APRIL 18 - MAY 2
MICHAEL MANN: IT'S A MANN'S WORLD
Michael Mann has pursued a remarkably consistent vision through a varied career in film and television that spans the last 25 years. His films, including his biographical and historical pictures, but exemplified best in his thorough reworking of the crime genre, focus on men defined by obsessive professionalism. Doomed outsiders governed by their own inscrutable codes, Mann's characters are the descendents of Jean-Pierre Melville's solitary underworld wanderers.
Mann himself is a legendary perfectionist, a method director who carries out intensive research, drills actors for months, and who exactingly controls every shot. Renowned as a master stylist, he creates a lush cinematic world by utilising intense colour, cold urban environments and choreographed carnage. Always brutal, Mann's use of violence is like Peckinpah's, highly expressive but never gratuitous.
- Mann with Crowe on the set of The Insider.
This season takes in highlights from the length and breadth of Mann's career in film and television. The archetypal Mann character, the obsessive loner, is already present in his early film, Thief (1981); an explosive epic of downfall and revenge. Manhunter (1986), the first adaptation of a Thomas Harris novel, features intense performances that compare well to Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and its brilliant use of Iron Butterfly's hammering In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida in the film's climactic scene is a superb example of Mann's eccentric use of music. Heat (1995) is widely acclaimed as Mann's masterpiece; a face-off structured around three spectacular set pieces. Finally, Collateral (2004) is another duel of wills and is a perfect example of the style of psychological action film that Mann has made his own.
APRIL 18 - 7.00pm
Manhunter
Michael Mann (1986) 121 mins MA
Retired FBI Forensic investigator Will Graham returns to help the bureau track-down a serial killer in Mann's chilling & edgy adaptation of Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon. Mann's sparse & clinical imagery is interwoven with some very clever clues, steadily building tension & gripping performances. In particular, Brian Cox as the original Dr Hannibal Lecktor (sic) reveals a character that is much more threatening in contrast to Anthony Hopkins all-devouring one. Rare imported print.
APRIL 18 - 9.15pm
THE INSIDER
Michael Mann (1999) 157 mins M
A tense psychological thriller as complex & uncompromising as it is engaging & enthralling, created from the real life web of deceit that surrounds the tobacco industry. A brilliant dissection of recent US politics & the media by a scalpel sharp screen sensibility that reaffirms Mann's position as one of the most important and intelligent directors working in mainstream cinema. Russell Crowe is a revelation, with his shrunken height & ballooning girth, metamorphosing into a bumbling harrowed picture of awkwardness trapped at the centre of an infernal feud. Co-starring Al Pacino & Christopher Plummer.
APRIL 25 - 7.00pm
CRIME STORY: Top of the World
Michael Mann (1987) 50 mins.
Episode of the NBC TV series Crime Story, which follows the exploits of the Major Crimes Unit of the Chicago Police department in the early 1960s. This episode was the only one directed by Mann and stars Paul Anka and Debbie Harry.
MAY 2 - 7.00pm
Thief
(Michael Mann) 1981 USA 122 mins R
A professional jewel-thief (James Caan), lured into a major diamond heist by the promise of a substantial payoff that would allow him to realise his civilian dreams, finds himself betrayed by his malicious benefactor. Mann's cinematic debut deploys strikingly expressive mise en scène & sound elements to underscore the psychological torment of the lone, obsessive professional, foregrounding the thematic & stylistic tendencies found throughout his subsequent works. With Tuesday Weld, James Belushi & Willie Nelson. Imported 35mm print.
APRIL 25 - 8.00pm
Heat
(Michael Mann) 1995 USA 172 mins MA
After an elaborately planned robbery of an armoured car turns into a triple homicide, decorated cop Lt. Vincent Hanna (Al Pacino) becomes determined to put master thief Neil McCauley (Robert De Niro) back behind bars. Famous as the first on-screen pairing of these Hollywood heavyweights, the film exhibits a Melvillian fascination with the bonds and rivalries between men defined by their professionalism & codes of conduct. Coolly evoking LA's milieu, this neo-noir is an astounding take on the possibilities of the action genre. With Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Val Kilmer & Ashley Judd.
MAY 2 - 9.15
Collateral
(Michael Mann) 2004 USA 120 mins MA
A cold-blooded hitman (Tom Cruise) forces a cabbie (Jamie Foxx, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor) to help him carry out a round of executions. The sodium haze of Los Angeles at night, shot in rich digital by Australian Dion Beebe (who won a BAFTA for his work here), is the board on which a chess-like battle of wits plays out between captor and captive. "Collateral achieves a degree of organic, internal rigour worthy of the title masterpiece." Senses of Cinema.