French windows on world cinema
The great film critic Philip French, whose columns have been the best reason for buying The Observer for the last thirty years, was honoured with a Life Membership award at BAFTA last night, only the fifty-eighth such award in BAFTA’s history, and the only critical recipient since Dilys Powell.
Friends and colleagues thronged the reception in Piccadilly — Michael Frayn and Claire Tomalin, Hugh Hudson, Fenella Fielding, Anthony Howard, Gillian Reynolds, Christopher Frayling, John Gross and a multitude of critics both major and minor — and Philip conducted a fascinating one-way two-hour conversation with David Puttnam on the stage.
The chat was punctuated with a Desert Island Clips of ten key French movies: The Four Feathers, The Servant, Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le Fou, The Quiet Man, High Noon, Singin’ in the Rain, Bad Day at Black Rock, Kind Hearts and Coronets, one of Satyajit Ray’s masterpieces and Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake.
When asked if he had ever wanted to make a film, French replied magnificently: “”I couldn’t make a film as good as one I would want to see,” adding that he’d rather see five films in a week than make one film every five years.
And asked who were the top film makers for our time, he listed Almodovar in Spain, Paul Thomas Anderson in America and “the astonishing talent” of Christopher Nolan. He was waiting for great new work to come out of Africa and predicted a strong revival of the Indian independent cinema.
In Britain, he hailed Shane Meadows and Lynne Ramsay and welcomed Martin McDonagh from the theatre. As an aside, he said that, with Atonement, Joe Wright was not exactly David Lean but “he could move in that direction.”
In his BBC days, French produced first The Critics and later Critics’ Forum on the radio, conjuring a forgotten age with the reminder of how much everyone smoked, even on air: there was a candle in the middle of the table so that critics could light their fags without creating extraneous studio sound by striking matches or clicking their lighters.
Critics had to address each other by their full names: “I beg to differ with Marghanita Laski” or “I agree with Al Alvarez” became almost catchphrases, and I made my own small contribution to this when, in discussing an obscure film about the religious colonisation of New Zealand by a bunch of zealots, I declared that I could not share the missionary position of J W Lambert.
On Singin’ in the Rain, Puttnam said that he worshipped Gene Kelly, while Philip merely “adored” Debbie Reynolds.
Everything Philip says about movies is touched with a view of the world, and a profound knowledge of literature and the other arts; he was a superb theatre critic for a time on the New Statesman, and not many of his colleagues would now remark on the Brechtianism of the studio scenes in Singin’ in the Rain, or make a connection between the Nouvelle Vague and the B-movie merchant Sam Fuller with a quotation of Jorge Luis Borges to the effect that artists create their own predecessors.
People who remember Telly Savalas in Kojak will appreciate the witty description of unembarrassed baldie French at the BBC by Jonathan Miller as “Radio Savalas.” Above all, Philip’s utter joy in the movies came across like a Niagara of informed enthusiasm. As always, it was hard to tell whether he thought faster than he spoke or vice versa. Either way, it was a marvellous evening.
