The Big Picture

Zelig

Dir: Woody Allen

The world’s wittiest man is more usually associated with spectacles than spectacle, but his 1983 masterpiece of mockumentary-making is different. Zelig is an astonishing satire on our need to conform that showcases the talents of ‘The Human Chameleon’ Leonard Zelig – a man so keen to fit in he shifts shape, size, personality and profession in order to resemble those around him. While Allen’s physical transformations are sufficiently spectacular to link Zelig to our theme here, it is the film’s ingenious editing and visual effects – which position Allen alongside famous figures from the film’s 1920s setting in otherwise genuine newsreel footage – that provide the true spectacle. Newsreels were a uniquely cinematic medium and so, to be appreciated properly, Zelig must be seen in a cinema. As Allen argues, conformity isn’t always ideal. But it is here: Do The Chameleon. Vote Zelig.

Calamity Jane (1953)

Dir: David Butler

This Wild West musical is classical Hollywood cinema at its most joyously spectacular. Doris Day plays Calam', a gun-toting, thigh-slapping cowgirl who considers herself one of the boys – until, that is, a glamorous showgirl blows into town and the two become rivals in love. The rollicking soundtrack includes the classics 'Whip-Crack-A-Way', 'Black Hills of Dakota' and 'Windy City', with delightfully frivolous lyrics such as 'Men wear sideburns, and they oughta/ Cos a haircut costs a quarter'.

This gem from the golden age deserves to be back on the big screen because everything about it is larger than life: from its sweeping love story to Day's flamboyant performance. Whimsical and charming, it is pure reverie, as cinema ought to be: as one love-struck character sings, 'I wouldn't be at all surprised / If I were only dreamin' all of this…'

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

Dir: Susan Seidelman

Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is married to a bath salesman, lives in suburbia and spends her boring housewife days imagining the stories behind personals in the newspapers. Her obsession with Susan (Madonna), a fascinating freewheeler who communicates with her boyfriend through personal ads, launches her into an inadvertent adventure featuring amnesia, mistaken identity, a chase with the mafia and falling in love.

The film caught the zeitgeist of the New York new wave, but it’s the spectacle of Madonna at her coolest from which its keenest cinematic pleasures come. Madonna established a new paradigm of a pop-star-as-style-icon, with sheer tops, lacy bras, vintage dresses and the most amazing studded boots in cinema. Balmain is doing those studded boots this season: the 1980s are cool again – and Desperately Seeking Susan definitely deserves a rerun on the big screen as a glimpse of when we all wanted to be Madonna.

Electric Dreams (1984)

Dir: Steve Barron

A batty, techno-centric concept, a unique love-triangle plot, and a mid-1980s synth-fest soundtrack, pop-promo-guru Barron’s Electric Dreams is Reagan-Thatcher era spectacle at its most glorious. Beginning from the yuppiest of concepts – a San Franciscan property developer buying an enormous home computer – the film spirals deliriously beyond sense, as the plucky PC acquires a personality. At first, this represents an unlikely boon for owner Miles – Cort, the computer, synchs with his household appliances and offers romantic assistance when super-hot cellist Madeline moves in next door. But when Cort develops its own compu-crush on Madeline – using Miles’ techno-heavy domestic set-up to sabotage its love rival – Dreams goes all out in dayglo, cultish excess. Italian electro-disco maestro Giorgio Moroder’s ‘score’ sets time and tone perfectly for an ecstatic snapshot of an age of misunderstood technical advance and dizzyingly unchecked overindulgence that deserves to be re-seen on the big screen.

Sexy Beast (2000)

Dir: Jonathan Glazer

From the opening moments, when bronzed bank robber Gal (Ray Winstone) is almost crushed by a runaway boulder, Sexy Beast is obviously far from a typical cockney crime caper. Director Jonathan Glazer is immediately bold enough to plaster the titles over Winstone’s speedo-clad crotch, and drops tender moments right alongside disturbingly surreal images of an Uzi-toting monster rabbit. The result is a tense and hilarious spectacle from start to blood-soaked finale, pushed into sheer freneticism by Ben Kingsley’s mesmerising performance as the psychotic Don Logan. Here is a character so depraved that even Ray Winstone is afraid of him! Even when standing in just his Y-fronts, Kingsley evokes more menace with a single piercing glare than a million Travis Bickles ever could.

A vote for Sexy Beast is a vote for thrilling and provocative cinema. Just don’t take your granny.

Theatre of Blood (1973)

Dir: Douglas Hickox

Friends, Britons, countrymen, fellow moving-picture enthusiasts, I implore you to consider Theatre of Blood. This spine-chilling spectacle features wicked wit and ingenious executions, perpetrated by the maverick – nay, the master – of the macabre, the incomparable Vincent Price. Add a devilish dame (Diana Rigg), catastrophically shoddy coppers and a cast of doomed British icons and it makes for a marvellous medley.

In this cinematic banquet of beastliness, Price plays Edward Lionheart, a Shakespearian ham, presumed dead after a dramatic plunge into the Thames, returning to enact revenge on the critics whose reliably dreadful reviews dogged his career. Lionheart’s bloodthirsty schemes, inspired by the work of his beloved Bard, quite simply have to be seen to be believed: witness death by dog-pie, murderous tramps and a killer coiffure. People of Britain: vote Theatre of Blood! It’s an absolute ruddy riot.