3/26/2011 Short Film: Envirez-vous /Black Narcissus (1947)

Rumer Godden

We started off our film night watching a tribute to upcoming "National Poetry Month" with a video interpretation of Charles Baudelaires' poem: Envirez-Vous, and then continued with another film based on the work of author Rumer Godden http://www.rumergodden.com/ in keeping with our Literature and Film theme. Please check out her website to view Godden's many works. She was a prolific writer and many of her books became films:

In This House of Brede (1975)
Battle of the Villa Fiorita, The (1965)     

Greengage Summer, The (1961)
Innocent Sinners (1958)              

River, The (1951)

Enchantment (1948)

Black Narcissus (1947)

TV Films
Peacock Spring
Kizzi
Tottie 

Black Narcissus:

Directors:

Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger

Writers:

Rumer Godden (novel), Michael Powell
Music: Brian Easdale

Cinematography: Jack Cardiff

 Stars:

Deborah Kerr, David Farrar and Flora Robson

Generally the group felt the film was interesting but no where near as beautiful or sophisticated as "The River" and dated in its portrayal of racial attitudes. The character of "Mr. Dean" wore shorts through most of the movie while it was obviously freezing, which we found incongruous.

Synopsis:
Sister Clodah is dispatched with four other nuns to establish a new convent far in the Himalayas. It's a difficult journey and their new house is a ramshackle old building on the edge of a cliff that had been abandoned by a religious Brotherhood many years before. They soon establish a school and an infirmary though the local General's agent, Mr. Dean, warns them against treating the deathly ill as they would no doubt be blamed if the patient doesn't recover. The location, the culture and the mountain air all begin to have a strange effect on the Sisters. Sister Clodagh, who is also on her first assignment as Sister Superior, begins to remember a romance she had as a young woman before entering the sisterhood. Another however, becomes obsessed with Mr. Dean, which leads to tragedy.  Written by garykmcd IMDB

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FBLink: Gardiner Library Film Festival

dramatic short

"Lovefield combines elements of HORROR, SUSPENSE and DRAMA to create a story that takes the audience on a roller coaster ride of emotions." YouTube

Note the music's power in determining our interpretation of what we think is happening.

also check out : http://www.ifcfilms.com/

3/20/11 The River

Tonight we watched a gorgeous film by Jean Renoir called The River based on the book by the same name by Rumer Godden who was one of Britain's most distinguished authors. She wrote books for both adults and children, including Black Narcissus and The Greengage Summer. She was awarded the OBE in 1993 and died in 1998.

More Info./Another Review: IMDB.com by MARIO GAUCI (Naxxar, Malta)

The River
India has, through the years, fascinated many a major film-maker, including Robert Flaherty, Fritz Lang, Louis Malle, Michael Powell, Roberto Rossellini and Jean Renoir. Renoir's film, based on a novel by English novelist Rumer Godden of BLACK NARCISSUS (1947) fame, is as gorgeously shot (in ravishing Technicolor) as can be expected from a master film-maker and the son of a famous French impressionist painter; however, the narrative itself is rather disappointingly thin to support its 99-minute running time. Having said that, the coming-of-age
story of two English girls living in India and loving the same young officer wounded in WWII, is appealingly performed by Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields and Adrienne Corri. The central character, played winningly by newcomer Patricia Walters (whose only film this turned out to be) is a stand-in for Godden herself, whose considerable writing talent was not encouraged by her stern family. The film offers Renoir another chance to show his humanist side dwelling as it does on the strange (to Western eyes) social and religious customs
of the Indian people; even so, when all is said and done, there is just too much local color in the film. However, as Renoir is not only one of my favorite film directors but arguably the greatest of all French film-makers, I am confident that a second viewing of THE RIVER will elevate significantly my estimation of it, as it is probably too rich an experience to savor all at one go.

Among the copious supplements on the Criterion DVD, there is a typically enthusiastic interview with Martin Scorsese (who also helped in funding the film's restoration) who waxes lyrically on the effect the film had on him as a 9 year-old film-goer; surprisingly for me, he also confesses that the appeal of Renoir's masterpiece, LA REGLE DU JEU (1939), an automatic candidate for
the title of the greatest film of all time, escapes him!!

check out

http://cineaste.com/


The Family that Dwelt Apart
based on an E.B.White short story

Our First 2 Showings: Literature and Film Saturdays in March

On March 5th we kicked off our film festival with Big Fish: a 2003 American fantasy adventure film based on the 1998 novel: Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace. The film was directed by Tim Burton and stars Albert Finney, Ewan McGregor, Billy Crudup, and Jessica Lange. Finney plays Edward Bloom, a former traveling salesman from the Southern United States with a gift for storytelling, now confined to his deathbed. Bloom's estranged son, a journalist played by Crudup, attempts to mend their relationship as his dying father relates tall tales of his eventful life as a young adult, played by Ewan McGregor.



On Saturday March 11 we watched 2 films:

Street of Crocodiles

Directed by             Brothers Quay

Music by             Leszek Jankowski

Release date(s)             1986

Running time             21 minutes

Street of Crocodiles is a 21-minute-long stop-motion animation short subject directed and produced by the Brothers Quay and released in 1986.

It was originally a short novel written by Bruno Schulz, from a story collection published under that title in English translation. Rather than literally representing the childhood memoirs of Schulz, the animators used the story's mood and psychological undertones as inspiration for their own creation. ref.Wikipedia

Everything is illuminated - Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz, Boris Leskin, Liev Schreiber (screenwriter and director) 2005

Based on the acclaimed, best-selling novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is illuminated tells the story of Jonathan (Elijah Wood), a young American Jewish man's quest to find the woman who saved his grandfather - in a small Ukrainian town that was wiped off the map by the Nazi invasion.

The journey begins as a comic nightmare - with an eccentric trio of paid "expert" guides sorely lacking in expertise: a cranky grandfather who insists on bringing his unruly seeing-eye dog to help him drive, and his over-enthusiastic grandson, whose fractured command of English, passion for retro American pop culture, and inability to shut up threaten to make the worst of every situation....ref.Wikipedia