3rd July 1970, ‘Kensington Post’ pages 39
Black comedy comes first
THE ELECTRIC Cinema Club, Portobello Road, starts the most ambitious programme in its short history next Wednesday by running a FORGOTTEN FILM FESTIVAL consisting of movies which haven’t been as widely shown as they should.
Thee first movie in the season is Marco Ferreri’s Dillinger Is Dead, a black comedy starring Michael Piccoli. The French error plays a successful research man who, on returning hone to his wife and cold dinner, finds a revolver in a newspaper announcing that Dillinger is dead.
He points the gun, kills his wile, has some love-making with the maid and then sets off on a boat for a long voyage…
Other films in the Festival include Kjell Greda’s Hugo and Josefin, a Swedish children’s film in colour; Goto, Island of Love, with Pierre Brasseur; and Kluge’s Artists at the Top of the Big Top Disorientated.
Why Is it that a film as interesting as DILINGER IS DEAD can’t get a West End opening? Michael Chivers of Amanda Films, who bought the fins, is worried about the “alarming” situation this reveals.
Mr. Chibers told me this week: “We’ve had to resort to odd showings here and there in club situations, which is obviously far from satisfactory for the producer, the distributor and the general public, who want to see the film.
“The situation is getting to such a state here in London that films that should have first run West End screenings are now being shown first outside the West End.”
PROBLEM
Mr. Chivers said that If the problem continued, he could see so-called An Houses ending up simply shaving cheap pornographic movies: distributors would have to restrict the import of fine Continental pictures, he added.
So wake up, you exhibitors — you take a lot out of the film industry. What about putting something back by taking a chance with the less commercially successful movie?
Nigel Gansell
