First Impressions: Thinking Aloud About Film

The MASKS AND MUSIC: THE FILMS OF WILLI FORST strand of last year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato, curated by Lukas Foerster, was so popular that I was unable to see any of them. Richard is more organised and came out raving about two: MASQUERADE/ MASKERADE (1934) and TOMFOOLERY/ ALLOTRIA, (1936). Luckily for us The Internet Archive has a very good copy of Maskerade which enabled us to see it (or in Richard’s case, to see it again). In the podcast below we talk about the film in relation to the Wiener Genre, Authorship, Anton Walbrook’s career (he is here billed as Adolf Walbrook), the difficulties of dealing with works from authoritarian regimes, how it was the most popular film of its year in the German-speaking world. More specifically we discuss the rhythms of the opening scene, Anton Walbrook’s introduction, the narrative invention of the narration of the publication of the muff drawiing, the mise-en-scéne, the influence of vaudeville and the film’s intent on pleasing. We relate the film to Lubitsch’s work and comment on how a particular shot of a camera seeming to float through a window might have influenced Minnelli (in Meet Me in St. Louis) and, according to Mark Fuller, Powell & Pressburger (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp). All this and much more may be listened to in the podcast below:

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/08/24/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-cinema-mentire/

I was lucky enough to see Maria Luisa Bemberg's SEÑORA DE NADIE (NOBODY'S WIFE, 1982)and YO, LA PEOR DE TODAS (I, THE WORST OF ALL, 1990) at this year's CINEMA REDISCOVERED in Bristol, in gorgeous prints, with an  appreciative and enthusiastic audience. I'm a long-time fan of Bemberg's but I'd never had the opportunity to see  SEÑORA DE NADIE and I'd never seen YO LA PEOR DE TODAS in such a beautiful version. The films surprised and delighted. But what I was most taken with was the effervescence, energy and brilliance of Amina Farley Yael and Natalia Christofoletti Barrenha who introduced the two films. They along with Marta Calderon Quiñones are Cinema Mentiré. This podcast is the result of my wanting to know more about Cinema Mentiré, who they are, what they do; and also, of my wanting to publicise the re-circulation of such marvellous films by a legendary female filmmaker in new restorations (which films? What are they about? What are they like? Why are they worth seeing now?), and with new subtitles undertaken by Cinema Mentiré themselves.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/08/21/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-ryan-gilbey-on-it-used-to-be-witches-under-the-spell-of-queer-cinema/

Sometimes you read a new book and love it so much you want to speak to its author and find out more. This is what happened to me in relation to Ryan Gilbey’s IT USED TO BE WITCHES: UNDER THE SPELL OF QUEER CINEMA. What I liked most is that I learned a lot from it – all these new films and filmmakers I’d never heard of – and that it was great fun to read: Ryan’s got an enviable turn of phrase. If the narrative is posited as a process of discovery, the book also has an interesting mode of narration: it’s partly personal, sometimes he writes of himself in the third person in a way that reminds me of Èdouard Louis’ novels . This has the effect of delineating events whilst also questioning them and his own perspective on them. It’s a book that interrogates its own delineations with a loose structure that seems to flow from one filmmaker to another, very inclusive, sensitive to the nuances of race and gender and with a spotlight on trans cinema -- with a British perspective but on world –rather than Anglo-American – cinema; and with the big names (Almodóvar, Haynes, Van Sant), not quite absent but playing a supporting role to filmmakers like: Jenni Olson, Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, Elizabeth Purchell, Campbell X, Isabel Sandoval and others. I think it a landmark book, one of interest not only to those wanting to know more about, cinema and/or queer but also by anyone interested in the current cultural landscape. It seems to succeed in doing what I previously thought undoable, which is to get enough of a grip on the increasing and seemingly ceaseless stream of new queer works in order to lay out a landscape whilst offering multiple, tentative, questioning perspectives on it. A landmark book by a wonderful writer. We discuss all of this and more in the podcast below:

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/08/06/thinking-aloud-about-cinema-absolute-beginners-julien-temple-1986/

A rediscovery at Cinema Rediscovered: Julien Temple's marvellous Abolute Beginners.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/30/thinking-aloud-about-cinema-cinema-rediscovered-2025-wrap-up/

If a week ago we podcast on what we were looking forward to at the CINEMA REDISCOVERED festival, this is the bookend reflecting on what we actually saw. We are once again full of praise for the organisers, the friendliness of the staff at the Watershed, the originality and diversity of the programme, the community aspect, the educational component and the way that it trains young people up to programme and curate and then gives them an opportunity to exercise those skills.

Emotional highlights included a reunion of Stephen Frears, Hanif Kureishi and Gordon Warnecke at the MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE screening and Stephen Wooley and Julian Temple getting back together to reminisce about Palace Pictures and ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS, which we liked so much we plan a separate podcast on it.

We appreciated the mini programs scheduled on single days (Carlos Saura, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Anna Mae Wong) and the longer ones (the AGAINST THE GRAIN: 1980s BRITISH CINEMA, MASUMURA x WAKAO). It was fantastic to be able to see some films at the BRISTOL MEGASCREEN (THE FALL OF OTRAR, DIVA, THE BEAST TO DIE, MANJI). We talk at some length on individual films as well (ROSA LA ROSE, FILLE PUBLIQUE; THEMROC, DESERT HEARTS, ONE POTATO TWO POTATO and others.

We praise the way Sheldon Hall designed his talk on films on Channel 4 for this particular audience, including broadcast dates on every film at the festival and under which strand; for Stephen Horne’s fantastic, multi-instrument accompaniment to the Anna Mae Wong programme; and the care in curating the introductions to the films, with most speakers understanding that the intro is not about them or their interests but about enhancing the audience’s experience and appreciation.

The festival left us wishing for a fuller programme the last evening but being left wishing for more is not a bad thing.

José Arroyo

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/23/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-sam-shahid-director-of-hidden-masters-the-legacy-of-george-platt-lynes/

George Platt Lynes is arguably the most significant artist in a long and distinguished line of great 20th Century queer photographers of the male nude which includes George Hoyningen-Huene, Horst P. Horst, Clifford Coffin, Robert Mapplethorpe and Bruce Weber. All in some sense worked in the interstices of fashion, portraiture, art photography and the nude. Yet though Platt Lynes is at least their equal, he is arguably the least well known, a situation Sam Shahid aims to rectify in his gorgeous new film, HIDDEN MASTERS: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES.

Sam Shahid is Creator Director, Principal and president of Shaid/Kraus & Company, a full branding, advertising and design agency founded inn 1993. Before that he was Creative Director of in-house advertising for Calvin Klein in the 1980s, did work for Abercrombie and Fitch in the 90s that still inspires today (some of the catalogues have become much sought-after collectors’ items). In the aughts he worked as Creative Director of INTERVIEW magazine and he’s since edited dozens of books of photographs by Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts. He knows about images, and he puts that knowledge to use in his first film, HIDDEN MASTERS: THE LEGACY OF GEORGE PLATT LYNES.

In the accompanying podcast, we talk about how Platt Lynes was at the centre of practically every current of modernism in America and how Sam found the only existent film footage of the photographer. We ask why Platt Lynes is relatively so little-known today. Is it because his greatest work is of the male nude? Is there homophobia involved? Sam talks about how difficult it was to get a hold of the photographs, tensions between controllers of major holdings and the family; the reticence of institutions and individuals to make public such an incredible body of work that feels so contemporary. Isn’t it time that a major museum undertake a retrospective of George Platt Lynes’ work?

What Sam doesn’t say is what a ravishing film he’s made, full of some of the most beautiful black and white images of men ever made. A film to see. It’s currently on release from Picadillo Pics and available on demand from Amazon and other major digital outlets.

José Arroyo

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/21/jose-arroyo-in-conversation-with-daniel-bird-on-the-fall-of-otrar-ardak-amirkulov-1991/

My choice for must-see film of this year’s Cinema Rediscovered is Ardak Amirkulov’s THE FALL OF OTRAR (USSR, 1991), which will have its UK Premiere in Bristol’s old IMAX cinema, now called the Bristol Megascreen, on Sat 26th of July. As Daniel Bird says in the podcast, ‘it’s a once in a lifetime occasion’. I wanted to talk to Daniel about the film because he knows more about it than anyone I know, because he speaks so articulately and with such an expansive frame of reference and because he’s the one who proposed the restoration to Cecilia Cenciarelli, one of the four artistic directors of Bologna’s Il Cinema Ritrovato and part of The World Cinema Project, whose goal is to restore great film from around the world. Such as this one.

THE FALL OF OTRAR is an epic set in the 13th Century where an obedient servant of the state Undzhu (Dokhdurbek Kydyraliyev) is persecuted for telling Kaiyrkahn (Tungyshpai Zhamankulov), his ruler, what he doesn’t want to hear, which is that Otrar is soon to be invaded by Genghis Kahn. The film is an extraordinary aesthetic experience, a film of great style, structured in two halves, with the last part depicting the siege of Otrar and battles sequences that clearly use Kurosawa’s KAGEMUSHA (1980) as a reference point whilst transforming before our eyes into something else altogether. The film has crane shots that rival Leone’s, poetic compositions that recall John Ford’s, and a selective use of sepia and colour that recall some of the masters of the late Soviet era. A beautiful film that feels epic and yet very intimate as well.

In the accompanying podcast Daniel tells me of THE FALL OF OTRAR’s fascinating production history (it was part of a national search for ‘new blood’ from the ‘regions’; it began filming just as the Soviet Union was unravelling, it started off as Amirkulov’s graduation project, it is now one of the key works of Kazahkstan cinema); his own involvement with the project; how the film can be seen as the result of a Russian influence in the dramaturgy and an East Asian, particularly Japanese, influence in the visual aesthetic. We talk too of the film’s initial distribution at home and in New York, Martin Scorsese’s involvement, and how this new release is demonstrating how the film is also one that speaks to our times, and the various ways it does so. There are digressions (Russian Formalism, Deleuze and Guattari’s A THOUSAND PLATEAUS: CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA, showing vs telling in cinema….and much more. It can be listened to below:

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/18/thinking-aloud-about-film-cinema-rediscovered-2025-preview/

Richard and I are once more excited about the prospect of Cinema Rediscovered, which begins next week on the 23rd and runs right to the 27th at the Watershed in Bristol. This year's is a beautifully balanced programme with directors (Carlos Saura, Maria Luisa Bemberg, Stephanie Rothman, Yasuzō Masumura) and stars (Anna Me Wong) ripe for rediscovery; but also featuring key exemplars of queer cinema (MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDERETTE, DESERT HEARTS, THE ANGELIC CONVERSATION; ostensibly the first film to feature queer representation in India, BADNAM BASTI (NEIGHBOURHOOD OF ILL REPUTE); black cinema (HANDSWORTH SONGS, THE KILLER OF SHEEP), feminist exploitation cinema (THE WORKING GIRLS, THE VELVET VAMPIRE); key work's from classic directors (Sam Fuller's THE HOUSE OF BAMBOO, John Ford's YOUNG MR. LINCOLN; a whole strand of 1980s British Cinema (from ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS to A ZED AND TWO NOUGHTS),  newly restored masterpieces (THE FALL OF OTRAR, YEELEN); and a smattering of films from practically every hemisphere. A great program, which includes not only films but workshops, talks, introductions; for Cinema Rediscovered is not only about seeing films in the best possible conditions but also about learning on cinema from filmmakers, curators, programmers, critics, academics and other practitioners.

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/16/thinking-aloud-about-film-delitto-damore-luigi-comencini-1974/

DELITTO D’AMORE (Luigi Comencini, 1974), also known as CRIME OF LOVE or SOMEWHERE BEYOND LOVE in English, is along with VOLTATI EUGENIO (1980), my favourite of the Comencini films shown at this year’s Ritrovato in Bologna. Two factory workers fall in love. He’s from a family of Anarchists from the North. She’s an immigrant from South. They both live with their families but she’s a woman so all her movements are monitored. They split up because she needs to be married in a Church whilst he can only consider City Hall. Factories spewing smoke is a constant background to the development of their romance. In the accompanying podcast Richard and I discuss: how it is a MARXIST romance in which two factory workers fall in love even as the factory spews poison all over them (one of the titles considered for the film was LOVE AND POISON); how rare it is for a political film to deploy such a delicate tone, a mixture of humour/romance/enchantment; the relative rarity of having working class workers depicted so lovingly and glamorously (by Guliano Gemma and Stefania Sandrelli). The film’s been compared to LOVE STORY (Arthur Hiller, 1970) and also ALI, FEAR EATS THE SOUL (Fassbinder, 1974). We bring up Visconti’s ROCCO E I SUOI FRATELLI (1960). None of the comparisons convey the humour, the romance, the enchantment that this very political film evokes. We hope we do in the podcast that follows:

https://notesonfilm1.com/2025/07/02/thinking-aloud-about-film-ritrovato-round-up-2025-with-pamela-hutchinson/

For this year’s Ritrovato Round-Up we are joined by the witty, incisive and all-around fabulous Pamela Hutchinson, editor of the Silent London website, author of two marvellous BFI Classic monographs (The Red Shoes, Pandora's Box), producer of the Weekly Film Bulletin for Sight and Sound and one of the jurors for Ritrovato's DVD Awards since 2018.

In the discussion that follows we touch on all the strands of the festival, praise Cecilia Cenciarelli for her programming, Mariann Lewinsky for her illuminating introductions and Ehsan Khoshbakht for his superb programme notes on Lewis Milestone. We touch on the Willi Forst and Nordic Noir programmes, so popular José couldn't get into any of them. We have a lively debate on Molly Haskell's Hepburn programme, agree on our love of Naruse, discuss how Comencini's Delitto de amore  highlights issues of class and made us want to see more Comencini films and delight in the early cinema and silent cinema strands. Sumitra Peries' Gehenu Lamai (The Girls) is a film we all adored. We touch on memorable experiences, such as watching Coline Serrault introduce Trois hommes et un couffin at the Piazza Maggiore, or the incredible response to Chaplin's The Gold Rush, the impact of Silvana Mangano in Bitter Rice, the intensity of the colour in Duel in the Sun, or the spontaneous applause for Shirley MacLaine in Artists and Models.