HOME CINEMAMay 2020 | Sight&Sound | 85the way the film objectifies him – shows how
lost she is. Her suppressed fury at her situation
eventually explodes when the horribly inquisitive
Lucy, one of a gaggle of children who she and Bob
are babysitting for radical chic friends, causes an
accident by running into traffic. During the first
weekend of this Sunday-to-Sunday narrative,
the Hodson children smoke dope and act like
a torturous chorus of imps – a not-inaccurate
lampooning of British bohemian child-rearing.
This deeply English film nails some typical
aspects of 70s London: the sooty residue of
the industrial revolution still clinging to old
buildings, the sardonic attitudes portrayed by
Gilliatt’s dialogue. But like all Schlesinger’s
films, its look is constructed around the
actors’ movements during rehearsals (as a
revealing extras interview with quietly spiky
cinematographer Billy Williams confirms).
Letting the actors determine where the camera
goes is usually heresy in my book, but it
works here, especially when it brings objects
into play, particularly the finger-dial desktop
telephones wielded so expressively by Finch.
Pauline Kael – with whom Gilliatt shared
film reviewing duties at the New Yorker –
described SBS as a “novel written on film”, and
it’s wonderful how so much novelistic texture is
crammed into such an episodic telling. It moves
quickly, too, using the telephone shots adroitly
to link events. Daniel and Alex know about each
other but have never met. They also both use the
same telephone messaging service, personified by
Bessie Love’s ever-alert switchboard operator, who
knows more than she ought about both of them,
communication breakdown being nothing new.
There’s one plot thread, however, that doesn’t
convince. When Alex goes to bed with one of
her sad management consultancy clients, is it a
contrivance by her to see if Bob can feel jealousy,
or a gesture of loneliness that achieves the same
effect by accident? It feels false either way.
The images on the BFI’s new Blu-ray are
pristine and the colours have the muted warmth
Williams says they were going for. There’s a
lot of pleasure to be had from small character
performances: Peggy Ashcroft as Alex’s mother,
Maurice Denham as her father, June Brown as
one of Daniel’s patients, and Vivian Pickles and
Frank Windsor as the Hodsons. Murray Head, in
a frank interview among the disc’s extras, talks
about the original, abandoned two-week shoot,
in which Daniel was played by Ian Bannen, who
was not comfortable in the role and with the
kissing scene in particular. Head also suggests
that Bob’s tendency to flee from conflict was a
trait of his own that Schlesinger leaned on.
So what does one end up feeling? Anything
at all? At the end, Finch gives a speech to camera
expressing a sentiment that chimes with the
unwanted advice given to Alex by her mother:
that there is no ‘whole thing’ that one strives
for – something Alex refuses to concede. The
nature of love and aloneness, how we navigate
between these poles, are the unsentimental
mysteries here. Schlesinger and his actors make
us feel their effect with a kind of melancholy,
London-drab version of quiet joy.
New releases
ANTONIO GAUDI
Teshigahara Hiroshi; Japan 1984; Criterion Collection;
Region B Blu-ray; 72 minutes; 1.33:1. Extras: 2008
interview with architect Arata; 1959 footage from
Teshigahara’s first trip to Spain; Robert Hughes BBC
documentary God’s Architect: Antoni Gaudí (2003); Ken
Russell 1961 BBC programme on Gaudí; Teshigahara
1963 short Sculptures by Sofu – Vita; trailer; booklet.
Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton
Antoni Gaudí, the Catalan architect whose fervid
imagination shaped Barcelona as we know it, is
a curio to some, a figure admired by many, but in
Japan a kind of minor deity. The art critic Robert
Hughes jokes about this fact in the hour-long
God’s Architect: Antoni Gaudí, an episode of his 2003
BBC series Visions of Space, in which is discussed
Gaudí’s religiosity, his passion for vernacular
styles both local and exotic, and his employment
of forms occurring in nature. But everything
explained there is simply, elegantly shown
and intuited in Teshigahara’s Antonio Gaudí,
the Criterion release of which comes packaged
with Visions of Space. Teshigahara’s film features
practically no commentary, save for a few words
from the Catalan architect Isidoro Puig Boada,
but with composition, camera movement and
sound it conveys the essential paradox of Gaudí, a
figure whose vision was both extraterrestrial and
rooted in a specific sense of place. Teshigahara’s
camera explores all Gaudí ’s major works: craning
before the spires of the Sagrada Familia (filmed
better only by Antonioni in 1975’s The Passenger),
gliding along the undulating benches in the
Park Güell decorated with collaborator Josep
Maria Jujol’s trencadís broken ceramics, staring
back at the sightless eyes of the sentinel-like
ventilation towers atop the Casa Milà. Unlike
Heinz Emigholz, in his equally fine but far more
austere architectural studies, Teshigahara does
not eschew camera movement, surrendering to
Gaudí ’s sensuality with tender caresses. The old
saw goes: “Writing about music is like dancing
about architecture” – but no one ever said
exactly what the problem was with doing that.
Disc: Excellent contextualising extras,
including Isozaki explaining the particular
appreciation of the Japanese for Gaudí –and
relating his work to Japanese Jomon pottery.BEAT THE DEVIL
John Huston; US 1953; BFI; Region B Blu-ray and Region
2 DVD dual format; PG; 89 minutes; 1.33:1. Extras: audio
commentaries; 2010 interview with Alexander Cockburn
on Beat the Devil; 1945 ad for Maypole Tea; 1956 public
information film on UK nuclear power; stills gallery; booklet.
Reviewed by Kate Stables
“Only the phonies like it” was Humphrey
Bogart’s disgruntled verdict on John Huston’s
sly, shambolic comedy thriller, which perplexed
audiences expecting an easily appealing
adventure along the lines of The African Queen
(1951). More of a misadventure, Truman Capote’s
cynical adaptation of Claud Cockburn’s novel
finds arch and tonally eccentric fun in the greedy
masquerades of disparate schemers temporarily
stranded on the Amalfi coast. Abandoning the
narration-capped caution of the studio’s cut,
this crisp 4K restoration puts a curious new
slant on a cult favourite by reinstating the film’s
airily charming opening, which shows off
Jennifer Jones’s chirpily mythomanic wife.
Despite parallels with The Maltese Falcon
(Huston conveniently claimed it satirised it),
the film is a playful pavement-cafe purgatory,
long on hoodwinking rather than heroics.
Bogart’s laconic bankrupt puts deadpan spin
on Capote’s zingers (“It’s my expectations that
hold me together”). But it’s the louche charm
and visual incongruity of the shady, squabbling
quartet of Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Marco
Tulli and Ivor Barnard that grabs your eye.
Cinematographer Oswald Morris, whose
Italian neorealist-style camerawork is buffed back
to its best, suggests in his audio commentary
that neither Gina Lollobrigida (who spoke little
English) nor Jennifer Jones (bemused by Capote
and Huston’s on-the-spot scripting) realised
that the film was comic. Jones’s perky onscreen
flirtation with Bogart, winking with mischief,
suggests that she, at least, was in on the joke.
Disc: A ravishing restoration, whose detail
and clarity highlight Bogart’s hairpiece
along with the stunning Ravello scenery.
Two first-class commentaries highlight
the film’s famously chaotic shoot.BEYOND THERAPY
Robert Altman; US 1987; Scorpion Releasing; Region A
Blu-ray; 93 minutes; 1.78:1. Extras: theatrical trailer.
Reviewed by Nick Pinkerton
The span between the 1980 ‘catastrophe’ of
HealtH and Popeye and the 1992 ‘comeback’ of
The Player is often regarded as Robert Altman’s
‘wilderness years.’ In point of fact, the former
are more interesting films than the latter,
but in narrativising careers we leave little
room for distinguishing between financial
setbacks and creative accomplishments. And
the noteworthy thing about these wilderness
years is not that they were a negligible
sidelining, but that they produced some
Incoming Bogie: Beat the Devil (1953) work that was really, really wild.