The Big Picture Magazine
For an industry so reliant on the whims of the marketplace, cinema’s relationship with capitalism has never been a straightforward one. Even as vast amounts of money were channelled into the filmmaking machinery and yet greater profits were realized at the other end, movies have never been completely comfortable with the economic system on which […]
I’ve always believed that films should be viewed in one sitting. No pauses, stops or breaks (take that pee before the movie, dummy!). An immersive experience that demands, or, at the very least merits, your full attention for what is a relatively short period of time compared to, say reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace or […]
“I learned the rules of the game from The Rules of the Game,” said Robert Altman about Gosford Park (2001), inspired by Jean Renoir’s La règle du jeu (1939). On the surface, Renoir’s film takes the superficial form of a country house farce resulted in an accidental death, a case of mistaken identity, while Gosford […]
I AM NOT anti-Netflix. Of course not. Let’s face it – without Netflix, we wouldn’t have Roma. What’s that? Have I actually watched Alfonso Cuarón’s three-time Oscar-winning masterpiece? Er, no. I’m waiting for the right moment. Or the right big screen. Or the right home sound system. Really, really? I’d really rather watch it in […]
Inspired by William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Akira Kurosawa created, with Throne of Blood (Kumonosu-jo, Japan, 1957), visual poetry: in black and white, light and shade, movement and immobility. Kurosawa does not try to put Shakespearean English into Japanese. Instead, image and rhythm replace words, pointing to the visual nature of Shakespeare’s language. In this way, Kurosawa, […]
When I began working on Akira Kurosawa, the pivotal role for his cinema of Toshiro Mifune (b. 1 April 1920 d. 24 December 1997) sprang immediately to mind. I could not help thinking how much Mifune’s presence and vitality contributed to the strong sense of movement in Kurosawa’s films. Mifune’s intense acting already fascinated the […]
Andrzej Wajda started his career as a filmmaker in post-war Poland. His early films – A Generation, Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds, Lotna and Samson – focus on both the Second World War and the civil war uprising and its aftermath. Wajda often emphasized the moral duty of the filmmaker in Poland, whose task it was to remember a […]
One of film noir’s defining actors, Gloria Grahame gave her femme fatale characters a raw, vulnerable sensuality. She was not simply pretty. Her glamour and sexuality hid surprising, unexpected emotional registers. Her bad girls were human. Her characters were smart, daring, warm. I can never quite figure out Gloria Grahame on screen. Isn’t this one […]
Drunken Angel (Yoidore tenshi, 1948) is Akira Kurosawa’s first film in which music, used at both a diegetic and non-diegetic level, plays an eminent structural role. One key scene is set in “Club Number 1,” a dance hall in the slum in which the action takes place. In this scene, the jazz song “Jungle Boogie” […]