Film

During Kino Eye’s recent brief absence, of one of Europe’s great cinema actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant, died. He made his name in such New Wave films as Un Homme et une Femme ( A Man and a Woman , 1966) directed by Claude Lelouch. His best known appearance, however, is probably his role as Clerici, the confused and hesitant fascist sympathiser in Bernardo Bertolucci’s brilliant Il Conformista ( The Conformist). Drawn into a fascist plot to assassinate the leader of the Italian left, in exile in Paris, once his professor when a student, Clerici is clearly not up to the job; as the film’s title...

Cartoonist Alison Bechdel has given us a cheeky update to the "Bechdel Test" in response to internet drama about rom com Fire Island , a rewriting of Pride and Prejudice with the Bennet sisters replaced with a group of queer, working-class, Asian-American men. The accidentally ubiquitous Bechdel test is a set of criteria to judge the representation of women in film, from comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For . To pass a movie has to: • have at least two (named) women in it • who talk to each other • about something besides a man. The blunt instrument of gender-equality judgement was found lacking...

See also this piece by Kenan Malik. Following protests organised by right-wing Sunni Muslim groups outside cinemas showing the film The Lady of Heaven , the Cineworld chain has cancelled all screenings of it. (Read the Guardian ’s report here .) We have not yet seen the film, but this is how things look to us. The writer of The Lady of Heaven is himself a right-wing religious bigot – a Shia Muslim sectarian hostile to Sunnis. From what we understand the main purpose of the film is to promote such sectarianism. But a film having politics judged objectionable is not a justification for it being...

The Danish Girl (dir. Tom Hooper, 2015), based on a novel by David Ebershoff, tells the story of Einar Wegener/ Lili Elbe, a Danish painter, who has reassignment surgery in the early 1930s. Einar/ Lili (played by Eddie Redmayne) has thought of herself as a woman for many years; seeks help from a psychiatrist, but all he suggests is confinement to an asylum. A German surgeon, Kurt Warnekros, offers to perform the complex — and then dangerous — surgery. The first stage is completed and Lili takes a job in an elite department store. She returns to Germany to complete the surgery, but dies shortly...

Solidarity 635 carried an article on “unsafe workplaces” demonstrating the high price workers often pay for a lack of safety at work. Those who become whistle-blowers are particularly vulnerable. In Silkwood (1983, directed by Mike Nichols) the eponymous character (played by Meryl Streep) works at a plutonium plant making fuel rods for the nuclear industry. She is a member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers’ Union and becomes increasingly concerned about safety at the plant, going to Washington to testify before the Atomic Energy Commission. Back at work she activates an alarm and it is...

Since its inception the NHS has been the subject of numerous films, soap operas and TV dramas: everything from Carry on Nurse and Emergency Ward Ten to Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later in 2002. One of the more controversial was Lindsay Anderson’s dark comedy Britannia Hospital , released in 1982. A new wing is to be opened at the Britannia Hospital by “HRH” (presumably the Queen although this term is never used) and the Chief Administrator Vincent Potter (Leonard Rossiter) runs himself ragged trying to ensure the opening goes off without mishap. Fat chance of that! A reporter (Malcolm McDowell) is...

The recent French elections have revealed a left that is in chaos. In 1936, much of that left united in the “Popular Front”. It was riddled with contradictions, and short-lived. Trotsky was scathing in his analysis. Yet one aspect of the Popular Front was a flourishing of films with a left orientation. Many film directors, gathered in the Groupe Octobre, sided with the Popular Front. The best known was Jean Renoir, who directed The Crime of Monsieur Lange in 1936. Amédée Lange (Rene Lefevre) is a writer who works for a publishing company owned by the loathsome Batala (Jules Berry) who is...

Turning Red is about a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian named Mei Lee. She gets good grades, does all the extra-curricular activities and helps out at the local temple, and when puberty arrives she discovers that the women in her family turn into giant Red Panda monsters when they experience strong emotions. Producer Lindsey Collins explained the body horror for kids: “Everybody on the crew was unapologetic in support of having these real conversations about periods and about these moments in girls’ lives.” It is great to see periods and puberty addressed in a Pixar film. Accusations that Pixar...

It is the 50th anniversary of the release of The Godfather . However, if it is gangsterism as capitalism that you are thinking about, then there is a better film (in my opinion): Abraham Polonsky’s Force of Evil from 1948. John Garfield plays the part of Joe Morse, a crooked but smart lawyer who works for a crime syndicate. It is a ruthless world where the big fish swallow up the small fry. One of those small fry is Morse’s older brother Leo. Morse tries but fails to save his brother. Realising that he has destroyed his own brother and himself, Morse then turns on the head of the crime...

Originally published on Media Diversified , a website for writers of colour. We republish with thanks. You can donate to Media Diversified here . I must have watched Bend It Like Beckham a dozen times – most recently on the twentieth anniversary of its release, last week. At the top of the UK box office for over three months in 2002, Gurinder Chadha’s film became a hit worldwide: the only film ever, believe it or not, officially released in every country, North Korea included. There are pages of statistics for its success. It undoubtedly had special resonance for British Asians. As a middle...