Peter Boyle’s reanimated Creature is more life-affirming than despondent. Shot in black and white (the studio tried to enforce colour), and boasting the same laboratory equipment used in 1931’s Frankenstein, Brooks and Gene Wilder (the movie’s deranged doctor and co-writer) channel the original film’s subversive wit and poignant sensibility.
At the center of Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein is a heart bursting with affection for Hollywood’s Golden Age and all the risks and rewards that came with film-making in the studio era.
In our age of vague emojis, where earnestness feels like evangelism, we are stuck at an impasse between sincerity and ridicule. Pauline Kael once said, “Unlike satire, spoofing has no serious objectives.” The spoof often behaves like an embittered lover – sour and crude. – Ali Arikan, Dipnot TV, Turkey (Credit: Criterion) Withnail is one of the greatest tragicomic creations in the history of cinema. But it is Richard E Grant who makes the biggest impression in the title role. The late Richard Griffiths is a wistful scene-stealer as Withnail’s gay uncle Monty and Paul McGann keenly suggests his unnamed narrator still retains a modicum of rationality. So it is a testament to Robinson’s razor-sharp script that the film is a masterclass in situational comedy. On paper, all this sounds ghastly and, well, not really funny. A rueful feeling that anarchic good times are soon to end permeates the film. “There must be some kind of way outta here,” ponders Jimi Hendrix on the soundtrack, as the couple embark on an ill-fated trip to the English countryside, only to return to their squalid Camden Town flat more despondent than ever. Set at the tail end of the 1960s, writer-director Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical film chronicles the final days of a co-dependent friendship between two out-of-work actors. – Christian Blauvelt, BBC Culture, US (Credit: Criterion) How perfect that a mime would give us a meme. For a silent artist his use of sound here is revolutionary and even anticipates the “narrator voice” jokes that pop up on Twitter today. And somehow, Chaplin made it even better when he reedited it in 1942 with the addition of his own voiceover to provide ironic commentary to what’s happening on screen. The Gold Rush is intimate, in its glimpses of loneliness and hunger, and it’s epic – with stunning special effects of avalanches and windstorms – in its depiction of the transformational power of greed. You’ve gone from the poignant to the hysterical in a matter of moments, and it’s a testament to Chaplin’s singular ability to make you feel such a wide range of emotions while watching his films. So he falls asleep and dreams she did arrive and dine with him, and afterwards he puts on a dance for her with the dinner rolls. Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp, trying to make a go of it as a gold prospector in the Yukon, is waiting for the woman he loves to join him at midnight – and she doesn’t show up. Every year on New Year’s Day I make time to watch The Gold Rush, which features surely cinema’s loveliest, loneliest depiction of a New Year’s celebration.
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