
Photos: Classiq Journal
At the beginning of summer, we made a list of films to watch for the whole family. With each science-fiction film checked off the list (Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind being the latest), the question remains: “When can I see Alien?” I don’t quite yet know what to answer to my seven-year-old, but I am looking forward to the moment. I can not wait to relate to a child’s enthusiasm when he watches for the first time one of the defining sci-fi films. My wishful thinking? To watch it on the big screen.
In space no one can hear you scream.
What, in my opinion, makes Alien extraordinary is that it belongs to itself, and to cinema. Retaining a trace of the independent spirit of the New Hollywood, as well as an European sensibility, Alien created a world that lived on its own. A world, mainly contrived to the interior of the ship Nostromo, with its empty and immersive corridors and spaces and a feeling of otherness, that I think can be best described as organic. It merges biology and technology in a way it had never been done before, nor since, in sci-fi cinema, investigating how it is to be human in a hostile universe where you encounter other biological and artificial life.
It is not an action film, there are no hierarchies, no gender references, no sentimental dialogue (all paths that, unfortunately, the ordinary sequels subsequently took). None of this matters out there, in the infinite space. There is something bigger than you out there. You simply get the sense of that watching the film. It uniquely conjures up primal emotions, the kind I imagine you would experience if you witnessed the dawn of human existence. That’s my personal relationship with Alien, one of those few films you don’t just experience, but rather inhabit.
There is this particular scene, an early scene that made me alert, planting the seed in my head, the very first time I watched it years ago, that I was in for a great film, as well as for a great character, one of cinema’s greatest sci-fi characters. It is when Sigourney Weaver’s resolute Ellen Ripley – who, until that moment, has an unidentified role in the hierarchy of the spaceship – shows steely determination and cold calculation in directly refusing her captain, Dallas (Tom Skerritt), to admit Kane (John Hurt) back into the ship after Dallas, Kane and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) had left the ship to investigate the derelict craft after they received an emergency signal from a planet previously thought to be uninhabited, and an extraterrestrial creature had attached to Kane’s face.
”Dallas: Something has attached itself to him. We have to get him to the infirmary right away.
Ripley: What kind of thing? I need a clear definition.
Dallas: An organism. Open the hatch.
Ripley: Wait a minute. If we let it in, the ship could be infected. You know the quarantine procedure. Twenty-four hours for decontamination.
Dallas: He could die in twenty-four hours. Open the hatch.
Ripley: Listen to me, if we break quarantine, we could all die.
Lambert: Look, could you open the god-damned hatch? We have to get him inside.
Ripley: No. I can’t do that and if you were in my position, you’d do the same.
Dallas: Ripley, this is an order. Open that hatch right now, do you hear me?
Ripley: Yes.
Dallas: Ripley. This is an order. Do you hear me?
Ripley: Yes. I read you. The answer is negative.”
Who is this person? It’s not that often, not anymore anyway, when a character grabs your interest so fully and so forcefully. What makes her stay so cool? She’s the one who does her job. And I believed her. I believed she wouldn’t have let them in. The only reason why they are let in is because another character, Ash, overrides Ripley and opens the hatch. Sigourney Weaver played her role cool. Androgynous and with a masculine height and dressed in her spaceship uniform and displaying that hard look refusing to allow herself to be governed by her emotions. Her work ethics and functional uniform are so far from the norm of today’s society that Ripley, more than forty years on, is a near-mythical creature herself, more so than she has ever been.

Viewing
Pour elle, 2008
Fred Cavayé
Intimate drama and unrelenting thriller at the same time, Fred Cavayé’s debut film is a beautiful piece of movie-making. Julien Auclert (Vincent Lindon) and his wife Lisa (Diane Kruger) – both Vincent and Diane are so very, very good in their roles – live a happy and comfortable life with their son, Oscar (Lancelot Roch). Their world is shattered when, one evening, the police break into their home and arrest Lisa for murder. Unable to prove her innocence (a matter of unfortunate circumstance and justice miscarriage), Lisa is serving a 20+year sentence. But when she starts refusing to take her insulin (she is a diabetic), Julien knows that the only way to save her is to break her out of prison. I have chosen the Japanese poster for Pour elle (Anything for Her) to use in the newsletter because it visualises so well the film, with the blurry background of the wall plastered with Julien’s sketches, notes and newspaper clippings that make up the escape plan, and the couple in the foreground, the impatient look of two people in love who can’t see their future further the present desperation that has unexpectedly taken over their lives. It’s the moment that can break you or make you do things you would never have thought you could possibly do.
The Breakfast Club, 1985
John Hughes
I have a soft spot for the teen movies of the 1980s. Some Kind of Wonderful, written by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch, is one of my favourites, but the one I’ve seen most recently is The Breakfast Club, another Hughes film. I am usually against quotes or slogans covering the film poster that try to sell the film, but this one is the exception to the rule: “They only met once, but it changed their lives forever. They were five total strangers, with nothing in common, meeting for the first time. A brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse. Before the day was over, they broke the rules. Bared their souls. And touched each other in a way they never dreamed possible.” The only background they need is the music of the ‘80s.
Un éléphant ça trompe énormément (Pardon mon affaire), 1976
Yves Robert
I can’t remember when it was the last time I laughed so much at a film. Pardon mon affaire is madly funny without failing to be a good film and without falling into the ridicule or into triviality. Four men best friends (Jean Rochefort, Claude Brasseur, Guy Bedos and Victor Lanoux, all impeccably cast) would go to any length to help each other. It all starts when Étienne (Jean Rochefort), a family man, falls head over heels for a mysterious woman in a red billowy dress after a Marilyn Monroe above a windy grating moment. The film is loaded with humour and slapstick moments, but while I was watching, there is something else I realised: films used to have a certain pace, they took time being made, they were made with joy, it wasn’t just entertainment.
The More the Merrier, 1943
George Stevens
Isn’t Jean Arthur one of the best comedic actors? And she’s at her best George Stevens’ quick-witted comedies. The Talk of the Town, co-starring Cary Grant, is one of them. The More the Merrier is another one. Connie Milligan (Jean Arthur) decides to sublet her apartment to two men, Benjamin Dingle (Charles Coburn) and Joe Carter (Joel McCrea), because of the housing crunch during World War II. Jean Arthur is so naturally funny. Comical yet not silly ridiculous. So gracefully yet confidently making her way among the men. It’s the attitude and body language, the verbal wit and physical humour, that distinctive voice that could be low and husky or going into a high pitch, simply put, so much more than what meets the eye that completes the picture. She knows how to be romantic, smart and grown-up without forgetting to be a tomboy and free-spirited and funny. And I like the different kind of humour that Joel McCrea, with his quiet demeanor, and Charles Coburn, with his usual effervescent self, bring to the film.

Left: Photo by Lusophonica, Cascais, Portugal: “Lusophonica is a coffeeshop. And also a radio.
A radio located in Cascais. And also a music nation.” | Right: Japanese film poster for “Pour Elle”, directed by Fred Cavayé, 2008
Reading
“I read books for pleasure and their transformative power,” Philip Glass writes. He refers to literature, mainly, but his book, Words without Music, certainly has something of this transformative power. Not all artists’ memoirs give you a glimpse into their creative processes and minds the way this one does. Philip Glass grants you this access and it’s incredible. He not only makes and plays music, he hears and sees music. “I don’t make music to go with the film, I write the music that is the film (including Paul Schrader’s Mishima or Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream).” I simply found his composing journey fascinating, from operas to film music to operas adapted from Jean Cocteau’s film trilogy Orphée/La belle et la bête/Les enfants terribles. On a side note, here is the Philip Glass calendar for the upcoming months on the occasion of the musician’s 85th anniversary this year.
Not since waiting for David Lynch’s Room to Dream have I looked forward more enthusiastically to a director’s book than I am for Quentin Tarantino’s Cinema Speculation. It’s due to come out in November, but I am already counting the days to its release (which is why I am writing about it in August). The best part is that it’s not autobiographical, but organised around key American films from the 1970s, all of which Tarantino first saw as a young moviegoer at the time. “At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT’s and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the artform ever.”
Listening
Creedence Clearwater Revival, anytime, anywhere. And the best news is that the band’s legendary 1970 show, Creedence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall, is set for release (on vinyl, cd and cassette – doesn’t the design of a cassette look better than ever before?) for the first time in late autumn. A documentary concert film, directed by Bob Smeaton and narrated by Jeff Bridges, is also ready for release. Jeff Bridges narrates: “What set Creedence apart from many of their contemporaries was their ability to produce the sound of their records on stage, and the primal excitement and joy of their concerts, which came from their love of live performance.”
Biffy Cliro.
The Stone Roses’ self titled 1989 album, and 1980s music galore, including The Breakfast Club and Some Kind of Wonderful soundtracks.

Making
There is something so liberating and authentically inspiring about brick and mortar shops that have no online version whatsoever. Together, Lisbon, is one such store. It requires a close encounter to discover it. You have to pass its threshold. The owner, artist Anna Westerlund, told me: “Together is a long time dream! It is an Anna Westerlund shop in the way that it is my shop, carrying all the collections, one off pieces and new ones that I am testing. It works a little bit like a scenery where I can test new ideas and having that permanent stage for my pieces is amazing. But at Together, we mix my ceramics with other brands that I feel compliment my work and makes the experience of who visits us richer. I think it would be boring if it was just ceramics!”
”I pursued literature as a personal refreshment. My opinions
didn’t need to be authenticated or verified by anyone else.
I read books for pleasure and their transformative power.”
Philip Glass, Words without Music
Exploring
Record stores, radio waves and the most original list of adventure films and documentaries I have come across so far.
Decked out in 1950s fashion and posters of Mick Jagger, James Brown, Serge Gainsbourg and David Bowie on the wall, Rupture Records, a record shop in the 10th Arrondissement in Paris, was founded five years ago on the premises of reconnecting with the pop culture from the 1950s to the 1980s, and of reconnecting people with culture. “We restore value to the music, we return to the object and the quality of the music,” owner Alexander Sap told Le Figaro when the store opened. “That’s what vinyl stands for. We take the time to choose, to look at the covers, to read a booklet, to feel the material, to hear the sound unfold, to breathe and to listen.”

”I knew right away that the image and the music could not be
on top of each other, because then there would be no room
for the spectators to invent a place for themselves.”
Philip Glass, Words without Music
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. The Racquet magazine newsletter. The Adventure Podcast: Terra Incognita. The print magazines Monocle and Sirene.