First a Girl
FIRST A GIRL: a British musical comedy with well-staged song and dance numbers, a properly comic script and a collection of fine performers orbiting around its talented and charismatic star, Jessie Matthews.
All posts by Stephen Watson
Atlantics (Atlantique)
Set in Senegal’s capital Dakar, this highly atmospheric Cannes prizewinner combines romance and social drama with an unconventional ghost story.
Docks of Hamburg
This dynamic crime story, full of brilliant cinematic effects, benefits from a beguiling performance from Jenny Jugo as the ‘Carmen of St Pauli’.
The Chambermaid
A detailed portrait of a hotel maid’s working life which should delight lovers of minimalist cinema.
The Light of Asia
The story of the young Prince Gautama, who turns his back on power and prestige for a life as a beggar and preacher and would later be known as the Buddha, is told with sincerity and spectacle.
System Crasher
A remarkable achievement, which, without overly sensationalising what is a bleak and often repetitive situation, manages to be continuously gripping and intense.
Domestique
This domestic drama-cum-horror film, both bleak and oblique, owes much of its power to the director’s attention to detail in every shot.
Miss Dalí
Towards the end of her life, Anna Maria Dalí ruminates on her relationship with her brother, the painter Salvador, from their beginnings in the northern Catalan city of Figueres, through his often scandalous career, to his sad decline and death in 1989. This is a curious enterprise, which retains most of the faults of a … Continue reading Miss Dalí
The Fall of the House of Usher; The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope
The main event at this performance, part of the Festival’s ‘Restorations and Rediscoveries’ strand, was Jean Epstein’s hour-long silent LA CHUTE DE LA MAISON USHER (THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER) from 1928. It was preceded by Jan Svankmajer’s THE PENDULUM, THE PIT AND HOPE (KYVADLO, JÁMA A NADEJE), a live action short with … Continue reading The Fall of the House of Usher; The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope
Shoes
At this year’s Cambridge Film Festival, the first session of a brief season of films by the pioneering American film-maker Lois Weber (1879–1939) comprised a ten-minute short, SUSPENSE, from 1913, and the 1916 ‘five-reeler’ SHOES (about an hour long). SUSPENSE adheres closely to a very well-known genre of the time: a wife (with baby, of … Continue reading Shoes