Highsmith on a roll ....

Patricia Highsmith, one of my favourite writers ever since reading THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY as a teenager, and loving the Rene Clement film PLEIN SOLEIL in 1960 - now burnished like new on Blu-ray - seems to be on a roll at the moment, with three new films from her novels.

Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett is filming CAROL with Rooney Mara for FAR FROM HEAVEN director Todd Haynes (who also did that re-boot of MILDRED PIERCE recently), for release next year. This is a lesbian drama (following on from BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOUR?) based on an early Highsmith novel "The Price of Salt" and is set in the early '50s with Banchett as the affluent married woman who gets involved with a shop girl. It will at least look marvellous ... Below: Blanchett filming CAROL.

Just about to open here is the highly regarded THE TWO FACES OF JANUARY, from Hossein Amini, with Viggo Mortenson, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac and Daisy Bevan (Joely Richardson's daughter), this is from a novel I liked a lot. and THE BLUNDERER is another very Highsmith tale in production with Toby Jones. 

Highsmith (1921-1995) of course has been in vogue since Hitchcock and Raymond Chandler adopted her first novel STRANGERS ON A TRAIN in 1951, then Rene Clement and Anthony Mingella gave us their versions of THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY. There were also French films on THIS SWEET SICKNESS (by Claude Miller with Depardieu), and Liliana Cavani's RIPLEY'S GAME, not to mention Wim Wenders' 1977 classic THE AMERICAN FRIEND ... Below: a studio pose for Robert Walker, Ruth Roman and Farley Granger for STRANGERS ON A TRAIN.

Above: Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz in Wenders' chilly THE AMERICAN FRIEND, and Delon and Maurice Ronet realising he is in danger in PLEIN SOLEIL. - more on those at labels.

If film-makers are looking for more Highsmith, I recommend her 1977 novel EDITH'S DIARY. Her final novel SMALL g: A SUMMER IDYLL could be an interesting film too with its open gay themes. Then there's all her short stories, and of course her own mysterious life, as per those biographies on her, as she went from America to England to France and deepest Europe, with her passion for cats and snails ...she was strikingly attractive in her youth (there are some nudes) and gave lots of interesting interviews, as well as that incredible backlist of novels and stories.

Nosferatu, 1979

Werner Herzog's 1979 version of the silent classic NOSFERATU is visually (and aurally) impressive and still has the power to unsettle, with Euro-favourites Bruno Ganz and Isabelle Adjani pitted against the vampire of Klaus Kinski - a dead ringer for Max Schreck in the 1922 silent Murnau classic - as the pitiful vampire bringing death and plague in his wake ...

Jonathan Harker is sent away to Count Dracula's castle to sell him a house in Varna, where Jonathan lives. But Count Dracula is a vampire, an undead ghoul living off of men's blood. Inspired by a photograph of Lucy Harker, Jonathan's wife, Dracula moves to Varna, bringing with him death and plague... An unusually contemplative version of Dracula, in which the vampire bears the curse of not being able to get old and die. 

Like Coppola's version in 1992 the visuals keep one mesmerised - starting with those close-ups of mummified bodies, then Harker's journey through that desolate countryside and mountains to that grim castle to meet the cadaverous Count. We have "The children of the night make their music" as the wolves howl, and that comment of the undead Count: "Time is an abyss... profound as a thousand nights... Centuries come and go... To be unable to grow old is terrible... Death is not the worst... Can you imagine enduring centuries, experiencing each day the same futilities..."

 
Ganz is effective as Harker, but Adjani, usually so magnetic, plays Lucy as though she is in a coma but presumably that pallid Victorian heroine what Herzog wanted. Kinski certainly conveys the loneliness and sadness of the vampire who longs to be human. Its certainly effective as that ghost ship arrives in at the port, bringing rats and plague, as the Count has killed off the crew, and the city succumbs to plague mania  ..... will Jonathan get to save Lucy in time? The ending is not what one expects, as Lucy keeps Nosferatu with her till dawn - but then a new vamprie arises to take his place. Maybe Herzog's most effective film since AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD? For another OTT Kinski performance see 1981's snake-on-the-loose thriller VENOM (Horror label), he is also good as the slum landlord in 1965's THE PLEASURE GIRLS (London label). 

Herzog's NOSFERATU is one of the centrepieces of the current BFI 3-month "Gothic" season, with an extended run of 46 screenings in London, as does Clayton's brilliant THE INNOCENTS (also reviewed at Horror, Deborah Kerr labels).

I read Bram Stoker's novel when I was 17 and it was profoundly scary, most of the vampire movies have been fun - I particuarly like ther 1960 Hammer BRIDES OF DRACULA (Horror label) and the effectively chiller DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS with Christopher Lee and Barbara Shelley is maybe the best of the other Hammer Draculas, apart from Polanski's deliciously comic DANCEOF THE VAMPIRES or THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS - also at Horror label.

People We Like: Bruno Ganz

What an exciting time the '70s were, seeing the rise and rise of all these new actors, writers and directors. What would Scorsese, Spielberg, Schrader come up with next?, or Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Richard Gere. Among the most interesting European actors was Swiss Bruno Ganz, born in 1941 and after years in the theatre making an impression in cinema from the mid-'70s.
I first noticed him in Jeanne Moreau's LUMIERE in 1976, and the big one was next year with Wim Wenders' THE AMERICAN FRIEND in 1977, when we were all fascinated by the new German cinema of Wenders, Herzog and Fassbinder [I shall get around him too in due course...]. THE AMERICAN FRIEND was a terrific version of Patricia Highsmith's "Ripley's Game" (also later filmed by Liliana Cavani in 2002), well apart from Dennis Hopper as a very odd Tom Ripley, and featuring Nicholas Ray in one of his last appearances. We just loved the look of the film, and Ganz as the picture framer with a fatal illness lured by Ripley into crime and murder. The Ripley books were de riguer at the time, so this was very well received.

Ganz followed up with films like Rohmer's DIE MARQUISE VON O, Herzog's oddball take on NOSFERATU in '79 as Jonathan Harker, with Isabelle Adjani and Kinski as Nosferatu, as well as appearing in films like THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL. Another fascinating late '70s German film was Hauff's KNIFE IN THE HEAD (MESSER IM KPOF) where he is Hoffman who gets mistaken for a radical and gets shot in the head and has to rebuild his life in hospital - its a terrific performance in a film which should be much better known.

Wenders' WINGS OF DESIRE was another great arthouse hit in 1987, which people either loved or not. It is a mesmerising meditation on love and desire as those angels hover over Berlin, with Bruno as the angel who falls in love and wants to be human. Ganz kept working in a variety of roles, and suddenly became famous all over again for his terrific portrayal of Hitler in 2004's DOWNFALL. De Niro's and Pacino's glory days may be behind them now and they just work for money, but Bruno seems to have kept his integrity and quietly keeps on working, its a very prolific career.