| | | Pickpocket review – existential thrills in Robert Bresson's study of a thief's progress | | by Peter Bradshaw May 31, 2022 | | Bresson’s 1959 film about a misfit who dreams of rising above conventional morals is a brilliant example of the cinema of ideas Robert Bresson’s hypnotically intense and lucid movie-novella from 1959 is now revived as part of a director’s retrospective at London’s BFI Southbank, and whatever creakiness I thought I saw in this masterly film for its last UK re-release has vanished. The andante pace of Pickpocket is part of its brilliance, part of its seriousness and its status as a cinema of ideas: a movie with something of Dostoevsky or Camus, or even Victor Hugo. The then non-professional actor Martin LaSalle was cast by Bresson as Michel, a gloomy young man who spends his days writing his journal in a seedy bedsit: a precursor for the prison cell for which he is destined. (Michel is clearly an ancestor of Paul Schrader’s insomniac malcontents, but with his own monkish austerity.) Michel is plagued with nameless guilt about his elderly, unwell mother whom he cannot bring himself to visit, despite being urged by her young neighbour, Jeanne (Marika Green). His pal Jacques (Pierre Leymarie) tries to set him up with respectable paying jobs, but Michel has become obsessed with the occult thrill of pickpocketing: he broods over a biography of the 18th-century Irish pickpocket-adventurer George Barrington, and meets up with a pickpocketing gang who school him in the sticky-fingered art of unbuckling watches and pinching wallets. They also teach him how to pass the loot from man to man so no one, if spotted, will be found with the goods on him – even temporarily dropping the item into the pocket of another passerby if the heat is on, and then surreptitiously reclaiming it. Continue reading... | | | | | Amid a rash of cheesy samples, is UK rap running out of ideas? | | by Will Pritchard May 31, 2022 | | UK rappers are plundering 00s choruses to help their tracks up the charts. Whether a cheeky ploy or a failure of imagination, it’s a marker of how the scene has grown It’s hard to say precisely where UK rap’s current obsession with sampling 00s pop songs started, but perhaps the catalyst was the borrowed guitar licks and Lady Saw vocals that announced Headie One, AJ Tracey, and Stormzy’s Ain’t It Different back in 2020. When three of the scene’s biggest and most influential stars mine preteen one-hit-wonder nostalgia – and score a hit of their own – the idea is sure to travel. Most would recognise those clean guitar notes as coming from Crazy Town’s 2000 hit Butterfly, itself a lift from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Pretty Little Ditty from 10 years earlier. As the old saying goes: if you can’t beat it, inquire about who owns the publishing licence, and then sample it heavily. It’s a motto that some UK drill rappers have adopted with gusto, leaving fans to question whether it’s harming or helping the genre. Continue reading... | | | | | 'Sleep with everyone! Be embarrassing!' – the dada baroness who shocked society | | by Hettie Judah May 31, 2022 | | She wore soup-can bras, made an explicit film with Man Ray – and may have inspired Marcel Duchamp’s upturned urinal. We explore a thrilling show celebrating the pacy life of ‘The Baroness’ Towering over crowds at the Venice Biennale, a fortysomething woman poses in a wild homemade costume, that includes beribboned matador pants and a hat like an upturned saucepan. In another photo, smaller and taken around 1920, she crouches on one leg like a stork, sprouting feathers and dripping jewellery. Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was born Elsa Hildegard Plötz in the city of Świnoujście, now part of Poland, in 1874. Her title – acquired in New York in 1913 – was the souvenir of a short marriage. “The Baroness” became not just her name but her persona: an avant-garde creation defying bourgeois decency. In Venice this year, she was honoured as a dadaist pioneer who reimagined her everyday life as a performance. Continue reading... | | | | | Jamming with Jokerman: how Bob Marley and Bob Dylan's songs powered hit musicals | | by Ammar Kalia May 31, 2022 | | Olivier award-winner Simon Hale on the thrill of orchestrating two legends’ tracks on Get Up, Stand Up! and Girl from the North Country It’s not often you get the green light from Bob Dylan to run riot with his songs. But for composer Simon Hale and playwright Conor McPherson, a call from the Old Vic theatre in 2017 was just that: an invitation to rework Dylan’s songbook into a musical, with the blessing of free rein from the artist. The ensuing show, Girl from the North Country, opened that year to rave reviews for its deft transformation of 19 of Dylan’s journeying songs into a story set in 1930s Minnesota. Following runs in the West End and on Broadway, the show is now embarking on a UK tour and Hale is back in the rehearsal room. Continue reading... | | | | | Don Craine obituary | | by Niall O'Donnell May 31, 2022 | | My father, Don Craine, who has died of lung cancer aged 76, was leader of a British R&B band, the Downliners Sect, which was influential in the early 1960s London music scene. Although it did not achieve big commercial success – apart from a No 1 in Sweden – David Bowie told Q magazine that he was influenced by the band and Van Morrison referred to them in a book about his life. The Downliners Sect signed with Columbia Records and produced several albums, and played at many of London’s influential venues, including Eel Pie Island hotel and the Flamingo Club. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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