Martin Scorsese concludes his A Personal Journey… Through American Movies (co-directed and co-written by Michael Henry Wilson, 1995) with a brief passage from Elia Kazan’s America America (1963). This epic, physical, elemental, almost monomaniacal film is an important touchstone for Scorsese, a talisman of the passage from and between the old world of Classical Hollywood [...]
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Adrian Danks
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Adrian Danks is Senior Lecturer and Head of Cinema Studies in the School of Media and Communication, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (University). He is also co-curator of the Melbourne Cinémathèque, and editor of Australian Content and Cteq: Annotations on Film in Senses of Cinema.
Articles by Adrian Danks:
Barbarosa (1982) was the first feature to be made in America by any of the key figures of the Australian film “renaissance” of the 1970s. It sits alongside the initial American films of Gillian Armstrong, Bruce Beresford and even Peter Weir – Mrs. Soffel (1984), Tender Mercies (1983), and Witness (1985), respectively – as an [...]
Filmed between 1991 and 1994, Nicolas Philibert’s Un animal, des animaux is a gently extraordinary documentary that follows the refurbishment and eventual reopening of the Zoology Gallery of Paris’ Le Muséum National d’Histore Naturelle in 1994 – an important colonial and scientific institution of late 19th century France. As in much of the rest of [...]
“I’m here to make a film about the end of the world… and this seems to be exactly the right place for it.” – Ava Gardner (allegedly) (1) Marguerite Duras’ 1979 short Aurélia Steiner: Melbourne, provides an illuminating avenue through which to start to examine the representation of Melbourne in cinema. Throughout Duras’ film we [...]
Watching John Smith’s playfully inquisitive, profoundly interiorised and often “hushed” Hotel Diaries is a curious and sometimes unsettling experience. Comprised of eight episodes (though the Rotterdam entries * “Pyramids”/“Skunk” * are always screened as a double episode) shot over a six-year period in a range of European and Middle-Eastern cities (Cork, Berlin, Winterthur, Bristol, Rotterdam, [...]
“The image of a Socialist paradise is a false one, false because it is static. What is beautiful in life is movement, development, change, part of a pattern of transition in which I take part.” (1) Krzysztof Zanussi is a filmmaker whose critical reputation has significantly declined over the last 25 years. This decline has [...]
Keith Beattie’s monograph on the seminal British documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings is a significant contribution to the scholarship on this fascinating, mercurial and multi-faceted artist, as well as on British documentary cinema itself. Like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Jennings is both central to the canon of British cinema and a figure who is difficult [...]
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg is one of Lubitsch’s most surprising, nostalgic and emotionally engaging films. It represents a “return to Germany” after four years in Hollywood, and can been as something of a watershed between his initial works for Warner Bros., then a significantly less important studio than it would soon become, and [...]
Arthur (1938-) and Corinne Cantrill (1928-) started their extraordinary filmmaking careers in 1960, and remain two of the most significant and productive figures in the history of experimental cinema. Their work is an intimate, highly formal, and breathtakingly cinematic exploration of the Australian landscape, their immediate domestic and working environments, the material qualities of the [...]
What is the particular dynamic at play in films featuring movie-going? Adrian Danks explores the film-within-a-film mode in range of movies, everything from Sullivan’s Travels to Vivre sa vie and more.
“Like Samuel Fuller, Scorsese fills his movies with personal talismans; like Werner Herzog, he riddles them with documentary subtexts.” (1) Martin Scorsese’s first feature, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, is a curious beast. Sometimes dismissed as little more than an extended film school exercise, it is in fact a significant and quite revelatory document [...]
Lisa Dombrowski’s The Films of Samuel Fuller: If You Die, I’ll Kill You! is an important contribution to the growing scholarship on and broader cultural fascination with the work of the self-consciously iconoclastic filmmaker Samuel Fuller. It positions itself squarely as a novel addition to the existing critical and analytical work so far produced on [...]
Robert Connolly’s Balibo (2009) is one of the strongest and best Australian films of recent years, and a welcome, committed return to the territory and approach of such political thrillers of the 1980s as Heatwave (Phillip Noyce, 1982), Ground Zero (Michael Pattison and Bruce Myles, 1987) and The Year of Living Dangerously (Peter Weir, 1982) [...]
Report (1967 USA 13 mins) Filmmaker: Bruce Conner Sound: Extracts from the LP record Four Days That Shook the World Completed over a three-year period, Bruce Conner’s Report is one of the key works of 1960s avant-garde cinema, a refinement and extension of the filmmaker-artist’s film work to that date. In some respects, it is [...]
Keith Beattie’s Documentary Display: Re-Viewing Nonfiction Film and Video is an extremely valuable and refreshing contribution to the burgeoning field of documentary film studies. Beattie’s book takes as its focus elements of documentary form and practice that are somewhat undervalued and often criticised in much of the dominant writing on and theorisation of the field. [...]
Bigger Than Life (1956 USA 95 mins) Prod Co: Twentieth Century-Fox Prod: James Mason Dir: Nicholas Ray Scr: Cyril Hume, Richard Maibaum, based on the article “Ten Feet Tall” by Berton Roueché Phot: Joe MacDonald Ed: Louis Loeffler Art Dir: Jack Martin Smith, Lyle R. Wheeler Mus: David Raksin Cast: James Mason, Barbara Rush, Walter [...]
This annotation previously appeared in Senses of Cinema, no. 10, November 2000. A selected filmography for producer Carlo Ponti is at the tail of this article. Léon Morin, Prêtre (1961 France 117 mins) Source: CAC Prod Co: Rome-Paris Films/C. C. Champion Prod: Carlo Ponti, Georges de Beauregarde Dir, Scr: Jean-Pierre Melville based on Béatrix Beck [...]
Mining the Home Movie: Excavations in Histories and Memories is a significant and often extremely rich contribution to the existing writing and research on the overlapping fields of home movie and amateur film practice – as well as the existing “archive” of each – within both contemporary cinema studies and a broader historiography. Karen L. [...]
18 March – 6 April 2008 The Hong Kong International Film Festival is a curious beast, a marathon survey of selected Asian and broader international films that have been released over the previous year. It mixes together not widely seen work from Mainland China, Hong Kong and the broader Asian region – as well as [...]
(1) Moonfleet (1955 USA 88 mins) Prod Co: MGM/Loew’s Incorporated Prod: John Houseman Dir: Fritz Lang Scr: Jan Lustig, Margaret Fitts, based on the novel Moonfleet by J. Meade Falkner Phot: Robert Planck Ed: Albert Akst Art Dir: Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters Mus: Miklos Rozsa Cast: Stewart Granger, Jon Whiteley, George Sanders, Joan Greenwood, Viveca [...]
This is a revised version of an article that first appeared in CTEQ: Annotations on Film no. 4, 1996. Petulia (1968 USA 105 mins) Prod Co: Petersham Pictures/Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Prod: Raymond Wagner Dir: Richard Lester Scr: Lawrence B. Marcus, based on the novel Me and the Arch Kook Petulia by John Haase Phot: Nicolas [...]
One of the most discussed films on recent release. Is it a measure of the film’s qualities or a result of the enduring fascination with all things Dylan? Danks separates the substance from the hype.
The Land of Nothing (1996 Hungary 62 mins) Dir, Ed, Research: Péter Forgács Phot: László Rátz, and other sources Mus: Tibor Szemzõ The events recorded by the private cinematographer behave like a paradoxical mirror. One moment is captured in its randomness. And then another and yet another is captured, subsequently fixing those moments into an [...]
Point Blank (1967 USA 92 mins) Prod: Judd Bernard, Robert Chartoff Dir: John Boorman Scr: Alexander Jacobs, David Newhouse, Rafe Newhouse, from the novel The Hunter by Richard Stark Phot: Philip H. Lathrop Ed: Henry Berman Art Dir: Albert Brenner, George W. Davis Mus: Johnny Mandel Cast: Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, Keenan Wynn, Carroll O’Connor, [...]
Avant-Garde 2: Experimental Cinema 1928-1954 is a laudable, curious and at times frustrating collection of French and mostly American experimental films made across a 25-year-period. It is a sequel of kinds to Kino International’s 2005 release that mostly, and probably more successfully, focused on the European avant-garde cinema of the 1920s and ’30s. Both DVDs [...]
This annotation previously appeared in Senses of Cinema, no. 20, May–June 2002, and in Senses of Cinema, no. 6, May 2000. Come and See (1985 Soviet Union 142 mins) Source: AFTRS Prod, Dir: Elem Klimov Scr: Klimov and Ales Adamovich Phot: Alexei Rodionov Mus: O. Yanchenko, Mozart Cast: Alexei Kravchenko, Olga Mironova, Lyubomira Lautsyavichyus, Vladas [...]
The Strawberry Blonde (1941 USA 97 minutes) Prod Co: Warner Bros. Dir: Raoul Walsh Scr: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, based on the play One Sunday Afternoon by James Hagan Phot: James Wong Howe Ed: William Holmes Art Dir: Robert Haas Cost: Orry-Kelly Mus: Heinz Roemheld Cast: James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth, [...]
b. 8 October 1897, Tbilisi, Georgia d. 4 December 1987, Los Angeles, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Articles in Senses Web Resources “Nostalgia for places one has never seen” (1) In his canonical, often provocative, still influential if sometimes damaging – at least in terms of its effect on the reputation of specific filmmakers – account [...]
The Silent Village (1943 Britain 36 mins) Prod Co: Crown Film Unit Prod, Dir, Scr: Humphrey Jennings Phot: Chick Fowle Ed: Stuart McAllister Sound: Jock May In his influential 1954 article, Lindsay Anderson anointed the quintessentially English filmmaker Humphrey Jennings as “the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced” (1). Like many other [...]
This annotation previously appeared in Senses of Cinema, no. 25, Mar–Apr 2003. Madame de… (1953 France 102 mins) Source: Film Alliance Prod Co: Franco-London Prod: Ralph Baum, Max Ophuls Dir: Max Ophuls Scr: Marcel Achard, Annette Wademont, Max Ophuls, from the novella by Louise de Vilmorin Ph: Christian Matras Ed: Boris Lewin Mus: Oscar Strauss, [...]
This annotation previously appeared in Senses of Cinema, no. 1, Dec 1999. This essay first appeared in the Treasures from the French Embassy Collection monograph, published by the National Cinémathèque, 1998. Bad memories, welcome… you are my long lost youth. – quotation which opens L’Armeé des Ombres Always a reticent, fringe-dwelling, and independent figure within [...]
The Wind (1928 USA 80 mins) Source: NFVLS Prod Co: MGM Dir: Victor Seastrom [Sjöström] Scr: Frances Marion, based on the novel by Dorothy Scarborough Phot: John Arnold Ed: Conrad A. Nervig Art Dir: Cedric Gibbons, Edward Withers Cast: Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Montagu Love, Dorothy Cumming, Edward Earle, William Orlamond Widely considered one of [...]
The Immortal Story (1968 France/Spain 63mins) Source: ScreenSound Prod Co: ORTF, Albina Films Prod: Micheline Rozan Dir, Scr: Orson Welles from novella by Isak Dinesen Phot: Willy Kurant Ed: Yolande Maurette, Marcelle Pluet, Françoise Garnault, Claude Farny Art Dir: André Piltant Mus: Erik Satie Cast: Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Roger Coggio, Norman Eshley, Fernando Rey [...]
Rabbit Punch (1948 USA 7 mins) Source: NFVLS Prod Co: Warner Bros. Prod: Eddie Selzer Dir: Charles M. Jones Story: Tedd Pierce, Michael Maltese Anim: Phil Monroe, Ken Harris, Lloyd Vaughan, Ben Washam Layouts: Robert Gribbroek Backgrounds: Peter Alvarado Mus Dir: Carl W. Stalling Voices: Mel Blanc Rabbit Hood (1949 USA 7 mins) Source: NFVLS [...]
There’s Always Tomorrow (1956 USA 84 mins) Source: NFVLS Prod Co: Universal International Prod: Ross Hunter Dir: Douglas Sirk Scr: Bernard C. Schoenfeld, based on a story by Ursula Parrott Phot: Russell Metty Ed: William Morgan Art Dir: Alexander Golitzen, Eric Orbom Mus: Herman Stein, Heinz Roemheld, Joseph Gershenson Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Joan [...]
The Small Back Room (1949 UK 108 mins) Source: BFI Prod Co: London Film Productions/The Archers Prod, Dir: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger Scr: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, Nigel Balchin, based on the novel by Balchin Phot: Christopher Challis Ed: Reginald Mills, Clifford Turner Prod Des: Hein Heckroth Art Dir: John Hoesli Mus: Brian Easdale Cast: David Farrar, Kathleen Byron, Jack Hawkins, Leslie Banks, Michael [...]
b. May 8, 1913, San Diego, California, USA d. May 4, 1984, Detroit, Michigan, USA Filmography Select Bibliography Web Resources It Can Happen Here! The World of Bob Clampett An unparalleled wackiness swept through the cartoons. Main characters became aggressively screwy and manic. Imaginations were let loose, gravity was ignored (1). Clampett was the studio’s [...]
Comanche Station (1960 USA 73 mins) Source: Sony Picture Classics Prod Co: Ranown Prod, Dir: Budd Boetticher Scr: Burt Kennedy Phot: Charles Lawton, Jnr Ed: Edwin Bryant Art Dir: Carl Anderson Mus Dir: Mischa Bakaleinikoff Cast: Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Akins, Skip Homeier, Richard Rust I’m much more interested in my characters than the [...]
In the opening pages of the aptly titled Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris, Ginette Vincendeau discusses the photograph of Melville that graces her book’s cover. The photograph shows the Stetson-wearing director perusing the pages of the December 1966 edition of the journal Arts. Large letters on its cover read, “MELVILLE accuse TRUFFAUT.” Vincendeau admirably [...]
The Dante Quartet (1987 USA 7 mins) Source: NLA/ACMI Filmmaker: Stan Brakhage One of dozens of hand-painted films that Brakhage completed in the last two decades of his life, The Dante Quartet can be regarded in some respects as a cinematic approximation of abstract expressionism, illuminated and brought into motion as if shot through an [...]
Late Autumn/Akibiyori (1960 Japan 125 mins) Source, Prod Co: Shochiku Films Dir: Yasujiro Ozu Scr: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu, from the novel by Ton Satomi Phot: Yaharu Atsuta Ed: Yoshiyasu Hamamura Art Dir: Tatsua Hamada Mus: Kojun Saito Cast: Setsuko Hara, Yoko Tsukasa, Mariko Okada, Keiji Sata, Shin Saburi, Sadako Sawamura, Miyuki Kuwano, Masahiko Shimazu, [...]
The Mascot/Puppet Love (1933 France 20 mins) Source: NLA/ACMI Prod Co: Gelma-Films Filmmaker: Ladislaw Starewicz Ladislaw Starewicz (Starewitch) is perhaps the key figure in the history of stop-motion puppet animation. Over a period of 50 years, from Russia to France, he maintained a fascination with the strange, almost surreal properties of the form, exploring both [...]
Vendredi soir (2002 France 90 mins) Source: CNC Prod Co: Arena Films/France 2 Cinéma Prod: Bruno Pesery Dir: Claire Denis Scr: Emmanuèle Bernheim, Claire Denis, from the novel by Bernheim Phot: Agnès Godard Ed: Nelly Quettier Art Dir: Katia Wyszkop Mus: Dickon Hinchcliffe Cast: Valérie Lemercier, Vincent Lindon, Grégoire Colin, Hélène Fillières, Hélène de Saint-Père, [...]
Three Little Pigs (1933 USA 9 mins) Source: NLA/ACMI Prod Co: Walt Disney Pictures Prod: Walt Disney Dir: Burt Gillett Anim: Art Babbitt, Norman Ferguson, Norman King, Dick Lundy, Fred Moore Mus: Frank Churchill, Pinto Colvig, Ted Sears Voice Characterisations: Pinto Colvig (Practical Pig), Dorothy Compton (Fifer Pig), Mary Moder (Fiddler Pig), Billy Bletcher (Big [...]
An overview of the work of filmmaker John Smith, and an appreciation of its humble, earthly qualities, its fine-tuned probing of the “local” world, the artist’s relationship to this world and the film form itself.
City Girl (1930 USA 88 mins) Source: NLA/ACMI Prod Co: Fox Film Corporation Dir: F. W. Murnau Scr: Berthold Viertel, Marion Orth from the play The Mad Turtle by Elliott Lester Phot: Ernest Palmer Ed: Katherine Hilliker, H.H. Caldwell Art Dir: Harry Oliver, William Parling Prod Des: Edgar G. Ulmer Cast: Charles Farrell, Mary Duncan, [...]
Spies (1943 USA 4 mins) Source: NLA/ACMI Prod Co: United States Army Signal Corps/Warner Brothers Dir: Charles M. Jones Scr: Theodor Geisel Spies is the third of 26 three to four minute cartoons featuring the character of Private Snafu made by the Warner Brothers animation department for the United States Army Signal Corps between 1943 [...]
Despite an intriguing fact-based premise and Dennis Hopper, this new comedy about Frank Sinatra’s visit to Australia lacks wit or resonance.
