Episode 56 Pickup on South Street

The podcast returns with Tom and Mike White from the Projection Booth podcast discussing Sam Fullers Pickup on South Street. Enjoy!

From Masters of Cinema:

"If you refuse to cooperate you'll be as guilty as the traitors who gave Stalin the A-bomb." "Are you waving the flag at ME?!" 

Samuel Fuller's sensational film noir casts a steely eye at America in the dawn of the Cold War, and brings 1950s New York City alive on the screen in a manner rarely equaled in the annals of film.

In one of his greatest roles, Richard Widmark plays Skip McCoy, a seasoned pickpocket who unknowingly filches some radioactive loot: microfilm of top-secret government documents. Soon after, Skip finds himself mixed up with federal agents, Commie agents, and a professional stoolpigeon by the name of Moe (played by Thelma Ritter in her finest role this side of Rear Window).

With its complex ideology, outrageous dialogue, and electric action sequences, Pickup on South Street crackles in a way that only a Sam Fuller movie can, and is widely considered one of the director's finest achievements.

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Episode 55 - Vampyr

Its Halloween so what better way to celebrate with a look at Carl Dreyer's Vampyr! Joakim is joined by Adam Gonet from The Art Shelf  to discuss this spooky classic. Enjoy.

From Masters of Cinema:

The first sound-film by one of the greatest of all filmmakers, Vampyr offers a sensual immediacy that few, if any, works of cinema can claim to match. Legendary director Carl Theodor Dreyer leads the viewer, as though guided in a trance, through a realm akin to a waking-dream, a zone positioned somewhere between reality and the supernatural.

Traveller Allan Gray (arrestingly depicted by Julian West, aka the secretive real-life Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg) arrives at a countryside inn seemingly beckoned by haunted forces. His growing acquaintance with the family who reside there soon opens up a network of uncanny associations between the dead and the living, of ghostly lore and demonology, which pull Gray ever deeper into an unsettling, and upsetting, mystery. At its core: troubled Gisèle, chaste daughter and sexual incarnation, portrayed by the great, cursed Sybille Schmitz (Diary of a Lost Girl, and inspiration for Fassbinder’s Veronika Voss.) Before the candles of Vampyr exhaust themselves, Allan Gray and the viewer alike come eye-to-eye with Fate — in the face of dear dying Sybille, in the blasphemed bodies of horrific bat-men, in the charged and mortal act of asphyxiation — eye-to-eye, then, with Death — the supreme vampire.

Deemed by Alfred Hitchcock ‘the only film worth watching… twice’, Vampyr’s influence has become, by now, incalculable.

Buy Vampyr

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Episode 54 - Rocco and His Brothers

Back with a look at Rocco and His Brothers and a teaser for the next episode!

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Episode 53 - The Birth of a Nation

We return after sometime away! In this episode we welcome back John Jansen from the The Hollywood Gauntlet to discuss one of the most infamous and important films ever made; The Birth of a Nation.

During this episode we ended up talking about many topics, some directly related to The Birth of a Nation some not so. I have divided this episode into two parts; the first is a discussion on The Birth of Nation the second after the outro music is me, John and Joakim talking about a few topics including an excellent film John made whilst at Sega which you can see below. Hope you all enjoy!

This is SEGA TEST (1996) Director JOHN JANSEN

The Hollywood Gauntlet

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Episode 52 - Soul Power

We return with a look at Soul Power, enjoy!

From Masters of Cinema:

Soul Power is a vérité documentary – compiled entirely from footage shot in 1974 – of the astonishing back-to-Africa 3-day music festival “Zaire ‘74”. It was held in Kinshasa ahead of the biggest boxing event of all time: the Muhammad Ali–George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle”. Directed by Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, editor of Leon Gast’s Oscar®-winning (Best Documentary) When We Were Kings, and sourced from the same archival pool, Soul Power features a legendary line-up of African and African-diaspora musicians – all of whom are at the very peak of their creative powers.

Alongside Ali’s wit and wisdom – profoundly lyrical in its own right – vibrant street scenes of downtown Kinshasa, and “fly-on-the-wall” footage of the festival’s staging, rehearsals, and jams, the three nights of concerts (lensed by Albert Maysles and a host of other legendary cameramen) offer electrifying performances by James Brown, B.B. King, Bill Withers, Sister Sledge, Miriam Makeba, The Spinners, Big Black, The Crusaders, Celia Cruz, and many more.

The concert has achieved mythological significance as the definitive Africa(n)-American musical event of the 20th Century and only now, after years of painstaking restoration – legal wrangling prevented an edit and release at the time of filming – Soul Power joins the pantheon of concert film classics, taking its place alongside others of the late-1960s and early-1970s, including Monterey Pop, Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, Soul to Soul, and Wattstax. 

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Episode 51 - Day of the Outlaw

We return with a catch up about upcoming MoC releases, Criterion UK and a look at Andre de Toth's Day of the Outlaw. Enjoy!

From Masters of Cinema:

Revered by the likes of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, the great director Andre de Toth made some of the most gripping and unusual American films of the 1950s, and Day of the Outlaw stands as one of his finest.

Robert Ryan plays the ruthless cattleman Blaise Starrett who rides into the small, snowbound town of Bitters to settle a feud with homesteader Hal Crane (Alan Marshal) over access to land, with one eye on rekindling a past love affair with Crane's wife Helen (Tina Stuart). But once a band of brutal outlaws, led by the notorious Captain Jack Bruhn (Burl Ives), enters and takes the townspeople hostage, the situation becomes a powder keg ready to blow.

Set against extraordinary winter landscapes, this jagged, tightly-coiled Western is a riveting examination of shifting morals amid desperate circumstances, featuring brilliant performances and exemplary filmmaking.

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Episode 50 - La signora di tutti

What better way to reach episode fifty than to be joined by one of the most foremost and respected film critics and theorists of her generation, to discuss Max Ophuls' La signora di tutti we are honored to have Laura Mulvey join us. We hope you enjoy!

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Episode 49 - 2015 Review

It's that time of year when every podcast in the world does year in review show... only ours is possibly a bit later than every one else. We are joined by James Marsh for a look back at 2015 and Masters of Cinema.

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