Cin­e­mat­ic Swan Songs: S‑Z

John Schlesinger will per­haps be remem­bered as the guy who brought gay/​camp iconog­ra­phy to main­stream Hol­ly­wood in his Oscar-haul­ing Mid­night Cow­boy from 1969. So it seems strange that he would check-out with this tin eared, fam­i­ly-friend­ly take on mod­ern met­ro­sex­u­al cou­pling. Madon­na stars as a yoga instruc­tor who can’t find Mr Right, even though she’s told on numer­ous occa­sions how pret­ty she is. Luck­i­ly, her gay best friend, played by Rupert Everett, is on hand to dress up, quaff Mar­ti­nis and acci­den­tal­ly impreg­nate her.

What should’ve been a pro­gres­sive film about sex­u­al­i­ty and par­ent­ing – a decade before the beloved likes of Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right – turns into a mawk­ish and con­fused trawl through rela­tion­ship woes in which the char­ac­ters all come across as self-serv­ing, pet­ty imbe­ciles. Since his light­ly rad­i­cal for­ma­tive years, Schlesinger made a pro­nounced move to more con­ven­tion­al fare dur­ing the final 25 years of his career, so this film which Robert Ebert evoca­tive­ly described as being as ​“tired as a junk­yard horse” sim­ply stayed the course. David Jenk­ins

Over his career’s last decade, high­brow con­trar­i­an crit­ics recast Tony Scott’s style as avant-garde. They said his image edit­ing shat­tered point-of-view into a mil­lion lit­tle pieces. Déjà Vu, with its themes of trau­ma and voyeurism, gave Scott a chance to make his style seem per­son­al and pur­pose­ful rather than glibly aggres­sive. But the super­sat­u­rat­ed visu­al style and vio­lent mon­tage of Unstop­pable rev­els in chaos as much as the film’s glee­ful­ly engi­neered smash-ups.

A film with an enor­mous car­bon foot­print, Unstop­pable chas­es a run­away train through Penn­syl­va­nia, with news and res­cue and sec­ond-unit heli­copters along for the ride; its brand of pop­ulism is delight­ful­ly butch, as each character’s grace under pres­sure cor­re­lates with his body-fat per­cent­age. How can I put this? Tony Scott films con­stant­ly defied the grav­i­ty of death and Unstop­pable is the final chap­ter in that body of work. It’s the ulti­mate ​“escapism” – a def­i­n­i­tion giv­en deep­er shad­ings by Scott’s sub­se­quent sui­cide. Mark Asch

Under Azure skies, African vil­lage life plays out: bar­ter­ing with The Mer­ce­naire, bring­ing water bowls to guests, female gen­i­tal muti­la­tion on girls so small and spindly that, top­less, they could pass as boys. When four girls ask Collé for pro­tec­tion, she casts a spell of moolaadé that pre­vents the knife-wield­ing salin­dana from com­ing with­in slic­ing dis­tance. Direc­tor Ous­mane Sembèné also used a spell to ward off sex­ist prac­tice in his clas­sic Xala from 1975, about a man unable to per­form sex­u­al­ly. His oppres­sive char­ac­ters hide behind tra­di­tion, which runs in stark con­trast to the polit­i­cal­ly pro­gres­sive film­mak­er himself.

From his 1966 debut fea­ture Black Girl until this his ninth and final film, Sembèné was a free thinker, and he dig­ni­fied the plight of those sup­pressed due to race, gen­der, dis­abil­i­ty or pover­ty. His val­ues lurked beneath seem­ing­ly idyl­lic, colour­ful, detailed worlds that bus­tled with engross­ing char­ac­ters. Moolaadé is a fine swan song show­cas­ing every­thing that he did best. His rad­i­cal and sub­tle writ­ing is pack­aged with­in seem­ing­ly throw­away episodes which all car­ry cri­tiques so sharp that they still have to pow­er to draw blood. Sophie Monks Kaufman

“Who wants to see the ugli­ness of life?” Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­er Ross Hunter once said when reflect­ing on his career. ​“I gave the pub­lic what they want­ed – a chance to dream, to live vic­ar­i­ous­ly, to see beau­ti­ful women, jew­els, gor­geous clothes, melo­dra­ma.” Hunter was a per­fect foil for Dou­glas Sirk, who could deliv­er all of the ele­gance that his pro­duc­er demand­ed but who also made films that sub­vert­ed and cri­tiqued such opu­lence, adding some grit to the glam­our. Sirk’s last film was Imi­ta­tion of Life, which is arguably his most damn­ing indict­ment of Amer­i­can val­ues, depict­ing a self­ish and prej­u­diced soci­ety in which peo­ple are obsessed with surfaces.

While the film was con­ceived as a star vehi­cle for Lana Turn­er – seek­ing reha­bil­i­ta­tion after the vio­lent end to her rela­tion­ship with John­ny Stom­pana­to – the real dra­ma exists in the rela­tion­ship between two sup­port­ing char­ac­ters, black maid Annie (Juani­ta Moore) and her light-skinned daugh­ter Sarah Jane (Susan Kohn­er). Pur­su­ing a life that is off-lim­its to her, Sarah Jane pass­es as white and rejects her own moth­er, mak­ing this one of the most poignant and inci­sive stud­ies of race ever made by a major Hol­ly­wood studio.

Sirk was only in his ear­ly 60s when Imi­ta­tion of Life was released but he had long decid­ed that this would be his last film. Health con­cerns were a fac­tor, but he also seemed aware that the era of the ​‘women’s pic­ture’ was com­ing to an end, and indeed the rise of soap operas on tele­vi­sion soon spelled the end for fea­tures like this. Sirk knew his time was up, and judg­ing by his sub­se­quent out­put, Ross Hunter prob­a­bly should have called it a day with this film too. Phil Con­can­non

Josef von Stern­berg is known as some­thing of an atten­tion seek­er, espe­cial­ly with regard to Mar­lene Diet­rich. Dietrich’s star pow­er is so great and Sternberg’s scene-build­ing is so visu­al­ly com­plex that his inno­va­tions with sound are often over­looked. For that rea­son, Anata­han, based on a true sto­ry of a Japan­ese pla­toon strand­ed on the epony­mous vol­canic island with a sin­gle woman for sev­en years dur­ing and after World War Two, is rarely men­tioned among his most impor­tant works.

Stern­berg shoots Ake­mi Negishi with­out the infat­u­a­tion and wor­ship with which he shot Diet­rich, and his paper and alu­mini­um sets take on a par­o­d­ic tone as the ​‘Queen Bee’ con­tin­ues to cause the men, inten­tion­al­ly or not, to grad­u­al­ly pick one anoth­er off. Arti­fice and sounds, how­ev­er, are key motifs, lost in the storm of the inten­tion­al but den­i­grat­ed cook­ie-cut­ter images. The nar­ra­tion that speaks for and about the char­ac­ters, forces a dis­tance that the close-ups of Dietrich’s legs nev­er allowed for. Sev­er­al films and decades of doing one thing bril­liant­ly bred expec­ta­tions, but Stern­berg deserves cred­it for invert­ing his style to recast his stance on male pas­sion and a woman’s pow­er. For­rest Cardamenis

Sei­jun Suzuki’s films are unin­tel­li­gi­ble on a plot and, indeed, a shot-by-shot lev­el. Basic con­ti­nu­ity is scrapped as fig­ures pose against gar­ish Pop back­grounds in sequences of mod­ernist com­po­si­tions seem­ing­ly cut to Ornette Cole­man tracks. Against such anar­chy, there can be no dif­fi­dence: all atti­tudes are obses­sive, all desires ele­men­tal. Princess Rac­coon is, then, the per­fect Suzu­ki love story.

Adapt­ed from a Japan­ese folk tale, the object of affec­tion is a shape-shift­ing ani­mal spir­it. The film is a musi­cal, made up of all-hands-on-deck song-and-dance num­bers and inti­mate pas de deux – when not digress­ing into zany low­brow com­e­dy, or mar­tial arts, which unfold across sound­stage kabu­ki sets, nat­ur­al exte­ri­ors and green-screen scenic paint­ings. Most unmis­tak­ably, it’s a pas­sion­ate, exu­ber­ant work. Now 92, the direc­tor has made it clear that the film is his career’s cel­e­bra­to­ry excla­ma­tion point. MA

They called him ​“Wild Bill” Well­man for good rea­son. Expelled from his Mass­a­chu­setts high school, he joined the French For­eign Legion dur­ing World War One and at 21 had signed up for the Lafayette Fly­ing Corps, rack­ing up three record­ed kills over the skies of Alsace Lor­raine before being shot down him­self. He lived to tell the tale, made it to Hol­ly­wood and direct­ed the first-ever Oscar-win­ner, 1927’s Wings, which still impress­es for its hair-rais­ing aer­i­al com­bat sequences. After career high­lights includ­ing the Jim­my Cagney gang­ster clas­sic The Pub­lic Ene­my and the orig­i­nal 1937 A Star is Born, he returned to World War One ter­ri­to­ry for what would be his last pic­ture, 1958’s Lafayette Escadrille.

There’s a surge of gen­uine emo­tion ear­ly on when Well­man fol­lows the fate of those youth­ful Amer­i­can ide­al­ists who died in droves for the French cause. But else­where the film’s stymied by its low-rent cast and pen­ny-pinch­ing bud­get, with only a smidgin of fly­ing action and much turgid romance involv­ing dec­o­ra­tive yet wood­en co-stars Tab Hunter and Etchi­ka Chore­au. Not the great­est send-off then, yet the sin­cer­i­ty of Well­man offer­ing trib­ute to the sac­ri­fices of his own great gen­er­a­tion clear­ly stands for some­thing. Trevor John­ston

There is a rare type of film that, when you watch it, you can actu­al­ly sense that it’s some sort of part­ing ges­ture. Dur­ing its three-hour run­ning time, Edward Yang’s human­is­tic mas­ter­piece Yi Yi (or, as it was known in the UK, A One And A Two…) feels like the dis­til­la­tion of gen­er­a­tions of accrued wis­dom, a poet­ic col­lec­tion of obser­va­tions on the strug­gles and beau­ty of life in urban Taipei. With its mul­ti-char­ac­ter ensem­ble and an enquir­ing point-of-view that feels like a dis­tinct pres­ence watch­ing over the actions, the film is anchored by the malaise-struck mid­dle-class busi­ness­man, NJ, his teenage daugh­ter Ting-Ting, and most mov­ing­ly, by her kid broth­er Yang-Yang, as they all nav­i­gate tricky dai­ly ter­rain at dif­fer­ent stages of life.

Yang gen­er­ous­ly presents each character’s per­spec­tive on its own terms over the course of a sin­gle year, begin­ning with a wed­ding and end­ing with a funer­al. Yang did not know this would be his final film – it was sev­en years lat­er that he lost a bat­tle with can­cer at the age of 59. This huge loss for cin­e­ma is made a lit­tle eas­i­er to bear thanks to the exis­tence of this film, which has the pow­er to teach, con­sole, inspire, and even engage with life anew with its com­pas­sion­ate yet mea­sured take on the human expe­ri­ence. Adam Cook

Cin­e­mat­ic Swan Songs: A‑F | G‑L | M‑R