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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Probably one of the top five releases of 2008, October 5, 2008
Serious film lovers are surely blessed that Facets Video (which brought out top rated 'Decalogue' and recently Bela Tarr's 'Satantango') has now released a totally pristine DVD of this almost forgotten 1970's U.K. filmmaker.
Here is Douglas' own poverty stricken childhood in a small Scottish village, recreated using mainly non-professional actors in three one hour segments. According to the added special feature documentary, Douglas (who died in 1991 of lung cancer) escaped the brutality of his surroundings by virtually living in his town's dumpy movie theater. If this brings to mind Antoine Doinel in Truffaut's 'The 400 Blows,' that's fine, but replace Antoine's Paris with a landscape straight from Samuel Beckett.
Douglas' genius was very much appreciated at the time but the producers also knew he had little commercial appeal. He was only to make one commercial film ("Comrades") before his death.
He was very much enamoured of silent movies and in this trilogy, dialog is very limited. Instead, his camera lingers long enough on a face or an abandoned yard or a shabby table, so that words become superfluous.
This is a great film experience. Several days after seeing it for the first time, the images still replay themselves in my mind. Once you own it, you'll know exactly what to buy next for your dedicated film buff friends.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
From Bleakness, a Triumph of Integrity and Redemption through Art, May 26, 2009
Confession - I had never heard of Bill Douglas until a recent fortunate accident connected me with the legendary TRILOGY.If you define a masterpiece as art with a power and appeal that defies analysis, yet connects you with something profound and truthful, this collection of monochrome autobiographies of "Jamie" (immediately identifiable as Bill Douglas himself)is without question a masterpiece. A boy drags himself out of terrifying poverty into a self-created world of hope and creativity. This is not Dickensean cinema, Oliver re-visited, or a Scotish Bleak House. One soon realizes a subtle artist is at work, for Mr Douglas' shots are squeezed dry of sentimentality. There is no manipulation of the audience, no compromising sweetness, no orchestration of response through a music score. Cuts are as jarring as Jamie's life itself. The audience's intelligence is respected when there are omissions of chronology and brutality is neither explained nor resolved. The films' artistry fashions beauty from the most unpromising images and themes, and at the end you will not know how the director achieved it. Slag heaps, coal lifts dropping men like refuse into the shafts, tenement pathways never offering an exit from the slums, awful toys in undarned Christmas stockings, lumpen food, silent dinner tables, adults incapable of joy, kids unable to smile -hardly a wholesome or hopeful world for the central character (superbly played by non-actor Stephen Archibald, whose casting is itself a stroke of genius by Bill Douglas). Yet the narrative culminates in Jamie breaking through the grimey surface of poverty, triumphing over his shattering beginnings, and finding a friend and a purpose. These films feature the quiet Bill Douglas style of lingering on the human face, or holding a shot of an empty space, so that the silence speaks. Look for reviews of Bill Douglas and his work, and you see the word "poetic" repeatedly summoned to describe what he does with a camera. He lives up to his billing as a poet of the visual, and these films are, in my opinion, works of genius.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Blew Me Away, November 8, 2011
I am going to keep this review brief, but if you are on the fence about buying this stop thinking and do. It's one of the most poetic and musical film(s). Although the films are short they are dense and pack just as much of a punch than any full length film. Definitely worth it.
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