4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
Today, we wish a happy birthday to the one and only Roger Corman! The godfather of indie cinema is 94 years old today. It’s hard to know what’s left to be said about Roger Corman. Corman was the producer who discovered some of the most important filmmakers in the history of American cinema. He’s also the director who had the guts to tackle the important issues that the major Hollywood studios were afraid to acknowledge. When all is said and done, Roger Corman is one of the most important figures in film history. He’s also one of our favorite filmmakers, here at the Shattered Lens.
It’s impossible to do justice to this man’s career with just 4 shots from 4 films but it’s a start.
4 Shots From 4 Films
Not Of This Earth (1957, dir by Roger Corman)
The Masque of the Red Death (1964, dir by Roger Corman)
The 1979 Russian film, Stalker, takes place in a world that might be our own.
In the middle of a wilderness that we assume, just because of the language that’s spoken in the film, to be in Russia, there is an area known as the Zone. The Zone is a place where the normal laws of physics don’t seem to apply. It’s not an easy place to enter and it’s almost impossible to exit but it’s rumored that there’s a very special room located in one of the Zone’s deserted buildings. If you can find the Room, you’re innermost desires will be granted. It’s said, for instance, that a semi-legendary man known as Porcupine found the Room and became wealthy as a result. Of course, Porcupine also hung himself just a few days later.
Legally, no one is allowed to enter the Zone. Soldiers patrol the perimeter and the gate that leads into the Zone is only opened to allow a train to make it’s way through. However, there are outlaws who specialize in leading expeditions through the Zone. They can get people in and, as long as everyone does as instructed, they can hopefully lead people out. One of these outlaws is known as The Stalker (Alexander Kaidanovsky). The Stalker, a former student of Porcupine, lives in a drab village where everything is filmed in Sepia. (By contrast, the Zone is filmed in color.) The Stalker is married to a woman (Alisa Freindlich) who continually begs him to stop leading expeditions into the Zone but who also says that she married the Stalker because his illegal activities bring a little bit of life to an otherwise drab existence. They have a daughter (Natasha Abramova) who is described as being a “child of the zone.” She may have a physical disability, though we’re never quite sure what the exact details of it may be. The final enigmatic shot of the film belongs to her and it’s a shot that makes us wonder about everything that we’ve just previously seen.
The Stalker’s latest clients are the Writer (Anatoly Solonitsyn) and the Professor (Nikolai Grinko). Both the Writer and the Professor have their own reasons for wanting to see the Zone. The Writer is an alcoholic who has lost his inspiration and hopes to find it again. The Professor says that he’s interest in the Zone is a scientific one, though it turns out that his actual intentions are a bit more complex. The Stalker leads them into the Zone but it’s not an easy journey. The Stalker grows annoyed as he comes to realize that the Writer does not share his nearly spiritual reverence for the powers and the mysteries of the Zone. Meanwhile, the Professor obsesses over his backpack, even when the Stalker tells him to leave it behind. There’s something in that backpack that the Professor definitely doesn’t want to lose.
Stalker is a science fiction film but it’s one that has no elaborate special effects. There are hints that the Zone may have been visited by extraterrestrials but the film deliberately leave ambiguous the true origin of the Zone. Director Andrei Tarkovsky instead emphasizes the barren landscape and the discussions between the three men, each one of whom is desperate in his own way. Though the Zone may be filmed in vibrant color while the village is filmed in Sepia tones, both locations are equally desolate.
Watching this film today, it’s impossible not to compare the film’s Zone to the real-life forbidden zone surrounding Chernobyl. However, Stalker was made 7 years before the disaster at Chernobyl. The film’s Zone probably has more in common with the 1908 Tunguska event, which was when something (an asteroid, a comet, or maybe something else depending on how conspiracy-minded one is willing to be) either crashed into or exploded above Siberia. The explosion was the equivalent of 30 megatons of TNT and, needless to say, you can find all sorts of fanciful stories about strange things happening in the area in the years after the explosion. That said, it’s definitely not a coincidence that the modern-day guides who lead unauthorized tours of the Chernobyl area have taken to calling themselves stalkers.
The film itself is a fascinating one, though definitely not one for everyone. As a director, Tarkovsky’s trademark was the long take and the camera often lingers over each scene, inviting the viewer to look for a deeper meaning that may or may not be there. It’s a film that invites the viewer to think and to wonder who is right and who is wrong about the Zone. It’s a film that asks a lot of questions but never claims to have all the answers. The true meaning of it all is left the individual viewer to determine. It really is a film that probably could have only been made by an artist trying to subtly rebel against a totalitarian society. The Writer has lost his inspiration because society has become so drab and corrupt. The intellectual Professor is forced to be deceptive about his true intentions. And the Stalker looks for a deeper meaning that goes beyond what the State has to offer. For that, he’s willing to risk everything.
Tragically, it’s possible that filming Stalker may have contributed to Tarkovsky’s death in 1986. (Interestingly, he died just a few months after the Chernobyl disaster.) Much of Stalker was filmed near a chemical plant and it’s felt that filming in such a toxic condition may have eventually led to the illnesses that not only killed Tarkovsky but several other members of the film’s cast and crew. By the time of his death, Tarkovsky had escaped from Russia and was living in Paris. Today, incidentally, is his birthday. He would have been 88 years old.
The 1948 Japanese film, Drunken Angel, tells the story of two seemingly different men living in a burned-out neighborhood in postwar Tokyo.
Sanada (Takashi Shimura) is an aging and world-weary doctor. Though he may drink too much and he is occasionally too quick to snap at his patients, he truly cares about the people who live near his clinic. He worries about the spread of tuberculosis, which was a very real concern in postwar Japan and which remains a concern to this day. He continually tells his patients that they need to stop drinking and take better care of themselves, even though he does not seem to be capable of taking his own advice.
Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune) is a young Japanese gangster, a member of the yakuza. Matsunaga does everything with a swagger, one that he appears to have largely adapted from Hollywood gangster movies. He not only dresses like an idealized version of an American gangster but he also smokes his cigarettes like one. Everything about Matsunaga gives the impression that he’s desperate to prove that he’s something more than just a small-time hood living in a bombed-out neighborhood that’s centered around a poisonous bog.
One night, Matsunaga shows up at Sanada’s clinic. He’s got a bloody hole in his hand. Mastunaga claims that he walked into a door. When Sanada responds with skepticism, Matsunaga adds that the door had a nail sticking out of it. Sanada may not believe Matsunaga but he’s a doctor so he treats Matsunaga’s wound. Sanada also diagnosis Matsunaga as suffering from tuberculosis and tells him that he has to stop drinking and womanizing. Needless to say, Matsunaga is not pleased with this diagnosis.
Though they start out as antagonists, a weary friendship grows between the doctor and the gangster. Matsunaga even starts to follow the doctor’s advice or, at least, he does until his boss, Okada (Reisaburo Yamamoto), is released from prison. Under Okada’s influence, Matsunaga falls back into his own habits, drinking and going to nightclubs where the musicians perform Americanized music. Okada is also the ex-boyfriend of Sanada’s nurse and, when he threatens to murder Sanada unless the doctor lead him to her, Matsunaga is finally forced to decide which of his two potential mentors will have his loyalty.
Taken on its own, Drunken Angel is an entertaining gangster film that features two memorable lead performances. Takashi Shimura is likable as Sanada while Toshiro Mifune is dangerously charismatic as Matsunaga. Director Akira Kurosawa originally planned for the film to focus solely on Sanada, with Matsunaga only playing a minor role. Mifune, however, so impressed him that he ended up expanding Matsunaga’s role until Mifune was eventually the film’s co-lead. (Following Drunken Angel, Kurosawa would go on to make 15 other films with Mifune.) Kurosawa keeps the action moving at an exciting pace and he frames the story with haunting images of the dilapidated neighborhood that the two men call home.
However, Drunken Angel is even more fascinated with one consider that it was made at a time when Japan, having been defeated in World War II and still traumatized by the nuclear attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, was still occupied by American forces. The film was made at a time when it was still very much an open question as to what role Japan would play in a postwar world. Would Japan become dominated by American culture (which, in this film, is represented by gangsters like Okada) or would it remain true to itself? When Sanada warns Matsunaga that he is surrounded by toxic germs that are making him ill and threatening his future, he could very well have been talking about what Kurosawa perceived as being the threat of Americans transforming Japan into a westernized playground.
In the end, it’s a film that works on many levels, as a gangster film, as a portrait of a friendship, and as a metaphor for a people and a culture trying to find their place in a new and imperfect world. If you haven’t seen it yet, now is the perfect time to do so.
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
96 years ago today, Marlon Brando was born in Omaha, Nebraska.
Unfortunately, Brando is one of those actors who, later in his life, became better known for his eccentricities than for his performances. Though Brando never stopped being a good actor, it’s undeniable that some of his later performances reveal an actor who often did seem to be a bit bored with the films that he was making. It’s sad to think that there’s people out there who might only know Brando because they stumbled across The Island of Dr. Moreau on Starz at like 3 in the morning.
Regardless of the reputation that he developed in his later years, Marlon Brando was one of the best actors of all time. His early performances are still exciting to watch and, even when his work was becoming progressively more eccentric in the 70s and 80s, he still continued to give performances that could grab your attention and leave you surprised by their power.
Of course, my favorite Brando film remains The Godfather so it only makes sense to share a scene from that film on Brando’s birthday. In this beautifully acted scene, Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) informs Don Vito (Brando) that Sonny has been killed. Of course, first, Tom has to have a drink. This scene might not be as iconic as some of the other scenes in The Godfather but it’s wonderfully performed by both actors and it reminds us that The Godfather is powerful not because it’s a crime film but because it’s a film about family.
On a snowy day in Montreal, a nameless young man (Maxim Gaudette) wanders about a cramped apartment. He loads a rifle. He drives to his mother’s house and leaves a note in her mailbox. He goes to École Polytechnique, the engineering school where he’s a student. Leaving the rifle in his car, he walks around the school. He stares at the students in the cafeteria, observing them with a hatred that they might not notice but which we’ll never forget. He goes back outside. He sits in his car while the snow continues to fall.
As we watch him, we hear him reading the suicide note that he’s written for the authorities. He talks about his belief that the world has been destroyed by feminists. He writes that he’s offended that he is expected to compete with women and that women have an unfair advantage in both the academic and the professional world. He brags about the good grades that he gets, despite the fact that he rarely attends school. He says that he’s never fit in with the world and that woman are to blame. He complains about women competing at the Olympics, showing that he views everything through the filter of his own misogyny. At one point, he apologizes for not being as eloquent as he believes he could be. He explains that he only had 15 minutes to put down his thoughts.
Inside the school, another engineering student, Jean-Francois (Sébastien Huberdeau ) struggles to complete an assignment before his next class begin. He sits in the cafeteria with open books scattered across the table in front of him. Later, we’ll see Jean-Francois running through the hallways of the school, trying to warn the other students that something terrible is happening. He’ll run to a security officer and ask him to call the police, just to be given a somewhat confused look in response. Later still, we’ll see Jean-Francois outside of the school, visiting his family and haunted by guilt.
One of Jean-Francois’s classmates, Valerie (Karine Vanasse), goes to a job interview where the older male interviewer states that he’s shocked that Valerie wants to go into engineering after graduation. Most women, he says, don’t do that. It’s a profession that requires a lot of hard work and it’s not ideal for someone who wants to start a family. Stunned, Valerie lies and says that she doesn’t have any desire to start a family. Throughout the film, we watch as Valerie stop several times at her locker so that she can switch shoes. When she has to deal with stuff like her job interview, she puts on high heels that are obviously very uncomfortable for her. When she just wants to go to class, she has to stop and switch to shoes that she can actually walk in and, at that moment, I knew exactly what she was feeling. Every woman watching will instantly know what she’s going through. Later, she complains to her friend and roommate, Stephanie (Evelyn Brouchu), about how condescending the interview was. Stephanie tells her not to obsess on it.
Outside, the snow continues to fall in the night, creating a bleakly cold landscape and making Montreal look like a barren and bombed-out wasteland.
Later, we’ll see Jean-Francois arriving late for a class. Valerie and Stephanie are already in the class, listening to the lecture. Not long after Jean-Francois claims his seat, the unnamed man steps into the room, carrying his rifle. He orders the males to gather on one side of the room and the women on the other….
These are the moments and images that stick with you, long after the 2009 Canadian film, Polytechnique, concludes it’s brief 77-minute run time. It’s a haunting film, definitely not one to watch if you’re already feeling depressed. What makes it especially disturbing is that it’s based on a true story. On December 8, 1989, an Algerian-Canadian student opened fire at École Polytechnique in Montreal. (The film does not name the killer and I won’t either, because to name him without naming his victims does a disservice to their memory. Those who really want to know his name are free to look it up on Wikipedia.) As seen in the film, the gunman specifically targeted women and even ordered all of the males in the classroom to leave before he opened fire. Also, as seen in the movie, the men did just that, with not a single one trying to stop the gunman or warn others until they were already out of the classroom. The character of Jean-Francois stands in for all of the men who were haunted by their decision to leave. As I watched the film, I had mixed feelings about the men who left that classroom. Yes, the gunman was armed but there were enough men in that classroom that it’s hard to justify the fact that not a single one attempted to intervene.
Before shooting himself in the head, the gunman killed 14 women and wounded 10 women and 4 men. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in Canada’s history. When the police found his body, they also found a suicide note in his pocket, the same note that we hear read at the beginning of this film. In memory of the lives lost, the anniversary of the massacre has been commemorated as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.
Poltytechnique, which is dedicated to those who died, was directed by Denis Villeneuve, long before he would come to America and make a name for himself with films like Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049. Polytechnique is filmed in harsh black-and-white and Villeneuve skips around in time, often showing us the consequences of the killer’s actions before showing us the actions themselves. It’s an approach that reminds us that the Montreal Massacre and all other acts of violence are events that will forever haunt us. The past will always cast a shadow over both the present and the future.
As I said, it’s not a happy film but perhaps not every film needs to happy. With Polytechnique, Villeneuve mourns for the lives lost on that day in 1989 and he encourages us all to try to create a better world for the future.
If there’s anything that I’ve discovered over the years, it’s that cinema is truly a universal language.
I’ve lost track of the number of film fans with whom I’ve bonded with over social media. Some of them live near me and some of them live very far away but the one thing that we all have in common is that we all love movies. For instance, I have a friend in India who loves Sofia Coppola almost as much as I do. Meanwhile, I’ve got friends in the UK who are as crazy about horror movies as I am and my friend Carlo in Italy shares my total disdain for Avatar. In short, films bring us together.
This month, I want to celebrate that fact here on the Shatered Lens. Along with my usual reviews, I’ll be taking a look at some films that were produced outside of the United States and far away from the Hollywood studios. Some of these films will be great and some of them probably won’t. Some of these films may be well-known and, again, some of them won’t be. What they all have in common is that they’re out there for discriminating viewers who aren’t scared of having to read a subtitle or two.
I want to start things off by looking at a French film, La fille au bracelet (The Girl With A Bracelet).
This low-key but thought-provoking courtroom drama opens with a family enjoying a day at the beach. We watch them from a distance and they seem almost like the perfect family unit. And yet, that perfection puts us ill at ease. We’ve seen enough movies to know that any family that appears to be perfect is going to be the exact opposite and, even more importantly, director Stéphane Demoustier knows this. Therefore, we’re not surprised when the police suddenly show up. We are perhaps a little bit more surprised when the police lead away not the mother or the father but instead, the teenage daughter, Lise (Melissa Guers).
The film jumps forward two years. Lise has been under house arrest ever since that day at the beach and is required to wear an ankle bracelet, so that the authorities can keep track of her. Lise has been charged with murdering her best friend, Floria. While her father (Rosdchy Zem) insists that Lise is innocent and gets involved in her defense, Lise’s mother, Celine (Chiara Mastroianni), has thrown herself into her work and says that she probably won’t even be able to attend her daughter’s trial.
As for Lise, she refuses to show remorse for a crime that she says she didn’t commit and she refuses to apologize for a lifestyle for which she feels no shame. As the proceedings begin, it becomes apparent that Lise is as much on trial for her perceived coldness and lack of conformity as for anything else. Much of the evidence against Lise seems weak. Lise and Flora had a fight shortly before the murder and Lise’s DNA was found on Flora’s body. Lise claims that she and Flora made up on the same night that Flora was found dead. While her parents listen, Lise’s sexual history is clinically dissected in the courtroom, suggesting that she is as much on trial for not conforming to society’s expectations as she is for any murder that she may have committed. Is Lise on trial because of the evidence or because she’s a member of generation that has been vilified by its elders? Is she on trial because she’s guilty or is she on trial because she’s a young woman who is not reacting the way that society expects women to react?
And yet, even though you want to be on Lise’s side, the film keeps you off-balance. Is it true that Lise is simply mourning her friend in her own way or is it possible that Lise is actually a remorseless murderer? At times, it seems like either one of the two could be true. The film ends on a deliberately ambiguous note, one that may leave some frustrated but which will also leave you thinking.
The Girl With A Bracelet requires some patience. The film plays out at a deliberate and methodical pace. However, your patience will be rewarded with a fascinating mystery that will keep you thinking. The cast is excellent, especially Anais Demoustier as the prosecutor. (Given the film’s theme of generational conflict, it’s interesting that the prosecutor is closer, in age, to Lise’s generation while Lise’s defense attorney is from her parent’s generation.) Melissa Guers makes her film debut in the role of Lise and gives an excellent and intriguing performance as an enigmatic character who always seems like she should be more sympathetic than she actually is.
I was fortunate enough to see The Girl With A Bracelet in Paris. (Two weeks later, and four days after Jeff & I returned home to the U.S., the entire world shut down. It’s strange to think about it now.) It’s a film that’s stuck with me and hopefully it’ll make it’s way over to the States sometime soon.
I know I’ve probably shared this scene in the past but I’m going to share it again because today is Lon Chaney’s birthday! 137 years ago, today, one of the greatest actors of all time was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He was the man of a thousand faces and he brought a lot of life to silent cinema.
This scene is from the 1925 version of Phantom of the Opera! That’s Lon as the phantom and Mary Philbin as Christine. In honor of the anniversary of Lon Chaney’s birth, we invited you to enjoy a scene that I love…..
This scene, incidentally, was originally planned to be shot in color. Unfortunately, the lights that were (back then) necessary to film in color were too hot and they caused Chaney’s makeup to melt. So, those plans were scrapped and then scene was shot in black-and-white but, personally, I find the black-and-white to be more effective. I’ve seen a colorized version of this film and it just wasn’t as effective.
I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I should even bother to continue my monthly Oscar predictions. With the current Coronavirus pandemic, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if there will even be an Oscar ceremony next year. Many completed films have been taken off the schedule so that they can be released at a time when people aren’t scared to leave their house. Meanwhile, production on several other films — some of them expected to be Oscar contenders — has been suspended. New films are continuing to premiere on the streaming services but the Academy has always insisted that films also play in a theater if they want to contend for an Oscar. That’s going to be difficult with the majority of the country’s theaters currently being closed.
Unlike a lot of people, I’m not necessarily apocalyptic or even that pessimistic in my outlook. I think that, one way or another, we will eventually be able to leave our homes again and that at least some of the movie theaters will reopen. So, I think that we will be able to have some sort of Oscar ceremony. For that reason, I’m going to make my predictions for March but, needless to say, take all of these with an even bigger grain of salt than usual.
If you’re curious to see what my Oscar thinking was in the months before the world went crazy, check out my predictions for January and February!
(I’ve tried to take the fact that the Coronavirus led to the suspension of many ongoing productions while making out my list below. As far as I know, filming wrapped on all of the films listed below before the outbreak.)
Best Picture
Ammonite
Annette
Hillbilly Elegy
The Father
Minari
News of the World
Nomadland
On the Rocks
Tenet
West Side Story
Best Director
Isaac Lee Chung for Minari
Paul Greengrass for News of the World
Christopher Nolan for Tenet
Steven Spielberg for West Side Story
Florian Zeller for The Father
Best Actor
Tom Hanks in News of the World
Anthony Hopkins in The Father
Bill Murray in On the Rocks
Gary Oldman in Mank
Will Smith in King Richard
Best Actress
Amy Adams in Hillbilly Elegy
Clare Dunne in Herself
Jennifer Hudson in Respect
Frances McDormand in Nomadland
Kate Winslet in Ammonite
Best Supporting Actor
Tom Burke in Mank
Richard E. Grant in Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
Well, here we are at the end of both March and the 18 days of paranoia. We started things off with a review of The Flight That Disappeared and now, we end things with a look at the 1954 BBC production of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
“Orewllian” is a term that gets tossed around a lot nowadays, largely by people who the real George Orwell probably would have viewed rather dismissively. Ever since the election of Donald Trump, for instance, it’s become rather common for certain people of twitter to say that “Orwell was right” or that we’re living in an “Orwellian nightmare.” I remember after Trump’s press secretary blatantly lied about the size of the crowd at the inauguration, there was even a commercial that featured Zachary Quinto giving a hilariously overwrought reading of the final passage of George Orwell’s 1984. “He …. LOVED …. BIG …. BROTHER!” Quinto declared while staring grimly at the camera.
Interestingly enough, many of the same people who complain about Trump’s lies being Orwellian never used the term during the previous 8 years, when we were being constantly told that a permanent recession was actually a sign of a strong economy and that if people liked their doctor, they could keep them. The fact of the matter is that, for a lot of people, “Orwellian” is just a term that they use whenever a politician from the other side does something that they dislike. It makes you wonder how many of them have actually read 1984 because, if they had, they would surely know that — if we truly were living in the world depicted in Orwell’s novel — no one would be allowed to acknowledge it and, in fact, Orwell and his books would have vanished down the memory hole. Just the act of saying that we’re living in 1984 without getting sent to a reeducation camp is proof that we’re not (or, at least, we’re not just yet).
That’s not to say that 1984 isn’t an important work of literature. In fact, it’s probably one of the most important books ever written, which is why it does it such a disservice to glibly toss around the term Orwellian. Even if we aren’t living in Orwell’s world right now, it’s probably easier than ever to imagine a scenario where we eventually could. The Coronavirus pandemic, for example, is just the sort of thing that could lead to the people accepting the idea that the government is meant to be a Big Brother and that those who disagree deserve to be reported for the good of the people. It’s easy to imagine a future where people believe that history started with the Coranavirus and that everything that happened before the pandemic was just a hazy rumor, like Europe before the Renaissance. As such, even if the term Orwellian is overused, 1984 is still a book that needs to be read and understood.
This version sticks closely to Orwell’s novel, though it downplays the book’s sexual themes. (This is not surprising considering that this version was made for 1950s television.) Though it condensed Orwell’s story, it hits all of the important points. Winston Smith (Peter Cushing) is a member of the Outer Party who works at the Ministry of Truth and who lives a rather drab existence in London, “the chief city of Airstrip One.” He is a citizen of Oceania, which has always been at war with Eurasia. Winston lives under a system of government called Ingsoc and every day, he spends two minutes hating a mysterious figure named Goldstein. All around him are posters of Big Brother, watching him and judging.
On the outside, Winston is a loyal party man but on the inside, he has questions and doubts. How can he not when he works for the Ministry of Truth? His job is to change history to reflect whatever the current version of it may be. Some of his co-workers, like Symes (Donald Pleaseance), are openly cynical about what they do. Others, like O’Brien (an imposing Andre Morell), seem as if they might be sympathetic to Winston’s doubts but Winston cannot be sure. Meanwhile, Winston has found himself obsessed with Julia (Yvonne Mitchell), who is a member of the Anti-Sex League but who might have doubts of her own. (Then again, she could also be a member of the Thought Police.)
When Winston is finally arrested for being a thoughtcriminal, it leads to a harrowing interrogation where he learns that truth doesn’t matter, the numbers add up to whatever the party says that they add up to, and that no one is strong enough to survive the ordeal of Room 101.
The BBC adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four was, for the most part, a live performance with a few filmed scenes inserted into the action. Still, the fact that the majority of the actors were delivering their lines lives brings a certain immediacy to the film. Everyone seem nervous and edgy. In real life, that could have been due to the fear that they would miss a line but it also feels appropriate for people who spend every day of their life being watched and judged by Big Brother. The entire production does an excellent job of creating a world where every minute is suffused in an atmosphere of dread and fear. From the minute we first see him, Winston seems to know that he’s doomed. The fact that Big Brother would rather torture and brainwash him rather than just make him disappear just makes things worse.
The production is full of actors — like Cushing, Morrell, and Pleasence — who would go on to become leading figures in the British horror industry and all of them do an excellent job bringing Orwell’s horror to life. Peter Cushing, with his mix of intelligent features and neurotic screen presence, makes for the perfect Winston Smith and Andre Morrell is just as perfectly cast as the fearsome O’Brien. The scene in which Winston is forced to confront Room 101 is still a harrowing one and this film perfectly nails the novel’s famous ending, doing so in a low-key manner that’s far more effective than the overwrought approach that other adaptations have brought to the final scene.
Nineteen Eighty-Four can currently be viewed on Prime. The print is a bit grainy but that only adds to the film’s power. It comes to us like a hazy vision of the future.
Through the Shattered Lens 