Tag Archive: BFI


Cruising at the BFI – the ego has landed

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May 16, 2025
Cruise risking life and limb for the UK film industry

An adoring audience, a fawning interviewer (Edith Bowman) and a prestigious award. Welcome to Cruise control in which the British Film Institute bowed to the Gods of populism and commercial cinema by awarding the BFI Fellowship to Tom Cruise “for his contribution to the UK film industry.”

You might well wonder how such a prize is justified for an actor who has never made a film with a British director (unless you count Stanley Kubrick as an honorary Brit).

The prize is rationalised by virtue of the employment opportunities Cruise has provided to special effects specialists for his ongoing Mission Impossible enterprise. A bit of a shoe-in I’d say although it serves the purpose of gaining positive publicity while giving TC a platform to tell the world what a genius he is.

Like he needs this!

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Best movies of 2024 you can’t even watch

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December 10, 2024
All We Imagine As Light – Number One

The cover of the December issue of Sight & Sound – the publishing arm of the British Film Institute (BFI)- proudly announces a listing of the 50 best films of 2024 and an accompanying e-mail to subscribers (of whom I am one) asks conversationally “How many have you seen?”

This question is, as it turns out, a disengenious one. Unless you have attended all the major film festivals of the year or live in the USA with ready access to an arts cinema there is no hope in hell that even the most avid movie buff will have watched all fifty.

In this way, critics maintain their fragile status as arbitors of good taste in all things cinematic.

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BUSTER KEATON’S CLASSIC FLOP

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January 20, 2013

THE GENERAL co-directed by Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman (USA, 1926).

Buster Keaton’s movie is now hailed as a classic. It was voted by BFI/Sight & Sound magazine as one of the best 50 movies ever made and topped a list of the Top 100 Silent Era Films.

Sadly , and ironically, it can also be likened to Jacque Tati’s equally ambitious Play Time in that audiences at the time were mostly left bemused and unimpressed.

The fact that both these movies were commercial flops meant that the subsequent careers of both stars took a serious nosedive.

Being ahead of your time is no joke.

The General features daring stunts and elaborately constructed set pieces, notably the crashing of The Texas train off a burning bridge. Instead of using a model in the latter scene, a real train was used for what proved to be the most expensive scene in the silent movie era.

As a 21st century viewer, I can marvel at the film while understanding why it alienated his fans when it was first released. Audiences at that time were used to seeing the stone-faced comic as a loveable failure and probably would have prefered to see him in more of a slapstick role. As Johnny Gray in The General he cuts quite a heroic figure. Only when he switches role from engineer to soldier does he become more of an accident-prone buffoon with more predictable sight gags.

The General includes the improbable plot device of Johnny’s sweetheart Annabelle Lee being taken hostage by Union rebels and held prisoner in a well-appointed bedroom rather than being beaten or sexually abused. Her rescue and the chase that ensues features choreography that is all the more remarkable when you consider that Buster Keaton refused to use stuntmen.

Unfortunately risking life and limb wasn’t enough rescue the film financially but Buster Keaton’s unwillingness to compromise guaranteed his place in movie history.

The movie is now in the public domain so you can watch it for free online, this You Tube version features an elegant score by Carl Davis:

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ENGLISH COUPLE FOUND DEAD IN NAPLES

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December 27, 2012

VIAGGIO IN ITALIA directed by Roberto Rossellini (Italy, 1954)

George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman are Mr & Mrs Joyce who have embarked on a less than idyllic holiday in Naples. In this journey to Italy, Neapolitan love songs fill the air but fail to establish a romantic mood and end up being as annoying as the insects.

Mr Joyce describes the vacation as a business trip although he seems more interested in charming the local women than working.

This well-heeled couple are plainly unused to being alone together and spend most of this ‘quality time’ bickering and pointing out each other’s defects; he is selfish, she is sentimental etc, etc, etc.

While he’s off with his own cronies, she’s left to entertain herself. He’s like a suave ladies’ man who has either lost his skills as a womanizer or can’t be bothered to make the effort anymore. He picks up a local prostitute in his Rolls Royce but can’t bring himself to go through with the transaction. Continue reading →

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UGETSU – THE WORLD IS A TEMPORARY ABODE

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December 9, 2012

UGETSU MONOGATARI directed by Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan, 1953)

This is not so much a ghost story as a story with ghosts and a far cry from mainstream horror flicks such as Paranormal Activity.

The depth and lyricism of classic Japanese movies like this make most contemporary films look shallow and superficial. It is justifiably included in the BFI/Sight & Sound list of the top 50 greatest ever films.

Mizoguchi began making films in the silent era, then with a burst of creativity in the last decade of his life, he made six celebrated films before his death in 1956 aged 58.

This masterpiece works on so many different levels that to focus on just one risks reducing the overall impact.

The plot centres on two couples whose simple lives are disrupted by civil war. It is based on two short novels by Akinari Ueda (from his collection Tales of Moonlight and Rain) and a story titled Décoré by Guy de Maupassant. Continue reading →

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