Frame by Frame

A s we’re about to see- from the moment I hit play on The Innocents I knew it would creep up into my heart. Truthfully I’ve failed to really hunt down director Jack Clayton’s other work which is criminal considering this is the finest directed ghost story ever told- and I’d put that above ‘The Shining’ too. T here’s a subtle psyology that elevates Clayton’s tale beyond so many other similar films- but it’s his daring, innovative and fiendishly intoxicating creative risks that take it from top-tier spook to one of the finest films in what might be the cinema’s greatest decade (so far)...

W hen I first saw it, High & Low is one of the few films in my life that has genuinely knocked the life out of me. Back at the tail-end of High School I’d done some work experience at the BFI Southbank and, in all honesty, used and abused their staff discounts to pick up as many must-sees as possible. I n spite of my blossoming love for Kurosawa at the time, High & Low must have sat on my shelf unopened for almost two years before it finally clicked one hazy afternoon. Back then nobody I knew had seen it and the director’s fans oft dismissed it in favour of his more famous works. As of today, I think this sleeping giant is his masterpiece...

I  first saw Masahiro Shinoda’s ‘Pale Flower’ while I was writing for a website called The Cinemaholic, after I’d finally been given carte-blanche to choose whatever topic I wanted and boldly (and incredibly foolishly) decided to tackle the ‘100 Greatest Japanese Films of All Time’. T here’s not a country on this planet as richly blessed in the cinematic arts as Japan. Not even France, or America. In the ashes of the Second World War a nation rocked to the core (perhaps by its own actions as much as anyone else’s) spiralled into a cinematic renaissance that is, frankly, still yet to cease. A nd from the murky depths of early 60s malaise, entrenched in the blossoming wonder of their own New Wave Movement, a genre picture maker named Masahiro Shinoda with more of an eye than most and more to him that anyone’s ever properly given credit for pre-dated the American crime film explosion of the 1970s in one film alone. If they only knew.

I  first saw Hiroshi Teshigahara’s ‘Woman in the Dunes’ early into my first year of college, buried somewhere amidst the treasure trove of world cinema classics YouTube were (knowingly or not) hawking at that time. It immediately struck me as something special but similar to Harakiri I actually found finishing the picture a real challenge. It’s a Gordian knot of Sisyphean black magic I found exhausting on the first few attempts. F lash forward to now and there’s sometimes a saying between artists, painfully amateur or immortally profound, that they wish they’d made someone else’s work. ‘Woman in the Dunes’ is my movie.  

I  first saw Letter Never Sent as I’m sure many people have: As the afterthought sandwiched between director Mikhail Kalatozov’s infinitely more lauded ‘The Cranes are Flying’ and ‘I Am Cuba’. T he former is the only Soviet film to have ever won the Palme d’Or- and one of mother Russia’s most cherished pieces of cinema. The latter is loved the world over for its revelatory camerawork and incensed celebration (and criticism) of life in the buzzing heart of the New World. Then there’s Letter Never Sent, a comparably miniscule tale of four researchers sent out into the Siberian tundra to hunt for diamond deposits. And frankly: Films this fucking good sometimes they feel like they were custom-built to be forgotten…

S eeing La Jetée for the first time is one of a select few film-watching experiences I’ll never forget. I blind bought a DVD knowing the plot, the photomontage schtick- young and green enough to let my expectations drive (and usually ruin) a lot of movies. F rankly I was a hell of a lot more excited to flick over to the other side of the DVD- which had Marker’s sublime ‘Sans Soleil’ just waiting to go- so I did what I  never  do and emerged from the inky recesses of a teenage room that seriously needed airing to watch it out in the open on the family TV. And for almost thirty minutes it felt like I’d left my fucking body. T here are no words for how much this film ever so quietly means to me, as you’ll see below, but I promise to try…

Y ellow Sky is a film I discovered, fell in love with, and was then quickly heartbroken by when I found out how few had also experienced its black-hearted treasures. D irector William A Wellman has slipped into the sand of time, with only the C-list ‘Classic’ status of his magnum opus, ‘The Ox-Bow Incident’, curling a finger from the dark- and anyone familiar with the bitterly iconoclastic gems lurking in the bleak corners of his oeuvre knows that simply will not do…

F rom the first moment I saw Johnny Guitar, in the early hours of some abandoned night out in my second year of university, it  had  me. Its one-liner fusillade of a screenplay that’s cleverer than it seems- its gloriously lengthy opening sequence totally comfortable in its own sense of time- and its larger-than-life characters all feeling smaller than we could possibly know. J ohnny Guitar was rejected by its native audience but adored across the pond in Europe, particularly by the French film critics who would go on to be the vanguard of the Nouvelle Vague- and while the film’s subtle cocktail of film poetry with a pulp punch was clearly influential, one of the things the New Wave-ers missed was its cracked, unshakable and utterly sincere heart…

I  first saw Wim Wenders’ wonderful film in my first semester of university, on the hunt through the Sight & Sound and They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?’s best-of lists. In spite of its revolutionary style and irresistible sincerity, it took me watching it with my best friends a few years later to really get on the level with its magical flow. N ow- I’m almost certain this will bloom into one of my favourite films someday.

I  saw Persona early into my formative film years, likely the first December I was in college when I (foolishly) sat and watched about six Bergman films in one night. A little like 2001 back then my feelings towards it were very academic: I understood there was a lot to unpack, and relished the details- but there was no real emotional connection. W here Kubrick’s film has only faded in my estimation into superficial cerebral guff, Persona plugs the depths of the human experience in a way few pieces of art could ever hope to match. Born of writer/director Ingmar Bergman’s own desperate depression, as well as isolation, it’s a work all too prescient for this state of lockdown…

M y history with ‘TCM’ stretches back to the end of high school, when I was a pussycat in more ways that one. Scared stiff of a smooth breeze, I wanted to gut-up and face my horror demons. So one night after school I lined up Halloween, The Exorcist and, finally, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. A ll of which are some of the finest-directed films in history, and since I’ve kept it so low-brow on this inaugural day of these kind of posts- why don’t we sit down and tackle one of the straight-up greatest films ever made?

I  first saw Harakiri in the early hours of the morning on YouTube, during my first term of college. A little like another contemporary Japanese classic, ‘Woman in the Dunes’, I fell under the spell of its meticulous direction but kept getting dragged out by the glacial grind of its pace. I t’s taken a few years to fall head over heels for this justly adored marvel- and I hope anyone seeing it for the first time can take some confidence in knowing the wait is worth it.

M y ‘journey’ with Ugetsu started when I was 16, just after the start of college. After a steady diet of classic British & American film since my parents sparked my love for cinema a few years earlier I’d dove headfirst into movies like ‘Bicycle Thieves’ and ‘The Seventh Seal’ thanks to their easy access on YouTube. A nd it was Ugetsu that brought that giddy wave of magic crashing down. Back when I was still young enough to justify using the word ‘overrated’ it fronted the bill second to note- I never got it. And once every other year I’d go back to it and continue to wonder why. R ecently I saw it again, and perhaps out of the context of my own fresh pain it all clicked. I sprung into a love affair with its director, Kenji Mizoguchi, and hunted down all of his surviving films. He was a prolific artist, remains one of film’s greatest feminists and will always be the undisputed master of pain- and not in a Cenobite sense. See what I mean here…

  T his post, and what I hope will be a long line to follow it, are directly inspired by (and lovingly stolen from) Alex Withrow of ‘And So It Begins’, which I’ve been reading for years and has been absolutely formative for my love of film.  Here   is a link of his own series of posts, which detail the tiny little loves in every great film perfectly. O n my own front, Hiroshima mon amour is a film I’ve had a little trouble tracing. I think I first saw it in 2017, my first year at university, as I was working through Sight & Sound’s Top 250 Films. It immediately struck me, and has stayed like a splinter in my heart ever since. Y ears later, I can’t think of another film which inspires my own process more. I hope this helps explain why… H ow sparing Resnais is with the opening credits. The man was a vibrant editor, as well as director, but here he chooses to show us just one image throughout. R esnais directed one of the first, best documentaries about the holocaust in ...