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Comrades (1986) Plus avec IMDbPro »

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19 utilisateurs sur 21 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Searingly beautiful: worth going a very long way to see., 3 février 2002

Auteur : Jonathan Dore (jd@jonathandore.com) de Cambridge

Bill Douglas's last film, one of the great films of British cinema, and a gorgeous visual poem of surpassing beauty. Among students of the British film industry "Comrades" is best known for its commercial flop: given a wide theatrical release in 1987, disappointing box office led it to be taken off within a couple of weeks before word of mouth recommendations could do anything to build an audience - doubtless many people were expecting a narratively straightforward, Merchant-Ivory piece of historical costume drama. It's never been released theatrically since, and Channel 4, who made it, have only shown it twice since on television - I strongly doubt they've even shown it on their dedicated film channel, FilmFour, either (it doesn't involve people pointing guns at each other). As such, it's a great unknown, and rare copies of the video are hard to come by, so for the immediate future, it's hard to see how this gem is going to become better known.

The music is an oddly inspired choice: apart from the hymns and folk songs that are sung by the characters, the soundtrack music makes no attempt at pastiche of 19th-century musical forms or styles. Instead, Douglas got Hans Werner Henze, one of the leading German composers of the post-war years, to provide music (all the more powerful for being sparingly used) in his own, completely uncompromised modernist idiom (no doubt Henze agreed to do it for little money, as his well-known radical politics would have made him sympathetic to a film about the birth of trade unionism). The rich and magical soundworld Henze evokes with a small group of instruments adds immeasurably to the sense of wonder and the sheer, marvellous strangeness of many of the scenes.

What sticks in the memory most, though, are the arresting, breathtakingly beautiful visual images, frozen in time and never to be forgotten: the lanternist walking across the chalk figure of the Cerne Abbas giant on a dark hillside during the title sequence, then later seen in silhouette passing silently in front of a huge full moon; Hammett (Keith Allen giving his finest performance), too furious to speak, holding up six fingers to the viewer, turning away and then coming back to repeat the gesture to indicate how many shillings they were getting for that week's work; George Loveless (Robin Soans, criminally underused ever since) pushing a shilling coin in front of the face of Jesus in an engraving of the nativity to show Frampton how he, like the wise men in the picture now appear to be doing, worships money; James Loveless walking across a trackless Australian beach and blundering into the shot of an itinerant Italian photographer attempting a portrait of an Aborigine; the Stanfield family saying grace around the table before dividing a pitifully small loaf between too many mouths; George Loveless feeling his way through the depths of a dark Australian forest, enraptured by the beauty and seemingly free, but actually in the world's largest prison. And there are many, many more.

Every image works in its own terms as a visual composition - as striking in their vivid colours, visual rhythm, and the sometimes stylized, almost hieratic gestures of the actors as Caravaggio's "Supper at Emmaus" or "Entombment of Christ". But the images themselves are never tediously lingered over, or presented only for their own sake: common themes run through them. The idea of one object obscuring another, or silhouetted against another (the coin over the face of Christ, the lanternist against the moon) or of an image being projected or captured (the shadow of Frampton's maid passing from room to room, projected against the curtains by the light of her own candle, the lanternist making animal shapes with the shadow of his hands against a wall, the photographer trying to capture an other-worldly image on the beach) are a strong undercurrent, suitably for a film-maker who saw his role as a painter of images. This is made apparent in the director's alter ego throughout the film, Alex Norton - superbly diverse in several different cameo roles, including the photographer, a silhouettist who cuts a paper image of the governor of the Australian penal colony as he engages in barbed political banter, and the lanternist himself (the subtitle of the film is "a lanternist's account of the Tolpuddle Martyrs"): the conceit of the whole film, as an epilogue makes clear, is that it was all a lanternist's show, presented to an audience of well-wishers who had worked for the Martyrs' release. Hints had been given: Norton's various characters had been the only ones, at various times, to stare directly at the viewer, into the camera, the director engaging conspiratorially with his viewers. The great tragedy for film-lovers everywhere, and what must have been a great sadness for Douglas, who died in 1991, is that his viewers have been so few.

UPDATE (February 2009): Film4 finally showed "Comrades" on 21 February this year, more than ten years after the channel began broadcasting. At almost the same time, the British Film Institute announced that they would be releasing the film on DVD and Blu-Ray in summer 2009. Hooray!

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10 utilisateurs sur 12 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Outraged!, 9 janvier 2004
Auteur : norloll (norloll@hotmail.com) de Norwich, England

WHY ISN't THIS FANTASTIC FILM AVAILABLE on vid or DVD?? That is my message - mainly intended for whoever holds the rights...

Btw - for those who are interested in pre-cinema stuff - Bill Douglas had a massive collection of pre-cinema artifacts (much referred to in this film) which are now housed at the Bill Douglas Center at the University of Exeter.

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7 utilisateurs sur 7 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
A mystery why this is never shown, 22 mai 2006
Auteur : youngian67 de Royaume-Uni

This is one of the greatest underrated epics of Brtish cinema.

Not only does it chart a pivotal event in the development of trade unionism but one of the few films portrays the harshness of the Australian exile system.

Everyone looked like they wanted to make this film and excel in it. The narrative slow burning but riveting, pausing to allow the audience to taste life of that period.

We see much of the wretchedness of late Victorian urban life on the screen but this early rural period is often pasteurised like a Constable painting or concentrates on the upper classes.

Bill Douglas owes more to Ken Loach than Merchant Ivory.

I believe this film was made by Channel 4 but it is never shown and or has a DVD release.

If anyone who has any experience of Channel 4 , I would be interested to know what they have against this film.

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6 utilisateurs sur 6 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Very Good Film, 29 décembre 2005

Auteur : afjhill de Canada

likewise..this is a truly great bit of film making. I have never seen a film before or since that gives such an interesting and atmospheric account of life in the English countryside of the 19th century. Also a film with a compassionate social message with strong characters that looks at what "ordinary" people can achieve when they work together. This is a film that should be issued on DVD and i would urge whomever is in charge of such things to find a way of doing this. It would appeal to many people from film buffs through to history students. I originally had to watch the film as part of a history course and it really brought that period of history to life for me.

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1 utilisateurs sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
A much needed eduction, 6 septembre 2009

Auteur : cgyford de Ankara, Turquie

Working class filmmaker Bill Douglas followed his much lauded autobiographical trilogy with this British Film Council funded poor man's epic about the Tolpuddle Martyrs and their struggle to establish an early trade union that was a worthy winner of the BFI Sutherland Trophy and a fitting final film for the director.

Soans puts in a strong central performance with able support from Gaminara, Bateman, Davis, Flynn and a roguish Allen, whilst Hordern, Jones, Fox, Windsor, Redgrave and an astonishing debut performance Staunton rounds out the cast and the omnipresent Norton fills in everything else.

The director retells the tale on a grand scale breathing new life into the story with atmospheric locations that perfectly capture rural Dorset and colonial Australia whilst remembering his own place as the story teller, in the form of the lanternist and his bag of tricks, and never loosing the central message of the union movement.

Remember thine end.

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1 utilisateurs sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
"Comrades" finally shown on TV, 20 mars 2009

Auteur : godfather2 de London

Sorry that this is posted a little late but Film4 showed 'Comrades' at 12.20am on March 20th 2009, complete with advertisements unfortunately.

The announcer said "now for a rare screening of a British epic", too right, I estimate it hasn't been on TV for 20 years.

They do tend to show films more than once so it might be repeated in the next few weeks, probably in a graveyard slot again.

Not sure if I enjoyed it as much as the first time around but the location filming and Dorset landscapes are stunning.

Seeing as they released the Bill Douglas 'Trilogy' on DVD last year perhaps a release for this overlooked epic is in the pipeline?

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1 utilisateurs sur 1 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Where is it now?, 28 juin 2008

Auteur : roland-spencerjones de Royaume-Uni

I remember watching Comrades many years ago, sitting spellbound as the story slowly unfolded. I particularly appreciated the long slow "mug-shots" of the characters, which stayed with me for years afterwards. The story of the Tolpuddle martyrs was new to me, although I remember hearing the name in my history classes. What develops in the film is the story of an early attempt at democracy and human rights, that ends with deportation to Australia. Even there the early spirit of trade-unionism emerges: United We Stand, Divided we Fall.

What a shame that the film seems to be currently unavailable on either VHS or DVD. Who can I write to about this?

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A horrid experience, 29 octobre 2009

Auteur : Mike Hayes de Royaume-Uni

I saw this film when it was shown at Purbeck Film Festival in 2002. It was introduced by a friend of the director and there was a display of memorabilia associated with the making of the film.

The film was shown in two parts with an interval between the parts. My friends and I decided that we had seen enough by the interval and left the cinema (along with many others). This was the most boring film I have ever seen and the cast, excellent actors as they are, was not able to rescue it.

Purbeck Film Festival continue to show the film - it does depict a local event - Tolpuddle is less than 20 mile from Purbeck. It has been reported to me that people still leave at the interval!

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5 utilisateurs sur 15 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
Give The Dog A Bone, 21 juin 2004

Auteur : Theo Robertson de Isle Of Bute, Scotland

*** Ce commentaire peut contenir des spoilers ***

This opens with someone getting brained by a militia man but if you`re expecting a Steven Segal action fest ( And what Steven Segal movie hasn`t opened with someone getting killed by a militia man ? ) you`re going to be bitterly disappointed since COMRADES is a movie documenting in fine detail the story of the Tolpuddle martyrs , a group of labourers from 19th Century England who were deported to Australia because they committed the crime of starting a trade union

The Tolpuddle martyrs are folk heroes in the modern British labour movement. If you`re only vaguely aware of who they were or have a passing interest in how things were in 19th century Britain but want to know what things were like in a pre Marxist era then you could do a lot worse than watch this movie . However there is a problem and that`s just like ZULU DAWN it works far better as a history lesson than as a movie which means history students will rate this movie far more than prolific cinema goers which explains why 40% of the voters have given COMRADES ten out of ten while the IMDB regular voters have only given it an average of 4.6 out of 10

There is something very memorable about this movie and unfortunately I don`t think it`s a good thing with Scottish actor Alex Norton playing multiple roles throughout the narrative and it wasn`t until he appears in about his fourth role that I realised he was playing different characters . This was highly confusing to me since I thought he was playing the same role previously . Norton later plays a labour boss in Australia overseeing a work detail and in a highly disgusting scene goes into a hut and gets a dog to perform oral sex on him . It`s all done in a rather disciplined way with the camera locked onto Norton`s face as he gasps " good boy " but it still doesn`t make the scene any less shocking and I guess it brings a whole new context to the phrase " Give the dog a bone "

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