And you screen a range of films as part of the
course?
I have a personal collection of films on DVD, so I
draw on that, it's a pretty extensive collection. I draw
on that to illustrate what we're talking about, and
where we're going with this.
Do you favour a particular decade of filmmaking
or cinema?
Me personally? Well I'd say from about 1926 to about
1928 are two wonderful years, especially in American
cinema, and also in British and French cinema. The
late silent period, just before sound came is a very
rich period, because at that time silent cinema had
been perfected. Filmmakers were able to tell all kinds
of stories, without any dialogue, but purely visually,
so it was an art form all its own. The silent film is at
its best, a unique art form. The actors have to mime,
but in the late 20s they perfected that art to the point
that you hardly know that they're not talking. That's a
very rich period that was brought to an abrupt ending
with the arrival of sound.
When you re-watch a classic film, do you find new
things in it?
Yes. Every time I revisit a film, I find something new
in it - especially these days when more and more
some of the older films are being re-released in Bluray. I have a very good home cinema where I have
projection on a big screen, and with Blu-ray the
quality is even better I think than it was in the cinema.
You can see things you never saw before. But even
without that, films that I watch over and over again,
every time I see them there's something - Oh, I never
noticed that before... subliminal, maybe but also I
think it's good to revisit films because they're like
friends. If you have a really close friend that you're
really fond of, why would you not visit them once a
year at least?
You learn new things, but there's also something
wonderful for me, about the fact that they're the same.
I love cinema because it's an art form that, unl ike
theatre say (let's say it's a dramatic art form, I'm not
talking about paintings or books), that since the
inception of cinema you the viewer have been able to
see something that was made 100 years ago, or 50
years ago, and it's exactly the same as it was then.
That means that for the first time we can actually
experience a dramatic presentation exactly the same
way that it was seen when it was first made, and that
was never possible before cinema. That to me is a
very important and exciting thing. I can always visit a
young Cary Grant, or the young Greta Garbo...
The General (1926)