The most famous face in musical history, and perhaps the instigator of modern culture as we know it; he truly was the King. But for a documentary focused on such an icon, The King touches very little on Elvis Presley the man.
Fifty years after the 1968 Soviet invasion that so brutally interrupted it, the Czech New Wave really is a gift that keeps on giving. It still astounds that such a sheer variety of cinema was created in so short a time – really just six or seven years, not even a decade – by such a range of talent. It’s a rich vein of film history, one that has been revealed in recent years in exemplary releases from distributor Second Run; if it left you with any concern, it was when this remarkable source might begin to dry up.
Not for a long time, if their latest is anything to go by, though it’s no less astonishing that Miloš Forman’s debut feature Black Peter (Cerný Petr) is being released on DVD in the UK only now. Forman died just four months ago, and it’s moving to watch his 1964 film, a triumph of humour and improvisation that combined a subtly subversive analysis of society with such “compassionate humanism” in relation to his characters (that last accolade comes from Ken Loach, an avowed disciple of Forman).
The store-detective’s responsibility towards shop-lifters is 'to educate customers in honesty'
You won’t find a better introduction to the context in which Forman was working at the time than the 30-minute interview Life As It Is: Miloš Forman on His Czech Films that comes as the main extra here. Filmed in New York in 2000 by Robert Fischer of German documentary company Fiction Factory, it’s part of a longer 115-minute film that takes Forman’s career through to the cusp of the new millennium (it was apparently only screened in full earlier this year and no doubt deserves to be seen as a whole, while further extracts will surely accompany future home entertainment releases). There’s such a wealth of detail (and some previously unseen footage), ranging from insights into the period in which Forman was becoming a film-maker, through to his working methods, including that distinctive combination of non-professional and trained actors that plays so brilliantly here.
He is especially revealing on what it meant to come of age in the post-Stalin years: a fantastic range of older cinema talent, banned from working in the field, was teaching at Prague’s celebrated FAMU film school, while Khrushchev’s call to give youth an opportunity (in his 1956 speech to the 20th Party Congress) surely worked in Forman’s favour, as well as that of his contemporaries. (The New Wave directors worked in such different directions that rivalry didn’t become a factor, he says; rather they stayed together as a front.)
His cinematic inspiration came from both Italian neo-realism (de Sica, especially) and the vérité of the French New Wave, but fuelling both was his reaction against the meaningless propaganda-type films of the previous decade with their Socialist Realist portrayals of “life as it should be”. Open rebellion may have still been impossible in the early Sixties, but comedy, a genre relatively unpoliced by the cultural authorities, allowed for such suggestive irreverence.
Black Peter shares much with Forman’s following film, the better-known A Blonde in Love from 1965, particularly in its central dance-floor scene that catches the sheer awkwardness of youth, the agonies of teenage tribulation. But the central character here is male, 16-year-old Peter (Ladislav Jakim), aimlessly (and hopelessly, it has to be said) beginning his first job, as a store-detective. Spying and surveillance are recurring themes, articulating wider issues about this socialist society, that are sweetened by euphemism, the store-detective’s responsibility towards shop-lifters being “to educate customers in honesty”.
But Peter is far more concerned with what's happening away from the store, not least life at home with his parents: the stern Jan Vostrčil is a magnificent presence as his father. (Pictured above left: Vostrčil, a nonpareil non-professional, was in real life a brass-band conductor, persuaded by Forman and his assistant director, Ivan Passer, to take the role only days before filming started; he would work with both again). Then there’s romantic interest Pavla (Pavla Martínková-Novotná), who’s as composed and confident as Peter is awkward and hapless (main picture).
Their tentative courtship may be the main subject of the long dance scene, but so much else is going on as well, not least the antics of the initially assertive, latterly tipsy young brick-layer Čenda (pictured right, right: Vladimír Pucholt, the main professional actor in the film). Pucholt’s hilarious exchange with Peter on the correct intonation for pronouncing the Czech word for “hello” is a show-stealer, but the more serious final scene, which he plays alongside Jakim and Vostrčil, is equally striking.
The film is presented from a brand new 4K restoration which strived to come as close as possible to how Czech viewers would have seen the film at the time. As close to “guerrilla filmmaking” as the communist system could have allowed, Black Peter was made on a minimal budget – Forman was even shooting it in tandem with another early work, the 50-minute brass band story If There Were No Music – but that didn’t stop it taking the main prize at the 1964 Locarno festival (over competition from new films by Godard and Antonioni, no less).
This release includes a new 15-minute interview with actress Pavla Martínková, filmed this year in the same stadium in the small town of Kolin where the dance scene was shot. Film historian Michael Brooke’s audio commentary is rapid and irrepressible, its enthusiasm as infectious as its discoveries are fascinating. Sheer delight.
Overleaf: watch the new trailer for Black Peter
A slow tracking shot over the gassed corpses of soldiers, their masks having failed the ecstasy of fumbling, opens The Guardians. This French art house film would perhaps have been better served by the English title The Caretakers; it's closer to the original French meaning and would have made it less likely to be confused with a superhero movie.
Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la bête had been planned as a slice of wartime escapism, a distraction from the privations of war. The film was also a chance for Cocteau to give his male lead Jean Marais a less overtly sexy role than his fans were used to, though there’s still a lot of smouldering going on, some of it literal.
Men in a wilderness, uneasy interaction with the locals, a horse… German director Valeska Grisebach’s third feature Western certainly does not lack the staples of genre that her title suggests. But there’s a vulnerable heart to this tale of cross-cultural bonding, with accompanying ruminations about changing human landscapes and fate, that moves it far beyond the expected.
We first meet her protagonists, a group of German construction workers, at their dour backwater home base as they’re preparing for the next job, and sense something of the group’s dynamics. But the assignment ahead isn’t at home; instead they’re setting off as migrant workers – not in the sense we usually associate with that term, of course, a nice touch in itself – to work on a hydroelectric project in a remote region of Bulgaria. It’s no standard EU gravy-train scheme though, but hard work in the heat, and conditions and resources aren’t as expected.
There’s a degree of laconic comment, from both sides, that the last time there were Germans in these parts was 70 years ago
It’s a world, too, in which they are western, set diametrically apart from an east that has only recently emerged from basic Communism: “like time travel” is how one of the Germans describes it. They’re holed up in an isolated compound amid forests, surrounded by glorious mountainous scenery; provisions have been laid in, including a generous supply of beer, but from the moment someone hoists a German flag over the place, we sense that these journeymen haven’t majored in multiculturalism. There are initial hints at concealed threat – “they see us, but we can’t see them” – that comes somehow from the locality itself, then an incident at the river where the group’s boorish foreman Vincent (Reinhardt Wetrek) commits a faux pas with some local women establishes a further negative accent.
Grisebach has already set up her main character, the older, grizzled and mustachioed Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann), as the loner in the group, with an accompanying tension between him and his boss. He’s the first to venture into the local village, riding a white horse he has found grazing wild, an unlikely cowboy to fulfil the mission of the genre. His sad eyes speak more than words, which is just as well because communication with the locals – some are open, others initially hostile – is mostly by gesture, monosyllabic at best; there’s a degree of laconic comment, from both sides, that the last time there were Germans in these parts was 70 years ago.
A sense of slow bonding develops between Meinhard and the villagers – he’s an unintrusive presence as they get on with their lives, and their instinctive openness resurfaces – and a particular close link develops between him and the boss of the local quarry, the effective village headman, Adrian (Syuleyman Alilov Letifov: pictured above, with Meinhard Neumann). There’s a degree of conflict too, clearly necessary for dramatic purposes, not least because the water supply doesn’t allow for watering local crops if the outsiders take it to mix their concrete, as well as much more affecting intersections of fate.
Just occasionally some such elements feel a very small bit formulaic, but Western’s heart is absolutely true: Grisebach avoids sentimentalising such growing contacts between locals and incomers. And these two worlds aren’t so remote, after all: if the village looks empty, it’s because the young are working abroad – in Germany, Britain or the US – while linguistic contact comes through those who have returned from such sojourns. The melancholy of Meinhard, his emotions expressed so powerfully by facial intonations, hints that he even might find a greater rootedness here than whatever tenuous links attach him to life in Germany, but again that’s underplayed: Grisebach is far too subtle.
It would be so easy to say that Neumann gives a performance of remarkable, quiet power and searing mournfulness, except that – as a non-professional, like all of Grisebach’s cast – he can hardly be said to be giving a performance at all. The director works extensively with improvisation, both with her own development of story and the elements of script she gives her actors in advance. We can only guess at how such levels of total immersion, particularly from her Bulgarian cast, were achieved, as well as at the investments of time and empathy involved from all sides. The effort is repaid on every level, its slow contemplation of life in a particular small corner of the world speaking far beyond such modest boundaries, and connections established across languages and cultures. Western is a film with a very special cadence indeed.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for Western
Childhood is an inimitable experience – the laws of the world are less certain, imagination and reality meld together, and no event feels fixed. A Sicilian Ghost Story recreates this sensation in the context of real world trauma, producing a unique and sometimes unsettling cinematic experience.
Luna (Julia Jedlikowska, pictured below) is a rather typical 12-year-old girl: precocious, imaginative, and very much infatuated with her classmate Giuseppe. Although they don’t have the same interests, they share something deeper, a comfort and belonging in each other’s company. On the walk home from school, the two dance around their attraction, Luna carrying a love letter for Giuseppe but denying it’s really for him. They’re chased by a dog, share a scooter ride, and he demonstrates his show horse; it’s a perfect day that ends in a kiss. Then, as if by magic, Giuseppe is gone.
Days and weeks pass, and no-one but Luna seems to care that Giuseppe’s not in school. At his house, no-one answers the door; his stone-faced mother stares hauntingly from the window. The adults of the village refuse to answer Luna’s questioning. Always prone to daydreaming, her imagination starts to run wild as she follows his ghost through the puzzle-like woods and deep lakes.
Sicilian Ghost Story is dedicated to Giuseppe Di Matteo, an 11-year-old boy kidnapped by the Mafia after his father turned informant. Rather than a straight adaptation of this tragic story, writer/directors Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza bring a dark, fairytale quality to the film. Luna’s imagination becomes both her guide and her sanctuary as she tries to come to terms with the grim reality, hinting at a deeper, supernatural connection between the two.
It’s an unusual watch: memories are revisited with different outcomes, dream sequences are often presented as reality, and the internal logic is stretched to breaking point. It is, really, how we remember our childhood – we can recollect the feelings, but not always separate the fact from fiction. This makes for a film that is a pleasure to experience but sometimes frustrating to follow.
The cinematography and sound design create a woozy, hallucinogenic experience
It bares a passing resemblance to recent British indie release Pin Cushion. Both have a young female lead inclined to fantasy, but where Pin Cushion is quirky, Sicilian Ghost Story is something more elemental. The characters are at once dwarfed by and connected with the spectacular landscapes of Sicily. Animals are a constant, and countryside literally hisses and rattles around the humans. It’s at times pagan-like: there’s a deeper spiritual connection with nature that lasts longer than the temporary, evil actions of man.
Visually, the film is stunning. The cinematography and sound design create a woozy, hallucinogenic experience. A variety of wide lenses and low angles add a surrealness to Luna’s journey, drawing a clear line between her world and the standard shots deployed for adults. As the camera focuses on her determined vulnerability, there’s an element of Millie Bobby Brown in Julia Jedlikowska’s performance, only emphasised when her head is shaven. It is a complicated and heavy film to lead, and she does so with ease.
While Sicilian Ghost Story offers some interesting narrative devices, powerful visuals and strong performances, it’s too tonally confused to be considered a complete success. It creaks when toeing the line between fantasy and reality, never quite committing to either to the detriment of both. At times, it feels like Pan’s Labyrinth without the visual effects, or Twin Peaks without embracing the surreal – tons of potential, almost realised.
Overleaf: watch the trailer for Sicilian Ghost Story
When director Jenny Lu graduated from university, the promise of a big city career quickly turned into a series of rejections. Around this time, a close friend of hers committed suicide by jumping off a bridge – unbeknownst to their circle of friends, this girl was working in the sex industry.
On the surface, Pin Cushion is a whimsical British indie, packed with imagination and charm. But debuting director Deborah Haywood builds this on a foundation of bullying and prejudice, creating a surprisingly bleak yet effective film.