herbiehancock

No 18 - Casablanca Director - Michael Curtiz Another massive classic film that - for reasons unknown - I had never watched until now. I think I thought it would always be very schmaltzy and had therefore avoided it. I love to be proven wrong. Which is good, because it happens a lot. We find ourselves in Casablanca, the cultural melting pot and pretty corrupt town occupied by those wishing to leave Europe and those rotten Nazis. At the centre of it all - the place to be - is Rick's bar where everyone comes to have a jolly wonderful time and drink away their troubles. And there are a lot of troubles. It is a kind of 'limbo' town in that everyone there is just waiting to leave... and it creates a wonderfully strange atmosphere. Into this limbo town come two people Laszlo - a concentration camp escapee - and Ilsa, his wife. Only.... Ilsa and Rick have a shared past. Thus we have our story, a love triangle in a seedy lawless town. But, this is a film where the characters draw ...

No 212 - M Director - Fritz Lang The lights dim and the cinema is washed in the crackling hiss of really old cinema. I've never really made the most of the fact that I'm a BFI member, but at least now I can say that I have seen an old and grainy, crackling and juddering piece of 1930's cinema, actually in the cinema. I have also finally had an overlap with Mr Dallas King who is doing the same thing as me, only ridiculously briefly. Check out his (500) Films of Empire blog to see what a film challenge REALLY is (this is more of a cinematic dawdle). M is a curious beast it is a film that happens in peaks and troughs. Genuinely interesting moments seem to be bookended with long sequences in which nothing really happens. However it is important to remember that this is still the early days of cinema. Complaints like pacing seem a bit petty about a film which was made before such things were really concerns. Especially when there are some wonderful cinematic touches. From som...