DVD/I50: PET SHOP BOYS: DISCOVERY - LIVE IN RIO 1994 (Roberto Berliner, 1994)

Finally released on DVD after 26 years, DISCOVERY finds Neil and Chris playing to an enthusiastic audience at the Metropolitan Stadium, Rio de Janeiro.  After the PERFORMANCE tour in 1991, their next one visited countries they had never played: Singapore, Australia, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Brazil. 

 

 

The Pets wanted a less structured production: gone is the avant-garde theatricality of PERFORMANCE and they delivered a 'straight' stadium rock show, selecting mostly upbeat songs, and instead of the previous tour's dance ensemble, here they are accompanied by four go-go dancers, and Katie Kissoon on backing vocals.

 

 

Unsurprisingly the previous year's VERY fills up most of the set list with songs from PLEASE, ACTUALLY, INTROSPECTIVE and BEHAVIOUR also featured.

 

Hidden interpolated covers really pop - ONE IN A MILLION morphes into Culture Beat's MR VAIN while Corona's RHYTHM OF THE NIGHT bursts out of LEFT TO MY OWN DEVICES!

Shelf or charity shop?  A shelfer - it's taken long enough to get here!  So happy this great show is finally available on DVD, after the dour PERFORMANCE it gives the Pets a chance to bring the party vibe helped by a loud and happy audience.  As well as the great covers already mentioned, there is a hugely effective combination of IT'S A SIN and I WILL SURVIVE.

DVD/150: SADIE McKEE (Clarence Brown, 1934)

MGM knew what Joan Crawford's fans wanted and SADIE McKEE is the quintessential 1930s Crawford vehicle.

Her persona changed from the silent era's Bright Young Thing to Depression Heroine, a working-class girl who achieves the man of her dreams and glamorous Adrian-designed gowns.

Sadie McKee is the daughter of a cook for a wealthy family, growing up with the family's son Michael  She overhears him denouncing her boyfriend Tommy who has been fired suspected of theft and, after denouncing him and his guests, Sadie impulsively elopes with Tommy to Manhattan.

Through cabaret performer Opal they find a room but the next day Sadie is left alone when Tommy takes a last-minute singing job touring with their sexy neighbour Dolly.

Sadie becomes a dancer where Opal works, and there meets the affectionate but alcholic millionaire Jack Brennan and his lawyer... Michael.

To spite Michael, Sadie unhappily marries Brennan...

Shelf or charity shop?  SADIE McKEE is a keeper.  Directed by one of her favourites Clarence Brown, Joan acts with a steely determination as if, despite the plot contrivences, you WILL believe the storyline.  Needless to say, Adrian's costumes are glorious. Crawford's then-lover Franchot Tone knows his place and Edward Arnold makes the most of the sozzled Brennan. The supporting cast is peppered with cracking performances: Jean Dixon as big-hearted but cynical Opal, Esther Ralston as the singer Dolly, Leo G Carroll as Brennan's disapproving butler, Zelda Sears as the salty boarding-house owner, Akim Tamiroff as the excitable cabaret manager and Candy Candido as a manic double-bass player!  It was a delight to spot - in one scene with no dialogue but plenty of sour facial expressions - Ethel Griffies, best remembered as the sceptical ornithologist in Hitchcock's THE BIRDS.  Sadly Gene Raymond's performance as Tommy hasn't dated well, acting with the eye-wobbling woodeness of a ventriloquist dummy.  Oh and if you like are the song ALL I DO IS DREAM OF YOU this is the film it was composed for and it is repeated endlessly!

DVD/150: TAGEBUCH EINER VERLORENEN (DIARY OF A LOST GIRL) (GW Pabst, 1929)

Months after the notorious PANDORA'S BOX was released, Pabst and his American star Louise Brooks started their second and last film TAGEBUCH EINER VERLORENEN, based on a 1905 bestselling novel which had already been filmed.

The plot is pure melodrama but what keeps you watching is the vivid natural magnetism of Louise Brooks as Thymian.

On her Confirmation day Thymian's world crashes down: her housekeeper commits suicide after Thymian's pharmacist father rejects her and later that night Thymian is raped by her father's letcherous assistant, and has a baby.

Refusing to marry her rapist, Thymian's hypocritical family have the baby taken away and she is sent to a reformatory for fallen girls.  

The girls are subjected to a regimented, joyless existance under the lesbian matron and her creepy assistant.  She manages to escape with her friend Erika.  After discovering her baby is dead, Thymian arrives at Erika's address... a brothel.

Shelf or charity shop?  Put-upon Thymian can abide in my plastic DVD storage box.  The film was ignored by critics and audiences, certainly not helped by the censors cutting it before the release. Despite Pabst suggesting she remain in Europe, Brooks, always strong-minded, returned to America but discovered Hollywood had, in essence, blacklisted for her troublesome reputation.  By 1938 her career was over and she dwindled into depression, drink, and prostitution.  French critics rediscovered her in the 1950s - Cinemateque Francaise co-founder Henri Langlois declared "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich: there is only Louise Brooks!" and by her death in 1985 she had become an icon.  Pabst also cast vivid actors who deliver strong unlikeable characters: Fritz Rasp as the rapist, Sig Arno as an eccentric bearded brothel client, and it is sad to see the large Jewish actor Kurt Gerron as Dr Vitalis; he settled in Amsterdam in 1933 but was arrested by the Nazis and died in Auschwitz. Apart from Brooks, the most memorable performance is from Valeska Gert who Pabst directed several times: more famous as a modern dancer and experimental cabaret performer, she delivers an astonishing performance as the sadistic lesbian matron, pure theatrical grotequerie opposite Louise Brooks' modern stillness.

DVD/150: BAKUSHU (Early Summer, Yasujiro Ozu, 1951)

The second of Ozu's 'Noriko' trilogy explores the tensions within a seemingly happy family as they interfere in the life of the 28 year-old daughter.

Three generations of the Mamiya family live together in Kanagawa: parents Shukichi and Shige, son Koichi, his wife Fumiko and their two demanding boys, and unmarried Noriko, who works as a secretary in Tokyo.

A visiting uncle chides Noriko about being unmarried at the same time as her boss insists she keep some photos of his unmarried golf partner who is an older business man.  Soon everyone in Noriko's orbit, including her unmarried best friend Aya, has an opinion about when she marries.

Noriko had another brother who remains missing-presumed-killed in WWII and when a schoolfriend of his announces he is leaving the area to work in the rural north of Japan, Noriko makes a decision which shocks everyone.

Shelf or charity shop?  A keeper as it's one of Ozu's most deceptive films: the film starts almost like a gentle comedy of manners as the Mamiya family en masse decide that Noriko needs a husband but when the shadow of the War dead appears, the film becomes more sombre as the whole family realize that Noriko's marriage will end their cosy life.  Setsuko Hara is marvellous as Noriko, who suddenly finds herself subjected to everyone's prying into her life; when she finally breaks towards the end, it is heartbreaking.  She is surrounded by excellent performances from the Ozu repertory company: my favourite, Chishu Ryu, plays against type as the authoritarian older brother Koichi, Ichiro Sugai and Chieko Higashiyama are fine as the parents - a role Chieko would perfect two years later in TOKYO STORY - as are Chikage Awashima as Noriko's friend Aya and Haruko Sugimura as the neighbour whose son becomes Noriko's surprise husband.  It should also be mentioned that Ozu draws out of his two child actors cheeky and fun performances.  

As always, arigato Ozu-san.

DVD/150: DUSTY SPRINGFIELD: ONCE UPON A TIME 1964-1969 (David Peck 2009)

Reelin' In The Years, who produced definitive Motown retrospective dvds also produced some on the British Pop Invasion of America post-Beatles and one of these was on the incomparable Dusty Springfield.

By focussing on the 1960s when Dusty had 5 US Top 20 hits (13 in the UK) it avoids the 1970s career slump, ironically when she moved to America.

Interspersing TV interviews with Dusty alongside new ones with Burt Bacharach and Dusty's backing singers Madeline Bell (in the 1960s) and Simon Bell (from the '70s and '80s), a sympathetic portrait emerges of an artist both of her time but before it: refusing to play segregated gigs in South Africa in 1964 and her uncredited production of some of her records.

It is interesting to contrast mimed performances - where passionate recorded vocals are almost sent-up by embarrased shimmying - and live performances where she is totally in the moment.

Shelf or charity shop?  Dusty will be singing from the shelf for a long while.  David Peck has produced another fine overview of my favourite British female singer with all her iconic 1960s anthems.  A weird by-product was marvelling at the bizarre background objects the TV set designers chose to surround her with - you wonder what happened to these peculiarly-shaped objects after the show.  I am happy to report many appearances of the Dusty wrist *flick*!