This Week... [1st to 5th of February 2013]

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaqdAMiPaMio7Qiy21oFQkc6PL6H_4SV0bqgZfOJMQXX4g4Gh23mslWJWJDvzXqtvcF-0QR_jBTP3r1GCkaMeld15_etg7txDC1QdTQnbwQiOGmpTaXNneUJ0TmwD-ti2aQNAc69FE_f0/s1600/rohe02.jpg

February 1^st: The Birds and The Bees Disc 1

I do not watch films just for entertainment or messages. As someone who has an interest in history as well, film viewing can also be a dive into the past even for all of cinema’s schlockier aspects. A double set from the British Film Institute collecting together sex education films made in Britain, the first disc, which goes from 1917 with Whatsoever A Man Soweth to 1938, mostly deals with the crisis of venereal disease, particularly the dangers of syphilis when it was still a major contagion. I will admit that if all the films were about this, it would have been a struggle to get through the films even as archival material. Thankfully The Mystery of Marriage (1932), despite dancing around the subject of sex for good taste, is a legitimately charming short film, comparing human relationships to those of animals and plants in witty ways. These earlier films are also fascinating, not just for the social and historical context, but also as movies. They sometimes get too preachy unfortunately even for educational shorts, and they can be viewed as dated in their gender politics in depicting women as willing carriers of STDs, but they are also fully structured, mini-dramas around thirty minutes each with narrative arches and characters. One, A Test For Love (1932), also contrasts the mostly male centric concerns by having the protagonist being a young woman who is infected and feels the social stigma of what that represents. Even in the area of films to teach the public about gonorrhoea, in an area of education (sex and reproduction) which is still embarrassing to some and a controversial topic even in the present day, especially with the lessons taught to children, you get the directors nonetheless playing with various dramatic and directorial flourishes they could come up with as long as they made a short that gave people a lesson. The films feel like meat-and-potatoes melodramas and B-movies than merely documents to pass on information viewing them now; the director of A Test of Love, Vernon Sewell, did become a prominent director and worked with Peter Cushing, so I cannot dismiss this thought.

From https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggQ77JAQuFs-E2UPUKiwImAO9b6HQdzr56W92BOtbiBf1JhgjdqdMmBk51CHK0p4L_zUYurvvKHTgIiEREXEg65Qbp9lgIxi1e_Iw-JyruPyyHTPL9Z-ePiVrj2YT0e1BFcFEeYalue5I/s1600/opening_credits.jpg

2^nd February – GoldenEye (Martin Campbell, 1995)

Catching up with more James Bond films within the last four months, I’m finding that I’m not enjoying them as I wish I should. The only ones that have grabbed me, You Only Live Twice (1967) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971), do so because the former goes as far as it can with its Sixties aesthetics mixed with Japanophile chique, and the later because it is so ridiculous that any patriotic feelings are squashed by Mr. Kidd and Mr. Whit’s presence. It may also be because, as the only two Sean Connery Bond films I’ve seen in this recent re-evaluation, that so far nobody does it better than the first person and films in the series. After a long absence from the failure of Licence To Kill (1989), and made in the prime decade of mainstream cultural weirdness, GoldenEye sadly doesn’t become a grand return for the character or a crackpot piece of pulp, but something stuck in-between without really succeeding in either. It’s a two hour film that doesn’t have enough to justify that length but somehow is that long. Pierce Brosnan does make a great Bond, and it has its moments, including Alan Cummings stealing all the scenes he’s in, but the film’s transitions and plot turns feel arbitrary rather than pulling you into them. Considering its incredibly surreal, and stunning, opening credits sequence based on the fall of the Soviet Union, and a major scene taking place in a graveyard for Soviet monuments, it never however strengthens this peculiar tone or tackles real life history with enough pulpy thought to it that it deserves, especially since the series was born in the age of the Cold War. When a new, female, M played by Judi Dench calls Bond a ‘misogynistic dinosaur’, it should be a sign of a film that drags its hero’s ideology over broken glass or pushes the more lurid nature of the character to the lengths like the Sixties Bond films did. Instead however Bond is blasé about all this and just continues with sleeping with women and killing as he has done every time before without the smirk or edge that should have been there after those words were uttered.

From http://www.ukdvdsonline.com/UserFiles/productImages/bfivd915.jpg

3^rd February – The Birds and The Bees Disc 2

Disc 2 of this set is more divisive. The later films – 1940 to 1973 – go from short form dramas to purely educational shorts for the most part, which takes away from their interest aside from the sociological aspects to them. There are some that stand out – the animation Six Little Jungle Boys (1945) and an American made film directed by the editor of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) – and the social aspects of the films themselves are still fascinating. Despite the growing frankness in the topics, you can argue the films become more puritanical in tone, and in the case of Don’t Be Like Brenda (1973), a mirror film to A Test of Love  about a young women also victimised by stigmatism that is far and away more sexist and patronising in tone than the sympathetic earlier short. There was also a fine line with sex education that was broken, shown breaking with the inclusion of the controversial film Growing Up (1971). Made by Dr Martin Cole, its depictions of real male and female masturbation caused an outrage, the booklet with the DVD set containing some of the most obscene and violent complain letters Cole got. Growing Up would probably never be acceptable to view in a classroom this era either, with the usual diagrams used in these films replaced by actual people, including children, being the stand-ins, which was extremely uncomfortable viewing for me as someone raised in this decade’s view on sexual morality. It is worth thinking of this film though compared to the education on the subject most of us got; my own was honest and detailed, taught in primary school and later taught in secondary school, but the approach Dr Cole used of real acts of sexual practice being depicted is probably too far even now for some and, to my hazy memory, never was used in the films my classes were shown. If these shorts, put together in an exceptional set from the BFI, are to be learnt from, it is the knowledge of how the taboos and views on sex and sexuality in the United Kingdom have changed, and have not, and how they are inherently my country’s views on them.

From http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7z8o5DWvO1rnni91o1_500.jpg

4^th February – A Deadly Invention (Karel Zeman, 1958)

The two dimensional world of stop motion, papercraft and animation are combined with live action in this incredible visual achievement. Based on the work of Jules Vern, of pirates and their desire to use a professor’s new technology as a destructive super weapon, the world depicted is made from the use of extensively fabricated sets and props, to create the sort of thing I am showing below, the only way to fully show what A Deadly Invention looks like...

From http://24.media.tumblr.com/cfa58bb98b82593842fc08e65a07374d/tumblr_mgirn2Z0R71qgfhxdo1_500.gif

If there is a potential flaw with this film, it’s the same that has effective many films which combine live action with animated artistry, even Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) to some extent, in that the actors themselves and their plot is not as fascinating as the world around them and do not fully become one with it. The film is still a marvel to see as an animation fan, flying boats, underwater divers fighting a giant octopus, animated birds against real people, and countless other sights that sparkle. When the film gets comfortable with its tone, from a great scene onwards where one sees how people get their news and sports coverage from a giant “movie” projector, A Deadly Invention becomes great entertainment as well as a fest for the eyes.

From http://www.moviehoppingisnotacrime.com/_/rsrc/1349988730674/night-ten-cannibal-apocalypse/caradice.png?height=225&width=400

5^th February – Cannibal Apocalypse (Antonio Margheriti, 1980)

Link to a review here - Cannibal Apocalypse Mini-Review