Keen film-goers anxious to see the London Film Festival’s new movies, which may but often don’t reach commercial screens, should not forget the excellent programme of historic restorations dotted about the programme.
They represent the terrific work now being done all over the world to preserve our cinematic heritage with modern digital technology.
This year’s programme (October 9-20) is one of the strongest yet. It includes Orson Welles’s 1947 film The Lady from Shanghai, Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et La Bête from the previous year, Nicholas Ray’s The Lusty Men from the early Fifties and two British classics — Thorold Dickinson’s Gaslight and Basil Dearden’s Victim, a brave exposé of Britain’s repressive homosexual laws in the early Sixties.
Gaslight, one of Dickinson’s best films, was bought by MGM and then suppressed in favour of their own not so great Ingrid Bergman version. Fortunately, Dickinson had made a secret print and it was eventually donated to the BFI.
These are the more obvious choices. But several films that have not been seen for years have now been restored by the World Cinema Foundation.
One of them is Filipino director Lino Brocka’s Manila in the Claws of Light, one of the finest films from South-East Asia I have ever seen.
The restoration was from original negatives deposited in our National Film Archive, so we can be proud of the re-emergence of this masterpiece about the lower depths of society during the dictatorship of General Ferdinand Marcos.
Brocka, who died in a road accident aged 52, was not above doing soft porn in order to find enough money to produce his serious films. Manila, however, is one of his most riveting.
Another extraordinary restoration is Uday Shankar’s Indian epic, Kalpana. Shankar, the oldest brother of sitar legend Ravi Shankar, was one of the central figures of Indian dance and his film, in which he stars with his wife, is amazing for its time (1948) and makes most of Bollywood look decidedly tame.
To see these films again will be more than a pleasure. They might even suggest to some that there is quite a lot missing from new movies today.
The 57th BFI London Film Festival, in partnership with American Express, runs from October 9-20 (020 7928 3232, whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/treasures).
