On May 21st Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant starring Eva Mendes, Nicholas Cage and a gaggle of Iguanas is released in cinemas nationwide. What better excuse could we need to explore the dark minds of Europe’s best directors?
Dario Argento: The creator of suspense. Argento spent his early career perfecting Giallo, the Italian thriller genre, before breaking on to the international stage with Red and follow up horror hit Susperia.
The atmospheric Susperia is the first of Argento's "The Three Mothers" trilogy which imagines the cruel occupations of witches in modern day settings. Susperia centers of the murderous antics of a coven posing as teachers at a ballet school.
The action unfolds to a perfect tempo. Suzy a new student in trapped in the pouring rain outside of the school when a traumatized student flees, rambling manically. What follows are sickening murders with wire, glass, rope and a crazed dog.
These graphic moments leave a nauseating feeling on the audience and a growing fear that the next time Suzy wakes from her sporadic bouts of drowsiness she'll be surrounded by a coven begging for her blood.
Ingmar Bergman: The trend setter. Bergman gave Scandinavian cinema global recognition and created a template for the region’s films; dark, full of emotionally repressed characters, claustrophobic but gripping.
Seventh Seal was Bergman’s masterpiece. Set during the late 1300s when the plague was rife in Northern Europe, Bergman follows a miscellaneous band of brothers who are travelling together in a bid to escape death.
The center piece of the film is the iconic game of chess played between the solider and the personified death; a ghoulish looking man, cloaked in black with bulging eyes who agrees to wager with the soldiers life.
Jean Luc Godard: The visionary of cool cinema. The effortlessly cool Goddard created modern French cinema as we know it; iconic, chic, mesmerising but simple.
His first feature A Bout De Souffle / Breathless is by far his most revered both critically and commercially (the artwork is a must for film student’s walls.)
Breathless is a film which screams of sixties sexiness; cute hairstyles, smoking in its manly glory and a recurring shot of a fore fingerrubbing against a man’s lips.
The protagonist is a French criminal who falls in love with the wrong girl, a cute American who works by yelling 'New York Herald Tribune,' against the romantisied Parisian traffic. It’s a classic story of love, crime and betrayal but it changed the film world forever by introducing the jump cut.
Werner Herzog: The art house hero. The famed German director of Signs of Life, Woyzec and Fitzcarraldo, once ate his shoe after he lost a bet. After 5 hours boiling his dish with garlic, herbs and stock Herzog tucked into his shoe in front of an audience; leaving only the sole with the comment that "One does not eat the bones of a chicken."
Herzog had lent his support to fellow director Errol Morris in his typical gusto manner; offering to eat his shoe if Morris could complete his proposed film on Pet Cemeteries. Gates of Heaven premiered in 1978.
This is the mind behind The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. The film features Nicholas Cage in a role which will cement the actor's metamorphosis into a bad ass, cult anti hero. Cage is Terrace McDonagh a cop addicted to pain killers, coke and any class-A high.
His girlfriend is a prostitute, he's in debt from gambling and he's the unsteady head in charge of a multiple homicide investigation that’s desperate to get a fix.
Krzysztof Kieslowski: The king of the close up. The polish screenwriter and director began his career in documentaries, capturing the eerie atmosphere of derelict concentration camps in the 1960s. His move into film was literally stunning; as the writer / director pushed the capabilities of his camera to capture the smallest moments in every day life to breath taking effect.
In Three Colours Blue, staring Juliette Binoche as Julie a woman who chooses a life of isolation after the death of her family, Kieslowski captures the moment Julie is told of her loss by filming the reflection of the doctor in Julie’s eye.
Roman Polanski: The ruler of the dark. Long before his troubles with Hollywood, Sharon Tate tragedy, the Best Picture Oscar for the Piano and a retold tale of Oliver Twist, Polanski was the master of uneasiness on screen.
Rosemary’s Baby, a tale in which a mortal woman gives birth to the devil’s son, is Polanski best known horror work - but the subtle decay of a woman’s mind in Repulsion echoes his disturbing habit of unhinging his audience’s sanity as slowly as he unwinds his protagonist’s.
Jean Renoir: The peacemaker. The son of a famous painter, a boarding school run away, a soldier with a bullet in his leg, Renoir turned to ceramics to express himself. Then he found film. Grand Illusion broke Renoir into the international film leagues.
His humanist vision of war, promoted European unity at a time of great strain for the continent as Hitler quickened his political momentum in Germany during 1937.
The story of two French POWs, Captain de Boeldieu and Lieutenant Maréchal during WWI is a kind portrayal of the humanity which can be found during war as Renoir depicts camaraderie amongst troops and fairness from the enemy.
On their initial capture the French soldiers are invited to lunch with a German captain before they are sent to a prisoner of war camp. Here they make great friends with another French soldier, Rosenthal, and the three develop a plan to escape.
Andrei Tarkovsky: The painter. Tarkovsky is renowned for his intricate cinematic compositions in films such as Mirror and Solaris. Tarkovsky often directed his films without chronology, narrative and plot choosing instead to use film as an expression.
Solaris is the director’s most famous work. The film tells the story of a scientist, Kris, who attempts to rid himself of his emotionally troubled past on Earth by travelling to a neglected space station where the crew have slowly been driven mad by Solaris.
Perhaps it’s not the best move forwards. Though Kris burnt all mementos of his life on Earth, his memories remain and Solaris uses them to slowly push Kris to breaking point by resurrecting his dead wife.
Francois Truffaut the escapist. Traffaut always lived on the edge of his own life, preferring the beautiful pseudo-realism portrayed in films rather than the unflinching reality of living.
Traffaut's obsession with the pictures led him to leave school at 14. From then on the head strong youngster adhered to his own stimulus of three films a day, three books a week. This strict diet created Cashiers du Cinema’s harshest critc and an auteur.
His first feature Les quatre cents coups / The 400 Blows, is an autobiographical account of his childhood, depicting the director's troubled relationship with his mother and step father. It is little coincidence that the title refers to the French expression "faire les quatre cents coups," meaning to raise hell.
Lars Von Trier: The upstart auteur. Von Trier gave himself a reputation early on at the Danish Film school when he added three letters to his name. 'Von' a name often carried by the Danish aristocracy set the young film maker apart from his class mates; a self imposed isolation which has continued as the pugnacious film maker upsets most within the film industry.
Von Trier happily alienated critics with the Dogme ’95 manifesto at Cannes film festival and continued to split them down the line with the release of Anti Christ in 2009.
Anti Christ was Trier’s home therapy for severe depression. The results are understandably bleak, troubling and in the case of the 'chaos reigns' fox baffling but if you want to see Von Trier at his best watch The Idiots. The film follows a group of isolated misfits who escape the constraints of their bourgeoisie existence through spazzing out.
Bad Lieutenant is released 21st May.
On May 21st Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant starring Eva Mendes, Nicholas Cage and a gaggle of Iguanas is released in cinemas nationwide. What better excuse could we need to explore the dark minds of Europe’s best directors?
Dario Argento: The creator of suspense. Argento spent his early career perfecting Giallo, the Italian thriller genre, before breaking on to the international stage with Red and follow up horror hit Susperia.
The atmospheric Susperia is the first of Argento's "The Three Mothers" trilogy which imagines the cruel occupations of witches in modern day settings. Susperia centers of the murderous antics of a coven posing as teachers at a ballet school.
The action unfolds to a perfect tempo. Suzy a new student in trapped in the pouring rain outside of the school when a traumatized student flees, rambling manically. What follows are sickening murders with wire, glass, rope and a crazed dog.
These graphic moments leave a nauseating feeling on the audience and a growing fear that the next time Suzy wakes from her sporadic bouts of drowsiness she'll be surrounded by a coven begging for her blood.
Ingmar Bergman: The trend setter. Bergman gave Scandinavian cinema global recognition and created a template for the region’s films; dark, full of emotionally repressed characters, claustrophobic but gripping.
Seventh Seal was Bergman’s masterpiece. Set during the late 1300s when the plague was rife in Northern Europe, Bergman follows a miscellaneous band of brothers who are travelling together in a bid to escape death.
The center piece of the film is the iconic game of chess played between the solider and the personified death; a ghoulish looking man, cloaked in black with bulging eyes who agrees to wager with the soldiers life.
Jean Luc Godard: The visionary of cool cinema. The effortlessly cool Goddard created modern French cinema as we know it; iconic, chic, mesmerising but simple.
His first feature A Bout De Souffle / Breathless is by far his most revered both critically and commercially (the artwork is a must for film student’s walls.)
Breathless is a film which screams of sixties sexiness; cute hairstyles, smoking in its manly glory and a recurring shot of a fore fingerrubbing against a man’s lips.
The protagonist is a French criminal who falls in love with the wrong girl, a cute American who works by yelling 'New York Herald Tribune,' against the romantisied Parisian traffic. It’s a classic story of love, crime and betrayal but it changed the film world forever by introducing the jump cut.
Werner Herzog: The art house hero. The famed German director of Signs of Life, Woyzec and Fitzcarraldo, once ate his shoe after he lost a bet. After 5 hours boiling his dish with garlic, herbs and stock Herzog tucked into his shoe in front of an audience; leaving only the sole with the comment that "One does not eat the bones of a chicken."
Herzog had lent his support to fellow director Errol Morris in his typical gusto manner; offering to eat his shoe if Morris could complete his proposed film on Pet Cemeteries. Gates of Heaven premiered in 1978.
This is the mind behind The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. The film features Nicholas Cage in a role which will cement the actor's metamorphosis into a bad ass, cult anti hero. Cage is Terrace McDonagh a cop addicted to pain killers, coke and any class-A high.
His girlfriend is a prostitute, he's in debt from gambling and he's the unsteady head in charge of a multiple homicide investigation that’s desperate to get a fix.
Krzysztof Kieslowski: The king of the close up. The polish screenwriter and director began his career in documentaries, capturing the eerie atmosphere of derelict concentration camps in the 1960s. His move into film was literally stunning; as the writer / director pushed the capabilities of his camera to capture the smallest moments in every day life to breath taking effect.