I watch a lot of films, more old than new. Sometimes I bore you with reviews. I rarely go to a cinema - as Sartre so aptly put it, 'L'enfer, c'est les autres". Sorry about that. I do however cherish those visits where a rapt silence seems guaranteed. I was on one occasion precisely one half of the audience for an afternoon screening of Hoop Dreams.
Modern multi-channel televisision is awash with films. Much dross but also plenty of good stuff. I mention serendipity and I will give you an example. I recently watched Went the Day Well?, of which more anon. I have also (along with the Groupie) watched the 1947 adaptation of Nicholas Nickleby. The serendipity? Well that comes in the identity of the man who directed both, credited on screen simply as 'Cavalcanti'. This got me intrigued. Who was this exotically titled auteur behind two such arrestingly English films? In full he was Alberto de Almeira Cavalcanti, Brazilian by birth but a citizen of the world, ulitimately blacklisted as an alleged communist. Look him up on the interweb thingy and marvel at a nomadic life of creativity.
Went the Day Well? was made at Ealing Studios in 1942. It is, I suppose, a propaganda film but it is rather more than that in its imagining of an English village invaded by the Nazis and the magnificent and resourceful resistance of the villagers to the Germans. It crops up on Talking Pictures TV, the merits of which I have previously advertised. 72/100. Another factor that recommends the film is that the source story is by Graham Greene.
From 1947, Nicholas Nickleby is not in the same league but it is highly enjoyable - I have guiltily to confess yet again that I find Dickens easier to enjoy in adaptation than in the original prose. Nickleby perhaps suffers in inevitable comparison with David Lean's masterful translations of Dickens to the screen. Nonetheless very viewable. 66/100.
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