When the hand that does the violence cannot be caressed to pity.

Dry Summer
Metin Erksan 1964 Turkey
Starring: Erol Taş, Hülya Koçyiğit, Ulvi Dogan


Turkey might not be the first place many expect to find a lot of the components of Metin Erksan's Dry Summer. A tale of treachery between brothers, for example, is an overly common theme in Bollywood but less usual elsewhere. Likewise, neo-realism is more often than not associated with Italy but rarely thought of as having strayed east. Despite that, these disparate influences do come together well with brothers Osman and Hasan (and Hasan's wife Bahar) at war with their neighbours over the control of the water that runs from a spring on their land. Osman (played with an utter lack of redeeming features by one of Turkish cinema's greatest villains, Erol Taş) is ruthless, lecherous and thuggish, repeatedly holding his sister-in-law by the plaits, his eyes all over her arse. Midway through the film when he carries the family's dead dog home on his shoulders it's implied that he's the one who shot it, in an effort to get Hasan to take his side in his conflict with neighbouring farmers. Hasan meanwhile is good-natured, in love and wants nothing more than to be with Bahar, their relationship shot through with a vein of sensuality that extends to the whole film, from images of hands brushing legs to bread being baked, smelt and torn apart to Hasan crashing through tall reeds to find Bahar, guided only by her perfume - Bahar's legs actually feature a surprising amount too, splashing through water, being caressed and kissed by Hasan and having the poison of a snakebite sucked out of them by Osman, but I assure you it's a lot less pervy than that may sound. As prevalent as the sensuality is a serious sense of foreboding that rises as the heat does; by the time a forest fire is shown Osman is sweating bullets and not because of the fire. Even his beheading of a chicken (which he then chucks at Bahar) foreshadows both the aforementioned moment with the dog and the scene in which he's almost beaten to death by his opponents and literally throws himself at her. The same goes for the ever-present guns (every character appears to own several), the minute you see them you know that they're going to get used in the end. It's an excellent film with beautiful cinematography from a director and a nation that rarely find distribution here - it's taken 50 years, expansive restoration and the influence of Martin Scorsese for this to even get a DVD release. It's also a surprisingly forward-thinking one, pointing to the Turkish Republic's construction of a series of dams to deprive Syria and Iraq of water in the following years.

If I were you baby, I wouldn't go 'round sticking out that jugular vein.

Nothing But A Man
Michael Roemer 1964 USA
Starring: Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Stanley Green, Gloria Foster, Julius Harris

Duff Anderson lives in Alabama. His alcoholic father doesn't recognise him, a child who might be his son is being cared for by a wet-nurse after his ex-girlfriend "found herself a husband" and any attempt at improving his situation is met with the ingrained racism of the state, although the north isn't seen as much of an alternative either. The only good thing in his life is Josie, a schoolteacher and preacher's daughter who sees good in him even if her father can't. If that sounds pessimistic it's because it is but it's also the basis of one of the most sensitive, intense portraits of American racism I can remember. The words 'historically and culturally important' are overused when it comes to film, often by those who mistake controversy for intelligent comment, but Nothing But A Man really deserves that moniker. Before 1964 the work of many black filmmakers like the great Oscar Micheaux had been purposefully created for the audiences of black-only theatres; there were even 'all-coloured' musical westerns like Harlem On The Prairie. Nothing But A Man was the first film featuring a largely black cast created for an integrated audience and, rather pleasingly, it's also an exceptional piece of work with a fast-talking yet quietly dramatic script and stunning acting all around, particularly from the debuting Julius Harris whose worn-out, powerless drunkard may be the best performance of both the film and possibly his career. Leads Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln are excellent too and, in Dixon's case, in a role that could easily come off as stereotypical and preachy. It never does though, his Duff never being anything less than compelling as he fights for normality amongst seemingly insurmountable odds, be it against racist co-workers or his respectable father-in-law who's "been stooping so long he doesn't know how to stand straight anymore". Despite all this the film does end on a mildly hopeful note though (albeit not a happy one) and tops off what's a gritty, unpretentious, subtle masterwork that really should be better known.

Crack me like the spine of your favourite book.

Nymph()maniac: Volumes 1 & 2
Lars Von Trier 2013 Denmark/UK
Starring: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Stacy Martin, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Jamie Bell, Uma Thurman, Willem Dafoe, Mia Goth, Udo Kier, Jean-Marc Barr

One of my favourite, and one of the most polarising, directors of modern times, Lars Von Trier, once proclaimed himself "the true masturbator of the silver screen". Never has that description been more apt than in his latest project, the cruel, indulgent Nymph()maniac, a tale of sex addiction equally at home with daft and dangerous attempts to get laid as it is with self-destruction and genitals rubbed to raw hamburger by excessive masturbation, all told in flashback by unreliable narrator Joe in a spoken chess match with her intellectual, apparently asexual rescuer Seligman, both to convince him she's evil and corrupt him, her stories all rising from items seen in his grotty apartment. It's a role that Von Trier has obviously gloried in writing; he himself has at times been the most unreliable of narrators, his public persona perhaps his biggest playground. To tell the truth the whole film is pretty gleeful, when it starts we're given only natural sound like rainwater and metal trash cans vibrating but suddenly that's interrupted by Rammstein's Führe Mich blasting out at excessive volume, subtle as an air raid, almost saying 'are you fucking ready?'. In another moment he recreates one of his most harrowing scenes only to pull back at the last second as if cock-teasing us with horror and in a later one he even has Joe levitate orgasmically with the Whore of Babylon and Valeria Messalina on either side of her, like the angel and devil on her shoulders. By the time the credits roll he's playing Gainsbourg's gorgeously breathy rendering of Jimi Hendrix's Hey Joe, a final giggle after destroying both his characters and us and decreeing humans as "too stupid for democracy". He even gets in a conversation about political correctness and the difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, an obvious reference to his banning from the Cannes film festival. But it's not all just extravagance, there's drama, body horror, an almost theatrical centerpiece with Gainsbourg and Skarsgård just talking to each other, discussions about the masochism of love, religion, fly fishing, Ian Fleming, Edgar Allen Poe, Doctor Faustus, Bach and a shocking amount of black comedy. Somewhat surprisingly comedy is the vein that runs through the film most, even in an attempted rape scene made ridiculous by the silly mechanics and angles of the situation. In fact, for a film about sex there isn't actually a lot of fucking on display and what there is has been very nearly drained of all eroticism. It's something that not many directors could pull off successfully but it works and, as harrowing as some of these scenes are, they're almost a joy to watch. There's a lot to enjoy here, not least the incredible cast (all of whom are pitch perfect). As Joe Gainsbourg and the debuting Stacy Martin are breathtaking - indeed it's hard to imagine that the film could have worked without them. Skarsgård meanwhile is brilliantly meticulous as the intelligent but inexperienced Seligman and Jamie Bell gives what may be his best performance in years as the politely forensic, boyish sadist K. Perhaps the biggest shock though is that Uma Thurman is on astonishing form as the spurned wife of one of Joe's myriads of lovers, bursting with anguish and good manners and dragging her three children with her, demanded permission to show them the "whoring bed", and that Christian Slater comes close to stealing the film as Joe's dying father. I'm not just saying this as a huge Von Trier fan or a huge Gainsbourg fan but you need to see this film, both volumes, both barrels, both faces. It's certainly not perfect but it's a virtuoso work that takes you further than you could have imagined before cackling in your face and licking its lips. There's nothing else like this.

There are no white horses or black horses, just dark grey.

Le Pont du Nord
Jacques Rivette 1981 France
Starring: Bulle Ogier, Pascale Ogier, Pierre Clémenti, Jean-François Stévenin

Jacques Rivette is a difficult bugger. Much like the great British director Peter Greenaway his films are fiendishly intelligent, genuinely odd puzzles that sometimes take 10 times the (regularly lengthy) running time to unravel, details being drip-fed so the viewer is often on the same level of understanding, if not a lower one, as the characters. They're also frequently brilliant. Le Pont du Nord was made during what's often referred to as the director's 'middle period', a time when, as in the notoriously experimental, thirteen hour Out 1, nothing was off limits. One of the many actors from that film, Bulle Ogier, stars here as Marie, an enigmatic ex-con desperate for a happy ending and feebly attempting to solve the mystery surrounding her no-good boyfriend ("stick it out, we'll be together in 3 days"), with her daughter, the tragic Pascale Ogier, as the jittery, knife and compass-wielding, James Dean-ish drifter who attaches herself to Marie, insisting that their repeated meetings are a sign of fate. The idea of freedom vs. design hangs heavy here with Marie representing freedom and Pascale's Baptiste as design, Baptiste even going so far as to claim that she's been 'preparing for something like this' for a long time. It's hard to argue with her. The first time we see her (in a beautifully filmed scene) she's on a moped riding through Paris starring down statues of lions as if daring them to come at her and within minutes she's practising martial arts and carving the eyes out of posters so they can't watch her. By the end of the film she's willingly fighting off a mechanical digger she imagines as a dragon (shown spitting fire and breathing smoke in some dazzlingly fun visuals). It's an incredible performance from Pascale, encompassing dreamy childlike innocence alongside threats of violence and paranoia. She has this incredible way of moving, constantly dancing from one foot to the other and playing spy like a child determined to protect its parent, wholly unaware that they probably don't need to. And yet neither woman dominates - it's even pretty arguable whether they're the main characters - instead allowing Paris the starring role. It's a really visually arresting view of the city, at times little more than waste grounds and construction sites, and one that soon covers it in a sprawling board game-like spider web designating different areas as frightening and deadly while others are just empty. And of course there's avid cheeky references to other films, even down to little comic moments like the claustrophobic Marie finally agreeing to spend the night in an all-night cinema because it's showing 'The Great Outdoors' then fleeing in the morning because the poster outside is being changed to Henri-Georges Clouzot's La Prisonnière (Clouzot actually fits well with Le Pont du Nord, his other films including The Spies and The Truth, both of which are parts of the narrative here). Despite all this the film isn't a complete success, overall becoming just too oblique to be completely satisfying. Even though you go in knowing there might not be a concrete conclusion (or plot), you still sort of want more of an explanation than you actually get.

In a castle dark or a fortress strong, with chains upon my feet.

12 Years A Slave
Steve McQueen 2013 USA
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, Brad Pitt, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, Paul Giamatti, Adepero Oduye

When the nominations for the BAFTA's were announced earlier this year my father was quite excited at the inclusion of Steve McQueen and it took me several minutes and two Wikipedia pages to convince him that the action star had actually been dead for 33 years. This Steve McQueen is a Turner Prize winning artist who moved to directing features in 2008 and has since made three fearlessly intense, dazzlingly shot films in conjunction with the actor Michael Fassbender. 12 Years A Slave also has extraordinary camera work, taking in slick POV-style shots moving through a field of cane plants like an unseen animal, others showing the innards of motors and rotaries, at once malevolent and passive, and another focussing on the flaming ashes of a burnt letter, the only light on a darkened night. At the top of the pile though is a horrifyingly languid scene where Ejiofor's Solomon is hung from a tree with his feet just allowed to touch the ground so he doesn't die but nearly chokes with every breath. What makes things even worse is that, in long shot, the other slaves continue with their work knowing that it would be more than their lives worth to interfere. There are a lot of differences from McQueen's other work too, not least that this time Fassbender's isn't the most troubling character. There's no doubt that his disturbed, psychopathic, Old Testament raw nerve Edwin Epps is utterly terrifying, exuding threat even in his lucid moments, but somehow Benedict Cumberbatch's benevolent preacher Ford is worse. It's not that he's evil or even particularly unkind, it's that despite his beliefs and his obvious kindness he still actively owns slaves and, early in the film, separates a pleading mother from her children - his wife's mind-boggling response to which is "Something to eat and a little rest and those children will soon be forgotten". Whereas Epps genuinely thinks it is his God-given right to own, beat and control slaves and, in one scene, even leans on a child as if it were a fencepost Ford apparently has the enlightenment to see that his actions are wrong and the means to opt out of the entire practice but chooses not to. It's just one of a collection of complex characters, from Paul Dano's flailing, contemptuous rodent Tibeats to Alfre Woodard's former slave who, after marrying one of Epps' right-hand men, now lives alongside the masters to Paul Giamatti's repellent, fast-talking (and ironically named) trader Theophilus Freeman to Brad Pitt's liberal carpenter Bass. All are beautifully played, as is Lupita Nyong'o's Patsey, a debut performance that almost steals the film in its mixture of ferocity and passivity. But overall this is Ejiofor's film, he's present in every scene carrying with him a constant look of disbelief and, in the film's closing scene, is so frighteningly emotional it's harder to watch than any of the violence we've already witnessed. I don't think it's an exaggeration to call this Ejiofor's best performance and also McQueen's best film, an expert rendering of sin and human cruelty that both bodes well for their future work and leaves the viewer with the slightly deflating sensation that they may never better it.

Without you I'd be like a monkey without sense.

Dhoom 2
Sanjay Gadhvi 2006 India
Starring: Abhishek Bachchan, Uday Chopra, Hrithik Roshan, Aishwarya Rai, Bipasha Basu

Regular readers of this blog may have seen a post I wrote several weeks back raving about the hysterical visuals and hilarious parodies of the Bollywood film Dhoom. At the time the person who recommended it to me also told me that the sequel, Dhoom 2, was much better than the first film and, as good as the original was, they were right. Everything that was brilliant and utterly ridiculous is back including Bachchan using the codename Vijay, the name of the character synonymous with his legendary father. Also along for the ride are two of my favourite Indian actors, Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai, and both are a joy to watch. Rai has graduated from being hired at least partially on the merit of her Miss World win to being someone who's always reliable for a good performance however bad the film might be and Roshan has proved himself time and time again as one of the most versatile actors in contemporary Bollywood, excelling in a wide range of roles from a superhero in the Krrish series to a dance teacher on the run in Kites to a quadriplegic magician begging for the right to die (with Rai as his nurse) in the controversial but beautiful Guzaarish. He even makes fun of this reputation here in his role as a master of disguise, at one point linking up with Rai to dress up as two of the bearded and bespectacled dwarves from Snow White. The opening scene is even better with Roshan actually stealing the British crown from the Queen as she plays with her grandsons aboard a train, and if that sounds ridiculous it's because it is. But it's not all just comedy, Gadhvi having upgraded things from the original to include a genuinely affecting love story and later a dramatic Russian roulette scene between Rai and Roshan. There's even a brilliantly twisty, visually stunning ending that begins atop a waterfall and closes in Fiji. The only bad point is once again the terrible subtitles that seem to affect a lot of Indian releases. It really can't be that hard to find a half-decent fucking translator can it? I mean, seriously. In better news, Dhoom 3 is out on Monday and I'm happier than a woodpecker in a lumber yard. I'm even doing a little dance. Maybe. (I'm not.)

I picked a flower in Britain once, the colour of your eyes

Cleopatra
Cecil B DeMille 1934 USA
Starring: Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Henry Wilcoxon, Ian Keith, Gertrude Michael


When you say the word Cleopatra to a film fan there's a pretty good chance that they'll start talking about the 1963 Joseph L Mankiewicz epic with Elizabeth Taylor in the main role. This is a different, lesser-known incarnation with Claudette Colbert as the queen and Cecil B DeMille at the helm and surprisingly one in which Colbert outdoes Taylor in both venom and vampiness. As the film opens we see an unmade bed and as the camera pans across the room a man, apparently dead, with another trussed up beside him and a bird looking on - I'd heard stories about Cleopatra's reputation but, damn. As it turns out she's actually been kidnapped by the Prime Minister's forces and abandoned in the desert with the warning that she'll be killed if she tries to return. Within 15 minutes not only has she returned (unfurled from a carpet no less), she's seduced Julius Caesar into divorcing his wife and dispatched her abductor with a combination of nonchalance and a javelin. The scene is brilliantly written with the pair matching wits and exchanging barbs before the film unexpectedly cuts away from them, instead favouring the rumour-mill of Rome for the next 15 minutes. This may sound slightly anaemic in terms of narrative but it's all that's needed. Indeed, it's easy to see how Caesar could fall for her that quickly and, despite her apparently doing it to gain power, how Cleopatra could be heartbroken at the suggestion that he didn't really love her. Later big, dumb, beautiful Marc Anthony (a mildly wooden Henry Wilcoxon) travels to Egypt to bring her back to Rome in chains but is soon reduced from a manly general to a love-struck boy, bewitched at the incredible set-pieces that she (and DeMille) set out before him, one of beautiful women dressed as tigers jumping through flaming hoops and nets of clams filled with jewels. It's exactly the kind of spectacle you may expect from DeMille but actually the first in what's otherwise a rather talky, theatrical production. Still, the most shocking thing here is how much DeMille gets away with considering that the Hays Code had just taken effect; he even has an apparently naked but strategically lit slave girl holding an incense burner in each hand in the title sequence. Likewise, when Cleopatra appears in front of Caesar for the first time Colbert is wearing little more than your average WWE Womens Champion. I've got to admit a little disappointment in the lack of accents - at times it seems not to matter whether a character is Egyptian, Roman or Judean as they all have an American twang - but I can sort of except it in this case because no-one makes the effort. Still, for a film with a few flaws and only one really great actor/actress (Colbert) I liked this very much.

A snake is not a thorn bush.

Two Sunny Days
Ognjen Svilicic 2010 Croatia
Starring: Maya Sansa, Bristol Pomeroy, Leon Lučev, Sylvia Kristel, Vicko Bilandzic

Pills, guns and estate agents...it all sounds so promising, or not as the case may be. In this case it's not, Svilicic's attempt at Journey To Italy less subtlety and more 'bad acting in the forest and yelling at sheep'. As workaholic American Peter, Bristol Pomeroy is particularly bad, aiming for injured male pride but never really getting past the awful dialogue he's been given. One of the main problems is that Peter and his wife never really seem like a married couple, you could sort of imagine them as boyfriend and girlfriend on their first disappointing holiday together but it's hard to believe they would have stayed together long enough to dislike each other as strongly as they do. After a short time Sylvia Kristel turns up quite randomly as a friendly religious zealot which at least brings a smile to your lips. For those who don't know I should point out that Kristal spent much of her career playing the legendary softcore porn character Emmanuelle. This role features more clothes but is far less interesting. Elsewhere, there are a couple of funny lines amid the shots at tension, most of them from Leon Lučev's manly hunter Stipe, and the blurring of morality late in the film is appealing but that's about as good as things gets. The ending is an insult, cut off as it is before there's any real conclusion. It might just be me but if I've spent an hour and a half watching a marriage implode I want to know if it actually does. What I don't want is a fade out into some pleasant music. I don't know if Ognjen Svilicic is reading this (I quite vainly hope so) but if he is all I have to say is 'Ognjen, you're a lazy fucker'.

You should be wearing condom upon condom, and then wrap it in electrical tape.

Inside Llewyn Davis
The Coen Brothers 2013 USA
Starring: Oscar Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman, Adam Driver, Justin Timberlake

Inside Llewyn Davis, Joel & Ethan Coen's latest tale of alienation and gradual reveals, shares a lot with their past work, not least in a pitch-perfect recreation of a particular era, an appreciation of the loser and in creating a seemingly unpleasant, oddly-named character and turning them into a highly quotable potential cult hero - Walter Sobchak, Anton Chigurh, Carl Showalter, the list is pretty much endless. Here, Davis is an arrogant, confrontational folk singer who lives on other people's sofas and is irritated by practically everything, his lips curling into a sneer at regular intervals. He'd be unsympathetic if he weren't so unlucky, and I mean the unluckiest man in the world burdened as he is with a pregnant (and married) lover who appears to sincerely dislike him, no home or career, constant ridicule and an accidental pet cat that looks increasingly more terrified at the situation than he is. When he's picked up mid-film by Garrett Hedlund's near silent beat poet/driver and John Goodman's formidable, story-telling jazz musician and threatened with a voodoo curse you sort of wonder how he'd notice the difference. And yet the film is very funny in a lot of ways (one of the best being the sight of the tiny Carey Mulligan cursing and spitting insults like a vitriolic sprite) and genuinely poignant, particularly in the audition scene where Llewyn plays his heart out only to be told "I don't see a lot of money here" and advised to reunite with his (dead) partner. Later he tries again in front of his father and receives an even more negative reaction. It's such that by the end of the film you're right there with this disagreeable man and can fully understand his crestfallen exasperation, you even want him to succeed. It's an eye-opening performance from Isaac, both in filmic and musical terms, and he really acquits himself incredibly well in the latter (supervised by the great T-Bone Burnett), as do Mulligan, Driver, Timberlake and Stark Sands. But of course the Coen's compassion doesn't mean there's necessarily going to be a happy ending, talent sometimes being unable to fully overcome human inadequacy

I think what you said is true, I'm going to die alone and sad.

August: Osage County
John Wells 2013 USA
Starring: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Sam Shepard, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor, Benedict Cumberbatch, Abigail Breslin, Dermot Mulroney

Tracy Letts has had a pretty good record in recent years, his plays Bug and Killer Joe having been adapted into a pair of decent films by William Friedkin. Now his toxic-tongued August: Osage County has followed suit, although this time with a different director, a far more star-studded cast and far more theatricality than either of the former. The reception has not been a warm one, with many admitting to being unsure whether to categorise it as a comedy or a drama. To me it sits somewhere in the middle, its fast-talking, undoubtedly brutal take on family dysfunction turned ever so slightly mouldy by a script that piles trauma upon trauma until the whole thing descends into a unrealistic black farce. It's one that may have worked as a TV series, the timescale of the action stretched out to take place over several weeks, but as a story set over the space of about 10 days it all just seems too much. It's a shame because it's beautifully acted, in one case from an utterly surprising person. I don't think it will come as much of a revelation when I say that I've never had much time for Julia Roberts, her career long having represented a huge, patronising smile and not much else to me, but in a huge shock she actually gives the best performance of the film, even outshining the virtually unassailable Streep (who's excellent as well). In one particular scene, a violent confrontation with Streep's stricken, roaring gorgon of a matriarch, veins bulge visibly from her forehead and her countenance momentarily resembles a creature from an H. R. Giger painting. Had she been less experienced it would be what's known as a 'coming out performance', as it is it's the best of her career, albeit one tinged with a small amount of melancholy. You sort of have to wonder, if she's been capable of this all along, why she's spent the last 25 years making paper-thin arse gravy like Runaway Bride? She can't need the money that badly.

Don't worship me, I'm not a saint on a cross.

Humanity And Paper Balloons
Sadao Yamanaka 1937 Japan
Starring: Kan'emon Nakamura, Chôjûrô Kawarasaki, Shizue Yamagishi, Sukezo Sukedakaya


Humanity And Paper Balloons is an odd film, which I suppose is somewhat fitting as its director Sadao Yamanaka had an odd life story. Unlike his contemporaries Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi Yamanaka didn't have a long and distinguished career. Instead he made a colossal 26 films in 6 years before being called up to the Imperial Army on the day Humanity premiered in Japan. He died of dysentery several months later in a Manchurian field hospital, aged only 28, and only 3 of his films have survived, Humanity being the last. As noted it's an odd one, focusing on the inhabitants of an 18th century housing estate of sorts but remaining startlingly minimalist throughout, its characters fascinating yet quiet. There's the cocky, gambling barber who takes bluff to worrying levels in an effort to humiliate his rival; the impoverished masterless samurai, drunken and desperate for most of the film; the daughter of the local pawnbroker, promised to the son of a samurai and debating whether she'd be better running off with her servant and even the slum itself, operating at times as little more than a holding pen for potential suicides. Fans of Ozu will be familiar with the ensemble piece but a nice twist here is that all the characters are allowed time to develop and have their own story, the only common ground being that everyone is looking for something better and that their subtle despair is captivating. It's a shock somehow to see a director treat his characters with such compassion and respect, especially when some of them appear not to have many redeeming features, and it makes me think that, had he survived, Yamanaka would have been as well remembered as his peers, rather than for his untimely death.

Drums beat, bugles called, lips were pressed to lips in parting.

Wings
William A Wellman 1927 USA
Starring: Clara Bow, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, Richard Arlen

The silent war epic Wings won the first ever Best Picture Oscar, or Outstanding Production (a much better name) as it was then called, but is a hell of a lot more grim than you might expect of such a work. Even in its comic opening scenes dumb, patriotic Herman Schwimpf - a man whose main purpose in the film seems to be providing officers with someone to punch - has to overcome the flagrant and often violent racism of his superiors before he's allowed to wash out as a flyer and disappear to the mechanics core. This is pre-pre-Code Hollywood, an era when soldiers could spew blood as they're shot and intertitles could keep score in a dogfight as young men plummet to their deaths, their planes spectacularly imploding as they hit the ground and crash through churches. Likewise, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers' Jack is free to duff up waiters and hallucinate champagne bubbles rising from the wiggling bodies of gorgeous young women but still wins the hand of Clara Bow's lovely, peppy driver Mary, despite having been in love with someone else for the rest of the film. It's an odd stance but all the more interesting for its dark ambiguity, the whole film easily readable as an anti-war picture despite the glamour of its flying scenes. They're breathtaking by the way, Wellman having been given free rein (he was in the air force in WW1), the cast having been given flying lessons to add to the realism, and the accompanying musicians having been given pioneering synchronised special effects to work around. As such, there are several long sequences of skyward battle, the massive budget being put to good use. Perhaps the oddest thing about the film though is that Bow, then one of the biggest stars in the country, is criminally underused, relegated to not much more than a supporting player - as she herself put it "Wings is a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie". It's a terrible shame because she lights up every scene she's in stealing the thunder of the two limited leading men at every opportunity (and seemingly without much effort). The film doesn't droop in any respect but you're still left wanting to see more of her when she departs halfway through. Even with her absence the last half hour is astonishing though, Jack's final attempt at glory resonating fatally for several others and resulting in a surprising, tender goodbye kiss between Rogers and Richard Arlen's David; the only way to deal with the fallout the phrase "That's war".

A woman's voice is her nakedness.

Wadjda
Haifaa al-Mansour 2012 Saudi Arabia
Put basically, Wadjda is the biggest film in the history of Saudi Arabian cinema, although I use the word 'history' loosely as cinemas are actually banned in the country, a mixed-gender group sitting in the dark seeing things that may ignite subversive thoughts falling foul of their ultra-strict morality laws. In addition, this is the first feature shot entirely in Saudi Arabia and the first feature outright to be made by a female Saudi director so it's a big achievement. It wasn't an easy process. Being a woman in such a society the director in question, Haifaa al-Mansour, often had to work from the back of a production truck on the streets of Riyadh as she couldn't publicly mix with the men in the crew, instead having to communicate with her cast via walkie-talkie and watch them on a monitor. Further enraging the powers that be, the main character is a rebellious child who wants to buy a bike so she can race her friend Abdullah. If that bothered them I can't help but think that the film's subsequent submission for the Best Foreign Language Oscar really had to stick in their craw. Perhaps even more important (and possibly more infuriating) is that the film is outstanding and, in Wadjda's increasingly inventive methods to reach her goal, surprisingly funny. There are also two beautiful performances from child actors in two of the main roles. It would sound incredibly trite to state that main star Waad Mohammed steals every scene she's in, not least because she's in every scene, but she's really the heart of the film, at once both defiant and innocent and never missing the contradictions of the society she lives in. Contradictions are a big thing here, from Wadjda's liberal-at-home mother being aghast that her friend has taken a job where she works with men and doesn't wear a full Hijab to Abdullah's gentle statement that he'd like to marry Wadjda when they grow up resonating as both lovely and potentially ominous. Reem Abdullah is excellent too portraying Wadjda's mother as a woman accepting of her lower status while still desperately trying to prevent her husband from taking a second wife. It's a subtle, charming, complex picture of a society completely at odds with our own and hopefully one that will herald a change in the country, both in terms of film and equality. We all need to see more like this.

'Have you ever been married?', 'Not very often.'

Une femme mariée
Jean-Luc Godard 1964 France

Jean-Luc Godard would be one of my picks for a list of the greatest directors of all time and, as such, he sort of has a pass with me. I think that as someone who has made several genuine classics and created several classic scenes in bad films he's allowed to miss sometimes, and he does; occasionally becoming too intellectual, too militant or just too difficult, often seemingly just for the sake of it. Une femme mariée, Godard's riff on marriage, parenthood, sex and pleasure, lays somewhere in the middle but still has a lot to like. The opening scene is startling in its simplicity (and paradoxically its creativity) and eroticism, the frame at times containing no more than a hand, a pair of legs and a bedsheet, the two bodies the only colour on the white background. And, of course, there's avid reference to literature and film, in this case Molière, Céline and Hitchcock among others. He even has his main character give a playful nod to Louis Feuillade's Fantomas, except she's mistaken and actually means another of Feuillade's serials Les Vampires. If it had been almost any other director I probably would have thought it was a genuine mistake but Godard being Godard it's a springboard to point out the pretentions of his bourgeois characters, an idea he returns to when he frames conversations as if the speakers are talking heads in a (quite dull) documentary; he even has the young son of the main characters weigh in on the subject of childhood. This also links into one of the most daring things about the script, that the characters are all so unlikeable. It's not even that they're anti-heroes, they're just horrible. Macha Méril's Charlotte (a repeated name in Godard's work) is self-obsessed, conducting an affair behind her husband's back (and it's implied that it's not the first time), has a child she doesn't particularly seem to care for and refers to as 'the boy', and thinks of little other than fashion, at one point not understanding the tragic punch-line of a political joke a friend of her husband makes. Her husband meanwhile is a boastful capitalist who it's revealed once 'raped and slapped' her, although paying a private detective to follow her is apparently the worst of his crimes ('so disrespectful'). It's the kind of skewed vision Godard does a lot but it has to be said that, as good as the film is, it's certainly not an accessible view and may be a little caustic and experimental for newcomers to Godard. Breathless and Une femme est une femme are both better and easier to get along with. Still, it's worth a watch somewhen down the line.

Even the missionary position is socially obsolete.

La Città Delle Donne

Federico Fellini 1980 Italy

Fellini's City of Women was made during what's often called the director's delirious later period and really delirious is about the best way to describe things here, although bizarre, self-referential and lurid are pretty accurate too. You can sort of guess what you're in for when the film opens on a train entering a tunnel and the first words out of anyone's mouth are 'fantastic arse'...actually, that's not a bad description either. Either way, the main result of this delirium is a hilariously surreal dream-like atmosphere throughout, the film's main star Marcello Mastroianni (looking as confused as the rest of us but having tremendous fun all the same) even begins the film asleep and it's a pretty safe theory to consider the whole narrative as a sort of fevered sex dream of innuendo, bafflement and operatic orgasms, taking in marriage, feminism and two of Fellini's favourite subjects, self-analysis and women. Honestly, it's the kind of film that a lesser duo than Fellini and Mastroianni wouldn't have gotten away with (and really they shouldn't have either) but somehow it works; Mastroianni getting a chance to dance like Fred Astaire and play physical comedy like a lecherous Harold Lloyd and Fellini glorying in a veritable banquet of wacky set-pieces. By the end of the film the clock is pushing two and a half hours and we're only sure of one thing, that this is a messy minor masterpiece that even a comparison like 'Spike Milligan and Marc Chagall drinking and arguing about gender politics and The Wizard Of Oz' doesn't cover.