Alexander Mackendrick and Sweet Smell of Success

At Ealing Studios, Alexander Mackendrick directed one masterpiece, The Ladykillers, and four more of the best films made there: Whisky Galore!, The Man in the White Suit, Mandy and The 'Maggie'.

When Ealing folded he went to Hollywood, where his first film was the noir Sweet Smell of Success. Though it failed in America on its release in 1957, it is now recognised as another masterpiece and is the subject of this superior video masterclass.

Mackendrick then suffered the indignity of being taken off two consecutive films and so did not complete another until 1963, when he made Sammy Going South for his old Ealing boss Michael Balcon.

Realising that he was no Hollywood hustler, Mackendrick turned, as you will see in the video, to academia. He became the founding dean of the film school at the California Institute of the Arts (now the CalArts School of Film/Video), giving up that position in 1978 to become a professor there.

A collection of his hand outs and lectures was published as On Film-Making: An Introduction to the Craft of the Director in 2005, with an introduction by Martin Scorsese.

When I mentioned another Ealing film, Hue and Cry, in a piece for Lion & Unicorn, I suggested that it "feels more Roberto Rosselini than Ealing." What I didn't know when I wrote that was that the wartime British official who gave Rosselini permission to shoot Rome, Open City was Alexander Mackendrick.

Strange Phenomena: The Films of Dario Argento

The British Film Institute's blurb onYouTube says:

In this video essay to coincide with our retrospective of Argento's work, season programmer Michael Blyth explores three characteristics which make his films so distinctive – his dynamic and impressionistic use of colour, his complex approach to gender and sexuality, and the surrealist logic of his narratives.

Scott Walker: Farmer in the City (Remembering Pasolini)

The fiftieth anniversary of Pier Paolo Pasolini's death put me in mind of this wonderful track from Scott Walker's album Tilt.

In a Guardian article last Saturday, Olivia Laing argued that Pasolini's warnings of corruption and rising totalitarianism offer a chilling message for our times.

Hitler and Mussolini both claimed to have killed Nessie

The Loch Ness monster became a popular newspaper story in the 1930s. The result of this was that, in an attempt to undermine British morale, both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy claimed to have killed Nessie.

The Aberdeen Press and Journal reported in December 1940 on Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' 'Monster Fairy Tale', saying: "It is reported from Glasgow, via Stockholm, that the Loch Ness monster has struck a mine, and its body has been found washed ashore in pieces on the west of Scotland." 

Perhaps unsatisfied with the lack of reaction from that news, a The World's News article published in 1941 reported that Italian newspaper Popolo d'ltalia claimed an Italian pilot had "bombed and destroyed a huge, serpent-like animal on the surface of Loch Ness". 

The illustration above shows Ruttie, the Rutland Water Monster. Lord Bonkers tells me she was wounded in an encounter with a U-boat, but made a full recovery.

Risotto rice under threat from flamingoes in north-eastern Italy

Despite the judges raising a collective eyebrow at the newspaper's choice of plural for "flamingo", our Headline of the Day Award goes to the Guardian.

Later. The judges are not without influence. 

Adriano Celentano: Prisencolinensinainciusol

Yes, it's the song from the Birrificio Angelo Poretti cinema commercial, and I notice that EasyJet have started to use if on their online advertising too.

It sounds great, but if you try listening to the words you find they're gibberish. What's going on?

An old New Yorker article describes Celentano (who is still with us at the age of 87) as "a sort of Italian Jim Carrey, a comic actor with a knack for the physical and goofy". 

He is also a singer, and  Prisencolinensinainciusol was intended to convey how the American English of the rock music he loved sounded to people whose first language isn't English. He also claimed a deeper purpose for it as a song about the importance of communication

Novelty records tend not to last, but what has kept this one alive is its music.

As a National Public Radio article explains, Celentano improvised the lyrics over a looped beat:

The song has been characterized as everything from Euro-pop, funk, house and even the world's first rap song — none of which were Celentano's intention.

"From what I know, 10 years later, rap music exploded in the States," he says. "I sang it with an angry tone because the theme was important. It was an anger born out of resignation. I brought to light the fact that people don't communicate."

But is that really what American English sounds like?

"Yes," he says. "Exactly like that."

Also on the record is Rafaella Carra, who in 1978 had an early Europop hit in Britain with Do It, Do It Again.

Foxes on a speedboat: Birrificio Angelo Poretti's Welcome to the Lake cinema commercial

I enjoyed The Phoenician Scheme, but maybe the highlight of the afternoon was this commercial for Birrificio Angelo Poretti.

Don't think you'll be getting a taste of the real Italy though: it's brewed by Carlsberg in Northampton.

Three False Convictions, Many Lessons: The Psychopathology of Unjust Prosecutions by David C. Anderson and Nigel P. Scott

Another book review I wrote for the Conference issue of Liberator (Liberator 425), which you can download free of charge from the magazine's website.

Three False Convictions, Many Lessons: The Psychopathology of Unjust Prosecutions

David C. Anderson and Nigel P. Scott

Waterside Press, £22.50

The possibility of false conviction is routinely deployed as an argument against the death penalty, but otherwise does not concern us as much as it should. Anderson and Scott look at three high-profile cases, those of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (Italy), Stefan Kiszko (UK) and Darlie Routier (USA), and trace the factors they have in common.

The authors emphasise the roles of psychopathology, confirmation bias, false confessions, the media and the internet as causes of unjust accusations. Putting a lack of empathy among police officers, prosecutors and others to the fore, it considers a wide range of other psychopathological aspects of miscarriages of justice.

They write: “The law is too important to be left to lawyers, judges, Prosecutors and police if we are not ultimately to sink to the levels described by Franz Kafka in the trial there the victim Joseph K discovers at first hand just what can happen when lawyers decide that their role is to earn a living at the expense of the accused and where things cannot be questioned.”

Darlie Routier is still on Death Row in Texas despite overwhelming evidence that her conviction for killing her own child is false, whilst Knox, Sollecito and Kiszko have been vindicated by the highest judicial authorities and telling evidence. The authors show how and why unfounded rumours still persist in the case of Knox and Sollecito and advances the theory that the Routier killings were the work of a notorious serial killer.

Jonathan Calder

The Joy of Six 1234

Pragna Patel argues that the establishment of Britain's first Sikh court threatens women's rights: "The use of religious laws to regulate minority women’s lives is not only discriminatory, it is immensely harmful in a context where domestic abuse and related femicides of South Asian and other minority women remain persistently high."

"People didn’t really care about the immorality. Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown discovered this when news of his adulterous affair was published under the headline "Paddy Pantsdown" ("dreadful, but brilliant," he acknowledged), and he enjoyed an opinion-poll bounce." Alwyn Turner looks back to the Nineties - "Britain's golden age of sleaze" - which seem strangely innocent today.

David Ward says it's time to regulate NHS Trust managers, because they act as "judge, jury and executioner" when whistleblowers raise patient safety issues.

"It suited almost everyone after Mussolini’s fall from power in 1943 to blame him personally for the disasters of the war, and to argue that most Italians had always been anti-fascist. The ‘bad Germans’ had forced the ‘good Italians’ into the war. They had been responsible for the massacres of civilians, not the Italians. They had persecuted and killed Jews, while the Italians had tried to save them." John Foot questions the 'bad Germans/good Italians' narrative that grew up around Italy's involvement in the second world war.

"After clearing the rubbish away, Natalie started with a few potted plants before turning her attention to the rest of the ginnel. With the help of another neighbour, Emily, they were able to secure a £1500 Neighbourhood Investment Fund from Manchester City Council. Most of the money went towards getting hanging baskets and hiring a joiner to make the planters. Natalie tells me that the ginnel had helped sell a house last year, over in the next street. An estate agent took a photograph and included it with the property." Dani Cole explores the beautiful, ingenious ginnels of Levenshulme.

Bob Fischer and Vic Pratt review the latest DVD collection of Children's Film Foundation treasures: "I watched Circus Friends, from 1956, and I knew I’d seen the young girl lead somewhere before, but I just couldn’t place her. It was only when the end credits rolled that I realised it was Carol White, from Poor Cow!"