Category Archive: FILM
Chimes at Midnight
(Dir. Orson Welles) (1966) Welles amalgamates Shakespeare’s Henry plays and more: apparently made on a shoestring, in Spain, and technically a shambles, it still reeks of authenticity (like Welles’ Macbeth and Othello) and soars due to sterling performances and a script justly centred on the père / fils triangle between Henry IV (a chilly, imperious John Gielgud), Falstaff (a rambunctious Welles) and young Prince Hal, errant royal buck soon to grow (or shrivel) to dour, dismal, ungrateful King. Falstaff is a giant figure in literature (other than in adapted, borrowed and diminished form in the Bard’s by-the-numbers comedy) and here Welles,…
Continue Reading →Long Day’s Journey into Night
"A summer cold makes anyone irritable."
(Dir. Sidney Lumet) (1962) (Written by Eugene O’Neill) As Tolstoy said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This look through the microscope at “the four haunted Tyrones” is a masterpiece of denial, perhaps the first important dysfunctional family drama of the 20th C. O’Neill (16 October 1888 – 27 November 1953) wrote his, a “play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood”, in a haze of drink, depression and clarity, in the late thirties, touching largely upon his own operatically-soapie family, dedicated to his last, controlling wife, Carlotta; dedicated to her almost as a confession. You…
Continue Reading →Samson & Delilah – The Unforgiving Present
(Samson & Delilah, directed by Warwick Thornton) (2009) “The Future is Unforgiving” (Photographic Exhibition by Warwick Thornton, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne) (July into August, 2015) At the Anna Schwartz Gallery, 185 Flinders Lane, The Varnished Culture saw the exhibition by Warwick Thornton, whom we knew only from his film Samson and Delilah (see thumbnail review below). Born and bred in the Alice, Thornton has possibly observed a thing or two about dysfunctional folks and the impact of the excesses of received culture on indigenous perspectives. Here, in a cavernous, concrete-floored space, there are a small series of interrelated images of aboriginal children. There are three large…
Continue Reading →Where Eagles Dare
"Liebchen, Liz doesn't understand me..."
(Dir. Brian G Hutton) (1968) Clive James once wrote that the film that followed him about the world was The Naked Jungle. Our own bete noire is Where Eagles Dare. The Varnished Culture has gone to the cold heart of country Victoria, to take the waters and sweat out the toxins of popular culture, and what do we find, after a purifying mineral ritual, massage and facial? Where Eagles Dare on the television! P’s late father-in-law loved this film, and what red-blooded man wouldn’t? Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood talking English/German/American/English as they infiltrate a Nazi fortress deep in the Alps, gain vital…
Continue Reading →The Burglars
"Confidentially...I never pay here."
(Dir, Henri Verneuil) (1972) A nifty cat-and-mouse jewellery heist caper set in Athens, in a time when you could get a decent meal for a fistful of drachmae. Omar Sharif is very good as the oily and corrupt copper, who is on to Jean-Paul Belmondo and his gang of emerald thieves. A top car chase, fights, romance, double-dealing and a unique climax in a grain hopper. A little cheesy but a relief to watch nowadays if you’re sick of Fast and Furious # 43. Vale Omar Sharif (10 April 1932 – 10 July 2015). He was not a great or imposing actor…
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