Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

His Girl Friday

Howard Hawks describes the origins of His Girl Friday in one of his favourite and most consistent anecdotes: ‘I was going to prove to somebody one night that The Front Page had the finest modern di...

June 14, 2023 | RAZOR SHARP
THE FABULOUS WOMEN OF HOWARD HAWKS

Une chambre en ville

Jacques Demy’s new film, Une chambre en ville, is one of his oldest projects. In 1953-54, just out of film school, he began to write a novel set in his home town of Nantes, a tragic love story agai...

June 14, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

Cléo from 5 to 7

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. When was this immaculate feature film, Agnès Varda’s essay on time and space, love and death, ever not on our minds? Arriving with ...

June 12, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Black Mirror - Beyond the Sea

+ Q&A with writer/creator Charlie Brooker, actor Josh Hartnett, executive producer Jessica Rhoades and director John Crowley. Writer/Creator Charlie Brooker on ‘Beyond the Sea’ Tell us about ...

June 12, 2023 | TV PREVIEW

War Pony

Two stories interweave in this coming-of-age drama set on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. In one, charming young father Bill acquires a poodle in his latest money-making scheme, while t...

June 7, 2023 | PREVIEW

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. S...

June 7, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Third Man

Introduced by journalist and programmer Leigh Singer (Wednesday 21 June only). SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. It is hard now to credit that there was a time when ...

June 6, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Passion

If Passion is about anything, it is about light. It’s about light in the pedantically literal sense that, for example, Gandhi is about Gandhi – here, you might say, is a film about that shaft of li...

June 6, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

Beyond Good and Evil - The Discreet Charm of Michel Piccoli

Due to unforeseen circumstances, Dr Catherine Wheatley is unable to join us for this event. Geoff Andrew will be now joined on stage by film writer and writer-director-producer David Thompson. Goo...

June 5, 2023 | MICHEL PICCOLI
A FEARLESS TALENT

Bicycle Thieves

A contemporary review Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, like Rossellini’s Paisa, came to London with a fabulous reputation to live up to, and, in a way, to live down. To Paisa, a film made in a s...

June 5, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

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

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

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