The Long Day Closes (1992)

Essential Viewing

UK

Feature Film
Writer/Director: Terence Davies
Cinematographer: Michael Coulter
Composers: Bob Last, Robert Lockhart
Cast: Leigh McCormack, Marjorie Yates, Anthony Watson, Nicholas Lamont, Ayse Owens, Tina Malone, Jimmy Wilde

Davies‘s stunningly photographed, heartbreakingly performed, and achingly beautiful autobiographical film, an impressionistic look at the life of a quiet, 11-year-old Liverpudlian, contrasting the glamour of Hollywood cinema with the bleak, grey world of 1950s Liverpool, is nothing less than a masterpiece. Iain.Stott

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Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

Highly Recommended

USA
Feature Film
Director: Max Ophüls
Writers: Howard Koch, Stefan Zweig
Cinematographer: Frank Planer
Composer: Daniele Amfitheatrof
Cast: Joan Fontaine, Louis Jourdan, Mady Christians, Marcel Journet, Art Smith, Carol Yorke, Howard Freeman, John Good, Leo B. Pessin

Fontaine, transforming from ugly duckling to beautiful swan before our eyes, is quite outstanding in this excellent adaptation of Zweig’s oft filmed novel, a tragic tale of unrequited love in turn-of-the-century Vienna, and one of the finest films of Ophüls’s career. Iain.Stott

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Duel (1971)

Recommended

USA

Television Film
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writer: Richard Matheson
Cinematographer: Jack A. Marta
Composer: Billy Goldenberg
Cast: Dennis Weaver

This intense, suspenseful, and expertly constructed television film from a young Spielberg – a cat-and-mouse chase thriller, following a man on a business trip as he is hounded mercilessly by a homicidal truck driver – easily manages to hold the attention despite being essentially a one-man play with very little in the way of dialogue. Iain.Stott

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The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

Highly Recommended

USA
Feature Film
Director: John Huston
Writers: John Huston, Ben Maddow, W.R. Burnett
Cinematographer: Harold Rosson
Composer: Miklos Rozsa
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen, James Whitmore, Sam Jaffe, John McIntire, Marc Lawrence, Barry Kelley, Anthony Caruso, Teresa Celli, Marilyn Monroe, Helene Stanley

The Asphalt Jungle is one of Hollywood's greatest crime films – an unflinching, systematic, and thoroughly credible examination of the preparation, execution, and aftermath of a botched heist, filled with the concerns, foibles, weaknesses, and sentimental notions of its criminals, whom here are refreshingly depicted without judgement. Iain.Stott

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The Wild Child (1970)

Recommended

France

Feature Film
Original Title: L'enfant sauvage
Director: François Truffaut
Writers: Jean Gruault, François Truffaut, Jean Itard
Cinematographer: Néstor Almendros
Cast: Jean-Pierre Cargol, François Truffaut, Françoise Seigner, Jean Dasté, Annie Miller, Claude Miller, Paul Villé

Truffaut’s delightful film, depicting Doctor Jean Itard’s attempts to civilise Victor the Wild Child of Aveyron, a feral boy found living alone in the woods in the south of France, is a delicate, respectful, and despite Truffaut’s (occasionally) slightly wooden performance, thoroughly compelling and acutely interesting account of a true story. Iain.Stott

For a longer piece, see here.

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Bigger Than Life (1956)

Highly Recommended

USA

Feature Film
Director: Nicholas Ray
Writers: Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum, Berton Roueché
Cinematographer: Joe MacDonald
Composer: David Raksin
Cast: James Mason, Barbara Rush, Christopher Olsen, Walter Matthau, Robert Simon, Roland Winters

Ray’s quite-unlike-anything-else allegorical melodrama, depicting a meek schoolteacher’s descent into psychosis after he become addicted to a new wonder drug, is a disturbing, frightening, brilliantly acted, and strikingly shot satirical, expressionist minor masterpiece. Iain.Stott

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I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Recommended

USA
Feature Film
Director: Jacques Tourneur
Writers: Curt Siodmak, Ardel Wray, Inez Wallace
Cinematographer: J. Roy Hunt
Composer: Roy Webb
Cast: James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway, Edith Barrett, James Bell, Christine Gordon, Theresa Harris, Darby Jones

Tourneur’s atmospheric horror film, a Caribbean set tale of love, hate, and voodoo, brought to life by Hunt’s outstanding chiaroscuro cinematography, is a creepy yet restrained work, which transcends its cheap, generic, B-movie roots. Iain.Stott

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The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

Recommended

UK

Feature Film
Directors: Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan
Writers: Miles Malleson, Lajos Biro
Cinematographer: Georges Périnal
Composer: Miklos Rozsa
Cast: John Justin, Sabu, Conrad Veidt, June Duprez, Rex Ingram, Miles Malleson, Morton Selten

The Thief of Bagdad is an epic adventure, replete with magic carpets, giant flying genies, and nefarious kings, which manages, despite some rather dated and hokey special effects, to bring out one’s inner child by suspending disbelief and capturing the imagination with some good, well-paced, and fantastical storytelling. Iain.Stott

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La Notte (1961)

Recommended

Italy/France
Feature Film
Original Title: La notte
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
Writers: Michelangelo Antonioni, Ennio Flaiano, Tonino Guerra
Cinematographer: Gianni Di Venanzo
Composer: Giorgio Gaslini
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Jeanne Moreau, Monica Vitti, Bernhard Wicki, Vincenzo Corbella

Antonioni’s exquisitely idiosyncratic and rather melancholy mise en scène, along with a pair of wonderful performances from Moreau and the never-lovelier Vitti, ensure that this examination of the listlessness and directionlessness of members of the ennui-ridden upper class is vital if not exactly cheery viewing material. Iain.Stott

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They Were Expendable (1945)

Best Avoided

USA
Feature Film
Director: John Ford
Writers: Frank Wead, William L. White
Cinematographer: Joseph H. August
Composer: Herbert Stothart
Cast: Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, Donna Reed, Jack Holt, Ward Bond, Marshall Thompson, Paul Langton, Leon Ames, Arthur Walsh

Ford’s insultingly noble war film is a well made but rather incredible tale, which manages to capture only the smallest traces of human nature, depicting a war in which lives are taken and lost without pain, grief, guilt, or fear; his is a morally certain world in which killing foreigners is only bettered by dying for one’s country – flag-wavingly depressing. Iain.Stott

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A Matter of Life and Death (1946)

Essential Viewing

UK

Feature Film
Writer/Directors: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger
Cinematography: Jack Cardiff
Composer: Allan Gray
Cast: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Roger Livesey, Marius Goring, Raymond Massey, Abraham Sofaer, Richard Attenborough

David Niven’s Second World War pilot literally cheats death and, as a result, a grand heavenly trial is organised to decide upon his fate. in Powell and Pressburger’s bewitching classic, a beautifully acted, visually ravishing fantasy, which only gets better with age. Iain.Stott

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A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Highly Recommended

UK/USA
Feature Film
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Writers: Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Burgess
Cinematographer: John Alcott
Cast: Malcolm McDowell, Michael Bates, Adrienne Corri, Patrick Magee, Warren Clarke, Carl Duering, Michael Gover

With McDowell’s extraordinary performance, Kubrick’s marvellous adaptation of Burgess’s cult novel, a snapshot of a violent, dystopian Britain, proves to be a brilliant and sensual nightmare, which manages to ask important questions about the place of state, society, and freewill in the process of maintaining law and order. Iain.Stott

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42nd Street (1933)

Highly Recommended

USA
Feature Film
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Writers: Rian James, James Seymour, Bradford Ropes
Choreographer: Busby Berkeley
Cinematographer: Sol Polito
Composers: Al Dubin, Harry Warren
Cast: Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent, Ruby Keeler, Guy Kibbee, Una Merkel, Ginger Rogers

Toe-tappingly wonderful musical numbers, vibrantly gorgeous choreography, and stunningly imaginative mise en scène combine with several cracking comic performances to form a thoroughly entertaining backstage musical, which somehow manages to negate some rather hackneyed plotting. Iain.Stott

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8½ (1963)

Highly Recommended

Italy/France
Feature Film
Director: Federico Fellini
Writers: Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli, Brunello Rondi
Cinematographer: Gianni Di Venanzo
Composer: Nino Rota
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale, Anouk Aimée, Sandra Milo, Rossella Falk, Barbara Steele, Madeleine Lebeau, Caterina Boratto, Eddra Gale, Guido Alberti

There are moments (but certainly not too many) when Fellini’s personal meditation on the autobiographical nature of the artistic process borders on overindulgence and ostentation, but for the most part, this beautifully shot and delightfully scored film is a moving, insightful, and humorous exploration of the art of film-making. Iain.Stott

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Notorious (1946)

Highly Recommended

USA
Feature Film
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writers: Ben Hecht, John Taintor Foote
Cinematographer: Ted Tetzlaff
Composer: Roy Webb
Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Leopoldine Konstantin, Reinhold Schünzel, Moroni Olsen

Nuanced and moving performances from Grant and Bergman combine to form the heart of Hitchcock’s tense and sexy film, a wartime thriller with Bergman’s disgraced-daughter-of-a-convicted-Nazi-spy spying, at the behest of the Americans, on her father’s old friends in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Iain.Stott

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The Trial (1962)

Highly Recommended

France/West Germany/Italy

Feature Film
Original Title: Le procès
Director: Orson Welles
Writers: Orson Welles, Franz Kafka
Cinematographer: Edmond Richard
Composer: Jean Ledrut
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Elsa Martinelli, Suzanne Flon, Akim Tamiroff, Madeleine Robinson, Arnoldo Foà

Welles’s allegorical minor masterpiece, an adaptation of Kafka’s acclaimed novel, following a man accused of an unnamed crime as he strives to prove his innocence, is a beautifully photographed and nightmarish vision of the futility of one man’s attempts to achieve freedom in the shadow of the ruling class’s needs and wants. Iain.Stott

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The Woman Next Door (1981)

Not Recommended

France
Feature Film
Original Title: La femme d'à côté
Director: François Truffaut
Writers: François Truffaut, Jean Aurel, Suzanne Schiffman
Cinematographer: William Lubtchansky
Composer: Georges Delerue
Cast: Gérard Depardieu, Fanny Ardant, Véronique Silver, Henri Garcin, Michèle Baumgartner, Roger Van Hool

Typically fine performances form Depardieu and Ardant raise Truffaut’s mildly diverting drama, an exploration of the effects of secrets, lies, infidelity, and obsession on bourgeois domesticity, above its undercooked and never-quite-credible screenplay, but by the time its tragic denouement arrives, it all feels rather silly. Iain.Stott

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The Threepenny Opera (1931)

Not Recommended

Germany
Feature Film
Original Title: Die 3 Groschen-Oper
Director: G.W. Pabst
Writers: Brecht, Balazs, Lania, Vajda
Cinematographer: F.A. Wagner
Composer: Kurt Weill
Cast: Rudolf Forster, Carola Neher, Reinhold Schünzel, Fritz Rasp, Valeska Gert, Lotte Lenya, Wladimir Sokolow

Pabst’s stuttering version of Brecht’s updating of The Beggar’s Opera, depicting the aftermath of the marriage between Mack the Knife and Polly Peachum, daughter of the King of the beggars in early twentieth century London, is a visually stunning work that is unfortunately fatally let down by some rather stilted dialogue and a general lack of credibility. Iain.Stott

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Un Chant d'Amour (1950)

Highly Recommended

France

Short Film
Original Title: Un chant d'amour
Writer/Director: Jean Genet
Cinematography: Jean Cocteau
Cast: Java, Coco Le Martiniquais, Lucien Sénémaud

What on paper must have read like gay porn – a prison guard watches and fantasises about the masturbatory and sexual habits of prison inmates – is, with Cocteau’s peerless cinematography and Simon Fisher Turner’s sexy 2004 score, an intimate, sensual, and stunningly beautiful short film. Iain.Stott

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Wagon Master (1950)

Recommended

USA
Feature Film
Director: John Ford
Writers: Patrick Ford, Frank Nugent
Cinematographer: Bert Glennon
Composer: Richard Hageman
Cast: Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr., Joanne Dru, Ward Bond, Charles Kemper, Alan Mowbray, Jane Darwell, Ruth Clifford

Ford’s relaxed, episodic western, following an eclectically peopled wagon train through the harsh desert in search of a better life, is a beautifully drawn, frequently surprising, and effortlessly entertaining portrait of those on the outskirts of society. Iain.Stott

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