BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Killers

Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner star in Robert Siodmak’s gritty and muscular film noir. Told entirely in flashback, a life insurance investigator pieces together the tragic story of ‘the Swede’ (Bur...

September 9, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Good Morning

Devoted to both the profound necessity and the sublime silliness of gratuitous social interchange, Good Morning (Ohayo) is a rather subtler and grander work than might appear at first. Commonly ref...

September 9, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

A Story of Floating Weeds

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The main character in A Story of Floating Weeds, Kihachi Ichikawa, is an echo of the protagonist of Passing Fancy, though he is neit...

September 8, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

The Only Son

A widow makes sacrifices to ensure her son gets an education. Years later, when she visits him, she is surprised by how his life has turned out and how little he has told her of it. The son in turn...

September 8, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

Ace in the Hole

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Billy Wilder was often called cynical but compared to Ace in the Hole the rest of his output is a mush-pot of human kindness. Possib...

September 8, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Tokyo Twilight

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. Tokyo Twilight (1957) is still one of Ozu’s most moving films, and perhaps the blackest and most desolate in tone. It concerns a fa...

September 7, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

Past Lives

This outstanding first feature by Celine Song is a beautiful, deeply romantic modern love story that embraces destiny, nostalgia and the immigrant experience. Na Young’s family emigrated from Seoul...

September 7, 2023 | NEW RELEASES

Face

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Face never pulls its punches about the social forces behind self-serving attitudes. Yet it also never allows its strongly left-wing ...

September 7, 2023 | ACTING HARD
WORKING CLASS MASCULINITY IN BRITISH CINEMA

The Wind Will Carry Us

Abbas Kiarostami has said recently that he’s no longer interested in filming in interiors with artificial light. In The Wind Will Carry Us his devotion to landscape as cinematic spectacle seems, at...

September 6, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Harmonium

Director’s Statement This film is linked to one of my previous films, Hospitalité, which came out in 2010. They’re like two sides of the same coin. Initially, Hospitalité was only supposed to be a...

September 6, 2023 | KOJI FUKADA

Gregory's Girl

+ intro by Douglas Weir, BFI’s Content Remastering Lead ‘Gregory’s Girl’: a contemporary review Bill Forsyth’s second film, Gregory’s Girl, is set in and around a pleasant comprehensive school in ...

September 6, 2023 | EVENTS

Bullet Boy

Contains strong violence. SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. The young man whose aspirations to leave a criminal milieu are fatally trumped by his obligations to a wa...

September 6, 2023 | ACTING HARD
WORKING CLASS MASCULINITY IN BRITISH CINEMA

The Lost Sorrows of
Jean Eustache

As our retrospective of Jean Eustache’s work begins, join us for the screening of The Lost Sorrows of Jean Eustache, followed by a conversation about Eustache and his cinema. An extremely personal ...

September 5, 2023 | LOVE, PAIN AND CINEMA
THE FILMS OF JEAN EUSTACHE

I Was Born, But...

Only 36 of Ozu’s 54 films survive to this day. He made the bulk of the lost titles, including his debut and only period drama, The Sword of Penitence (1927), during the silent era. His early ‘nonse...

September 4, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

Hidden

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. At a formal level, Michael Haneke’s Hidden contemplates one of the fundamental questions of filmmaking: where to put the camera. Wat...

September 4, 2023 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Au revoir l'été

Kōji Fukada on ‘Au revoir l’été’ The export release title might conjure up a Rohmeresque world of holiday-time ennui, but the light, bright, summery images in Kōji Fukada’s third feature, Au revoi...

September 4, 2023 | KOJI FUKADA

Tokyo-Ga

Spiritually and chronologically located somewhere between America and Europe, begun before Wenders had completed Paris, Texas (1984), Tokyo-Ga (1983-85) can be seen as an important port of call in ...

September 3, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

Magnolia

Messy is probably the best word to describe Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, a grandiosely sprawling, audaciously earnest concoction that yearns to find meaning and connection among an overextended...

September 3, 2023 | MEMBER PICKS

Make Way for Tomorrow

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. You could come to the films of Leo McCarey by a variety of routes. Silent-comedy fans may know him as the man who teamed Laurel and...

September 2, 2023 | A FAMILY AFFAIR
THE FILMS OF YASUJIRO OZU

I Flunked, But...

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. I Flunked, But… As the obverse of I Graduated, But…, told from the standpoint of one who escapes unemployment, I Flunked, But… defle...