| Duesseldorf to stage next year's Eurovision By 2010-10-12T15:42:38ZBERLIN (AP) -- Germany will stage next year's Eurovision Song Contest in the western city of Duesseldorf.... hosted.ap.org |
Casablanca: The story of a scene The film is headed for an airport that has sound-stage written all over it. When they get there, three people will work out the allotment of two letters of transit. They all wear hats, which cast stylish noir shadows of longing and regret on their starry faces. The story goes that the film-makers hardly knew what the final arrangement was going to be.The set-up reminds us that not too many Hollywood films of the golden era explored the deal romance might make with life. Most lovers are shrugged off at movie's end to live "happily ever after". But no love is stronger than the type that endures separation, frustration or problem. People looking at each other are more palpably in love than those in each other's arms. After all, the uncinematic thing about an embrace is that you can't see the faces. So the cross-cut close-ups of Bergman and Bogart at the end, in the fog, are among the most enduring images of Hollywood romance.At a more inward level, the cross-cut close-ups rhyme with another fond gaze – ours for the screen. If the movies are the dream of enhanced sight (looking past surfaces) then nothing is more brimming with love than faces looking at each other. It may follow from this that the real object of films like Casablanca was not just that we love Rick and Ilsa, or even that we fall for the issue of the war, but that we are in love with the movies, and their practice of desirous looking.Of course, the last scene is more than that: it's the opportunity to put a bullet in Major Strasser (that generous villain – because he always does the stupid thing, not always a Nazi trait). And the film then ordains the necessary marriage of two fatalists – Rick and Louis, Claude Rains' Vichy policeman. When Louis presides over Strasser's removal, he is signing his own letter of transit. Thus the film ends with another romantic promise – the start of a beautiful friendship, as the two men stroll off together. You're going to say that in 1943 no one in Hollywood would have dreamed of that implication. Maybe, but this is north Africa and many romantics ended up beneath its sheltering sky after the war.The wonder in Casablanca now is that you can see what a fabrication it is while realising that if nonsense is put together with love, care and aplomb the silliness hardly matters. Rick and Ilsa meet again over the piano like a broken marriage reunited in a heaven where there is no touching. Or is it hell? Watch it here: bit.ly/casablancaendingRomanceHumphrey BogartDavid Thomsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Tokyo Story: No 4 Yasujiro Ozu, 1953It's dangerous to start watching Japanese cinema, because the world is so extensive and dazzling you may quickly develop a taste for nothing but Japanese films. Is there a romance more mysterious than Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari? Is there action to surpass Kurosawa's Seven Samurai? And, in terms of family drama, has any film been more moving than Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story? Time and again, Ozu has made films about family, and the shifting structure we refer to as "time and again". Family is less a fixed entity than a kind of weather system that keeps coming back. So children need parents, and need to outlive them. But while the weather will go on, and your children will become parents, so your life will close, and you will not be there to see the way your own children look back as if to say they understand you, too late. Is this tragedy or comedy? Ozu is never quite sure. He seems to wonder whether any progression can amount to tragedy, or whether it is not simply as inevitable as passing time and changing light.This may not sound "entertaining" or active or even interesting, which only means the viewer needs to undergo the gentle process of being helped to see through Ozu's withdrawn but compassionate style. So he watches from the corner of a room at a low level (for Japanese domestic life is often conducted from a sitting position) and he declines to rush in with forgiving, approving, loving close-ups – because he believes people are beyond forgiveness or individual glamour. Family is a group in which everyone has his or her reason. In Tokyo Story, Shukishi and Tomi Hirayama (Chishu Ryu and Chieko Higashiyama) visit their grown children, full of hope and the wish to be recognised, but they find the children too busy, too preoccupied. This is not depicted as bad behaviour, or a sign of cultural breakdown; it is the way of the world. The acting is intimate, humane and reserved yet there are no stars, let alone heroes or heroines. There are no "happy endings" in the terms western culture requires. Instead, the riddle of happiness or its opposite runs through "time and again" like light on moving water. Does it sound dull, or too simple? Be warned – it can make other films seem unbearably crass. DramaWorld cinemaYasujiro OzuDavid Thomsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Levi Johnston unsure if he's with Democrats or GOP By 2010-10-23T05:01:43ZLOS ANGELES (AP) -- Levi Johnston says he hasn't decided whether he'll run for mayor of his Alaska hometown as a Democrat or a Republican.... hosted.ap.org |
Ed Vaizey: 'It's a very exciting development' Culture minister Ed Vaizey outlines the changes to the UK film industry, including a 60% increase in lottery fundingJohn Plunkett guardian.co.uk |