Robin Baker

Quite extraordinary - and still a teenager!

So glad you enjoyed it. Though after you mentioned its musical potential, I’m now imagining the rice paddy scenes choreographed in the style of By a Waterfall from Footlight Parade.

A muse (Calliope?), Cosimo Tura, painted 1455-60. Oil over egg tempera on wood. National Gallery.

I must have walked past this painting numerous times before without really seeing it. Today it stopped me in my tracks. The golden dolphins would not look out of place on a prog rock album cover.

Saul Bass's poster design for VERTIGO (1958) is one of the great film poster classics. But originals don't come cheap: up to £15,000! A ticket for Hitchcock's masterpiece at BAC is rather more affordable - from just £5. Thu 5 Mar at 7.30pm https://www.bridport-arts.com/event/vertigo/

1/4. The title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO (1958) is truly iconic, perfectly setting up the moods and feel of the film. It was designed by Saul Bass. The spirographic images (Lissajous waves) were by artist and animator John Whitney, a pioneer of computer art.

We can't wait!
https://www.bridport-arts.com/fpts/

YouTube video by John Tenaglia Bitter Rice 1949

9/9. Need any more reasons?

You can watch it here www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzHW...

8/9. The bloody shoot-out in a butchery full of severed animal carcasses.

7/9. Best pre-Seven Samurai rain and mud sequence I can think of, with extraordinary shifts in mood and dynamic filming.

6/9. The relationships between and solidarity of women.

5/9. The scenes of the women rice workers - where the film feels at its most neorealist.

4/9. Raf Vallone’s chest hair that I can only assume had its own agent given the exposure it receives.

3/9. Top-notch early performance from Vittorio Gassman. Effortlessly cool and handsome in almost every shot - but unspeakably repugnant throughout. And the camera loves him no less than Mangano.

2/9. Silvana Mangano in her first starring role. One of those ‘a star is born’ performances - you can’t keep your eyes off her. This is a film that’s very much about sex.

1/9. First time watch of the pulpy, noirish, neorealist Bitter Rice (Giuseppe De Santis, 1949). No idea why it’s taken me so long - probably the most enjoyable film I’ve watched this year. If you haven’t seen it, see 🧵 for a few reasons why you should.

4/4. It's time to forgive the fact that he made an infamous promotional film for the Conservative Party (hard, I know), and revisit what made Schlesinger great rather than just good.

YouTube video by Dаvіd Вrоmаgе Terminus (1961)

3/4. And try Schlesinger's Terminus (1961), a 30 min day-in-the-life of Waterloo Station. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx_l...

Aside from his Alan Bennett collaborations, An Englishman Abroad (1983) and A Question of Attribution (1991), the latter part of his career lacked the brilliance of its start.

2/4. The film (like Schlesinger's career) is underrated. But there's a richness of emotion and characterisation (despite its Swinging Sixties Goes to Dorset vibe) and extraordinary epic sweep that was missing from Vinterberg's 2015 remake.

1/4. John Schlesinger - born 100 years ago today - on the set of Far from the Madding Crowd (1967) with Terence Stamp and Julie Christie.

2/2. They're part of the Schlemmer Frame Collection preserved by the Austrian Film Archive www.filmmuseum.at/en/collectio...

1/2. Love the fragile beauty and mystery of these single 35mm frames from unidentified early films.

7/7. Following the war, the Ahwaris' way of life was almost destroyed by Hussein who drained the marshes to deny its use by insurgents (seeking refuge in the Ahwar to escape persecution by the Ba'athist regime) and to punish the Ahwaris. Fortunately, the Ahwar is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

6/7. For some reason, I binge-read a series of books about the Ahwaris when I was a teenager. Thesiger’s book is particularly recommended (at least from my distant memory of it).

5/7. Rewardingly, the film has the authenticity of an ethnographic film, filmed on location among the Marsh Arabs/Ahwaris, capturing life led on and around the wetlands.

4/7. Although the film is not focussed on the war, it is always the backdrop. Moreover, it is about the omnipresence of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.

3/7. But I preferred this. It sits in a very political context. At the start of the film there’s an extraordinary shot of 2 fighter jets flying across the southern Iraq marshes/Ahwar, announcing the film’s setting during the first Gulf War. Before the jets arrive the image is almost timeless.

2/7. On one level, it’s not unlike those gentle Iranian films from the 80s and 90s where kids go on journeys to buy goldfish, bags of rice or to return their schoolfriend’s exercise books.

1/7. Enjoyed The President’s Cake (Hasan Hadi, 2025) a great deal - the first Iraqi film I've seen. Out now in UK cinemas.

John Wyver on the absolutely perplexing disconnect between restored archive treasures on iplayer and the total lack of supporting publicity, or even explanation.