ROGER GIBSON - Festival Facts

Booking Ref

O LUCKY MAN!

Booking Ref

Sun 13 Aug 19:30 – Studio

Anderson’s third feature is a provocative look at British society. A bold medley of surrealism, satire, polemic and spy film. Malcolm McDowell would return to the screen twice to play Mick Travis, a cinematic everyman whose character arc across three films is less important than Anderson’s desire to crack the veneer of ‘respectable’ British society. In this journey through the British hinterland, Travis starts out as a travelling salesman, only to become implicated in armsdealing and radical medical experimentation, before the film reaches its gleefully knowing conclusion (featuring the only on-screen appearance by Anderson in one of his films). This broad satire that succeeds in hitting a number of its many targets also features an early appearance by Helen Mirren.

UK 1973 LINDSAY ANDERSON 178M

Britannia Hospital

Malcolm McDowell’s final outing as Mick Travis finds him donning the role of an investigative journalist, secretly filming in the eponymous hospital just as it plays host to a visit by the Queen.

A group of protesters encircle the building, outraged that a notorious African dictator is receiving private medical treatment there, while Professor Millar (Graham Crowden), a specialist working in a new wing, appears to be employing radical procedures to improve humankind. Characters from the previous two Travis films make appearances here, while Anderson and screenwriter David Sherwin take potshots at both the establishment and the way the National Health Service has been treated.

Booking Ref

Mon 14 Aug 19:45 – Studio

Wed 16 Aug 18:15 – Pic Palace

UK 1982 LINDSAY ANDERSON 116M

The Whales Of August

A deeply moving drama about two elderly sisters who discover that it’s never too late to change.

Mon 21 Aug 16:15 – Studio

Tue 22 Aug 18:30 – Studio

Anderson’s final narrative feature brought together two Hollywood legends from a bygone era: the silent star Lillian Gish and Bette Davis, one of the firebrands of Hollywood’s golden age. They play widowed sisters from Philadelphia, who spend their summers together on the coast of Maine. The surroundings cause them to reflect on their lives and the events that came to define them. Even though they didn’t get along on set, the two actors make for a compelling screen presence, their characters’ relationship bolstered by the performances of veterans Vincent Price, Harry Carey Jr and Ann Southern, who was nominated for an Oscar.

USA 1987 LINDSAY ANDERSON 90M

JEAN-LUC GODARD: 1930-2022

The director who created one of the most influential, challenging, and debated bodies of work in cinema history.

Was there a watershed in cinema: before and after Godard? That was certainly how it seemed during the 20 or so years after his debut in 1960. As the leading figure in France’s New Wave, his influence was felt far and wide, encouraging a generation of filmmakers to reject the styles of their elders, and instead create a new personal cinema. Soon his influence could be seen in Eastern Europe, in Italy, in Scandinavia and even in Britain. Would Dick Lester’s two Beatles films have been as formally exciting without the example of Godard? Would Vilgot Sjöman’s once-notorious ‘I Am Curious’ films have been as boldly personal without Godard? But however widely his influence could be seen, Godard himself never stood still, challenging his admirers with each new film and setting a pace that few could match.

The revolutionary uprisings of 1968 created a watershed in Godard’s own life and career. Turning his back on the art cinema that he had reshaped, he threw himself into a period of political agitation and, even after he returned to making movies with major stars during the 1970s and ‘80s, these were never as influential as his early films. There was also the challenge of television and working with video, which Godard embraced before most filmmakers of his generation, inaugurating a new phase in his work from ‘Sauve qui peut’/’Slow Motion’ (1980) onwards. Back in his native Switzerland, Godard became a reclusive guru, often controversial, but continuing to experiment and provoke. – Ian Christie

Sat 12 Aug 20:45 – Studio

Sun 13 Aug 17:30 – Pic Palace

Breathless Bout De Souffle

Jean-Luc Godard’s gritty and engaging first feature had an almost revolutionary impact when first released in 1960. There is simply no other film which demonstrates so perfectly what it feels like to be young and in love.

Small-time thief (Jean-Paul Belmondo) steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he reunites with a hip American journalism student (Jean Seberg) and attempts to persuade her to run away with him to Italy. Widely regarded as the ground zero of the French New Wave movement and clearly hugely influential and standout in terms of narrative and attitude, the film feels cuttingly original and has an aura of edge and freedom. Godard paid homage to the pace and energy of American gangster B-movies of the 1940s. He took his plotline from a news item supplied by Truffaut, in which a cop-killer was harboured by his girlfriend and casually betrayed for the reward money. The thin, conventional storyline is swept along by the imaginative, urgent style with its then innovative jump cuts, overlapping dialogue and handheld camerawork. A landmark film, it forever changed perceptions of cinema. (Subtitles)

FRANCE 1960 JEAN-LUC GODARD 90M

Fri 18 Aug 20:30 – Studio

Le Petit Soldat

Aka ‘The Little Soldier’

During the Algerian War of Independence, a young Frenchman living in Geneva and belonging to a right-wing terrorist group falls in love with a young woman from a left-wing terrorist group.

‘Le Petit Soldat’ is a controversial spyromance, which was banned in France for three years on account of its unflinching portrayal of the Franco-Algerian conflict. The film follows Bruno (Michel Subor), a disillusioned young deserter who becomes involved in the French nationalist movement despite his lack of deep political beliefs. Under orders, he kills an Algerian sympathiser and is then captured and tortured. When he meets and falls in love with a beautiful young woman, Veronica Dreyer (Anna Karina appearing in her first film role), he does not realise that she is fighting for the other side. Godard, in 1960, making a film about the Algerian War, was portraying the sort of intellectual and moral confusion that good men have when they confront senseless events. Given this attitude, it might seem strange that ‘Le Petit Soldat’ is funny, but it is, for long stretches. Banned until the censoring French ruling party was overthrown, it is as relevant today as it was in 1963. It is impossible to watch without thinking of Guantanamo, of extraordinary rendition and (explicitly) of waterboarding. (Subtitles)

FRANCE 1960/63 JEAN-LUC GODARD 88M

Le M Pris

Aka ‘Contempt’

A sumptuously stylish study of a rocky marriage and fraught professional relationships, Godard’s unusually straightforward adaptation of a novel by Moravia is also his most hauntingly beautiful film. Starring Brigitte Bardot, Fritz Lang, Jack Palance and Michel Piccoli.

On a movie adaptation of Homer’s epic poem ‘The Odyssey’, an aspiring playwright, Paul Javal (Piccoli), finds himself caught between the creative director (Lang) and the crass American producer, Jeremy Prokosch (Palance). While the director wants to faithfully recreate Homer’s world artistically, the producer demands a more commercial feature and waves his mighty chequebook to make it happen. When Paul finds himself swayed by the power of the producer’s money, he sees that his wife Camille (Bardot) is beginning to regard him with increasing contempt. Making the most of Raoul Coutard’s luscious Scope images and Georges Delerue’s achingly lovely score, Godard ensures that we care about this troubled couple even as he illuminates, with incisive wit, the corrosive compromises often inherent in filmmaking. This monumental achievement, which combines the classical with the radical, is presented here in a new 4k digitally restored print. (Subtitles)

FRANCE/ITALY 1963 JEAN-LUC GODARD 103M

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