Tag: Steve McQueen

Occupied City

Posted on by victorfraga

There are countless films and books that delve into the horrors of WW2. Hannah Arendt’s seminal The Banality of Evil deals with the origin of evil. Just last year, at least two Cannes films took a very imaginative look at the subject: Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and Steve McQueen’s Occupied City. The latter is based on the director’s wife Bianca Stigter’s Dutch-language book Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945.

The Zone of Interest and Occupied City have something else in common: there is a dissonance between what is heard and what is seen on screen. In Glazer’s film, you hear the horrors that happened inside Auschwitz as the Hoess family lead their beautiful life undisturbed. McQueen does something similar, and rather remarkable for a documentary: we see the locations of the addresses mentioned in Stigter’s book as they are now (the film was shot between 2020 and 2022, during the Covid pandemic), while we hear the shocking wartime stories of the Jews, and how many of them succumbed to the atrocities. Melanie Hyams delivers the unemotional voice-over, in another unusual directorial choice.

First we see a hospital. Nazi clinicians have replaced Jewish doctors. They forcibly neuter Jewish women who happen to be in a mixed relationship (they wish to prevent the birth of “Half-Jews”). After the War, it becomes a Jewish hospital for concentration camp survivors. The building has since been demolished – as were many places mentioned in the book. The images show a newly-erected construction instead. A female Jewish doctor struts along the corridors, elegantly captured by Dutch cinematographer Lennert Hillege. Then we see a concert hall with the names of the Jewish composers (Mahler, Rubinstein, Mendelssohn, etc) concealed. The cover was promptly removed after the conflict. We also hear the story of a theatre with an all-Jewish cast: it became a hub where prisoners were held before being sent off to concentration camps. It is now a war memorial, with Led lighting displaying the victim names.

McQueen provides some facts and figures: the Netherlands attempted to stay neutral during the beginning of WW2 (like it did during WW1). Germans eventually occupied it, roughly at the same time as Belgium and Paris. Dutch Queen Wilhelmina and the government fled to London in exile. In 1940, approximately 800.000 people lived in Amsterdam, roughly the same as now. Ten per cent were Jews. The German occupiers considered the remaining 90% “Arians”, and wished to fully incorporate the small country into the German Empire. More than 170.000 Jews were removed from Amsterdam, and only 5.000 returned. About three quarters did not survive at all.

At one point, McQueen films a present-day anti-fascist protest on Dam Square, a major town square in the Dutch capital. The horrific ideals that should have died with WW2 remain very much alive. Recent events reveal that the fight is not over. Perhaps it’s never over. The bitch that bore him is in heat again. We also witness protests against global warming. This is a reminder that we have to battle on many fronts nowadays in order to vouch for our survival.

Steve McQueen’s first feature documentary is a very profound and long meditation on the passing of time, with a duration close to four and a half hours (including a 15 minute intermission). Stay away if you have the concentration span of a hummingbird. Otherwise open your eyes, prick up your ears, and enjoy the ride. This highly original, punch-in-the-face type of film provides useful insight into Nazi horrors, and it’s also a love letter to the city that the British director and his wife call home.

Occupied City is in cinemas across the UK on Friday, February 9th. On BFI Player and Curzon Home Cinema on Monday, March 18th.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

Posted on by Jeremy Clarke

Hollywood. 1969. Screen actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) has been reduced from former star of TV Western Bounty Law to villains in other serial episodes. He needs to do something to get his career back on track. His stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) acts as his driver and general handy man and is also a trusted friend and confident. As Cliff drives around the city, he sees hippie girls hanging out or thumbing lifts on the Los Angeles roadside, some of them as he will discover members of Charles Manson’s now infamous ‘Family’ cult. Rick’s next door neighbours on Hollywood’s exclusive Cielo Drive are celebrity film director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and his pregnant, rising star actress wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), although Rick has never met them.

Littered with pop culture references ranging from movie posters on billboards and titles on theatre marquees to clips from film and television, popular music from the period and even radio ads featuring Batman, Tarantino’s script mixes fact and fantasy, real and fictional characters. A part of it takes place in February 8-9 1969 then leaps forward to August 8-9 of the same year. The latter date is that of the real life Tate murders when members of the Manson Family broke into the Polanski/Tate home and killed everyone who was there, including the eight and a half months pregnant Sharon Tate. The Manson Family were living on the Spahn Movie Ranch, a former location for shooting Westerns owned by the now blind George Spahn (played in the film by Bruce Dern in an astounding turn). A little of Sharon Tate’s movie career is covered too, specifically The Wrecking Crew (Phil Karlsen, 1968) which is playing at a cinema that the actress visits.

Although the Rick Dalton/Cliff Booth characters and story are pure invention, they intertwine with more factually and historically based material. There’s an apocryphal sequence of Rick playing the Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis) character in The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963) with DiCaprio cleverly replacing McQueen to interact with the other actors in otherwise genuine footage from that film. Booth gives flower girl Pussycat (Margaret Qually) a lift to the Spahn ranch hoping he might be able to visit his old boss whom he hasn’t seen for years. Tarantino has a lot of fun with all this, both on period Hollywood Studio lots and in the wider world of L.A. and beyond, at one point staging an impromptu fight between Booth and Bruce Lee (Mike Moh) when he was playing Kato in The Green Hornet.

The whole thing runs for the best part of three hours but never outstays its welcome. Tarantino here makes full use of his lengthy running time, packing in a riot of incidental visual and aural detail and allowing scenes to play out for just as long as they need. The whole thing is a love letter to Hollywood, to L.A. and to the tail end of the 1960s and is hugely entertaining. Pitt and DiCaprio make memorable onscreen buddies. Neither of them has ever been better. Nor, arguably, has Tarantino. The amazing cast to be found in its numerous, additional bit parts includes Dakota Fanning, Luke Perry, Timothy Olyphant, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Emile Hirsch, Michael Madsen, Zoe Bell, Scoot McNairy and Brenda Vaccaro. And the level of sheer background detail may make this a film you’ll want to return to again and again.

Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood is out in the UK on Wednesday, August 14th. On Netflix on Wednesday, July 7th. Also available on other platforms.

Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans

Posted on by victorfraga

A story about obsession, backstabbing and fast cars. Steve Mc Queen: The Man & Le Mans has all the ingredients of a melodrama. Instead, we’re presented a classic tragedy. The elements, such as the daunting task and the counterforces preventing it from happening, are all here and they play out neatly.

One key factor, the “hero” is missing, though. McQueen was a man who lived in the constant mission of bridging the gap between himself and his onscreen persona. In this process, people got hurt, especially so during the making of his 1971 picture Le Mans (Lee H. Katzin), documented here. The film, envisioned to be the ultimate racing picture, ended up marred by production conflicts and ignored by mainstream audiences.

Hollywood has a penchant for mythmaking and the documentary brings forward quite a Tinseltown story. It shows how McQueen, one of the most bankable film stars of the late 1960s and a gearhead, set himself on a path towards failure. During filming, the actor ruined his marriage and ended the partnership with his most trusted writer, for example.

The most interesting aspect of the film, however, is the myth-busting. For contemporary eyes, it reveals one of the symbols of extreme counterculture masculinity. The “King of Cool” was a persona doused in blasé, womanising and elitist qualities that eventually took over his life. In an interview, he relates his passion for racing to a pleasure of being in position of power. To listen to him say that with that clarity shows how much masculinity has played a part in pop culture.

Not that everything onscreen feels vintage. Compared to today’s superhero blockbusters and endless remakes, the production seemed refreshing. By 1970, the New Hollywood movement was in full swing. It allowed for studios to take risks with original material that would be unthinkable nowadays.

Of course, this came with a price tag, both literally and metaphorically. The sheer confidence of the studio in McQueen’s star power lead them to greenlight a project without a script. That, combined with the actor’s obsession to racing details and inexperience with production, became a recipe for disaster.

Helmers Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna do a good job re-enacting this drama. Instead of relying just on interviews with key people (though there are plenty), they go somewhere else. Many sequences are deliberately sensory, such as the retelling of car crashes. Others, like in-set conflicts, seem to come straight from the radioplay transition, to astonishing results.

By design, Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans may resonate louder with fans of the actor and of racing. But every member of the public can understand the significance of a fall from grace. It’s one of mankind’s most enduring narrative threads, after all.

Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans has been made available on DVD, Blu-ray, as well as VoD on Amazon, Google Play and iTunes.

Click here for our review of another film that conveys a very different sense of extreme masculinity.