BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Desperately Seeking Susan

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Although Desperately Seeking Susan has been sold as a Madonna vehicle directed at the teenage market, its success in the US has been...

January 5, 2025 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Leopard

The casting of Burt Lancaster in the title role threatened to poison the production from the very beginning, since Goffredo Lombardo, head of the production company Titanus, had made the decision t...

January 4, 2025 | LUCHINO VISCONTI
DECADENCE AND DECAY

The Wizard of Oz

On 13 October 1938 Production No.1060 on the MGM’s Culver City lot went before the cameras. A full six months later than the moneymen wanted, the film had already notched up the kind of budget MGM ...

January 3, 2025 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

8 Mile

No performer since David Bowie in the 1970s has better exploited the actorly impulses at the heart of pop music than hip-hop star Eminem. Shuffling a deck of alter egos (alongside his stage name he...

January 3, 2025 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Scrooge

One of the best-known adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Christmas classic, Brian Desmond Hurst’s 1951 film stars Alastair Sim as the notorious curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge, visited by the ghosts of Ch...

December 21, 2024 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

It's a Wonderful Life

Frank Capra cleared his throat, and began. The war was over and he was anxious to make another movie. In early October 1945, he approached Lew Wasserman, James Stewart’s agent at MCA, telling him t...

December 20, 2024 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind

‘Kaufman’s script showcases a perfect balance between intelligent and resourceful storytelling.’ – Carolina, BFI Member We celebrate the 20th anniversary of director Michel Gondry and writer Charl...

December 19, 2024 | MEMBER PICKS

A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things

Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham – voiced here by Tilda Swinton – had an extraordinary creative passion. In his poetic documentary portrait, Mark Cousins explores her artistic practice, re...

December 18, 2024 | RELAXED SCREENING

Meet Me in St. Louis

The closer you look at most famous Hollywood productions, the harder it is to see how they turned out all right – let alone to believe that anyone was in charge. Just as on any set the crew trusts ...

December 15, 2024 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

GoodFellas

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. A contemporary review Scorsese’s return to the milieu of Mean Streets invites comparison less with that film than with Coppola’s The...

December 15, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Dresser

Richard Eyre on ‘The Dresser’ What made you want to get involved in this production of The Dresser ? I was approached by executive producer Colin Callender and asked if I would like to make a fil...

December 15, 2024 | RICHARD EYRE
WEAPONS OF UNDERSTANDING

The Shop around the Corner

Ernst Lubitsch grew up in Berlin as the son of the Russian Jewish émigré owner of a dressmaking company. He knew the world of shops and they feature often in his films. Perhaps witnessing the patte...

December 14, 2024 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

Notes on a Scandal

‘People have always trusted me with their secrets. But who do I trust with mine?’ (Barbara Covett, Notes on a Scandal) Two women caught up in a drama of need and betrayal are at the heart of this ...

December 14, 2024 | RICHARD EYRE
WEAPONS OF UNDERSTANDING

Eyes Wide Shut

Jan Harlan (executive producer): Stanley’s idea was to show a modern hell, a very abstract concept, a hell into which people enter out of boredom – money and wealth won’t do it any longer. Did he s...

December 14, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg enjoys a legendary place as an all-but-unique curiosity in French cinema – the film for which the epithet ‘bittersweet’ was invented, less a musical (though French examp...

December 13, 2024 | RE-RELEASES

Carol

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel, Haynes’ typically elegant yet acerbic movie charts the intense (yet hesitant and furtive) r...

December 12, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Monty Python’s Life of Brian

+ intro by Justin Johnson, BFI Lead Programmer (Wednesday 11 December) According to legend, the idea for Life of Brian stemmed from a throw-away remark by Eric Idle during an interview shortly aft...

December 11, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Apartment

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Wilder’s much-lauded classic is a film of contradictions: a romantic comedy about suicide and adultery, at once glaringly ‘Hollywoo...

December 10, 2024 | CHRISTMAS FILMS

Tangerine

It’s Christmas Eve and at a donut shop in Hollywood a couple of transgender sex workers meet up to discuss a problem one of them faces. Soon, questions of infidelity, the fine line between performa...

December 9, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Iris

+ extended intro by Sir Richard Eyre and Dame Judi Dench (8 December only) ‘Essentially, Iris is about forms of love and the way in which love changes and love endures,’ explains director Richard ...

December 8, 2024 | RICHARD EYRE
WEAPONS OF UNDERSTANDING