BFI Southbank Programme Notes

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...

January 1, 2022 | NEW RELEASES

Stolen Kisses

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Those who don’t care for Truffaut’s films usually complain that there are no really horrible people in them. It’s possible that Truf...

January 1, 2022 | FRANÇOIS TRUFFAUT
FOR THE LOVE OF FILMS

The Prestige

Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman play rival master magicians on the late-19th-century stage, each competing to outdo the other both professionally and in their private lives. Director Christopher No...

January 1, 2022 | BOWIE
STARMAN AND THE SILVER SCREEN

La Grande illusion

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Truffaut considered Renoir the world’s greatest filmmaker and wrote that this classic – about WWI prisoners of war – dealt with ‘wag...

January 1, 2022 | BIG SCREEN CLASSICS

2001 - A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick’s cosmic sci-fi masterpiece was cited by Bowie as the inspiration for ‘Space Oddity’, his first hit. Opening with the dawn of man before voyaging to the limits of the known universe...

January 1, 2022 | HOOKED TO THE SILVER SCREEN
BOWIE AT THE MOVIES

The Shout

Jeremy Thomas on ‘The Shout’ I came back to England via a short stay in America, and a friend called Michael Austin, who has since written screenplays for Fred Zinnemann and the script of Greystok...

December 30, 2021 | TERROR VISION

Shall We Dance?

Despite having a wife, a daughter and a successful career, Shohei Sugiyama (Yakusho) is depressed. But the sight of a beautiful woman through a window inspires him to embrace a new hobby: ballroom ...

December 21, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Fire Festival

SPOILER WARNING The following notes give away some of the plot. Mitsuo Yanagimachi is the foremost independent director of his generation in Japan, coming midway between the last of the industry-t...

December 20, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

Memento Mori

This was Jack Clayton’s last film, his first comedy, and his most critically acclaimed work since his sensational 1959 feature-film debut, Room at the Top. That same year, Muriel Spark had publishe...

December 19, 2021 | A CLASS OF HIS OWN
THE FILMS OF JACK CLAYTON

Moving

Moving talks about present-day problems in Japan. The story takes place in the town of Kyoto, a town where the richness of traditional language and a certain way of thinking in relation to human em...

December 18, 2021 | JAPAN 2021
100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On

It is tempting to annex The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On to Shohei Imamura’s filmography. Imamura suggested the project in the first place, and effected Kazuo Hara’s introduction to Kenzo Okuzak...