Our London correspondent Adrian Smith meets film director and former Python Terry Gilliam. Gilliam was appearing at the BFI to discuss his career and his upcoming release The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus... Cinema Retro has seen footage and the film looks breath-taking. We can't say we're unhappy about the specific magazine that Terry chose to hold for the photo. He's obviously a man of good taste, as evidenced by his reading habits.
Cinema Retro London correspondent Adrian Smith gives us an advance view of the new Tarantino film.
By Adrian Smith
Back in 1995, I
thought Quentin Tarantino could do no wrong. After the quadruple whammy of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, True Romance
and Natural Born Killers, it seemed
as though he was just about the coolest man on the planet. He even polished the
Crimson Tide script, causing Denzel
Washington to wax lyrical about the Silver Surfer.
However, I managed
to miss Jackie Brown and had no
interest at all in the Kill Bills.
Earlier this year I finally tried Death
Proof, but gave up after half an hour out of sheer boredom. Perhaps I’d
outgrown Tarantino. His constant recycling of older, better movies and juvenile
glee in violence just weren’t for me any more.
Or so I thought.
This evening I
attended a preview of Inglourious
Basterds, as part of the Empire Movie-Con II, held at the BFI in London. No
doubt many of you are aware that there also exists an Italian war film from
1978 of the same name. QT has stated that he only used the title and basic idea
(essentially a re-working of The Dirty
Dozen), and the script was all original. The plot follows the exploits of a
group of American Jewish soldiers in Nazi-occupied France. As you are no doubt
expecting, in true QT style there is a lot of talk. A LOT of talk. The opening
scene is a conversation between two people which lasts twenty minutes. There is
a barroom scene featuring Nazi drinking games which easily lasts half an hour.
QT certainly likes his characters to chat. It was this propensity which I felt
killed Death Proof before it even got
going. Here however these scenes work brilliantly. This has to be down to the
fantastic performances, most notably from Brad Pitt as Lieutenant Aldo “the
Apache†Raine, and Christoph Waltz as his nemesis, the Colonel Hans Landa,
known as “The Jew Hunterâ€. Waltz in particular is a mesmerising actor. He
manages to turn what could have been a cardboard movie villain into a complex,
nuanced, basically human character, and also provides much of the film’s
humour. Did I mention it’s a comedy? There are scenes of action and violence,
but there is also a lot of comedy in this film. This is essentially an
irreverent take on the WWII film, and it is easy to see why it will upset many
people. It is another example of Hollywood
re-writing history to show that the American’s won the war. However I would
argue not to take it so seriously. The film begins with the caption “Once upon
a time…â€, and if you treat it as a fairy tale, albeit a gruesome, often
sadistic one, with more twists and turns than a roller coaster, you will find
yourself going with it.
Inglourious Basterds has certainly restored my faith in Tarantino as a
filmmaker. His personal video introduction this evening reminded me that he is
still quite twitchy and irritating, but he does deserve for this film to be a
success. In his version of events it is cinema itself that triumphs over evil,
and the closing line of the film is “I think this could be my masterpiece.†He
could be right.
In
1964 the BBC, as part of their regular “Wednesday Play†series, produced a 90-
minute drama based on the assassination attempt on Hitler in 1944. John Carson
played Col. Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg, now best known for being
played by Tom Cruise in Valkyrie. I’ve not seen that, so I can’t compare
them, although I imagine there are a vast number of differences. As a TV play,
as opposed to a filmed drama, this is quite stagey, with a limited number of
studio sets, and some filmed inserts. There is also an awful lot of talking.
However, it is still an excellent production, which benefitted not only from
some outstanding performances, but also a talented director in the German
Rudolph Cartier. He was incredibly experienced in British television, having shot
a number of well known shows including the original live The Quatermass
Experiment a decade earlier.
The
July Plot
is being screened at the BFI in two weeks as part of its “Missing, Believed
Wiped†segment. I was fortunate enough to be at a screening two weeks ago as
part of a John Carson tribute at the Cine Lumiere in London. John himself was
in attendance, and it was exciting to think that nobody, including him, had
seen it for over 40 years.
Rather
surprisingly, during the opening credits we follow von Stauffenberg and his
briefcase containing the bomb through the various levels of security until he
places it besides Hitler. We follow the action immediately afterwards, as his
co-conspirators wait for confirmation of Hitler’s death and begin to roll out
their plans for the takeover of the military and the police. It is tense stuff,
despite the fact that we know Hitler was no more than scratched, due to someone
else in the room moving the bomb behind a table leg. It is so frustrating to
think that this really happened. If this was a Hollywood movie the plot would
have worked and the war would have been over. The play rather poignantly
reminds the audience of how many more people died in that final year of the war
after von Stauffenberg and his comrades are caught and executed. It’s a
sobering thought, and leaves you feeling some of the frustration they no doubt
felt when they realised it was all over.
Cinema Retro London correspondent Adrian Smith with John Carson, star of The July Plot
You
can book tickets to see The July Plot
for yourself at the BFI Southbank in London on the 22nd August by clicking here.It’s highly recommended, and it can only be
hoped that following its rediscovery and restoration the BBC will make this
important piece of work available on DVD.