PAINTED SKIES

The resplendent and shimmering One From The Heart has returned to screens after 40 years. Francis Ford Coppola, fresh from the success of Apocalypse Now, turned away from the wild jungle and gambled everything on extravagant sound-stages mimicking Las Vegas. As the title suggests, this sincere ode to Hollywood history and imperfect relationships came straight from Coppola’s soul, even betting his newfound company on it (and losing). But rising from the ashes is a film punch-drunk on the idea of escapism, intoxicated by romantic fantasy. On 4th July weekend, volatile couple Hank (Frederic Forrester) and Frannie (Teri Garr) split ways and throw themselves into whirlwind affairs amongst Las Vegas’ overwhelming light-show. One From The Heart turns such everyday romantic heartache into operatic spectacle, with Tom Waits providing omniscient musical narration and all the action taking place within the enclosed painted warehouse of American Zoetrope. Once dismissed as empty showmanship, One From The Heart is a pivotal film in Coppola’s career that demonstrates his unleashed imagination and an aching sincerity underneath astounding Hollywood artifice. It must be seen to be believed.

Leaping out of Chester Gould’s 1930s cartoon strips, Dick Tracy (1990) is a comic book adaptation unlike any other. Ace policeman Dick Tracy (Warren Beatty) takes on mob boss Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) while resisting femme fatale Breathless Mahoney (Madonna). Warren Beatty’s bizarre passion project boasts extraordinary matte paintings and prosthetics to create an incredible pop-art world on film captured by Vittorio Storara’s cinematography. This stylishly unique Hollywood flick is a stunning, primary coloured spectacle with a surprisingly sincere love story within this righteously corny pulp-noir.

Unique amongst auteur Éric Rohmer’s output, Perceval le Gallois (1978) places its Arthurian legend between Medieval illustrations and classic studio-bound Westerns. As naïve Perceval (Fabrice Luchini) seeks to become a knight, he roams around a hermetically-sealed set with painted castles and minimalist trees. Rohmer’s adaptation of Chrétien de Troyes’s 12th Century poem makes no attempts at ‘realism’, instead rendering the Medieval world as it saw itself, including third-person narration and a singing chorus. A rare but celebrated treat, Perceval is a fascinating film that finds beauty in its literal and figurative simplicity, with Andréa Picard calling it “Éric Rohmer’s masterpiece maudit, undoubtedly one of the most original, daring and meticulous devised films in all of cinema.”

This slice of storybook surrealism shows the wild imagination of Karel Zeman (known as the Czech Méliès) mixing matte paintings, tinting, animated compositions, and more for this dizzying tall tale. After astronaut Tony (Rudolf Jelínek) encounters the boastful Baron Munchausen (Miloš Kopecký) on the moon, they quickly fall into a breath-taking adventure involving an imprisoned Princess and a raging sea monster. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1962) emulates the cross-hatched illustrations of Gustave Doré, crafting some of the most stunning and magical sequences on film in this delightful romp.

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Co-organised with generous support of the Karel Zeman Museum.

An absurd comic cry about everyday life, You, the Living (2007) sees Roy Andersson take on loneliness and melancholy in hilarious, immaculately constructed tableaus. These flattened, static scenes – all crafted inside of Andersson’s Studio 24 – recall the aesthetic of Modernist painters like Edward Hopper or Otto Dix combined with the dry comic touch of Jacques Tati. Poignant, bleak yet surprisingly empathetic, You, the Living displays hypnotic dioramas that evoke both laughter and doom.