Format: DVD

Release date: 22 September 2008

Distributor: Arrow Films

Director: Abel Ferrara

Writer: Nicholas St John

Cast: Christopher Walken, Laurence Fishburne, Wesley Snipes, Steve Buscemi

Italy/USA 1990

99 mins

The Fun Lovin’ Criminals took it as the title of one of their tracks and it’s not much of an exaggeration to say Biggie Smalls claimed to be it every other line in his raps, but the popular use of the phrase ‘King of New York’ originates with Abel Ferrara’s 1990 film about a drug lord who eliminates his competition in order to make enough money to save a Harlem hospital. At long last, King of New York gets the special edition treatment this month.

Frank White (Christopher Walken) has had years in prison to think about his life and articulate the motivations behind his bloody campaign for redemption. On his release, he argues that crime has increased without his controlling influence, that drugs are a problem endemic to society and that he’s just a businessman trying to give something back to the community. Of course, Frank is a psychopath and his arguments aren’t convincing, but it’s a great part for Walken, who revels in the contradictions of the character. Frank is a traditional Italian-American mob boss, but he’s also progressive in the sense that he allows both blacks and women in his gang. Laurence Fishburne’s performance as Frank’s number one guy Jimmy Jump, a black man fully emancipated by virtue – or should that be vice? – of being a sociopath, hasn’t dated well – more Fresh Prince than fresh – but does retain some of its original power and is still eminently quotable.

As well as being notable for early appearances by Fishburne, Wesley Snipes and Steve Buscemi, King of New York has a great hip hop soundtrack featuring Schooly D. The action is hit and miss, but the cinematography is remarkable and is the best element in the film. Never before had New York looked so sinister, nor has it since.

Despite the satisfying weight of the SteelBook case, this ‘special edition’ is disappointingly light on extras. The second disc fails entirely to justify itself, containing only a handful of repetitive documentaries recycled from previous releases and TV. In the director’s commentary, Ferrara comes across as technically brilliant, but personally repulsive. With a mixture of nostalgic enthusiasm and reluctant obligation – he starts out saying he’s only doing the commentary because he’s been handed a few thousand dollars in cash – he points out killer shots, explains how they were achieved, then leches over the female cast members. Still, King of New York is a worthy addition to the Italian-American gangster section of any DVD library.

Alexander Pashby

Format: DVD

Release date: 13 October 2008

Distributor Icon Home Entertainment

Director: Franco Rosso

Writers: Franco Rosso, Martin Stellman

Cast: Brinsley Forde, Karl Howman, Trevor Laird

UK/Italy 1980

95 mins

In a Brixton basement somewhere, the little LCD clock hanging precariously on the wall above the speaker stacks vibrates with the same heavy bassline that moves everything else around it: the walls, the people, culture; it reverberates so much that the time it is supposed to show is rendered illegible, a thing of no consequence.

Set in the pre-gentrified soundscape of Brixton, tuned in to the bass frequencies of the black community resisting in apnoea under the repressive yet unstable surface of British history at a critical juncture of its development, Babylon is a shamefully forgotten masterpiece of (British) cinema. The magic of the film comes from the brilliantly orchestrated transposition onto celluloid of the socially conscious culture fostered by the sound systems, back in the Caribbeans, and later in England; here the MC is replaced by the filmmaker, the microphone by a camera, and the physicality of the bass is rendered through the livid intensity of the images.

Rarely screened after its release and never issued before on DVD, Babylon was directed by Franco Rosso, an Italian immigrant who considers England his home. It is perhaps his status as an outsider that allowed the director such an empathetic, insightful look into a culture that he felt close to, and that he believed needed to be represented on film in order to be preserved from the homogenising tentacles of the establishment.

Institutions were indeed far from tolerant, let alone understanding. The BBC refused to produce the film while The Guardian‘s Molara Ogundipe-Leslie criticised Franco Rosso for not being best placed to provide an accurate description of the black community: ‘If there are funds for the making of such films as Babylon, should they not be awarded to black film-makers? Or, could non-black film-makers work more closely at the conceptual level with black artists and intellectuals who know their people better and who can define their own reality more truthfully?’ As the shooting began the unions refused to accept the labour of young Jamaican workers not unionised (interestingly enough, Melvin Van Peebles experienced a similar problem on the set of Sweetback).

But when the London screens were taken over by the lights and sounds pounding out of this cinematic sound-clash, the response was solid and righteous, the black community liked it, and those outside were, as Rosso put it, ‘forced to, for a very short time, accept and open the doors’ (interview by Dave Philips in the first and only issue of New Britain).

The story of the vicissitudes and frustrations of young people faced with an intolerant British society, Babylon remains as uncompromising as it was back in 1980, with time adding an extra layer of historical significance to the film. Babylon – the sinful capital of consumerism and corruption for Rastafarians – is the backdrop for the daily life of Blue (played by the lead singer of Aswad Brinsley Forde) and his Ital Lion crew in the run-up to a sound-system battle against the rival group Jah Shaka. In only 95 minutes, the film manages to expose the audience to the daily injustices suffered by ethnic minorities through its wide range of characters and situations while avoiding any moralising bombast. As the story progresses, Blue finds himself increasingly stranded on the margins of society and his plight is representative of a whole generation of black people told to ‘go back home’ after having been exploited for cheap labour; but, as one of the characters points out: ‘this is my fucking home!’

Against the Sus law, the racism of the National Front and the cowardly silence of progressive liberals, the only weapon left to the characters of Babylon is the music, and they wield the subwoofer as a political tool to fight the violent bigotry of British society. As a result, the soundtrack in Babylon represents more than a mere melodic accompaniment and functions as a narrative device punctuating the montage, becoming part of the materiality of the film and subverting its usual role of comment ‘lost’ between the expressive content and the stylistic form of the film.

The DVD comes with the documentary Dread, Beat an’ Blood as an extra. Also directed by Rosso, this documentary portrays the art and times of insurgent dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, a friend of the director and his guide to the sound systems scene. The Babylon DVD presents essential views whose long unavailability should make us reflect upon the inestimable value that different cultures could represent in a real multi-cultural society.>

Celluloid Liberation Front

Format: DVD

Release date: 25 August 2008

Distributor: Eureka Entertainment

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Writer: Christen Jul

Based on: novel by Sheridan Le Fanu

Cast: Julian West, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz, Jan Hieronimko, Maurice Schutz, Albert Bras

Germany/France 1932

75 mins

Most classics of the cinema are great works of dramatic art. Not this one. But it offers a series of inspired original visions that helped shape the supernatural genre and changed the way we spook ourselves.

Director Carl Dreyer doesn’t really try for full coherent enactment of this archetypal vampire tale. When there is some story to be filled in and he doesn’t feel inclined to do it cinematically, he reaches for lengthy expository title cards or even just puts the pages of a creepy old book up on screen for us. The narrative jerks and jumps, with little cumulative tension. The sound is an afterthought and doesn’t contribute much. Oh, and the film isn’t very frightening. But it is a dream, and dreams don’t follow the plot.

As so often in German films of this era (OK, Dreyer was Danish), one marvels at the technical invention of the cinematography. The early interior scenes instil a hallucinatory unease, somewhere between The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and Eraserhead. Dreyer offers closeness where space would be more comfortable, and vice versa. And the oddness of the camera’s angles and movements deny the viewer a sense of a secure viewpoint. The indications that usually allow us to get a grip on a narrative – connection between events, explanation of occurrences, motivation for actions – are withheld. As for the exteriors, Dreyer swathes them in a glowing haze, softening the perspectives and thus our sense of depth and distance, while endowing the figures with a gliding grace of movement. The action is punctuated with shadows and silhouettes that resonate with ominous visual portent – reapers, diggers, dancers. They don’t serve to tell us something, they just prime our minds with symbolic suggestions.

Vampyr is not just a director’s film. There is a central performance like no other from an actor who led one of the most remarkable lives of the century (a life that calls out to be told first by a serious biographer and then by a demented filmmaker). Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg traded in his mundane given name for the exotic screen alias of – ooh! – ‘Julian West’. He then laid a trail of adventure and debauchery from the Old World to the New. But this role must be his great achievement, in a film that he financed himself. His pale elegance and gravity of demeanour lend dignity and conviction in a genre where the mannered easily spills over into the ludicrous. Horror, like comedy, is no joke: it often needs the unhinged, but it more often needs to be played straight. The climax of West’s performance, and Dreyer’s tour de force, is a dream/out-of-body sequence that takes a scary idea and makes it sublime by the imagination, wit, and sheer oddness of its realisation.

How many of us can truly say that we have enough eerie in our lives? Vampyr is a deep well from which we can draw.

Peter Momtchiloff

Format: DVD

Release date: 25 August 2008

Distributor: )ptimum Releasing

Director: Walter Hill

Titles: The Driver, The Warriors, The Long Riders, Southern Comfort, Extreme Prejudice, Johnny Handsome

Cast: Michael Beck, Ryan O’Neal, Isabelle Adjani, Bruce Dern, Keith Carradine, Powers Booth, Nick Nolte, Mickey Rourke, Morgan Freeman, Lance Henriksen

USA 1978-1989

568 mins

Minimalism is the key characteristic of the early films of Walter Hill, as exemplified by his car chase classic The Driver (1978), in which the characters are simply referred to as The Driver, The Detective and The Girl. These films are lean, mean, unpretentious thrillers in which existential characters are energised by street-smart storytelling and expertly staged action sequences. The Driver fuses the cool methodology of Jean-Pierre Melville with the pure pulp of dime store fiction to focus on the professional rivalry between a getaway specialist (Ryan O’Neal) and an obsessive cop (Bruce Dern), both of whom are aided and impeded by an elusive femme fatale (Isabelle Adjani). Hill’s characters exist in the moment, rarely considering consequence, which makes The Driver as ambiguous as it is exciting.

The Warriors (1979) is the socially prescient story of a small-time New York gang that is framed for assassinating Cyrus, the charismatic underworld leader who has been trying to bring a truce to the streets. They attempt to escape the South Bronx, only to be attacked at every turn by gangs with such menacing monikers as The Orphans and The Baseball Furies. Accused of inciting violence upon release, The Warriors is an electrifying excursion into urban subculture, which utilises such locations as Coney Island, Central Park and deserted subway stations to unsettling effect.

The protagonists of Southern Comfort (1981) are also being hunted, but this time our heroes are National Guardsmen, the urban jungle has been replaced by the boggy marshes of a Louisiana swamp, and the antagonists are Cajuns who do not like to be disrespected on their land. Although Southern Comfort can be viewed as a metaphor for the Vietnam War, with American soldiers becoming undermined in an environment that they do not understand territorially or culturally, it is first and foremost a suspenseful action picture that gradually grips through a sustained sense of sweaty atmosphere.

Each of these films is influenced by the pared-down moral universe of the western, and Hill attempted to revive the moribund genre with The Long Riders (1980), an evocative vision of the Old West which offers a sympathetic portrait of the Jesse James gang, with real-life acting siblings cast as the brothers that formed the outlaw posse. Although the pace is leisurely compared to the director’s contemporary thrillers, the film exudes the authenticity which would later distinguish the HBO series Deadwood, which Hill produced.

Extreme Prejudice (1987) and Johnny Handsome (1989) serve as examples of Hill’s late-80s creative decline. The former features Nick Nolte as a Texas Ranger taking on a drugs cartel, while the latter stars Mickey Rourke as a hideously disfigured criminal who is offered a second chance at life following extensive cosmetic surgery. Both are more melodramatic than Hill’s earlier oeuvre, and concede to, rather than challenge, the conventions of action cinema. While these later studio assignments are defined by the time in which they were made, Hill’s early films are visceral genre vehicles that are still ahead of the curb.

John Berra

Format: DVD

Release date: 18 August 2008

Distributor: Revolver Entertainment

Director: James Crump

USA 2007

69 mins

Black White + Gray: A Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe is an interesting but flawed feature documentary that seems as concerned with righting a historical wrong as with probing the relationship between these two fascinating men. Mapplethorpe, who died of Aids in 1989, remains one of America’s most famous photographers, who alternately shocked and delighted the art world in the 70s with his dramatic, sado-masochistic photography. Wagstaff was an enigmatic, highly influential art curator and collector who also, as this film suggests, discovered Mapplethorpe. Both his lover and sugar daddy, Wagstaff played a central role in Mapplethorpe’s success, which, together with his own impact on the art scene, has been mostly forgotten by the current generation of art fans. James Crump’s documentary details Wagstaff’s life, from his privileged birth to his passion for photography in the early 1970s and his death from Aids in 1987, placing him firmly back at the centre of an explosive period in 20th-century history.

The film presents Wagstaff as a man with chiselled good looks who rejected his rightful place at the top of New York society. Gay but stuck in the closet, Wagstaff had a miserable time in the 1950s, according to the musician Patti Smith, who was extremely close to both men and whose interviews are one of the film’s highlights. He abandoned his career in advertising and devoted himself to studying art history, initially concentrating on the work of early Italian masters. Soon his focus changed dramatically, and he became a champion of Minimalism, staging a landmark exhibition entitled Black, White and Gray at the Wadsworth Atheneum in the early 60s, as well as advocating the work of emerging artists such as Andy Warhol. In 1973, Wagstaff plunged into the world of photography, building up an incredible collection of images with the millions he inherited from his mother.

The radical changes that took place in American society in the 60s and 70s allowed Wagstaff to essentially transform himself from a straight-laced aristocrat to a man who could openly explore his own sexuality. His relationship with Mapplethorpe, 25 years his junior, drew him in to a world of coke and clubs, orgies and S&M parties. It is a real tragedy that this scene ended so horrifically with the scourge of Aids in the 80s and the premature death of both men, and the documentary is at its most affecting when recounting those events. The archival footage of Mapplethorpe shot while he was ill shows a weak, greying artist who has lost all the glamour and sex appeal that he so vividly exploited at the peak of his career.

The main problem with the documentary is that the exploration of this revolutionary era is staged in such a dull and unoriginal way. Interviews with gallery owners, art critics, friends of the couple and so on are all conventional talking heads, shot in their studies, offices, back garden. The narration is dry and stilted. While the interviews are cut with some terrific photos of Wagstaff and Mapplethorpe, as well as Wagstaff’s own outstanding collection of photographs (sold to the J Paul Getty Museum for $5 million in 1983), the documentary fails to do full justice to the two dynamic men at its heart.

Sarah Cronin

Black White + Gray is part of a new strand of art documentaries released on DVD by Revolver Entertainment in association with Arthouse Films. Other releases include The Cool School and A Walk Into the Sea.

Format: DVD

Release date: 25 August 2008

Distributor: Eureka Entertainment

Director: Georges Franju

Writers: Arthur Berní­Â¨de, Jacques Champreux, Louis Feuillade, Francis Lacassin

Cast: Channing Pollock, Francine Bergé, Edith Scob

France 1963

94 mins

Also included on the DVD:Nuits Rouges

Director: Georges Franju

France 1973

104 mins

Georges Franju’s reputation (in the UK at least) is built on just one film – his second feature, the hauntingly beautiful Les Yeux sans visage (Eyes Without a Face, 1960). His early documentaries are rarely seen, as are the films he subsequently made throughout the 60s and 70s. Judex (1963) and Nuits Rouges (1973) – packaged together here – are both homages to Louis Feuillade, the French director of silent serials much loved by Buí±uel and the surrealists. Franju was instrumental in the creation (with Henri Langlois) of the Cinémathí­Â¨que Franí§aise where Feuillade was ‘rediscovered’ in the 1940s. Judex is a remake of Feuillade’s 1916 serial and was co-written by his grandson Jacques Champreux.

Judex (Latin for ‘judge’, we are informed) is a masked and cape-wearing avenger who exacts retribution on the wicked capitalist Favraux whilst combating the evil doings of the vamp Diana (Francine Bergé) and her henchmen. Diana was played by Musidora in the original and is almost identical to her Irma Vep character in Feuillade’s greatest achievement, Les Vampires – a knife-wielding cat-suited cat-woman. Judex himself could be another of Feuillade’s characters, the daring thief Fantômas, but despite all the accoutrements of the villain, he is a good guy. He is played by the American magician Channing Pollock who, though a bit stiff as an actor, displays his talent for producing white doves from silk handkerchiefs at every given opportunity.

Franju attempts to recreate the mood of the silent era with slow pacing and expressionist lighting (with great shadows) as well as decorative intertitles and even a few iris shots and a keyhole mask. However, he ignores the quality that made Feuillade’s style so distinctive – his stunning visual compositions. In the original, whole scenes were shot with little editing and a still camera (this was pre-Griffith of course), with the action beautifully framed, often in depth. In Franju’s revisitation, it is replaced with classic continuity editing. Yet, he equals if not betters Feuillade in achieving dreamlike expressionism from (unlike the German silents) real locations, finding the poetic and lyrical in reality much as he did in his documentaries.

The iconography of Feuillade’s world is perfectly captured – most notably in the moonlit rooftop scene where two women in leotards (one black and one white of course) fight to the death. Franju even trumps the original’s surrealist tendencies with the bizarre masked ball at the start of the film, in which all the guests wear creepily realistic bird heads – Judex a hawk and Favraux a vulture. Other moments of startling poetry include the scene in which a drugged Jacqueline (Franju regular and the masked star of Les Yeux sans visage Edith Scob, with her own face this time) is thrown from a bridge and floats down the river before being rescued by children. If Franju’s film has a major flaw it is in trying to cram five hours (12 episodes) of serial plot into a 90-minute movie. The silent era storyline must at times seem rather far-fetched to modern audiences but in such a magical film it almost works.

Perhaps the main difference between the two versions is one of intention. Feuillade is aiming for pulp entertainment and almost accidentally hits poetry whereas Franju sets out to make an enchanting lyrical film, paying little attention to the drama. Nevertheless, there are enough brilliant set pieces and beautiful cinematography to thrill the fans of Les Yeux sans visage.

Paul Huckerby

Format: DVD

Release date: 25 August 2008

Distributor: Shameless Entertainment

Director: Aldo Lado

Writers: Francesco Barilli, Massimo d’Avak, Aldo Lado, Ruediger von Spiess

Original title: Chi l’ha vista morire?

Cast: George Lazenby, Anita Strindberg, Adolfo Celi

Italy 1971

89 mins

Serious Boobs…

…was one of the things Who Saw Her Die? DIDN’T have, which was disappointing considering the content of the trailers showcasing Shameless’ other 1970s movie offerings, including Strip Nude for Your Killer and various other self-explanatory titles. What it DID have, however, was shoddy dubbing, pink 70s blood, masses of pigeons, a skinny, shrivelled George Lazenby and some rather limp and pathetic boobs which appeared on screen for mere seconds before being replaced by more bloody pigeons.

This film reminded me of one of those late 1990s point-and-click PC adventure games, in which stunning but faded backdrops contrasted with poorly drawn, pixilated characters and puzzles that really blurred the line between ‘lateral thinking’ and ‘random’. Here, a grainy Venice of muted browns is the landscape for mysterious killings of red-haired children and the film features some magnificent atmospheric shots, making the city more of a genuine character than the players.

Unfortunately, the depth and heritage imbued in the Italian landscape is wasted on a plot and cast that are so contrived and shallow that any sense of realism is completely destroyed. Not a single character rings true, the parts seeming to consist entirely of entering stage left, saying something pertinent, then leaving stage right. The characters seem superficially interesting but no insight into their personalities is provided beyond the bare necessities of the story. There appears to be no reason behind any of the murders, and any character that might shed some light on what the hell is going on is killed minutes before they get the chance to explain. The unnecessary twists simply make no sense and fly in the face of everything that has gone on before, and the anticipated revelation at the end is replaced with a fat man shouting: ‘He was an imposter! He wasn’t even a priest at all!’

It doesn’t make any sense IN context either.

But there is one thing this film does fantastically, and it does it so well that you can look past the technical issues mentioned above. Throughout the entire hour and 40 minutes of irresponsible parenting and tropical bird feeding, I was well and truly terrorised. This guilty pleasure was due to one thing and one thing only: Ennio Morricone’s soundtrack. The music is sparse but haunting and immediately transforms the film into a work of art. It doesn’t try to blend with the subtle framings of Venice and its inhabitants so much as trample all over them, but it gets in your head, and the theme for the killer is unforgettable. Never has a bit of veil draped over a camera whilst shuffling towards a girl been so terrifying, or a pair of hobnailed boots more sinister.

And that changes everything. Who Saw Her Die? is a film that wishes it were a mystery thriller but is in fact a psychological horror movie. It doesn’t have to make sense because it gets you on a visceral level. And most horror movies have a stupid ending anyway.

Although usually they have more boobs.

And less pigeons.

Oli Smith

Format: DVD

Release date: 18 February 2008

Distributor: Optimum Releasing

Director: Enzo G Castellari

Writers: Sandro Continenza, Sergio Grieco, Franco Marotta, Romano Migliorini, Laura Toscano

Original title: Quel maledetto treno blindato

Cast: Bo Svenson, Peter Hooten, Fred Williamson, Michael Pergolani

Italy 1978

95 mins

The recent DVD release of Inglorious Bastards is not exclusively due to its artistic merits but also to the publicity given to the film by that cinema archaeologist, Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is currently working on a remake, and announced he had finished the script at the P-Town film festival. Brad Pitt has now been confirmed in the lead, and the cast also includes Mike Myers and Eli Roth.

‘Castellari made various films that I could define as ‘fast and easy’, not too demanding, like 1990: The Bronx Warriors, which was exploiting the success of films such as Mad Max. As far as I’m concerned, he (Castellari) will remain the director who best knew how to direct Franco Nero. The Castellari film that I prefer though – and that I think is one of the best examples of Italian exploitation – is Inglorious Bastards.’ (Nocturno Dossier N. 66: ‘Il Punto G: Guida al cinema di Enzo G. Castellari’, March 2008). When Tarantino opened the retrospective ‘The Italian King of B’s’ at the 2004 Venice Biennale with Joe Dante, he publicly declared his love for Italian B-cinema of the 60s and 70s. He has shined a spotlight on many forgotten gems of Italian genre/exploitation cinema, among which Milan Calibre 9, a classy thriller that rivals the finest Melville and which Tarantino considers to be the best Italian noir of all time. Inglorious Bastards is no such masterpiece (and Castellari himself does not understand what Tarantino sees in it), but it is not difficult to see what attracted the director to this entertaining, action-packed war movie, which takes the stylistic elements of the genre to an extreme.

The chief reference is Robert Aldrich’s 1967 seminal war movie The Dirty Dozen (in Italian the two titles are a near match), and the film follows a similar plot. In Aldrich’s film, a group of prisoners are submitted to a harsh drill after which they attack a German compound in a suicidal mission. In Castellari’s rustic and surreal version, a group of deserters mistakenly kill a bunch of fellow soldiers dressed as Nazis and replace them to carry out a risky assault on a German train carrying a bomb.

Even though the characterisation of the roguish characters, the situations and the narrative development derive from Aldrich’s work, the film distinguishes itself by its sloven style, its gross humour and heavy-handed approach (perhaps that’s what Tarantino considers as the finest Italian exploitation). However, it is also worth noting that the film achieves remarkable technical results on a very limited budget. And unlike American war movies where everybody inexplicably speak American English, it has Nazi soldiers and French partisans respectively speak their own language, an interesting feature that Tarantino is set to replicate in his remake.

There are many set pieces that make the film worth watching, from the beautiful sequence of slow-motion deaths – Castellari must have seen Sam Pekinpah’s Cross of Iron – to the terrific final explosion at the train station. A little miracle of mise en scí­Â¨ne, this sequence is characterised by a savvy use of models and matte that creates an astonishing visual detonation which, I am sure, many modern special effects experts would admire for its hand-crafted mastery. There is also an unexpected and surreal scene where some German women, presumably reserve soldiers, are bathing naked in a river… an enjoyably nonsensical sequence of a kind that has all but disappeared from today’s ultra-efficient, plot-driven, creatively limited cinema. The film is well served by its cast and Fred Williamson’s impressive performance is considered by Tarantino to be the actor’s best. His angry face is featured on the American poster (under the alternative title GI Bro) with the slogan: ‘If you’re a Kraut, he’ll take you out’.

All in all, Inglorious Bastards remains solidly entertaining after 30 years, and the fitting mise en scí­Â¨ne, the credible narrative and the calibrated editing of the action scenes reveal the incredible craftsmanship of a director whose skills have been unjustly underestimated. We’ll have to wait until June 2009, when the remake is set to come out in the USA, to see if the same can be said about Tarantino’s version.

Format: DVD

Release date: 14 July 2008

Distributor: Optimum Releasing

Directors: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro

Titles: Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children, The Bunker of the Last Gunshots

Writers: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Marc Caro, Gilles Adrien

Cast: Dominique Pinon, Jean-Claude Dreyfus, Ron Perlman

France 1991/1995/1981

99/112/26 mins

Before Amélie and before Alien: Resurrection, French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet had a partnership with designer and comic book artist Marc Caro, which began in 1974 when the pair met at an animation festival. In the early animated shorts they made together, Jeunet was responsible for the camera work and the cast, and Caro would take care of the overall design. Later they went on to make two live action features, Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children – arguably Jeunet’s best work – which are now collected in a new box-set from Optimum together with their 1981 short The Bunker of the Last Gunshots.

Delicatessen is the story of Louison (Dominique Pinon), an ex-clown in a post-apocalyptic France who is forced to take a job as a handyman in an apartment building above a butcher’s in exchange for food and lodging. There he meets and falls in love with Julie (Marie-Laure Dougnac), the butcher’s daughter. However, the reason the tenants survive while everyone outside is starving is that the butcher (Jean-Claude Dreyfus) is supplying them with ‘long pig’ and next on the menu is filet Louison!

Several critics have argued that the plot of Delicatessen is really just an excuse for the visually stunning and endlessly creative set pieces. This is supported by the theatrical trailer, which only contains the celebrated scene where some squeaky bed springs provide the rhythm for a symphony arising from the activity of each tenant – painting with a roller, playing the cello, inflating a bicycle tyre, etc. However, this is to do an injustice to Jeunet and Caro’s storytelling abilities. In the context of the film, the tenants are trying to drown out the noise of the local tart earning her cut of the meat by satisfying the butcher’s sexual appetite. So while the set pieces are very funny, they’re never gratuitous and each scene is in line with the plot.

Like that other great directing partnership the Coen brothers, Jeunet and Caro use circles as a kind of visual signature for their work. In Delicatessen, it’s bubbles, plug holes and manhole covers. In The City of Lost Children, it’s the bionic eye that Krank (Daniel Emilfork) – the degenerate clone of a mad scientist who must steal children’s dreams in order to live – gives to blind men in exchange for their service as cyclopean child catchers. However, the most important circle to Jeunet and Caro is the circus. Delicatessen‘s clown Pinon returns in Lost Children as the original scientist, playing also seven of his healthy clones. He’s joined by Ron Perlman as a strongman looking for his kidnapped brother and by Delicatessen‘s butcher Dreyfus as an-ex ringmaster who’s lost everything except for his flea circus. Taking the best bits from Oliver!, Annie and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and transporting them to a sci-fi future, the film has it all, including incredibly detailed sets, CGI that at the time was pioneering, costumes by Jean-Paul Gautier and a soundtrack from Angelo Badalamenti. The performances are great too, with the precocious Judith Vittet as the leader of a gang of orphans being the perfect counterpart to Perlman’s monosyllabic giant.

Both movies have been available as separate DVDs with all the usual extras for a while now. However, the box-set offers the first chance to see Jeunet and Caro’s 26-minute live action short The Bunker of the Last Gunshots. The film focuses on a bunch of soldiers and military scientists who become increasingly paranoid while waiting for the enemy to show up during the last days of a war that could have created the barren world of Delicatessen and Lost Children. This short will be of most interest to fans looking to trace the development of Jeunet and Caro’s style. With no dialogue, there’s already the emphasis on rhythm and the bald bad guys with wires coming out of their heads that characterise their later work. There is also an interesting connection to Aliens: the striking similarity between the external scenes and armoured personnel carrier in Bunker (1981) and the external scenes and armoured personnel carrier in Aliens (1986) makes it possible to speculate that James Cameron may have seen and been influenced by Bunker.

Alexander Pashby