Film Reviews by ML

Vanessa Redgrave (Julia) is just wonderful in this story, outshining Jane Fonda (Lilian), just as the script demands. However as a European I found the framing story didn't work. The first 10 minutes are spent at the beach house of Lilian and her much older partner Dashiell Hammett (played by Jason Roberts) and there is nothing to tell us if the year is 1930, 1960 or 1990. For me the strong atmosphere of this frame detracted from what followed and I found it a relief when the action moved to Europe, but I suspect that US viewers will not have the same objection. Two and a half stars.

This character study is not a bad film - I'm glad to have seen it - but it's no "Nights of Cabiria" and definitely not a lost masterpiece. If you like Neo-realist films, first watch Vittorio De Seca's "The Bicycle Thieves" (1948) and Visconti's astonishing "La Terra Trema" (1948) and "Rocco and His Brothers" (1960).

Perhaps like me you admire the Neo-realist cinema of post war Italy, which depicts the harsh realities of life for the poor. Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thieves" is a lovely film, but one might find it a bit sentimental once one has seen Visconti's "La Terra Trema" (both films are from 1948). But fourteen years earlier, there was this movie, made and set in Shanghai of 1934. A radiant Ruan Ling-yu takes the title role: by day, a devoted single mother, by night, a prostitute - euphemistically referred to in China at the time as shennü, or Goddess.

The first half is a really hard watch, as The Goddess falls into the clutches of a small time thug who becomes her pimp, gambling away her earnings. Things lighten in the second half when she decides to send her son to school where there is a kindly headteacher, but only temporarily, and there's no happy ending.

This is a great film, and it's easy to see why some people called Ruan Ling-yu "the Garbo of the East".

P.S. Despite the year, the film is silent as China was slow to switch to talking pictures because of the multiplicity of languages in China.

Vittorio De Sica was a leading figure in the "neorealist" school of Italian film-making with works such as 1948's "Bicycle Thieves" (Ladri di biciclette), a heart-breaking tale of how an honest man is finally driven to an act of petty crime by the grinding poverty of post war Italy. Here he produces another heart-rending work, this time the tale of a mother and daughter at the end of the Second World War, struggling to survive as law-and-order break down. This is a far cry from the light fare with which we normally associate Loren. She is a revelation, playing against type in a role she had to fight for (she was originally cast as the daughter). Her performance won her the Oscar for best Actress - the first person to win an Oscar for a film made in a foreign-language. What a pity she wasn't given such material in Hollywood or in England; she should be remembered for this, not for singing "Goodness Gracious Me" with Peter Sellers to promote the film "The Millionairess", which was made in the same year (1960) as "Two Women". The two films represent the two poles of her career and illustrate her range as an actress.

This touching and affectionate documentary is not an analysis of Callas's oeuvre or character but an attempt by director Tom Volf to allow her to tell her own story. He achieves this through plenty of archive footage, interviews, and private letters, carefully juxtaposed with aria. As she says near the end (1'47'00"): "I have written my memoirs: they are in the music I interpret, the only language I really know."

Three arias are key to the narrative: 'Vissi d'arte' ("I lived for art, I lived for love, I never did any harm to a living soul... Why, why, Lord, why do you repay me so?), 'Mi bambino caro' (My dear child), her acknowledgement of the affection of her public, who inspired her to always give her very best; and finally 'Addio del Passato' - 'Farewell, happy dreams of the past', the last cry of a woman doubly heart-broken by Aristotle Onasis: first when he throws her over for Jacqueline Onassis, and then again, once they had re-established a friendship, by his death. Six months later she died alone in her Paris apartment from a heart attack. She was 53.

If you love Callas, you'll love this: I watched it through twice.

This is a slow, unusual and uncomfortable film, but give it half an hour and it starts to get under your skin. Set in Poland in 1946, both the country and the people have been ravaged by war and the dismal betrayal of the Communist occupation, but love still finds a way to grow - like a flower between two paving stones. Norman (Scott Wilson) and Emilia (Maja Komorowska) are the atypical lovers, long past their youth, but for me Ewa Dalkowska stole the show as Emilia's mother, bed-ridden, but with a huge soul, prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to secure her daughter's future. Somehow desolate and hopeful at the same time.

The film is masterfully (but not beautifully) shot by Slavomir Idziak. His muted palette of blues and browns is somehow even less colourful than black and white, brilliantly evoking the colourless nature of those times. Kubrick's masterpiece "Barry Lyndon" (a film I treasure) feels sentimental in comparison.

Film reviewer Roger Ebert has a typically insightful review on his website: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-a-year-of-the-quiet-sun-1984

Reasonably well done, but fails to really move one. One reviewer called it "mid-brow" and I think that sums it up quite well. A missed opportunity.

Media reviews of "Tehran: City of Love" are rather diffident. The reviewers like the film, but complain that it is too downbeat, too hard on its characters. In other words, whilst praising the film, they feel it would be better if it were either more French or more Hollywood.

I think they are missing the point: love, says Jaberansari, can be difficult in Tehran. This film may not be at the same level as fellow Iranian Abbas Kiarostami's "10", but it is a very good film, with great characters and strong performances. I have found that it lives in the memory.

I watched this film because movie critic Roger Ebert cited it as an influence on Paul Schrader's excellent 2017 feature "First Reformed", even selecting it as one of his 'Great Movies'. It's worth watching just to see how much Schrader has borrowed from Bresson, and how wisely. In both films, the protagonist is a struggling and isolated priest in a small dead-end parish who decides to keep a journal. Bresson's film opens slowly, but sit patiently through the first half hour and it starts to draw you in. Bresson's priest is neither a hero nor an anti-hero. He is simply a man, unsuited to parish work. Despite realising this, he never gives up hope, but the community closes ranks against him. Trying to fulfil his task becomes his Road to Calvary. This film lingers in the memory.