Programme Notes

BFI Southbank

All My Friends Hate Me

Just because you’re paranoid, Joseph Heller noted, doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. This is birthday boy Pete’s own Catch-22: invited by his old university crew to a country mansion celebration,...

June 10, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Une femme douce

Dostoevsky wrote A Gentle Creature in 1876 (five years before his death) and included it in his Writer’s Journal. He had heard of three suicides, young women who had died within a matter of months....

June 9, 2022 | OF SIN AND SALVATION
THE CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

Wot! No Art

Introduced by BFI National Archive Curator Steve Foxon Christopher Mason’s documentary presents a retrospective of the arts in the immediate post-war years (1945-51), when patronage for ‘public ar...

June 7, 2022 | ART IN THE MAKING

Thief

On paper, Michael Mann’s feature debut Thief is nothing groundbreaking, fit to be consigned to that vague category of ‘neo-noir’. Certainly the basic materials of the plot – the hood looking for a ...

June 7, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Style, Anti-style
and Influence
Robert Bresson Re-assessed

Good evening, and welcome to this event devised to serve as an introduction to our retrospective of the films of Robert Bresson (1933-1999). Though I am the programmer of the BFI Southbank season, ...

June 7, 2022 | OF SIN AND SALVATION
THE CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

Escape from Alcatraz

Who knows whether Don Siegel saw A Man Escaped, but this account of a prisoner’s quietly determined attempts to escape the renowned island penitentiary feels surprisingly Bressonian, partly due to ...

June 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Spirit of the Beehive

In rural Spain under Franco, a small girl watches James Whale’s Frankenstein shortly before encountering a fugitive soldier; the ideas growing in her lively mind stand in contrast to the listless b...

June 5, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

L'Argent

Where L’Herbier’s L’Argent began with the stock exchange, Bresson’s starts from the very opposite end of the financial spectrum: with a schoolboy who gets too little pocket money, whose father is t...

June 5, 2022 | OF SIN AND SALVATION
THE CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

A Man Escaped

The subject is simple. It comes from an escape story by a member of the French secret service called André Devigny. In 1943 he was arrested and interrogated by the Gestapo at Lyons. He made an atte...

June 4, 2022 | OF SIN AND SALVATION
THE CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

Au hasard Balthazar

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Contemporary reviews After the impurities and simplifications of Proces de Jeanne d’Arc, Au hasard Balthazar is a welcome return to ...

June 4, 2022 | OF SIN AND SALVATION
THE CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

The Wizard of Oz

What’s it about? Our Judy Garland season provides us with the perfect opportunity to travel with Dorothy, somewhere over the rainbow, from monochrome Kansas to the multi-coloured land of Oz. With t...

June 3, 2022 | BFI FAMILIES

Mouchette

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the film’s ending. After the manifold splendours of Balthazar, Mouchette seems an altogether thinner experience, exquisite but frail, as though Bresso...

June 3, 2022 | OF SIN AND SALVATION
THE CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

Meet Me in St. Louis

The closer you look at most famous Hollywood productions, the harder it is to see how they turned out all right – let alone to believe that anyone was in charge. Just as on any set the crew trusts ...

June 3, 2022 | JUDY GARLAND - A STAR IS REBORN

The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty

Sent off during a match in Vienna, a German goalkeeper (Arthur Brauss) leaves the stadium, wanders around the city, visits a cinema and ends up committing a wholly unexpected murder… Wenders – a Br...

June 3, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Les Dames
du Bois de Boulogne

Based on an anecdote in Denis Diderot’s novel Jacques le fataliste, this tale of sexual rivalry and revenge boasts glittering dialogue by Jean Cocteau and a magnificent performance by Maria Casarès...

June 3, 2022 | OF SIN AND SALVATION
THE CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

Les Anges du péché

Les Affaires publiques Please note: The film author asks you to excuse the fact that he agreed to cut certain scenes from this film. It was his first film. Three songs were judged to be too extrav...

June 3, 2022 | OF SIN AND SALVATION
THE CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

Ivan's Childhood

Tarkovsky’s first feature – about a Soviet teenager engaged in espionage missions on the German front during World War Two – is also one of his finest: visually impressive, emotionally direct, esch...

June 2, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Diary of a Country Priest

This portrait of an ailing young curate haunted by his perceived failures in saving human souls is something of a transitional work; the literary script (from a novel by Georges Bernanos) is played...

June 2, 2022 | OF SIN AND SALVATION
THE CINEMA OF ROBERT BRESSON

The Merchant of Four Seasons

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Fassbinder was influenced by a range of aesthetic practices, but this chronicle of the downward spiral of a would-be-engineer-turned...

June 1, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Judy Garland
20th Century Icon

Launching our Judy Garland season, this illustrated talk by season programmer Emma Smart – followed by a panel of guest experts – will take you through the films selected, exploring Garland’s extra...

June 1, 2022 | JUDY GARLAND - A STAR IS REBORN

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