Reviews

I had never seen this although I knew it had a bad rep from previously, so went last night to the BFI in London's special (and free) screening of Hugh Hudson's about-to-be-released-on-DVD cut with relatively high hopes.

Hudson has trimmed the film by about 11 minutes and added a voice-over narration from a clearly much older Pacino (but perhaps that doesn't matter as he could be telling the story as an old man). This does give it a clearer narrative and might assist those who felt it lacked that before.

I will say it is wonderfully shot with realistic scenes and fine battle footage but some of the performances are woeful, I'm afraid. The worst by a country mile is Richard O'Brien as an odious British officer/lord. This is pantomime acting and his character even utters the line "American dream, what!" which I find impossible to believe would have been said in late 18th century America by an Englishman! Nastassja Kinski, gorgeous as she is in this, is not much better. She is all over the place and I find her character barely believable.

Pacino is not that bad in comparison and is clearly trying very hard but why, oh why did they allow him to wear that ridiculous headband thing?? This dates the film to 1985, not 1776. It detracts from his performance.

Overall, visually good (apart from the headband) but very disappointing.

What a fantastic programme this was! There has been nothing as good as it ever since on UK TV. It was always superior in my view to Top of the Pops with its usually inane presenters (the wonderful John Peel excepted) and terrible miming from so many of the stars (though that did change later on as more bands wanted to play live).

Australia does have Channel Ten's Video Hits which is sometimes similar in its approach but has two of the dullest, ignorant presenters appear on it far too much.

"The Chart Show" was a simple concept - just stick on a load of music videos and add the odd captioned comment. It did indeed introduce tons of us to new bands and musicians as well as how good (or awful) music videos could really be.