Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

Vertigo

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Though admiring Vertigo’s pictorial splendour, I found Kim Novak gauche, the plot baloney and the whole enterprise lacking the maste...

June 4, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Ten Days' Wonder

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In their novel Ten Days’ Wonder, the cousins who write as Ellery Queen produced what they described as a ‘Decalogical Detective Stor...

June 4, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

Themroc

Contemporary reviews Michel Piccoli, red mane flowing and scruffy in his greasy vest, sits in a squalid kitchen making his 6 o’clock breakfast. Fury-like, his elderly mother shuffles in, points tet...

June 3, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

Only Angels Have Wings

Everyone drawn to action cinema is drawn to Howard Hawks. And those who love Hawks love Only Angels Have Wings (1939) in a particularly intense way. It is a virtual encyclopaedia of his gestures, ...

June 3, 2023 | RAZOR SHARP
THE FABULOUS WOMEN OF HOWARD HAWKS

La Grande Bouffe

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. If Marco Ferreri was among the greatest marginal Italian filmmakers, his marginality functioned on several levels. For one thing, hi...

June 3, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

La dolce vita

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In an age when few arthouse films cause riots or give rise to parliamentary debates, it’s difficult to envisage the sheer seismic fo...

June 3, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Bringing Up Baby

Bringing Up Baby is one of the greatest screwball comedies and a treasure from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Cary Grant plays a naive and repressed palaeosaurologist who becomes entangled with (and ...

June 3, 2023 | RAZOR SHARP
THE FABULOUS WOMEN OF HOWARD HAWKS

Boyz N the Hood

With so much of John Singleton’s film raging against the curtailing of life, it was painful to read of his sudden death, aged just 51. His first feature is still powerful and relevant as it follows...

June 3, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Ball of Fire

Snow White trades purity for one-liners and innuendo in this madcap comedic update. While hiding from the police, Sugarpuss O’Shea educates a group of stuffy professors on the ways of the world whi...

June 3, 2023 | RAZOR SHARP
THE FABULOUS WOMEN OF HOWARD HAWKS

Reality

On 3 June 2017, 25-year-old Reality Winner returns from running errands to find two FBI agents at her home in Augusta, Georgia. An Air Force veteran and yoga instructor, Winner spends the next two ...

June 2, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Le Mépris

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Though visually dazzling, Le Mépris is among the darkest and most serious of Godard’s early films – and one of his greatest. When Pa...

June 2, 2023 | RE-RELEASES

The Diary of a Chambermaid

Buñuel updates Octave Mirbeau’s 1890s story to a strangely timeless 1930s and the onset of Fascism, so that Célestine (Jeanne Moreau), newly employed at a rural mansion, fends off the attentions of...

June 2, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

The Big Lebowski

The success of Fargo put to rest a long-held myth about the Coen Brothers: that their films were strictly esoteric or enigmatic. This belief seems to be based partly on the way their earlier films ...

June 2, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Belle de Jour

Adapting Joseph Kessel’s novel about a married bourgeois Parisienne led by idle curiosity to work afternoons in a high-class brothel, Buñuel consistently gives only scant indication as to what is r...

June 2, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

Razor Sharp - The Hawksian Woman Revisited

We are pleased to announce that the BFI’s Hires and Sales Manager Jelena Milosavljevic, film critic Christina Newland and film journalist and Editor-at-Large for Empire magazine Helen O’Hara will...

June 1, 2023 | RAZOR SHARP
THE FABULOUS WOMEN OF HOWARD HAWKS

La Mort en ce jardin

When political unrest hits a South American diamond-mining community, a motley group make their escape, only to fall foul of the many dangers of the jungle, not least their own conflicting personal...

June 1, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

Chevalier

Set in 18th Century France, Chevalier unfolds the vivid, timely story of the soaring rise and defiant spirit of the musical phenomenon, Joseph Bologne, aka the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The Cheva...

June 1, 2023 | PREVIEW

The 400 Blows

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. One of the greatest films about childhood, Truffaut’s partly autobiographical first feature is also profoundly moving. Forever in tr...

June 1, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Three Colours - White

Kieślowski on ‘Three Colours: White’ Berlin: 15 February. White premieres in the festival, and turns out to be the trilogy’s scherzo: a black comedy about an unconsummated Polish-French marriage, ...

May 26, 2023 | THE THREE COLOURS TRILOGY

Three Colours - Red

Red closes the Three Colours trilogy – and Kieślowski’s career as a director – on a magisterial note of wish-fulfilment. Each of the film’s four main characters is a distinct centre of interest wit...

May 26, 2023 | THE THREE COLOURS TRILOGY

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