Tag: German expressionism

Nosferatu
(2024)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 30 December 2024
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(2024)
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Director – Robert Eggers – 2024 – US – Cert. 15 – 132m

*****

Unaware a woman has unwittingly summoned Count Orloc, her husband is sent to the latter’s castle in Transylvania – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, January 1st 2025

The German expressionist silent film Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922) has been described as setting the cinematic template for the horror film. Broadly speaking, it’s an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, with names changed for the purposes either of connecting to the German audience or avoiding copyright issues. While there have been numerous Dracula movie adaptations and spin-offs over the years, remakes of the 1922 film are comparatively few and far between; prior to the current film, Werner Herzog notably made Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).

Eggers is a great admirer of the 1922 film, and originally planned to remake it after The Witch (2015). It’s not hard to see why. His films have about them a terrible sense of dread, of dire events about to occur. Like F.W. Murnau, he is a great visual stylist (although the silent film industry of the 1920s was very different to the far more sophisticated sector of today). The film has had time to marinate in his head for the best part of a decade, which has probably done the project no harm at all.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

The Small Back Room

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 28 May 2024
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Directors – Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger – 1949 – UK – Cert. PG – 106m

*****

In London during World War Two, a back room boffin and bomb disposal man struggles with alcoholism – 4K restoration played at BFI Southbank on Tuesday, May 28th prior to release on Blu-ray, DVD and Digital on Monday, June 3rd

This black and white, post-war era drama isn’t the first film that comes to mind when people think about Powell and Pressburger – it was made immediately after what today are regarded as three of their best colour features – A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947) and their arguable masterpiece The Red Shoes (1948). And that was preceded by one of their finest black and white works, “i know where i’m going!” (1945).

In many ways, The Small Back Room couldn’t be more different. There’s a marvellous sense of whimsy about those films, even if the later ones are intense and savage in places. Like Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes – and, for that matter, Powell’s late solo masterpiece Peeping Tom (1960), an intensity lies at the heart of The Small Back Room.

Gone are the light, airy spaces of the earlier films, their sense of the outdoors expanse (and, in The Red Shoes, the expanded landscapes of the eponymous ballet sequence within the film).… Read the rest

Tags across the hallway, advertising, alcohol, alcoholism, Allies, ATS, barman, black and white, bomb, bomb disposal, booze, boss, carriages, Chesil Beach, Christopher Challis, Cinema Unbound: The Creative Worlds Of Powell + Pressburger, cinematographer, civil servant, claustrophobia, clock, colleagues, conference rooms, corporal, Cyril Cusack, dance, dancehall, dancehalls, David Farrar technical, department, drama, Emeric Pressburger, explosion, faces, false leg, field radio independent producers, flat, flats, German, German expressionism, girlfriend, government, hands, head of department, indulge, interiors, Jack Hawkins, jazz band, Kathleen Byron, lab, leisure time, local, London, London Underground, low, Michael Gough, Michael Powell, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Milton Rosmer, minister, Nigel Balchin, novel, office politics, offices, pain, partner, pebble, post-war, Powell and Pressburger, pub, pubs, relationship, Renée Ascherson, research, research lab, restaurant, Salisbury Plain, scientist, secretary, self-worth, Sid James, stoic, Ted Heath’s Kenny Baker Swing Group, temptation, test, thermos flask, ticking, tools, tube, UK, wartime, welfare, whisky, Whitehall, window, working life, workmen drilling, World War 2, World War II, World War Two, wrenches, WW2

Animation Dance Features Live Action Movies Music

Coppelia

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 22 June 2021
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Directors – Jeff Tudor, Steven de Beul, Ben Tesseur – 2021 – Netherlands, Germany, Belgium – Cert. U – 82m

****

People in an idyllic town must thwart the nefarious plans of a mad scientist in this extraordinary amalgam of dance, live action performers and animation – out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, April 1st

This isn’t the first movie to combine live action with animation nor will it be the last and while it has numerous echoes of movies intentional or otherwise, it’s very much its own vision. First and foremost a dance piece but far from mere ‘filmed dance’, it will appeal as much to admirers of the twin arts of cinema and animation as to devotees of dance. Being entirely devoid of verbal language, it’ll attract lovers of silent cinema too. (One can imagine the film shown mute with a live orchestra playing the score.)

The lack of verbal language means that the characters are never named (just like in a ballet where you’d refer to a cast list in an accompanying programme) although tags for a number of them are obvious – several shop owners include a bicycle repair man (Daniel Camargo), a florist, a hairdresser (Jan Kooijman) and a baker of bread and cakes (Irek Mukhamedov) while a dance studio hosts a ballet teacher (Igoné de Jongh) and her child student troupe.… Read the rest