Parky at the Pictures (DVD 27/6/2013)

In 1994, the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales made an amazing discovery. Amongst the material donated by Viscount Tenby was the complete negative of Maurice Elvey's 1918 silent epic, The Life Story of David Lloyd George. As the grandson of the former Prime Minister, Tenby was more than happy for John Reed and his team to restore the print, which finally received its premiere in 1996. Yet rather than heralding the long overdue arrival of the most ambitious picture to have been produced in this country prior to David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962), the British film establishment chose virtually en masse to spurn it and it has lain in undeserved obscurity ever since. However, MovieMail has decided to take stock of the two-disc DVD edition and it more than lives up to its billing of a forgotten masterpiece.

Structurally, this is pretty conservative, with the Childhood (1863-70) segment opening with shots of David Lloyd George's parents, birth certificate and the house in a Manchester backstreet in which he was born. However, the family moved soon afterwards to a farm in Bulford in Pembrokeshire, only for the infant's teacher father, William George, to pass away when he was just 18 months old. His mother Elizabeth took David and his siblings, William and Ellen, to live with her cobbler brother, Richard Lloyd, in his cottage in Llanystumdwy, near Criccieth in Caernarfonshire. However, the boy managed his first revolt against authority when he tried to stop a neighbour from taking away a chair when Elizabeth was forced to auction off their meagre belongings and his attempt to jam the gate with a stone and knock off the man's hat suggest a feisty character with a penchant for the underdog.

Yet, while they could only afford half a boiled egg each on Sundays for the boys (while Ellen had to make do with a dipped soldier), the family was not as poor as Lloyd George liked to make out. Indeed, Lloyd played a prominent role in local religious and political life and he was encouraged by teacher David Evans, whose vivid Scripture lessons fired the boy's imagination and also seemingly Elvey's, as he borrows from DW Griffith's 1916 epic, Intolerance, to show Moses resisting Egyptian tyranny in a blue-tinted illumination that contrasts with shots of German soldiers herding Belgian women following the invasion of 1914. But, while Evans hoped that a great leader might one day emerge from his class, he was appalled when Lloyd George refused to recite the catechism for a clergyman visiting on behalf of the National Anglican School board, as he attended the nonconformist Chapel of the Disciples of Christ, where Lloyd sometimes preached.

This willingness to stand up for his principles attracted the attention of Maggie Owen from Mynydd Ednyfed, who also listened intently, as young David spoke his mind at the meeting in Llanystumdwy smithy of the local debating society. However, he was still a boy in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War divided the continent and David and his pals rewrote history by having Napoleon III's forces triumph over those of Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck (after who a neighbour had named their pesky dog). This game on the North Welsh hills brings to mind the story of David and Goliath and Elvey depicts the former's conquest of his bullying opponent and uses superimposition to contract David with the adult Lloyd George and Goliath with Kaiser Wilhelm II. Considering the might of the British Empire at the time, this is a rather fanciful comparison, but it demonstrated Elvey's visual imagination and his potency as a myth-maker, as he ends this part of the film with a quotation from Lloyd George about his pride in his roots and in being able to help his own people. 

According to the captions in the Youth (1870-90) chapter, the newly baptised Lloyd George took his first step towards manhood when he decided to become a solicitor and Lloyd taught himself Latin and French to help his nephew with his studies. He was articled as a junior clerk to the firm of Breese, Jones and Casson in Portmadoc and spent much of his spare time wandering the hills sporting a Tam o' Shanter cap and reading the complete works of William Shakespeare. Around this time, the family moved into Morvin House in Criccieth and Lloyd George began to write articles for the local paper under the pseudonym `Brutus' and finds his trenchant brand of oratory much in demand at public meetings. But, even more significantly, he visited the House of Commons while in London for his final legal exam and, that night, wrote in his diary of his ambition to become a politician after watching William Ewart Gladstone and Lord Randolph Churchill jousting at the Dispatch Box during a debate on the 1884 Franchise Bill.

Having passed his exam, Lloyd George starts practicing law at Morvin House and marries Maggie at Pencaenwydd Chapel on 24 January 1888. Soon afterwards, he made his name when he advised some quarrymen from Llanfrothen to break down the gate after the rector refused to allow a nonconformist colleague to be buried in his churchyard and the judge overturned the jury verdict in agreeing with Lloyd George that they had been discriminated on account of their religion. This success enabled him to open a second office in Festiniog and he causes a minor stir at the nearby chapel when he reads the lesson but declines the invitation to lead the prayer, as he feels unworthy of the honour.

On the advice of Irish leader Michael Davitt, Lloyd George decides to devote his life to politics and is chosen as the Liberal candidate for Caernarfon in the 1890 by-election. The party agent dispatched to support Conservative hopeful Ellis Nanney (a magistrate from Llanystumdwy) was so impressed by Lloyd George's performance on the hustings that he predicted a heavy defeat. In the end, he won with a majority of just 18 (1963 to 1945) and took his seat on Budget Day, where he was welcomed by the Speaker after taking his oath of allegiance. His maiden speech came on 13 June 1890 when he raised the questions of Welsh education and temperance reform and caught the attention of his fellow MPs by making amusing attacks on Lord Randolph Churchill and Joseph Chamberlain.

Liberal bigwig John Morley predicted great things for the newcomer after seeing him address a meeting in Lancashire. But he didn't always court popularity, as Elvey shows when a visit to a rowdy South Wales pub convinced him of the need to regulate opening hours. This was some way in the future, but he showed during the 1892 General Election campaign how to deal with a drunken heckler and such wit led to his majority increasingly significantly and Lloyd George was treated to a torchlight procession through the streets to mark his victory. His crusades against landlordism and clericalism won him further support. But, on 22 May 1896, he was suspended for a week after incurring the wrath of the Speaker for refusing to vacate the Chamber during the reading of the Agricultural Ratings Bill.

Such intransigence only raised his profile further, as did the ability to take a joke against himself, as he did during a meeting on the Disestablishment of the Church of Wales when he was compared to a mendacious bishop. But his opposition to the Boer War led to Lloyd George being vilified during the 1900 election and there was even a debate among his local activists about whether he was a suitable candidate. In a spectacular sequence that required 10,000 extras, Elvey recreated the riot at Birmingham Town Hall on 18 December when an attempt was made to storm the platform and Lloyd George had to be smuggled out of the building disguised as a policeman. Yet, when he returned to the venue in 1906, he was accorded a warm reception and raised a smile by referring to his previous visit.

By this period, he had become renowned as a social reformer, having been backed by former miner William Abraham in helping force through the 1902 Education Act. Consequently, when the Liberals won a landslide in December 1905, Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman made him President of the Board of Trade and he quickly made his mark with the Merchant Shipping Act that improved the living conditions and rations of the sailors keeping Britain's ports busy. He also won plaudits for insisting on a public inquiry into the 1907 Shrewsbury rail disaster that claimed 20 lives. As a result, when Herbert Asquith moved into 10 Downing Street in 1908, he was promoted to Chancellor of the Exchequer and changed the nation's attitude to the elderly by passing the Old Age Pensions Act on 28 May 1908 and Elvey marks the occasion with a wonderful shot symbolising the liberation of the aged from the curse of the workhouse by showing dozens of senior citizens appear to walk through the sinister curving wall of just such a forbidding institution and gathering excitedly each Friday to collect the money that enabled them to live with dignity.

Busy though he was, Lloyd George remained a devoted family man and he is shown teasing 16 year-old daughter Olwen that he is planning a bill to reduce the length of school holidays before he accompanies her to the park to see some pelicans being fed. And his determination to ensure everyone was entitled to similar domestic bliss, he introduced the People's Budget on 29 April 1909 and spoke for five hours to explain how new taxes would be levied so that fathers living in squalor would not risk jail in order to steal bread to feed their broods and the opposition leader Arthur Balfour poured him some water and even suggested an adjournment so he could continue to make his epochal speech. The following day, Lloyd George bogeyed the first hole at Walton Heath golf course, but he was back in the Commons on 4 May 1911 to reveal how National Insurance would enable sick workers to be cared for and paid on the presentation of a doctor's note (which Elvey brilliantly illustrates by showing a wife not having to pawn her wedding ring or the china when her husband falls ill).

Such parliamentary heroics made Lloyd George a target of the Suffragettes and militant members are seen attacking his vehicle when he arrives for a speaking engagement. The incident is presented in a slightly chauvinist manner and there is something patronising about the caption that proclaims that the Suffragettes did eventually do their bit during the war alongside ordinary women. But it was Lloyd George who steered through the Franchise Act of 1917, which gave the vote to over six million women.

Back in 1911, the Agadir crisis almost tipped the continent into war and the Kaiser is shown brooding over a map with his generals as Lloyd George delivers a speech at the Mansion House, in which he states that he will always strive for peace, but would never accept terms that disadvantaged or dishonoured the Empire. However, while he was fishing back in his beloved Wales, `the Red Dawn of the Great Crusade' descended in August 1914 and, as Wilhelm appears through a red-tinted mist, we see German troops marching through the ruins of a Belgian town and Lloyd George leaps into action to convince business leaders to temporarily close the Stock Exchange, limit the issuing of paper currency and raise the bank rate.

No sooner has he prevented a fiscal panic than Lloyd George rallies the nation during his Queen's Hall speech on 19 September, which is cross-cut with the provocative images of troops beating Belgian children who dared mock them by goose-stepping through the rubble of their town. He predicts a long and terrible war, but avers that Britain shall `march through terror to triumph' and starts to turn the tide by summoning manufacturers and ordering them to convert their premises to produce shells and weapons for the duration of the conflict. In May 1915, he is appointed Minister of Munitions and sets up an office in 6 Whitehall Court with Dr Addison and Frances Stevenson, the secretary who would become his second wife in 1943 and there is just the merest hint of flirtation between them (as they had been lovers since 1912) before he dresses down the owner of a gramophone factory and paints an awful picture of industrial malaise if victory is not secured.

Demonstrating tireless energy, Lloyd George visits a button workshop that is now churning out shells and a lengthy sequence follows as he tours facilities by car to keep up his hectic schedule and meets a 74 year-old Australian who paid his own passage to come and do his bit. Considering this was filmed as the outcome of the war was still by no means certain and no one had presented workplaces in such documentary-like detail, this should be one of the most famous scenes in British screen history, as it predates Flaherty and Grierson by several years. By contrast, however, the battle footage is nowhere near as impressive as that choreographed by Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell for The Battle of the Somme (1916). Yet, if going over the top is stripped of its hellish reality and the Huns are captured a mite too easily, Elvey ably conveys the enthusiasm with which Lloyd George was greeted when he visited French counterpart Albert Thomas and took a march past of veterans from The Somme and Verdun.

As he addresses a mess dinner in the citadel at Verdun, we see Britannia and Marianne standing proud in No Man's Land, with the wind billowing their gowns and the flags they bear with patriotic defiance. His words go down equally well at a public meeting back in Blighty, where he says he has always stuck up for the oppressed and, on 6 May 1916, he calls for more men to volunteer to serve their country and a disconcerting dissolve shows civilians suddenly dressed in khaki and we learn of a French youth who wrote that he was glad he was born in 1897 as it means he is old enough to fight in 1917.

Such inspirational leadership led to Lloyd George being appointed Minister of War when Lord Kitchener died and he joins `Tiger' Clemenceau in more morale-boosting recces to the frontline, where they often came under fire. But he insists on hearing first-hand accounts of valorous deeds performed by the allies and infamous crimes perpetrated by the foe. He waves the men off to almost certain doom as `It's a Long Way to Tipperary' weaves its way through Neil Brand's exemplary score. Yet, no sooner has he spoken to Sir Eric Geddes about improving the rail network to speed troops and supplies to our ports than Lloyd George is asked to take over from Asquith in December 1916 (no explanation is given - this is a staunchly apolitical film throughout) and he treasures a letter from a widow urging him to make the sacrifice of her son worthwhile and a cable from Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who started out as a miner in Wales. .

In a touching scene, Lloyd George enters the Cabinet Room and the spirits of past Prime Ministers appear to look him over, with Campbell-Bannerman, Gladstone and Disraeli returning as though to give him their seal of approval. On 19 December, he gives his first speech in the Commons as leader and acknowledges the terrible responsibility he bears, as Britain is fighting the most awful war humanity has ever known and he quotes Abraham Lincoln (who is show in inset) on the rectitude of the cause. A caption explains how Lloyd George concentrated the executive in very few hands, chose men with administrative and commercial experience to hold the great offices of state (for example, engineer George Barnes took over at Pensions) and offered the workforce a fuller and franker partnership in the governance of the country. He also gave imperial statesmen a key role to play and even met a deputation of women's organisations on 29 March 1917 and praised their contribution running NAAFIs and serving as nurses in field hospitals and with ambulance crews at the front.

On 6 April 1917, Woodrow Wilson brings the United States into the war and he is flatteringly compared to George Washington and Lincoln as a great wartime leader. Lloyd George welcomed the intervention at the Savoy Hotel on 12 April before following a short break in Wales with a trip to Italy, where his status as `the Prime Minister of Europe' is confirmed.  On returning from Rapallo, he visits French War Minister Paul Painlevé on 13 November and, in his celebrated Paris speech, says that resources need to be better managed if victory is to be claimed. Elvey cuts away to Anglo-French troops binding Germans in a rope by pulling in the right directions and this leads to a unified command in 1918. The big push followed and a caption calls Lloyd George `The Champion of Civilisation' as it reveals that he was given the freedom of London, Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Glasgow and Edinburgh for his conduct of the war.

A lengthy extract from a speech on 5 August 1918 states that Britain has fought not from selfish motives, but to uphold right against might and he urges a redoubling of efforts as the future of mankind is at stake. He warns that a bad peace would be calamitous (ironically, he helped broker just such an over-vindictive treaty at Versailles in 1919) before being greeted as a hero as his car drives through crowded streets of cheering men, women and children. He stands by the fire in Downing Street and looks at the camera, imagining ranks of men marching into formation on a parade ground for the final time before being demobbed (another dissolve, this time back into civvies) and reunited with their loved ones. A weeping widow is consoled and made to feel part of the victory and as he looks directly at the viewer once more, Lloyd George says we need to be better prepared in future. But our greatest goal is to make sure there is never a next time.

Sadly, two decades after the peace conference left the Hall of Mirrors, the lights went out all over Europe for the second time in a generation. Nobody could have known this in 1918, when Elvey and historian Sir Sidney Low were preparing their scenario. But, just as unlikely was the fact that Horatio Bottomley, the rapidly xenophobic editor of the periodical John Bull, would whip up an anti-Semitic frenzy that led the film to be suppressed because he had reached the unmotivated conclusion that Ideal Film producers Simon and Harry Rowson were pro-German Jews who had changed their name from Rosenbaum because they had something hide rather than because they were following example of the Royal Family of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The brothers sued for defamation and won. But the government still opted to reimburse them with twenty £1000 notes for the cost of the negative and place it under lock and key for some 80 years. It has been suggested that the social reform content might have fanned the flames of post-revolutionary Bolshevism in Scottish shipyards. But it is just as likely that it was withheld because Frances Stevenson detested actor Norman Page's performance.

This seems more than a little harsh, as he bears a decent physical resemblance to Lloyd George and ably captures his dynamism and iconoclasm. Alma Reville, who would later marry Alfred Hitchcock, has less to do as Maggie Owen, while records do not seem to have survived to help historians identify the other key players or, for that matter, the principal craftsmen. But it is readily evident that this must have required an exceptional effort in a time of limited resources and military and diplomatic uncertainty. What is more, British cinema attempted nothing like it until well into the sound era and it is noticeable that no such similar film was made about Winston Churchill during the Second World War.

There is no escaping the fact the action frequently lurches into hagiography and Elvey relies heavily on captions to convey the extraordinary amount of private and professional detail. But, for sheer scale and ambition, this surpassed both the Italian superspectacles of the early 1910s and DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). Thus, it's tempting to speculate how this picture might have changed both British cinema and the fortunes of the scandalously underrated Maurice Elvey (who became a Quota Quickie merchant) had it not fallen victim to prejudice and pusillanimity. He proves on several occasions to have been a pictorialist of rare vision and it speaks volumes for him that he never bemoaned his ill-fortune. Those in the upper echelons of the UK film establishment should hang their heads in shame, however, for not recognising the merit of this masterwork either on its rediscovery or since. No wonder we have made such little impression on the Seventh Art down the years.

Deference is also the watchword in Ben Harding and Phl Grabsky's Manet: Portraying Life, as presenter Tim Marlow explores the exhibition with co-curators MaryAnne Stevens from the Royal Academy and Lawrence Nichols from the Toledo Museum of Art. Yet, in spite of its conservative presentation style, this proves a fascinating introduction to Édouard Manet (1832-83), even though it sometimes comes across as a feature-length commercial for a show that ended on 14 April.

In truth, this seems better suited to the small rather than it was to the cinema screen. The Royal Academy exhibition had two aims: to celebrate Manet's genius as a portraitist and to show how he transformed the art of the portrait by allowing it to reflect the growing modernity of the world around him. Marlow and his guests agree that Manet is a misunderstood painter, who befriended and influenced the Impressionists, while remaining outside their coterie. Nichols wants the show to capture the compulsion to create that gave Manet's canvases such immediacy and power, while Stevens is keen to emphasise his status as a radical thinker and reinforce his claim to be the founder of modern art. She reveals how he approached each subject free from preconception and blurred the distinction between portraiture and genre painting by making his sitters actors in scenes of contemporary life. Nobody mentions this here, but this is exactly what Robert Bresson would later seek to achieve by casting non-professional `acteurs-modèles' in his films.

Following a section on how a gallery goes about planning, assembling and staging an exhibition of this magnitude, the focus falls on Manet's early years, as the scion of an upper middle-class family who struggled at school and relied on uncle Edmond Fournier to pay for his first drawing lessons. His father was a judge who hoped he would follow him into the law. But biographer Kathleen Adler explains how Auguste agreed to let Édouard study under academic painter Thomas Couture after he twice failed the naval entrance exam and endured a trying voyage to Rio de Janeiro aboard a training vessel.

While only 17, Édouard fell in love with his Dutch piano teacher, Suzanne Leenhoff, whose son Léon featured in 17 paintings over the next few years. However, he could just as easily have been fathered by Auguste as Édouard and the couple had to wait until Auguste had died before marrying in 1863. The most famous of the Léon pictures is The Luncheon (1868) and Marlow discusses its significance with artist Tom Phillips, who highlights the disengaged poses that make its narrative all the more enigmatic. He also points out the teasing departures from classical composition and how the juxtaposition of traditional still life components with the boy's youth signify a moment in which innocence passes into maturity and intimates the possibilities of great things to come.

According to art historian Stéphane Guégan, Manet learned a good deal about spontaneity during his six years with Couture, whose Romans in the Decadence of the Empire (1847) also helped shape the notions of moral decline that would come to dominate his own work. However, Gustave Courbet and the realist style that so scandalised the Salon also left their mark on Manet, along with such Old Masters as Franz Hals and Diego Velázquez, who was the subject of a Prado pilgrimage that was reflected in both The Street Singer (1862) and The Tragic Actor (1865), which depicted Philippe Rouvière in the role of Hamlet. Dulwich Picture Gallery curator Xavier Bray notes the latter's similarity to Velázquez's portrait of court jester Sebastián de Morra, which similarly employed a neutral backdrop to draw attention to the simplicity, immediacy and authenticity of the central figure.

King Louis Philippe had done much to popularise Spanish art in France and it was his successor, Napoleon III, who transformed the Paris in which Manet lived and, thus, provided him with plentiful inspiration for his later works. When not thrilling to the trains pulling into the St Lazare station near his home, Manet became fascinated with the regularisation schemes devised by Baron Haussmann during his frequent walks with the poet Charles Baudelaire, who coined the term `flaneur' to describe their penchant for people watching. As writer and film-maker Iain Sinclair explains, Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862) encapsulates this flaneuristic approach. Yet, while it screams modernity, it also cannily hedged its bets by depicting the very people whose good opinion Manet valued. Thus, the radical spirit is tempered by the bourgeois pragmatism that also informed the self-promotional decision to include himself just inside the frame.

What is most remarkable about the picture, however, is its synthesis of music, poetry and painting. Manet boldly excluded the source of the music from the scene, but it remains evident in the rhythm of the composition and it is fitting that harmony should play such a key role in the history of a canvas that is jointly owned by the National Gallery in London and the Dublin City Gallery founded in 1908 by Hugh Lane. Director Barbara Dawson proudly proclaims that this was one of the first spaces devoted to modern art in Europe and reveals how Lane was among Manet's earliest collectors, with the Tuileries Gardens and a portrait of the artist Eva Gonzales among his key acquisitions. However, following his death on the Lusitania in 1915, the 39 year-old's will was accompanied by an unsigned codicil that prompted the galleries to share the bequest on a six yearly cycle.

Back in Paris in 1863, the Salon remained the best way for artists to exhibit their latest work. In this year, however, Manet was among many who had submissions rejected and, thus, Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe formed part of the famous Salon des Refusés, which proved a sensation with the critics, even though they tore into what was presumed to be a depiction of two students picnicking in the woods with a naked prostitute. Manet was undeterred by the denunciation of this affront to taste and decency and returned, two years later, with Olympia, a nude inspired by Titian's Venus of Urbino that was accepted by the Salon, but denounced for both the supposed uncleanliness of the reclining prostitute and Manet's temerity in placing the viewer in the position of a prospective client. At a stroke, he became the leading avant-garde artist in Paris and actor-director Fiona Shaw delights in the subversive nature of a second version included in the RA show, as she explains how he craved acceptance in presenting the staid formality of Second Empire life, yet couldn't resist tweaking convention and refusing to justify his audacity.

Following a short digression on photography, Manet's fondness for cartes de visite and the naturalism of his portrait of Georges Clemenceaus, Jonathan Yeo assesses the 1868 portrait of Manet's friend and fellow realist Émile Zola. He discloses that the 27 year-old novelist disliked the picture and kept it in his hallway, as he felt it said more about the painter than himself. Yet, while it's impossible to miss the copy of Olympia on the wall and Zola's essay on Manet on the desk, what is most revealing here is the fact that the author avoids eye contact with the viewer and Yeo (himself a portraitist) suggests that this was because Manet was unable to escape prejudgement and perhaps recognised that Zola resented being treated as a prop rather than a person. 

Another discursion follows, in which Andrea Mall shows how an 1873 pastel portrait of Suzanne had to be specially packaged for transit, while Larry Nichols testifies to the radical application of paint in the 1880 portrait of Manet's politician friend, Antonin Proust. But, while his technique was innovative, he was anxious not to be too closely associated with friends like Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, who had come to be known as the Impressionists after critic Louis Leroy's mocking review of Monet's Impression, Sunrise (1873). As Stevens explains, Manet may have painted The Monet Family in Their Garden in Argenteuil (1874), but he tended to be a studio rather than an outdoor artist. Moreover, he never copied their example of breaking form with fractured light and sought to revolutionise art by storming the Salon rather than operating outside it.

Yet, as Marlow and Shaw concur while looking at The Railway (1873), Manet did challenge convention by painting pictures that were about things rather than mere representations of them. Consequently, this image of a woman with her daughter beside some railings and a railway line succeed in being both sentimental and modernist in its reflection of the dawning of the Third Republic and growing urbanisation of French society. However, he didn't live to see the momentous changes come about, as he succumbed to syphilis at the age of 51. However, as Guégan states, he bade a dramatic farewell to Paris in A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882), which contrasts the gaiety of the patrons reflected in the mirror with the impassivity of the barmaid, as she serves a customer (ie the viewer) who is also seen in the glass behind her.

As Marlow concludes, Manet died while recovering from an operation to amputate his gangrenous left leg. Antonin Proust, Zola and Monet were among his pallbearers and Degas lamented that it took his passing for them to realise his importance to art history. The curators close by stating that Matisse, Cezanne and Picasso all revered him and wish that he was not quite so underrated, as they would rank him alongside Monet and Van Gogh in popularity and perhaps above them in terms of significance. By combining analysis with meticulous cinematography, this earnest and informative documentary allows audiences to reach their own conclusions. But one is left hoping that the surfeit of asides and slight fustiness of style can be addressed before the next outing.

First-timer Jay Bulger adopts a very different approach to screen biography as he goes in search of the wild man of drumming in Beware of Mr Baker. Two years after blagging his way into Ginger Baker's compound to write an article for Rolling Stone magazine, Bulger returns to Tulbagh in the Western Cape and is first seen being rapped on the nose with his host's walking stick for daring to include interviews with some of his past collaborators in the film. However, it soon transpires that such behaviour is entirely normal and even seems moderate in comparison with some of Baker's more excessive antics since he first burst on to the music scene in the early 1960s.

According to Johnny Rotten, everyone viewing this profile should prostrate themselves in gratitude for what Ginger Baker has achieved. However, a montage of celebrity drummers and former bandmates suggests that Baker's greatness has come at a considerable cost to himself and others and it quickly becomes clear as Bulger starts to interview him in his favourite armchair that age has not mellowed Baker in the slightest. He was born in Lewisham on 19 August 1939 and lost his war hero father four and a half years later. Looking back, Baker realises he enjoyed the excitement of the air raids and still has a thing for explosions. But the absence of a role model led to him going off the rails as a teenager and he joined a gang.

During a shoplifting expedition to a record shop, however, Baker heard the Charlie Parker album Quintet of the Year and he suddenly discovered something to which he could relate. His mother beat him for stealing the disc and his former gangmates sliced him with razors for desertion. But Baker started fighting back after he read the advice to stand up for himself and be a man that his father had written in the letter he left to be opened on his son's 14th birthday. Sister Pat Wallis says he inherited the Baker temper, but he also had a natural sense of rhythm and timing and was playing in jazz bands almost as soon as he left school. Unfortunately, following a meeting with Phil Seamen in the Flamingo club in London, he also became a regular heroin user, but absolved himself because he felt the drug enabled him to play with the freedom that he heard on the records of African drummers in Seamen's collection.

It would take 19 years for Baker finally to conquer his addiction, by which time he had fathered three children with first wife Elizabeth Finch. Daughter Ginette laughs off the fact that she survived a botched abortion and siblings Leda and Kofi also agree that Baker was always closer to his drums than he ever was to them. They were certainly key to his fame and fortune, as replaced Charlie Watts in Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated in the early 1960s and reunited with bassist Jack Bruce, who had once impressed him when he jammed with one of his earlier combos. He was less taken with Mick Jagger when he guested on one number, but he struck up a friendship with another charismatic frontman when he joined The Graham Bond Organisation in 1963.

Hailed by their peers as one of the decade's most significant groups, this distinctive quartet cropped up in movies like Robert Hartford-Davis's Gonks Go Beat (1965). But they didn't quite fit into the contemporary pop scene, while chemicals fuelled the tensions between Baker and Bruce that finally erupted when the former pulled a knife during a fight and the latter was fired. With Bond also invariably under the influence, the band fell apart and Bruce was astonished when Baker invited him to play alongside Eric Clapton in Cream.

Drummers Neil Peart (Rush), Bill Ward (Black Sabbath), Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Max Weinberg (The E Street Band), Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge), Lars Ulrich (Metallica), Stewart Copeland (The Police) and Nick Mason (Pink Floyd) all proclaim they owe their careers to Baker. Yet, as clips play of `I Feel Free', `Sunshine of Your Love' and `White Room', he insists he is not a rock drummer and never has been. Moreover, he complains bitterly that his crucial role in the arrangement of tracks on the albums Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears and Goodbye brought him little financial reward, as the songwriting royalties were shared by Bruce and lyricist Peter Brown. But there were perks, with Elizabeth and roadie Bob Adcock recalling the groupies who swarmed over the trio, while Denny Laine reveals that they were idolised by Jimi Hendrix and Carlos Santana and Mickey Hart from The Grateful Dead remember the impact they had on America with their supersonic `Holy Ghost' music.

But after just two hectic years together, Baker, Bruce and Clapton went their separate ways. Bruce regrets that they couldn't work things out, as they had such amazing musical chemistry. However, the easy-going Clapton couldn't take the feuding within the rhythm section and was horrified when Baker turned up on his doorstep as he was putting together his next supergroup, Blind Faith, with Steve Winwood and Ric Grech. This enterprise proved equally short-lived (1968-69), but Baker had a greater freedom to play and revelled in the trappings his success brought him. He was even unfazed when he heard on the radio that he had been found dead in a hotel room of a heroin overdose. But he knew he was pushing his luck and tried to clean up his act in Hawaii and Jamaica (where the temptations came thick and fast) before arriving back in Britain to discover that Clapton had quit to tour with Delaney & Bonnie and that Winwood was in the process of reforming Traffic.

Baker tells Bulger he has no hard feelings about Clapton twice walking out on him and insists he remains his best friend on the planet. But Clapton isn't sure he ever got to know Baker and concedes that there are whole areas of his life about which he knows nothing. He kept his distance, therefore, as Ginger Baker's Air Force harked back to the big band era. Denny Laine recalls the thrill of being part of such an ambitious jazz fusion project alongside Winwood, Grech, Seamen and Bond. But it also fell apart after some 18 months and two albums that Melody Maker journalist Chris Welch reckons cost Baker a small fortune to record and promote.

Reminiscing about this period leads Bulger to compare Baker to contemporaries like The Who's Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin's John Bonham. However, he is furious to be branded a rock drummer and Clapton rallies to his cause by describing him as a proper musician, who could compose and arrange as well as play. Indeed, Baker prefers to compare himself with Elvin Jones, Phil Seamen and Art Blakey, with whom he had famous drum jousts in the early 1970s (which are recalled in a slick montage of footage and stills that is brilliantly cut to a rapid fire beat). But Baker was in no mood to rest on his laurels and decamped to Africa, where documentarist Tony Palmer filmed him motoring across the Sahara. However, it was only when he reached the Nigerian capital that Baker finally found what he had been searching.

Fela Kuti was the driving force behind Afrobeat and, from the moment Baker saw him at the Afro Spot in Lagos, he recognised a kindred spirit. Sandra Izsadore, Remi Kabaka and Michael Veal all insist that Baker was lucky to play with such a cultural icon. But his son, Femi, remembers they were like brothers and Baker risked his life by spending six years in such an unstable country to increase his understanding of African music. He even opened his own studio and became a part of his political party, Movement of the People. However, the friendship was doomed when Baker became obsessed with polo and started mixing with the very elite that Kuti wished to sweep aside. Thus, when the army attacked his headquarters in 1977, he severed his ties and Baker only just managed to escape when his studio was raided and he lost every penny he had invested in it.

Returning to Blighty, Baker joined Adrian and Paul Gurvitz in the Baker Gurvitz Army, largely because no one else would play with him. He was also hit with an enormous tax bill after the Inland Revenue saw a BBC film about his polo stable and Elizabeth and the children were evicted from their home just as he eloped to Italy with an 18 year-old named Sarah, who was the sister of Ginette's first boyfriend. Baker was off drugs at this point, but began using again during the recording of the Hearts on Fire album and footage shows him falling off his drum stool while preparing for a TV performance. Yet he remained in demand and Johnny Rotten sent producer Bill Laswell to find him to play on a Public Image album. However, Baker was in a dark place after the bored Sarah dumped him for a younger man and he accepted an offer to star in the third-rate TV series, Nasty Boys (1990).

Baker now considers this the stupidest thing he has ever seen. But worse was to follow when he was reduced to placing an advertisement in Music Connection magazine in the hope of finding a new band. Visiting around this time, Ginette barely recognised her father, as he had gone to look so old. However, he married for a third time after meeting Karen Loucks, who felt he needed looking after. She sufficiently bolstered his confidence to join Masters of Reality in 1992 and the Sunrise on the Sufferbus album was widely admired. But the kids in the audience had no idea who Baker was and threw things at him during gigs.

Tired of playing the rock star, Baker and Loucks opened a polo club in Colorado and jammed after games with Ron Miles and his band DJQ20. Now also a drummer of some repute, Kofi started playing with his father, who got to meet one of his heroes when Max Roach came to a gig in New York. But, Ginger being Baker, it was only a matter of time before things went awry. When one of his English grooms was arrested for not having a visa, Baker launched into an anti-American tirade on the Lewis and Floorwax radio show and was promptly deported. Before he left, he hurled a volley of abuse at Kofi and the pair have never spoken since. He also broke up with Karen (whom he refuses to discuss) and relocated to South Africa.

Now married to Zimbabwean Kudzai Machokoto (who is very hesitant when Bulger asks if Baker is a good stepfather to her 12 year-old daughter Lisa), Baker tried to replicate the polo-jazz combination, but couldn't find musicians of a sufficient calibre. He reunited with Clapton and Bruce at the Royal Alber Hall in 2005 and blew the $5 million he made from the concerts on 24 British horses. Stricken with degenerative osteoarthritis and occasionally forced to wear an oxygen mask, Baker was broke and on the point of selling the ranch when he bashed Bulger on the nose at the end of the shoot. Yet, Clapton and Bruce remain loyal to the cantankerous maverick and reaffirm his greatness as an artist. Thus, they can hardly have been surprised when, 18 months after filming ended, Baker made a comeback. Bulger films him on stage in Salzburg in 2011 and Baker can still belt it out with the best of them. So, maybe Johnny Rotten has it right when he concludes that being a madman is a small price to pay for being able to play such perfect music.

Adeptly edited by Abhay Sofsky, this is a compelling portrait of a wayward genius. Musically, Ginger Baker is in a league of his own and even the children he has so callously neglected seem prepared to make allowances for his eccentricities and derelictions. But, while Bulger chronicles the career capably enough, he is much less interested in drum technique, classic tracks and band break-ups than he is in the man behind the notoriety. Consequently, the most important moment in the whole film comes at the end when he asks Baker to remove the sunglasses he has worn throughout the interview sessions and a pair of sullen, exhausted eyes squint in the glare of the spotlights. The toll taken by the ravages is plain to see and, instead of a rock titan with a thousand anecdotes and a bad word to say about everyone, Baker suddenly seems like a very old man.

True to form, however, just as he appears beaten, Baker bounces back off the canvas and prepares to slug it out one last time and his exhilaration after the Salzburg gig proves a more than fitting finale. It also brings Bulger's own story full circle and he deserves enormous credit for coaxing Baker into being so candid about his triumphs and disasters. At times, he bigs up his own part in proceedings and interviews too many famous faces with nothing useful to say. He also overdoes the animated inserts produced in a stark charcoal-like style by David Bell, with the repeated image of Baker rowing in the bowels of an ancient galley to map his peregrinations rather hammering home the notion that he has always been a slave to the rhythm. But his rapport with an ever-tetchy, chain-smoking subject enables him to elicit several acidic gems, including Baker's jaundiced views on heavy metal, his supposed drumming rivals and his own demons and tendency to self-destruct. Moreover, Bulger's refusal to be starstruck ensures that this is never anything less than honest in its appraisal of the man, his myth and his music.

The 1960s were, of course, notorious for the emergence of a more permissive society. But, even at the height of the Summer of Love, the mixed up individuals profiled by Pole Michal Marczak in F*ck for Forest would have raised a few eyebrows. This eye-opening documentary questions whether good intentions are enough when it comes to raising awareness and funds for causes in the developing world. Given the situations in which he finds himself, Marczak remains admirably equitable in depicting the bizarre activities of the Berlin-based F*ck for Forest charity, whether its members are preaching a hippie-esque doctrine of sexual liberation in the German capital or discovering the futility of their woefully ill-conceived plan to help a community in the depths of the Amazon rainforest. But, while the climactic expedition puts the entire sordid charade into shockingly stark context, an uncertainty of tone ultimately undermines this valiant, but scrappily unfocused venture.

Despite being a champion show-jumper in his native Norway, 23 year-old Danny Devero has decided to drop out. His mother is so dismayed by this turn of events that she goes away to avoid seeing him during a visit to his home in Bergen and his sister Camilla has no qualms about branding him an embarrassment to the family. Undeterred, Danny travels with his guitar to Berlin, where he hooks up with the unconventional eco-cadre, F*ck for Forest, which seeks to raise money through its porn website to save the planet.

Founders Leona Johansson and Tommy Hol Ellingsen explain how they charge $15 for a monthly subscription to gain unlimited access to the photos and videos uploaded to a site that seeks to encourage freedom of sexual expression while pushing the green agenda. But, while they frequently participate in the often hardcore action, they and loyal acolyte Natty Mandeau spend much of their time recruiting amateurs to give their services for free. Apparently, 10% of those approached express an interest in becoming porn stars and Marczak follows one skinny chap through some woodland as he explains how being photographed with a baby doll can not only boost the FFF coffers, but also help him cope with the effects of a breakdown.

Tommy, Leona, Danny and Natty attend a variety of demonstrations and public celebrations in the hope of finding volunteers. They get a few takers, but not everyone canvassed entirely approves of the campaign's methodology. There are also some dubious expressions at a seedy nightclub demonstration, as Tommy exalts the essence of life, as he licks blood and semen off his fingers after copulating on stage with newcomer Kaajal Shetty.

Whatever one thinks of FFF's tactics, they seem to be working, as the group has €400,000 at its disposal and its principals set off to South America to see how it can best be spent. On landing in Brazil, the small band travels through perilous areas of Colombia and Peru before arriving in the dead of night at a village in the heart of the rainforest. They receive a cordial welcome from the residents, with one middle-aged woman flirting shamelessly with Danny. But the FFFers have no plan of action and even less idea of what to do next. They go on an expedition into the jungle and sample a brew designed to expand their minds and salve their souls. Yet many days go by before anyone suggests having a meeting with the local decision-makers.

Eventually, everyone assembles in a community centre that appears to have no useful facilities and Tommy gives an impassioned speech about what his organisation stands for and how keen he is to help in any way he can. But the revelation that he has been offered 74 acres of tropical woodland for $1 million bemuses the locals, who ask what they are supposed to do with it. When Tommy and Leona extemporise an answer about providing their children with a better future and seizing the right to be naked, the meeting breaks up with the tribesfolk accusing them of wasting their time and branding them typical European exploiters.

Unsurprisingly, Tommy and Leona are crushed by the rejection. But, even though their hearts are in the right place, their naiveté is shocking to behold and one wonders what will happen to their largesse if they don't succeed in devising a more cogent strategy once they return to Berlin. Kaajal has clearly seen enough, however, and returns to India, while Danny trudges back to Bergen, where his bid to alert some homeless Palestinians to the joys of nudism is laughed off by hard-bitten realists who inform him in no uncertain terms that there are much more important things in the world to worry about than free love.

Shooting in a rough`n'ready handheld style that wholly suits the chaotic subject matter, this is a film that is as likely to raise hackles as sympathy. The Berlin segment meanders somewhat once the basic FFF rationale has been outlined and, while it is amusing to speculate why anybody takes Leona and her friends seriously, there is nothing edifying about watching Tommy and Kaajal gyrating before ogling onlookers. But the Peruvian section is even more excruciating, as the villagers realise that their efforts to put on a good show in sharing their culture and traditions with visitors who seem have the wherewithal to help them have been a complete waste of their time and precious resources.

The complete inability of the outsiders to comprehend that their hosts feel patronised and duped is perhaps the saddest part of the picture, as they have invested so much in a cause they still clearly believe to be noble. But Marczak tactfully decides against filming any post mortems, as he (and we) have seen all we need to. One suspects that Marczak finds the entire FFF enterprise ludicrous. But, while a gentle ribaldry informs his coverage of the quintet's sexual antics, he handles their comeuppance with a laudable discretion that just about leaves what remains of their dignity intact.

Pope Francis is currently striving to restore the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church after its myriad recent scandals, the most public of which has centred around the sexual abuse of minors and the vulnerable. Released in cinemas the very week that Pope Benedict announced his resignation, Alex Gibney's Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God follows his previous exposés Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005) and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Darkside (2007) in showing how a single shocking incident fits into a bigger and far more egregious picture. But, while Monday's announcement from Rome stands to deflect attention away from the crimes of Father Lawrence Murphy, it will redouble the focus on the part played by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who would become Benedict XVI) in the Vatican conspiracy to cover-up the extent of child abuse within the Roman Catholic Church and to prevent those who betrayed the trust of the vulnerable individuals in their care from facing civil justice.

Between 1950 and 1974, Father Murphy worked at St. John's School for the Deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Served by a congregation of loyal nuns, he seemed to be a popular priest and ex-pupils Terry Kohut, Gary Smith, Pat Kuehn and Arthur Budzinski recall the effort he put into fund-raising and ensuring that children who had often been abandoned by their parents felt an overdue sense of worth and belonging. But Murphy was also a predatory paedophile who used to walk the dormitories at night selecting victims and even formed a cabal of older boys to groom suitable victims for seduction. As many of the youths relied on Murphy to communicate with their non-signing parents, he prevented them from protesting about their treatment and, besides, who would take the word of a troubled kid over a well-respected cleric?

As former Benedictine Richard Sipe reveals, many abusive priests cloak themselves in this air of superiority to convince themselves of their inviolability. But another ex-monk, Patrick J. Wall, says that he spent much of his time in holy orders putting out fires by coercing accusers into feeling their own guilt and shame and persuading them that no good could possibly come of prosecuting a man whose value to the parish atoned for his sins. Kohut, Smith, Kuehn and Budzinski concede that they were initially silenced by such tactics. But, in 1974,  they decided to report Murphy to the police and Bob Bolger remembers Smith and Budzinski printing fliers denouncing him as a pederast and urging the faithful to stop making charitable donations to the school.

Counsellor John Conway urged the quartet to pursue a different course of action and arranged a meeting with Archbishop William E. Cousins. While preparing his case, Conway discovered that a Fr Walsh had expressed his concerns about Murphy's behaviour back in 1957 and had even sent a letter on the subject to the Papal Nuncio. Yet nothing had been done to investigate Murphy, let alone remove him from such a sensitive post. Moreover, when Conway took his findings to the district attorney's office, he was informed that the statute of limitations had passed and that no prosecution would be possible. Enraged by this turn of events, dorm supervisor Jim Heydendahl threatened to go public with what he knew about Murphy's systematic abuse of his students. However, the diocese intervened and hoped that the fuss would die down when Murphy retired for health reasons.

At this juncture, Gibney starts to widen the net and has British human rights lawyer Geoffry Robertson explain the purpose of the Congregation of the Servants of the Paraclete, an organisation founded in New Mexico in 1947 by Fr Gerald Fitzgerald to treat paedophile priests. At one point, it was mooted that perpetrators could be hidden away on the Caribbean island of Carriacou. But, instead, it was decided to spend millions on rehabilitating the 2000 or so known offenders who had been cited by victims from around the world and, thus, the Vatican put its faith in a policy of denial, suppression and counter-accusation that had been instituted in 1866.

Back in the mid-1970s, Murphy had been found a new parish and the authorities continued to rally round when Smith brought a lawsuit against him. As lawyer Jeff Anderson recalls, Smith was duped and bullied into accepting compensation for his ordeal. Yet he also had to issue an apology for besmirching Murphy's reputation. This cowardly approach appalled Fr Thomas Doyle, who became one of the first whistleblowers from within the Church and New York Times religious affairs commentator Laurie Goodstein reflects upon the pressure he faced to withdraw his evidence and how Cardinal Bernard Law was rewarded for keeping a lid on the scandal with the plum post of parish priest of the Basilica Papale di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.

Robert Mickens of The Tablet explains how the Vatican tried to present the problem of aberrant priests as being unique to America. But, as Marco Politi of Il Fatto Quotidiano recollects, Europe was also soon enmired and the Vatican was forced into following 1700 years of precedent by issuing flat denials and questioning the integrity of the accusers. Richard Sipe declares that Cardinal Ratzinger spent a quarter of a century using the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (which is essentially the successor to the infamous Inquisition) to cover up cases and, as Mike Peelo from RTE infers, it was only when Fr Tony Walsh - the famous `Singing Priest' from Our Lady of the Assumption in Ballyfermot, Dublin - was arrested and charged with some 200 offences that a change of strategy was adopted.

The process was a slow one, however. As Gráinne O'Sullivan, the co-founder of Countmeout.ie, explains, priests were revered around the world and there was great reluctance to allow one to be prosecuted for fear that it might undermine the apostolic authority of the remainder. Thus, complaints about Walsh dating back to 1979 were ignored and it was only when the clamour grew that Archbishop Desmond Connell of Dublin set up an inquiry. Under the terms of Canon Law, however, all testimony had to be kept secret on pain of excommunication and, as Colm O'Gorman from Amnesty International and One in Four expounds, this tied Connell's hands as he sought to set up an internal trial and it was only after Walsh was jailed in 1995 that he was finally defrocked.

Connell comes off badly in an interview clip in which he says that he had too many other duties to devote himself to the Walsh case. But it's hard to see what more he could have done when Rome was so reluctant to co-operate. Indeed, when Cardinal Sean Brady read out a 2010 letter from Pope Benedict begging for the forgiveness of the Irish people, several senior bishops protested at being made scapegoats for mismanaging a crisis over which they had been denied any control.

Eventually, the full story came out in the 2011 Cloyne Report. But the saga demonstrated Vatican complicity in the protection of paedophile priests and Gibney queries how the process to beatify John Paul II can continue when he turned a blind eye to the misdemeanours of the likes of Fr Marcel Maciel. A member of the zealous fund-raising body, the Legion of Christ, Maciel was a favourite of the late pontiff. However, as author Jason Berry reveals, he was also a morphine addicts and a serial sex offender, who fathered several children with his many mistresses. He was protected by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who was a colleague within the Curia of Cardinal Ratzinger, whose response to the mounting evidence against Maciel and others was to lament the violation of holy orders rather than empathise with the victims. In his defence, Ratzinger sought to prosecute Maciel and, on the day that John Paul II died in 2005, agents were dispatched to New York and Mexico City to gather evidence against him. Yet, even after he ascended the Throne of St Peter, Benedict was powerless to bring Maciel to book and he was allowed to retire in considerable comfort in Jacksonville, Florida.

Lawrence Murphy was also granted a similar boon. But, in 1997, Terry Kahout wrote him several accusatory letters, while Bolger, Smith and Budzinski confronted him at his Boulder Junction hideaway. He ordered them off his property and wrote to Cardinal Ratzinger assuring him that he had repented of any wrongdoing and wished to live out his life in priestly dignity. Robert Mickens explains that this was a shrewd tactic, as the Vatican sets great store by the sacrementality of the divine office, which supposedly elevates priests above mere mortals as they have transformed bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. However, Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests (SNAP) is less impressed by the tactic and accuses Archbishop Rembert Weakland of being too scared to have an old homosexual affair become public to press charges against Murphy.

Jeff Anderson offered to help Kahout sue the pope because he topped the hierarchy that had sought to protect paedophiles and installed them in parishes where they could continue to offend. But the status given to Vatican City under the 1929 Lateran Treaty allows it a degree of immunity in international courts and Geoffrey Robertson despairs that a document fashioned by Mussolini's Fascist regime should legitimise the code of Omerta behind which the papacy hides. He calls for the Vatican to be stripped of its statehood, while Maurizio Turco of Anticlerica.Le.net highlights the abuse of deaf kids in Verona to show how little has changed in the wake of a crisis that would have toppled most other institutions or, at least, prompted them to instigate fundamental reform. .

Many American dioceses have declared bankruptcy to protect themselves against further compensation claims by victims of abuse. But Kahout, Smith and Budzinski refuse to let Milwaukee off the hook and not only seek to outlaw self-defensive bankruptcy in such cases, but also campaign to have the Vatican archives opened so that the truth about the Catholic conspiracy to protect criminous clergy can finally be known. Pope Benedict had fiercely resisted this call and it will be fascinating to see what his successor does with the poisoned chalice he has been handed.

Every Catholic in the country should see this film to understand the shameless deceptions that have been devised to bury centuries of heinous depravity. Gibney makes the regrettable mistake of using actors Jamie Sheridan (Kahout), Chris Cooper (Smith), Ethan Hawke (Kuehn) and John Slattery (Budzinski) to voice the St John's Four, while his decision to reconstruct Murphy's nocturnal prowlings as though he was a vestmented vampire or SS officer in a concentration camp is as hopelessly misjudged as Ivor Guest and Robert Logan's ominous and highly manipulative score. But these are minor criticisms of a courageous and meticulously constructed picture that makes bold use of printed and photographic archive material, as well as home movies and first-hand testimonies.

The Murphy case is grotesque and one can only admire those who have dedicated their lives to exposing criminality in the hope that future generations will be spared it. But, even though the evidence may be less verifiable, the most compelling passages involve the Vatican and the inability (whether wilful or otherwise) of the retiring pontiff to do anything constructive, either under John Paul II or during his own reign, to acknowledge the degeneracy or punish the transgressors. Kirby Dick and Amy Berg have covered similar territory in Twist of Faith (2004) and Deliver Us From Evil (2006), but Gibney follows the trail further along the corridors of power and the revelation that Ratzinger demanded that he was informed of every accusation of child abuse makes his decision to continue defending perverts and repudiating their victims all the more unforgivable.

Changing tack completely, Sasha Gavron's Village at the End of the World profiles a remote Inuit community situated deep inside the Arctic Circle. Perhaps lacking in focus and never quite capturing the personality of the place or its people, this nevertheless provides a revealing insight into one year in the life of fishing folk who are determined to battle economic stagnation and environmental transfiguration to preserve a lifestyle and a heritage that have continued undisturbed for thousands of years before progress intruded as both a blessing and a curse.

From David Katznelson's first shot of Niaqornat, as it nestles on a rocky inlet pocked with vast hunks of melting ice, it's clear that this is a settlement worth saving. A caption informs us that it is Seqernup Kaaviinnalerfiani (`When the Sun Circles' or Summer 2009) and we see teacher Mathias Therkelsen reading the story of Noah and asking his smattering of students what future they envisage for North Greenland as global warming begins to kick in. But getting through the day is the major preoccupation for 76 year-old Ane Kruse, the oldest woman in the village, who points through the window to the houses where her many relatives live. Lineage is also a complex issue for 16 year-old Lars Kristian Kruse, who lives with grandparents Malene and Jonas and works in the local store alongside his unnamed mother, who has as little to do with his rearing as his father, Karl Kristian Kruse, a hunter-cum-fisherman who prefers his own company and trusts his own instincts.

Completing the quirky quartet under Gavron's scrutiny is Ilannguaq Egede, an outsider from the south who met his wife online and is now responsible for the collection and disposal of sewage and garbage. He jokes about his decidedly unpleasant work, but knows it has to be done and takes pride in the fact that he has been accepted by neighbours, who, until recently, worked in the Royal Greenland fish factory. Erneeraq Therkelsen takes us on a guided tour of the tiny facility and clearly resents the fact that strangers concerned solely with profit should have placed his home in jeopardy. Veteran hunter Nikolai Kruse feels much the same way, as he watches supplies being brought ashore from a Royal Arctic supply ship and the elders are concerned that this vital service will be stopped if population numbers continue to diminish.

Lars confirms that there aren't many girls around as he larks about with Arne Per and Nukappi, who are younger than he is and more into sliding down inclines than watching English football, listening to rap videos or making friends from across the globe on Facebook. Grandma Malene is worried for Lars's future, but he seems well adjusted for a kid who has never exchanged a word with a father who barely acknowledges his existence. Yet, as the calendar passes into Pueqqortinnerani (`The Time of Frost in the Air'), mayor Karl calls a village meeting and announces that he wants to re-open the factory as a collective, in which every resident would have a stake. His idea is warmly received, although Mathias is distracted by the imminent departure of his wife and children for the distant town of Uummannaq, where they can enjoy a better quality of life and not have to worry about the wilder weather that is making things increasingly difficult for Karl and Ilannguaq.

Conditions deteriorate into Kaperlak (`The Time of Darkness'), as the sun disappears and even the hardy dogs that run free around the village fall victim to the cold. Ane recalls that electricity only came to Niaqornat in 1988 and, over a series of old photos, she remembers the disconcerting sound of creaking icecaps and how storytellers used to come to entertain people with myths that are still cherished today. But the community spirit is greatly boosted when Karl captures a pregnant whale and everyone takes a turn on the ropes hauling the carcass and is rewarded with a cut of meat and a share of the blubber. Karl warns against hunting for sport and says humans should only kill what they need or Nature will spiral out of control. Lars admits he is too squeamish to hunt, while Ane points to a picture of Brigitte Bardot and jokes that no one likes her because she is opposed to fur trading.

Lars watches a video online for a pop song about suicide in Greenland and it is this sense of hopelessness that Karl seeks to counter by opening negotiations with the government to broker a takeover of the factory. A ceremony is held to welcome the returning sun as Sikusimanerani (`The Time of Ice') arrives and Ilannguaq explains how it took him a while to acclimatise to the way things were done in Niaqornat. However, he can now control a dog sled and ice fish and he hopes he is no longer considered an interloper. By contrast, Lars cannot wait to leave and makes a shamanistic `tupilak' monster in order to channel his darker feelings. He also checks out New York on Google Earth and longs to g somewhere even a fraction as exciting.

Meanwhile, with talks having ground to a halt over the factory, Karl makes preparations for a hunting expedition. Village administrator Lone Kruse says she worries about him when he is away and there is concern when radio communication breaks down, as the melting ice is so treacherous. He certainly looks a tiny speck in the vast white wilderness of an aerial shot and his task is put into context by Lars and Malene relating a legend about a shaman who had to comb the sea animals out of Mother Nature's hair after they had hidden to avoid capture. But everyone has faith in Karl and he returns with a polar bear skin and chunks of meat for his friends to put in their freezers. Proudly, he shows the camera phone footage of his kill and this tenacity is further in evidence in Seqinnerpoq (`The Sun Shines'), as fisheries inspector John Nielsen comes to see the factory and recommends that the village would make a better impression if it was smartened up a little.

Karl leads the tidy-up and Ilannguaq organises the reception for some 80 guests from a passing cruise ship. In order to present as authentic a view of Inuit life as possible, a notice calls for volunteers to wear national costume and traditional skin clothes, tan a sealskin, display Greelandic goods and host a visitor in their home. Ane welcomes three passengers, but they have no common language and she looks bored by their presence. Others discuss in-breeding and one waxes lyrical about how unspoilt by progress Niaqornat is, even though a young girl just yards away from him is playing on her laptop. The passengers buy souvenirs, pose for snapshots and pay their respects at the little cemetery and Mathias laments that there aren't more of them, as he waves them goodbye.

By the time Sikuarsaartalefiani (`The Water Begins to Freeze') comes round, Karl has been informed that Royal Greenland (who had cynically been driving a hard bargain) had finally agreed to sell the factory at a fair price. The villagers party to celebrate, with a game of musical chairs getting quite competitive. But the excitement isn't enough to prevent Lars from relocating to Uummannaq. He feels he needs to grow up and see something more of life. Moreover, he is hoping to get a girlfriend. Buoyed by the good cheer that follows the grand re-opening of the factory, he clambers into the red helicopter that is the only form of transport to the outside world and waves cheerfully as he embarks upon his adventure.

A closing caption reveals that he found a sweetheart, while another shows that Ilannguaq had been promoted to run Niaqornat's electricity plant. Most encouraging, however, is the disclosure that the KNT co-operative now runs a further five fisheries across Greenland and that the future is looking brighter than it has done for many years.

Charting the efforts of 59 hardy souls to avoid ecological, economic and emotional meltdown, this superbly photographed actuality discreetly examines how tradition and progress are being harnessed to ensure a viable future. Unflinchingly presenting the grimmer side of life, Gavron potently demonstrates how things have changed in the 90 years since Robert Flaherty introduced audiences to the frozen wilds in Nanook of the North (1922). But, while she makes deft use of interiors to reflect the personalities of her central quartet, Gavron never comes to grips with the landscape or its human or canine inhabitants in the way that Werner Herzog did in Encounters At the End of the World (2007). Similarly, she devotes much more time to individuality than communality.

Indeed, much more attention should have been paid to the physical and psychological strains imposed by Kaperlak, while the precarious ecological situation is barely mentioned besides an isolated remark about the ice only fully freezing in March. The relationship with the wider nation, the determination of Royal Greenland to fleece the residents over the halibut factory sale and the role of women in what is still essentially a patriarchal hunter-gatherer society are also left largely unexplored. Moreover, little attempt is made to explain why Karl treats Lars so callously. Yet, even though it could have been so much more, this is still an affectionate, affecting and ultimately optimistic snapshot of a culture overcoming the odds to survive.

Gavron made her fictional debut with a 2007 adaptation of Monica Ali's bestselling novel, Brick Lane, and London also provides the setting for Anthony Asquith's Underground (1928). A co-founder of the London Film Society, Asquith (whose father had preceded Lloyd George as Prime Minister) had studied screen craft in Hollywood before returning to share a directorial credit on the 1928 drama Shooting Stars with AV Bramble. He made his full debut later the same year with this visually innovative and evocative tale of working folk that has been restored by the BFI with a new score by the estimable Neil Brand in time for the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. Yet, while this moiling romantic saga suggested that the scion of the 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith had the common touch, it also demonstrated the influence of the continent's major cinematic styles and revealed Asquith to be an artist of considerable insight and ingenuity.

As much a celebration of metropolitan living as a work of social realism, the picture opens with power station electrician Cyril McLaglen forcing his attentions on shopgirl Elissa Landi as they ride in a crowded tube train. Epitomising the modern woman, Landi gives as good as she gets, as she conspires with some schoolboys to embarrass her unwanted admirer. But she is smitten herself when bashful platform attendant Brian Aherne returns her dropped glove and the attraction is evidently mutual, as he searches for her during the evening rush hour to ask her out at the weekend.

McLaglen watches their conversation with scarcely concealed fury and takes out his frustration on dressmaking neighbour Nora Baring, who is hurt by his snarled curse that he wants nothing more to do with her. Determined to sabotage any nascent romance, McLaglen accosts Landi en route to her tryst and tells her that one day she will become his wife. However, his coarse manner only prompts her to accept the besotted Aherne's proposal at the end of their date, which she somewhat spoils by remarking that McLaglen is equally keen to marry her.

Popping into the pub on his way home, Aherne discovers that McLaglen has been boasting about his relationship with Landi and a fight breaks out. Seething in defeat, McLaglen returns home and convinces Baring to help him exact his revenge. Next day, therefore, she pretends to faint at the station and, when Aherne comes to her assistance, she accuses him of molestation and Landi is dismayed to see him being led away in disgrace. But she believes in his innocence and spurns McLaglen's written offer of marriage to help Aherne clear his name.

However, the letter soon proves vital, as Landi realises that McLaglen and Baring are in cahoots when she follows the latter home after spotting her in the shop. But her arrival coincides with McLaglen announcing that he is leaving Baring to make a new life for himself and his treachery persuades her to confess to Landi that the accusation against Aherne is entirely groundless. No sooner has Landi departed, however, than Aherne confronts the distraught Baring and she takes him to the power station where McLaglen works.

Despite everything, Baring still holds a candle for McLaglen and rushes to warn him that Aherne has gone to speak to his boss. But he hits her for failing him and her reeling fall causes a power cut. Taking to his heels, McLaglen is chased through the streets by the outraged Aherne and they finally come face to face in an Underground lift.

This being a love story, everything inevitably ends happily ever after for Landi and Aherne. But there is nothing simplistic about Asquith's scenario or direction. The combination of styles is audacious without being contrived. Thus, the documentary authenticity of the scenes set on trains or in tube and power stations, pubs, parks and haberdasheries is never compromised by the switches to Expressionist lighting that help convey character psychology or the resort to Soviet-style montage to bring momentum and suspense to the climactic chase. But Asquith doesn't simply use Stanley Rodwell's camera to capture the shadows and angles created by Karl Fischer's lighting designs and Ian Campbell-Gray's well-observed interiors. He also devises astute point-of-view shots that pitch the audience into the heart of the action and intensify its identification with the protagonists.

Yet, for all the surface modernity, this is an old-fashioned morality tale that sees right prevail and true love find a way. For all their efficacy, the performances are also somewhat conventional. But what makes this so compelling is the lyrical `city symphony' dynamism that conveys Asquith's evident excitement with both the bustle of daily life in what was still the world's most important capital and the way in which all classes shared cramped and open spaces with a bonhomie that few would detect in the same places today. Given that the Great Depression would begin the following year, this is a snapshot of a country on the cusp of decline and it is sad to reflect that Aherne and Landi's idyll would come under attack from the air within a dozen years of their happy union.