lieutenant 'Dai' Nimmo RAF, "Diversions"), Karl-Otto Alberty (SS-Untersturmführer Steinach).
    Helsinki premiere: 30.8.1963 Bio Rex, released by: UA United Artists Pictures Inc. – re-release: 21.3.1975 Adams – telecasts: 23.12.1994 MTV3, 28.12.2010 Yle TV2 – vhs: 1983 Scanvideo, Musiikki Fazer – PCA 20399 – VET 66300 – K16 – 4780 m / 175 min.
    A vintage KAVA print deposited by UIP (MGM-UA) with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Bror Labart / Stina Labart viewed at Cinema Orion, Helsinki (50 Years Ago), 9 June 2013

I saw this most popular of the WWII prison camp movies for the first time. It belongs to a distinguished genre. Jean Renoir, himself an officer of the French Air Force and a POW veteran, directed the best of them, La Grande Illusion, about WWI.

Noteworthy aspects in The Great Escape include:

1. The focus on professionalism. These prisoners remain soldiers also in prison, and their mission is to cause maximum trouble to the Germans.

2. The absence of hate. The Germans and the Allied are enemies, but it's all strictly professional, and there is no ad hominem aspect in the relationship.

3. It is not a matter of mutual respect, though. The Allied do not respect the Germans who let Hitler and the Gestapo reign the way they do.

4. Oberst von Luger (Hannes Messemer) is a victim, too. He knows how it all will end, and he would like to have the war play itself out without further trouble. The Allied prisoners decide otherwise. Almost all the fugitives are finally executed by the Gestapo, as is apparently Oberst von Luger.

5. The Great Escape is a fantastic account of a big, elaborate, and professional organization. It is a secret organization, and in that sense The Great Escape resembles big caper movies. Every little link is vital in the huge chain. Any mistake can become fatal. The pressure can become too much to bear. Weaknesses need to be acknowledged. Panic, anxiety, claustrophobia, and weakening eyesight are among the problems that have to be dealt with. Craziness has to be acknowledged, too: on the Fourth of July everybody gets drunk with moonshine liquour. The Great Escape is a study in the organization of labour and in leadership seen from an exceptional angle.

6. There is a documentary passion in the detail.

7. The cast is excellent. Steve McQueen may be the star, but Richard Attenborough's understated performance as the project leader of the prison break is the most memorable.

8. There are no women in main roles or supporting roles. There is no romantic interest.

9. The rhythm and the mise-en-scène also express the concept of professionalism (first think, then act). This is an action film where the action is not expressed via exaggerated speed or editing.

10. There is an American bias. While the movie is largely based on facts, in reality none of the fugitives were American. Of the actors Donald Pleasence was an actual RAF and POW veteran.

11. I was struck by the focus on intelligence in this legendary spectacle.

The print viewed has been in heavy use with "rain" pouring in the heads and the tails of the reels. The colour is intact, and the print gives an ok cinema experience of the epic.