Reviews

As someone who has run a cultural cinema for over thirty years and programmed thousands of great films from the whole history of the cinema from Lumiere Bros forwards, I am often asked what I regard as the greatest film ever made. El Dorado is NOT the greatest film ever made (though it deserves consideration), but it IS my favourite of the thousands and thousands of films that I have seen.

Why is this?

Firstly, it is heroic. It announces this in the credit sequence of Olag Wieghorst's paintings of the old west, and delivers throughout its length right up to the final adrenalin gushing walk of the two old and failing gunfighters along the street in a town that they have made fit to live in.

Secondly, it is sensationally subtle in its mise en scene. Look at the scene where the crippled Cole Thornton is exchanged for Bart Jason. After the exchange has been made, Cole is seen on the right hand side of the screen lit in warm hues by the table lamp. JP and Bull, who made the exchange, on the other hand are coolly lit (cool meaning not hot, please) by the greenish oil lamp. I cannot think of a more subtle use of lighting to express emotional relationships in all cinema.

Camera and character movement within the frame are also brought to a new high. Look at the shot when Bull announces that Cole is leaving. It follows naturally from his (Bull's) spectacular entrance and results in a two-shot with Maudie whom we know loves Cole... then Bull, having, unknowingly, dropped the bombshell of Cole's departure moves out of frame to the right and the camera moves just far enough to put Maudie centre frame as we see the pain that the news gives her...

Thirdly, it integrates its humour throughout the long and complex drama. Structurally the use of Bull and Mississippi as foils for JP and Cole is a complete masterstroke.

Finally it is one of the most emotionally satisfying films I can remember. I weep in the closing moments every time I see it because I realise that I am about to lose these wonderful, wonderful characters who have transported me into a kind of heaven for the past two hours.

So who do we mainly thank for this most magnificent film?

I really must read Harry Brown's novel from which the screenplay was adapted... but I do know that as far as I am concerned Leigh Brackett is the greatest female script-writer - indeed greatest female film artist behind the camera - and not just because of this work. And when she worked with Howard Hawks glory almost invariably followed.

I've already mentioned Olaf Wieghorst's paintings, which are also monumentalised by the title song - praise be to Nelson Riddle and John Gabriel (who plays Pedro) - which I would feel honoured to have played at my funeral.

Then there is the small matter of John Wayne and Robert Mitchum - two towering stars who had by then become great actors, and magnificently naturalistic cinematography by Harold Rosson whose career spanned to almost 150 films as cinematographer with credits including Docks of New York, The Wizard of Oz, Singin' in the Rain and this, his last film, into which he put all of his love and artistry.

Which brings us to Howard Hawks, the most unpretentious artist of the cinema, and one of its greatest. I know this film is a kind of remake of Rio Bravo, and he went on to do it again with Rio Lobo, but for me, this is his last full work - his health was failing on the shoot of Rio Lobo. There is something special in the last works of (some)truly great directors ... look at Gertrud, or Family Plot, or The Dead. It as though they are saying to us... 'OK... I'd like to do it over a dozen or so films, but I'm going to show you the real cinema in just one, because I might not get another chance....' So just the same as in Family Plot were Hitchcock's generosity and artistry come together in the biggest slice of cake he ever delivered, here Hawks gives us a kind of sublime perfection of cinematic structure and expression.

One film to a desert island?

This is it...

No matter how much one may love the cinema, purity is something that we rarely find on the screen. Wonder, yes. Spectacle, emotion by the bucketload, but purity, very rarely.

And Au Hasard Balthazar is the zenith of purity in the cinema. Through this matchless masterpiece, Bresson has shown us what the cinema might have been if it did not have the crushing obligation to make money.

For many years I regarded this as the greatest film ever made - and it still could deserve that epithet. What is certain is that with Balthazar, Bresson entered a form of expression in cinema that is so profound that it almost burns you to watch it.

Of course it's not about a donkey, but the sins of the world. And it is a measure of Bresson's staggering achievement that at the end of the film you can actually believe that you have witnessed the sins of the world. And it leaves you not shocked, nor angry - though both emotions are entirely appropriate - but numb with a desperate sadness.

On top of all of this, it is also the film which is the subject of probably the finest piece of film criticism in the English language - Andrew Sarris' long and wonderful review of it in The Village Voice on its initial New York release. That ends, 'it stands alone atop one of the loftiest pinnacles of artistically realised emotional experiences.'

And so it does.