BFI Southbank Programme Notes

Sunset Blvd.

Gloria Swanson on ‘Sunset Blvd.’ When we started Sunset Blvd. we had only 26 pages of script. [Screenwriter Charles] Brackett and Wilder were determined I should do it. I didn’t want to. Because in...

January 8, 2024 | SENIORS

Stroszek

Herzog’s second film with lead actor Bruno S. (following The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser) was written specifically as a vehicle for the unusual performer’s rough-edged naivety. Having reneged on a prom...

January 8, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

California Split

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In the remarkable unbroken panning shot at the beginning of Thieves like Us – with the convicts glimpsed at the start of its parabol...

January 8, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Oh, Mr Porter!

This British comedy was a vehicle for the talents of Will Hay, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt, who had first performed together in Windbag The Sailor (1936) in which Hay played an inept sea capt...

January 7, 2024 | MEMBER PICKS

Fitzcarraldo

We seem to have been here before. The very name Fitzcarraldo, corrupted from Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald because the Peruvian Indians had difficulty with the pronunciation, might have been invented ex...

January 7, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Thundercrack!

A great many Londoners of a certain age remember Curt McDowell’s notorious art/trash/porn crossover with genuine fondness. Made in 1975, it became a monthly staple at the legendary Scala Cinema in ...

January 6, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

Sunrise
A Song of Two Humans

When F.W. Murnau left Germany for America in 1926, did cinema foresee what was coming? Did it sense that change was around the corner – that now was the time to fill up on fantasy, delirium and spe...

January 6, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Secret of Kells

Housed in the Library at Trinity College Dublin since 1661, the ninth-century manuscript the Book of Kells, in which monks intricately illustrated the four Gospels, is held to be one of Ireland’s g...

January 6, 2024 | CARTOON SALOON AT 25

Aguirre, Wrath of God

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. All Werner Herzog’s fictions evince a fascination with the mechanisms of human madness – especially those engendered by the will to ...

January 6, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

SCALA!!!

Fasten your seatbelts for the return of the homegrown hit of this year’s LFF, featuring John Waters along with John Akomfrah, Adam Buxton, Caroline Catz, Matt Johnson, Isaac Julien, Beeban Kidron, ...

January 5, 2024 | NEW RELEASES

The Evil Dead

Sam Raimi on ‘The Evil Dead’ Before I made the first Evil Dead, I had never read an EC comic or H.P. Lovecraft. Although there are very similar themes, especially with Lovecraft: the ‘something dar...

January 5, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

Land of Silence and Darkness

The screening on Wednesday 17 January will include a + BSL intro by deaf filmmaker Sam Arnold. Following this screening there will be an opportunity for deaf networking. In an article devoted to L...

January 4, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

The Lady from Shanghai

The older I get, the more convinced I am of Orson Welles’s genius. That may not sound particularly worthy of comment, but I should explain that I’ve always believed he was one of those rare beings ...

January 4, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Heart of Glass

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In Werner Herzog the conquistadorial spirit lives again. He sets out to discover new worlds in the manner of a Renaissance explorer ...

January 4, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Taxi zum Klo

Taxi zum Klo is a largely autobiographical venture, with Frank Ripploh and his former lover Bernd Broaderup reproducing their real-life situation. After a 1978 article in Stern in which he openly a...

January 3, 2024 | SCALA
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL CINEMA

Psycho

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. This much imitated but never bettered mix of suspense, horror, mystery and black comedy famously begins with a woman suddenly decid...

January 3, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Even Dwarfs Started Small

Jean Cocteau said often that he valued highest those films that were documentaries of unreal events; Werner Herzog’s second feature Even Dwarfs Started Small extends the principle to its logical co...

January 2, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Charulata

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Two hands, a man’s and a woman’s, reach tentatively out to each other. But just before they meet, the frame freezes. Reconciliation...

January 2, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Signs of Life

Herzog’s highly atmospheric first feature centres on three German soldiers posted, towards the end of WW2, far from military action at a munitions base on the Greek island of Kos. Eventually inerti...

January 1, 2024 | JOURNEY INTO THE UNKNOWN
THE FILMS OF WERNER HERZOG

Shoot the Pianist

Based on David Goodis’ novel Down There, François Truffaut’s second feature is a breezy New Wave concoction of genre pastiche, playful stylistic tricks and romantic reverie. Aznavour is charismatic...

January 1, 2024 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS