Charlie Bubbles & A Cinema Of Rebellion
To mark the passing this week of screenwriter and author Shelagh Delaney this week, here’s a tribute to her finest work, the oft-forgotten classic of British Cinema, Charlie Bubbles. From the earliest days of the cinema Hollywood has looked towards Europe for talent, inspiration and business, and no better was it exemplified during the 1960′s … Read more
BlogAlongARusskie #1 – Ivan’s Childhood
Hope Lies at 24 Frames Per Second are taking part in Kinnemaniac’s BlogAlongARusskie project, in which a group of blogs and websites cover the complete Andrei Tarkovsky ouevre over the next seven months. Click here for the launch site. Andrei Tarkovsky’s debut feature has become a mainstay of the classic film canon since its release in … Read more
“You Guys Have Really Come Up With Somethin’…” – 2001: A Space Odyssey
You guys have really come up with somethin’. Dr Floyd In 1968, man had not yet landed on the moon. The NASA space programme was in full flow, stellar travel seemed just out of reach. Science-fiction was seen as the non-serious side to what was happening in real life: men blasting into space, maybe even … Read more
Kubrick’s Lighter Side – Dr. Strangelove
It has been said that the greatest of arts, be they film, literature, music, painting or drama are those that reflect the state of the world at the time they are produced; that they provide an immortal portrait of the cultural, political and moral landscape of the world that their particular artist lived in. It … Read more
Stanley Kubrick’s Cinematic Lolita
By Craig Skinner Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film Lolita, adapted from Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel of the same name, is a fascinating example of a cinematic adaptation and one that is oddly under-discussed within Kubrick’s career, even though it was something of a cause célèbre at the time of its release. The novel upon which the film is … Read more
I Am Spartacus: The Film Stanley Kubrick Was Never Able To Claim As His Alone
By Noel Thingvall Ah, Spartacus. The lone wolf. The odd man out. The “one of these is not like the others”. Ask a fan of Kubrick what they think of the film, and they’ll usually be disappointed because it’s done in a much more commercial style than the rest of his work. Ask someone who’s … Read more
Melville + Delon = Le Samouraï
Opening with perhaps the coolest scene ever captured on celluloid, Le Samouraï begins with a scenario that lays down director Jean-Pierre Melville’s manifesto in as perfectly explicit a manner as possible. Our hero, Jef Costello, a mysterious and meticulous assassin lays upon an unkempt bed, smoking as the sound of his pet bird fills the … Read more
Honour and Incarceration – Le Trou
There is a rich history of the prison genre within French cinema, with Jacques Becker’s Le Trou one of the key works of the genre. Released five years after Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped, but as important a touch stone in terms of setting the standard by which all other incarceration dramas would later be … Read more
Eastern Premise #5 – Onibaba
Jason Julier returns with a piece on Kaneto Shindō’s Onibaba, the latest entry in his Eastern Premise series. When faced with the question of selecting my favourite Japanese film I retreat to 1964 and Kaneto Shindō’s haunting Onibaba. The director has an impressive list of credits including The Naked Island (1960) and Kuroneko (1968), which no … Read more
Not In The English Language #7 – L’Enfance-Nue
For the third column in a row, Not In The English Language sets its sights upon Gallic shores, with Maurice Pialat’s L’Enfance-Nue. Covered extensively on this very site in the past, Pialat’s debut work is a big favourite of Hope Lies at 24 Frames Per Second. Something of a companion piece to Francois Truffaut’s The 400 … Read more
