Classic Cinema Club

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Films for May and June

18th May The Story of Qiu Ju
1992 Directed by Zhang Yimou

A rare comedy from the director, this gentle satire on bureaucratic inefficiency provides a fascinating glimpse into the daily life of the Chinese. Hidden camera and non-actors playing themselves give the film an edge of reality. Despite this, the director’s trademark sweeping rural landscapes, deep colours and beautiful compositions are still in evidence. “One of the pleasures of the film is to see everyday China, which appears on screen unrehearsed and natural. Watching the film, we find the humor for ourselves, and along the way we absorb more information about the lives of ordinary people in everyday China than in any other film I've seen.” Roger Ebert

25 May The Lights of Ten Thousand Homes
1948 Shen Fu

The film is set in Shanghai after the Second Sino-Japanese War and interconnects the urban scene and life with the rural ones for a comparison which expands the film’s connotations, enlarges audiences’ vision, and reflects broader social outlook. The figures in the film are distinctive and well developed, and the film making style is plain, natural and subtle. The film's conflicts arise from oppositions including rural vs. urban, worker vs. management, and younger generation vs. older generation. The film is selected as one of the 100 best 20th-century Chinese films by Asia Weekly and the Hong Kong Film Academy.

 
June.... Four films by the influential director John Huston

1 June The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Starring Humphrey Bogar

Filmed mostly on location in Mexico, this is a gritty depiction of the cancerous effects of gold lust upon a man's soul, and an uncompromising look into the dark side of human nature. Among the favourite films of Stanley Kubrick, as well as Paul Thomas Anderson, who used it as inspiration when making There Will Be Blood.
Starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, while his son John won Best Director and Best Screenplay.

8 June The Asphalt Jungle (1950)
Starring Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe, Marilyn Monroe

The Asphalt Jungle is a study in crime, hard-hitting in its expose of the underworld. Ironic realism is striven for and achieved in the writing, production and direction. An audience will quite easily pull for the crooks in their execution of the million-dollar jewelry theft around which the plot is built.” Variety
"The robbery is among the best-staged heists in noir. The simple visual treatment, the precise movements of the actors, and the absence of music on the sound track raise the tension to a boiling point." David M. Meyer
Starring Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe, Marilyn Monroe.

15 June The Misfits (1961)
Starring Gable, Monroe, and Montgomery Clift

Written by Arthur Miller for Monroe, his wife at the time, and filmed in Nevada, this is an elegy for the death of the Old West, made notorious due to the problems which dogged the production, and the fates of its actors soon after its release, it remains haunted by the best performances of their careers.
Starring Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe in their final roles, along with Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach.

22 June The Night of the Iguana (1964)
Starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner & Deborah Kerr

A defrocked priest finds himself the centre of attention of several women in an atmosphere of sexual temptation and frustration set and filmed in sweltering Mexico.
"Huston and company put together a picture that excites the senses, persuades the mind, and even occasionally speaks to the spirit—one of the best movies ever made from a Tennessee Williams play.” Time
Starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, Sue Lyon

A Classic Ealing Comedy!

29 June Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Starring Alec Guiness

One of the superlative Ealing Comedies, this is a tale about a man who plots to kill every relative that stands between him and the family inheritance. At once a witty black comedy of manners, a grotesque serial-killer caper and an acerbic satire on the class system, with its delicate balancing act between bad taste and bad manners, the Ealing genre reached utter perfection.
Starring Dennis Price, Alec Guinness – as eight characters! – Valerie Hobson, Joan Greenwood, Hugh Griffith.

 

17th May 2012