I am not going to attempt to review every DVD I watch, but this is something special.Queen of Spades is another all but lost British film that has recently been released. It is an adaptation of a Pushkin short story filmed by Thorold Dickinson in 1948.
Early 19th century St Petersburg was recreated in a cramped studio in Welwyn Garden City, giving the film a theatrical feel. Not because the acting is stagy - it isn't - but because it has a romantic, expressionist look.
As Peter Bradshaw said in the Guardian:
Dickinson's film is full of shadows and mirror reflections: a self-doubting, self-lacerating world in which the horror of eternal damnation is counter-balanced by the thrill of instant riches. An exotic, fascinating film.
1948 may have been the best ever year for filums, I think Casablanca and a few other great ones date from the year the welkin rang to announce my brith.
ReplyDeleteSo are you lending it out, then?
(Oh . . shhh . . but Labour won a By-election in Blackburn, I know you take an interest . . .)
I think it was a gain, and, as the Lib-Dems were second, they may have lost it, if they held it.
ReplyDeleteBut anyway you might like to look into that.
Thorold Dickinson was featured on Radio 4's Film Programme not so long ago, as one of the great lost talents of the British film industry.
ReplyDelete