I've been huffing Joseph Losey films recently. S&D.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dHje8zJMc3Y/TPeEQqW4g2I/AAAAAAAADg8/8_Vl5mtndxU/s400/the-servant2.jpg

Not really huffing but I have watched all three Pinter collaborations this week. It's amazing how British they seem although heavily influenced by the European (specifically Italian?) avant garde of the time and not really American-seeming at all. oh and Last year at Marienbad too i suppose is a huge influence.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/3592/5035141020a.jpg

Of the three Accident is the most "avant" and the best, imo, thanks largely to Gerry Fisher's amazing photography and lighting. The Servant is pretty shocking stylistically and ideologically although I can't really get with the final 20 minutes or so, specifically the party/orgy scene which seems too disconnected to what has gone before and seems, to me, to forgo believability a little in making its psychological point.

The Go-Between is great and Alan Bates makes me weak at the knees. i like the savage gentility of it.

I have Boom! here to watch although I'm a bit sceptical of it. I've never really got with Badfilm or found many Badfilms anything other than simply bad or boring or annoying. but:

http://cdn1.iofferphoto.com/img/item/143/220/807/boom-1968-elizabeth-taylor-16x9-widescreen-0dd7c.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dHje8zJMc3Y/TPeNxUGhAvI/AAAAAAAADiM/RX685fMmwY4/s1600/boom%2B1.jpg

and here's John Waters on why Boom! is the best failed art film ever:

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/john-waters/articles/filth-101/

hi jed, of his american films, i really like The Prowler, an early fifties noirish thriller, quite taut and tragic. wld like to see the remake of 'm' that losey made round abt the same sort've time.

LOVE the servant - davy graham! - and there's a new BFI book abt it:
http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_19587.html

The Prowler is a classic. Modesty Blaise is an interesting failure.

great link, jed_!

This graf of Waters' describes perfectly why most comedies these days leave me cold:

I make fun of things I really like, I think that's very important in comedy. Nothing's funny if you make comedy about something you hate. It can be funny for about ten minutes but it doesn't really work unless you love what you're making fun of. I look up to bad taste because it's a freedom I don't have, I do care what people think. I don't sit on my front steps in my underpants and give people the finger when they go by. I'm jealous of people that do that, because they don't care. Bad taste is a great freedom if you have it, and the people who have it I respect as long as they aren't doing it to make fun of people.

Losey's films are broken, indigestible things. You just don't know where to put them. I suppose they're flat-out art films. But he plays around so much with conventional narrative(s) and commercial genres that he challenges easy categories. His films often fail at storytelling or parody or art or whatever but they succeed at some sort of inorganic in-betweenness. Boom! is his masterpiece. Few English-speaking are better deserving of the "fever dream" tag and it put the wacky Lizploitation era into overdrive. For newbies, I'd strongly suggest These Are The Damned which starts here and ends up waaaaay the fuck over there.

Boom! is not the best of anything I'd care to rank. Like some of his other films though.

of his american films, i really like The Prowler, an early fifties noirish thriller, quite taut and tragic. wld like to see the remake of 'm' that losey made round abt the same sort've time.

I saw M a couple years ago as part of a retrospective for Losey's centennial. I can't describe it more enthusiastically than "competent," although it does make some excellent use of LA locations.

The Criminal ranks with The Prowler as a solid, well-made crime thriller.

The Boy With Green Hair's themes of pacifism and noncomformity were daring for its time and place, but today, to me at least, it tastes like diabetes.

Not really huffing but I have watched all three Pinter collaborations this week. It's amazing how British they seem although heavily influenced by the European (specifically Italian?) avant garde of the time and not really American-seeming at all. oh and Last year at Marienbad too i suppose is a huge influence.

Only seen Accident and probably had a thought after watching it along the lines that those Losey-Pinter colabs were the only films at the time 'rival' what Resnais was doing with figures from the 'literary' world.

Shame this stuff is probably downplayed by Pinter fans in favour of the plays - not surprising but still...

like both 'the servant' and 'accident,' espec the former. 'marienbad' seems like a good reference point.

I'll be introducing "The Servant" on Dec. 19th as part of the Queer/Art/Film series in nYc some come out and see it in a movie theatre in Manhattan y'all

saw that in IFC calendar!

Could anyone upload an mp3 of Cleo Laine's All gone from The Servant...surely its out there..

http://www.zshare.net/download/99359849c6cd9c0e/

I love his remake of "M". "The Damned" is also very good as well as truly strange.

Thanks jed - I am making a jazz vocal compilation and it will fit perfectly I think.

There was a dbl bill at the Roxy last year - Losey's The Damned and Figures in a Landscape. Not going was a bad decision.

You're welcome. Definitely a great track.

The Boy With Green Hair's themes of pacifism and noncomformity were daring for its time and place, but today, to me at least, it tastes like diabetes.

Playing tnite in NYC... there's a Warner Archive disc, but I can't get my hands on that. Anyone feel good about this one?

King and Country also recently DVD'd, libray has that.

Best thing about it is theme song.

just watched "The Go-Between" the other night and really enjoyed it.

there's a clunkyness to the frame story bits but the core of the film is terrific, moody posh stuff that also captures the frustration of being a 12 year old awkwardly on the outside of sexual knowledge and trying to understand what the adults are doing with each other. Also the "marienbad" refs kinda return there because it's all set in a country house w extensive gardens / lawns, so there is a weird Resnais effect that carries over.

RIP Gerry Fisher, cinematographer on eight Joseph Losey films beginning with Accident, also Huston's Wise Blood and Billy Wilder's Fedora.

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-gerry-fisher-1926-2014

rewatched his M at the Film Forum today. The ultimate Bradbury Building movie, and once he gets past copying Lang in the first 10 minutes, pretty terrific. I think David Wayne's final one-take monologue is electric.

What else did you think of M? I just watched Time Without Pity, and all I can think right now is that it has the most CLUTTERED soundtrack I've ever heard.

nice deep focus shots... also Jim Backus has one scene as the mayor of LA, in full buffoon mode even before Mr Magoo.

Under the opening credits they show Wayne approaching little girls of different races, which is very unusual even for that Hollywood "Red period" in 1945-51. (besides Losey, three of the principal actors were blacklisted shortly after M)

well?

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/alex-ross-perry-presents-secret-ceremony/

Looks interesting.

"if I had to get a tattoo, it would say 'Joseph Losey'" - John Waters in the latest issue of Sight and Sound

Ha! That's fantastic.

Secret Ceremony is pretty great overall, a few moments of 'hmmm' and over-the-top giallo influence (speaking as someone who loves a giallo) but iirc the two women are really good and the set is excellent.

#mustGo

I just watched "King and Country". It's the first Losey film I've seen. A bit stagey but grimly affecting nevertheless. Courtney and Bogarde are both incredible in it.

I just watched Time Without Pity, and all I can think right now is that it has the most CLUTTERED soundtrack I've ever heard.

― Charlie Chaplin Challenge (j.lu), Sunday, July 12, 2015 9:50 PM (2 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea wow esp the very end

my fav losey ive seen is Accident

TCM alert: The Joseph Losey version of M (1951) on January 1 at 10:15pm EST.

Thanks!

Blu of Figures in a Landscape now out

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/review/figures-in-a-landscape

King and Country gets compared to other military (in)justice films all the time, esp Paths of Glory, but it's much more focused than that -- no battle scenes, just the foregone dispatch of deserter Tom Courtenay, with the contrapuntal camaraderie and gloom of the grunts about to be sent on an offensive in 2 days. Lots of b&w excremental images in the mud, rats being mock-executed after nibbling on ears, etc. Dirk Bogarde at his most no-nonsense as TC's initially autopilot lawyer.

I like The Boy With Green Hair -- saved by its weirdness, even if people now wish it was weirder. Howard Hughes allegedly attempted to temper the pacifism, and was resisted by everyone including Dean Stockwell.

"Modesty Blaise" was on every Grandad's favourite channel, Talking Pictures, at the weekend ("Bedazzled" was on the night before). It looks great, of course, but it's pretty terrible tbh - the bits where Monica Vitti and Terence Stamp start singing, surely a blatant rip off of "Pierrot le Fou", almost had me hiding behind the couch. There is one funny line in the entire film, and it's almost the last line!

... just starting on Talking Pictures!

... good theme tune.

Wanna watch this but about to hit the bed.

MUBI are running a Losey season.

No, I'm not watching it either, Clive Revill has just shown up and his performance is unbearable.

god losey is really hit and miss. i watched Eve last night and it was the most repulsive nonsense i've ever half-slept through

MUBI are running a Losey season
This must be UK only.

I think so.

My impression is that MUBI seasons go around different countries at different times.

it's mostly to do with licensing differences in Europe or North America, I think, rather than them just moving around.

Hope you are well, xyzzz.

The narrative in Eve felt like a bit of a mess at times but fuck me Moreau was so good in this. That silent scene of her putting a record on...listening to the men talk and not caring for it.* There was a lot in just that scene but I gave it an inattentive watch. It feels like he really develops his take on relationships (the way power shifts so destructively in the cocoon..the senses are blunted and then judgement, finally dignity) in The Servant but begins it here.

* First time I think I really 'got' Moreau tbh.

XP - thanks Jed, I am ok. Hope you are good too.

the servant is incredible. one of my favourite films. in part bc of how good dirk bogarde is in it, his signature role for me. the crazy bill brandt perspectives, but yes definitely the sense of how power shifts in a relationship. the most pinteresque of his pinter collaborations (the seesawing sense of menace that underlies it). a huge distinction between these two films was the difference between the servant's interest in class, colonialism, englishness and the rather glib exoticism of Eve: venice, paris, man/woman (who can tame her!). i think i'm hypersensitive to this at the moment bc i've been watching more european 'art cinema' from the 50s/60s than i usually do and jesus how boring it must have been to have been a woman in movies or interested in them during this time. moreau is 'good' in lots of ways, and sortof 'makes' the film a lot of the time carrying it with charisma, timing. but her complexity and depth are shallowed out by the film and its "god made eve from man's rib" bollocks" you keep expecting a 'professor' character to say: "a woman is like a typewriter, beatifully engineered to materialise man's genius" or some other misogynistic nonsense. (from a sense of cinema article: Losey must have thought that with Moreau in the lead he would be taken very seriously as a commentator on the male’s endless desire. Moreau was at that time the supreme European actress. (4) Stepping up to the league of European directors who got to make a movie with Jeanne Moreau must have seemed a vindication of his long struggle for recognition. (5)) You can see exactly why people like delphine seyrig got so radicalised.

it would be unfair to say that this is all i hated about the film, i also hated its arch, mannered style. its embarrassing cops at antonioni and 'the '60s.'

anyway i feel much better now

Literally just read this great quote from Jeanne Moreau about Eve and Losey:

"In Eva, some people could not stand the director. Heaven knows why. These people indulged in a systematic destructive action which involved the producer, the stage director, and the manager. Furthermore, the director was an American working with an Italian crew, which meant that it was difficult to communicate. At times I served as interpreter and I realised perfectly that the team had no consideration for the boss who directed them, which creates inevitably a horrible atmosphere. To make things even worse there was antagonism between the director and the first cameraman, although he happened to be an excellent cameraman. This factor, added to the others, made the atmosphere worse and worse.

... When the film was stopped, many things had not been shot, but the systematic destructive action did not stop at that point. Then came the editing ..."

in the same interview (with Cahiers Du Cinema, Jan 1965) she also says about Antonioni, "He is not a director who gives the impression that you can touch him", which I love!

plax - definitely agree and there is a erm misogynist chic to the way the likes of Vitti, Karina, Moreau are used in the early 60s films (countered by left bank efforts like Hiroshima Mon Amour) - and especially the case in a film that is just not as good as L'Eclisse or what have you. Still, I was struck by Moreau and the way she almost broke through the problems with the film in the odd scene, and as a way to map what Losey achieved in The Servant it's still of note.

i guess part of my problem is that i saw the servant years before i saw any other losey films and they have all been incredibly disappointing in comparison

Think I saw Accident first, reckon this is almost on the same level, for me, as The Servant.

Mubi will be showing Go-between so will have a proper look at that.

I can't get Mubi to work properly, so my attempt to watch the last Godard movie last night was abandoned.

Have you used it before?

No, I got sent a link by a friend, which was a nice thought but it's unusable.

Ok. It's just a login and a password (and then obv you pay a subs unless you press the free for 7 days option)

No, I mean the films are unwatchable, streaming-wise, it took 15 minutes to watch the first 2 minutes of the Godard movie.

Apparently not an uncommon experience with Mubi.

In my two years with it that only happens now and then...it's definitely usable but it could be your internet provider too.

It almost certainly is my internet provider but who can be arsed with the hassle of changing internet providers at the moment?

Eva is worth it if only for Moreau's delivery of the payoff "bloody welshman"

Secret Ceremony... there should be a warning label for clueless and bizarre Persona riffs

People love this, I have it in my 'to watch' pile.

it's very much in line with Images, Possession, Reflections in a Golden Eye, Point Blank

I'm trying to think of why it reminds me of Performance, other than "an outsider is taken into a fancy London flat"

..where people takes baths together

Yes! Psychodrama of evacuated identities. Fassbinder's Despair is similarly boring

Tho I need to revisit

Nabokov novella left me cold

As well as Images, Secret Ceremony has some similarities to Altman's That Cold Day in the Park - wrt identity psychodrama & plot details

Lol, I love despair. Dirk Bogarde is so funny!

Wonder if I should watch one today?

Wonder if I should watch huff one today?

Fixed

EVE maybe?

Watched The Servant last night and am plagued by certain images from it today: the really weird scenes at Lord and Lady Mounset's, which were like a sinister Marienbad pastiche; Sarah Miles in front of the fire, prostrate across a chair, which seems transgressive but I can't quite figure why (also: hot); the shadows as they played 'tennis' on the stairs, which seemed like a Nosferatu homage in places (Bogarde made me think of Dracula a few times, actually); the stilted ensemble conversations in the pub - proto-Altman, with everyone taking their turn instead of talking over one another?

I loved what it had to say about exhausted, post-Empire Britain and how the interior of Fox's house, no matter how long you spent there, never seemed to become familiar, the dimensions never quite clear. Also made me want to go and rewatch Performance.

Nice capsule interviews with Sarah Miles & Wendy Craig: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/mar/25/how-we-made-the-servant

Cool, thanks!

Thank you for bumping this thread--I've been meaning to watch Mr. Klein.

No-one has mentioned The Romantic Englishwoman yet. Don't bother, it's completely desultory. They didn't even bother to make it confusing.

I recently watched a couple of movies from his post-Hollywood, pre-Servant phase - The Intimate Stranger (noir) and The Damned (wacky sci-fi set in Weymouth, of all places). Both on youtube and both pretty watchable, if you're into the late 50s/early 60s British B movie aesthetic...

Time Without Pity's on Criterion this month. Started watching.

It was on TV here yesterday ... but during the tennis.

An unexpected delight -- one off screening of The Servant at my local Alamo in a couple of weeks.

Good night on Talking Pictures, "The Criminal" has just finished. Excellent film, surprisingly tough and violent and that ending is something else! Great cast and Stanley Baker can do no wrong in my book.

Just watched a 90s doco on Losey ("The Man with Four Names") which is on YouTube. A bit rambling, and doesn't cover all the films, but has some great interviews.

The Go-Between is free on Prime.

This thread is a foreign country.

A few of his Hollywood films made it to Criterion Channel this month. I'm watching Odds Against Tomorrow soon.

Time Without Pity, I meant.