01-06-2019, 12:24 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-06-2019, 04:56 PM by TM2YC. Edited 1 time in total.)
The Entertainer (1960)
Seamlessly intertwining resonant themes, the painfully slow end to the career of Archie Rice, a British Music-Hall/Vaudeville comedian (Laurence Olivier), the ruin of his finances, his sham marriage and the dissolution of his family, the fading glamour of a seaside resort and the recent 1956 Suez-Crisis (the symbolic end of the British Empire). The ghosts of England's past are cleverly evoked with the casting of the charming and lovely Roger Livesey as Archie's more successful father (who was symbolic of the decline of Empire in the Colonel Blimp movie). Everybody loves him, even if he's a silly old fool because he reminds people of better days, Archie just reeks of failure. Sometimes Olivier can be very good and sometimes a bit hammy but he is on incredible form here playing a crumpled, defeated man who faces the word with a showbiz smile but is "dead behind the eyes" (the character's own words). The soundtrack is full of half heard, half remembered old Music-Hall songs, leaving the viewer in a constant state of nostalgia for something past. A work of quiet genius.
Babylon (1980)
A great snapshot of Working-Class Jamaican 2nd-generation immigrant culture in London's Brixton area. Despite the micro budget and the anti-establishment edge of the subject, multi-Oscar winning Cinematographer Chris Menges makes it all look very classy. Aswad's Brinsley Forde stars as "Blue" a Sound system MC struggling against racism and general deprivation. Amazing soundtrack too.
Seamlessly intertwining resonant themes, the painfully slow end to the career of Archie Rice, a British Music-Hall/Vaudeville comedian (Laurence Olivier), the ruin of his finances, his sham marriage and the dissolution of his family, the fading glamour of a seaside resort and the recent 1956 Suez-Crisis (the symbolic end of the British Empire). The ghosts of England's past are cleverly evoked with the casting of the charming and lovely Roger Livesey as Archie's more successful father (who was symbolic of the decline of Empire in the Colonel Blimp movie). Everybody loves him, even if he's a silly old fool because he reminds people of better days, Archie just reeks of failure. Sometimes Olivier can be very good and sometimes a bit hammy but he is on incredible form here playing a crumpled, defeated man who faces the word with a showbiz smile but is "dead behind the eyes" (the character's own words). The soundtrack is full of half heard, half remembered old Music-Hall songs, leaving the viewer in a constant state of nostalgia for something past. A work of quiet genius.
Babylon (1980)
A great snapshot of Working-Class Jamaican 2nd-generation immigrant culture in London's Brixton area. Despite the micro budget and the anti-establishment edge of the subject, multi-Oscar winning Cinematographer Chris Menges makes it all look very classy. Aswad's Brinsley Forde stars as "Blue" a Sound system MC struggling against racism and general deprivation. Amazing soundtrack too.
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