I Start Counting.

Could never quite see the attraction with Jenny Agutter. I never found her a very convincing actress, although her prime and proper demeanour suited the part of Roberta in the BBC’s adaptation of Edith Nesbit’s children’s classic The Railway Children in 1968, a role she repeated in Lionel Jeffries feature film version in 1970. Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout (1971) was a worthy attempt to play a teenage schoolgirl stranded in the Australian outback with her young brother. But her role in David Greene’s dull attempt at a psychological thriller I Start Counting (1969) was miscast. Her part as an adopted fourteen-year-old catholic schoolgirl Wynne (she was sixteen at the time) who falls in love with her older “brother” George (Bryan Marshall) and goes on to accept the fact that he could be a serial killer is not convincing and a stronger more assertive actress might has made the character more plausible.  

Adapted from Audrey Erskine Lindop’s novel by Richard Harris it’s a long way from the swinging London of Green’s Sebastian (1968) in both story and location. Filmed in Bracknell, Berkshire we discover that Wynne is infatuated with her older brother who is twenty years her senior but she assumes that because she is adopted that falling in love him is acceptable -  sending jailbait sexuality to the very borders of incest! Wynne’s family has moved from a rather picturesque cottage located on the edge of a common to a clinical looking flat in a concrete tower in the sky. It’s on the common that bodies of two young girls have been found murdered. After witnessing George dispose of a blood stained woolly in a waste bin she begins to suspect him of being involved in the killings. This suspicion does nothing to cool her feelings for her brother, although she starts to question his whereabouts and to follow him discovering there’s more to Georgie boy than meets the eye. Two of the films characters remind you what era we are in, firstly there’s Wynne’s best friend Corinne (Clare Sutcliffe), who according to the local clippie (Simon Ward’s first major role) ‘wears her skirts way too short’, has great fun flirting with George in front of her best friend but when he turns on her she looses interest pretty quick! The second character is the younger brother Len (Gregory Phillips) who keeps a scrapbook of press cuttings about the murders, has a longhaired friend (Michael Feast who you will no doubt recognise from Private Road 1971) who supplies him with dubious looking ‘pills’.  

The movie did raise a few hackles at the time of release because of the suggestion of underage sex, or at least the sexual feelings of a fourteen year old. Although credit to Green for not making Agutter appear as a sex object, in fact unlike Corinne, she is quite a plain Jane, her beauty hidden beneath pleated skirts, knee high socks and thick jumpers most of the time. It’s a soft whimsical thriller that lacks bite, with a soundtrack to match. Having never read the novel, I’m not sure if it’s the story that’s weak or David Greene’s direction.

Mr Turner.

One of the most important elements of any movie is its stories characters and how they are drawn and presented to us on the screen. Mike Leigh is a past master in converting actor’s lines to a totally believable portrayal of their personalities.  Leigh’s films over the years have given us people like Poppy Cross in Happy Go Lucky (2008), Mary in Another Year (2010), Maurice and Cynthia Purley in the award winning Secrets & Lies (1996) and many more besides. But it’s not just the main characters that are finely illustrated but also the minor one’s. This is one of the noticeable qualities of the British director and writer’s latest movie Mr Turner (2014).

 

The artist.

If anything the characters in this biographical period drama are as good as anything that Leigh has done in the past. Firstly we have William ‘Billy’ Turner (Timothy Spall) an artist who painted rather drab seascapes in the 19^th century, had two mistresses, the first of which, Sarah Danby (Ruth Sheen), bore him two daughters, which he is said to have denied. His second mistress Sophia Caroline Booth (Marion Bailey) who he shared a house in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea as ‘Mr Booth’ for 18 years and where he uttered his dying words “The sun is God” Both these women are totally different with Sarah the hard faced women who felt very wronged by Billy Turner, where as the twice widowed Sophia was in love with him.

 

'Mr Booth' with Sophia.

The two William Turners.

Two other characters are worth mentioning, Turner faithful housekeeper Hannah Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), who was devoted to her master, although he sexually abused her, and who suffered from the skin disease psoriasis. The other is Turners father, also called William (Paul Jesson) who had lived with and helped his son for 30 years since the death of his wife at a young age locked away in an insane asylum. It was this mans death in 1829 that had a profound effect on the painter who was getting ever more eccentric and also beginning to suffer bouts of depression. It’s these two characters that light up the screen every time they appear, and I can’t help feeling that the film looses something after the death of William Snr?   

 

The faithful housekeeper.

We could be watching an adaptation of a Charles Dickens novel, the writing is that good. Along with the award winning performance of Timothy Spall, the cinematography of Dick Pope, who captures the vivid light and colour of so many of the scenes that would end up on the artistes canvas and who has worked along side Leigh on many of his movies, and the unique detail’s that make this movie head and shoulders above other period dramas and as importantly brings the 19^th century world of art, culture and promiscuity to life.    

Sweet Movie

How do you start to describe Dusan Makavejev’s 1974 avant-garde art house comedy drama Sweet Movie? The simplest way would be to say that the movie concerns two very different women, a Canadian beauty queen known as Miss World 1984, who represents the destructive force of American consumerism, and Anna Planeto a captain aboard a ship laden with sweets and sugar who represents revolution, but that would be too simplistic. A better description could probable be an anarchic look at sexual repression, communism and economics?

The film ‘is carnivalesque with vengeance, aimed at overthrowing every arbitrary rule, regulation and tradition it can find, including the conventions of cinema itself’[1] and Makavejev succeeds with plenty to spare! Since its release the movie has been described as uncouth, uncivilised, and offensive and has been banned, or severely cut in many countries. A film guaranteed to course lively debate whenever and wherever it’s shown.

Makavejev was forced to move from Yugoslavia to Europe following his political satire WR: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) to allow him to continue to make films, but still finance, even in Europe, was difficult to come by, but he managed to raise the funding for Sweet Movie from Canada, the Netherlands and France as well as Sweden and West Germany.  

 

Anna Prucnal.

There were even more serious consequences for Polish actress Anna Prucnal who plays Captain Anna. The Polish authorities deemed the film to be pornographic and anti-Communist and took away the actresses passport exiling her from her homeland for seven years, not even granting her a visa to visit the country when her mother passed away!

For chocolate lovers only!

The narrative for Sweet Movie, which like WR: is allegedly based on the theories of sexually liberation put forward by psychologist Wilhelm Reich, starts with the Crazy Daisy Show introduced by the Director General of the Chastity Belt Foundation (Jane Mallet) who is running a competition to find the prettiest virgin for Miss World 1984. Her prize is marriage to Mr Dollars (John Vernon) the world’s wealthiest man. But when the new bride (Carole Laure) discovers that her husband has a gold plated penis and a ‘morbid fear of sex related disease’ she rejects him. In response the family bodyguard takes her to the giant milk bottle on the roof of Mr Dollars milk emporium, sexually humiliates her, packs her in a suitcase and sends her to Paris. Waking up on the Eiffel Tower she has intercourse with a Latin singer, ending up in hospital when the pair cannot be separated! Miss World 1984 goes on to join the Therapy Commune of Otto Muehi who performs exaggerated bodily functions. She takes part in a meal, which includes vomiting the food you have just eaten followed by one of its members performing regression therapy, a rebirth experience where he cries, urinates and defecates over himself. The group then clean, powder and pamper him. We finally see Miss World 1984 take part in the filming of an advert for chocolate in which she totally immerses her naked self.

 

Survival on the canals of Amsterdam. 

Meanwhile in Amsterdam Captain Anna’s boat Survival, with the enormous head of Karl Marx on its bow, sails on the canals of the great city with its cargo of sweets and sugar. She picks up a young sailor from the Potemkin (Pierre Clementi) who professes his love, but she warns him that she kills all her lovers, excepting this condition he moves onto the boat and the pair begin their lovemaking on a large suspended vat full of sugar. Also invited onto the boat are a group of pre-pubescent boys who she seduces. (It’s this scene that got the film banned from the UK)

 

Lovers beware?

Is there life after birth? A fantasy sure enough but one that’s rich in political references, not always recognised by viewers from the west admittedly, and phallic symbols, mainly penises including the Eiffel Tower – intellectual cinema about ideas and multi-layered references. The film is interwoven with documentary clips including some disturbing footage from a German film showing the victim’s of the Katyn Massacre when the Russian Army executed Officers from the Polish army, a brave move by the director for 1974 considering we were still in the midst of the cold war. 

 

Carole Laure.

Dusan Makavejev was part of the Yugoslav Black Wave a movement of the 1960’s and early 1970’s that was known for its non-traditional approach to filmmaking, which included black humour and a critical examination of the Yugoslavian society. Director of photography is Pierre Lhomme. The film's music is composed by Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis.

---

[1] David Sterritt – Wake Up.

Stations of the Cross.

Written by siblings Dietrich and Anna Bruggemann, with Dietrich in the director’s chair, Stations of the Cross (2014) deals with extreme catholic fanaticism channelled through the eyes of a pretty 14-year-old schoolgirl Maria Gottler (an excellent Lea van Acken). She is preparing for her confirmation in to the Society of St Paul, inducted into its ways by her priest Pater Weber and her piously repressed mother (Franziska Weisz). But I’m afraid that this story is far removed from the Sunday service and Biblical teachings we learnt at Sunday school! The scene is set in the first ‘station’ when we discover the Priest brainwashing a group of youngsters, including Maria, sitting around a table that is meant to bring to mind The Last Supper. He pontificates about the dangers of satanic music, movies, social media and unbelievable, cake! Maria’s home life is fraught with repression and guilt; her personnel guilt is bound up with her younger brother who cannot speak.

Indoctrinated by both the Church and at home....

A disturbingly harrowing, but moving look at what could have been a perfectly normal childhood albeit for her exposure to the pressured religious bigotry which denies her not only the natural life of a ordinary teenager but also her emerging sexuality. This very well made and shot film is literally divided up into the 14 stations Christ passed through on the way to Calvary, each depicting a different part of his martyrdom. An austere movie with a complete lack of humour, is it a sin to laugh?  After watching this you will be convinced it probably is! It confounds the view that extreme religion can be found in many different parts of the world and is not confined to the Middle Eastern countries as our media would have us believe!

....forces Maria to punish herself unnecessarily!