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hawkwing_lbTonight I watched two films, and was sufficiently not-exhausted to enjoy them both. The first was HMS Defiant (1962) a film set in 1797 and notable for a decent amount of ship-based claustrophobia, tight plotting, Alec Guinness and Dirk Bogarde. Also, we get some ladies at the very beginning to assure the audience that all this intense homosociality is not, y'know, sodomitical. Filmed in a time when sets were cheap and extras cheaper, it has some nice tallship scenes and quite a bit of flogging.
I like tallships. I also like Alec Guinness. And good dialogue.
The other film was Les femmes de l'ombre, which interested me rather more. The English release is known as Female Agents, which is a much less striking title than The Women of Shadow. Starring Sophie Marceau, Julie Depardieu, Marie Gillain, Déborah François, Moritz Bleibtrau, Maya Sansa, and Julien Boisselier, it is the story of a group of women recruited by the SOE and sent in to France to rescue an English agent and assassinate a German SS colonel.
Salomé allegedly took his inspiration in part from the life of Lise de Baissac. The film itself is afflicted by several dozen things which make no sense for history but make rather a lot of sense in the compressed time/space of a film - although it relies on coincidence a little too much on one particular occasion. It is visually striking, although there are one or two shots that lend themselves to confusion/over-emphasis - the director has reached for the most striking, most iconic image, and reached a bit too far. At times it sways towards hackneyed emotional beats, but on the whole it resists them in favour of something much more raw.
(I'd love to see what someone with more critical chops in cinema made of it.)
It is not a perfect film, and its has a lot to do on a moderate budget. (Including some understated but nasty torture scenes.) But it is a damn good one, and I recommend it wholeheartedly - especially to anyone who read and enjoyed Code Name Verity and/or Rose Under Fire.
I like tallships. I also like Alec Guinness. And good dialogue.
The other film was Les femmes de l'ombre, which interested me rather more. The English release is known as Female Agents, which is a much less striking title than The Women of Shadow. Starring Sophie Marceau, Julie Depardieu, Marie Gillain, Déborah François, Moritz Bleibtrau, Maya Sansa, and Julien Boisselier, it is the story of a group of women recruited by the SOE and sent in to France to rescue an English agent and assassinate a German SS colonel.
Salomé allegedly took his inspiration in part from the life of Lise de Baissac. The film itself is afflicted by several dozen things which make no sense for history but make rather a lot of sense in the compressed time/space of a film - although it relies on coincidence a little too much on one particular occasion. It is visually striking, although there are one or two shots that lend themselves to confusion/over-emphasis - the director has reached for the most striking, most iconic image, and reached a bit too far. At times it sways towards hackneyed emotional beats, but on the whole it resists them in favour of something much more raw.
(I'd love to see what someone with more critical chops in cinema made of it.)
It is not a perfect film, and its has a lot to do on a moderate budget. (Including some understated but nasty torture scenes.) But it is a damn good one, and I recommend it wholeheartedly - especially to anyone who read and enjoyed Code Name Verity and/or Rose Under Fire.
