Cin­e­mat­ic Swan Songs: A‑F

We take for grant­ed that when we wake up of a morn­ing, art will be there for us to con­sume. And that our favourite artists will be there, ready and will­ing, to serve this unquench­able desire. But time is a cru­el mis­tress, and just as, say, a film direc­tor has to make a first movie, he or she will also have to make a final movie.

Our lat­est cov­er film, Pao­lo Sorrentino’s Youth, is about a retired con­duc­tor (played by Michael Caine) who is look­ing back over his life and work­ing out which loose ends need tying, and which can remain for­ev­er frayed. With that in mind, we’ve decid­ed to take 50 exam­ples of cin­e­mat­ic swan songs and explore them indi­vid­u­al­ly in search of com­mon themes and threads.

On occa­sion, a direc­tor will accept their mor­tal­i­ty, cre­at­ing a work that trans­lates into a grand state­ment on a life lived and a cor­pus com­plet­ed. Oth­er times, we see reli­able film­mak­ers who treat cre­at­ing art as a job – a way to pay the bills – and they con­tin­ued to car­ry this out until they found them­selves stiff in a box. There are also exam­ples where tragedy inter­venes to stop a great artist in their tracks, mak­ing what some may have seen as an excit­ing new direc­tion into a unpre­dict­ed excla­ma­tion of finality.

It seems sad to have to kick things off by writ­ing about Chan­tal Akerman’s No Home Movie, not least because its swan song sta­tus was cal­ci­fied so recent­ly and so abrupt­ly. The film was booed at its press screen­ing at the 2015 Locarno Film Fes­ti­val, and oppor­tunist hacks lat­er crass­ly spec­u­lat­ed that this had a direct link to the director’s sui­cide two months lat­er. Had those same hacks actu­al­ly watched the film, they would’ve seen an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly mov­ing and unguard­ed por­trait of lone­li­ness and exis­ten­tial bemuse­ment as Akerman’s beloved moth­er dete­ri­o­rates phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly in front of her hand-held camera.

As final movies go, this one seems arche­typ­al, draw­ing on her for­ma­tive clas­sics such as 1975’s por­trait of enforced domes­tic­i­ty, Jeanne Diel­man, 23, Quai du Com­merce, 1080 Brux­elles, and more direct­ly from 1977’s mag­nif­i­cent News from Home, whose nar­ra­tion com­prised of con­cerned let­ters from Akerman’s moth­er as the direc­tor plied her trade in New York City. The open­ing long shot of a frag­ile tree being blown to break­ing point by strong winds says it all. David Jenk­ins

Much like Alain Resnais’ Life of Riley, a film which appears to acknowl­edge that its mak­er knows his time is almost up, Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Com­pan­ion is a cav­al­cade of pure, down­home plea­sure, but with a seri­ous­ly bit­ter­sweet under­tow. The film offers a fic­tion­al chron­i­cle of Gar­ri­son Keillor’s famous, long-run­ning live radio broad­casts from which the film takes its title – a broad mix­ture of teatime com­ic high-jinx, gath­er-round-the-hearth anec­dotes, folk songs and mis­cel­la­neous merriment.

The show we’re watch­ing is actu­al­ly the final broad­cast, and the old the­atre in which it takes place is set for demo­li­tion the fol­low­ing morn. Con­ven­tion would have it that some scheme needs to be exe­cut­ed to save the build­ing and, by exten­sion, pre­serve this grand old Amer­i­can tra­di­tion, but no-one seems that fussed about let­ting it slip away in the name of mod­erni­sa­tion. Notable for a superb sup­port­ing turn by Lind­say Lohan, plus the patent­ed Alt­man dia­logue, which over­laps with itself like gen­tle waves as the tide flows out. DJ

Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni may not have known that The Dan­ger­ous Thread of Things, from the 2004 omnibus pic­ture Eros, would be his final work. It’s a take on those plot­less, ​“pre­ten­tious” films about aim­less rich peo­ple, and as a swan song, it fits the bill.

At 91, the Ital­ian titan was ren­dered inca­pable of speak­ing and part­ly paral­ysed by a stroke, but nev­er­the­less pro­duced this essen­tial­ly silent fea­turette, a woozy union of expe­ri­ence and per­cep­tion that asks us to devote no less atten­tion to a glass rolling across a restau­rant floor than it does two lovers whose quar­relling is the only osten­si­ble human sub­ject mat­ter. What’s more impor­tant is that we look, hear and feel every­thing pre­sent­ed to us. The bizarre inner log­ic of the film becomes clear in the clos­ing moments as near­ly iden­ti­cal nude women observe one anoth­er on an emp­ty beach – which may, all told, be the most pure­ly serene moment in the director’s entire oeu­vre. Nick New­man

You can’t keep a good man down, and hav­ing announced that 1982’s Fan­ny and Alexan­der would be his final film, Ing­mar Bergman came back for one last (gen­tle, obser­vant and metic­u­lous) roll of the dice. 2003’s Sara­band is an adden­dum to one of his great works – 1973’s Scenes from a Mar­riage. Yet instead of div­ing straight back in to the sharp rhetor­i­cal par­ry­ing of that film – in which Liv Ullmann’s Mar­i­anne and Erland Josephson’s Johan argue for the best part of five hours – the stir­ring Sara­band stages a reunion high­light­ing the hideous lives of off­spring and kin and how our heroes may have failed as both part­ners and parents.

The film opens and clos­es on Ull­mann scan­ning a table of pho­tographs and address­ing the cam­era direct­ly, and even though she was the emo­tion­al entry point in Scenes…, she pro­fess­es to being lone­ly and unful­filled despite her pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess. The film looks at Johan’s son from anoth­er mar­riage and his daugh­ter, the for­mer a wid­ow­er and both musi­cians with an unhealth­ily close rela­tion­ship. There’s an abun­dance of psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly meaty mate­r­i­al here, and Bergman, ever the light-fin­gered mas­ter, enhances it through mak­ing the film about how peo­ple inter­pret and deal with bonds they per­haps don’t ful­ly com­pre­hend. DJ

The final shot of Luis Buñuel’s final fea­ture sees its two main char­ac­ters ran­dom­ly blown up by ter­ror­ists. But the way it is shot (you only see a fiery mush­room cloud) you could con­strue this as the direc­tor glee­ful­ly det­o­nat­ing the entire plan­et as a mis­chie­vous part­ing shot. A cine-ras­cal ​’til the last, Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Desire is per­haps a belat­ed mis­sion state­ment, as many of the films with­in his excep­tion­al canon focus on the idea of arro­gant, enti­tled peo­ple being unable to ful­fil sim­ple desires.

Here, Fer­nan­do Rey’s wealthy fla­neur Math­ieu clasps his eyes on lis­som maid Con­chi­ta dur­ing a din­ner par­ty (played in alter­nate scenes by Car­ole Bou­quet and Ángela Moli­na) and decides that he must have her. Ini­tial gen­tle­man­ly advances swift­ly give way to bald finan­cial trans­ac­tions, though Con­chi­ta will sim­ply not let Math­ieu into her sewn-on gir­dle. It’s a scald­ing tract on notions of social enti­tle­ment, machis­mo, pre­ten­sion and those (men) who are so over­whelmed by their own lofty sta­tus that they can’t see the world falling apart around them. DJ

Claude Chabrol almost made a film a year from 1958 until his death in 2010. Giv­en how extra­or­di­nar­i­ly pro­lif­ic he was, his final pic­ture was nev­er going to be a self-con­scious swan song. And yet his death inevitably enhances cer­tain traits in his work, ele­vat­ing a decep­tive­ly sim­ple polici­er to the state of ele­gy. The direc­tor con­sid­ered Bel­lamy to be like a nov­el that Georges Simenon nev­er wrote, a film in which Gérard Depardieu’s tit­u­lar police inspec­tor finds him­self drawn into a case while hol­i­day­ing with his wife. Though Chabrol only made two direct Simenon adap­ta­tions, the author’s spir­it found its way into so much of his work.

By cre­at­ing his own ver­sion of Chief Inspec­tor Mai­gret, Chabrol bridged the gap between Simenon’s world and his own. The crime itself in Bel­lamy is almost a side note; as always, Chabrol’s inter­est is in the hopes, fears and desires of his char­ac­ters. As the crit­ic Armond White not­ed, genre was Chabrol’s MacGuf­fin. The film con­cludes with lines by WH Auden which speak not only to the events there­in, but to Chabrol’s entire body of work: ​“There’s always anoth­er sto­ry / There is more than meets the eye.” Craig Williams

Though hard­ly count­ed among Char­lie Chaplin’s great works – when, indeed, it’s count­ed at all – A Count­ess from Hong Kong is a far sharp­er sign-off than many think. In Count­ess, Chap­lin him­self has only a bit part, which is a lit­tle more than 1923’s A Woman of Paris where the auteur-performer’s pres­ence was entire­ly absent. Some folks would be hard pressed to see a Chap­lin film as a Chap­lin film when the man him­self is not smack-dab in the frame. And in this case, it’s hard to blame them: wide-screen, colour, Mar­lon Bran­do in the lead – this is hard­ly the ingre­di­ents of a Chap­lin clas­sic. And yet, as crit­ic Andrew Sar­ris claimed, it’s ​“the quin­tes­sence of every­thing [Chap­lin] has ever felt.”

This mourn­ful­ly com­ic tale of an unhap­py diplo­mat, his cold wife (Tip­pi Hedren) and a fire­crack­er stow­away (a nev­er-bet­ter Sophia Loren) is one of deep long­ing, encap­su­lat­ing a clash between ide­al­ism and the cyn­i­cal world of mon­ey and pol­i­tics that threat­ens it. Career obses­sions with class issues and the lan­guage of ges­ture, plus a sheer mas­tery of form make A Count­ess from Hong Kong one of his most deeply-felt films, the swan song of an old man who lived a life dashed with equal parts pas­sion and dis­ap­point­ment. Adam Cook

There’s a doc­u­men­tary pro­file of the late, very great direc­tor, artist, activist and cham­pi­on of inde­pen­dent film, Shirley Clarke, in which the cam­era darts around a throw pil­low con­ver­sa­tion cir­cle. Jacques Riv­ette sits grin­ning as the star wax­es poet­ic about her idio­syn­crat­ic project. This state of per­ceived com­fort pen­e­trat­ed all of this unher­ald­ed director’s film work, from crack­ling drug fix dra­ma The Con­nec­tion, to florid con­fes­sion­al Por­trait of Jason and on to her cli­mac­tic doc­u­men­tary work, Ornette: Made in Amer­i­ca, about free jazz sax­o­phon­ist and com­pos­er, Ornette Coleman.

This film, which inno­vates with form in the same way its sub­ject did, is about the process of mak­ing music, but it’s also about how artists talk about them­selves and cre­ate an image they present to the world. Clarke’s genial pres­ence is jour­nal­is­tic though she nev­er hec­tors, man­ag­ing to tease out per­son­al, pri­vate and pro­found details from Cole­man, includ­ing the inter­twin­ing of his con­ven­tion-bust­ing musi­cal odyssey with the fact that he once phys­i­cal­ly attempt­ed to sup­press all erot­ic desire from enter­ing into body and mind. Clarke died in 1997, leav­ing behind a petit, ugly/​beautiful body of work that we should cher­ish. DJ

The career of the late Jacques Demy can be sliced rough­ly down the mid­dle. Every­thing from 1961’s Lola to 1970’s Don­key Skin is great, every­thing from 1972’s The Pied Piper to his final film, Three Seats for the 26^th, from 1988, is of vari­able qual­i­ty. The stand-out in that shaky lat­ter peri­od is 1982’s A Room In Town, though his of-its-time and heart­en­ing­ly sin­cere swan song, Three Seats…, does have much to rec­om­mend it. The film is an elec­tro-pop love let­ter to work­ing class chanteur (and some­times actor) Yves Mon­tand, who has returned to his home­town of Mar­seilles to star in a gaudy musi­cal extrav­a­gan­za based on his life.

Though this might seem of mar­gin­al inter­est to those not up with Mon­tand, Demy’s char­ac­ter becomes a per­son­al sur­ro­gate, dredg­ing up and explor­ing themes from the director’s own clas­sics – the melan­choly rap­ture of French provin­cial liv­ing, fiery affairs extin­guished by time and dis­tance, reunions with fam­i­ly and loved ones through hap­pen­stance, and the sheer joy of singing and danc­ing in pub­lic. DJ

It’s only after watch­ing Carl Theodor Dreyer’s impe­ri­ous and impos­ing oeu­vre in its entire­ty that you see that the director’s project was one of refine­ment. He came tan­ta­lis­ing­ly close to find­ing the pri­mor­dial essence of pure cin­e­ma on many occa­sions, not least in films like 1955’s Ordet and 1928’s The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc. How­ev­er, it’s his gen­tly dev­as­tat­ing part­ing shot, Gertrud, which stands as his most breath­tak­ing, nuanced and rad­i­cal mas­ter­stroke. ​“A woman’s love and a man’s work are mor­tal ene­mies.” It’s a gar­ish, off-hand sen­ti­ment which nev­er­the­less colours the life of tor­ment­ed soci­ety dame, Gertrud (Nina Pens Rode), whose search for a form of pure and self­less love goes trag­i­cal­ly unfounded.

Though the­atri­cal in its basic scene con­struc­tion, Dreyer’s shat­ter­ing mas­ter­piece is bold­ly cin­e­mat­ic in its com­po­si­tion and light­ly expres­sion­is­tic in its per­for­mances. Dur­ing long dia­logues actors stare not at each oth­er, but into some mys­te­ri­ous mid­dle dis­tance void, in a film about the impos­si­bil­i­ty of attain­ing strict gen­der equal­i­ty in het­ero­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships and, thus, being unable to see eye to eye. The film was loathed when it was orig­i­nal­ly released – dis­missed as anti­quat­ed and stuffy. It has, of course, since grown to be recog­nised one of mod­ern cinema’s most emo­tion­al­ly brac­ing achieve­ments. DJ

The god­fa­ther of the mod­ern movie mon­tage set fire to his own play­book in this Mex­i­can adven­ture which cin­e­ma lore dis­missed as a muffed-up fol­ly. Though intend­ed as a puff piece quick­ie by the film’s local pro­duc­ers and pay­mas­ters, Eisen­stein had oth­er ideas. He shot away to his heart’s con­tent and – on the evi­dence of the morass of images – tried to tell the unvar­nished truth about an impov­er­ished coun­try in the midst of polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al upheaval.

While fea­tures such as Bat­tle­ship Potemkin rep­re­sent the inno­va­tions of ear­ly cin­e­ma, ¡Que viva México! comes across as a film that could’ve been made in the 21^st cen­tu­ry. And that’s not a com­ment on its sub­ject, more an admis­sion that it feels spright­ly and mod­ern. Some com­men­ta­tors have even pegged it as an ear­ly sur­re­al­ist film. Pooh-poohed by some because Eisenstein’s footage was belat­ed­ly edit­ed by one of his cre­ative part­ners, Grig­ori Alexan­drov, and thus not ​“strict­ly” part of the director’s body of work, it remains a fas­ci­nat­ing and sin­gu­lar film, what­ev­er its auter­ist cre­den­tials may be. DJ

Rom-com queen Nora Ephron direct­ed just eight films, though she wrote twice as many (the 2000 John Tra­vol­ta flop Lucky Num­bers was the only one she direct­ed but didn’t write her­self.) Her last film, 2009’s Julie & Julia, focused on the par­al­lel careers of two women, sidelin­ing the love sto­ries on which she made her name. Yet in many ways, this film is the most per­son­al the writer/​director ever made. First­ly, it reunit­ed her with long-time muse Meryl Streep with whom she col­lab­o­rat­ed as writer on Silk­wood and Heart­burn. Sec­ond­ly, it gave her the chance to pay cin­e­mat­ic homage to a sub­ject she reg­u­lar­ly wrote about in both news­pa­pers and nov­els: Food.

Set against the back­drop of post ⁹⁄₁₁ New York, it fol­lows the gas­tro­nom­ic jour­neys of food blog­ger Julie Pow­ell (Amy Adams) and her culi­nary inspi­ra­tion, the celebri­ty chef Julia Child (Meryl Streep) – both sous-chef their respec­tive ways to self-actu­al­i­sa­tion. While Julie and Julia per­haps doesn’t offer the same plea­sures as Ephron’s clas­sic romance films – sad­ly absent are the autumn leaves and Ernst Lubitsch-esque screw­ball pat­ter – it does argue that women amount to more than their love lives. Sim­ran Hans

There would have been a cer­tain grim poet­ry had Veroni­ka Voss been the great Rain­er Wern­er Fassbinder’s final film. It con­cerns a crum­bling celebri­ty whose drug depen­den­cy expe­dites her trag­ic demise. But instead it was to be Querelle, made in 1982 from a beau­ti­ful­ly lurid book by Jean Genet and released after the director’s death in June of that year. With its snow-globe set design – a Brest port lined with phal­lic bol­lards – and a dreamy choral sound­track by the director’s long-time musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tor, Peer Raben, the film stands alone with­in the director’s oeu­vre as a fan­tas­ti­cal fairy­tale with gay roman­tic trappings.

It’s almost like a more brass­i­ly sub­ver­sive Jean Cocteau movie. It’s pos­si­bly Fassbinder’s most invig­o­rat­ing­ly visu­al film, one in which every fight, every act of aggres­sion and flur­ry of naked pas­sion trans­lates into a dance or mat­ing rit­u­al. Bod­ies glis­ten in the gold­en sun­sets, and Fass­binder uses every trick in the book (and some new ones) to enter the mind of his mur­der­ous hero. DJ

Spoil­er: the clos­ing scene from John Ford’s 7 Women is one of the great­est final sequence of any filmmaker’s career. The icy, life-hard­ened pro­tag­o­nist DR Cartwright (a mar­vel­lous­ly brash Anne Ban­croft), is in an impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion and held cap­tive at a Chris­t­ian mis­sion. Hav­ing hand­i­ly picked apart the foun­da­tions of the mission’s res­i­dents, one val­ue at a time, she then sac­ri­fices her life to save the peo­ple around her. At odds with the sev­en women of the film’s title (she not count­ed among them), the athe­is­tic DR is brought in as a des­per­ate­ly need­ed doc­tor, and not long after her arrival, a com­pa­ny of Mon­go­lian sav­ages take over. She offers her­self as a con­cu­bine to their leader to spare the oth­ers, a great exam­ple of a lone For­dian out­sider act­ing on behalf of the greater good.

Ford spent a life­time look­ing at how indi­vid­u­als find their place with­in soci­ety at large, and with 7 Women he arrives at a trou­bling and pow­er­ful act of mar­tyr­dom, thus clos­ing a rich oeu­vre on a note of devout exis­ten­tial­ism — abrupt­ly turn­ing away from soci­ety or nation, and towards a rela­tion­ship with one’s self and the uni­verse. Like so many last films, this one con­cerns death — not age­ing, but dying, and by exten­sion, how to live. Every moment is inte­gral to its pur­pose, com­mu­ni­cat­ing emo­tions and ideas with dev­as­tat­ing aplomb. A swig of poi­son, the extin­guish­ing of a light, the igni­tion of Ford’s most blunt­ly philo­soph­i­cal propo­si­tion. The End. AC

Bob Fosse’s most sub­stan­tial lega­cy is as a Broad­way choreographer/​direc­tor, but his five fea­ture films sug­gest that theatre’s gain was cinema’s loss. His debut, Sweet Char­i­ty is strong, and Cabaret, Lenny and All That Jazz are Best Direc­tor-nom­i­nat­ed touch­stones (he won for Cabaret). And then there’s Star 80, as close to over­looked as a film rep­re­sent­ing one fifth of an Oscar-win­ning director’s out­put can be. Deliv­er­ing a tabloid-sleaze sala­cious sto­ry with extra­or­di­nary com­pas­sion and insight, it tells of the tawdry mur­der of 1980 ​‘Play­mate of the Year’ Dorothy Strat­ten (Mariel Hem­ing­way) by her estranged hus­band Paul Snider (Eric Roberts).

The per­for­mances are out­stand­ing: Roberts’ Snider is a volatile cock­tail of fury and inad­e­qua­cy, embody­ing the inchoate vio­lence of a Travis Bick­le and the hope­less fame­whor­eish­ness of a Rupert Pup­kin (report­ed­ly, Fos­se once cir­cled The King of Com­e­dy). And Hem­ing­way is a rev­e­la­tion, heart­break­ing­ly evok­ing Stratten’s dawn­ing self-worth that wars with her mis­guid­ed sense of grat­i­tude, en route to an almost unwatch­ably vis­cer­al cli­max. Fos­se had plans to direct oth­er films that nev­er came to fruition, but Star 80 deserves to be reclaimed as an uncom­pro­mis­ing exam­ple of his chill­ing, inci­sive inves­ti­ga­tions into fame, image and destruc­tive ego. Jes­si­ca Kiang

Cin­e­mat­ic Swan Songs: G‑L | M‑R