In the child’s dreams, the sound of the tide transforms into one of stampeding hooves in a cattle pen; a memory of a formative trauma that has left him crippled. This is the first post-credits sequence of Raymond Rajaonarivelo’s When the Stars Meet the Sea (Quand les étoiles rencontrent la mer, 1996), an at-times uneven but often impressive film that marks my first encounter with the cinema of Madagascar.
A still from Youssef Chahine’s 1959 Egyptian film Cairo Station.
Since my teenage years, I’ve had a passion for film – particularly those films emerging from outside the Hollywood mainstream. And yet, for all my declared interest in world cinema, my tastes have been fairly predictable in their own way. A cursory look at the country-of-origin column in my list of favourite films will show that I’m seeing a lot of work from Europe and North America, a little from Asia and scarcely anything from Africa or Latin America.
Written by Jan Svankmajer (from Marlowe, Grabbe and Goethe). Read by Andrew Sachs.
Scene 1: An actor’s dressing room. Seated in front of a mirror, wearing a false beard, costume and make-up, protagonist reads from a script.
Faust: Alas, philosophy I have explored,
as well as medicine and law;
add to these, regrettably,
my studies in theology.
Yet here I sit, a foolish bore,
no wiser than I was before.
No dog can live like this;
knowledge gained is far from bliss.
So I resolve my soul to free
through blackest magic and dark alchemy.
The first thing you notice about Clouds of Sils Maria is that it looks different. There’s a sense of urgency here that’s not even close to being justified by the narrative – well, in the sense that there is a narrative; this being one of those rare, refreshing films for which it can be said, for decent stretches of its running time, “nothing happens” – and it’s an urgency that can be located most obviously in its transitions and in its occasional bouts of double exposure.
For Young Earth Creationists, a passage in the Book of Job is sufficient proof that dinosaurs and humans co-existed: a 34-verse description of a mythical, Loch Nessque sea creature whose comparative strength demonstrates man’s weakness and vulnerability (and thus, by extension, necessary submission before God). Its function is that of many of the allegorical works comprising the Hebrew Old Testament: a reminder to the reader to “know their place”; a reminder carved into the ruins of the Tower of Babel and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Continue reading
“And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.”
Primarily a theatrical and literary device, the monologue nevertheless enjoys a special place in the realm of cinema. While advocates of realism may dismiss it for its essential artificiality, it cannot be denied that the monologue has framed some of the greatest and most powerful scenes in the history of film. Unfortunately, the words alone can only convey so much of a great soliloquy – there are mannerisms, delivery, filming styles and, most importantly, context that get lost in the process of transferring from screen to paper; nevertheless, this is an attempt to showcase these cinematic moments as best possible within the confines of the written (English) word.
Here, then, are the ten best monologues I have come across:
David Heslin 