BFI Southbank Programme Notes

The Last Metro

A contemporary review It is not surprising that The Last Metro has proved François Truffaut’s most popular film to date both in France and the United States. It boasts two of France’s most popular ...

January 8, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Casque d'or

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Unsurprisingly, Truffaut revered Jacques Becker, a former assistant to Renoir who made films of a similarly fluent lyricism and emot...

January 7, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Boiling Point

At one of the hottest spots in London, during one of the busiest nights of the Christmas season, head chef Andy (Stephen Graham) is under pressure: he is running late, his restaurant is overbooked,...

January 7, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Letter from an Unknown Woman

Truffaut greatly admired Ophuls and called this ‘an incredibly beautiful adaptation’ of Stefan Zweig’s story about a concert pianist (Jourdan) who receives a letter relating how the author develope...

January 6, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

BUG Special - David Bowie

Welcome to a very special edition of BUG. We’re here to celebrate the life and work of David Bowie – giant of popular music, creative powerhouse, artistic and cultural pioneer, in sound and visi...

January 6, 2022 | EVENTS

After Life
Season 3

+ discussion with Ricky Gervais, Penelope Wilton and Diane Morgan After Life, the critically acclaimed comedy-drama created by and starring Ricky Gervais returns for its final series with six new ...

January 6, 2022 | TV PREVIEWS

Touching the Void

Kevin Macdonald’s gripping documentary Touching the Void tells the story of an extraordinary escape from seemingly inevitable death. At its centre is mountaineer Joe Simpson, who at the age of 25 i...

January 5, 2022 | TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

Love on the Run

A man in his early thirties, that day finally divorced, takes his son to the station to send him off on a school camping holiday. In order to carry out this assignment he has had to give up a date ...

January 5, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Basquiat

Artist Julian Schnabel’s directorial debut is a star-studded biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, a gifted and prolific painter and street artist who died at the age of 27 after an exceptional rise thr...

January 5, 2022 | BOWIE
STARMAN AND THE SILVER SCREEN

Twin Peaks
Fire Walk with Me

Originally met with universal derision, almost 30 years on Fire Walk with Me has had an exceptional reversal of fortune: the feature-length follow-up to the hit TV series is now heralded as a maste...

January 4, 2022 | BOWIE
STARMAN AND THE SILVER SCREEN

Querelle

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Querelle is the 42nd and last ﬁlm by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died aged 37, only two months after it wrapped. The movie sums up...

January 4, 2022 | HOOKED TO THE SILVER SCREEN
BOWIE AT THE MOVIES

Les Enfants terribles

Melville was something of a hero to the Nouvelle vague – Godard cast him in Breathless – and Truffaut, like many, admired this adaptation of Cocteau’s novel for its fidelity, the serenity and stren...

January 4, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

The Great White Silence

The race to the South Pole in 1910 is one of those great national stories – we all know how Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his companions met their tragic end after being beaten to the Pole by the...

January 3, 2022 | TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

L'Enfant sauvage

When Jean-Pierre Léaud turned his accusatory glance on the world in that last frozen frame of Quatre Cents Coups, he was asking the question Truffaut keeps returning to in his films. When innocence...

January 3, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

A Clockwork Orange

In the week that A Clockwork Orange first lurched into UK cinemas in January 1972, the song dominating the top of the charts was The New Seekers’ ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’, an ode to mu...

January 3, 2022 | HOOKED TO THE SILVER SCREEN
BOWIE AT THE MOVIES

12 Angry Men

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away the plot. Adapted by Reginald Rose from his own teleplay – in which one man’s doubts about a murder trial overcome his fellow-jurors’ prejudices – Sid...

January 3, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

Day for Night

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. In the preface to his book Les Films de ma vie Truffaut wrote: ‘When I was 20 I reproached André Bazin for considering films like m...

January 2, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

Christiane F.

Christiane F., Kai Hermann’s biography of a teen junkie and sex worker, caused a scandal on publication. As a recovering cocaine addict and father, Bowie was shocked at witnessing teenagers getting...

January 2, 2022 | BOWIE
STARMAN AND THE SILVER SCREEN

West Side Story

After completing his film The Post, Spielberg felt the moment was right to embark on West Side Story. Although it was still very much in the planning stage, the director’s vision was cohering: a fr...

January 1, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Titane

In Titane we meet Alexia (Agathe Rousselle), a showgirl who performs ferociously sexual dances at a motor show and who has a strange, erotic connection with cars following a traffic accident in her...