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The Guardian
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pedro Almodóvar attacks Trump as ‘catastrophe' in New York speech
The veteran Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar has launched a broadside against the US president, Donald Trump, while accepting an award in New York. Speaking on stage at the Lincoln Center on Monday evening, he said he had been in two minds as to whether to travel to the US to pick up his Chaplin award. 'I doubted if it was appropriate to come to a country ruled by a narcissistic authority, who doesn't respect human rights,' he said. 'Trump and his friends, millionaires and oligarchs, cannot convince us that the reality we are seeing with our own eyes is the opposite of what we are living, however much he may twist the words, claiming that they mean the opposite of what they do. Immigrants are not criminals. It was Russia that invaded Ukraine.' Almodóvar continued: 'Mr Trump, I'm talking to you, and I hope that you hear what I'm going to say to you. You will go down in history as the greatest mistake of our time. Your naiveté is only comparable to your violence. You will go down in history as one of the greatest damages to humanity … You will go down in history as a catastrophe.' The director, who shot scenes from his most recent release, The Room Next Door, outside the auditorium where he was speaking, compared his experiences growing up in Franco's Spain with life under Trump in today's US. He credited his homeland's evolution into democracy in the late 70s and early 80s with his own flourishing as a director. 'It is impossible to explain what that feeling of absolute liberty meant for a young person who wanted to make films,' Almodóvar said. Those paying tribute to the director included Dua Lipa, John Turturro, John Waters, Rossy de Palma, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Martin Scorsese, Tilda Swinton and Antonio Banderas. Waters called Almodóvar 'the best film-maker in the world' while Lipa praised his ability to 'just completely normalise trans and gay roles or storylines, something that feels these days like quite a radical act'. Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion Earlier this week, Karla Sofía Gascón, the Spanish actor who became the first trans star nominated for an Academy Award, expressed her hesitation about returning to the US. 'If they want to discriminate against me because of my sexuality, then it will be very difficult,' she told the Hollywood Reporter. 'But I hope so. I'm looking forward to doing millions of things in the United States because I think it's a wonderful country full of something that we have all wished for in this world, which is freedom, and we are losing it. We are losing it.' The actor went on to suggest that the backlash to her offensive tweets, which effectively ruled out the possibility of her winning an Oscar, could be ascribed in part to anti-trans sentiment. 'We are in a very complicated and difficult time,' she said, 'in which I sincerely feel like one of the first victims of all this hate.'
The Guardian
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Going for Goldblum: fans flock to Jurassic Park star Jeff in London
In what was once a red-light district, between a furniture shop and a recruitment agency, Jeff Goldblum is selling T-shirts. And not only T-shirts, the Hollywood A-lister is also selling his own jazz albums, while meeting fans and signing their merchandise. He has not had to work too hard to sell himself to the crowds of people waiting to meet him on a sunny Monday afternoon in London – the queues stretched more than 50 yards. 'From when I was very young, I always had a great passion for films, and I never really thought I could do it,' said 18-year-old actor Jack Foley, who was waiting in the queue to meet Goldblum. 'Watching his films, seeing how big he is and how much of a great actor he is, really has pushed my career to be better. His music is class and he's just an inspiration to everyone.' Rather than in the now-gentrified surrounds of Granary Square in King's Cross, Foley had envisaged meeting Goldblum 'in a parking lot', adding: 'You know where you've paid for your ticket and you're just kind of walking up, you see Jeff Goldblum and you say, 'oh, there's Jeff Goldblum'?' He suggested the actor and musician had a quality that made him seem just like everyone else – as long as everyone else was a style icon and a Hollywood actor. 'He's the greatest person … he cares for people,' he said, adding that Goldblum was taking time to meet his fans. Goldblum was in the UK for the launch of his fourth album as well as playing several concert dates with the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra and meeting fans, declaring: 'I love London, I love England.' He appeared at a popup shop in Spiritland, a cafe, bar and radio studio near King's Cross. 'Honestly, I just love him,' said Peach Richmond, a children's book illustrator. 'He got me out of a bit of a twisty-turny place when I was younger with his comedy. So that's why he's a bit of an idol for me, I think. It's just his energy, it's just his whole joy that he gives off. And he's just himself – it's what's really inspires me to be who I am as well.' Goldblum is in the class of actor whose 'energy' – or perhaps, more specifically, his distinctive delivery – has set him apart. Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion It was with that idiosyncrasy that he spoke to Amelia Wilding, a musician. He seemed to be listening intently while simultaneously holding sway over the conversation. Here, repeatedly asking her to spell out her first name so he could sign her record cover; there, crooning her surname as he scribbled his own. 'He has a really distinctive style and sense of humour,' said Stephen Barber, who was queueing with Laura Shorthall and dog Fiadh – all three apparently Goldblum fans, two of them wearing Jurassic Park T-shirts. The actor's performance in the 1993 Oscar-winning dinosaur film was in Barber's 'top three'. Sanny Hoskins, who runs a London events TikTok account, said she had never expected that a cafe a few doors down from an Indian restaurant would be the place she would meet one of her favourite actors. 'You can connect with someone who you see through cinema, through TV, and get a face-to-face moment with them. I think that's what makes London so amazing.'
The Guardian
28-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Greta Garbo documentary reveals star as ‘a relaxed, silly, funny person'
She is remembered as the ultimate reclusive film star, following her shock retirement at the height of her success. But the enduring image of Greta Garbo is being challenged by a new documentary, which will show that, far from withdrawing from life – as in her most famous line, 'I want to be alone' – she lived it to the full, partying with close friends. The British film-maker Lorna Tucker has been given access to previously unseen behind the scenes footage in which the star, once described as 'the most alluring, vibrant and yet aloof character ever to grace the motion picture screen', can be seen larking about and laughing. The footage shows a relaxed, silly, funny person,' Tucker said. 'We see that the most famous woman in the world was actually very silly, very normal. But she also hungered for privacy to live out her life.' The footage has come from one of Garbo's Swedish friends. Tucker has also been given access to more than 200 unpublished letters by Garbo's grand-nephew, Scott Reisfield, who welcomed the documentary for showing another side to the star in her later life. He said: 'The whole 'Garbo is a recluse' meme was a media creation. Sure, she was private. But not in a JD Salinger kind of way … Yes, she did sometimes hold her hand up to ruin the shot, but that became the shot. Paparazzi sold the idea of Garbo hiding because it made them more money.' The documentary, titled Garbo: Where Did You Go?, is an artistic exploration of the myth and mystique of an actor revered for her ethereal screen presence and described by the actor-director Orson Welles as 'the most divine creature', although she was insecure about her looks. Born Greta Gustafsson, her beloved father was an itinerant labourer who died when she was a teenager and she grew up in poverty in a Stockholm slum. After getting a scholarship to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, she was cast in 1924 in the silent epic The Saga of Gösta Berling, whose director, Mauritz Stiller, gave her the name Garbo and got her a Hollywood contract. She went on to make classic films including Mata Hari, Queen Christina, Anna Karenina and Ninotchka. She had gone to Hollywood wanting to send money back home to her mother and sister, whose early death from cancer was to devastate her. Disillusioned with the film industry, she suddenly announced she was retiring in 1941, aged 35. She never acted again. She withdrew from public life, relying on close and protective friends, including her long-term lover, George Schlee, and the comic actor and film-maker Charlie Chaplin. When she was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1955, she did not attend the ceremony. She died in 1990. Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion Tucker said Garbo became wary of people selling stories about her: 'She had to become very private and trust her instincts of who she let in, and that came across as frosty. But also it's about how the press weave a narrative. They take a picture of her looking sad or covering her face and say, 'She's hiding, this woman who never goes out.' She did go out. She partied all the time, but just at friends' houses. She was having a wild time, but in private. '[The press] create a narrative and then, sadly, that becomes the narrative … [They were] offering so much money to … her poorer friends to tell stories, so then they ended up getting cut out of her life and, just before she died, she was pretty much alone because she couldn't trust anyone.' Reisfield only recently had the letters translated and he is drawing on them for his forthcoming book, Greta Garbo and The Rise of the Modern Woman. Mostly dating from the 1940s and 1950s, Garbo had sent the letters to his grandmother, Peggy, a former nurse who married Garbo's brother, Sven Gustafson. They reflect Garbo's bid for privacy. In one letter, she wrote from Wisconsin: 'Nobody recognises me here.' In another, planning to visit Palm Springs in California, she advised: 'If you would like to write to me … write in Swedish, because they might open the envelope.' The documentary is produced by Embankment, an independent film company whose productions include The Father, the Oscar-winning drama starring Anthony Hopkins. It airs on 14 May on Sky Arts, Freeview and the streaming service Now.
The Guardian
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Only known script of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless to be auctioned online
The only known script for Jean-Luc Godard's seminal New Wave film Breathless (À Bout de Souffle) will be auctioned later this year after coming to light for the first time in more than 60 years. About 70 pages of Godard's handwritten notes and synopses of some of the most famous scenes, including the movie's dramatic opening, were discovered in the estate of the celebrated producer Georges de Beauregard. Breathless, which follows the doomed affair between an American student in Paris (Jean Seberg) and her hoodlum boyfriend who is wanted for gunning down a police officer (Jean-Paul Belmondo), is a keystone of France's Nouvelle Vague movement that shook the cinema world, including Hollywood. Godard's innovative method of working means that scripts of his films are rare. He shunned formal scripts and liked to write dialogue the night before a shoot, to encourage actors to behave naturally. He also had a penchant for destroying written records. Anne Heilbronn, the head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby's Paris, which is auctioning the manuscript along with photographs and other items from De Beauregard's estate, admitted she was overcome with emotion when she saw the documents. 'I wanted to cry. It was an incredible shock to actually have this manuscript that is a record of the history of French and world cinema in my hands,' she said. 'À Bout de Souffle is an iconic film for the whole world and here we see part of the dialogue, the scenes, the trailer, for the first time since 1960. As far as we know, it is the only script of its kind.' The original outline for the story, based on a news event that enthralled France in 1952, had been written by Godard's friend and fellow New Wave director François Truffaut, who allowed him to develop the plot. De Beauregard, another of the movement's key figures, had met Godard through Truffaut, and made a leap of faith in agreeing to produce Breathless, the then unknown director's first full-length film. Sign up to Film Weekly Take a front seat at the cinema with our weekly email filled with all the latest news and all the movie action that matters after newsletter promotion Godard approached the shoot over the summer of 1959 with a documentarist's method, filming in the streets with a handheld camera and mostly with natural light. Having started with a precise screenplay for the first 14 minutes of action, he ditched it and decided to write each day's script the night before. As the dialogue was to be synchronised in post-production, he did not mind if the actors forgot lines they had often been given on the morning of the shoot, as they frequently did. Sotheby's says it is describing the manuscript as 'partial', not because anything is missing but because Godard did not submit a full synopsis and script to the ministry of culture's National Centre of Cinematography and Animated Pictures, as would have been normal at the time, and made much of it up as he went along. Godard explained his thinking in Cahiers du Cinéma in 1968. 'I had written the first scene [Jean Seberg on the Champs Elysées] and, for the rest, I had a huge number of notes corresponding to each scene. I said to myself, this is outrageous! I stopped everything. Then I thought about it … instead of finding something a long time before, I'll find it just before. When you know where you're going, it should be possible. It's not improvisation, it's last-minute fine-tuning.' In 1967, Truffaut wrote: 'The passing years confirm our certainty that À Bout de Souffle will have marked a decisive turning point in the history of cinema, as Citizen Kane did in 1940. Godard has shattered the system, he has made a mess of the cinema.' The manuscript, with an estimate of £350,000-£500,000, will be sold as part of Sotheby's online auction of books and manuscripts, open for bidding on 14-18 June. The single lot will include four original photographs of Godard and Seberg, a vintage contact sheet, and letters from Godard and the actor and director Roger Hanin, who appeared in the film, all from De Beauregard's archive. 'As someone who adores the cinema and is passionate about it, I can say it is one of the best film scripts I have ever held,' Heilbronn said.
