Show People (1928) to Quentin Tarantino’s elegiac
Once Upon a Time In Hollywood (2019) films about Hollywood, and by extension Los Angeles, have been there from the start of movies and continued in various guises throughout its multifarious history, often with tongue planted firmly in cheek. Throughout the sixties and early seventies several films were produced that spoke of the end of Hollywood as a creative enterprise, that is, as a field in which artists could examine their emotions and ideas and their response to the contemporary world – a civilization in crisis that they sought to describe or explore in depth from within. From Pier Paolo Pasolini’s
“
Thank you for the days / those endless days, those sacred days you gave me” So begins the classic 1968 single by the Kinks, and Tsai Ming-Liang has an apposite poster tagline here if he needs it. But altering any one element of this immaculate comeback feature––say, putting this very track against the closing credits––would be heresy, especially when it already contains a beautiful use of diegetic music in the theme from Chaplin’s
Limelight. I was lucky enough to see his tender, spellbinding new film at BFI London’s in-person, distanced screenings, and strongly hope others are afforded that pleasure when things open again in 2021––when it will most certainly appear on TFS’s list for the second year running. –