Monthly Archives: April 2024

Film, TV, and Theatre

Phil Cornwell and John Sessions in Stella Street (1997)

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A British TV com­e­dy series that per­haps fell under the radar a lit­tle bit (you can actu­al­ly find peo­ple who nev­er saw or heard of it), Stel­la Street was nonethe­less a great find when it began air­ing in 1997 and con­tin­ued over four series to 2001. Its some­what bizarre premise is that an ordi­nary street in sub­ur­ban Sur­biton is peo­pled by a group of big­time celebri­ties going about their lives in ordi­nary, sub­ur­ban fash­ion, but adher­ing to some well-known and exag­ger­at­ed stereo­types per­tain­ing to said celebs.

The show was con­ceived and writ­ten by John Ses­sions, Phil Corn­well and Peter Richard­son, with the main char­ac­ters played by Ses­sions and Corn­well (and Ron­ni Ancona for some episodes). The celebri­ties cho­sen to live in Stel­la Street were pre­sum­ably influ­enced by the per­form­ers’ abil­i­ty to do great impres­sions of them and whose per­sonas lent them­selves to some great send-up com­e­dy. The pro­gramme takes the form of a mock­u­men­tary with film­ing done on a hand­held cam­era and Corn­well as Michael Caine talk­ing direct­ly to the cam­era to intro­duce char­ac­ters and sit­u­a­tions (just as he does in the 1966 film Alfie).

Jack Nichol­son is por­trayed as the invet­er­ate wom­an­is­ing bad-ass of his stereo­type (or his real per­son­al­i­ty?) com­plete with bad taste Hawai­ian shirts not exact­ly suit­ed to the British cli­mate. Michael Caine is full-on Six­ties’ Michael Caine with the trade­mark lacon­ic vocal deliv­ery, shock of gin­ger hair and horn-rimmed glass­es. Roger Moore is the quin­tes­sen­tial Eng­lish gen­tle­man with impec­ca­ble man­ners, and with a lone­li­ness theme ruth­less­ly exploit­ed by Ses­sions. David Bowie is the self-effac­ing and slight­ly awk­ward super­star stay­ing true to his Brom­ley roots. Mick Jag­ger and Kei­th Richards run the local gro­cery store, Mick with mas­sive enthu­si­asm, Kei­th with time-worn, dev­il-may-care cyn­i­cism and a gleam in his eye.

Let’s enjoy a mon­tage of Corn­well and Ses­sions bring­ing these char­ac­ters to life: the may­hem of Mick and Keef’s cor­ner shop, and then a glo­ri­ous vignette of David Bowie and Roger Moore exchang­ing spec­tac­u­lar­ly mun­dane Christ­mas presents (with Roger Moore tak­ing polite­ness to the next lev­el when gift­ed an under­whelm­ing £10 book token).

Mick and Keef
Film, TV, and Theatre

Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927)

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A few months ago I went to a screen­ing of the 1920 silent hor­ror film The Cab­i­net of Dr Cali­gari at local venue the Old Woollen in Fars­ley. The film is a quin­tes­sen­tial piece of Ger­man Expres­sion­ist cin­e­ma from over a cen­tu­ry ago and a fas­ci­nat­ing insight into cel­lu­loid cre­ativ­i­ty dur­ing the era of the Weimar Repub­lic. As fun as it is, with its sto­ry of a mad hyp­no­tist induc­ing a brain­washed som­nam­bu­list to com­mit mur­ders, I want­ed to look at an even more quin­tes­sen­tial movie from the era, one that most peo­ple have come across at some point, the great 1927 sci­ence-fic­tion mas­ter­piece, Metrop­o­lis, direct­ed by Fritz Lang (1890–1976).

Lang has been cit­ed as one of the most influ­en­tial of film­mak­ers of all time, and he is cred­it­ed with pio­neer­ing both the sci-fi genre (Metrop­o­lis, Woman in the Moon) and film noir (M). He didn’t shy away from pro­duc­ing epi­cal­ly long films, either, like the 4.5 hour Dr Mabuse the Gam­bler or the two-part Die Nibelun­gen based on the epic poem Nibelun­gen­lied, but the one film that cap­tures the zeit­geist of the auteur’s work is undoubt­ed­ly Metrop­o­lis.

It was writ­ten in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lang’s wife Thea von Har­bou and based on her 1925 nov­el of the same name. Metrop­o­lis is set in a futur­is­tic urban dystopia pre­fig­ur­ing Blade Run­ner and bring­ing to mind themes from Orwell and indeed Mary Shel­ley with its own Frankenstein’s mon­ster in the form of the sci­en­tist Rot­wang’s icon­ic robot the Maschi­nen­men­sch.

Mean­while, the film’s aes­thet­ics, with Goth­ic touch­es, draw heav­i­ly from the Bauhaus, Cubist and Futur­ist design move­ments of the time. We see a world of colos­sal sky­scrap­ers from which a wealthy elite lords it over the down-trod­den mass­es of the under­ground who toil in abject con­di­tions to keep the machines of the soci­ety run­ning.

One day a mem­ber of this elite, one Fred­er Fred­er­sen (Gus­tav Fröh­lich), has an epiphany when pre­sent­ed with what life is like for the poor, by the saint­ly Maria (Brigitte Helm, who also plays the Maschi­nen­men­sch), and the two con­spire to change the soci­ety and bring about social jus­tice. As such, it can be con­strued as a rather sim­plis­tic moral­i­ty tale, but there’s no sim­plic­i­ty in the styl­i­sa­tion and bril­liant tech­ni­cal effects, which serve to cre­ate a remark­able world, both visu­al­ly beau­ti­ful and pow­er­ful. Enjoy the the­atri­cal trail­er, below, with an excel­lent sound­track by Got­tfried Hup­pertz.

Fritz Lang