Well you know a film is really conceived in the editing room and I have no control over that

“Well, you know, a film is really conceived in the editing room, and I have no control over that. Most film careers are careers of moments and scenes.” This was where she mentioned Clift, and also Bette Davis in some of her great moments “The one about the actress My brain’s gone. All About Eve.”She wouldn’t admit to envying anyone else’s career, apart from the actresses who got to work with Ingmar Bergman, “because of what they learned about life”. It was Bergman’s The Magic Flute that showed her what film could do, when she saw it at drama school.

“I saw it recently on a television screen, and I got Colin (Friels, her husband) to watch it, I even got my son to watch it… and 15 minutes later I turned it off.” She’d have to see it on the big screen to decide whether to blame television.When I ask her about a part in which I thought a great Australian actress might take an interest (Australian subject, Australian director) – Lindy Chamberlain in Schepisi’s A Cry In The Dark, the part actually played by Meryl Streep, she doesn’t actually say that she turned it down on moral grounds But they did come to her about the part “And I wasn’t interested The court case was still going on. Which seemed to me sort of inappropriate.”Even when she does accept a role, she remains a critical presence. She vigorously contests Woody Allen’s estimate of her performance in Celebrity (“All I have to do is put the camera on her, walk away, and let her acting genius take over”) “He gives me too much credit. When we started working, it became clear very quickly that whereas I thought the pitch was there,” – hand at waist height – “Woody thought the pitch was there,” – hand above her head “So I went whoo! OK.

You want it very extreme from the outset.”The film doesn’t make up its mind about the character she plays, but Davis seems to dislike her, almost on a moral level “In my view that woman is grotesque at the end of the film. I think she’s grotesque because of what she becomes” – a vapid and entirely happy television presenter.I pick up on her disapproval and ask her about it “I worry about somebody like her in 10 years’ time. What that woman has chosen ain’t going to feed her for long, and then what’s going to happen?”I’m fascinated by what she’s telling me, this great star who thinks Bergman’s actresses learned about life from working with him, and that a television presenter shouldn’t be happy. Do you really worry about the character outside the movie? That’s when she stops me short “Quite frankly, I don’t give a flying fuck But you did ask.”. FOR ALL its frantic hard-sell, the trailer works on a basic head- in-the-sand principle. Rehash the film’s most explosive sequences, bung in a few tear-jerking moments, but whatever you do, don’t even hint at the existence of rival movies Least of all the big boys.

It’s a plucky strategy, but apparently redundant given the only competition anyone’s worried about this year: just ignore The Phantom Menace and the nasty bully will go away. Only the new Austin Powers film dares to look over the parapet. And, if not fight back, then at the very least chummy along gamely with George Lucas’s monster in its current “teaser” for The Spy Who Shagged Me (opening two weeks after The Phantom Menace).
The camera pans down from an empty starscape (very Star Wars, that) on to a hulking spaceship, and zooms in on the back of a throne-like chair. The gravelly voice-over reinforces the Star Wars idiom: battles won, empires destroyed, and an ongoing saga. The throne spins round to reveal Dr Evil, Austin Powers’ nemesis from his first outing “Expecting someone else?” he cackles. Cue “fab” soundtrack and Austin and “chicks” frugging in groovy split-screen.”If you see only one movie in 1999,” advises the voice-over, “see Star Wars. But if you see two, see Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”.

In 1971, British audiences more accustomed to getting a sunny view of Swinging London from the top of a double-decker bus were battered and bruised by the arrival of three British gangster movies Love and peace were out Hard men were in. Suddenly their favourite screen heroes were appearing in roles that ranged from the down-at-heel to the downright nasty. Villain starred Richard Burton as a cruel, gay hood with a mother complex. Stephen Frears’ Gumshoe saw Albert Finney’s Liverpool bingo caller playing Bogart, while Mike Hodges’ Get Carter sent Michael Caine’s hitman back to his native Newcastle to revenge his brother’s murder Only one film from this unholy trinity is remembered today.