Category: Directors

Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)

Herzog’s visionary epic remains one of the most impactful, haunting films in history

Director: Werner Herzog

Cast: Klaus Kinski (Don Lupe de Aguirre), Cecilia Rivera (Flores de Aguirre), Ruy Guerra (Don Pedro de Ursua), Helena Rojo (Inés de Atienza), Del Negro (Brother Gaspar de Carvajal), Peter Berling (Don Fernando de Guzman), Daniel Ades (Perucho), Armando Polanah (Armando), Edward Roland (Okello)

I first saw Aguirre, Wrath of God when I was young, a late night BBC2 showing. I’d never seen anything like it – and, to be honest, I’m not sure I have since. But then I am not sure anyone has. Aguirre was Herzog’s calling card and its haunting bizarreness, unsettling intensity and its mixture of extremity and simplicity is echoed in almost everything the eccentric German has made since. It seeps inside you and is almost impossible to forget, offering unparallelled oddness and lingering new nightmares every time.

It’s based on a heavily fictionalised piece of history, a rambling, possibly invented (and certainly over-elaborated) event: the mutiny of Don Lupe de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) during the Conquistador campaign in the Amazonian remains of the Incan Empire. Pizarro has led an overburdened expedition into the depths of the rainforest searching for the untold (and fictional) riches of El Dorado. Don Pedro du Ursua (Ray Guerra) is sent with a party to explore down the river, with Aguirre as second-in-command. Further disaster occurs, as Aguirre launches a coup, installs puppet ‘emperor’ Don Guzman (Peter Berling), decides to seize El Dorado for himself and descends into a megalomaniacal madness, dreaming of building grandiose castles in the sky and toppling the Spanish monarchy.

Herzog filmed this fever dream of exhausted, starving and lost characters (and, indeed actors!) struggling to tell truth from mirage. The stunning visuals and locations are matched with the immediacy of water-splashed, mud-splatted lenses capturing the action. Aguirre is one of the most immersive films ever made, not least because as we watch cannons being dragged through rainforest, actors trudge down the side of mountains in the rain or cling to barely submerged rafts through rapids, we seem to sharing the experience of people doing all this for real.

Aguirre is book-ended by two of the most haunting shots in cinema history. Herzog’s opening flourish pans down the side of a mountain – one side of the shot showing the mountain, the other the mist – its disconcerting orientation (it’s easy to think you are seeing a birds-eye view, until you spot the actors climbing down the narrow path) made even more unsettling by the electronic mysticism of Popol Vuh’s music. This shot’s beauty and subtle terror is topped only by the final shots, of Aguirre prowling alone on a ruined raft surrounded by the dead and a ‘wilderness’ of monkeys (bringing to mind Shakespeare vision of a land not worth the cost in love). Between these bookends unfolds a film that will long live in the memory.

Aguirre is about obsession and madness but also failure. It’s so steeped in failure and hubris, it practically starts there. What else are we to think as we watch the conquistadors flog through the forest, dressed in hideously unsuitable clothes (armour for the men, dresses for the ladies), dragging cannons, relics and luckless horses behind chained Incan slaves? From the moment Pizarro calls a halt, it’s clear the search has failed. What the rest of the film demonstrates is how this failure only grows under the burden of relentless greed and vaulting ambition.

Greed powers everyone down this river: greed for the El Dorado’s gold and the power it might bring. It’s leads men to follow Aguirre’s mutiny and sustains them as their journey becomes ever more wild-eyed. No one is exempt: certainly not the Church, represented by hypocritical yes-man Brother Gaspar (Del Negro) who responds to mutiny by muttering that, regretfully, the Church must be ‘on the side of the strong’ – but doesn’t let that regret get in the way of serving as prosecutor, judge and jury in a kangaroo court for Don Ursua or happily stabbing to death an indigenous fisherman (who he gives the last rites) for blasphemy after the poor man confusedly drops a Bible on the floor.

But Aguirre’s hungers seems purely for power, with gold almost an after-thought. He’s far different from the mission’s newly elected ‘Emperor’, bloated glutton Guzman, who veers between stuffing his mouth with the limited rations or passing ludicrously high-handed regal pronouncements. Aguirre wants something more: complete and utter willpower over his surroundings. He doesn’t need to be commander for this: knowing he holds the power is enough, the ability to control life and death for his men.

Much of Aguirre’s magnetic, horrifying dread comes from the qualities in the man who plays him. Kinski’s performance is strikingly terrifying, his stiff-framed walk (based on Aguirre’s real-life limp) as judderingly disturbing as the retina-burning glare of his stare, the bubbles of incipient madness and the relentless determination to do anything (from blowing up a raft of his own men to beheading a potential mutineer) that will keep his will predominant. Aguirre’s perverse desire for control extends to an unhealthy interest in his daughter (something very unsettling today, with our knowledge of Kinski’s own appalling actions) and curls himself into the frame like a hungry tiger waiting to pounce, unleashing himself for demonic rants to cement his power and ambitious plans.

As with so many Herzog films, the longer the journey, the more fraught it becomes with perils, greed and madness. The film invites us to watch an expedition that started teetering on the edge of sanity, topple into violence, death and despair. Perhaps that’s why Ursua is spared, to join us in watching in stubborn, appalled silence the rafts drift aimlessly down river, men picked off one-by-one by unseen forces while their minds slowly fracture. Herzog uses the mute Ursua as a horrified surrogate for us, his blank incomprehension mirroring our shock at how far men can slump.

The worst elements of many of them emerge. The monk who preaches the word while complacently doing nothing and dreaming of a golden cross. Guzman’s obese Emperor, guzzling food while his desperate men starve. Aguirre’s psychopathic sidekick Perucho, who whistles casually when taking on Aguirre’s dirty work. Others collapse into shocked stupor: Aguirre’s daughter, who can’t seem to process what’s happening around her; Ursua’s lover Ines (Helena Rojo) whose hopes to reverse the mutiny tip into suicidal defiance and the stunned, tragic, imprisoned Incan prince re-named Raphael, forced to witness the self-destruction of men who looted his country and are never satisfied.

Aguirre’s Conrad-istic vision reeks of colonial criticism. As these arrogant ‘civilised’ men, charge downriver into madness and death, they remain convinced they can control the environment around them. The people of the Amazon to them are savages or slaves in waiting, any gold they find theirs by right. Aguirre himself is like some nightmare collection of every single rapacious European ruler who wanted to tear a chunk off a map and claim it as his own: even in failure and death, he still sees no reason to stop, only to press on, claiming more land, wealth and power. It’s this terrible truth that give Aguirre such continued power and relevance.

Herzog’s film builds beautifully to inevitable destruction, but it matters not a jot to Aguirre, content with his complete control over a raft of dead men. Herzog films it unfold in a haunting mixture of static shots, carefully framed compositions inspired by Spanish paintings (including a bizarrely formal coronation shot of Guzman), accompanied by a chilling silence or the unsettlingly eerie sounds of Vuh’s music or the pipes of an Incan bearer. Aguirre, perhaps more than any other film, exposes the horrific hubris of empire building, the pride and greed that lies behind it and the piles of unsettling bodies (guilty and innocent) left in its wake.

It’s a film that deserves to be famous for more than just the crazed stories of its making. The clashes between Kinski – an impossible, wicked, man but a celluloid-burning presence – and Herzog are legendary (it was the film where Herzog threatened to shoot the ferocious star and then himself if Kinski followed through on walking out mid-shoot). But just as stunning is the film’s haunting, lyrical mysticism and the fierceness of its savagery. It can have a vision of a ship in the heights of the trees and a head that finishes its countdown separated from its body. It can leave you so deeply unsettled, so hauntingly present that it will stick with you as it has stuck with me for over twenty years, giving new remarkable visions every time I re-watch it.

Hamnet (2025)

A powerful film about grief that works best in its smaller moments rather than its grand ending

Director: Chloé Zhao

Cast: Jessie Buckley (Agnes Shakespeare), Paul Mescal (Will Shakespeare), Emily Watson (Mary Shakespeare), Joe Alwyn (Bartholomew Hathaway), Jacopi Jupe (Hamnet Shakespeare), Olivia Lynes (Judith Shakespeare), Justine Mitchell (Joan Shakespeare), David Wilmot (John Shakespeare), Bodhi Rae Breathnach (Susanna Shakespeare), Noah Jupe (Hamlet)

“Grief fills the room up with my absent child”. It’s possibly one of the most profound things said about grief and loss. Naturally, it came from Shakespeare who, more than any other writer, could peer inside our souls and understand their inner workings. Grief can strike anyone, and overwhelm them, leaving them hollowed out husks, uncertain how to carry on. It’s a terrifying force that grows to dominate Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s literary best seller: how it creeps, unexpectantly, into lives that are contented and happy and works to tear down their foundations.

Hamnet imagines the emotional impact of the death of a young boy on his parents: those parents in this case being Will (Paul Mescal) and Agnes (Jessie Buckley) Shakespeare. The film takes us from courtship to marriage, Agnes pushing Will to follow his dreams in London, the birth of their children and death’s seizure of their son Hamnet (Jacopi Jupe). It will have a deep impact on their lives: for Agnes a world of grief and isolation, for Will a cathartic injection of his grief into his new play, Hamlet.

There are many things in Hamnet that work extremely well, not least it’s strong emotional force. Much of the film’s second half is extremely moving, a lot of that from the gentle build of its first half. Grief isn’t an expectant force – it bursts, unannounced into lives. The first half of Hamnet is romantic and optimistic. Will and Agnes’ courtship, two awkward outsiders in a small, rural town, is touchingly portrayed, full of awkward gestures and flashes of joy. Their marriage – over the objections of many, but with the endearing support of Agnes devoted brother, played with real heart by Joe Alwyn – is very happy and they have delightful children who they love very much.

There are tensions: it’s tough to live under the roof of Will’s parents. His father John (David Wilmot) is an abusive bully, his mother Mary (Emily Watson, on excellent empathetic form under a harsh exterior) judgemental. Will is desperate for something more than being a second-rate glove-maker. It’s actually sweet that Hamnet interprets their living apart not due to marital troubles, but a recognition that their love doesn’t need constant contact. Will’s need of London’s bustle is balanced by Agnes’ desire for nature and (ironically) to protect her children from the disease-ridden big city.

It’s the first hour’s playful, graceful unfolding that makes much of the second half hit home. Zhao’s film has an ethereal romanticism, with the camera gliding with patient, unobtrusive warmth around Agnes and Will. While dealing with raw emotions, Zhao brings a sense of magical realism to the film without overplaying her hand. A large part of Agnes outsider status is based on perceptions of her as a witch, who spends her time in the forest building her herbal knowledge (Zhao introduces her with a phenomenal birds-eye shot, nestled womb-like in the roots of a large tree), trusts her dreams and has formed a deep link with a pet hawk. This other-worldly presence in Agnes, carries across in the film’s vibrant, dreamy nature – and shows why Agnes is so drawn to the shy, awkward poet, who similarly feels most alive in his own visions and dreams.

It makes the second half particularly impactful, as the truly shocking death of a child (surely one of the most traumatic child deaths put on screen, devoid of peaceful, Little Nell-like beauty and with Hamnet suffering in prolonged, agonising pain) rips into the happy haven of this life. Zhao’s compassionate distance works brilliantly here, as the film brings us into the pained lives of these bereaved parents, without every once making us feel like intruding voyeurs. Instead, we feel every blow of the film’s perfectly observed exploration of the mundane reality of grief.

A lot of that is also due to Jessie Buckley’s searing performance as Agnes. Buckley is perfect as this slightly jagged, eccentric but determined women who knows her own mind and refuses to bend to others, full of an earthy romanticism. Her vulnerability is there – there is a very moving moment during her twin’s birth, when Buckley rests her head on Watson’s shoulder and weeps pitifully for her (deceased) mummy. But it doesn’t prepare us for Buckley’s perfectly judged raw emotionality. From an agonised, near silent scream at Hamnet’s death, Buckley shifts brilliantly into a shocked quiet whisper that she must tidy up the mess. Over the next few scenes, she collapses into herself, berating her husband with cold fury, wanting him to feel as paralysed with grief as she is. This is a fabulous performance by Buckley, well-matched by Mescal, whose pained soulfulness is perfect for a man processing grief through drama.

But I found the transition of this grief into the creation of Hamlet strangely less moving and more contrived. I’ve always found the attempts to use Shakespeare’s work to fill historical gaps in his biography tiresome. Hamnet studiously ignores that the role was played first by the middle-aged Richard Burbage, rather than a young actor – Noah Jupe, brother to Jacobi playing Hamnet – resembling the late Hamnet. Hamnet carefully re-cuts and selectively stages scenes of Hamlet to present it solely as the tragedy of a lost, sensitive soul. Lord knows what the emotionally enthralled Agnes made of the parts of Hamlet the film doesn’t stage: Polonius’ murder, the abuse of Ophelia, Hamlet making “country matter” gags and so on. Fundamentally it’s a lazy conceit that art can only come by replicating someone’s real experience and is presented in an obvious way designed to score straight-forward emotional points.

Hamnet gets so much right, it hurts that it doesn’t always work. There is an emotional anachronism to the central concept that didn’t land with me: was Hamlet just an inspired, cathartic therapy session for Shakespeare (unlikely since he ripped the plot from an older Danish legend called Amleth)? It lifts me out of things, just as the production and costumes frequently feels a little too clean, a little heritage (even more so considering the raw emotions). Moments of dialogue don’t quite ring true and little things like Shakespeare’s swimming ability (a skill possessed by virtually no one in Tudor England) or its coy dance around confirming Agnes’ historical illiteracy that jar. I’ll also confess I’m irritated by the film’s carrying across of the books conceit in avoiding naming Shakespeare for as long as possible (for almost 100 minutes), while making it clear from quotes throughout exactly who Mescal is playing.

But of course, I know, it’s an emotional fantasia, so perhaps it doesn’t matter that it feels like something shot on a National Trust property. When Zhao’s poetic, observational realism works, it carries real impact. There is a moment at the film’s end when a mirrored overhead shot with the film’s opening, and a look of such radiant hope crosses Buckley’s face, you forgive the manipulative and obvious musical choice accompanying it. Hamnet works best, not in its final showboating act, but in the raw, quiet, everyday moments that show both happiness and grief it gets close to an emotional force that leaves a lasting impact.

Senso (1954)

Visconti’s grand tale of romantic obsession is an engrossing film to lose yourself in

Director: Luchino Visconti

Cast: Alida Valli (Livia Serpieri), Farley Granger (Franz Mahler), Massimo Girotti (Roberto Ussoni), Heinz Moog (Court Serpieri), Rina Morelli (Laura), Christian Marquand (Bohemian official), Sergio Fantoni (Luca)

It probably felt like a real shock when Visconti made a sharp turn from neorealism into luscious costume drama. But, in a way, isn’t it all the same thing? After all, if you wanted to get every detail of a peasant’s shack just so, wouldn’t you feel exactly the same about the Risorgimento grand palaces? So, it shouldn’t feel a surprise that Visconti moved into such stylistic triumphs as Senso – or that an accomplished Opera director made a film of such heightened, melodramatic emotion as this. Chuck in Senso’s political engagement with the radicals fighting for Italian independence, and you’ve got a film that’s really a logical continuation of Ossessione.

Set in 1866, the rumblings of unification roll around the streets of Venice – the city still under the control of the Austrian empire, despite the city’s Garabaldi-inspired radicals. In this heated environment, Countess Livia Serpieri (Alida Valli), cousin of radical Roberto (Massimo Girotti) finds herself falling into a deep love (or lust?) for imperiously selfish Austrian officer Franz Mahler (Farley Granger). It’s an emotion that will lead her to betray everything she believes she holds most dear and lead to catastrophe.

It’s fitting Senso opens at a grand recreation of La Traviata at the Venetian Opera. Not only was Visconti an accomplished director of the genre, but as Senso winds its way towards its bleakly melodramatic ending, it resembles more and more a grand costume-drama opera, with our heroine as a tragic opera diva left despairing and alone, screaming an aria of tormented grief on Verona’s streets. You’ll understand her pain after the parade of shabby, two-faced treatment the hopelessly devoted Livia receives at the hands of rake’s-rake Franz, a guy who allows little flashes of honesty where he’ll confess his bounder-ness between taking every chance he can get.

What Senso does very well is make this tragic-tinged romance so gorgeously compelling, that you almost don’t notice how cleverly it parallels the political plotlines Visconti has introduced into the source material. Because Franz’s greedy exploiting of Livia for all the money he can get out of her, the callous way he’ll leave her in dire straits or the appallingly complacent teenage rage where he shows up and inserts himself into her country palace (with her husband only a few rooms away) is exactly like how Austria is treating the Italians, stripping out their options, helping themselves to what they like and imposing themselves in their homes.

Livia’s besotted fascination with Franz kicks off at the same opera where the Garabaldi inspired revolutionaries disrupt events by chucking gallons of red, white and green paper down from the Gods onto the Austrian hoi-polloi. And their destructive relationship will play out against an outburst of armed revolutionary fervour, both of them stumbling towards a dark night of death and oppression in the occupied streets of Verona. Livia’s obsession will damage not only herself, but these same revolutionaries who be left high-and-dry when Livia prioritises Franz’s well-being over the revolution’s survival, by funnelling the gold she’s concealed for the purchase of arms into Franz’s wastrel pockets.

But it’s impossible to not feel immensely sorry for Livia, because her desperation and self-delusion is so abundantly clear. Alida Valli is wonderful as this woman who only realises how lonely she is when she finds someone who can provide the erotic fire her detached, self-obsessed husband never has. It’s a brilliantly exposed performance: Valli actually seems to become older as time goes on, as if collapsing into the role of wealthy sugar-mummy to an uncaring toy boy.

Before she knows it, she will be wailing that she doesn’t care who knows of her feelings, before dashing across town to where she believes Franz is staying (it turns out instead to her revolutionary cousin, her husband assuming her feelings are revolutionary sympathies not infidelity). She knows – God she clearly knows! – Franz is not worth the love she is desperately piling onto him, but her need for him is so intense, that we can see in her eyes how desperate she is to persuade herself otherwise. Valli sells the increasingly raw emotion as she can no longer close her eyes to Franz’s selfishness and cruelty and her final moments of raging against the dying of her light are riveting.

Opposite her, Farley Granger (dubbed) may not have enjoyed the experience (he refused to come back and film his final scene, which was shot instead with a partially concealed extra) but his selfish youth and cold-eyed blankness is perfect for a man who cares only for himself. There are parts of him that need to be mothered, and he’s not above throwing himself on her covered in gratitude. Sometimes he’ll advise her he’s not worth it, or sulk like a petulant kid if he feels he isn’t getting enough attention. But he’ll always come back for more wealth.

His shallow greed is appalling. His eyes light up when Livia gives him a locket with a lock of her hair in it. Sure enough, she’ll find that hair discarded in his apartment when she searches him, the locket sold. His fellow soldiers know all about his roving, careless eye – he’s “hard to pin down” one knowingly says, so clearly indicating Franz’s lothario roaming that it’s hard not to feel desperately sad for Livia. The vast risks she takes for him, he’ll chuck away on the next shiny thing (or woman) to catch his eye. But he can also be charming or vulnerable – or at least fake these qualities – so well that Livia continues to persuade herself he is someone she can ‘save’ from his flaws.

It leads to disaster for all, a personal tragedy swarming and soaking up thousands of others. Her revolutionary cousin Roberto will be collateral damage, Visconti capturing this in two exquisitely staged battle sequences (one utilising a stunning near 360 camera turn to take in the catastrophic after-effects of a failed advance by the revolutionaries). This is the grand destruction that wraps around the Operatic failed romance at the height of Senso: it’s a sign that the all-consuming lust that consumes its lead has reached out and crushed almost everything around it.

It makes sense then that the luscious colour and gorgeous design of Visconti’s film comes to its conclusion in dreary streets, nighttime confrontations and a final mood that feels nihilistic and destructive. Senso is a wonderful exploration not only of the senseless destruction of romantic obsession, but also of the wider damage where this negative energy shatters a host of high-flown, optimistic political ideals leaving only ruins and disaster behind. Visconti’s masterful balancing of all of this makes Senso a shining example of both gorgeous film-making and a wonderful mix of compassion and the high-blown. A wonderfully engrossing film to soak in.

Sentimental Value (2025)

A autuer director tries to bond with his daughters in this heartfelt drama of family dynamics

Director: Joachim Trier

Cast: Renate Reinsve (Nora Borg), Stellan Skarsgård (Gustav Borg), Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (Agnes Borg Pettersen), Elle Fanning (Rachel Kemp), Anders Danielsen Lie (Jakob), Jesper Christensen (Michael), Lena Endre (Ingrid Berger), Cory Michael Smith (Sam), Catherine Cohen (Nicky), Andreas Stoltenberg Granerud (Even Pettersen), Øyvind Hesjedal Loven (Erik), Lars Väringer (Peter)

Famed auteur director Gustav Borg (Stellan Skarsgård) has seen his career quietly stall in the past fifteen years. He frequently failed as a father to his two daughters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) now a leading classical actor and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) a married academic researcher with her own son, who she and Nora give a care and attention they never received from Gustav. However, Gustav has an olive branch for Nora – a semi-autobiographical film about his mother that he wrote for Nora. When she rejects him, he secures funding with Hollywood star Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning) and remains a presence in their lives as he plans to shoot the film in their family home.

Trier’s compelling portrait of a family confronting their feelings, explores the bonds that tie families together and if they go deeper than just sentiment. Superbly directed, it masterfully explores the confused, awkward tensions between children and their father and is blessed with three superb performances from Reinsve, Lilleaas and Skarsgård that genuinely feel like a family unit. With a naturalness in their comfort with each other, all three give a master class in micro-reactions (and aggressions) that show the raw nerves a father can touch with his clumsy attempts to connect with his daughters.

The connection between Reinsve and Lilleaas is so intensely moving, it’s hard not to believe they aren’t sisters. These two extraordinary actors share scenes of sisterly love that are heartfelt in their simplicity. Just as their pained, struggling to hold back tears when expressing their feelings carries a huge impact. Beneath all the snapped words, both daughters have a genuine need to love and be loved by their father, someone they clearly don’t always like but who they also need – and, in a strange way, understand.

Reinsve (absolutely brilliant) shows Nora hiding her emotions but collapsing into herself when distraught. She’s reduced to shocked hostility when re-encountering her father, who she blames for her struggle to form emotional bonds with others. Reinsve is compelling as this fragile, empathetic person who has buttoned herself into a protective shell: she has a beautiful moment after opening her heart to a fellow married actor she is having an affair with, only for her to recoil with pain when he politely rejects her. Nora invests so much of her feelings in her acting, that it leaves her with crippling stage-fight before performances (a brilliantly staged scene sees her demand to be practically man-handled on stage mid-stage fright, which anyone whose acted can sympathise with). The more we learn about her pained background, the more Reinsve invests this character with a deeply affecting sadness just under the surface, making us more and more aware of her vulnerability.

She’s equally matched by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas as Agnes, who feels she must provide the emotional glue to hold this strange family together. She has built the warm, protective home for her family which the others are drawn to (both Nora and Gustav are devoted to her young son Erik), but Lilleaas shows Agne has worked to re-channel her feelings. Having once played the child-lead in one of Borg’s films, she painfully tells him it was the best summer of her life as it was the only one where she had her father’s full attention. It’s a generous, subtle and deeply affecting performance, of emotional bravery as we discover the depths of her love and loyalty to her sister.

Skarsgård, meanwhile, gives one of the finest performances of his career as the egotistical but regretful Borg, whose pain at his growing artistic and familial irrelevance is clear. He’s full of charm and warmth, but also ruthlessness: he forms close bonds with those he’s working with, but moves on the second the project completes. It’s an attitude he has extended to his family, which he wishes to change, but lacks the emotional intelligence to do so, as the charm he uses for the festival circuit fails to land with his family. He’s a man who can only express his true feelings in the language of film, through art rather than his own words. It’s a superb performance.

Sentimental Value is frequently shrewd and funny about filmmaking. Borg is facing the dying of the light, making his film for Netflix and looking intensely pained when its suggested it may never be screened in a cinema. There is a brilliant joke where he gifts Erik a hideously inappropriate collection of DVDs (including The Piano Teacher and Irreversible) made even funny when Agnes says they don’t even own a DVD player. If there is one way Borg does differ from Bergman (his clear inspiration), it’s his boredom with theatre: he has never seen Nora act, clumsily assumes she is playing Orphelia in her next show (she’s actually playing Hamlet) and tells her (one of Norway’s leading stage actors) that appearing in his film could be ‘a big break’.

But in the film world, Borg is clearly a master: calm, patient and able to inspire with enthralling descriptions of proposed shots, able to tease out beautiful work from actors. No wonder Rachel Kemp wants to work with him. Elle Fanning is excellent in a nuanced, intelligent performance as a gifted Hollywood starlet who begins to instinctively feel she is wrong for the lead in a European auteur-epic blatantly written for someone else. Fanning has an extraordinary scene, where she gives a reading of a key monologue from Borg’s film: her talent is immediately clear, but her skilled emotional reading is also completely out-of-tune for the mannered, imagery-dense text. Fanning makes this character empathetic, respectful, earnest and a true artiste, Trier inverting our expectations of any pop at Hollywood self-obsession.

A beautifully played chamber piece, it’s not just the Bergman-inspired career of Borg (his proposed film is pure Bergman stylistic homage) that makes Sentimental Value feel like it has a little touch of the master. Trier brings his camera to focus intensely on his actors, to let their emotions fill the screen and play in front of us. He even indulges a Persona style flourish where their three faces merge and combine with each other, under-lining the essential bonds that tie them together.

In a classic Bergman-style metaphor, the film is framed around ancestral family-home which literally has a flaw crack running through it. The film opens with Nora recounting a school essay she wrote imagining her house responding to events filling it – a mix of her childhood play and ferocious parental arguments. Sentimental Value subtly layers in roots of adopted trauma, with memories of Gustav’s mother (an imprisoned and tortured resistance fighter) who committed suicide when he was a young boy, which deepen the emotional complexities and fraught baggage every character carries.

What’s also beautiful about Sentimental Value is that it always feels true. There are not artificial moments of actorly grand-standing leading to emotional breakthroughs, but quiet (and even more moving) moments of genuine truth and honesty. Trier isn’t afraid to make the film funny, but also brilliantly shows that there is a lot more than just sentiment drawing families together, with a revelation that while Borg may never be able to express it the way his daughters want, he understands and loves them in ways no-one else can. It’s a beautiful, masterfully made, deeply thought-provoking and emotionally mature work that continues to mark Trier (and his actors) as major talents.

Roman Holiday (1953)

Gorgeously light romantic comedy that invented and mastered a whole genre

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Gregory Peck (Joe Bradley), Audrey Hepburn (Princess Ann), Eddie Albert (Irving Radovich), Hartley Power (Hennessey), Harcourt Williams (Ambassador), Margaret Rawlings (Countess Vereberg), Tullio Carminati (General Provno), Paulo Carlini (Mario Delani), Claudio Ermelli (Giovanni), Paola Borboni (Charwoman), Alfredo Rizzo (Taxi driver)

Everyone loves a fairy tale, which is probably why Roman Holiday remains one of most popular films of all time. The whole thing is a care-free, romantic fantasy in a beautiful location, where it feels at any time the chimes of midnight could make the whole thing vanish instantly in a puff of smoke. It’s like a holiday itself: a chance to immerse yourself in something warm, reassuring and utterly charming. This fairy tale sees a Princess escape to freedom. Only she’s not escaping imprisonment by some ghastly witch or terrible monster: just from the relentless grind of never-ending duty.

The heir to the throne of an unnamed country (one of those Ruritanian neverwheres you’d find in a Lubitsch movie), Princess Anne’s (Audrey Hepburn) every waking moment is a never-ending parade of social and political functions. Just for once she’d like to do what she wants to do for the day. Something she gets when she escapes into Rome (after being given a dopey-inducing drug to sleep) and finds herself in the company of American newshound Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck). Joe quickly works out he’s harbouring the most famous woman in the world and dreams of the scoop of the century. Pretending not to know ‘Anya’s’ identity, they spend the day shooting the breeze in Rome – only to find themselves falling in love. Will Joe sell the story? And will Ann stay free or return to her duties?

Truth be told, like many fairy tales, it’s a very light story that leads towards familiar (and reassuring) morals, with a big dollop of romance along the way. It works however, because it’s told with such lightness, playfulness and gentle innocence, that it washes over you like a warm bath. A director like Lubitsch would have found sharper wit (not to mention sexual tension) in the material, but Wyler’s decision to hold back arguably works better. It lets the magic of the plot weave without directorial flourishes overbalancing things. It works because it’s so soft touch and unobtrusive in its making that it allows the actors to flourish.

It helps as well that they had Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn’s entire life changed with Roman Holiday (surely the last time she could have walked through Rome unnoticed!), winning an Oscar for the sort of dream-fit role that comes once in a blue moon. Hepburn looks perfect as a fairy-tale Princess, but her performance succeeds because of her gift for light comedy and flair for slapstick. She’s an acutely funny and hugely endearing performer, and your heart warms to her instantly. From stretching her foot and losing a shoe (under her billowing dress) in the film’s opening reception, Hepburn launches into a perfect low-key comic routine as she attempts to restore it. That comic physicality carries through her doped-out first night of freedom, including an impressive roll across a bed into a sofa, fully committed to the word-slurring ridiculousness. She’ll bring the same daft energy to her disastrous Vespa riding. Hepburn has become such an icon of class, it’s easy to forget what a bouncy comedian she was.

These comic touches make us root for her, and it’s made even easier through Hepburn’s ability to make naivety combined with touches of austere distance effortlessly charming. Watching her react with blithe confusion (and then charmingly embarrassed realisation) as she accepts shoes and flowers from retailers without realising they expect payment is never less than charmingly hilarious. Her wide-eyed excitement at everyday things like ice cream or getting an (iconic) haircut is winningly loveable. You find it funny rather than frustrating that she expects help undressing (much to Joe’s flustered surprise) or for problems like policemen to melt away. Hepburn’s performance is nothing less than transcendent, a sprinkle of Hollywood magic.

Opposite her, the film wisely casts that bastion of decency Gregory Peck. Other actors would have leaned into Joe’s background as a fast-living reporter constantly in hock to a parade of gamblers, landlords and newspaper editors. But Peck is so clean-cut he feels like Walter Cronkite on leave and removes any audience concern that Joe might do something caddish. We never once feel for a moment Anne is at risk of being taken advantage of when she sleeps in his apartment (would we have felt the same certainty with, say, Tony Curtis or even Cary Grant?) and Peck is so straight-shootingly decent, the implied threat that he may betray Anne by reporting her day of freedom as a glossy tell-all of outrageous behaviour very easily drifts from the audiences mind when watching the film. We all know Peck would never do that!

All this allows us to fully relax and enjoy the bulk of the film, which is essentially watching two beautiful, likeable people have a lovely day looking among the gorgeous sights of the Eternal City. It’s hard to credit it, but the Roman authorities initially refused the right to film as they were worried it would demean the city. Just as well they changed their mind, as perhaps no film has driven more people to Rome. Roman Holiday (even the title is a subliminal suggestion to the viewer) is full of wonderful locations, from the Trevi fountain to the Spanish steps and it single-handedly turned the Mouth of Truth into a must-visit tourist spot – not surprising, as Peck’s improvised pretence to lose his hand and Hepburn’s wails of laughter are one of the film’s most lovable moments.

Moments like that showcase the natural warmth and chemistry between the two actors, and Roman Holiday leans into it to create one of the most romantic films ever made. There is a genuine palpable spark between the two, from their meet-cute in a taxi (a dopey Anne confusedly mumbling that she lives in the Colosseum) to the ice melting between them, to the little glances they give each other as they make each other laugh on Vespas or their bond growing as throw themselves into fending off a parade of besuited goons from Anne’s embassy (this moment includes the hilarious moment when Hepburn bashes a goon over the head with a guitar).

It’s all leading of course to the inevitable bittersweet ending – because, such is the decency of Peck and Hepburn, we know they are never really going to chuck it all aside when duty and doing the right thing calls – which is equally delivered with a series of micro-reactions at another interminable function that is genuinely moving in its simplicity. Even Eddie Albert’s hilariously cynical photojournalist gets in on the act.

It’s the perfect cap to a wonderfully entertaining, escapist fantasy which never once leaves you anything less than entertained. You could carp that there is never any threat or peril at any point – and that the paper-light plot breezes by – but that would be to miss the point. But Roman Holiday invented and mastered a Hollywood staple: two likeable people fall in love in a gorgeous location. And who hasn’t dreamed of a holiday like that?

Belle du Jour (1967)

Buñuel’s sensual mix of fantasy and reality, asks intriguing and searching questions with ambiguous answers

Director: Luis Buñuel

Cast: Catherine Deneuve (Séverine “Belle de Jour” Serizy), Jean Sorel (Pierre Serizy), Michel Piccoli (Henri Husson), Geneviève Page (Madame Anaïs), Pierre Clémenti (Marcel), Francisco Rabal (Hyppolite), Françoise Fabian (Charlotte), Macha Méril (Renée), Maria Latour (Mathilde), Marguerite Muni (Pallas), Francis Blanche (Monsieur Adolphe), François Maistre (The professor), Georges Marchal (Duke)

Desire can be a scary thing; a deep dive into the things that excite and titillate us can be deeply unnerving. That’s the heart of Buñuel’s compellingly intriguing Belle de Jour, where dreams and fantasy merge with confused and repressed desires struggling to find an outlet. It makes for a fascinating, unsettling and erotic film, powered by a fearlessly superb performance by Deneuve. Buñuel’s film avoids judgement, frequently inverting lazy moral judgements in a film that flirts with playfulness and dark dangers.

Séverine (Catherine Deneuve) is happily married to Pierre (Jean Sorel) but seems unable to find any sexual satisfaction with him. Sleeping in separate beds, the couple are supportive and loving but chaste. Séverine’s fantasy life though is awash with day-dreams of erotic, sadomasochistic desires in which she is degraded and humiliated, scenarios clearly alien in her marriage. Séverine finds an outlet for her desires by taking an afternoon job as a prostitute in Madame Anaïs (Geneviève Page) high-class brothel, where she can experience an erotic thrill in debasement that she barely understands herself. But can her secret survive the probing of sinister Husson (a brilliantly creepy Michel Piccoli) or her confused fascination with gangster Marcel (Pierre Clémenti).

Belle de Jour explores the dark desires many of us hold but never acknowledge – either to the world at large or to ourselves. It’s told with Buñuel’s masterful control, moves with smooth narrative economy and throws our expectations off kilter with carefully controlled switches from reality to fantasy. Buñuel’s unsettling opening shows Séverine and Pierre riding in a carriage through a tree lined country lane, their conversation tinged with hostility. We wonder what film it might be – we probably don’t expect Pierre to order the carriage to stop, demand the drivers drag Séverine from it, take her into the woods, flog her bare back and then allows one of his burly men to have his way with her. Just as we don’t expect the look of pleasure on Séverine’s face.

Fantasies like this re-occur time-and-time again throughout the film, as Séverine’s only way of truly explore sexual fantasies her husband is (presumably) unable to fulfil. In her fantasies she is abused, tied up, has mud flung at her and services men in the full knowledge of her husband. Buñuel presents this, as you might expect (for a man whose foot fetish has become something of a running joke) with a striking lack of judgement or moral ticking off. Instead, it feels more like Séverine is a woman trapped between two stools of seemingly knowing what she might want, but struggling to find the sexual and emotional confidence to acknowledge it. None of this, in any case, has any impact on her love for her husband or the importance she places on their marriage.

Buñuel captures this brilliantly with her hesitancy to follow through on her desire to knock on the door of hostess Madame Anaïs (an excellent Geneviève Page). We watch Séverine dawdle outside the apartment block, doubling back, staring blankly at shop windows and waiting until she cannot be seen and then shuffling up the stairs and back-and-forth outside the door. Buñuel repeats the trick later (with a shot focused on her feet) as she hesitates about whether to push her way through the door again next week.

In the bedroom, Séverine frequently feels awkward and uncertain (even a little embarrassed), which is striking until you realise this is less of the fear factor and more a kink one. She’s fails utterly with the Professor (François Maistre), a client who desires to be punished, a lust completely counter to her own desires. However, she ends a session with a burly Japanese customer, whose physicality terrifies the other girls (he also carries with him a mysterious buzzing box – Buñuel joked he was asked more about the content of this box than anything else in his films), exhausted but with a look of reclining, feline satisfaction on her that we don’t see before or since.

Buñuel’s film slips and slides ever more intriguingly into oblique uncertainty as Séverine explores the further reaches of her sensuality. A fascinating sequence tips uncertainly between dream and reality. Séverine encounters a mysterious nobleman (an austere Georges Marchal) during a casual café pick-up. But his coach drivers are the same as those from her earlier dream (tellingly, Buñuel also makes a Hitchcockian cameo as a café customer –tipping the wink this might not be reality). At the Duke’s home, Séverine lies in a coffin (in another dream call back, the butler is ordered to keep the cats out, the same bizarre cry Séverine made during her woodside thrashing) while the Duke masturbates under the coffin before flinging her out of the house like trash. Fantasy or reality? Is exposure to wider sexual desires expanding Séverine own dreams?

How much has she told Pierre about what happens in these dreams? It’s hard to believe Jean Sorel’s straight-shooting doctor would be as blasé as he appears about a recurring fantasy of his wife on a carriage ride followed of sexual humiliation. Did she just tell him about the first part? Séverine seems determined to shelter Pierre from her desires, part of compartmentalising her inner and outer lives. You could argue the general autonomy and respect he gives her not only powers her love for him, but also runs so counter to her inclinations that she finds it represses all desire for him.

Belle du Jour sees no contradiction between a desire for casual, need-filling sex with strangers and a loving marriage. You could argue Buñuel’s film suggests Séverine’s problems only start when she finds emotional bonds blurring in a fascination with Pierre Clémenti’s brutal, scarred gangster Marcel, who arrives like the violent embodiment of her dreams and who she longs to see again and again. Only when genuine feelings start to intrude, does what she is doing even begin to feel like any sort of betrayal. Buñuel presents Marcel as a destructive raging id, impulsively violent. But he also plays with our expectations of moral punishment for Séverine, throwing in a moment of Pierre studying an abandoned wheelchair with such jarring foreboding it’s easy to see it as a subtle joke on our expectations for Séverine’s expected narrative punishment.

The ending tips back into fantasy, presenting us with a choice of how much we choose to believe is real or not. While Séverine fears Pierre’s discovery of her secret, you can also imagine the shame and humiliation she would feel would also satisfy many of her deeper fantasies, with her fantasies of Pierre routinely berating her as a slut. Buñuel’s brilliant merging of fantasy and reality, with audio and visual hints and call backs that intrude into and loop back over both worlds is brilliantly suggestive.

Belle de Jour also owes a huge part of its success to the sensitive, non-judgemental performance of Catherine Deneuve which is brilliantly subtle and ambiguous, never presenting us with a constantly shifting range of possibilities about Séverine’s emotions. Deneuve is compellingly sympathetic and frustrating in equal measure, perfectly attuning herself to Buñuel’s complex canvas. That is a picture of puzzles and possibilities, that asks us to take deep and unsettling looks at ourselves and our own desires. Buñuel’s gift here is to take what could be red-light zone smut and turn it into something profoundly, challengingly opaque and intriguing.

Madame Curie (1943)

Halting science biopic, that’s really an attempt to make a spiritual sequel to Mrs Miniver

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Cast: Greer Garson (Marie Curie), Walter Pidgeon (Pierre Curie), Henry Travers (Eugene Curie), Albert Bassermann (Professor Jean Perot), Robert Walker (David le Gros), C. Aubrey Smith (Lord Kelvin), Dame May Whitty (Madame Eugene Curie), Victor Francen (University President), Reginald Owen (Dr Becquerel), Van Johnson (Reporter)

Marie Curie was one of History’s greatest scientists, her discoveries (partially alongside her husband Pierre) of radioactivity and a parade of elements, essentially laying the groundwork for many of the discoveries of the Twentieth Century (with two Nobel prizes along the way). Hers is an extraordinary life – something that doesn’t quite come into focus in this run-of-the-mill biopic, that re-focuses her life through the lens of her marriage to Pierre and skips lightly over the scientific import (and content) of her work. You could switch it off still not quite understanding what it was Marie Curie did.

What it was really about was repackaging Curie’s life into a thematic sequel to the previous year’s Oscar-winning hit Mrs Miniver. With the poster screaming “Mr and Mrs Miniver together again!”, the star-team of Garson and Pidgeon fitted their roles to match: Garson’s Marie Curie would be stoic, dependable, hiding her emotions under quiet restraint while calmly carrying on; Pidgeon’s Pierre was dry, decent, stiff-upper-lipped and patrician. Madame Curie covers the twelve years of their marriage as a Miniver-style package of struggle against adversity with Pierre’s death as a final act gut punch. Science (and history) is jettisoned when it doesn’t meet this model.

Not only Garson and Pidgeon, but Travers, Whitty, producer Sidney Franklin, cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg, composer Herbert Stothard and editor Harold F Kress among others all returned and while Wyler wasn’t back to direct, Mervyn LeRoy, director of Garson’s other 1942 hit Random Harvest, was. Heck even the clumsily crafted voiceover was spoken by Miniver writer James Hilton. Of course, the Miniver model was a good one, so many parts of Madame Curie that replicate it work well. But it also points up the film’s lack of inspiration, not to mention that it’s hard to think either of the Curies were particularly like the versions of them we see here.

Much of the opening half of Madame Curie zeroes in on the relationship between the future husband-and-wife who, like all Hollywood scientists, are so dottily pre-occupied with their heavy-duty science-thinking they barely notice they are crazy for each other. Some endearing moments seep out of this: Pierre’s bashful gifting of a copy of his book to Marie (including clumsily pointing out a heartfelt inscription to her she fails to spot) or Pierre’s functional proposal, stressing the benefits to their scientific work. But this material constantly edges out any space for a real understanding of their work.

It fits with the romanticism of the script, which pretty much starts with the word “She was poor, she was beautiful” and carries on in a similar vein from there (I lost count of the number of times Garson’s beauty was commented on, so much so I snorted when she says at one point she’s not used to hearing such compliments). Madame Curie has a mediocre script: it’s the sort of film where people constantly, clumsily, address each other by name (even Marie and Pierre) and info-dump things each of them already know at each other. Hilton’s voiceover pops up to vaguely explain some scientific points the script isn’t nimble enough to put into dialogue.

It would be intriguing to imagine how Madame Curie might have changes its science coverage if it had been made a few years later, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been eradicated by those following in Curie’s footsteps. Certainly, the film’s bare acknowledgment of the life-shortening doses of radiation the Curies were unwittingly absorbing during their work would have changed (a doctor does suggest those strange burns on Marie’s hands may be something to worry about). So naively unplayed is this, that it’s hard not to snort when Pierre comments after a post-radium discovery rest-trip “we didn’t realise how sick we were”. In actuality, Pierre’s tragic death in a traffic accident was more likely linked to his radiation-related ill health than his absent-minded professor qualities (Madame Curie highlights his distraction early on with him nearly being crushed under carriage wheel after walking Marie home).

Madame Curie does attempt to explore some of the sexism Marie faced – although it undermines this by constantly placing most of the rebuttal in the mouth of Pierre. Various fuddy-duddy academics sniff at the idea of a woman knowing of what she speaks, while both Pierre and his assistant (an engaging Robert Walker) assume before her arrival at his lab that she must be some twisted harridan and certainly will be no use with the test tubes. To be honest, it’s not helped by those constant references to Garson’s looks or (indeed) her fundamental mis-casting. Garson’s middle-distance starring and soft-spoken politeness never fits with anyone’s idea of what Marie Curie might have been like and a bolted-on description of her as stubborn doesn’t change that.

Walter Pidgeon, surprisingly, is better suited as Pierre, his mid-Atlantic stiffness rather well-suited to the film’s vision of the absent-minded Pierre and he’s genuinely rather sweet and funny when struggling to understand and express his emotions. There are strong turns from Travers and Whitty as his feuding parents, a sprightly cameo from C Aubrey Smith as Lord Kelvin and Albert Bassermann provides avuncular concern as Marie and Pierre’s mentor. The Oscar-nominated sets are also impressive.

But, for all Madame Curie is stuffed with lines like “our notion of the universe will be changed!” it struggles to make the viewer understand why we should care about the Curie’s work. Instead, it’s domestic drama in a laboratory, lacking any real inspiration in its desperation by its makers to pull off the Miniver trick once more. Failing to really do that, and failing to really cover the science, it ends up falling between both stools, destined to be far more forgettable than a film about one of history’s most important figures deserves to be.

Performance (1970)

An almost undefinable mix of gangster and philosophy, almost unique in its eccentric oddness

Director: Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg

Cast: James Fox (Chas), Mick Jagger (Turner), Anita Pallenberg (Pherber), Michèle Breton (Lucy), Ann Sidney (Dana), John Binden (Moody), Stanley Matthews (Rosebloom), Allan Cuthbertson (Lawyer), Anthony Morton (Dennis), Johnny Shannon (Harry Flowers), Anthony Valentine (Joey Maddocks), Kenneth Colley (Tony Farrell)

Performance seems to slop out of the swinging sixties dark side, a brash and darkly disturbing explosion of style and intellectualism. There are few films like it out there: its a sometimes tough but haunting watch, crammed with mind-bending imagery and swimming in strange and unsettling ideas. It’s both a gut punch and an unsettlingly erotic massage.

Chas (James Fox) is a ruthless gangland enforcer for mob boss Harry Flowers (Johnny Shannon). Ambitious but instinctively violent, he’s a slim, tall cocktail of anger and predatory resentment – so it’s not a surprise that he eventually provokes a minor gangland dust-up, which leads to him killing a rival against Harry’s orders. His life in danger, Chas retreats to a convenient bolthole. Passing himself off as a travelling juggler (!), he wheedles his way into the home of reclusive pop star Turner (Mick Jagger) who lives a life of philosophy, drugs and free love in a beat-up house in Notting Hill. There Chas and Turner will form an unusual connection as a mixture of drugs and repressed yearnings and longings see their personalities begin to mix and merge.

It was born from the mind of Donald Cammell and was originally commissioned as a sort of 60s romp. Many of the money men signed on, under the impression they would be getting a sort of A Hard Day’s Night for The Rolling Stones. God alone knows what they made of the nightmare fuel they ended up (rumour has it, the wife of one executive vomited at an initial screening). Cammell, heavily influenced by Jorge Luis Borges, created a dak dream-like work where questions of identity and sex get wrapped up in a surreal framework where reality bends around the crazy logic.

It’s reflected in the film’s artistically discordant style, re-edited to deliberately blur linear lines and (increasingly) tip the film into dream-like logic. From the opening ten minutes we start switching between different, complementing, tones. In this case between Chas and his cronies in a car and a stereotypically upper-class lawyer (Allan Cuthbertson at his most imperial) speaking in court to a pompous jury who themselves merge with the dirty-old men watching a cheap porno flick in one of Chas’ stopping points.

This surrealistically toned cutting – married to strikingly beautiful, unusual colour-filled lighting from Nicolas Roeg (who co-directed the film with Cammell, delivering much of its visual look) – lays the groundwork for a film that increasingly shifts into something strange and constantly unsettling, where we can never be quite sure where we are. Characters merge into each other, brief cuts showing Jagger switch places with Fox and Pallenberg (at one point Chas and Turner appear in bed together before Turner is replaced in the next cut with Lucy), sequences take place that must be fantasy and the real-world disappears in a finale that lays the entire film open to interpretation.

What’s striking about Performance is that, even with stylistic flourishes, much of the opening section plays like a hard-boiled gangster film. There is a marked reality about Chas’ moving around the streets of London, roughing up taxi firm owners, threatening rivals and intimidating the loose lipped. Surprising as it might seem, it reflects Chas’ conservativeness: a self-made man, Chas takes inordinate pride in his freshly-cut suits and perfect hair, lives in a flat that’s like an interior design brochure and has contempt for arty free-spirits. The film’s opening matches his everyday aesthetic.

He’s played with a snarling aggression by James Fox, a hugely successful piece of counter-intuitive casting. Fox makes Chas tense, cocky and no-where near as clever as he thinks he is. He’s a bully who delights in terrifying a posh chauffeur and resents taking orders. He’s vain– his apartment littered with glossy photos of his own half-naked athletic body – and his sadomasochistic sex with his girlfriend is carried out with hand-held mirror so he can watch himself. This is a rich, primal, brilliant performance by Fox, latching into a dark energy he rarely touched again.

What’s also striking though is that there is a vulnerability and emptiness to Chas. Odd as it might seem, it’s also a mirror-image of Fox in The Servant: there a naïve young man absorbed by his butler – here a seemingly worldly gangster, totally unsettled and slowly changed by a new domineering force in his life. Chas may believe himself to be the master, but he’s a rat in a maze in the psychedelic craziness of Turner’s world, with a freedom, wildness and gentleness completely alien to Chas’ ordered world.

Whipper-thin and with a natural charisma that almost masks his fundamental weakness as an actor, Jagger sashays into the film as a softly spoken force of nature, the sort of artist who pops pills then reads philosophy. His house, all ramshackle opium den chic, is a hedonistic place of relaxed freedoms where Turner lives in a menage with Pherber and Lucy (there was much scandal at the time about whether Jagger and Pallenberg had sex for real during filming). It’s a surrealist den, shot from unusual or unsettling angles with an oddly precocious child (whose gender seems to change from scene to scene) running around.

Turner finds Chas fascinating – and it’s here the film’s title comes to life as Cammell muses how much is Chas’ personality an affectation, a construct that he has built? Doped up on magic mushrooms, Turner (and the film) explore and deconstructs the sort of man Chas is. From Turner dressing-up as and impersonating Chas, to Chas himself stripping down physically and mentally, both in the sort of bohemian clothes he despised and even trying on feminine garb with face paint. It unpeels the construct of Chas hyper-masculinity to find a more tender, less egotistical man below.

And what better construct, you might argue, than gangsters? These are people living an eternal front (Flower’s office is awash with brash touches – like an equestrian painting of himself – that hide his closeted and violent nature; he’s clearly inspired by both Krays). It’s a front the openly hedonistic and relaxed Turner can shake up: Jagger sings ‘Memo From Turner’ in a surreal dreamish sequence, where he takes Flowers place and encourages his fellow gangsters to literally strip. Performance deconstructs this, using editing to merge Turner and Chas, as two sides of the performance coin.

The film spirals further down this rabbit hole of personality shifting, as Chas becomes more and more like the softly waif-like Turner, just as Turner experiments with the flouting masculine aggression of Chas. Mirrors allow us to visually mix and merge characters and strange cuts take us on an increasingly non-linear journey. This remains unconfirmed and undefined – one critic wrote it was easier to write a book about Performance than a review and he’s probably right – and the further down this metaphorical (and, in its final sequence, almost literal) rabbit hole you go, the more the surreal questions remain unanswered. What is going on in the end? Is it real? Who absorbs who? All questions remain enigmatically open and rife to multiple interpretation.

Performance is hardly an easy watch. I can easily imagine the wrong person at the wrong time finding it either disturbing or (probably more likely) a pile of pretentious wank. But it’s a daring, undefinable and unreadable film that offers itself up to ripe interpretation and re-interpretation while remaining playful. And that is one heck of a difficult performance to pull off.

Boomerang! (1947)

Effective journalistic investigation into a murder case turns into engaging courtroom melodrama

Director: Elia Kazan

Cast: Dana Andrews (State’s Attorney Henry Harvey), Jane Wyatt (Madge Harvey), Lee J Cobb (Chief Harold Robinson), Cara Williams (Irene Nelson), Arthur Kennedy (John Waldron), Sam Levene (Dave Woods), Taylor Holmes (TM Wade), Robert Keith (‘Mac’ McCreery), Ed Begley (Paul Harris), Karl Malden (Lt White)

In Bridgeport, Connecticut, a popular priest is gunned down in the street, the killer escaping into the night. The police are baffled. The city turns against the reformist mayor’s administration. Then, after several weeks, there is a lead as twitchy ex-soldier John Waldron (Arthur Kennedy) is dragged in and, after hours-and-hours of interrogation without sleep, signs a confession. But who cares about small details like that, when everyone is sure the police has their man? But State’s Attorney Henry Harvey (Dana Andrews) has doubts – and no pressure from the public or officials will make him build a case against an innocent man.

Based on an actual 1924 murder case, Boomerang! is told with journalistic sharpness by Elia Kazan that smoothly moves from investigative into courtroom drama. Boomerang! was cited by Kazan as when he started to find his voice, establishing a style that would carry him to Oscar-winning success in On the Waterfront and beyond. Shot largely in location (though admittedly in a different Connecticut town than Bridgeport), it’s full of the immediacy of the streets, avoiding sets and forced studio locations. Kazan leans into the journalistic feel, with a voiceover explaining events and an earnest attempt throughout to make it feel like we are watching real events unfold.

It captures people going about their everyday lives: gossiping over laundry, strolling down streets, pounding typewriters in press rooms, gathering in church and shops. This is a film designed to convey a full sense of a real world. That goes as well for reflecting the investigation, which is full of the visceral pounding of pavements and hustling of suspects into police cars as well as the interrogations of the worn-down Waldron, taking place in an inhospitable room where never-ending questions means Waldron’s head has to be literally picked up to continue answering the questions.

The observational strengths of the film’s opening eventually moves into something more straight-forwardly melodramatic, but Kazan’s documentary restraint tries it best to not make this shift too jarring. As Harvey’s doubts grow, he becomes under increasing pressure from officialdom, principally from Ed Begley’s sweaty Paul Harris (who is too noticeably dodgy from the start for his villainy to be anything like a surprise). This is before a series of courtroom dynamics that hue towards the sort of fireworks you find in larger-than-life films than the journalistic reserve Boomerang! starts with.

Which isn’t to say that these courtroom dynamics are not very well-handled, especially by the under-rated Dana Andrews, who brings just the right amount of humanity and dignity to an otherwise stiff-on-paper character of a crusading, too-good-to-be-true attorney. Andrews delivers the courtroom speeches, and the detailed breakdown of the flaws in the police case, with a real quiet passion – just as he brings a nice degree of moral outrage to the bullying attempts to silence him.

Boomerang! provides several opportunities for compelling character actors, many of whom went on to work again for Kazan to great success. Lee J Cobb’s bulldog fierceness is perfect for put-upon police Captain Robinson who lets his determination to prove he can crack the case compromise his judgement. Cobb gives Robinson a powerful sense of authority – there is a wonderful scene where he faces down a would-be lynch mob with little more than growling disapproval. There is also a lovely moment, where he lifts the sleeping Waldron and carries him into his bed with all the care of a loving father. He’s well backed by Karl Malden as an eager-to-please inexperienced cop.

Arthur Kennedy produces one of his expert portraits in weakness as Waldron, an embittered veteran who has found peace offers little more than failure. While never losing track of what makes Waldron suspicious, Kennedy finds a neat line in vulnerability and fear keeps him sympathetic. Opposite him, Cara Williams explodes with righteous fury as a former girlfriend who believes herself wronged, eager to see Waldron condemned. It’s a more interesting role than any other female role in the film, although Jane Wyatt finds some engaging warmth in the dull role of Andrews’ loyal wife.

Boomerang! at heart is a film about the barrel being fine, aside from a few rotten apples. The crime takes place after the old machine politics system has been cast aside by new politicians, not beholden to the system, willing to introduce reforms. And, by and large, they are shown to really mean it – even if, at one point, some express the view that it doesn’t matter if Waldron is guilty or innocent, since winning means the reformists can remain in power. But all the real sins are collected in the hands of Begley’s character: even the police are absolved, despite the fact we watch them essentially brow-beat a man into confessing (a sergeant even suggesting they rough him up a bit to speed things along, which makes you wonder what the system was like for people are not veterans the police captain feels sorry for).

Boomerang! pulls any punches of really exploring systemic flaws, even while it covers an innocent man being bum-rushed into a trial. But then it puts complete faith in the idea that the same system will turn around and do its job by ensuring he is completely absolved – with the only danger from corrupt elected officials, not the blindness of a potential system. It’s a factor Kazan (to be fair) felt the film made too many compromises on – and he’s right. It might tell a scare story, but Boomerang! is fundamentally a reassuring film that is sure everything will turn out right in the end.

Father of the Bride (1950)

Gentle, well-made comedy is elevated by a star turn from Spencer Tracy

Director: Vincente Minnelli

Cast: Spencer Tracy (Stanley Banks), Joan Bennett (Ellie Banks), Elizabeth Taylor (Kay Banks), Don Taylor (Buckley Dunstan), Billie Burke (Doris Dunstan), Leo G. Carroll (Mr Massoula), Moroni Olsen (Herbert Dunstan), Melville Cooper (Mr Tringle)

Apparently almost 70% of couples find wedding planning stressful. Perhaps they would be reassured to hear things haven’t changed much since the 1950s! Stanley Banks (Spencer Tracy) is a successful partner in a law firm whose domestic bliss is disrupted when daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) announces she intends to marry boyfriend Buckley (Don Taylor). With the support of her mother Ellie (Joan Bennett), Kay dreams of a big church wedding – and Stanley is left counting the cost while struggling with his sadness at his daughter growing up and flying the nest for good.

Father of the Bride delightfully takes a simple idea and mines it for as much comic effect as possible. The structure is simple: the build-up to and staging of the wedding, with all absurdities of such things as fussy caterers and exacting church wardens pointed up. There are minor bumps and hiccups, but nothing that would make a viewer ever seriously worry that all will not turn out well. Instead, the film riffs on the constant exasperation of a father watching the plans (and cost) of the wedding spiral ever upwards, as more and more extras pile on top of others.

Much of its success is linked to Spencer Tracy, excellent as the eponymous father. The role was written for him and Minnelli demanded he should play it when producers suggested a more comic actor like Jack Benny might fit the bill better. (Katherine Hepburn did not take on the wife, though I can’t imagine she would found much to engage her in Joan Bennett’s underwritten role.) The entire success of the film revolves around our connection with Tracy, something never in doubt with his skill and assurance.

Minnelli cements this with an opening shot panning across wedding debris before craning up to introduce us to a fourth-wall breaking speech of resigned weariness from Tracy. His narrative voice is returned to again and again, as Tracy shares a wry and exasperated commentary. Father of the Bride is a testament to Tracy’s comic chops, his mastery of the micro-reaction providing constant laughs, from a look of disbelief across a dining table to one of shock as the latest bill flies in. It’s a hilariously effective performance, in which Tracy embraces the ridiculousness of farce. Like a practiced comedian he spays himself (three times) while attempting to open a coke or kids himself into believing he looks dandy in a morning suit several years too small for him.

But the performance – and the film – really works because Tracy also communicate its humanity. In his relationship with Elizabeth Taylor (suitably radiant as Kay, and full of a forceful personality she surely inherited from her father), Tracy makes clear his love for his daughter and his sadness at an end of an era: he won’t be ‘the man’ in her life anymore. Even with small inconsequential moments (such as Kay ignoring Stanley’s appeal to wear a coat before fetching it immediately when Buckley suggests the same), Tracy shows sadness dance across his face. The wedding is awash with bittersweet moments, with Tracy as harried host desperately attempting to speak with his daughter one last time before she leaves. Father of the Bride through Tracy’s performance mines a great deal of quiet, genuine emotion from a parent struggling with a child grown up.

It’s a bittersweet thread Minnelli’s film keeps pinging away under the comedy. Minnelli seems an unlikely choice (you’d expect a Cukor or Capra), but his skill with composition adds to the film without overwhelming the slender story with flash. The opening shot of wedding debris prepares us for the hustle and bustle of the big day, where a parade of carefully choreographed background events in the Banks’ house is as skilled as the bustling crowds of the event. Minnelli gives a Dali-inspired flair to Banks’ pre-wedding nightmare (his feet melting into the ground and clothes falling apart) and he plugs into Tracy’s reactive skill to frame these off-the-ball moments for maximum impact.

Editing also helps accentuate jokes. On hearing his daughter intends to marry, Banks reflects with horror on who this suitor might be, a montage of assorted suitors (from athletic, to bookish, to dancing) spooling past us. (The biggest joke now might be how utterly safe all these suitors are, the sort of lads you imagine fathers today would be desperate for daughters to bring home). Minnelli also fades in and out on blurry close-ups on glasses to communicate both the passing of time and Stanley’s rising inebriation (after a growing parade of martinis) when the Banks meet with Buckley’s parents.

This sort of comic energy helps carry the film very effectively. Of course it is all very simple – the 1991 remake added more moments of crisis and obstacles for the characters to overcome – and that can explain why events sometimes feel stretched out even over its slim 90-minute run time. For all the film’s tagline (“Bride gets the thrills; Father gets the bills!”) suggests frustration on Stanley’s part, moments where he weeds through a huge invite list (525!) or bemoans paying for an orchestra no one is listening to are generally underplayed (perhaps it was thought we could only sympathise so much before starting to think of Tracy as a penny pincher?)

But, overall, the film works very well indeed, mostly due to Spencer Tracy’s hugely effective performance – funny, endearing, likeable and hugely relatable with a perfect balance between comedy and emotional depth. It would have been nice to have had more of a contrast between Stanley and Buckley – when Buckley turns up to a heart-to-heart with father-in-law clutching a briefcase full of his work, I immediately thought ‘never has a woman more clearly married someone like her dad’. But what the film aims to do it, it succeeds at. And that’s to have some good-natured, heart-warming fun showing how even stars like Tracy can find weddings stressful.