{film} – Page 58 – { feuilleton }

Leslie Megahey, 1944–2022

TV producer & film director Leslie Megahey died at the end of August but the news has taken a while to filter through to these pages where his BBC TV productions have been the subject of several posts. My recurrent comments about his work were effusive enough for him to send me a handwritten note of thanks a few years ago, plus a promotional card for one of the films in the Artists and Models series. If more of his productions had been available online or on disc I would have written something about them as well, but old television, especially the documentary variety, remains persistently inaccessible to future audiences.

There are biographical details in the link above so what follows is a list of the Megahey productions that, for this viewer at least, made his name one to look out for in the TV listings. Some of these are on YouTube, a couple are available on disc, while the rest have yet to resurface anywhere. Everything here is highly recommended…if you can find it.

• Omnibus: All Clouds are Clocks (1976/1991): An hour-long interview with composer György Ligeti. I caught this one on its updated rebroadcast in 1991 when Megahey revisited Ligeti to see what directions his career had taken over the past 15 years. Currently unavailable.

• Schalcken the Painter (1979): Another Omnibus film, and a ghost story (after Sheridan Le Fanu) that’s as good as any of the BBC’s MR James adaptations. Released on (Region B) blu-ray & (Region 2) DVD by the BFI.

• Arena: The Orson Welles Story (1982): A two-part interview (165 minutes in total) which caught Welles in a rare mood when he was happy to talk at length about his career. The TV equivalent of the huge book of Peter Bogdanovich conversations. Part One | Part Two

• Artists and Models (1986): Three drama/documentaries about French painters: David, Ingres and Géricault.

• Cariani and the Courtesans (1987): Another historical drama about an artist, Giovanni Cariani (c. 1490–1547). Very much in the mould of Schalcken the Painter but without the supernatural element. Currently unavailable.

• Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (1988): The best film version of Bartók’s opera. The Region 1 DVD by Kultur seems to be deleted but is worth seeking out for having removable subtitles. There’s a copy at YouTube.

• The Complete Citizen Kane (1991): A 90-minute documentary about Welles’ film using extracts from the Arena interviews and the Megahey produced TV series The RKO Story, plus new material. No longer on YouTube (or anywhere else) due to a copyright complaint. This is why I’m always saying you should download these things as soon as you find them.

• The Hour of the Pig (1993): A feature film about a medieval animal trial, this one was hacked around by Miramax then released in the US as The Advocate where it flopped. The hard-to-find UK version turned up on YouTube a few days ago.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Men and Wild Horses: Théodore Géricault
• The Complete Citizen Kane
• Schalcken the Painter revisited
• Le Grande Macabre
• Leslie Megahey’s Bluebeard

Weekend links 638

• After writing about Hungarian animator Marcell Jankovics back in January, I left a comment expressing the hope that Arrow or Eureka might give us a Region B blu-ray of Son of the White Mare (aka Fehérlófia), Jankovics’s “psychedelic” animated feature from 1982. Fast-forward nine months to Eureka’s announcement that they’ll be doing exactly this in November. Watch the trailer. The release will include some of the director’s short films plus his first feature, Johnny Corncob (1973), a historical tale presented in the “groovy” style (previously) popularised by Yellow Submarine. If idle wishes can be granted so easily then I’ll hope again that Eureka might do the same for René Laloux’s second and third animated features, the Moebius-designed Time Masters (1982) (made in the same studio as Son of the White Mare) and the Caza-designed Gandahar (1987). Fingers crossed.

• “I don’t think anybody copies me, but Harmony Korine, Todd Solondz, Bruno Dumont, Gaspar Noé, I like those kinds of directors. They’re sometimes not funny at all. They’re very serious and eerily melodramatic. I just like movies that surprise me.” John Waters (yet again) talking to Conor Williams about films, writing and a prayer for Pasolini.

• “There is something profoundly haunting about a master artist’s last painting left unfinished upon its easel…” Kevin Dann on The Mermaid (1910) by Howard Pyle.

• At Bandcamp: Navigating the Nurse With Wound List: A Gateway to Far-Flung Sounds.

• “Juicy With Meaning”: Alex Denney chooses five essential films by David Cronenberg.

• Mix of the week: Discovering 1970s jazz fusion with Kerri Chandler.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: Purgatory by Ken Hollings.

• Steven Heller’s font(s) of the month: Farandole & Lustik.

• Dennis Cooper’s favourite albums.

• RIP Peter Straub.

• White Horses (1968) by Jacky | Five White Horses (1968) by Sun Dragon | Ride A White Horse (2006) by Goldfrapp

The Secret World of Odilon Redon

Documentaries about French artist Odilon Redon aren’t very common at all so it’s a shame this one isn’t better quality. The Secret World of Odilon Redon is another introductory film from the Arts Council of Great Britain, made in 1973, the same year as Magritte: The False Mirror. The print is in even worse condition than the Magritte, with washed-out colour and a quavering score that sounds like it was taken from a mispressed record; but the voiceover by Richard Hurndall makes it worthwhile, a series of quotes from Redon’s memoirs, in which the artist discusses his work and his philosophy. The accompanying visuals, which include views of places where he lived and worked, do nothing for the vivid colours of his pastel drawings but if you want those there are plenty of other resources elsewhere.

For a more Surrealist approach there’s Guy Maddin’s Odilon Redon, or The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity, a dreamlike excursion into the strange world of the artist’s etchings.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Odilon Redon’s Temptations
• More chimeras
• Odilon Redon’s musical afterlife
• Odilon Redon and Magazine
• Odilon Redon lithographs
• The eyes of Odilon Redon

Weekend links 637

A Risograph print by Raimund Wong for a forthcoming London concert by Suzanne Ciani. Via.

• “What makes him such an exemplary film composer is the adroitness with which he used style as a catalyst, conspiring with directors to illuminate crucial elements of character, tone, and plot through the expressive resources at his disposal.” Nate Chinen on Henry Mancini, a timely piece since I’ve been watching a lot of film noir recently, including two of the features mentioned there, Touch of Evil and Experiment in Terror. The latter is an uncharacteristic thriller from Blake Edwards with a marvellous, brooding score by Mancini. Here’s the main theme.

• “Infinitesimal as they are, phytoplankton produce more oxygen than all the world’s rainforests combined and roughly half of the oxygen on the planet—in other words, roughly half of the air we humans breathe.” David Greer on the importance of plankton.

• “Someday I’ll come into a place and someone’s playing my music and I’ll leave immediately because I don’t want to go through the editorial process again!” Diamanda Galás talking to Kevin Mccaighy about her new album, Broken Gargoyles.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: 25 experimental horror films. Not sure I’d class Night of the Lepus as “experimental”—”rubbish” would be more accurate—but you may disagree.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: 69 Exhibition Road: Twelve True-Life Tales from the Fag End of Punk, Porn & Performance by Dorothy Max Prior.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Gunkanjima (aka Battleship Island) from above: exploring what was once the world’s most-densely populated city.

• Previews of pages from A Tiger in the Land of Dreams by Tiger Tateishi, newly reprinted by 50 Watts Books.

• Mix of the week: A mix for The Wire by Ali Safi of the Marionette label.

• New music: Verde Pino by Beautify Junkyards.

• Mark Pawson & Disinfotainment

• Tiger Rag (1929) by Duke Ellington And His Orchestra | Night Of The Tiger (1959) by The Markko Polo Adventurers | Tiger (1967) by Brian Auger & The Trinity

Broken Down Film by Osamu Tezuka

Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka directed a handful of short films throughout his career in which he used a reduced running time to try things that might not work so well at feature length. The shorts are often labelled “experimental”, which some of them are, although the term “playful” would be a better description for others. Broken Down Film (1985) is one of the latter, a Fleisher-like silent Western with a trio of stock characters and a stereotyped narrative that includes a gunfight (almost), and a heroine tied to a rail track. The playfulness is in the presentation which imitates all the material problems that can afflict a reel of film, from projection mishaps to various forms of damage, some of which impinge themselves on the characters. Tex Avery occasionally played with the medium in this way (I think it’s one of the Droopy cartoons where a character runs off the edge of the film) but even Avery never took things this far. The uncredited music, by the way, is Snake Rag by King Oliver’s Jazz Band.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jumping, a film by Osamu Tezuka