We chatted with French director Cécile Ducrocq about her first feature film Her Way. We talked about her successful short film Back Alley that served as inspiration for this feature, her longstanding working relationship with actress Laure Calamy (Call My Agent), the conflicting feminist views over prostitution and the film’s focus on the mother-son relationship.
Mike Leigh discusses his battle to maintain final cut on his Palme d’Or winning film Secrets & Lies (1996) against the wishes of the French funders.
Recorded at The Garden Cinema on 13 September 2022 as part of Mike Leigh in Conversation: our ongoing series of retrospective screenings of Leigh’s films, each followed by a discussion and Q&A with Mike Leigh and Gary Yershon.
This week, we speak to Angela Allen who has worked on the film sets of many celebrated films, including The Third Man, The African Queen and The Dirty Dozen, for nearly six decades, overseeing continuity, supervising scripts and advising directors.
Angela shares with us anecdotes and personal stories from her time on and off the set. This podcast episode is slightly longer than usual, so we’ve included a discussion breakdown:
2.04 How to know if a film will be good.
2.45 Angela on the editing process and working with Carol Reed (The Third Man)
7.30 The current fashion for “overcoverage” and working with John Huston
10.25 Zeffirelli vs Huston and filming Elizabeth Taylor
13.58 The auteur theory from France
15.47 Different directors, same scripts
18.25 “We’d have sixteen pages on the fact that Jennifer Jones’s toilet paper had to be pink”, meeting David O’Selznick
21.10 Working with Korda and Spiegel, “the most intelligent producer but a bit of a crook, too”
26.40 Working with Orson Wells and stories from The Third Man
35.36 Arthur Miller & Marilyn Monroe (The Misfits)
39.55 “Paula Strasberg made her as impossible as she was”
43.23 “Do you feel sorry for [Marilyn]? No I don’t”
44.32 Angela on writing a book
Find us on the usual platforms. Send us your comments, feedback and suggestions via Twitter @thegardencinema or by contacting us at podcast@thegardencinema.co.uk.
We discuss the pleasure and power of the cinema experience and which films are better on the silver screen with MUBI’s podcast host, journalist Rico Cagliano.
We talk to Rico about the MUBI podcast seasons, cinemas he’s researched and visited and share anecdotes about films that should be watched on a big screen, such as Lawrence Of Arabia and Wings Of Desire.
Find us on the usual platforms. Send us your comments, feedback and suggestions via Twitter @thegardencinema or by contacting us at podcast@thegardencinema.co.uk.
Our weekly update with news about upcoming events and listings as well as interviews with Jose Arroyo, George Crosthwait and Hotsy Totsy
We talk about the films of Almodovar, his depiction of the Spanish civil war, Spanish cinema and Penelope Cruz with Film Professor José Arroyo, who has written extensively about the Spanish director and has interviewed him a number of times.
We invited him to mark our upcoming Penelope Cruz season, to talk more generally about the actress, Almodovar and Spanish cinema.
We discuss glamour, camp and appeal of Almodovar’s filmography and Jose’s own interest in the filmmaker, his working relationship with Penelope Cruz, her versatility and comparisons with Sofia Loren, depicting the Spanish Civil War and the post-Franco Spanish film industry.
We also touch on other films from our season, such as Jamon Jamon and discuss the merits of a season of contemporary Spanish “new wave” directors.
We chat to Tom Palmer and Tom Stourton, the scriptwriting team behind the feature film All My Friends Hate Me. The writers met as school and have been performing sketches and double acts since then. They created the hilarious “web film” High Renaissance Man and had previously collaborated with director Andrew Gaynord on such comedy hits as Stath Lets Flats.
We discuss the evolving nature of comedy, British influences such as Alan Partridge, their collaborative writing process, class-based satire, depicting social anxiety and paranoia, and the surprising twists in their debut feature. Spoiler alert!
You can watch Andrew Gaynord’s short hit CGI Brows on YouTube.
Find us on the usual platforms. Send us your comments, feedback and suggestions via Twitter @thegardencinema or by contacting us at podcast@thegardencinema.co.uk.
We chat about Marlene Dietrich, her close working relationship with Josef Von Sternberg, the changes in her persona that came with her shift to Hollywood, comparisons with Mae West and Greta Garbo, and the enduring power of stars with Dr Lucy Bolton.
Lucy is a Reader in Film Studies at Queen Mary University and her fields of research include film stardom and celebrity. She recently co-edited a collection entitled Lasting Stars: Images that Fade and Personas that Endure. We invited her on the podcast to take a deeper look at Marlene Dietrich’s career, persona and lasting influence, to mark a season dedicated to the actress.
Find us on the usual platforms. Send us your comments, feedback and suggestions via Twitter @thegardencinema or by contacting us at podcast@thegardencinema.co.uk.