Letters from America
Saturday 20 April 2019
I went to the Orpheum at Cremorne last night, which was Good Friday, and saw a film about the late life journey of a difficult man, which was funny, agonising and heartfelt in equal parts: Sometimes Always Never.
The film had been recommended to me (thank you!). Here is a link to a summary review:
https://www.palacecinemas.com.au/movies/sometimes,always,never/
The context of the film was all very English until, toward the end, there was an extended allusion to the classic Swedish film by Ingmar Bergman, The Seventh Seal – though instead of playing chess with the grim reaper our hero plays Scrabble.
I am not knowledgeable about cinema and really have never have had much interest in a lot of Hollywood offerings (I am not lying, I only saw Top Gun for the first time this year). But even though I have no film background I managed to see three of the great modern film masterpieces probably four times each (I kid you not), before I turned 17. They were: Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali’s Un Chien Andalou, Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin and Ingmar Bergman’s Seventh Seal. This makes me very good at spotting cinematic allusions to the masterpieces! A couple of my highschool teachers were exceptionally taken with these classic films (and soundtracks) and thus I came to see a lot of them. If you can imagine a post-Whitlam somewhat elite and privileged public high school education with a touch of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie’s not entirely innocent idealism, then you have a picture of some of my later years’ high school experience.
Quite apart from high school, the film that struck me the most ever I think, was probably Bonnie and Clyde (the original). Chinatown was brilliant too. And Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Any takers among you with favourite films? I forgot The Rocky Horror Show or The Blues Brothers … what a lot of sheer joy they were 🙂 brilliant but not really for cinematic virtue. A favourite recent film, which might surprise some of you, is Mad Max Fury Road. It’s just one incredible car chase.
Happy Easter friends xx
