Return to Form

In this episode, Ralph and Owen journey into the spectral wastes of British film, asking: what went wrong, and what is to be done? Through kitchen sink realism, folk-horror spooks, socially-engaged documentarians, materially-inclined avant-gardism, and more than a handful of oddballs, the situation seems as underwhelming as it was in 1927, when Kenneth Macpherson opined that “it is no good pretending one has any feeling of hope about it”. Ninety-seven years later, is the landscape still as dispiriting – and why did ‘we’ never get our own New Wave – and why are we still stuck in the kitchen sink? Through cash, ‘character’, class, and capital, there’s a lot to unpick. Regardless, the boys do their best to keep the aspidistra flying. Who do they discuss? Who don’t they! Anderson, Macpherson, Grierson, Hogg, Keillor, Reisz, Clark, Watkins, Jarman, Brook, Greenaway, Powell & Pressburger, Reed, Lean, Hitchcock, Loach, Leigh. The lot. 00:00:00:00 Intro 00:04:20:04 Early Silent British film 00:05:27:03 Talent leaving Britain for America 00:06:52:14 British documentaries and municipal filmmaking 00:09:09:17 The Studios of the interwar years 00:12:01:16 Powell and Pressburger 00:15:22:14 Class and politics in film 00:17:56:16 Free Cinema movement 00:24:30:13 Woodfall 00:28:15:05 The Third Man 00:30:37:10 60s-70s studio films/Merchant Ivory 00:31:54:13 60s counterculture 00:35:12:00 Folk horror 00:37:04:09 London Filmmakers Coop 00:48:04:15 Playwrights 00:55:27:00 The Paternalism of Social Realism 01:00:11:03 Pedro Costa as a counterpoint to social realism 01:04:16:13 Peter Watkins 01:09:47:05 Lindsay Anderson making an arse of himself 01:10:55:10 Peter Wollen's 1963 essay on the British New Wave 01:13:10:09 Kenneth MacPherson's 1927 article about British film 01:19:02:16 TV's influence in the 70s-80s 01:19:16:09 Alan Clarke 01:23:05:18 Sally Potter 01:30:10:24 Peter Brook 01:31:47:19 90s 01:32:34:21 British art film/essay films 01:37:09:20 00s and 10s 01:40:06:10 Joanna Hogg 01:43:08:18 Borderline (Kenneth Macpherson) 01:48:13:19 Peter Greenaway 01:55:09:09 Top 5 worst tendencies 01:57:31:14 Alternative Top 5 British films 01:59:59:23 Conclusion Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6hdAjXtGPpeQTCcuJ3KNmH?si=Ud_f__90TOSa28tzYPA5GQ Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/muub-tube/id1515030490 Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@returntoformpod

In a year when so much felt so over, film seems so beautifully back. Casting their eyes over twelve months, four festivals, and countless hours of chthonic kino encounters, the boys sat down to boil the broth of 2023; setting out to identify their top 10 films of the year. Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6hdAjXtGPpeQTCcuJ3KNmH?si=Ud_f__90TOSa28tzYPA5GQ Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/muub-tube/id1515030490 Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@returntoformpod 00:00:00 Intro 00:05:18 Honourable mention: Trenque Lauquen (Laura Citarella) 00:11:11 Honourable mention: Reality (Tina Satter) 00:11:58 Honorable mention: How To Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker) 00:15:17 Totem (Laura Aviles) 00:17:47 Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt) 00:21:59 Allensworth (James Benning) 00:23:46 The Sweet East (Sean Price Williams) 00:25:50 In Water / mul-an-e-seo (Hong Sang-soo) 00:28:10 May December (Todd Haynes) 00:29:48 Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell (Phạm Thiên Ân) 00:32:43 One Fine Morning (Mia Hansen Love) 00:35:28 Afire (Christian Petzold) 00:41:49 Samsara (Lois Patiño) 00:43:42 Passages (Ira Sachs) 00:48:09 The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer) 00:50:23 The Daughters of Fire (Pedro Costa) 00:51:53 Close Your Eyes (Victor Erice) 00:55:45 Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World (Radu Jude) 00:59:48 Honourable mention: Rotting in the Sun (Sebastian Silva) 01:00:45 The official RTF Top 5

LFF may be over, but the takes are not. For their final derive through the halls of contemporary arthouse film, Ralph, Owen, and George take stock of flicks both fair and foul: Jonathan Glazer’s tautly rigorous Zone of Interest, Molly Manning Walker’s spring-breaky debut How to Have Sex, Moin Hussain’s service station sci-fi Sky Peals, Wim Wender’s flabby kunstlerfilm Anselm, Linklater’s poorly-aimed Hit Man, Hamaguchi’s ham-fisted Evil Does Not Exist, Lila Aviles’ raucously intimate Totem, Pedro Costa’s compelling proof-of-concept The Daughters of Fire, and – finally – Close Your Eyes, the much-much awaited return of Victor Erice, in fine and dazzling form. 0:00 Intro 3:09 ZONE OF INTEREST - Jonathan Glazer 34:37 HOW TO HAVE SEX - Molly Manning Walker 57:04 TOTEM - Lila Aviles 1:05:47 HIT MAN - Richard Linklater 1:07:45 ANSELM - Wim Wenders 1:16:26 SKY PEALS - Moin Hussain 1:19:18 EVIL DOES NOT EXIST - Ryusuke Hamaguchi 1:27:12 CLOSE YOUR EYES - Victor Erice 2:01:53 DAUGHTERS OF THE FIRE - Pedro Costa Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6hdAjXtGPpeQTCcuJ3KNmH?si=Ud_f__90TOSa28tzYPA5GQ Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/muub-tube/id1515030490 Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@returntoformpod

Plumbing the murky and anodyne depths of German modernity, Christian Petzold – leading light of the Berlin School; protege of artist-filmmaker Harun Farocki – has a bafflingly uneven reputation. The highs are thrilling and poised; the lows, schlocky and off-note. Why so inconsistent? To separate the sauer from the succulent, the boys – joined by George MacBeth – set out on a long-distance road trip through the autobahns and service stations that have provided such weirdly compelling settings for his filmmaking – a journey that makes pit-stops at the great (Afire, Gespenster), the so-so (Jerichow, Cuba Libre), and the wurst (Barbara, Phoenix, Transit, Undine). With a career bookended by moments of brilliance we celebrate a true return to form.

Last weekend we dreamed in celluloid, in three-strip technicolor and, crucially, on NITRATE. The BFI's new, hopefully regular, festival dedicated to cinema's technical heritage was a triumph - give or take an opening night. The boys sampled some exhilarating expanded cinema on 16mm by Malcolm Le Grice, some dicy nostalgism from Mark Jenkin, and of course Blood and Sand, Rouben Mamoulian's bullish nitrate delight. Join us for recollections of this sweaty and flickery weekend as we discuss the good, the bad and the flammable.

This week Owen and Ralph discuss the early works of a living legend, the Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski. His recent poly-form donkey parable EO has led to a BFI retrospective and the long overdue Blu-Ray release of his first four features, made in 1960s Poland. These films and the London-based Deep End represent Skolimowski at his boldest and best. With depth and blocking worthy of Welles or Fellini, and a youthful rebellious spirit to match Jerzy proved he was a globally important cinematic voice. Yet his later international work often falls flat. Owen and Ralph dust off these underrated classics and ponder along the way what makes a truly cinematic image.

Mia Hansen-Love’s latest is a dementia drama with a twist of romance. Always attuned to the intimate she blends naturalistic dialogue with Sirkian melodrama, with affecting performances from Lea Seydoux, Melvil Poupaud and Pascal Gregory. The spectre of Rohmer holds rather than haunts this luscious European arthouse gem. After the long Berlinale hangover One Fine Morning jolted the boys out of their cinematic malaise - this is a morning you want to be awake for.

This week, we’re taking a closer look at the impressionistic and (later) avant garde filmmaking of Germaine Dulac – particularly that which occupied her activities during the 1920s. For her, this was about “integral filmmaking” (as she called it): the rhythmic collision (and superimposition) of dissonant images and ideas. Clergymen, ballet dancers, fountains, machines. If it all sounds ‘so far, so Leger’, then think again. What she was doing was quite different – and unarguably distinct. Basically, you need to resolve your Dulac lack. Films covered include: The Seashell and the Clergyman, DISQUE957, Themes and Variations, The Smile of Madame Beudet and Arabesques.

Festival-fog is taking its toll on the boys, so they sympathise with the angst of many of Berlinale's fraught faces: Willem Defoe’s trapped thief in Inside had them on the edge of their seats, while Vicky Krieps had them on the edge of walking out in Margarethe von Trotta’s Ingeborg Bachman biopic. But ultimately it was Franz Rogowski's double Berlinale outing, as both a flirty filmmaker in Ira Sach’s Passages and a French foreign legionnaire in Giacomo Abbruzzese Disco Boy that won the lads over, especially Ralph! Berlinale Intro 0:00:00 Inside - Vasilis Katsoupis 0:21:01 Ingeborg Bachman Journey into the Desert - Margareta von Trotta 0:21:01 Passages - Ira Sachs (R) 0:37:24 Disco Boy - Giacomo Abbruzzese 0:47:49 Le Grand Chariot - Phillippe Garrel 0:56:56 Being in a Place - Luke Fowler/Margaret Tait 01:03:32:19 Seneca - Robert Schwentke 1:11:51 Past Lives - Celine Song 1:19:02:09 Berlinale outro 1:34:26

Orson Welles has secured his place in the filmmaking firmament. But Citizen Kane (1941) – with all its magnate malarky – can roundly overshadow everything he turned his hand to in the decades that followed; his films torn to shreds by philistine producers and Hollywood suits. What remains is a roster of some of the 20th century’s most ebullient and sublime films – from the Magnificent Ambersons (1942) to Fallstaff (1966), and beyond. Here, the lads try to pick their way through the Wellesian terrain – with brief pit stops at the Lafayette Theatre and the deserts of California. Forgive them for not mentioning F is for Fake (1973). The tl;dr? Welles was among America’s greatest formalists; and, even in truncated form, between exile and rapprochement, his work will endure.

This week the boys are joined by screenwriter James King to discuss one of the most disctinctive voices in world cinema. An audacious arthouse alchemist who wears his influences on his sleeve, an access-all-areas immersion architect who raise moments of intimacy to the level of holy miracles, and a lover of landscape who lingers with as much curiosity on the hills of the Morelos as he does the concrete jungle of Mexico City. We also speak in depth about the new Sight and Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll and Chantal Akerman's triumphant placing on it. To skip to the main event find us at 12-minute mark!

'The slightest movement sends reverberations through the viewer' said Scorsese of Greece's old master auteur. The boys locked in for punishing schedule of yearning and distance in snowy and misty conditions. As winter comes down the tracks, why not warm your hands under the projection lamp and witness the transcendent imagery of Theo Angelopoulos. Films covered include: Landscapes in the Mist, The Travelling Players, Suspended Step of the Stork, Voyage to Cythera, Eternity and a Day, The Hunters and The Beekeeper.

In their 2nd despatch from Wroclaw, Owen, Ralph and George cover James Benning’s new structural state of the nation United States of America, Claire Denis’ dodgy lockdown drama Both Sides of the Blade, David Cronenberg’s speculative surgery sci-fi, Michel Franco’s existential Acapulco ennui in Sundown and Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s poignant road movie Broker.