The Greatest Single Shot In The History Of British Film

The Guardian have claimed that Atonement contains what they consider may be the single greatest shot in British film. Er... okay, but excuse me... that's completely nuts.

Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice is such a wretched disaster of a film I have a complete and utter conviction Atonement will ascend to mediocrity at best. The idea of it containing the greatest shot in Brit cinema is laughable.

So, what is this shot? The Guardian describe it like this:

It's a beach scene at Dunkirk, when the dazed James McAvoy makes it back from his mission in France only to stumble into the chaos of the British army in disarray. Wright introduces us to the carnage with a magnificent tracking shot that winds its way through a minefield of devastation.

Oh, I see. I get it. It's one of those.

Period set dressing and costumes - check. Extended tracking moves - check. Explosions and chaos - check.

Yawn.

If you don't share my doubts, you can download the Guardian's podcast in which Wright discusses his apparently mindblowing shot.

Okay, I'll come back to this apparent masterpiece of film craft once I've actually seen Atonement and I can knock it with authority, but in the meantime - what of the other, genuine contenders for the title of Greatest Single Shot in British Film?

Well, as far as tracking shots go, there's several in the canon of Alan Clarke that deserve serious consideration. In fact, there's several in any one of Clarke's later films.

But let's forget tracking shots. They're seldom the best shots in a film - not least because they're incredibly hard to keep constantly relevant.

How about something from early Hitchcock? An embarrassment of riches there, of course. I'm very fond of the final moments of Blackmail, but I won't go into details about them here - that film has an ending I'm so keen to keep from spoiling, I've routinely lied about it for almost two decades.

The big reveal in The Crying Game certainly has the content if not necessarily the form to enter the hall of fame too, I feel.

I'll leave this open to you for now. I'm very keen to get your suggestions. British films only, remember.

The Top Twenty-One British Directors Of All Time

The Telegraph have compiled a list of those they would say are the best 21 British film directors ever. I'll run the list by you, and then tell you what I make of it; then, please, chime in with your own comments too.

1) Alfred Hitchcock 2) Charlie Chaplin 3) Michael Powell 4) David Lean 5) Nicolas Roeg 6) Carol Reed 7) John Boorman 8) Terence Davies 9) Alexander Mackendrick 10) Stephen Frears 11) Ridley Scott 12) Michael Winterbottom 13) John Schlesinger 14) Danny Boyle 15) Lindsay Anderson 16) Bill Douglas 17) Ken Loach 18) Thorald Dickinson 19) Mike Leigh 20) Shane Meadows 21) Ken Russell

Let's delete some of those, first of all. My list would never feature Shane Meadows, Michael Winterbottom, John Boorman or Charlie Chaplin and Powell would be admitted only in the company fo a chaperone - that is, as an adjunt to Emeric Pressberger.

So who would I add? Alan Clarke, without a shadow of a doubt. How he was left off in the first place I could never suppose. Lynn Ramsey - even if she'd only ever made shorts and her career was curtailed before Ratcatcher, she'd deserve a spot in the top twenty. Jonathan Glazer too - he'd be notable if he'd never 'graduated' to features from promos and adds. For the more mainstream-friendly picks, I'd go for Edgar Wright and Garth Jennings, directors of the second-best and best film I've seen this year so far this year (those being Hot Fuzz and Son of Rambow).

Notable mentions in no particular order - some of these would make it into the twenty one and I guess some wouldn't, though they're better choices, I believe than the 'delete list' above: John and Roy Boulting, Paul Greenaway, Mike Hodges, Iain Softley, Bruce Robinson, Derek Jarman, Nick Park, Chris Menges, John Hough, Richard Eyre, Michael Reeves and Lewin Fitzhamon.

Definitely Lewin Fitzhamon.

A Pub Shoe, Innit?

Tonight's Culture Show on BBC2 featured Mark Kermode playing pool with Danny Boyle, and a trailer for next week when he's going to play darts with Shane Meadows. I hope Michael Winner's getting better, they'll needing him at the fruit machine the week after, I expect.

Why are so many British filmmakers so bad? As fars as true greats go, wll, we've got Edgar Wright and Lynn Ramsey and... Garth Jennings... (of course, how could I forget Garth Jennings... doh!)...

Er... Um... there's always Richard Curtis. How many of you are going to agree with that? I love Curtis, but I know he's not a popular choice amongst bloggers and blog readers.

Some of the greatest directors of all time came from the UK: Alfred Hitchcock, Alexander Mackendrick and Alan Clarke (The Three Als) are amongst the very best from anyplace, at any time. And now?

I suppose there's Terry Gilliam. He's forfeit his US citizenship, so I think we can claim him now.

Maybe the fact that there's almost no film industry in the UK is part of the problem; maybe the fact that the prevailing British film culture is one of imitation is another.

Stephen Frears Won't Be Directing The Time Traveller's Wife

Looks like Robert Schwenke has the gig of directing The Time Traveller's Wife. A week or two ago, there was talk that Frears was up for the job but, sadly, that hasn't come to be. Rachel McAdams is, presumably, still attached to star, and of course, it's still an adaptation of the best seller.

All I can hope is that Frears found a better script elsewhere, not that somebody in command thought the Flightplan hack would be a better choice for this project.

Or, indeed, a better choice for anything.

I remember walking out at the end of Flightplan, actually rather impressed with certain elements of the scripting, much of the acting and a lot of the production design, but I was quite concerned with Schwentke's direction. I felt almost as though the film had survived him, rather than been nurtured by him.

Stephen Frears made his movie debut in the early 70s with Gumshoe, and then, for almost a decade and a half, he worked in British TV. Effectively, the British film industry and the British TV industry were the one and same back then (if not also now) and Frears certainly didn't scale down his ambitions or approach because of the smaller screen or narrower aspect ratio. He returned to cinema in the mid 80s with The Hit, and frankly, the rest is history. If it's not history for you, I recommend you spend some time putting Stephen Frears into Netflix or LoveFilm and renting anything that comes up.

Since Alan Clarke passed away, Frears has been the greatest of working British directors (because Stanley Kubrick and Terry Gilliam can't be counted, I'm afraid) and has consistently made interesting films, both for the smaller and larger screen. I'll feel okay taking this radar eye off of The Time Traveller's Wife now and keep watch for news of Frears' next movie instead.

(Unless of course it all goes a bit Weitz-Tucker-Weitz on the project, as per The Golden Compass)