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Courtesy of StudioCanal

by James Cameron-wilson

Few films in the Swinging Sixties were as much a part of their time as John Schlesinger’s Darling. Chronologically positioned between Godard’s Breathless and Antonioni’s Blow Up, it is a microcosm of the tail end of an empire that was enjoying its last twitch of cultural significance. The Darling of the title is the extremely beautiful, self-absorbed and cosseted Diana Scott played by the It girl of the day, Julie Christie, the face of Ideal Woman magazine. And she would seem, indeed, to be the Ideal Woman, beloved of cads, intellectuals and royalty. The thumbnail premise is attributed to three men, the scenarist Frederic Raphael, the director John Schlesinger and the producer Joseph Janni, and it is Raphael who has provided the sparkling dialogue. Essentially it’s a satire of Britain in the mid-1960s, with Julie Christie the Carnaby Street...

To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Academy Award-winning classic Darling, we’re giving one lucky winner the chance to own the stunning new 4K restoration of this iconic film.

Starring screen legends Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, and Laurence Harvey, Darling remains a sharp, stylish portrait of 1960s fame, fashion, and fractured love.

Don’t miss your chance to own a piece of cinema history in glorious 4K!

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This competition is open to UK residents only

The competition will close 30th June 2025 at 23.59 GMT The winner(s) will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative to the prizes will be offered Prizes may vary from the description only when absolutely necessary The prizes are not transferable To coincide with Gdpr regulations, competition entry information will not be stored once the competition has ended and the winners have been chosen and prizes sent out.

The...

There is a point in John Schlesinger’s swinging Sixties hit Darling when Diana, played with Oscar-winning intensity by Julie Christie, is asked why, as someone who is presented as the face of modernity, she dresses so conservatively. Herein lies the crux of the film.

Diana is a model, the Honey-glo Girl, the Happiness Girl. She’s known for her dazzling, carefree smile, and the myth of her picture perfect life is so strong that she almost believes it herself. As much an artefact of consumer capitalism as the products she represents, she is desired in the same way, and she knows it. Her relationship with respected literary journalist Robert (Dirk Bogarde) – for which he leaves his wife and children – suits them both: she is the dazzling jewel on his arm whilst he gives her the intellectual credential she has craved. Behind the scenes, however, their unmarried bliss is gradually eroded.

“Darling”, the 1965 drama feature, directed by John Schlesinger, starring Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey, has been restored in 4K for a 60th anniversary release, screening May 30, 2025 in theaters:

“…’Diana Scott’ is an ambitious young model who moves from bed to bed to take advantage of whatever each moment can offer her.

“Three men in her life, willingly or involuntarily help her on her way to the top: a TV interviewer and honest man striving to tell illusion from reality; an advertising executive, totally cynical about manipulating society's values; and a magazine photographer battening parasitically on glossy society.

“A fourth man, one she ultimately marries, makes her a prisoner of the jet-set world she always wanted…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

“Darling”, the 1965 drama feature, directed by John Schlesinger, starring Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde and Laurence Harvey, has been restored in 4K for a 60th anniversary release, screening May 30, 2025 in theaters:

“…’Diana Scott’ is an ambitious young model who moves from bed to bed to take advantage of whatever each moment can offer her.

“Three men in her life, willingly or involuntarily help her on her way to the top: a TV interviewer and honest man striving to tell illusion from reality; an advertising executive, totally cynical about manipulating society's values; and a magazine photographer battening parasitically on glossy society.

“A fourth man, one she ultimately marries, makes her a prisoner of the jet-set world she always wanted…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

"I'm not gonna be a prisoner any longer!" Studiocanal UK has revealed a new trailer for Darling, a classic sex drama from 1965 that is fully restored and being re-released for its 60th anniversary. Hitting theaters again in the UK this May but not in the US. Diana Scott has grown up to accept the undeniable fact that her beauty gives her the power to unlock doors forever closed to the mere ordinary. When she meets Robert, a TV reporter, Diana immediately dumps her husband. His unconventional marriage cannot compete with the strength of his feelings for her. A succession of liaisons follow culminating in marriage to an Italian Prince. But though now an international jet-set celebrity, she is still alone, unable to find the real affection she craves, a prisoner of the world she has conquered. Starring Julie Christie, Dirk Bogarde, and Laurence Harvey. Darling was scanned in 4K 16-bit by Filmfinity UK,...

Exclusive: Mark Gatiss is suitably on-trend with Bookish. He created and stars in the upcoming series as Gabriel Book, an eccentric bookshop owner and expert sleuth who helps the police solve tricky cases. The show has contained stories – one crime plays out over two episodes – and there are lighthearted elements and something comforting about the cluttered antiquarian bookshop, situated in a picture-perfect historic London lane. There is pre-launch buzz and international buyers have already started snapping up the series.

This is cozy crime, but as the show unfolds, Gatiss’ writing reveals layers and wrinkles that give the series teeth.

“It’s become a bit of an instant cliche, ‘cozy crime’, but I don’t think it has to be,” Gatiss tells Deadline. “It can be welcoming, and this has period elements that people love, and they love a world where you can’t solve crimes with computers. But it’s...

When he’s not spooking and seducing with films like “The Lighthouse” and his most recent work, a reinvention of F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu,” filmmaker Robert Eggers is enjoying the best of moody cinema. Chatting inside the Criterion Closet, Eggers praised the work of Soviet writer/director Sergei Parajanov, pulling his film “The Color of Pomegranates” off the shelf first.

“Parajanov is a really fascinating filmmaker who is really into recreating folk culture with a lot of detail,” said Eggers. “And he does these beautiful tableaus that are interpretation[s] of the art from the world that he’s trying to articulate and bring us into. And it’s really spectacular.”

Continuing his appreciation for film aesthetics, Eggers went on to grab a set of work from Pier Paolo Pasolini, taking care to acknowledge the efforts of his designers in crafting the environments he shoots.

Eggers told Criterion, “The worlds that Pasolini creates with Piero Tosi,...

Who said the French and British couldn’t get along? When they’re not lighting up the screen together in films like Anthony Minghella’s “The English Patient, the 1992 adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights,” and recently in “The Return,” based on the last chapters of Homer’s “Odyssey,” pals and collaborators Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes enjoy just getting to spend a little time with one another. And thankfully, Criterion gave them the chance to do just that.

Stepping into the Criterion Closet, Binoche and Fiennes pretended not to know one another, but soon became quite intimate, a not-so-unforeseen side effect of the tight quarters they found themselves in. Binoche led most of the selection efforts, with the “Conclave” star serving as the curious pupil, having heard of many films she pulled down, but not actually having seen them. After coming across Jim Jarmusch’s moody prison comedy “Down by Law,...

The Night Porter.Fascism is not only an event of yesterday.… It is with us still, here and elsewhere. As dreams do, my film brings back to the surface a repressed “history.”—Liliana CavaniThe aesthetics of fascism, and how they enable the perversion of cultural memory, are interrogated even as they are instrumentalized in The Night Porter (1974), a film that remains confounding and polarizing 50 years after its release. Its director, Liliana Cavani, knew that portraying the compulsive sexual charge between a young Holocaust survivor and her former Nazi tormentor was bound to turn stomachs. An Italian socialist, best known at the time for her four-hour television documentary, History of the Third Reich (1962–63), Cavani was well positioned to address the shifting modes of historical representation and the nuance-flattening power of the moving image, which can so readily be put in service of propaganda. During research for Women of the Resistance (1965), another television documentary,...

Victim is a 1961 British film noir that is not only a highly regarded film, but was also important in helping to change centuries-old attitudes and laws in the UK against homosexuality. The film works primarily on the strength of its cast, lead by matine idol Dirk Bogarde, as well as its strong script and precise direction. Many films have been called ground-breaking due to their impact on film history, the arts, and society, though only a select few have actually changed laws or public policy. As he cites in his January 2024 article, Juan Orellana identifies Silenced, JFK, and A Short Film About Killing as films that actually inspired changes in law, and Victim is also on that list.

Norman Spencer, the British producer, production manager and screenwriter who worked alongside famed director David Lean on films including Blithe Spirit, Great Expectations, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, has died. He was 110.

Spencer died Aug. 16 in Wimbledon three days after his birthday, the European Supercentenarian Organisation announced.

Apart from Lean, Spencer produced Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), starring Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift and Katharine Hepburn; Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point (1971), the car chase movie that starred Barry Newman; and Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987), starring Denzel Washington.

Spencer was Lean’s unit manager on the ghost comedy Blithe Spirit (1945), based on the Noël Coward play, and served as his production manager on his adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948).

He produced Lean’s The Passionate Friends (1949) and the Hepburn-starring, Venice-set Summertime (1955); worked on a rewrite of the script for...

Quick Links The Respectable, Sympathetic Homosexual Man How Victim Inspired Change Victim Remains Critically Well Received

In 1961, Basil Dearden's neo-noir film, Victim, was released in the United Kingdom. Although Victim initially faced some controversy from the British Board of Film Censors, it eventually received critical acclaim. Since then, Victim has consolidated itself as a classic within British cinema. Moreover, it has since been credited for helping to liberalize attitudes towards discussions of homosexuality in British film and television, as well as wider society.

Victim was the first British film to explicitly name homosexuality and shine it in a light of sympathy. This is hugely significant, taking into consideration the wider context. By 1961, the nature of homosexuality in Britain was still controversial, and it would be for 6 more years until law reform legalized homosexual relations. Many have attributed this reform, and developing liberal attitudes to media representation, with Dirk Bogarde...

A Bridge Too Far is a 1977 war movie directed by Richard Attenborough, featuring a star-studded cast. The film is based on the real-life WWII Operation Market Garden, a failed Allied operation in the Netherlands. Despite the impressive cast and true story, A Bridge Too Far received mixed reviews and had a modest box office success.

The epic 3-hour 1977 war movie A Bridge Too Far features a remarkably star-studded cast. Directed by Richard Attenborough, who is arguably best known for playing John Hammond in Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), A Bridge Too Far chronicles the real-life WWII Operation Market Garden, a failed Allied operation in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. The film takes place late in 1944 when the Allied forces, particularly a group of American and British paratroopers, appear to have the upper hand but are met with unexpected resistance. The film was released in theaters on June 15, 1977.

The war...

The James Bond franchise has long been blossoming in the action genre and remains among the fan-favorite franchises. It is rich in many elements, from thrilling action sequences to innovative gadgets, that captivated audiences for decades. It is all thanks to Ian Fleming, the creator behind the iconic 007 spy, who laid the foundation of the vast saga.

Sean Connery in Goldfinger [Credit: United Artists]However, many would be surprised to know that he was against the idea of Sean Connery to take up the iconic role. Fleming would have done with anyone, but not Connery, and the reason would surprise many!

Sean Connery’s James Bond Was Different from What Ian Fleming Intended

In Nicholas Shakespeare’s biography of Bond author Ian Fleming, titled Ian Fleming: The Complete Man, the author shared insights on what went behind the scenes in a film adaptation of Ian Fleming’s first Bond novel Casino Royale.

Isabelle Huppert will head up the 2024 Venice Film Festival jury this year. Serving as jury president, Huppert will hand out the Golden Lion and other awards when the festival on the Lido concludes. The dates for this year’s edition are August 28 to September 7.

Huppert has never before served as jury president at Venice, but she did at Cannes in 2009, awarding the Palme d’Or to Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” after deliberations with James Gray, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Asia Argento, Robin Wright, and Lee Chang-dong. Before that she’d served on the jury headed by Dirk Bogarde at Cannes in 1984, which gave the top prize to “Paris, Texas.”

The 71-year-old actress has been a powerhouse force in global cinema for the past 50 years, making her mark in French cinema before quickly appearing in Hollywood productions such as Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate.” Over the past decade Huppert’s...

A variety of different actors have portrayed 007 over the years, and the original actor to first suit up in the role is still a favorite for many fans. However, Sean Connery's casting was questioned by the creator of the James Bond character, Ian Fleming, who wasn't totally sold on the casting.

Per IndieWire, new details about the history of the franchise have been divulged in Nicholas Shakespeare's upcoming biography on Fleming, titled Ian Fleming: The Complete Man. The book goes into the casting process for the first James Bond, going back to the mid-1950s with several different actors approached. Fleming had considered a handful of names to get the role, suggesting Richard Burton would "be by far the best James Bond."

Related Former 007 Pierce Brosnan Says This Academy Award-Nominated Actor Would Make a 'Magnificent' James Bond There is an ongoing speculation about who will play James Bond next,...

Lashana Lynch became the first woman to own the 007 title in the 2021 James Bond tentpole “No Time to Die,” but it turns out a plan to make James Bond a woman was actually pitched over 60 years prior. In Nicholas Shakespeare’s upcoming biography of Bond author Ian Fleming, titled “Ian Fleming: The Complete Man,” it’s confirmed that producer Gregory Ratoff floated the idea of casting Susan Hayward in a film adaptation of Fleming’s first Bond novel “Casino Royale.”

Shakespeare writes in the biography (via IndieWire): “Since the mid-1950s, many well-known actors had been approached [to play Bond]. Gregory Ratoff had the arresting idea of having Bond played by a woman, Susan Hayward. Ian had entertained several possibilities, from Richard Burton (‘I think that Richard Burton would be by far the best James Bond’), to James Stewart (‘I wouldn’t at all mind him as Bond if he can slightly...

Yes, a female James Bond has been over a half-century in the making.

Before Lashana Lynch briefly donned the 007 title in “No Time to Die,” the film adaptation of “Dr. No,” a woman was in talks to lead the franchise 50 years prior.

In Nicholas Shakespeare’s upcoming biography of Bond author Ian Fleming, titled “Ian Fleming: The Complete Man,” it’s revealed that original “Casino Royale” producer Gregory Ratoff had imagined a woman in the titular lead role. In fact, Oscar-winning actress Susan Hayward was in Ratoff’s mind to take the part.

Prior to “Casino Royale,” the two Bond films had floundered with “Thunderball” and “Casino Royale” receiving poor reviews, hence the proposed gender-swap.

Shakespeare writes in the biography, “Since the mid-1950s, many well-known actors had been approached. Gregory Ratoff had the arresting idea of having Bond played by a woman, Susan Hayward. Ian had entertained several possibilities,...

Clay McLeod Chapman And Andrea Mutti Conjure The New Horror Series “SÉANCE In The Asylum”: "We’re receiving a message from the beyond! Dark Horse Comics presents Séance in the Asylum, a new historical horror series from renowned writer Clay McLeod Chapman and artist Andrea Mutti that will have you questioning what’s real and what’s not. Chapman will write the series and Mutti will illustrate, with Trevor Henderson, Francesco Francavilla, Lukas Ketner, and Jenna Cha rounding out the circle and providing variant cover art on issues #1-4.

“Years back, I uncovered an esoteric text -- The Homeopathic Principle Applied to Insanity: A Proposal to Treat Lunacy by Spiritualism by Dr. James John Garth Wilkinson -- written all the way back in 1857, and I knew within my bones, my blood, that this was destined to be a story,” said Chapman. “As a lifelong acolyte of the Fox Sisters,...

In his last dramatic and interminable years, Michael Cimino spent his days in solitude rewatching old movies in the Bel-Air mansion he bought during his heyday. On the rare occasions that he ventured out, he drove a Rolls-Royce he acquired while making The Deer Hunter in 1978, his chauffeur having left long ago, as well as his success.

Even in those final moments, he did everything he could to show a winning image to Hollywood, a town that had ostracized him ever since the colossal Heaven’s Gate fiasco that had bankrupted United Artists during the early ’80s. He had a perpetually ironic, scornful smile, but he was the first to know how pointless, even miserable, that act was. The only thing he had left from his triumphant years was some money, and he would show up at the hangouts of movers and shakers like the Polo Lounge, where he often ended...

Initially inspired by an all too common misreading of the classic novel Lolita in her younger years, filmmaker Victoria Singh-Thompson – last featured on Directors Notes with her caught between cultures coming-of-age drama Don’t Forget To Go Home – wanted to depict the complex layers of trauma and how it affects the way we see the world. The resulting film 14 in February is a fragmented and haunting look at the world through the eyes of a young hard-of-hearing schoolgirl who isn’t yet able to process the experiences she has undergone and dissociates from her memories. The immersive and quietly shocking short is as visually still as it is emotionally frantic, with a focused lens pulling us into its young protagonist’s point of view, accented with purposeful jarring sounds which as a package, disturb and succeed in creating the unease that Singh-Thompson wanted. Making a welcome return to Dn’s pages,...

Glynis Johns, remembered by movie audiences as Mrs. Banks from Mary Poppins and by Broadway devotees as the first person to sing Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” on a national stage, died Thursday of natural causes at an assisted living home in Los Angeles. She was 100.

Her death was announced by her manager and publicist Mitch Clem. “Today’s a sad day for Hollywood,” Clem said in a statement. “She is the last of the last of old Hollywood.”

A Tony winner (Best Actress/Musical) for her performance as Desiree Armfeldt in the original 1973 Broadway cast of the Sondheim-Hugh Wheeler A Little Night Music, Johns both debuted and, due to her widespread acclaim, helped popularize what would become perhaps Sondheim’s most beloved and well-known songs with “Send in the Clowns.”

Born in Pretoria, South Africa, the Welsh Johns made her West End debut in 1931 at age...

To celebrate Studiocanal’s brand new 4K restoration of King and Country available in the UK for the first time ever on Blu-ray & Digital and on a new DVD 6th November, we’re giving away a Blu-Ray copy!

Studiocanal is thrilled to announce a brand new 4k restoration of British anti-war classic King And Country (1964) from esteemed American director Joseph Losey (The Servant), available in time for Remembrance Day on Blu-Ray & Digital for the first time ever in the UK, plus a new DVD on 6th November, through the Vintage Classics brand. The new restoration of King And Country recently premiered at Venice Film Festival to great acclaim.

Returning for another stellar collaboration with director Joseph Losey is revered British actor Dirk Bogarde (The Servant), seen here as Captain Hargreaves, a tough army lawyer assigned to defend army volunteer-turned-deserter Private Hamp, played by the brilliant Tom Courtenay (Billy Liar), whose...

Tom Courtenay is unforgettable as a first world war private on trial for desertion. But it is Dirk Bogarde, dripping with distaste for his defendant who delivers a horrific coup de grâce

There’s an extra, unexpected shiver of contemporary relevance and horror in this rerelease of Joseph Losey’s brutal expressionist drama from 1964. Tom Courtenay plays the pinch-faced, talkative but also somehow inscrutable Private Hamp, who is court-martialled for desertion in 1917 having “gone for a walk” away from the guns at Passchendaele.

Dirk Bogarde’s suave, sorrowing Capt Charles Hargreaves is assigned the task of defending Private Hamp – suppressing his distaste for Hamp, of course, like all the officer class, and trying not to think about the inevitability of his execution – and he boldly asks the court to consider Hamp’s “mental health”. The presiding colonel, played by Peter Copley, erupts with contempt at this modern-sounding phrase. “Do you...

Venice film festival: A courtroom drama based on events in Herman Wouk’s second world war novel The Caine Mutiny, Friedkin leaves us with a valuable last effort

The ghosts of film history can be seen all over Venice, the city where Dirk Bogarde sat down in a deck-chair and died and Donald Sutherland was bewitched by the sight of a red raincoat. One spies their faces on black-and-white stills inside the main festival site and adorning celebratory posters positioned around town. They occasionally crop up on the movie schedule as well.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial is the swansong film from director William Friedkin, completed just before his death last month and dedicated to the memory of its co-star, Lance Reddick, who died back in March. This is a forensic, exacting courtroom drama; stiffly tailored and a little unyielding; doggedly making a bonus of a claustrophobic single location. It’s not The Exorcist,...

It's been a long road, getting from there to here.

One might recall in June of 2023, it was announced that several key executives and programmers at Turner Classic Movies were callously canned by the new management at their parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery. For many, this was tantamount to nixing TCM altogether. CEO David Zaslav made this decision at the end of a string of bad decisions that made him look like the film world's most callous villain. After the weird rebranding of HBO Max to merely Max, it was starting to look like Zaslav didn't give a damn about film history.

It certainly looked that way to Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, three lovers of vintage film and advocates for the preservation of classics. The trio famously called Zaslav to appeal for the retaining of TCM and the re-hiring of some of their old staff. A...

The Venice Film Festival kicked off its 80th edition Wednesday night on a somewhat muted note, with the dual Hollywood strike casting a pall over the glitz and glamour that typically exemplify the world’s oldest cinema fest. Instead of Luca Guadagnino’s Zendaya starrer Challengers — which was scheduled to open Venice pre-strike, getting pulled amid the walkout — Venice was forced to go with a more locally focused feature, Edoardo De Angelis’ Italian World War II submarine drama, Comandante.

Italian actress Caterina Murino hosted the festival’s grand opening ceremony with a retrospective spanning eight decades of Venice cinema, featuring clips highlighting past Golden Lion winners. The audience burst into applause at the sight of the late William Friedkin, whose last film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, will premiere on the Lido this year.

Comandante tells the true story of Salvatore Todaro, a submarine captain under Italy’s fascist government who...

In an alternate universe, Zendaya would be breaking the Internet with her red carpet fashion as she promoted Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers,” the movie that was supposed to open the 80th annual Venice Film Festival.

But the SAG-AFTRA strike made it impossible for the tennis movie, starring one of the world’s buzziest movie stars, to come to the Lido.

So instead, Venice kicked off with World War II drama “Comandante” by young Italian auteur Edoardo De Angelis. The movie, mostly set on a submarine, landed a brief 90-second standing ovation as actor Pierfrancesco Favino — who plays naval officer Salvatore Todaro — took a bow.

Indeed, the lack of star power was strongly felt at Venice opening night. The size of the crowds that lined up outside the Sala Grande Theatre was modest, and the biggest cheers went to Damien Chazelle, who is presiding over the Venice jury. Jane Campion,...

Even without major stars or Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” to buoy it, the opening night of the Venice Film Festival’s 80th edition was high on nostalgia for cinema’s past and excitement for the eight days of movies ahead.

A black-tie crowd gathered in the Palazzo del Cinema’s Sala Grande on the Lido for the presentation of Edoardo De Angelis’ World War II Battle of the Atlantic epic “Comandante,” the opener that replaced Guadagnino’s “Challengers” after that film was moved by MGM/Amazon to April due to the strikes.

First, though, elegant minimalist and icon Charlotte Rampling presented the festival’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Liliana Cavani, the Italian director of psychosexual Holocaust drama “The Night Porter,” starring Rampling and from 1974. (Wong Kar Wai muse Tony Leung Chiu-wai will also receive a Lifetime Achievement anointment later in the fest.) Rampling played a concentration camp survivor who finds her ex,...

Updated with more details: The 80th Venice Film Festival officially kicked off Wednesday evening with the world premiere screening of Edoardo De Angelis’ Italian World War II submarine drama Comandante. Running in competition, the film took over the slot vacated by Luca Guadagnino’s tennis drama Challengers, which backed out of the spot amid the actors strike.

Before the Pierfrancesco Favino-starring movie unspooled to a warm welcome and a brief post-credit standing ovation, Italian actress Caterina Murino launched the festival’s opening ceremony featuring a retrospective covering the 80 years of the event. That included glimpses of previous Golden Lion and awards winners, with the audience erupting when the late William Friedkin appeared in the montage.

Friedkin, who died August 7, has his final work, the Showtime film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, screening later this week out of competition.

Biennalle president Roberto Cicutto then came on the stage to introduce Charlotte Rampling,...

As the Venice film festival turns 80, we pick the titles that capture the city’s allure, from desolate Don’t Look Now to romantic Summertime and Top Hat’s cheery glamour

This time next week I’ll be packing my bags for Venice, where the 80th edition of its annual film festival will unveil new films by Sofia Coppola, Ava DuVernay, Yorgos Lanthimos, David Fincher, Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Bradley Cooper, the late William Friedkin – an especially glistening lineup for an event never short on gloss. But even without such attractions, Venice would remain my favourite festival: it’s the faintly unreal allure of the city itself, the spray from the Vaporetto as you leave the airport, the sense that you’re arriving into an eternal film location rather than just an industry event.

You can’t arrive on the Lido, the drowsy barrier island where the festival unfolds, and not recall...

Richard E. Grant is a towering figure in film, and not just because he's a great actor of considerable height. He also has a tendency to play larger-than-life characters, people with sizable egos and so much self-inflation they often float. He's mastered this in great films like Withnail & I and Can You Ever Forgive Me?, and has played with that character type to hilarious degrees in projects like How to Get Ahead in Advertising, Girls, and Loki. He injects varying degrees of melancholy or menace into these characters as well, so that none of them are quite the same. He's a master of the craft.

His latest conjuring act is J.M. Sinclair, one of the four main characters of the tense but witty chamber drama The Lesson, which is part film noir, part dark comedy, and part literary thriller. Sinclair is a famous novelist who hasn't published a book in several years,...

The Venice Film Festival has set filmmaker Liliana Cavani and actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai to receive this year’s Golden Lions for lifetime achievement. The 80th Venice fest runs from August 30-September 9 on the Lido.

Cavani, whose credits include 1974 classic The Night Porter, starring Dirk Bogarde and Charlotte Rampling, and 1985’s The Berlin Affair, has had several films at the festival, beginning with 1965’s Philippe Pétain: Processo a Vichy, which won the Lion of San Marco for best documentary. It was followed by Francesco d’Assisi (1966), Galileo (1968), I cannibali (1970), Dove siete? Io sono qui (1993) — for which Anna Bonaiuto won the Coppa Volpi for best actress — Ripley’s Game with John Malkovich (2002) and Clarisse (2012).

As for Leung, whose credits include Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love, Zhang Yimou’s Hero, Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s Infernal Affairs and recent Marvel title Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,...

Christophe Honoré selected Catherine Breillat’s 36 Fillette: “Her work is very important for French cinema.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Jacques Demy’s Lola (starring Anouk Aimée with Marc Michel), Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas, Zhangke Jia and composer Yoshihiro Hanno, Yves Robert’s La Guerre des Boutons, Alain Resnais’ Providence and L'Année Dernière à Marienbad, Kenneth Lonergan’s Manchester By The Sea, Sophie's Misfortunes, and Catherine Breillat’s 36 Fillette all came up in our discussion.

Christophe Honoré with Anne-Katrin Titze on why Alain Resnais is a king: “I’m interested in narrative play and people who have a ludic relationship to storytelling.” Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Christophe Honoré was in New York to present Winter Boy, starring Paul Kircher, Vincent Lacoste, Juliette Binoche, and Erwan Kepoa Falé, shot by Rémy Chevrin (Guermantes, [film]On...

The Great Italian Films of the 1970sThere was a certain type of great art film which was being made from 1968 through the 1970s which can never be approximated. Active and engaged filmmakers were consciously wakening out of the post-war amnesia and taking a perversely erotically charged political stand against the hypocrisy of the previous generation.

Italy was the hotbed of this examination of fascism coming out of World War II. Luchino Visconti’s The Damned (1969), Bertolucci’s The Conformist (1970), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s infamous Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975). Even the American musical, via Bob Fosse’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, Cabaret (1972) hinted at what the Italians went after with their full force of creative muscle.

Take Liliana Cavani’s The Night Porter (1974), set in Vienna in 1957, the film centers on the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi concentration camp officer (Dirk Bogarde) and one of his inmates (Charlotte Rampling). Their sadomasochistic love is their only happiness and it paralyzes the former Nazis who have been reintegrated into polite society.

Universally reviled by U.S.’s top critics, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times called it “as nasty as it is lubricious, a despicable attempt to titillate us by exploiting memories of persecution and suffering”. Vincent Canby, prominent critic for The New York Times, called it “romantic pornography” and “a piece of junk”. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker, “Many of us can’t take more than a few hard-core porno movies, because the absence of any human esteem makes them depressing rather than sexy; The Night Porteroffers the same dehumanized view and is brazen enough to use the Second World War as an excuse.”

Susan Sontag’s essay Fascinating Facism for New York Review of Books (February 6, 1975) stated, “If the message of fascism has been neutralized by an aesthetic view of life, its trappings have been sexualized. This eroticization of fascism can be remarked in such enthralling and devout manifestations as Mishima’s Confessions of a Mask and Sun and Steel, and in films like Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and, more recently and far less interestingly, in Visconti’s The Damned and Cavani’s The Night Porter.”

However, its value was recognized by the executive producer Joseph E. Levine who quoted them on the posters of the U.S. theatrical release through his company Avco Embassy.

In a brilliant essay of the film by Kat Ellinger I quote:

Filmmakers were suddenly touching the untouchable, and it made certain people incredibly uncomfortable.”

Unlike Naziploitation, The Night Porter does nothing to cartoonise the Nazi officers that dominate the narrative. It isn’t a case of good versus evil, or that sadism is presented as a form of lasivious softcore pornography. Neither is the film a deliberate political treatise like the art films of Bertolucci, Visconti, or Pasolini. Its biggest transgression is that it humanises one of its main characters, Max (Dirk Bogarde), a former Nazi officer with a penchant for sadism, when he finds his ‘little girl’ again in the postwar period; a former concentration camp inmate Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) with whom he undertook a sadistic affair while she was incarcerated. On reuniting it is clear that their loved never died, so they continue, even though they know it will eventually contribute to their downfall and consequent death. Love in this realm is desperately profane, disgusting, something that should never be. And because of this it remains infinitely fascinating and uniquely humanistic.

Related in spirit was Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972), using sex to express the death of love and male causality, its own furor when it hit American cinemas still continues to court controversy; and Luchino Visconti’s The Innocent (1976), based upon the novel by the decadent writer Gabriele D’Annunzio, expressing the same but in a totally antithetical environment of the aristocracy. Bertolluci’s The Conformist(1970) twisted the repressed homosexual of its title into a sadomasochistic fascist.

One could say, as did Gabriel Jenkinson, “the dynamics of conformity present in the modern consumerist capitalist system result in repression, which in turn manifests as violent sadomasochism — and …if one does not actively rebel against this system, one is complicit in its proliferation.”

Parenthetically on the other side of the earth, in Japan, In the Realm of the Senses (1976) by Nagisa Ôshima about a woman whose affair with her master leads to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship also came out of Oshima’s early involvement with the student protest movement in Kyoto in ‘68 and out of his concern with the contradictions and tensions of postwar Japanese society in which he exposed contemporary Japanese materialism, while also examining what it means to be Japanese in the face of rapid industrialization and Westernization.

In 2020 Vincent Canby might have revisited The Night Porter and seen it in a different light. His 2020 review of Visconti’s last film, L’innocente (The Innocent), completed in 1976 shortly before his death was “among the most beautiful and severely disciplined films he has ever made.” It was also brazenly sadistic and sexy to a point that today would be labeled pornographic, and today could not be conceived of, much less made, diving, as it does, into sex, abortion, male domination and violence.

According to The World, public radio’s longest-running daily global news program, a co-production of Prx and Wgbh, in 2012:

British scientists have finally confirmed what women worldwide have been suspecting for centuries. It’s not religious principles that start wars. It’s not even civilization’s thirst for oil. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s the penis.

According to a study published this week in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society publication, the male sex drive is the cause of most conflicts in the world, from soccer hooliganism to religious wars, not to mention family disputes over the toilet seat being left up.

According to this story in The Telegraph, the scientists call it the “male warrior instinct” and claim men are programmed to be aggressive toward outsiders. It apparently used to be a handy instinct, back when you had to kill other suitors in order to gain more access to mates, but nowadays, this only works in some countries and a few US cities. For the rest of us, this unreformed sex drive only means ever-increasing defense budgets.

The magnitude of this discovery is so great, it’s difficult to estimate the potential ramifications.

At only eight inches on average (or that’s what we have been told), it’s smaller in size than most other controversial discoveries, yet — just like the atom — it has catastrophic consequences if in the hands of the wrong people.

And so these filmmakers show us the pathological drive of the unleashed male libido.

But times are different in the 21st century. These films could never be approximated by our Tik Tok generation where porn has created a quick witty and essentially violent vibrato of sexuality. These films of the late ‘60s and ‘70s took the libido at its rawest and showed its drive as an expression of political evil in very different types of stories.

And it might be worth noting that of all these films, the most reviled was written and directed by a woman and in most of the films, it is, in fact, a woman who proves the stronger of the two sexes and disarms the man. What remains viscerally true to this day is that that missile shaped 8 inch organ needs to be beaten into a plowshare.

SexFascismMoviesItalyInternational Film...

Performer starred opposite Dirk Bogarde in Victim as well as playing the mother of Helen Mirren’s monarch in The Queen

Sylvia Syms, the versatile British actor who appeared in a string of films including Ice Cold in Alex, Expresso Bongo, The Tamarind Seed and The Queen, has died aged 89.

According to a statement given to Pa by her family, Syms “died peacefully” on Friday at Denville Hall, a care home in London for those in the entertainment industry. Her children, Beatie and Ben Edney, said: “Our mother, Sylvia, died peacefully this morning. She has lived an amazing life and gave us joy and laughter right up to the end. Just yesterday we were reminiscing together about all our adventures. She will be so very missed.”...

Sylvia Syms, the British actress whose body of work stretched back to the 1950s and included roles in Ice Cold in Alex, Victim and The Queen, has died. She was 89.

In a statement to Sky News, her family said she “died peacefully” on Jan. 27 at a London care home for those in the entertainment industry.

“She has lived an amazing life, and gave us joy and laughter right up to the end,” they said. “Just yesterday, we were reminiscing together about all our adventures. She will be so very missed.”

Born in London in 1934, Syms attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and became an almost instant star in her 20s, thanks to major roles in films such as WWII drama and 1958 Berlinale winner Ice Cold in Alex (alongside John Mills, Anthony Quayle and Harry Andrews), English Civil War drama The Moonraker and Expresso Bongo with Cliff Richard.

In 1961, she...

English actress Sylvia Syms has passed away in the UK aged 89, according to her family.

Syms was best known for roles in movies including Ice Cold Alex, Victim, The Tamarind Seed and Stephen Frears’ The Queen, in which she played The Queen Mother.

Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2023: Photo Gallery & Obituaries Related Story Gina Lollobrigida Dies: Italian Cinema Diva Was 95 Related Story Chris Ledesma Dies: 'The Simpsons' Longtime Music Editor Was 64

Syms passed away this morning at Denville Hall, a care home in London for those in the entertainment industry. In a statement shared with The Sun, Syms’ family said: “She has lived an amazing life and gave us joy and laughter right up to the end. Just yesterday we were reminiscing together about all our adventures. She will be so very missed.

“We would also like to take this opportunity to thank everyone at Denville Hall for...

The rereleases from Wendy Toye, one of only two female directors working in the 1950s UK film industry, include her feature debut and a Dirk Bogarde cameo

This pair of middling rereleases from Britain’s studio era are of significance because of who oversaw them: Wendy Toye, one of only two female directors working in the UK film industry in the 1950s. While her contemporary Muriel Box often chipped away at feminist issues in her films, these two features find Toye – also a child-prodigy dancer and prolific theatre and opera director – working firmly inside the commercial parameters of the period.

The Teckman Mystery (★★★☆☆), from 1954, is in the mould of the upper-class Hitchcockian runaround, starring John Justin as writer Philip Chance, who is commissioned to write a biography of a vanished airman called Martin Teckman. Toye whips up a brisk, intriguing pace in black and white as a series of sinister...

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Leslie Phillips, the British actor and Casanova of the Carry On movies who turned to serious supporting roles in Out of Africa and Empire of the Sun before voicing The Sorting Hat in the Harry Potter franchise, has died. He was 98.

Phillips died peacefully in his sleep on Monday, agent Jonathan Lloyd told the BBC on Tuesday.

With an eye for the ladies onscreen and off, the sophisticated Phillips appeared in more than 170 roles across screens big and small, portraying policemen, military officials, reverends and judges. But for audiences in the 1950s and ’60s, he was synonymous with the low-budget Carry On and Doctor series (he took over from Dirk Bogarde in the latter).

In the ’80s, he distanced himself from his playboy roles to lend gravitas to Sydney Pollack’s Oscar best picture winner Out of Africa (1985) and to Steven Spielberg’s...

Ava Gardner's career was a constant tug-of-war behind the scenes, and that was in large part due to her having to constantly maneuver around her home studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, aka MGM. In the golden age of Hollywood, the studio system wielded a ton of power, far more than the power imbalances we see with studios today. They shaped, sculpted, and launched the careers of many a favorite actor, director, screenwriter, etc. But there were strings attached that I'd liken to puppet strings. Bucking against those strings could get you cut.

In earlier roles, much criticism was directed towards Gardner for her supposed subpar acting abilities, abilities which MGM Studios failed to nurture in the young woman from the get-go. There was an emphasis on Gardner's image and, once roles in "Barefoot Contessa" and "The Killers" pigeonholed her in more seductive roles that emphasized her glamourous beauty, MGM really leaned into that image.

"Nocebo" is an equally psychological and physical horror movie. It's mind and body horror, both surreal and all too realistic. Director Lorcan Finnegan's film takes a horrific part of the world, which is best not to spoil, and turns it into a suitably nightmarish setting featuring stars Eva Green and Chai Fonacier. 

The home is another cage in Finnegan's new film. "Lorcan explored that a bit in "Vivarium,'" Green told us in a recent interview, referencing Finnegan's 2019 sci-fi mystery. "It was something like being the perfect house, but it's too perfect and you choke. There's something when everything is too perfect, it's not right."

Green is an actor who works with true independent spirits. The "Penny Dreadful" star has made some box office hits, like "Casino Royale," but she's also made several out-of-the-box films, such as "Franklyn," "Perfect Sense," and "The Salvation." With "Nocebo," Green stars in another...

Bing Crosby, David Hockney and Dame Margot Fonteyn are among the interviewees to have been discovered within old Desert Island Disc tapes.

As the interviews predated the BBC recording archives, the recordings had previously been lost, but now an audio collector has found them.

Richard Harrison from Lowestoft in Suffolk discovered the 90 lost tapes, telling the BBC that finding the missing archives was a “great feeling”.

Desert Island Discs is a BBC Radio 4 programme broadcast which is also now released in a podcast format. It has been airing since January 1942 when it was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme.

The 90 recordings feature interviews from the 1960s and 1970s and include a host of stars from actor Dirk Bogarde to actor and dancer Sophie Tucker.

Harrison is a member of the Radio Circle, a group who take a keen interest in discovering lost radio. Harrison collects old tapes from car...

To mark the release of newly restored The Who Dare on 5th September, we’ve been given 2 copies to give away on Blu-ray.

During the Second World War, Lieutenant Graham (Dirk Bogarde) is sent on a mission to destroy two German airfields on Rhodes that may threaten Egypt. Under his command, a group of six Special Boat Service, two Greek officers and two local guides are assembled.

The group is taken to Rhodes by submarine and comes ashore at night on a desolate beach. From there, the group has to traverse the mountains to reach its targets. At a pre-designated location, the party splits into two raiding parties. After having infiltrated the air bases, they blow up the aircraft, but two of the raiders are taken prisoner by the Italians. Hunted by the many enemy patrols, will the others evade capture and make it back to the submarine in time?...

Haven’t yet seen all the best old-school vintage naval combat epics? This color & ‘scope thriller has a terrific cast of Brit stars and up-n-comers, can boast excellent visuals and is historically accurate. Alec Guinness captains a ship during the Napoleonic Wars, and finds his duty complicated by a psychopathic top officer (Dirk Bogarde) who usurps authority and sees the crew as fresh meat for his sadistic ideas about discipline. All the tech and art credits are top-tier, plus we get nice supporting perfs from the likes of Anthony Quayle, Nigel Stock, Maurice Denham, Victor Maddern, Tom Bell, and Murray Melvin.

Damn the Defiant!

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 136

1962 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 101 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / H.M.S. Defiant / Available from Viavision / Australian 34.95 / and Amazon US / 34.95

Starring: Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Maurice Denham, Nigel Stock, Richard Carpenter, Peter Gill, David Robinson, Robin Stewart, Ray Brooks, Peter Greenspan, Anthony Quayle, Tom Bell,...

To mark the release of the newly restored The Gentle Gunman on 7th March, we’ve been given 3 copies to give away on Blu-ray.

At the height of World War II, Terry (John Mills) and his younger brother Matt (Dirk Bogarde) are undercover Ira foot-soldiers working in London. But while Matt is fully committed to the cause, Terry is now beginning to question their violent methods. When two fellow Ira members are arrested, the brothers are asked to break them out. Will Terry follow his orders, or will his misgivings put the two in harm’s way?

Please note: This competition is open to UK residents only

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The Small Print

Open to UK residents only The competition will close 10th March 2022 at 23.59 GMT The winner will be picked at random from entries received No cash alternative is available Please note prizes may be delayed due to Covid-19 To coincide with Gdpr regulations,...

Monica Vitti, the Italian screen icon known for a string of 1960s classics, died Wednesday at 90, according to reports in Italy.

The news was conveyed by writer, director and politician Walter Veltroni on behalf of Vitti’s husband, Roberto Russo:

Roberto Russo, il suo compagno di tutti questi anni, mi chiede di comunicare che Monica Vitti non c’è più. Lo faccio con dolore, affetto, rimpianto.

— walter veltroni (@VeltroniWalter) February 2, 2022

The feted actress, best known for movies including L’Avventura (1960), Red Desert (1964), L’Eclisse (1962) and La Notte (1961), had been battling Alzheimer’s disease for two decades.

Born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli on November 3, 1931, in Rome, Vitti acted in amateur productions as a teenager then trained at Rome’s National Academy of Dramatic Arts.

The actress shot to global fame following spectacular collaborations with legendary director Michelangelo Antonioni in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Vitti starred in L’Avventura as a detached and...

It’s the ‘other’ version of Dickens’ terrific novel, an English film that few Americans have seen. This Australian DVD is in the Pal format and from a rather outdated transfer, yet I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a favorite story enacted by a great batch of UK talent. Dirk Bogarde stars and the many character roles go to familiar faces: Cecil Parker, Athene Seyler, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass, Rosalie Crutchley, Freda Jackson, Christopher Lee, Leo McKern, Donald Pleasence, Eric Pohlmann, Danny Green and the lovely Marie Versini. It’s a regular actor-spotting quiz. Ralph Thomas directed and much of the film was shot in France … with excellent English diction.

A Tale of Two Cities

Region 2 Pal DVD

Viavision (Australia)

1958 / B&w / 1:33 adapted flat / 117 min. / Street Date January 5, 2022 / Available from Viavision / 19.95 au

Starring: Dirk Bogarde, Dorothy Tutin, Cecil Parker, Stephen Murray, Athene Seyler, Paul Guers, Marie Versini, Ian Bannen, Alfie Bass,...

Lovers of vintage English crime thrillers will have a lot to chew over with this pair of escapist gangster pix, one pre-war and one post-. In each an innocent young couple suffers a run-in with a criminal gang. John Mills and Richard Attenborough are the ‘fresh’ new talent on display. The leading lady of Dancing with Crime is Sheila Sim, playing opposite her husband Attenborough. The co-feature The Green Cockatoo sports credits for William Cameron Menzies and Miklós Rózsa.

Dancing with Crime + The Green Cockatoo

Blu-ray

Cohen Film Collection / Kino Lorber

1937 & 1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 82 + 64 min. / Street Date January 25, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Richard Attenborough, Sheila Sim, Barry Jones; John Mills, René Ray, Robert Newton.

Original Music: Benjamin Frankel, Miklós Rózsa

Directed by John Paddy Carstairs; William Cameron Menzies

The Blu-ray era has given home video devotees great opportunities to catch up with ‘exotic’ genre films from abroad. American TV...