Aug 21st
Vertigo**
US 1958. Paramount. 128m. Vistavision

An agoraphobic detective is hired to pursue a necrophiliac with whom he falls in love, but cannot prevent her death because of his condition. Traumatised, he then meets a woman who resembles her and decides to mould her into his lost love.
Overrated and rather infuriating Hitchcock mystery with some splendid set pieces, but they come in between ages of tedious prowling after the enigmatic heroine. Hitch annoyingly ditches any supernatural element half-way through for the usual murder plot, which by his standards is a very minor one. Despite the labour of love, audiences were not ready for James Stewart as a romantic obsessive.

Written by: Alec Coppel, Samuel Taylor, based on the novel "D'Entre les Morts" by Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narjerac.
Producer/Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Starring: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore, Henry Jones, Raymond Bailey, Lee Patrick.
Photography: Robert Burks.
Music: Bernard Herrmann.
Titles: Saul Bass.

Restoration: Robert A. Harris, James C. Katz.

+ Grace Kelly (to become Princess Grace of Monaco) and Vera Miles (who became pregnant) were both sought before Kim Novak was hired.

Aug 16th
Nim's Island** (U)
South Hill Park Arts Centre, Bracknell

An agoraphobic adventure novelist decides to help a 12-year old find her father on their own private island.
There's a lot of the old Disney style (complete with Jodie Foster and cute animal sidekicks) in this rather sentimental but enjoyable Swiss Family Robinson cum Romancing the Stone adventure - shot not on a remote island but in Queensland, Australia. Funny if slightly overplayed with its "fish out of water" scenario, although these scenes (especially the fantasy depiction of "Alex Rover") are more enjoyable than the schmaltzy central plot with the girl and her father.

d: Mark Levin, Jennifer Flackett
s: Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster, Gerard Butler, Maddison Joyce

Aug 15th
Donnie Darko*
US 2001. Metrodome/Pandora/Flower Films. 128m(Director's Cut). Panavision

A psychologically dysfunctional California teenager has visions of a 6-foot rabbit at a porthole to the end of the world.
Paranoid and self-regarding but undeniably watchable dark fantasy, set for whatever reason (nostalgia presumably) in 1988 before the election of President George Bush (Snr), with a welter of references and famous actors from that era, with some good performances among them.

Written and Directed by: Richard Kelly.
Producers: Sean McKittrick, Nancy Juvonen, Adam Fields.
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Jena Malone, Mary McDonnell, Katharine Ross, Patrick Swayze, Drew Barrymore, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Holmes Osborne, Noah Wyle, Beth Grant, James Duval.
Photography: Steven Poster.
Music: Michael Andrews.
Editing: Sam Bauer, Eric Strand.

Aug 9th
Sherlock Junior** (U)
Electric Palace, Harwich

US 1924. Metro. 46m. bw. silent

A cinema projectionist and amateur sleuth falls asleep and dreams himself into the film he is showing.
Part two of the CTA/Electric Palace double bill is headed by this excellent surreal Keaton comedy, playing around with lots of amusing ideas and typically fast-paced gags.

Written by: Clyde Bruckman, Jean Haver, Joseph Mitchell.
Producer: Joseph M. Schenck.
Director: Buster Keaton.
Starring: Buster Keaton, Kathryn McGuire, Ward Crane, Joe Keaton, Erwin Connelly.
Photography: Elgin Lessley, Bryon Houck.

Preceded by:
Men of the Lightship**
(GB 1940. Crown Film Unit. 25m. bw; The crew of a lightship on the East coast of England is attacked by German bombers. Next to incomprehensible in terms of the crew's dialect, but the material is well put together within sparing wartime circumstances, and with a dramatic final reel.; p: Alberto Cavalcanti; d: David McDonald; m: Richard Addinsell.)

At the Cinema in 1912

Aug 9th Electric Palace, Harwich

The Electric Palace (a restored cinema since 1911, as a promo DVD - eventually - demonstrated), in conjunction with the East Anglian Film Archive and the Cinema Theatre Association, staged this nostalgic and evocative hark back to the days of early silent cinema (following on from a previously successful show last year), complete with mock-up old cinema square screen, and an authentic hand-cranked projector (with arc light used for the last film only), as operated in turn by David Cleveland and Nigel Lister, who also played some pleasant melodies on his piano to accompany some of the films.

Starting off with A Race for a Bride (GB 1908. An incompetent runner cheats at cross country in order to marry the girl who loves him), which I think had some sort of local connection as some of the locations looked very familiar to the Harwich and Dovercourt area, then followed by A Dream of Toyland (GB 1899. d: Arthur Melbourne Cooper), an early example of British animation, long before the days of Nick Park and Wallace & Gromit.

Next came an early example of what became a staple diet in the cinema right up until the 1980s, the Pathe Animated Gazette (Fra/GB 1912):

(Douai: French Military Aviation Disaster -- London [Botanical Gardens]: Students' Revels -- Paris: The Battle of Flowers [Car Show with vehicles covered in floral displays] -- Chelmsford: Famous Aviator Married - Graham White & Dorothy Chadwell Taylor -- London: The [Horse drawn] Coaching Marathon -- Windsor: Prince of Wales rows.)

Later on in the afternoon came another, more poignant piece of newsreel from 1912, courtesy of Gaumont News: The Titanic Leaving Belfast Lough for Southampton. According to the projectionist, this is the only authentic piece of film of the actual ship ever recorded from the time (all others apparently, are of its sister ship Olympic.)

That Fatal Sneeze (GB 1907. d: Cecil Hepworth) is an amusing example of how early filmmaker's used to enjoy using the new medium for all sorts of playful tricks, such as making the camera shake to give the appearance that a man's sneeze is shaking the whole world! Other examples followed, such as Magnetic Fluid (French comedy where a mischievous tramp stumbles upon a scientist's manual on how to control people using magnetism), and also Her First Pancake (GB 1907. d: Arthur Melbourne Cooper), a recently discovered item from the archives, where a cook's badly prepared pancake gives her master hallucinations of being in the frying pan with the pancake!

Finishing off with The Aerial Torpedo (GB 1909. p: Charles Urban; d: Walter Booth. 9m.) which was re-released in 1915 after the real life air raids by Zeppelins over Britain, making this slightly dark sub-science fiction (about innocent civilians being bombed by airships), seem slightly topical for the time - perhaps even with echoes of September 11th about it, 92 years later.

All the films were short one-reelers (5 minutes or more), and quite quaintly done to entertain audiences of the time who were thrilled by the novelty, without any of the later sophistication that cinema later developed, but they are a fascinating and priceless example of how people behaved and how the world was all those years ago, and how certain themes are timeless through the ages.

Aug 8th
The Sin Eater
aka: The Order
US/Ger 2003. Twentieth Century Fox/Baumgarten Merims. 103m.

A young Catholic member of the obscure "Carolingian" order of priests (devoted to combatting ghosts and demonic spirits) searches for a legendary "sin eater" who has taken his mentor.
Portentous religious thriller which might be better suited to an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, trying to sex-up its subject but also taking itself far too seriously (only the title has any basis in fact), and therefore just ends up being ridiculous.

Written and Directed by: Brian Helgeland.
Producers: Craig Baumgarten, Brian Helgeland.
Starring: Heath Ledger, Benno Furmann, Shannyn Sossamon, Mark Addy, Peter Weller, Richard Bremmer, Jon Laurimore.
Photography: Nicole Pecorini.
Music: David Torn.