Vienna

Vienna, 1981. Directed by Russell Mulcahy.

…a strange melancholy seemed to descend upon me over the last weekend and has not yet lifted. Maybe it’s the time of year… I don’t know. However, I’ve been trying to catch up with all your blog-posting that I’ve been missing over the last couple of weeks and you’re all so disturbed insane eccentric amusing that it’s been a pleasure and perked me up somewhat. But I thought I’d foist some of my melancholy onto you. Like a cold. Aren’t you lucky?

I suspect I’ve been thinking of the past and future just a little bit too much of late. I’ll not bore you with the details; so, broadly, I’ve been thinking on the funerals I’ve been to over the years… when it hit twenty I stopped counting and then started running through the people and all the things you should have said, all the things you shouldn’t and all the things that can now never be. These kinds of days always remind me of the Ancient Mariner’s lament. On top of this I’ve been thinking on the Screenwriter’s Festival; to go or not to go…

Vienna has been running through my head for the last couple of days… I’d completely forgotten about it and, despite having loved the song for many years, I’ve not got a copy*. It was always around when I was younger and I can’t believe how long ago it actually was. Of course, back then I didn’t realise where the image system and reference points came from… turns out to be all the films I’ve watched since! Strangely, while the song itself is inspired by the brilliant The Third Man** (1949, Carol Reed; Sp: Graham Greene) the promo itself, I think, reminds me far more of a great Burt Lancaster film, The Killers** (1946, Robert Siodmak; Sp: Anthony Veiller, Richard Brooks, John Huston)... but I’d have to check. I was staggered to find that the promo was directed by Russell Mulcahy. It's become very easy to mock 80's things but how much of current popular culture will look patently absurd in twenty years…

*I’ve just realised- I think I was invaded by the trailers for Ashes To Ashes…
**Despite all evidence to the contrary, I do actually like some films… both of these are brilliant: The Third Man being one of the greatest films ever made and if you don’t agree may all your toast burn ever so slightly for the next seven days!

Fairytale Of New York

Fairytale Of New York, 1987. Directed by Peter Dougherty.

Uncut! Uncensored!! Inimitable!!!

…and I’m about to run out of memories! ;-)

By the way, have you ever noticed how the opening to this bears an uncanny resemblance to the synth opening of U2’s Where The Streets Have No Name? Anyway…

Happy Christmas!!!

One and All!!!

Stop The Cavalry

Stop The Cavalry, 1980. Director: Unknown.

Our House

Our House, 1982. Directed by Dave Robinson.

Two more promos that ‘meant something to me’… even though I can’t really recall what. Isn’t that the way with memories? I forget.

Two from The Nutty Boys, always guaranteed to brighten the day. Madness produced the first two albums that I used for ‘promotional purposes’… a friend leant me copies of what, at the time, we thought were Complete Madness and something called ‘Cairo East’, although now looks like the second may actually have been Absolutely with a missing outer sleeve!

The strange thing about Madness, in hindsight, is how out of time they seem. The music does seem to have a strange elegiac quality to it and there’s often a sadness to it all; a yearning for an already missing past. It Must Be Love: jokey promo which still manages to wring the heart-strings… how did they manage that? I suspect it might have been something called talent. Our House: possibly their best song coupled with their best promo. Again all that jokiness is undercut by the melancholy string sections. The promo seems to be harking back to the days of the Boultings, Carry On and Ealing and not with modern ‘mocking irony’ but with seemingly genuine affection; is filled with joie de vivre and musters more humour than most sitcoms can these days (by the way, has anybody else noticed how much the new St. Trinian’s film looks more than passingly like Spiceworld?). The line ‘she’s the one they’re going to miss in lots of ways’ brings a lump to the throat every time I hear it now: you never know what really matters until it’s gone…

It Must Be Love

It Must Be Love, 1981. Directed by Chris Gabrin.

Like A Prayer

Like A Prayer, 1989. Directed by Mary Lambert.

So classic there’s nothing much that needs to be added… so I won’t… Ha! Out-manoeuvred you again! I didn’t have house-room for Madonna until a few years back so I must have been more drawn to the promo than the song: nifty story, beautiful image making (so much so they’ve become a cliché) and a heady mix of steamy sensuality and fervent religiosity… made a major impact on my blank little mind and I loved the religious imagery. I think it was the whole image system that really caught my magpie eye. My only major quibble is the framing device that didn’t tend to get shown way back when, but it works… I guess. Mary Lambert went on to direct Pet Cemetery (sic).

It stirs a memory from somewhere of a million years ago in a different country: while on holiday I once saw one of those ‘Black Madonnas’… I can’t remember where but I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer or Rocamadour… if the W. is to be believed it may well be the latter. But I’m just not sure. There were fields of lavender around there somewhere as well… looked and smelled wonderful.

…and now I love the song as the well as the promo.

Ashes To Ashes

Ashes To Ashes, 1980. Directed by David Bowie and David Mallet.

Not sure how to introduce this bunch of random weird but that’s never stopped me before…

I sometimes wonder what made me interested in film and the visual arts in the first place. I tend to get a bit irritated when I see some of these interviews where a big name chappy says ‘when I saw **** I knew instantly that I had to make films’. I just didn’t have that moment of epiphany or, at least, I don't think I did. I never did have much memory of my earlier years and a close encounter with a Carlton 3000 GSi (wonderful blacked out windows it had) did for quite a lot more. For no readily apparent reason recently I’ve been remembering some of those early visuals that really got me excited and interested in ‘that sort of thing’ and I thought I’d tell you about a couple of those that have come back to me because I can’t think of anything better to harass you with I love you all greatly and feel a deep need to share!

The family didn’t get a VCR until maybe ’90 which was much later than everybody else I knew, and cinema was an expensive treat that happened once in a blue moon, but TV- that was readily available and what seemed to really make an impression on me quite early on were the fledgling and, in hindsight, somewhat rough pop promos.

I didn’t like Bowie until right recently but this promo sank deeply into my psyche. Everything in it seemed designed to be interesting: Harlequin, or was it Pierrot? (Robert Powell anyone?), padded cells, fires burning on beaches (very Shelley), the weird colour shifts (like some wild DW CSO), images within images, the negative images, pseudo-nuns, strange religiose marches, ink black seas breaking on post-apocalyptic shores and bizarre fleshly underground chambers… Watching again reminded me how much of it I’d forgotten and how this seems to sum up a nifty chunk of my inner showreel… the odd thing is, for good or ill, I’m not sure if I commit much, if any, of this stuff to paper! Oh, and I love the large bulldozer probably because it reminds me of the times my Dad would take me down onto various sites and I was able watch all the JCBs and Barber-Greenes in action and, in Winter, the Maggy-Deutz's.