BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean

The director of Nashville, A Wedding, The Perfect Couple is dead. Long live the director of 3 Women, Quintet – and Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Well, not exactly… In the st...

June 3, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

A Perfect Couple

Not uncharacteristically of Altman, A Perfect Couple grew out of the jetsam of his professional life: in this case, a desire to further explore Paul Dooley and Marta Heflin (who had played small pa...

June 1, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

Images

Altman on ‘Images’ Robert Altman was in London in February, cutting his new film, Images. To help audiences to stop thinking of him as the man who made MASH (and to forestall their indignation wh...

June 1, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

Mavis!

‘Mavis gets a little rough sometimes,’ Bob Dylan once said of the young Mavis Staples, according to the woman herself. He was referring to the unexpected grittiness in Staples’s singing voice, one...

May 31, 2021 | HER VOICE - BLACK WOMEN FROM THE SPOTLIGHT TO THE SCREEN

Broadcast News

With a pre-recorded introduction by director Sarah Smith (30 May only). Twenty-four years on, this witty, whip-smart rom-com following the fraught TV newsroom love triangle of Holly Hunter’s perky...

May 30, 2021 | DREAM PALACE - THE FILMS THAT CINEMAS WERE BUILT FOR

Brewster McCloud

Brewster McCloud registers as an honourable failure: a species of crazed doodling with all the awkward, endearing earmarks of a promising ‘first’ film, in which a director tries to do and say every...

May 30, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

That Cold Day in the Park

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Robert Altman had been working as a director for close to 20 years before he had a big hit with MASH (1970), and he followed that co...

May 29, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

The James Dean Story

After an inauspicious first feature (The Delinquents, which Altman preferred not to be screened), he co-directed this rather poetic documentary portrait of the life and character of the star and cu...

May 29, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

Man Hunt

Adapted – somewhat loosely – by Dudley Nichols from Geoffrey Household’s Rogue Mail, Fritz Lang’s thriller, set on the eve of WWII, centres on a big-game hunter (Pidgeon) arrested by the Gestapo af...

May 28, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

First Cow

There have been many genteel scenes in westerns in the past but none so winningly genteel as the whole of First Cow. Kelly Reichardt and Jonathan Raymond’s screenplay is based on Raymond’s novel Th...

May 28, 2021 | NEW RELEASES & RE-RELEASES

The Gleaners and I

With a pre-recorded introduction by director Zhu Shengze. Agnès Varda describes her latest film, The Gleaners and I, as a ‘wandering road documentary’. While it covers some of the same ground as V...

May 27, 2021 | DREAM PALACE - THE FILMS THAT CINEMAS WERE BUILT FOR

Goodbye, Dragon Inn

Introduced by director Peter Strickland (26 May screening only). Tsai Ming-liang on dream palaces and ‘Goodbye, Dragon Inn’ Taiwan Movie theatres are like temples. You will always meet a true god...

May 26, 2021 | DREAM PALACE - THE FILMS THAT CINEMAS WERE BUILT FOR

Alice in the Cities

Wim Wenders’ first road movie contrives a situation whereby an emotionally detached photojournalist ends up chaperoning a precocious nine-year-old girl from New York to their native Germany via Ams...

May 26, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

3 Women

3 Women literally came from a dream. It didn’t come from a dream in the way that I dreamed this, what I dreamed was that I was making this film. Or was going to. Catherine, my wife, had gone in to ...

May 26, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

Syndromes and a Century

With a pre-recorded introduction by director Chaitanya Tamhane. Considering the challenges it poses, Syndromes and a Century is an exceptionally easy and pleasurable watch. Apichatpong Weerasethak...

May 24, 2021 | DREAM PALACE - THE FILMS THAT CINEMAS WERE BUILT FOR

Robert Altman, Outsider and Innovator - An Illustrated Online Talk

How strange it is to be writing this programme note! In the past, the talks I gave for BFI seasons were in the NFT cinemas, delivered to an audience sitting in the auditorium from behind a lectern ...

May 24, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

Magnificent Obsession + Fear Eats the Soul

Introduction by Heather Stewart, BFI Creative Director (Sunday 23 May only). SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Both John M. Stahl’s 1935 version and Douglas Sirk’s l...

May 23, 2021 | DREAM PALACE - THE FILMS THAT CINEMAS WERE BUILT FOR

The Long Goodbye

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Leigh Brackett was one of the few women to publish science fiction in the pulp magazine era, albeit under a gender-neutral byline. ...

May 23, 2021 | ROBERT ALTMAN - AMERICAN OUTSIDER

The Big City

Based on a short story by Narendranath Mitra, The Big City tells a relatable story about fear and courage, with a loveable protagonist offering a female point-of-view on issues such as money, labou...

May 23, 2021 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Beau Travail

With a pre-recorded introduction by director Kirsten Johnson. SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Directed by Claire Denis, and scripted by Denis and her regular writi...