Tag: film review site

Film, Film Music and Sound

Sounds of The Birds (1963) – Alfred Hitchcock.

Few directors have had their relationship with music analysed as much as Alfred Hitchcock.  His natural ability to select the right composer to almost brand his films aurally has often meant that the musical scores have become synonymous with his filmmaking style even though they have been created by several different composers over the years.  With this context then, Hitchcock’s 1963 film, The Birds, seems … Continue reading Sounds of The Birds (1963) – Alfred Hitchcock.

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Film

Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari (1920) – Masters of Cinema Restoration.

Shadows dance upon the walls of Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari (1920).  The world of shadows and light, edges and angles, the slanted and the macabre, all seem so much more at home in silent cinema as a whole; images that negate sound have a very natural ghostliness to their nature.  This is doubly so for a film that nigh on invented horror … Continue reading Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari (1920) – Masters of Cinema Restoration.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

A Musicological Study of Ken Russell’s Composer Films – Part 4 (The Music Lovers).

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Transitional Films and Symbolic Representations of Classical Composers. In spite of using the visual form as an excuse for experimentation with documentary and biography as seen in his films for the BBC, it wasn’t until the early 1970s where Russell really found material to properly experiment with.  The word experimental however must be contextualised as even the films discussed … Continue reading A Musicological Study of Ken Russell’s Composer Films – Part 4 (The Music Lovers).

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Film

The Unleashing of Repressed Eroticism in Black Narcissus (1947) and The Shining (1980).

The geographical make-up of a film’s scenario is often a subtle root-cause of its dramatic effect.  The sense of place, both its physical and psychological attributes, can be so overwhelming that whole narratives can follow the buckling of characters under pressure from this force; to the point where their own emotional identity and personal dynamics fluctuate, reflect, and occasionally attempt to rebel against an imposing … Continue reading The Unleashing of Repressed Eroticism in Black Narcissus (1947) and The Shining (1980).

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Film, Folk Horror

The Uncanny in Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922)- Benjamin Christensen.

In one of the first attempts I made at canonising the sub-genre of Folk Horror, I likened the majority of its films to be brilliant but mere fugues on the ideas presented in Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922).  Outside of Victor Sjöström’s The Phantom Carriage (1921), it was the earliest and most explicit form of the sub-genre that seemed to be surviving … Continue reading The Uncanny in Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922)- Benjamin Christensen.

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Film, Film Music and Sound

A Musicological Study of Ken Russell’s Composer Films – Part 3 (The Debussy Film).

Part 1. Part 2. The Dramatisation of History in The Debussy Film (1965). For a film relatively early on in Russell’s portrayals of classical composers, The Debussy Film is surprisingly knowing about the director’s position as story-teller in the relaying of history to the viewer.  The history of the French “impressionist” composer, Claude Debussy, is one of the more dramatic that Russell chooses to recreate … Continue reading A Musicological Study of Ken Russell’s Composer Films – Part 3 (The Debussy Film).

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Film, Film Music and Sound, Folk Horror

The Music of Folk Horror – Part 7 (Musical Anachronisms).

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Musical Anachronisms – Naturally and Overtly. “Let’s just say there aren’t many films set in the reign of William and Mary in which the devil rebuilds his body by harvesting the skin of children…” (Gatiss, 2010, BBC). To address the presence of musical anachronisms in films of all types is a tricky subject … Continue reading The Music of Folk Horror – Part 7 (Musical Anachronisms).

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Film

Norte, The End Of History – Lav Diaz (2013).

This review contains plot details. Dostoevsky is a brutal writer, wringing moral development out of human suffering and calamity perhaps like no other.  When approaching his film adaptations, there is a gulf between the filmmakers that get clogged down with obsessive period details (a problem that plagues adaptations of that other great humanistic Russian, Tolstoy) and the filmmakers that understand that it is the emotional … Continue reading Norte, The End Of History – Lav Diaz (2013).

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Film

Deception and False Uptopia in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, Alps).

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”  Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov. The above quote from Dostoevsky’s masterful work, The Brothers … Continue reading Deception and False Uptopia in the Films of Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, Alps).

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Film, Film Music and Sound, Television

A Musicological Study of Ken Russell’s Composer Films – Part 2 (Monitor and Bartok).

Part 1. BBC Monitor and the Use of Audio-Visual Form as Musicological Comment. The medium that Russell first gained traction in was not in fact film but in television documentaries.  The flop of his first feature film, French Dressing (1964), marks the advent of his daring creativity entering into his work as television director; a role he had begun at the BBC for their documentary … Continue reading A Musicological Study of Ken Russell’s Composer Films – Part 2 (Monitor and Bartok).

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