The Constant Gardener (2005)

Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes in the brilliant and moving The Constant Gardener

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Cast: Ralph Fiennes (Justin Quayle), Rachel Weisz (Tessa Quayle), Danny Huston (Sandy Woodrow), Hubert Koundé (Dr Arnold Bluhm), Archie Panjabi (Ghita Pearson), Bill Nighy (Sir Bernard Pellegrin), Gerard McSorley (Sir Kenneth Curtis), Pete Postlethwaite (Dr Lorbeer), Donald Sumpter (Tim Donohue), Richard McCabe (Arthur Hammond), Juliet Aubrey (Gloria Woodrow)

John Le Carré’s reputation as a spy novelist without peer can lead people to forget his books are often scathing condemnations of Western policy. The Constant Gardener, a superb adaptation of one of his finest novels, is no different. It’s a passionate, angry denunciation of how Western pharmaceutical companies, and their government partners, exploit the people of Africa. But it carries real force as it’s interwoven with a moving and tender study of grief and how it changes us, pushing us to see things from a different perspective. It’s that which gives the film its force.

Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) is a middle-ranking career diplomat, serving in the high commission in Kenya. His wife Tessa (Rachel Weisz), an idealist determined to make a difference, is murdered. Justin determines to get to the bottom of her murder – and finds Tessa was investigating a British drugs company using the distribution of AIDS drugs to poverty-stricken Kenyans to test an experimental TB drug, covering up the harmful side effects and disposing of the dead. As flashbacks reveal Tessa’s investigation and motivations, Justin becomes ever more determined to unmask the drugs companies, and the figures in the British government protecting them.

Directed with vibrant urgency by Fernando Meirelles, The Constant Gardener is part thriller, part romance and part study of loss. Continuing his style from City of God, Meirelles’ camera work is jagged, hand-held and often unsettling, becoming ever more disjointed and edgy as the plot itself heads into darker and darker territory. The film throws us into its Kenyan setting, not shying away from the poverty of the villages. At one point, an aerial shot travels from the golf course, where the British are at play, across a train track and settles on the neighbouring slums.

This is all part of the film’s anger, which translates Le Carré’s feelings from the book. Inspired by the story of an aid worker he met in Cambodia in the 1970s (and who died in Kosovo in the 90s), the film is as furious as the novel at the heartless exploitation of Africa for the benefit of Western companies. Who counts the cost of Kenyan lives lost to experimental drugs? Certainly not the rich and powerful, who keep any consequences at a distance and rationalise them as for the greater good.

And not many have the courage to stand up to this. Most it seems are like Justin – good people who prefer not to think about, or look to deeply at, the impact we are having on the world. It takes a firebrand like Tessa to shake things up – and she pays a huge cost for it. Starting with Tessa’s death, the film feels at first like a mystery, but the culprits are all too obvious. Instead the question is why, not who, and the dark conspiracy that unfolds is really about establishing who knew what rather than who was involved (everyone, of course, was involved).

Rachel Weisz (winning the Supporting Actress Oscar for her work here) excels in a part that could have been a holier-than-thou left-wing agitator, but which she makes warm, human and real. Tessa is a woman who cares deeply, but also loves deeply, who is genuine, unaffected and speaks her mind. Weisz’ performance hits just the right notes, passionate but playful. The bond between her and Justin is real and based on a deep love on both their sides.

So warm is her performance, that you totally understand the all-consuming grief and loss Justin suffers at her death. It’s a very different sort of part for Fiennes – gentle, vulnerable, sweet, far different from his more patrician roles. He nails the part perfectly, bringing out of it a great deal of emotional force. The film is a tender exploration of the impact of grief on a person, and the mixture of shock, sorrow, anger and confusion in Fiennes’ performance feels completely real. This stillness and sombre approach to loss carries real weight.

The film becomes both a crusade – the husband taking up the cause of his slaughtered wife – but also an unusual romance. The greatest pain for Justin is discovering that his wife kept so much of her life secret from him. She did it to protect him, but he longs for the chance to prove to her that he could have been her “secret sharer”, that she could have trusted him. Effectively the film – and Justin’s quest – is to emotionally reunite with his wife, to fully understand her. The emotional heart of the film is this story, the husband effectively communing with the ghost of his wife, wanting there to be no more secrets keeping them apart.

This does mean that, at times, the conspiracy angle of the film gets slightly rushed. A late sequence effectively is four confessions from supporting characters to Justin in a row. The film gets a little bogged down in the mechanics of Justin chasing down various pieces of paper. The eventual quest to find the doctor behind the scandal (a wizened with guilt Pete Postlethwaite) offers a rather neat resolution. But it doesn’t matter too much as the film culminates in an ending that is as bizarrely bleak as it is hopeful.

Beautifully shot by Meirelles, with a raw immediacy that keeps the tension up, with a genuine sense of Kenyan life, it has a wonderful cast of character actors doing their bit (Bill Nighy as an arrogant senior diplomat and Danny Huston as a weasely coward stand out). It’s a film that is full of righteous fury at the West – but also with a tender beating heat for the pain of grief and the struggle with mourning. Emotional and political, it’s the finest Le Carré adaption on film.

The Graduate (1967)

Dustin Hoffman is out of his depth in coming-of-age comedy The Graduate

Director: Mike Nichols

Cast: Dustin Hoffman (Benjamin Braddock), Anne Bancroft (Mrs Robinson), Katharine Ross (Elaine Robinson), William Daniels (Mr Braddock), Murray Hamilton (Mr Robinson), Elizabeth Wilson (Mrs Braddock), Buck Henry (Room clerk), Brian Avery (Carl Smith), Walter Brooke (Mr McGuire), Norman Fell (Mr McCleery)

In 1967, the world went crazy for The Graduate. This comedy of manners and sex tapped into a whole generation’s growing sense of rebellion. Who wants to be told their life has already been mapped out for them? The Graduate seemed to capture that mood and was celebrated as the ultimate example of how someone could break out of the mould. It’s a young person’s film, and perhaps you need to be young to watch it. The older you get – and the further away from those dreamlike days of the late sixties where everything seemed possible – the more the film feels like an amusing but soulless story, with a privileged bore at its heart.

Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman – actually nearly 30) is a fresh-faced young graduate, top of his class and a sports star. Arriving back home in California, he’s depressed, lost, uncertain about what he wants from life, but pretty sure it isn’t the litany of office, marriage and a career in “plastics” that his parents expect. His isolation brings him to the attention of Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft – only 6 years older than Hoffman), the wife of his father’s business partner. She sets about to seduce him, partly out of boredom, partly perhaps because she feels the same ennui and depression as he does (not that Benjamin ever notices – more on that later). They start a long summer affair, conducted with supreme awkwardness on Benjamin’s part, which suddenly becomes complex when he falls for her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross). Can true love triumph?

The good first. The film’s popularity was grounded in its wit – and it has a very funny script by Buck Henry, who also appears in one of the film’s funniest sequences, as an overly helpful desk clerk at the hotel where Benjamin is awkwardly trying to book a room for his assignation. The film is pacey and energetic and full of imaginative cuts (a brilliant one sees Benjamin flopping out of a pool, jump cutting to him descending onto Mrs Robinson in bed) and directorial flourishes. It’s a dynamic and sexy young film, full of bounce and appeal, with some great jokes.

Mike Nichols – who won the film’s only Oscar for Best Director – shoots the film with real vibrancy. He does a fantastic job getting us to invest in Benjamin. A huge percentage of the film sees the camera focus in on Benjamin, usually in medium-shot or close-up – and it’s a rare moment when he isn’t in frame. The camera rarely leaves him for the first ten minutes, first zooming out from a close-up of him sitting on a plane, following him along a conveyor belt to the terminal (where his blankness slowly changes to fearful anticipation of what waits at home) to tracking along beside him at his welcome home party. This party is stuffed with his parents’ friends, and Ben’s isolation, claustrophobia and insecurity seem all the more striking as the camera gets closer and closer to him. It’s a superb example of using the camera to build empathy for the character.

Nichols’ excellent work continues throughout the film, which makes excellent use of shots, editing and zooms to make us experience Benjamin’s emotions, helping us root for him. It also helps that the film is scored to some of the finest music Simon and Garfunkel ever performed. The slightly sad, wistful feel to their songs – from Sound of Silence to Scarborough Fair – seems to perfectly frame Benjamin’s doubts, just as the slightly more hopeful beats of Mrs Robinson seem to capture him embracing freedom at the film’s end.

The decision to cast Hoffman pays off in spades. Hoffman is no one’s idea of a WASPy sports-star alpha male, but he’s everyone’s idea of an outsider. His performance is pitched perfectly – awkward, shy, uncertain, unaffected and natural. In fact, the film is pretty much perfectly cast. Anne Bancroft’s performance defined her whole career, the predatory Mrs Robinson whom she invests with touches of emotional vulnerability and more than a trace of the very same depression and fear that Benjamin is feeling. An entire generation effectively fell in love with the charming Katharine Ross.

Freedom is what the film is all about. But today, you feel the film skims only lightly on depths it could explore in detail. Benjamin can feel all the ennui he likes: he’s got it so made, I wish I had his problems. With his wealth, his fast car, the vast array of businessmen falling over themselves to offer him low-work-high-reward jobs, not to mention the gallery of attractive women throwing themselves at him, it’s the sort of misery only the rich enjoy. Almost constantly dressed in suit and tie, with his combed down hair, he looks a million miles from the generation that would party at Woodstock and protest Vietnam. Benjamin probably went on to vote for Reagan (twice). There is nothing counter-culture about him whatsoever. He ticks off noisy teenagers at a drive in and seems to find the young as hard to understand as the old. He’s less a generation adrift, more of an individual misfit.

The film though loves him to pieces, in the same way it largely treats Mrs Robinson as somewhere between a joke and a monster. She’s written as either a horny exploiter of youth, or a vengeful harpy. Rather than a ruthless cougar, today she seems to be more of a vulnerable, damaged figure. Every scene with Bancroft carries moments of pain, sadness and world-weary depression. Why else is she so able to spot these traits in Benjamin? Watch her desperation and hurt when Benjamin starts to date her daughter. That’s real humanity there, miles from the empty selfishness of Benjamin, who genuinely doesn’t get why she could take it so amiss that he intends to replace her with her own daughter.

The most striking moment in the film that captures this is the scene where Benjamin attempts small talk during one of their nights together. The film wants us to think Ben is looking for something real, and that Mrs Robinson just wants the sex. But the conversation is a masterclass from Anne Bancroft of suppressed pain and regret, as she talks of having to drop her art degree because she was seduced by her husband, of years of living an empty life. Benjamin of course doesn’t get it – he guesses she dropped the art because she wasn’t interested – and then gets cross when he feels he’s being belittled. Mrs Robinson’s sad eagerness to persuade him to stay is rather affecting – more than the film really allows. I credit Anne Bancroft with much of this.

And then we have Elaine. The second half of the film shifts gear dramatically from the first. While the first half is a sex comedy and study of suburban discontent, the second seems to change into the sort of celebration of youthful energy that the first half could be said to be partially satirising. Elaine is an independent young woman, embracing her education and the opportunities it offers. Suddenly, an energised Benjamin is tearing across country to win Elaine back (let’s put aside that Benjamin behaves in this section like something between a stalker and a creep).

However, as the film nears its conclusion, that celebration of the promise of youth is undercut somewhat, as Elaine chooses to make all the same mistakes her mother made. The film even hints at this with its famous ending shot. After eloping from her wedding, Elaine and Ben sit on the back seat of the bus. The camera holds the shot as they laugh, until they stop laughing and then sit next to each other, and then awkwardly look this way and that as if waiting for someone to tell them what to do. What do they really have in common? Having made a spontaneous decision like this, what happens next? It’s another little genius flourish by Nichols – although it’s also the film having its cake and eating it, selling the sequence before this as a triumph of true-love, then asking us to question if the world is that simple.

Some of these ideas felt lost in the excitement of the film’s first release, when it captured a wave of public feeling. But the older the film gets, the more awkward it looks. As if the kids who watched it in the sixties and turned into the Reaganite Baby Boomers of the 1980s, slowly realised that the message it was selling was not quite true and perhaps their parents weren’t that different after all.

Watching The Graduate today, I found it hard to shake the feeling that if I flashed forward to the characters’ lives in 1997 I would find a very different, but still very similar story. Benjamin Braddock would be a wealthy businessman, still dressed in suit and tie, who went into plastics or computers or some such and swallowed the “greed is good” mantra from his corner-office. Elaine a depressed housewife, mother to a couple of kids, who left her dreams of forging her own life behind to marry the subject of a youthful fling. Who, with her own regrets, finally understands the sadness and misery at the core of her mother’s life. And is making eyes at that attractive young man next door…

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Al Pacino takes a bank hostage in Dog Day Afternoon

Director: Sidney Lumet

Cast: Al Pacino (Sonny Wortzik), John Cazale (Sal Naturile), Charles Durning (Sgt Eugene Moretti), Chris Sarandon (Leon Sharmer), James Broderick (Agent Sheldon), Lance Henriksen (Agent Murphy), Penelope Allen (Sylvia), Sully Boyer (Mulvaney), Susan Peretz (Angie Wortzik), Carol Kane (Jenny)

Perhaps only in the 70s could a failed bank robber have been turned over-night into a counter-culture folk-hero. It’s the subject of Sidney Lumet’s thrilling, heist-gone-wrong movie, set on one sweltering day in New York when Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino) tried to rob a bank to fund the sex-change operation of his boyfriend Leon (Chris Sarandon). He ends up taking the co-operative bank staff hostage while a media and public firestorm takes place outside the bank, mixed in amongst an army of trigger-happy cops. And it’s all based on a true story.

Sonny is far from your hardened criminal. He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt. He takes care of the hostages, who all become immensely fond of him and his less confident partner-in-crime Sal (John Cazale). When the police and media turn up, Sonny is outraged at the trigger-happy police presence and quickly wins the support of the crowd with his honesty, bluntness and quick wit. With the police incapable of controlling the situation, soon he is actively playing to the crowd, taking phone calls from the press in the bank. He becomes a counter-culture icon, sticking it to the man (his famous chant of “Attica!”, refers to the famous prison riots, where prisoners rioted to secure their rights).

It’s the key topic that fascinates Sidney Lumet, in this brilliantly frentic, edgy and dynamic film, that captures the tension in New York, where it felt like the careful balance between law and order could disintegrate any time. Lumet’s improvisational feel with the crowds, the edgy, raw performances – particularly from Pacino and Durning, both of whom are sensational – and the sense that anything could happen at any time. Dog Day Afternoon is about a city on the edge, combined with the ability of the media to turn regular people into stars. There was little faith in the authorities, and even a little bit of nose thumbing in their direction could sway the crowds.

At the centre of all this is Sonny, a fascinatingly flawed person, partly absorbed with being the centre of attention, part desperately trying to work out what his best move is among an increasingly narrowing number of options. Al Pacino nearly didn’t take the role, after suffering a near nervous collapse from the pressure of Godfather Part II – but, after committing to the film, he gave one of his most extraordinary performances of an era he and a small group of actors dominated.

Sonny feels increasingly trapped in his predicament. The robbery of the bank is hilariously cack-handed from the start – one of the robbers bails in minutes and has to be begged not to go home in the get-away car – and it becomes clear that for Sonny this is all a last desperate throw of the dice. Both of his relationships – with his first wife and his second marriage to Leon – are relationships on the brink of disaster, destabilised by Sonny’s desperate need for prove of love and affection. He’s a man uncertain in his own skin, smart enough to know the world isn’t fair, but not smart enough to know what to do with it. Fundamentally decent, but forced into illegal actions. Pacino delivers this with the expected fireworks, but when we see Sonny away from the public gaze, he’s a sad, broken-down, isolated man who genuinely doesn’t know where his life is going.

Dog Day Afternoon was radical at the time for how it deals with homosexuality. Neither Sonny nor Leon are presented – as might have been expected at the time – as limp-wristed or fey, but just regular guys who happen to want different things from life. Chris Sarandon (Oscar nominated) is strikingly tender, low-key and world-weary as a man resigned to what the world is throwing at him, from the emotional pressure of meeting Sonny’s needs for affection, to spending every day feeling trapped in his body and facing suspicious stares from all around him. Pacino presents Sonny as a masculine, dynamic figure whose sexuality is just part of his personality. It’s a film not afraid to acknowledge the love between men, and never considers this anything other than entirely normal – something extremely unlikely in 70s cinema. Indeed, you can see the mood of the time in the way the crowd changes once the motivations behind Sonny’s actions becomes clear. Hostility grows – through many gay rights activists quickly arrive to bolster the crowd. The films normalising of homosexuality, also serves as a critique for the assumptions and reduced options many identifying as gay had at the time.

Of course, this all makes the entire siege even more attractive to the media. The film is a neat satire of the way the press can turn events like this into entertainment. A pizza delivery guy, sent to feed the hostages, can barely contain his excitement, screaming “I’m a star!”. At least two hostages refuse offers to leave the siege – at least partly, it’s suggested, because there is nowhere better to be than at the centre of the show. Pacino’s electric playing to the crowd demonstrates how Sonny’s firecracker sense of the turmoil of the period – the violence of the authorities and the lack of justice for the regular guy – helps feed this. The media’s eagerness to sensationalise the events, do turn them from real life into entertainment – and the way so many characters and on-lookers yearn to be part of a real-life drama – is sharply critiqued, with truth and humanity sacrificed for prime-time ratings (ideas Lumet would explore even more deeply in his next film Network).

It’s also fascinating to watch the cack-handed police inexperience at handling sieges like this, from the lack of central control to the trigger-happy cops, to allowing public and the media to get within a few metres of the bank entrance. Charles Durning is superb as a frazzled police sergeant, out of his depth, unable to control his colleagues and totally lacking the calm and control needed for hostage negotiations. He’s replaced in the operation by FBI agent Sheldon – played with a chilling distance by James Broderick – who represents the other side of the law at the time: ruthless, cold and very ready to switch from negotiation to execution.

Sonny may look is in control of things, but it’s quickly clear no-one really is. Even Sonny feels this, Pacino delivering with a resigned calm a scene where Sonny asks one of the bank tellers to record his final will. Dog Day Afternoon is also a tragedy, with the real victim being Sal, Sonny’s partner in the robbery. He’s played with an almost childish innocence by John Cazale, as a not very-bright man completely out of his depth, whose idea of a foreign country to escape to is Wyoming (a hilarious piece of improvisation by Cazale). While Sonny is the public face of the situation – and someone law officials figure they can work with – Sal becomes a dangerous unknown quantity for them that they feel needs to be disposed with. An offer they openly make to Sonny, who furiously rejects it (but, tellingly perhaps, doesn’t tell Sal about).

Poor Sal sweetly chats with the staff. He quietly warns about the dangers of smoking. He sweats and timidly waits to be told what to do. He bravely tells Sonny that he is completely ready to shoot the hostages, while clearly having no idea about the emotional reality of doing this. He meekly follows instructions and is responds with panic to almost every situation. Cazale’s flawless performance turns him into the real victim here, completely unprepared in every way for the situation he is in (he whiningly complains about being called gay on the news, and is terrified at the idea of flying with the hostages to a foreign country, having never been in a plane before). It’s a wonderful personal tragedy that plays in the background of the film.

Lumet’s film has the dynamic vibe of a fly-on-the-wall documentary turned drama. Pacino is the perfect actor for this, his performance (Oscar-nominated) sensational, high-octane and demonstrative mixed with confused, vulnerable and eventually traumatised and guilt-ridden. The film brilliantly balances questions of politics, media and sexuality, offering seering critiques of attitudes around all three. Wrapped into a fire-cracker film, this is a brilliant piece of social commentary, personal tragedy and street theatre. Overlooked more than it deserved, it’s a masterpiece of 70s film making.

Citizen Kane (1941)

Believe the hype: Orson Welles changes the course of film history in this landmark masterpiece

Director: Orson Welles

Cast: Orson Welles (Charles Foster Kane), Joseph Cotton (Jedediah Leland), Dorothy Comingore (Susan Alexander Kane), Agnes Moorehead (Mary Kane), Ruth Warwick (Emily Monroe Norton Kane), Ray Collins (Jim W Gettys), Erskine Sanford (Herbert Carter), Everett Sloane (Mr Bernstein), William Alland (Jerry Thompson), Paul Stewart (Raymond), George Coulouris (Walter Parks Thatcher), Fortunio Bonanova (Signor Matiste), Harry Shannon (Kane’s father)

Writing about Citizen Kane is rather like writing about the Mona Lisa. Both are works of art so famous and influential that you are intimately familiar with them even if you’ve never seen them. But what makes them such constant delights is that, leaving everything else aside, the Mona Lisa is beautiful to look at – and Citizen Kane is hugely enjoyable to watch. Welles’ masterpiece – frequently hailed as the greatest film ever made – is about as close to perfection as you can get.

Entire books have been written about seemingly every aspect of the film’s creation. Welles’ original intention was to call the film American. It’s a fitting title. Citizen Kane is perhaps the finest film ever made on the corruption that ambition, money and power bring to the American spirit. Kane starts out as a pioneering idealist, but his fatal flaw his is need for power. That need to seize control of everything extends from buying all the art he can find in Europe to controlling the lives of all around him. It’s the mentality that will force his second wife into an opera career she is hopelessly unsuited for. It will eventually leave him sitting alone in his huge mansion, surrounded by wealth but bereft of friends. A large part of the American Dream is about “making it big” – and few make it bigger than Kane, and have so little to show for it at the end.

The film is a character study of ambition and power, using a framing device of the late Kane’s final word: “Rosebud”. What did he mean? Will finding out provide the key to understanding this powerful, elliptical man? A reporter (William Alland) aims to find out by interviewing key people from Kane’s life. From their recollections, the story of Kane’s life slowly comes together in a non-linear style. Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) as a young child inherits one of the world’s largest gold mines. Coming of age, Kane decides to use his wealth to become a press baron. He builds a news empire and runs for Governor – but the public revelation of his affair with amateur singer Susan (Dorothy Comingore) ruins his campaign. He builds a mansion on a man-made mountain, Xanadu, but is isolated and friendless in the echoing rooms of his own mausoleum.

You can argue the same thing happened to Welles himself. Citizen Kane is his own mausoleum, the only time in his life when everything went right. Also, probably the only time Welles’ attention stuck to something long enough to deliver. Welles memorably called working on a film set “the biggest electric train set any boy ever had”, and the entire film is saturated in his creative glee at trying so many new tricks. Citizen Kane bought to the forefront so many methods of film-making, its influence has been so pervasive on film today, that it’s hard to see how revolutionary it appeared at the time.

Welles worked with cameraman Gregg Toland to push the film into a whole new visual language, deeply influenced by German expressionistic film. It’s a beautiful film to look at, and each shot is covered with meaning, Welles’ eye for the theatrical image matched with Toland’s genius for visual language.

Citizen Kane is rarely thought of as a noir film, but it’s possibly the most noirish film you’ll ever see. Watching it again I was struck with how often shadows dominate the screen. Faces are frequently obscured, most famously in the projection room scene, where Thompson receives his instructions to find out what “Rosebud” means. But at key moments, faces disappear into black – while preparing his “Statement of principles” that will fill the front page of Kane’s first edition at the Inquirer, his face is lost in murky darkness. We hear what he is saying, but what is he thinking at this moment? It’s impossible to tell. Long shadows and inky black segments fill the frame frequently – it’s a film that gives a true feeling of darkness and unknowability at its heart.

This is mixed with the theatrical flourish of its constant deep focus. Almost unheard of at the time, every shot of Kane is in perfect focus. It makes for visual compositions inspired by theatre, and ripe with dramatic meaning. Kane’s parents and his guardian William Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris) organise the future of the young Kane in the foreground, while we see the child playing outside in the show through a window. The deep focus turns Xanadu into a museum of lost chances and dreams, and the Inquirer newspaper office into an increasingly dark corridor of ambition, with people’s fates decided in foreground while we see them trapped in the background.

If that wasn’t enough, Toland uses angles Hollywood films hadn’t dreamed of. For some scenes, trenches were dug into the set and the camera placed in it, allowing the camera to stare up, with the actors towering over us. Citizen Kane is often claimed to be the first film where ceilings needed to build for the sets, as Toland’s angles and camerawork frequently made them visible. It’s not completely true, but it speaks to the visual impact of the film. Nothing really like this had been widely seen before. And I’ve not even mentioned the soaring, swooping tracking shots that pass through signs and buildings, the sort of inspired movement of the camera so many directors before had avoided in favour of stationary recording of the story. It’s visionary stuff.

The same was true for the film’s sound and music. Welles used his experience from radio to turn the soundscape of the film into something truly different. In radio, all cuts are managed by sound, but film had traditionally used only visuals to mark edits. Here, sound is used as often as visuals. When Kane runs for Governor, the sound and vision cut seamlessly from Leland on the stump for Kane to Kane finishing the same speech at a cavernous rally. Early in the film, the words “Happy Christmas” are skilfully cut together to leap forward years. Bernard Herrmann’s spare but perfect score, rather than laid over every scene, only comes in (as on radio) where emotional or transitional change is needed.

But then this is a film that uses editing as a way to tell story that few films before had tried. The sequence showing the collapse of Kane’s marriage to President’s niece Emily Monroe Norton (Ruth Warwick) is the perfect example. Over about two minutes of screen time we see several short scenes, all set at the breakfast table. Each scene shows a progressive step in their relationship collapsing, from loving exasperation to annoyance to anger to mute loathing. The scenes are no more than 20-30 seconds each, but the film perfectly moves from one to the other. The music slowly changes from a romantic waltz to a cold discordant rhythm. Transitions are marked by wipes. In each scene the actors move further apart at their breakfast table, the dialogue becomes harsher, sharper and more confrontational as the room they sit in becomes grander. In a few moments, an entire marriage story is told. It’s quite simply marvellous. The sequence is bookended by matching camera movements, gliding in and then out from the room.

You could speak for pages and pages (as indeed people have) about what a marvel Kane is. Welles’ vision and willingness to push the boundaries created an environment where all his collaborators worked to achieve their best, set free from the restrictions of more traditional moviemaking to stretch themselves as artists in a way rarely allowed. But it’s easy to forget what a marvellous story Citizen Kane is, what an entertaining and brilliantly constructed film it is and how every scene has something that delights and enthrals.

There’s controversy over who wrote the script. Welles and Herman J Mankiewicz are credited – although arguments have been made that each deserved the lion’s share. Whoever did create it, the script is quite simply superb. Economic, but packed with wonderful lines and some extraordinary speeches (Mr Bernstein’s speech about a powerful memory of a young woman he saw once from a distance is quite simply one of the best small-scale speeches you’ll see). Every scene is brilliantly assembled, and gives fabulous material to an extraordinary cast of actors.

It makes for a compelling character study, wrapped into a series of brilliantly done vignettes. Each set of recollections – from Thatcher, business manager Mr Bernstein (Everett Sloane), old friend Jedidah (Joseph Cotton) and ex-wife Susan (Dorothy Comingore) – makes for a fabulous series of self-contained scenes, each gaining richer and deeper meaning with every subsequent reflection that follows. There are so many sensational scenes I hardly know where to begin: you could write an essay about each one. Thatcher’s serio-comic reflections of the roguishly cheeky Kane are wonderful. Bernstein’s memories of the chancer coming good – with a brilliantly playful celebration scene – wonderfully entertaining. Jedidah and Susan’s far more tainted reflections of the man’s flaws make for wonderfully constructed drama, presenting a corrupted and bullying Kane. In every scene there is a beautiful moment of dialogue or drama which sticks in the memory.

The acting is equally good. Cotton settles into the groove many of his finest roles would fit into – the never-quite-grew-up schoolboy, who slowly realises his hero has feet of clay. Comingore is wonderfully fragile and then increasingly bitter as Kane’s ill-used second wife, forced into a humiliating career because Kane won’t be married to a failure. Sloane is charmingly loyal, with beautiful moments of profound sadness, as Bernstein. Coulouris is brilliantly funny as the exasperated Thatcher. Ray Collins’ is smooth and unabashed as Kane’s political rival. Agnes Moorehead is tinged with sadness and ambition for her son as Kane‘s mother.

But at the heart of Citizen Kane – in every sense – is Welles. His handpicked crew was some of the best in the business – but it was Welles’ inspiration, his willingness to imagine techniques and approaches un-attempted before, that encouraged them to their finest work here. With the magnetic force of personality that was his hallmark, he inspired everyone to give their very best. And he led from the front. The film is a triumph of drama, tragedy and comedy, directed with sublime grace. Welles the actor is perfectly cast, the part almost a riff on his own cult of personality, the mix of pride and overweening ambition and little-boy cheek crossed with self-destructive laziness. Welles’ performance is faultless in the film, taking Kane from the smirking chap happy to lose a million dollars a year (“at the rate of a million dollars a year I’ll need to close this place…in 60 years”) to the bloated old man, trashing his wife’s room after she walks out. Perfect.

The only tragic note about Citizen Kane is that this wasn’t the first in a career of non-stop genius from Welles. Instead, flaws in his own personality, combined with his ability to make enemies and lack of ability to focus on the task in hand, increasingly consumed Welles, making him eventually a lost great, a man wandering from film set to film set, taking on small roles for cheques that might one day help him make a film. But he’ll always have Kane, the sort of film that is a marvel which can never, ever disappoint. With every scene a classic, every moment compelling, every beat in it perfectly judged, its influence stretching to almost every film made since the late 1940s – it deserves its place as the greatest film of all time.

Land and Freedom (1995)

Ian Hart fights for Land and Freedom in Ken Loach’s impassioned Spanish Civil War drama

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Ian Hart (David Carr), Rosana Pastor (Bianca), Frédéric Pierrot (Bernard Goujon), Tom Gilroy (Lawrence), Icíar Bollaín (Lawrence), Marc Martinez (Juan Vidal), Paul Laverty (Militia Member)

What do we really know about our elders? After David Carr passes away, his granddaughter finds a box full of memories from his time as a young man (Ian Hart) who went to Spain in 1936 to fight against fascism. His granddaughter uncovers a whole side of her radical grandfather she never knew – his passions, his love and the reasons for his disillusionment with the communist party.

If there was someone who was going to make a film about the Spanish Civil War, it would be Ken Loach. The Spanish Civil War is a totemic event for left-wing politics, where the dream of a truly commune-based left-wing government in Europe, by the people for the people, died in a long civil war with right-wing military forces. Loach’s film hums with anger at this missed opportunity and fury at the way these crusaders for justice were left high and dry by both the rest of Europe, and the Russian-controlled forces that should have been on their side.

The Spanish Civil War is a war that it’s easy to slightly forget – a dress rehearsal for World War Two but with a different result. It’s striking that this is one of the very few films – perhaps the only film – to really tackle it. Perhaps that’s because, for many, it’s a hazy and confusing combat with no clear goodies and baddies. On one side the left-wing forces were riddled with internal conflict, with many in thrall to Stalin, while the right-wing forces were anti-Stalin (good) but fascist (very bad). It’s a war that ended with an elected government overthrown in a military coup, tacitly endorsed by the Allied powers – not something that fits well with our narrative of the World War Two era.

It’s clearly a war where Loach has picked a side. His sympathies – and the film’s – are certainly not with the leadership of the communist party, who are portrayed as heartless, two-faced and only concerned with assuring Soviet control over the country. Instead he sides with the common working-class man, fighting in the trenches, full of idealistic passion and righteous anger. Loach’s film is unashamedly political, awash with ideas and idealism.

Not many other films feature at their heart an impassioned, semi-improvised, debate on the merits of forming a commune and economic self-determination. This scene, the key moment in the film, really works by the way, with the actors throwing in their contributions alongside extras, many of them veteran Spanish trade unionists. You can question the naivety of it – and also the way, as often, Loach tends to paint compromise as a vice nearly as bad as betrayal – but it makes for surprisingly compelling viewing. Because, if nothing else, it’s clear everyone, from the director down, really believes in the virtues of the politics being offered and the hope they bring – and that’s infectious.

It’s also because Loach is a highly skilled director who has carefully used the film to build our empathy with these brave campaigners. There are some truly impressive performances. Ian Hart is superb as the young David Carr, young, idealistic, funny, brave and angry. Rosana Pastor is just as good as the woman he loses his heart too, the sort of feminist warrior ideal that is the staple of films like this, but whom she makes feel exceptionally vibrant and alive. Loach throws us into the trenches with these guys, showing us their lives and loves, allowing us to follow them through triumph and loss. It’s a film that demands we respect and admire these people who came from far and wide to fight for what they believed in – and it’s right to do so.

As always with Loach, what I miss is the shades of grey. You cannot doubt the honesty and true feeling behind these people’s views. They believe that what they are saying is the only way. What Loach tends to do – and does here – is show anyone who disagrees with this view, no matter the reason, as either cowardly or self-serving. An American communist who stresses the need for moderation in their politics (to win sympathy from the Western powers) and professionalism in the military campaign is dismissed as a sell-out and a patsy. As often with Loach, the idea of getting results from moderation and organic change is seen as worse than a romantic failure that sticks completely to ideals. Perhaps it’s an interesting insight into why so many left-wing political movements have ended in failure?

But away from the politics this is a fine film, one of Loach’s best. The reconstruction of the Civil War – often confused, rushed trench warfare fighting unclear enemies – is brilliantly done. A storming of a village by David Carr’s militia group is shot with the sort of immediacy that would make Paul Greengrass jealous. And what Loach does better than almost any other filmmaker is bring real, living, passion to the screen. As the militia is finally betrayed for good by the Communists, the spittle-flecked, teary-cheeked anger of the characters at the Soviet-backed forces rounding them up feels almost unwatchably real.

I don’t always agree with Loach’s politics – and I strongly favour compromise and moderation as a better way of achieving long-term goals than blindly sticking to principles – but I have no argument with his qualities as a filmmaker. And Land and Freedom is so clearly one-from-the-heart that you can’t argue with it. No matter your political stance, you must be moved by it. And feel a profound sorrow about how a generation saw their dreams ripped away and betrayed.

Badlands (1973)

Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek are killers on the run in Terrence Malick’s masterpiece Badlands

Director: Terrence Malick

Cast: Martin Sheen (Kit Carruthers), Sissy Spacek (Holly), Warren Oates (Father), Ramon Bieri (Cato), Alan Vint (Deputy), Gary Littlejohn (Sheriff), John Carter (Rich man)

If American cinema has a poet, it’s Terrence Malick. His career is the most elliptical of any major American filmmaker. Shunning interviews or any discussion of his work, his mystique is built upon Kubrickian isolation (he took a 20-year gap between his second and third films) and the powerful mystique of his first film – and still his masterpiece – Badlands. A luscious, beautifully filmed, profound piece of film-making, perfectly paced and told with a poetic sensibility, it’s powerful and brilliant. Nothing Malick has done since has reached the same beautiful balance between story, profundity, poetry and realism.

Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen) is an aimless young man, recently fired from his job as a garbage collector in South Dakota. His imagination is captured by a teenage girl, Holly (Sissy Spacek), freshly arrived from Texas. He romances the young girl – who is naively swept up in the possibility of Kit’s poetic soul – but her father (Warren Oates) disapproves. So, in a casual confrontation at their home, Kit kills the father, burns down the house and he and Holly head out on the run. Travelling across the country, Kit kills with a casual lack of maliciousness, all the time building in his head his self-image as a James Dean-like hero in his own movie, a poet turned outlaw. Holly narrates the film, her guileless, innocent and often unreliable narrative revealing her own naivety. Sheen is outstanding as Kit, idealistic but empty, while Spacek gives Holly a sublime blankness that makes us never sure how much she understands the situation she is in.

Malick based the film on the killing spree of Charles Starkweather, who carried out a murderous journey across several states in the mid-West with his underage girlfriend in the late 50s. But what Malick found in this story was a fascinating insight into how people can become absorbed by the romanticism of the American pioneer spirit, to try and turn their own lives into something with meaning and depth. So, Kit can be little more than a not particularly bright casual killer, but he builds his own self-image as something part-way between movie star and philosopher poet.

What the film does quite brilliantly is balance the ruthlessness of Kit with this dreamlike poeticism. Much as you shouldn’t, you end up caring a little for Kit and Holly, while deploring their brutality. Perhaps it’s because both of them feel so young. After the murder of her father, they build a cabin in the woods and live off the land, with all the enthusiasm of kids. There is something very vulnerable about both of them, their abilities to really understand the situations they are in and the moral implications of their actions non-existent. In a way they are playing – but with real guns.

Their life has been so filtered through the Hollywood celebrity culture growing around them, that they see their actions like part of a film. Death is as unreal and without impact as it is in Hollywood. Kit twice, early in the film, prods dead animals with nerveless curiosity – the same blankness and lack of reaction that he will later treat dead people with. Holly is briefly shocked by the death of her father, but then builds all Kit’s actions into a narrative of romantic drama.

Kit and Holly build their own narrative the whole time – but with a shallow emptiness that reveals their own pretensions. Both of them are collectors of odds-and-ends – Kit picks up mementos and strange souvenirs from where they have been, treating these as near religious icons that future generations will use to mark his presence. Objects from lamps to paintings to rocks are invested with artistic value by the pair. Kit’s shallowness is clear: early in the film he picks up a large rock from under the tree where they first made love, determined to keep it forever as a memento. After walking a few metres, he drops it and decides to take a lighter rock. Later, when Kit is finally cornered by the police, his main concern is to build a small cairn to mark the location where he was caught.

Kit wants to be more than he is. He is delighted when his physical resemblance to James Dean is noted by the police (his appearance is carefully studied to cultivate this). At a rich man’s house, he decides to record messages for posterity – words so bland, predictable and lacking in depth they reveal the total lack of imagination and original thought in Kit. He is polite, generally kind to his victims (before killing them) and thinks of himself as a sort of poet of the wilderness. Neither he nor Holly understands the horrific finality of death. The couple have a fatally corrupted innocence, a childlike, romantic understanding of the world that becomes a sort of fairy-tale. And you can totally see why a naïve young girl like Holly might see Kit as a romantic figure who can set her free.

Malick’s film wraps this up in a film of dreamlike beauty. In later films, Malick became so obsessed with beautiful images, and increasingly pretentious in his themes, that they became self-important artefacts. But Badlands balances these instincts beautifully with a fascinating and revealing story.

The shooting of the film offers up one beautiful image after another, reflecting the poetic longings of the couple at its heart, while underpinning sharply their blandness. Malick captures the awesome grandness of the Badlands themselves, a dusty stretch of emptiness that goes on forever. Malick shoots moments, like the house-fire, with such grace and perfection that they take on deep psychological meaning (what else is that house fire but the death of Holly’s early life?). Shots of nature – the sort of wildlife photography that would go too far in later films – place the couple in exactly the sort of tranquil independence, free from the burdens of the real world, that they long for. It’s an American dream, the celebration of the pioneer spirit deeply and darkly inverted.

The film is an enigma that avoids ever casting easy judgements on its characters. Their actions may be awful, but how much have they been bent and twisted by the world around them? The film’s eclectic musical choices – Carl Orff to Nat King Cole – bring the film a sense of magic, again a dreamlike mysticism. It’s fitting for a young couple who are living in a dream, with no consequences and no morals. This impressionistic masterpiece, which mixes in moments of shocking realism and casual violence, reflects the inner life of its leads, both yearning to be more than they are, and directing these longings into disastrous ends. Badlands is one of the greatest debut films in history, and still the perfect fusing of Malick’s poetic leanings with narrative film-making.

A Separation (2011)

Compelling drama of a family under pressure, in Farhadi’s brilliant film

Director: Asghar Farhadi

Cast: Payman Maadi (Nader), Leila Natami (Simin), Sareh Bayet (Razieh), Shahab Hosseini (Hodjat), Sarina Farhadi (Termeh), Merila Zare’I (Miss Ghahraii), Ali-Ashgar Shahbazi (Nader’s father), Babrl Karimi (Judge), Kimia Hosseini (Somayeh), Shirin Yazdanbakhsh (Simin’s mother)

It’s very easy today to imagine Iran as another world. A mysterious country, locked behind an oppressive regime that we are constantly told by our leaders is a frightening, distant place not to be trusted. But this prosperous country, with its rich historical background, isn’t some sort of Mars. It’s full of regular, normal people just trying to do their best for their families. It’s the strongest thing you’ll take out of Asghar Farhadi’s heartfelt, low-key, deeply moving masterpiece: deep down, we are all united by how circumstances push us into desperate situations with few good options.

Married couple Nader (Payman Maadi) and Simin (Leila Natami) have petitioned for divorce. Secular Muslims, they want to emigrate to find better opportunities for their teenage daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi). Simin wants to leave now – but Nader won’t leave while his aged father (Ali-Ashgar Shahbazi), suffering from Alzheimer’s, is alive. Their only option, under Iranian law, is divorce. However, separation makes it impossible for Nader to care during the day for his father. He hires Razieh (Sareh Bayet), a devout Muslim – but the position causes her a host of problems, from concerns about touching another man (she calls her Imam to ask if she can change the old man’s trousers after an accident), to her worries about what will happen if her husband Hodjat (Shahab Hosseini), a feckless man in and out of prison, finds out she is working for a single man. After Razieh ties Nader’s father to a bed to keep him safe, she and Nader argue, during which he forces her out of his flat. Razieh then has a miscarriage that night. Did Nader know she was pregnant? If so, he could face prison for murder. Both families find themselves in desperate straits.

A Separation is a superb piece of film-making, deceptively simple in its assembly and shooting, but carrying a huge emotional force as we become invested in the lives of the people it follows. Farhadi never passes moral judgement over his characters. All of them have strong reasons for doing what they are doing, rooted in what’s best for the family. Everyone acts in the way they feel will best protect their loved ones. Arguments become profoundly personal and damaging – but they don’t start out that way. It’s simply a question of things slipping out of control.

That’s not helped by the laws of the Iranian state. Farhadi’s film is very careful to never pass explicit comment on Iran’s laws. But the nature of the regime – and the mood it encourages – is at the heart of all the problems. Tensions are perhaps inevitable between the middle-class and secular Nadar and Simin, and the more working-class and traditional Razieh and Hodjat. This is class and religion in one cocktail, both sides carrying impressions that are nearly impossible to shake off.

But it’s the laws of the state that amplify this: where a man and a wife must go through a demanding pantomime for divorce or a man can be sentenced for murder for the lightest push on the shoulder of a woman who then miscarries. The judge hearing the pre-trial arguments (a very gentle and dignified performance from Babrl Karimi) may be the very soul of reasonableness, but it doesn’t change the fact that the laws he must rigidly uphold continually inflame the situation.

The story is brilliantly constructed, a tightly plotted melodrama that frequently presents new information that forces us to reinterpret what we have seen and heard. It mixes superbly domestic drama and crime procedural, and frequently only the audience has the complete picture of everything that has happened. Key arguments – the loss of money, Razieh’s unexplained absence from her duties, the difficulties of keeping Nadar’s father safe – are shown to us from every angle. But still, we understand the very natural – and human – reactions that people who do not have all the facts, as we have, make. Perhaps it’s the constant stress of simply living – magnified in a crowded and difficult city like Tehran – that seem to put every character on a knife-edge, terrified that a wrong step could land them in a host of trouble.

But that’s the power of Farhadi’s film-making – he invests every shot with sympathy and empathy. He wants us to understand everyone. It would be easy to make Hodjat exactly the sort of chippy, argumentative, working-class figure Nadar clearly thinks he is – but we also see his desperation, poverty, shame at not being able to provide for his family. Simin is easy to see as a woman trying to escape to live her own life – but she is also willing to cause collateral damage to the rest of her family. Nadar is the picture of a more liberal Iranian – but he also refuses to listen to people and is selfish in equating what he wants with what everyone else should want. There are no easy moral choices here – and no clear “heroes and baddies” for us to invest in.

The film reminds us that on every side of a dispute there are real people, with real concerns. And that the collateral damage can be just as bad. Nadar’s father is left even more catatonic than he was at the film’s start. Nadar and Simin’s daughter Termeh becomes consumed with guilt and disillusionment over the moral compromises her parents are forced to make. Her distress plays constantly at the edges of scenes – and even her morals eventually end up compromised – only coming fully into focus with Farhadi’s heartbreakingly open-ended conclusion.

The acting is superb. Payman Maadi is harassed and desperate under a veneer of controlled reason. Leila Natami plays a modern career woman, compromising herself every day, with great power and intensity. Sareh Bayet’s vulnerability is matched only with her profound sense that she cannot compromise her morals, in a performance that brilliantly mixes fear, resentment, warmth and anger. Shahab Hosseini superbly brings to a life a loud, brash man who is secretly profoundly weak, scared and trapped. There isn’t a wrong note in the entire cast, and Farhadi’s patient and intimate direction and shooting allows each of them to bring their characters superbly to life. This is a brilliant film which shows an intriguing – but sensitive – insight into life in Iran. But it most strongly demonstrates how human we all are. Everyone in the film is doing what they feel is best for their family – be that trying to hold them together, forcing the issue of emigration, earning money from work, or suing for compensation for the loss of a child. It’s a glorious reminder of how our lives can be altered by circumstances, and our intentions drastically different from their impact.

The American President (1995)

The buck stops with Michael Douglas in Aaron Sorkin’s dress rehearsal for TV, The American President

Director: Rob Reiner

Cast: Michael Douglas (President Andrew Shepherd), Annette Bening (Sydney Ellen Wade), Martin Sheen (AJ MacInerney), Michael J Fox (Lewis Rothschild), Richard Dreyfuss (Seantor Bob Rumson), David Paymer (Leon Kodak), Samantha Mathis (Janie Basdin), John Mahoney (Leo Solomon), Anna Deavere Smith (Robin McCall), Nina Siemaszko (Beth Wade), Wendie Malick (Susan Sloan), Shawna Waldron (Lucy Shepherd), Anne Haney (Mrs Chapil)

Taken solely on its own merits, The American President is a charming, witty romantic comedy which makes some shrewd (liberal-tinged) comments about American politics. But no-one is ever going to take The American President on its own merits. Because this Sorkin-scripted bundle of joy is so clearly a dry-run for The West Wing, it’s hard to watch it without spotting the roots of it here: everything from shared characters to scraps of dialogue. Perhaps only M*A*S*H stands with this film as so dwarfed by its spin-off.

President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) is a widower, raising his daughter Lucy (Shawna Waldron). Heading into the third year of his first term, he’s got a domestic agenda dominated by his new crime bill (although Shepherd won’t risk increasing gun controls). Charming, articulate and passionate – he’s also lonely. But his life changes when he falls for environmental lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening), their courtship seeing them fumble through “boy-meets-girl” when boy just happens to be the most powerful man in the world. Will the President’s popularity survive him dating someone outspoken and passionate? Or will it be a tool for his Republican rival Senator Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss) to hit him on everything from family values to patriotism?

It’s impossible not to enjoy The American President. Sorkin’s playful, articulate and smart dialogue is of course an absolute triumph. The cast are extremely well-chosen. Few actors look as damn Presidential as Michael Douglas, not to mention carrying with them an air of impassioned authority and commanding bonhomie. Annette Bening is spot-on as exactly the sort of feisty and intelligent woman that would attract a liberal minded President, but turn off pundits and regular people. Martin Sheen was obviously so comfortable with Sorkin’s dialogue style that promotion to the President seemed inevitable (seriously it’s very odd watching the film and seeing Sheen not being treated like the President!). Michael J Fox’s entire career was revitalised by Sorkin tapping into the frantic, fast-paced comic energy that is the actor’s forte.

Rob Reiner’s direction is fresh, relaxed and perfectly complements the dialogue. We get a few West Wing style walk-and-talks (does this make Reiner the inventor of it?). The film superbly balances romantic comedy with serious political discussion on military intervention and proportional response (“the least Presidential thing I do”), the environment and gun control. It also gets a neat idea of the shady, and dirty, business of generating votes in the House – and the deals that need to be done to secure legislation. Reiner gets great stuff from the actors (Sorkin didn’t question his casting, since so many of them ended up in The West Wing) and keeps the momentum up beautifully.

The film has a lovely Capra-esque feel to it. Sorkin is even witty enough to lean on this by having Sydney discuss Capra openly with a White House security guard – also a lovely moment to establish Sydney’s genuineness and openness, as compared to the jaded I-don’t-care attitude of her colleague. There is a real feel in it – and of course this optimism carries across to The West Wing – that good people in the right place can change the world. That decency and compassion can trump (so to speak) the cynicism of Washington insiders. (The idea appeals to everyone – what is Donald Trump but a nightmare version of a plain-speaking man in Washington who says what he thinks?).

Balanced with some lovely comedy, it works extremely well. Along with the debate, Sorkin has a great feeling for the absurdity of the Leader of the Free World trying to work out how he can behave like a regular Joe and ask a girl out on a date. Simple ideas, from sending flowers to the etiquette of having someone stay over, are laced with difficulties. The film gets a wonderful sense of how the public eye can unjustly tear people apart – all drummed up by Dreyfuss’ eminently hissable villain.

There is some great chemistry between Douglas and Bening. Douglas is at possibly his most charming and authoritative here, effortlessly selling the lightness but also the powerfully effective speeches Sorkin crafts for him (his final press conference speech that effectively closes the film is a barnstormer). Bening, as well as being perfectly cast, walks a neat line between serious professional and girlish crush, that comes across extremely well.

It’s hard though, for all the film’s romantic charm, not to look at it through the filter of The West Wing. It’s both a first pass, and a historical curiosity. Sorkin recycled many of the ideas touched upon here (most noticeably Sheen’s President would spend an entire episode discussing proportional responses) and also expanded several characters. Douglas’ teacher turned President, widely read and with a liberal outlook, is a clear forerunner of Bartlett. Sheen himself plays a character who is all but Leo. Fox plays a character combining elements of Josh and Toby. Anna Deavere Smith is a CJ without those distinctive touches Allison Janney bought to the role. Names, plot developments, concepts are all recycled. Stylistic flourishes in the writing match.

The American President isn’t as good as The West Wing of course – few things are. But as a boiled down, Hollywood version with a romantic twist, it’s still pretty damn good.

Uncut Gems (2019)

Adam Sandler is desperate to make a score in Uncut Gems

Director: Benny & Josh Safdie

Cast: Adam Sandler (Howard Ratner), Lakeith Stanfield (Demany), Julia Fox (Julia De Fiore), Kevin Garnett (Himself), Idina Menzel (Dinah Ratner), Eric Bogasian (Arno Moradian), Judd Hirsch (Gooey), Keith Williams Richards (Phil), Jonathan Aranbayev (Eddie Ratner), Noa Fisher (Marcel Ratner)

Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) is a Jewish jewellery dealer in New York. Addicted to gambling, Ratner has a mountain of debts – mostly to his loan shark brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogasian). Estranged from his wife Dinah (Idina Menzel) and trying to build a new relationship with girlfriend Julia (Julia Fox), Ratner’s life is a mess. His business depends on colleagues like Demany (Lakeith Stanfield) to bring in high-end clients, such as basketball star Kevin Garnett (playing himself). Ratner hopes an auction for a rare uncut diamond from Ethiopia will get him out of the hole. But, after agreeing to loan the diamond as a “good luck charm” to Garnett, Ratner finds himself in a desperate race to get it back in time for the auction, make enough money to clear his debts – and resist the temptation to throw it all on a big accumulator bet on the next basketball game…

The Safdie brothers’ film is an explosion of frantic energy. Shot with hand-held dynamism and cut with adrenalin-fuelled quickness, every scene has life occurring at hundreds of miles an hour, leaving the viewer struggling to keep up. Like Robert Altman walking in Scorsese land, dialogue frequently overlaps, with the buzz of improvisation and rawness of language. The film rips through events with a headlong force, scenes veering from black comedy, to tragedy to violence with unexpected force.

There is an almost Jonsonian or Moliere sprightliness about the film. Ratner feels like a Volpone, a chancer on the make, trying to keep ahead of his schemes long enough to end out on top. The film plays like a dark farce. Often, at the worst possible moments, Ratner’s opponents or friends appear to ruin his current plan. Ratner’s shop is practically a classic farce set, with its backrooms and magnetically controlled door that doesn’t always open when ordered. But it’s a dark farce, which never lets you forget the threat of genuine physical violence.

The Safdie brothers take a superb chance on casting Adam Sandler. With his gallery of grotesques in a low-brow comedies, it’s easy to forget the commitment and transformational quality Sandler brings to any role. With the film teetering towards dark farce, that energy is perfect. Sandler channels the bombast of Al Pacino by way of the sleaze of Gilbert Gottfried, a raspy voiced would-be-but-never-was, a Del Boy of low-rent crime. It’s a high octane, big performance. But it works because Sandler is aware this is a character always performing, and has taken on a persona of such New York Jewishness (the Safdie brothers have said this was their intention) that it almost feels like his true emotional self has been long buried.

He’s a character who struggles with earnestness and honesty – partly because it brings so few benefits to his world, partly because he’s almost forgotten how to behave other than as the high-octane chancer he presents to the world. In many ways, this is very secure role for Sandler, falling very much into his wheelhouse without the crude gags, but with additional tears. Heavily praised by critics – many of whom perhaps couldn’t bear to sit through his more conventional film work – it’s a strong performance, but not a revelation as many suggested. Ratner is an exaggeration and a tour-de-force, but the real stretch for Sandler is in the smaller, quieter moments (of which there are few) where Ratner has to confront the emotional consequences of his appalling choices.

Moments like this are few and far between, amongst the crazed energy of the bulk of the film, but they carry real impact. It would be easy for this jet-black crime dramedy to overlook its heart, but it’s certainly there. Ratner’s relationship with Julia seems to be a typical gold-digger/older man’s folly, but reveals itself to have far greater depths of emotion than first appears. Similarly, the feud between Ratner and his wife is just part of a wider spectrum of genuine affection between them – even if the idea of continuing the marriage is a joke. Even Ratner and his brother-in-law (a world-weary Eric Bogasian) have moments of genuine affection, for all the threat of violence.

The real villain of the piece, if there is one, is Ratner’s own self-destructive streak. He can’t let the chance of a good score pass him by, and his constant habit of shooting himself in the foot and making the wrong call have led him to the brink of destruction. Not that the film is keen to show us too much of this. Interestingly, for a film about a gambling addict, Ratner’s actual bets have a romantic tendency to come off. In fact, for all that he is clearly in dire straits, the film shies away from showing the real damage that addictive gambling can have.

Perhaps it’s because the Safdie brothers clearly feel very protective towards Ratner. For all his wheeler-dealing desperation, the film lends him a perverted sense of nobility. We can see him lose out on a big deal, get punched in the throat, thrown in a fountain and still he keeps on going (Sandler’s fast talking wildness works wonders here). It’s a flaw in the film for me, that it’s nervous of looking at this self-destructive individual with the cold-eyed clarity that the best of the 1970s film this is partly apeing, would do. It’s a bit like making a film about a drunk, but showing every drinking session as being a whale of a time.

The film culminates in a final wide-eyed bet, mixed with a flurried attempted escape from the crooks. The final act throws in some surprising – and affecting – twists to the tale that stands much of what we have been watching on its head. The film’s frenetic style might, at times, make it a hard-watch – it is so eager to impress that it rarely rests but constantly jumps around like an over-active teenager – but it channels Sandler very effectively, and has the sort of edge too many other films can only dream of. Moments try too hard (the bookending shots that burrow, Fincher like, deep into crevices is a flourish too far), but this is still wire-cracker film-making.

Georgy Girl (1966)

Lynn Redgrave excels as permanent odd-girl out in Georgy Girl

Director: Silvio Narizzano

Cast: Lynn Redgrave (Georgy Parkin), James Mason (James Leamington), Alan Bates (Jos Jones), Charlotte Rampling (Meredith), Bill Owen (Ted Parkin), Clare Kelly (Doris Parkin), Rachel Kempson (Ellen Leamington), Denise Coffey (Peg), Dandy Nichols (Hospital Nurse)

Made at the height of the Swinging Sixties – when London was the coolest city in the world – Georgy Girl is, in some respects, a time capsule. It was seen at the time as almost impossibly naughty and subversive, with open talk of abortions and affairs, mothers who feel their lives have been changed for the worse by having babies and young people struggling to accept their responsibilities. Now of course, it all looks rather tame. But there remains a charm to the film – helped above all by its performances – that still manages to make it a winning film, despite some of its attitudes raising entirely different questions today than its makers intended.

Georgy (Lynn Redgrave) is the plain-looking (and doesn’t the film keep reminding us of this!) daughter of the devoted butler (Bill Owen) to millionaire James Leamington (James Mason). Leamington has supported Georgy while she grows up – even letting her use his house for her children’s performance classes – but now his interest in her is changing. With his wife dying, James offers her the chance to become his mistress (with an actual contract). Georgy turns it down – not least because of her growing interest in Jos (Alan Bates), the fun-loving boyfriend of her flatmate Meredith (Charlotte Rampling), a drop-dead gorgeous violinist who treats him and everyone else with disdain. When Meredith falls pregnant with Jos’ baby, the two of them marry – but Meredith wants nothing to do with the child, a contrast to Georgy who has always dreamed of family.

It’s actually a film of cold, hard realities. Beware any film which gives you a conventional happy ending – the hero chasing a woman down a street crying out that he loves her – around the half way mark. All the characters are presented with choices, and are forced to either compromise or run away. It’s telling that the characters who most fit the mood of the era invariably run away, while those with a more traditional outlook stick it out. You could argue that far from being a celebration of the 60s, Georgy Girl is a fierce critique.

At the time, Georgy was seen as something of a free spirit. Perhaps this was because of her unconventional looks or her playful imagination when working with the children in her performance class. Maybe it was the opening sequence, which sees her getting a fashionable haircut, only to instantly wash it out in a sink. Or could it be because she treats her father’s wishes for her to listen to her elders and betters with disdain? (Let’s skirt over the fact her father seems to be effectively pimping her to his employer.) The way she makes a scene at Leamington’s birthday party by performing a raunchy cabaret number? Most of all though it may well have been due to the catchy (and instantly recognisable) Seekers song that plays over the opening and closing of the movie and serves as her calling card.

Interestingly though, watching it now, there is something incredibly conservative about Georgy – and quite possibly about the film itself. While she lives in the heart of the buzzing metropolis, Georgy’s dreams seem to come from another age: to become a mother, in a comfortable domestic setting. It’s hardly a feminist rallying cry. Georgy is so keen for this, she is perfectly willing to step (almost literally) into the shoes of Meredith, inheriting her husband, child and home. The film also misses no opportunity to remind the viewers Georgy is plain, dumpy and sexually inexperienced. Redgrave has been dressed to look like a sort of Teutonic housekeeper. The film doesn’t seem to quite know where to land between praising Georgy and slightly encouraging us, to chuckle at her.

Georgy isn’t in fact the swinging 60s icon in the film. That unquestionably is Charlotte Rampling as Meredith. Looking absolutely stunning, dressed by Mary Quant, Meredith is everything we expect from the era: confident, outgoing, ambitious, sexually liberated. But Meredith is also a stone-cold, ruthless, heartless bitch. Superbly played by Rampling, she treats Georgy as a servant, Jos as a mix between comfort blanket and vibrator, and decides to get married and have the child (rather than abort it as she has two others of Jos’ children – without telling him) because she’s bored. Once the poor child is born, the idea of sacrificing anything from her life is anathema to Meredith who promptly disappears over the horizon.

Georgy Girl is actually a film with much more mixed – even satiric – views of women and its era. The sort of liberation Meredith enjoys goes hand-in-hand with a selfish shirking of responsibility and using her beauty as a justification to treat everyone she meets as supplicants. Georgy is stuck in the middle, a woman in an era of growing freedoms but whose aims remain solidly in the Victorian era. The men are an equally mixed bag. Today we would certainly call what Leamington has been doing grooming. Jos has a happy-go-lucky 60s charm to him, but is flighty, unreliable, selfish and disappears with a smile the second the going gets tough. For all the film is sort of remembered for its joie-de-vive, it’s actually a searing look at the era with mixed feelings about its characters.

The fact we really end up caring for Georgy is due to Lynn Redgrave’s wonderful performance. A second choice for her sister Vanessa, the role typecast Redgrave in Hollywood’s minds as sort of dumpy loser (especially after her Oscar nomination). But she brings the role a real magnetism. Georgy is doomed to play second fiddle in people’s lives (and perhaps even her own). Perhaps the most 60s thing about her though is her determination to get what she wants – whether that is avoiding an affair with her father’s employer, or securing a good life for Meredith’s baby.

The rest of the cast are equally strong. Bates brings the best of his impish charm to the part (even if at times he tries too hard), as well as a metrosexual edge to Jos as someone very comfortable with joking around and being a bit camp. James Mason (who took a massive pay cut for the role, a decision which paid off with an Oscar nomination) is superb as fragile but creepy Leamington, a man who believes he is genuinely in love and is also excited at the prospect of replacing his bed-ridden wife (played by Redgrave’s actual mother Rachel Kempson, adding a nice Oedipal touch) with a younger model. Bill Owen mixes both a hilarious servility with assertions that his daughter “owes” Leamington something for all he’s done for her.

Georgy Girl works well because it is – and remains – funny as well as being dramatic and thought provoking. It might not be a feminist tract – and the character most likely to be seen as a feminist in the thing is its least sympathetic by far – and it might well affectionately scorn a woman who doesn’t look like a conventional man’s idea of attractive, and give her a traditional outlook behind a playful exterior – but it’s an energetic and rather charming film that does make you care. Separating it from the era it’s set in, might well do it a world of good.