Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)

Whatever you take from Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, one thing that cannot be in question is the quality of Ellen Burstyn’s charismatic lead performance as the witty but emotionally vulnerable single mother who tries her best for both herself and her son but finds herself increasingly ill equipped for her life on the road. The commitment, energy and kooky charm she brings to the performance proves that this was clearly her baby, and she rightly gives it her all...

See my full review of this classic, recently released to BFI DVD, at The Geek Show

Who's That Knocking At My Door (1968)

Martin Scorsese's 1968 debut, Who's That Knocking At My Door, is released to DVD by the BFI on Monday 27th March. 

The film originally started out as Scorsese's NYU graduation project in 1965 and took three years to make. 

It was worth it.

During a press screening at the New York Film Festival, no less than John Cassavetes proclaimed it to be "as good as Citizen Kane", before adding, "No, it's better than Citizen Kane, it's got more heart"

Right from the off, it proved Scorsese to be very special indeed.

Who's That Knocking At My Door? Why Hollywood, it's Marty Scorsese, and he's about to change your world forever.

Read my full review at The Geek Show

Napoleon (1927)

It's quite ironic that my first DVD review for The Geek Show was Kes, because unexpectedly keeping the avian theme is Abel Gance's stunning masterpiece Napoleon (released by the BFI next week) which features the young Corsican's inseparable bond with his pet eagle!

Read my full review on The Geek Show

Tonight's Tele Tip: BBC4's Antonia Bird Night

Following on from the BFI retrospective held earlier this month in tribute to the much missed director Antonia Bird, who passed away in 2013, BBC4 tonight will screen from 8:30pm onwards a series of programmes and films dedicated to her.

The night starts with a classic 1986 episode of EastEnders, a two-hander with Leslie Grantham and Anita Dobson as the warring couple of the Queen Vic, Den and Angie, on the brink of divorce until Angie delivers a devastating blow, followed by a new documentary, From EastEnders to Hollywood; Susan Kemp explores the life and work of Bird, from her trailblazing start at the radical hotbed that was the Royal Court in the 70s, through to the early groundbreaking days of EastEnders and Casualty in the 80s, and all the way to Hollywood in the 90s and back again. Then at 10pm there's an all too rare screening of her 2000 TV film Care starring Steven Mackintosh as a man struggling to piece together his life after a childhood of abuse in a children's care home.

Red Shift (1978)

God love the BFI. Another near forgotten treasure is released from the vaults this month; Red Shift is an adaptation of The Owl Service author Alan Garner's sci fi fantasy children's novel (and let's use the term children loosely) that appeared in the acclaimed Play For Today strand in 1978. It's a mark of the quality and distinction TV had at the time that the two plays that sandwiched Red Shift were David Hare's Licking Hitler and Jim Allen's The Spongers. Remember when the BBC gave a toss about intelligent drama and showcasing a variety of voices? This was then.

Time figures much in Red Shift. The story is set in South Cheshire and the slip roads leading to the M33 (the 'red shift' of the title; its triangular formation allegedly being something seen by the naked eye from space to have a red glow) and beyond, the hills of Mow Cop (the subject of today's Wordless Wednesday). But, whilst the setting may remain static, it literally shifts across three time periods; a heartfelt but strained romance in the 70s is our introduction and meat of the piece, before we flit back to a beleaguered militia coming into contact with a pagan goddess in Roman times and a bloodthirsty massacre during the English Civil War. 

In each segment the narrative focuses on a disturbed and troubled youth, Tom, Macy and Thomas, each linked by his location, the discovery of an axehead and 'visions' that appear like fits when words can no longer be summoned up. As you can see from such a description, it's a deeply elliptical and disturbing piece that neatly fits the burgeoning 70s preoccupation with folklore, the ancient characterisation of women having the ability to heal or hurt man, specifically when they are fated to hurt already, and paganism - an echo of which Garner appealingly suggests runs through the arteries of the modern day motorways that course through our ancient countryside. It commences like the standard fare one perhaps stereotypically expects from a Play For Today, depicting the 70s setting as little more than a tale of small town frustration featuring a verbose and intelligent yet clearly pained young man trapped by his overbearing yet well meaning parents as his modern thinking girlfriend looks set to move on thanks to a career opportunity in London. One can only imagine what the unexpecting viewers at the time thought with the sudden shift to a different timezone.

Directed beautifully by Long Good Friday director John Mackenzie and starring some truly excellent television actors including Lesley Dunlop, Bernard Gallagher, Ken Hutchison, James Hazeldine and Michael Elphick, BFI have restored the original print in crisp HD, present this beguiling headscratcher to a new generation.

The Kids Aren't Alright

I first watched this, or at least snippets of it, in my A Level Sociology class at college. Many moons ago that, and when I heard from a friend currently studying the same subject that the college still use it as a teaching tool, I decided it was in need of a revisit.

Juvenile Liaison is an early feature from acclaimed documentary film maker Nick Broomfield, alongside the American film maker Joan Churchill. Now, I'm someone who can take or leave Broomfield, I'm aware of his strengths as well as his (many) weaknesses. It's something of a relief therefore that this features nothing of him as an on screen presence. Indeed, we only occasionally hear him off camera asking questions or prompting those he is shadowing when the action dries up.

The film itself concerns the day to day duties of Blackburn's Juvenile Liaison department, essentially an official police interim role between schools, parents, Social Services and the further, more serious weight of the law; CID.  Their aim was to provide an ongoing observation for first offenders rather than taking them to court. The 'star' of the film is Sgt George Ray, the epitome of the old adage that if you think you're tough, someone tougher is around the corner. It's also an adage he takes a keen interest in teaching what the children and teenagers he comes across. Indeed, in some cases - as he kicks and drags one teenager out of bed, and grabs one child by the hair before noisily berating and threatening them - it's quite obvious he takes some delight in teaching them this lesson, despite what he says to the contrary.

Yes Sgt George Ray is the worst of things; a working class Tory who believes a short sharp shock and a smack round the ear is the only way to get people to toe the line. He also holds deep rooted suspicions and criticisms of students and demonstrators and is shown to exhibit bemused head shaking disbelief when one parent informs him a stranger told her it was incorrect of her to administer a beating to her child "None of their business" he snorts, before offering to beat the child himself for her.  In short, Sgt Ray is the very real figure we'd get if our 'Why can't there be real Gene Hunt's out there' moans ever dared come to fruition. Only worse, because he specialises in picking on children.

But perhaps that's an unfair criticism. After all Ray's duty is to the Juvenile Liaison team. Anything else, anything older is out of his remit. But it's considerably telling that on several occasions in this fascinating, bleak documentary evidence frequently comes to light of just  how many of these youth offenders are struggling at home in light of abusive or similarly deviant parents or older offspring. The Juvenile Liaison team seem to only mildly acknowledge this information before moving back to their familiar theme of browbeating, bullying, hectoring and employing mind games on their tearful dumb struck charges until a mumbled red faced apology is uttered as they run from the room, ashamed. Job done. I would have liked to see if any of this factored in their report to Social Services, but the film doesn't consider this salient. Or maybe the officers in question didn't. But you needn't watch the events from a 2013 viewpoint to see the root of some of these issues were clearly the homelife and how they were being brought up. One look at the disarrayed slum homes they come from, with at least half a dozen duffel coat clad children scurrying loudly  around rooms possessed of terrible decor and random junk tells us that these aren't fine examples of a stable upbringing. These families are poor, in need of attention and help, not clips round the ears.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing cases is that of young Asian schoolgirl Rashida, who is suspected of being a thief and a 'sly liar'. She has the (dubious?) honour of being the one child Ray could not gain a confession or an apology from and her thieving was only later discovered after a trap involving green dye in a fellow schoolgirl's bag was set. Again, what is more telling is how the police and Rashida's teachers view her; she's classed as an immigrant in all official on camera discussions, despite her family having lived in Blackburn for 40 or 14 years (the dialogue is a bit hard to decipher at this point), of having only average intelligence, when everything points to the contrary, and we discover was suspended from school the previous November for nits "It's to be expected with these immigrants" her headmistress observes, "They don't look after their hair like we do"

There's also WPC Lillian Brooks who strikes me as a sad forlorn figure away from her official duties, with a face like something the animator of Charley Says may have come up with. Brooks takes in two truanting children she finds in Woolworths asking them repeatedly 'what have you stolen?' When it becomes clear they're guilty only of being out of school, Brooks takes them home claiming the moral victory that if she hadn't intervened they would have been 'tempted into shoplifting', disregarding the fact that the money they did have, they had spent lawfully on food and drink already. When the older brother at home protests at her suspicious attitude, Brooks is visibly affronted. She genuinely feels she's done them a favour.

Juvenile Liaison is a harrowing, jaw dropping and frustrating look at how we used to live and just how far the Establishment, whilst thinking it is doing good, can get it wrong. It's of particular interest to watch now in the wake of Savile and just how we viewed children and how much child abuse occurred in Establishment circles in the 70s, and it can be found on Youtube, along with its sequel, discovering what became of the children involved some years later.

Speaking of which....

Wow, this was another fabulous documentary film from Nick Broomfield that attempts to catch up with the 'stars' of his very first feature, 15 years later in 1990.

Inevitably by this stage Broomfield himself has become a character in his own documentaries, and in some cases his hectoring one sided interviewing style is little different to the browbeating his interviewees faced as children at the hands of Sgt Ray in the first film. The tone of this piece is ultimately inferior to the original, but what this film discovers and reports makes it, in some ways, even more fascinating.

In this we learn that not only was Juvenile Liaison banned and refused a screening back in 1976 it was also the subject of an internal police enquiry which saw several liaison officers consult the families involved to get them to refuse their original waivers for the film's release (of the families, all but two consented to the police's wishes) and the early retirement of Sgt George Ray, allegedly disillusioned with the Force, though Blackburn Police claim over the phone to Broomfield that his retirement was due to age. 

It's extremely interesting to see how the children we met in the original turned out. George, the incessantly crying and downright petrified youngster that Sgt Ray kicked and dragged from his bed in the first film has had the most tragic life; learning disabled and hearing voices, George had suffered alcohol abuse and several investigations into rape before The Salvation Army intervened and saved him. When we meet him again he lives cleanly and comfortably in a family he touchingly wishes were his own. This more than any other case highlights the ignorance that a blunt instrument like Sgt Ray clearly had in what he was dealing with. No short sharp shock or clip round the ear treatment would save this boy, what was needed -  as has been proved - was a familial love and psychiatric help.

Likewise we meet again Bernard, now a cheery young man with an awful 90s wedge haircut and garish knitted jumper happily sitting back on the sofa with his parents sipping from a can of lager as he watches his younger self being accosted on the TV screen. They all laugh, but you can see something edgy around the eyes, especially his. When he later reveals that he spent from the age of 13 to 17 in care after he was found to have 32 separate bruises upon his body following a beating from his mother, the laughter becomes less genuine and the conversation is hurriedly drawn to a close. 

Sadly we didn't get to be reunited with Rashida, the young Asian schoolgirl forever dismissed as an immigrant by police and teachers alike, though Broomfield reveals an arranged marriage has finally placed her on the straight and narrow after a string of court appearances. Nor do we meet Sgt Ray or WPC Brooks, who were both unwilling to be interviewed or involved with the film. We see Joan Churchill on the phone to Brooks and we hear Broomfield, likewise, with Ray, the latter claiming the film was one sided and out to attack him and the good work of the unit. The film pushes the conspiracy angle and, going off the actions of the constabulary in the aftermath, there's clearly some merit to it. But in failing to actually get an official statement from the current unit or the PR arm of Blackburn Police the results are very one sided, which is a criticism one can often level at Broomfield's later work.

The real merit of the piece is in seeing what happened to the children. It's really rather fascinating and makes me wonder what happened to them now in the 23 years since this sequel was made.

The Black Panther (1977)

Coming to DVD from the BFI at the end of next month, the biopic of notorious 70s serial killer Donald Nielson (played by Donald Sumpter) which was effectively banned and banished after it's original cinema release. The following trailer is for an early 80s video release

Out On Blue Six : Public Service Broadcasting

This is a new find of mine, it's a music project called Public Service Broadcasting, and it's just brilliant. An EP, available via digital download and on vinyl, entitled The War Room, will be available from May 28th in collaboration with the BFI. Samples are from the excellent film The First Of The Few

I'd forgotten they could make music like that!

End Transmission.