Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 20/7/2017)

Looking back, it's possible to detect homoerotic nuance in films like Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger (1926) and Kenneth MacPherson's Borderline (1930), while coded lesbian message were also evident in Victor Saville's First a Girl (1935) and Wolf Rilla's Marilyn (1953). Comedy actor Michael Ward also served as the British equivalent of Franklin Pangborn (who famously played what were termed `pansy' characters), while Carry On regulars Kenneth Williams and Charles Hawtrey could be relied upon to camp it up at every opportunity. Yet, while scholars of queer cinema have reinterpreted pictures like Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale (1944), overt references to homosexuality were restricted to such biopics as Gregory Ratoff's Oscar Wilde and Ken Hughes's The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960), in which the repressed Irish playwright is respectively essayed by Robert Morley and Peter Finch.

But the feature that did most to prompt the British establishment to examine its conscience was Basil Dearden's Victim (1961), which is reissued this week to mark the 50th anniversary of the Sexual Offences Act. In partnership with Michael Relph, Dearden had acquired a reputation at Ealing for `problem pictures' addressing pressing social issues. Today, many critics sneer at the pair for their well-meaning white bourgeois liberalism in tackling such topics as postwar prejudice (Frieda, 1947), racism (Pool of London, 1950 and Sapphire, 1959), delinquency (I Believe in You, 1952 and Violent Playground, 1958) and the struggle facing ex-servicemen to readjust to Civvy Street (Out of the Clouds and The Ship That Died of Shame, both 1955). But Victim was considered their riskiest venture, even though star Dirk Bogarde - whose popularity had earned him the nickname, `the idol of the Odeons' - took an even bigger gamble, as, like Rock Hudson in Hollywood, he had to go to considerable lengths to shroud his sexual preferences (which he never acknowledged during his own lifetime, even though he lived with business manager Tony Forwood) in order to protect his pin-up image.

As the credits roll over Otto Heller's sober monochrome images of a London skyline undergoing an overdue postwar makeover, Peter McEnery spots a police car driving up to the building site where he works. Taking the lift down to the ground, he runs to the nearest phone box to ask friend Donald Churchill to bring a package from his lodging house to their usual pub. McEnery also places a call to barrister Dirk Bogarde, who looks at the photograph of wife Sylvia Syms on his desk as he warns him not to bother him again. While Bogarde goes to his club, McEnery pays a visit to bookseller Norman Bird and his disapproving assistant, Margaret Diamond. He pleads with Bird for help, but a past betrayal clearly still rankles and he orders McEnery to leave.

Frustrated at Sergeant John Cairney's failure to find McEnery, Detective Inspector John Barrie tells him to tighten the net. But McEnery has skipped town and has hooked up with old pal Alan Howard and his wife, Dawn Beret. He asks if he can borrow some cash to make it to Southampton so he can skip the country as a boat steward. But he is arrested in a café in the middle of tearing and flushing the incriminating evidence from his wardrobe. Before he is detained, however, McEnery calls Bogarde again and Syms answers the phone and feels sorry for him because he sounded so desperate. She works with emotionally disturbed children and frets about her widowed brother, Alan MacNaughtan, who is having to raise his son alone.

Questioned by Barrie and Cairney, McEnery refuses to disclose the reason why he has been stealing from his employers. But they reach the conclusion that he is being blackmailed because of his homosexuality and they conclude that he has a crush on Bogarde when they piece together the papers stuffed into the café lavatory and discover them to be part of a scrapbook. Calling in at the station, Bogarde admits knowing McEnery, as he had once given him a lift after he had missed the last bus. But he had become something of a nuisance and he had broken off all contact after McEnery started sending him letters. As he leaves, Bogarde asks if he could see McEnery and is stunned when Barrie informs him that the youth had hanged himself in his cell.

Stunned, Bogarde is distracted when Syms congratulates him about being made a QC. But he has regained his composure by the time Churchill comes to his chambers with a photograph that had been sent to McEnery by the blackmailer. Bogarde knows that his life could fall apart in the ensuing scandal, but he feels so guilty about leaving McEnery to face the music alone (as he had thought he was trying to blackmail him) that he asks Churchill to help him track down the coward to used a telephoto lens to record one of their meetings.

Across London, blind man Hilton Edwards and his companion David Evans post some letters, which Edwards describes as homing pigeons that he hopes come back with full beaks. He is a regular in Frank Pettitt's pub, along with Mavis Villiers and Charles Lloyd-Pack, who had noticed how twitchy McEnery had been the last time they saw him. They are drinking at the bar with Churchill and car salesman Nigel Stock, with Edwards trying to eavesdrop from a nearby table. However, Lloyd-Pack isn't in the mood for socialising, even though he has just made a tidy profit by selling his barber shop. Bird is also upset by the news of McEnery's death after reading about it in the paper. He asks Diamond to feign ignorance if people come snooping, but she insists she is only interested in her weekly pay packet and couldn't care less what Bird gets up to.

Like Cairney, Pettitt has no time for `inverts' and Villiers snaps at the publican for complaining about their feeble excuses whenever they get caught. But he concedes that they can be amusing and shrugs when she accuses him of being a hypocrite. One of this customers follows Lloyd-Pack to his shop, where the old barber recognises the distinctive address label on an envelope that falls out of famous actor Dennis Price's pocket. He says nothing about it, but Churchill calls Bogarde to suggest that Lloyd-Pack is acting oddly and the lawyer corners him at closing time. He refuses to answer any questions, as he has been to prison four times for being homosexual and is relocating to Canada to keep out of further trouble. Lloyd-Pack curses the cruel trick that Nature has played on him, as he fails to see why he should be prosecuted for being himself. But he has run out of patience and informs Bogarde that McEnery is better off dead.

No sooner has Bogarde left the shop than Derren Nesbitt bursts in. He is wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses and he threatens to smash up the shop unless Lloyd-Pack tells him what he said to Bogarde. When he refuses, Nesbitt breaks a mirror with a hairdryer and Lloyd-Pack collapses to the floor. News reaches Churchill that he has died and he contacts Bogarde, who realises that Lloyd-Pack was trying to tip him off about Price when he left a message with his housekeeper. As he reaches that conclusion, Syms sees a newspaper report about McEnery and becomes concerned that her husband is involved in the scandal.

Arriving home, Bogarde is confronted by Syms, who wants to know if he felt the same way about McEnery as he did about a Cambridge student he had known before their marriage. He assures her that he has not betrayed their vows, but admits that he wanted McEnery and that he is aware that he killed himself as an act of romantic sacrifice. Syms tuts that there will be no room in Bogarde's heart for her with that memory to torment him and she strides out of the room.

But Bogarde has more plain talking to cope with when ennobled client Anthony Nicholls summons him to a meeting with Price and photographer Peter Copley. They admit to being blackmailed and suggest that a large payment would be the best way to get the pest off their backs. When Bogarde implies that he has a responsibility to uphold the law, Copley reminds him of another suicide in his past and Bogarde punches him in the face for suggesting that he married a judge's daughter to disguise his true nature and advance his career. Price mocks Bogarde for being Caliban looking in the mirror, but Nicholls urges them to keep their heads, as the blackmailer will triumph if he turns them against each other. But Bogarde insists on trapping the culprit and remains so even after chatting to Syms by the river's edge and she tells him that he has completely destroyed her.

At the pub, Edwards and Evans make plans to return to Cheltenham, while Villiers turns down the offer of a drink from Churchill because she is off to model corsets for a photo shoot. Stock also leaves the bar to take a phone call from Nesbitt and Churchill notices how shaken he seems. He contact Bogarde, who uses a test drive in a Rolls Royce to ask Stock to trust him and let him make his next payoff so that he can challenge the blackmailers. That night, Bogarde goes to the rendezvous near Battersea Power Station and demands that Nesbitt hands over the negative of the McEnery snapshot, as well as Stock's letters. But Nesbitt is in no mood to have terms dictated and he daubs an offensive accusation on Bogarde's garage door. MacNaughtan sees it and is furious with his brother-in-law for exploiting Syms to protect his reputation. He also wants to keep his son away from him. But, when he avers the Bogarde risks becoming a blackmailer himself if he keeps playing the vigilante, Syms stands by her husband and asks MacNaughtan to leave.

Nesbitt sends a telegram to Syms, who meets Bogarde at the school where she works to pass it over. He sighs that MacNaughtan reflects public opinion and he suggests it would be better if she moved out to avoid her name being besmirched. At his chambers, he shows the McEnery picture to loyal assistant Noel Howlett, who takes the news calmly and promises to stand by Bogarde regardless of the course of action he decides to take. Touched by his faith in his integrity, Bogarde calls Barrie and he takes up position with Cairney outside Bird's bookshop. Nearby, a couple of plain clothes men pick up Edwards and Evans for writing false begging letters. But, as Bogarde exchanges parcels in the minor classics aisle (with the mysterious man from the pub lingering nearby), Bird recognises him and bundles him into his office. He curses him for luring McEnery away from him and hopes that he realises how many lives he has helped to destroy. As Bogarde joins Barrie and Cairney, the bowler-hatted chap turns out to be an undercover cop who saw Diamond take the envelope and rush off in a taxi. They follow her to the rooms she shares with Nesbitt, who is looking at new negatives when the cops swoop. Diamond spits out bile about how disgusting homosexuals are and Stock breaks down when Nesbitt reveals he has been providing them with names to help pay off his own debt.

Nesbitt sneers that Bogarde will destroy himself in the witness box and Barrie acknowledges his gratitude for sticking his neck out. But Bogarde hopes the `blackmailer's charter' will soon be repealed and that society will accept that same-sex emotions are as normal as anything heterosexual. He is surprised to find Syms waiting for him and warns her that things are going to get very nasty. But she insists on standing beside him and the film ends with him tossing the negative on to the fire, as he prepares to endure a living hell.

Although it feels somewhat melodramatic some six decades on, Victim retains its landmark status because of the courageous performance of 39 year-old Dirk Bogarde in a role that had been rejected by Jack Hawkins, James Mason and Stewart Granger. On the cusp of making the transition from matinee heartthrob to arthouse darling, Bogarde clearly draws on personal knowledge (if not experience) to convey the angst that gays and lesbians from all walks of life must have felt at being unable to live open and honest lives. The pity he feels for McEnery seems much stronger than the respect he shows Syms for standing by him and one is left wondering what awaits them as a couple in six years time when Bogarde no longer needs to keep up the charade. Nothing should be assumed, however. After all, Syms had a thing for mettlesome characters, as she would go on to get engaged to Jamaican Johnny Sekka in Roy Ward Baker's Flame in the Streets (1961) and fall in love with June Ritchie in Wolf Rilla's pioneering lesbian drama, The World Ten Times Over (1963).

Although it's made clear that Bogarde never acts upon his urges (and is held up as something of a hero for having resisted), he insisted on the inclusion of the scene containing the self-scripted line, `because I wanted him'. Yet many condemned Dearden and Relph for making the (superbly played) gay characters so timid and reactive. But it has to be remembered that they needed to get the picture past the British Board of Film Censors at a time when the tabloids frenziedly covered prominent prosecutions like those of John Gielgud and Lord Montagu with a jaundiced eye and when the BBFC's own secretary, John Trevelyan, could state that `for the great majority of cinema-goers homosexuality is outside their direct experience and is something which is shocking, distasteful and disgusting'. Thus, even though Relph was keen to spark debate, screenwriter Janet Green and husband John McCormick had to tread carefully, as they knew they were likely to be asked to make cuts in order to receive an X certificate.

In fact, the British censor proved as accepting as the audiences that made the film a box-office success. But the Production Code Office in Hollywood refused to allow the word `homosexual' to be heard on American screens. Moreover, MPs also refused to be swayed, as, three months after Victim premiered, they voted by a majority of 114 against acting on Sir John Wolfenden's recommendations. Eventually, they saw sense between suspending the death penalty (1965) and legalising abortion (October 1967). But it should come as no surprise that Terence Davies could later write that when he first saw the film in Liverpool (presumably he had snuck in, as he was around 16 at the time), the sight of Bogarde expressing passion for another man meant `you could have heard a feather drop'. A few years later, Bogarde got his reward, as Lord Arran wrote to thank him after seeing the picture on television for his `courage in undertaking this difficult and potentially damaging part', as he had no doubt that it had helped sway public opinion. No wonder Bogarde later described accepting the part of Melville Farr `the wisest decision I ever made in my cinematic life'.

What a difference a year makes. When Thomas Kruithof embarked upon his debut feature, France seemed mired in crises on all fronts. Now, with Emmanuel Macron papering over the cracks and putting a positive spin on situations that had once seemed intractable, La Patrie is emerging from the dark days that root Scribe in the mood of paranoia and insecurity that had informed such post-Watergate conspiracy thrillers as Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974), Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View (1974) and Sydney Pollack's Three Days of the Condor (1975). However, the influence of Alfred Hitchcock's `everymen in peril' scenario can also be felt in a storyline that makes a virtue of its implausibilities.

Acountant François Cluzet is an obsessive-compulsive workaholic. However, when pressure gets to him, he also drinks. So, when he is given an impossible deadline in his badly organised insurance office, he gets himself into such a state that he covers the floor with ringbinders and slowly loses his grip. Two years later, despite earning a medal for 12 months of sobriety from his Alcoholics Anonymous group, Cluzet fails to impress at an interview with human resources executive Alexia Depicker and puts on a brave face when he runs into flourishing old friend Philippe Résimont at a funeral.

When not doing jigsaws, Cluzet attends AA meetings and group leader Daniel Hanssens asks him to mentor new member, Alba Rohrwacher, who seems unconvinced by the sense of Christian camaraderie. On arriving home, Cluzet gets a call from Denis Podalydès inviting him to an interview in the Parisian district of La Défense. He is surprised to have been selected for a job that requires transcribing phone-tap recordings on an electric typewriter. But Podalydès assures him that he needs somebody discreet, precise and reliable, as his surveillance company undertakes important assignments that benefit the nation. Despite being apolitical, Cluzet is a patriot and needs the €1500 weekly salary. So, he accepts the offer with a surprising lack of curiosity.

Meeting for coffee, Podalydès gives Cluzet instructions about his daily routine. He is to work in an empty apartment in an unremarkable residential block and must open and close the curtains at each end of his 9-6 day. Smoking is forbidden, as is leaving the premises during the set hours, making noises that might attract attention and telling anyone about the job. Nodding gravely, Cluzet takes the keys and makes a start with the first tape. Many of the conversations are banal, but he takes them all seriously and shreds any pages containing typos. Moreover, when neighbour Olivier Bony collars him in the lift, Cluzet explains that he is a translator in temporary occupation.

Woken in the night, Cluzet goes to see Rohrwacher, whose flat has been trashed by a barroom pick-up who lost his temper when she told him to turn the music down. She is surprised by Cluzet's refusal to judge and thanks him for tidying the mess before he leaves for work. He listens to conversations relating to popular politician Benoît Szternberg (who is voiced by Jean-Marie Winling), special agent Sami Bouajila and their involvement with Libyan Nader Farman, who has information about three French hostages being held in Mauritania. But Cluzet detaches himself from the content of the calls in striving for accuracy and is piqued when he finds a note in his typewriter reminding him to show more discretion and stop smoking.

Indeed, he is so stung by a final reminder that he begins a note questioning the warnings. But he thinks better of it and ploughs through more exchanges between Bouajila and Farman. At home time, Cluzet is shaken by a ring on the doorbell. But he peeps through the spyhole to see a nurse leading senile old man Yves Jadoul back to his apartment. The following day, however, Cluzet is even more alarmed when he hears a conversation end abruptly with Farman in evident distress. He replays the tape, but merely completes the transcript as though it was nothing out of the ordinary.

The incident plays on his mind at AA, however, and, the next morning, Cluzet is disconcerted by the sound of a key in the lock. Simon Abkarian introduces himself as Podalydès's intermediary and Cluzet realises that he is the man who has been smoking in the room in his absence. Despite being suspicious, he continues with his work. But, while out with Rohrwacher, he sees a newspaper report claiming that Farman (who had close ties to the Gaddafi regime and was being investigated for tax fraud) had shot his wife before killing himself.

Suitably unnerved, Cluzet writes a letter of resignation and asks Abkarian to pass it to Podalydès. But he refuses and tells Cluzet to keep doing what he's told and to make better coffee. Abkarian asks Cluzet to play a tape in which Szternberg and Bouajila discuss Farman's notebooks and the potentially damaging information they contain. He asks the scribe to hand over the cassette and tries to reassure him by taking him to dinner. As they eat, Abkarian cautions Cluzet that Podalydès is a ruthless man who will sacrifice anyone to get what he wants and protect his position on the precarious power pyramid. He pauses to staunch the flow of a nosebleed and Cluzet furrows his brow, as he wonders what he has become mixed up in.

Returning to the car, Abkarian orders Cluzet to keep watch while he steals the notebooks from the office of Ferman's lawyer. When he refuses, Abkarian tightens the seatbelt around his throat and he has no option but to co-operate. A police siren blares outside, as Cluzet hovers by the door. But it distracts him from the sound of a cleaner working late and he is forced to hold the man's legs as Abkarian throttles him. Appalled at becoming an accomplice to murder, Cluzet throws up after driving away and Abkarian (who is furious that the notebooks contain nothing of interest) has to remind him to say nothing of what they have done to anyone, including Podalydès No sooner has Cluzet got home, however, than Podalydès sends a car to collect him. He is hooded while passing through a tunnel and shown into a room in a quiet suburban house. Podalydès asks where the missing cassette has gone and shows him a chained and bloodied Abkarian to remind him to follow his orders alone. Defiant and dismissive of Podalydès's threats, Abkarian insists he will rue the day he underestimated him. But the icily calm Podalydès intimates to Cluzet that Abkarian (who was sacked months ago for insubordination) will pay for his arrogance and suggests that he takes the day off to recover his composure before reporting for work as usual. Packing a bag and grabbing his passport, Cluzet prepares to flee. But he is picked up on the street and brought before Internal Security agents Bouajila and Bruno Georis, who show him photographs placing him at the murder scene. However, when they visit his former office, they find it empty and Bouajila warns Cluzet that he faces 20 years in prison if he fails to come up with more tangible evidence. Dozing off, Cluzet has a nightmare about the blood-filled typewriter printing the wrong letters. But he cuts a deal to smuggle out copies of everything he types for Bouajila, who promises him that he will be under the protection of his men.

Cluzet arrives home to find Rohrwacher waiting on the doorstep. She is worried about him and forgives him for forcibly trying to barge past her. Over coffee, he admits that he is in trouble and she clutches his hand and agrees to keep him company. They fall asleep on the settee and Cluzet covers her with a blanket when he leaves for work. However, he rushes out when he hears his own voice speaking to Bouajila and calls him from a pay phone. Terrified that Podalydès is on to him, Cluzet begs Bouajila to collect him. But he swears that no one listens to the tapes before he does and guarantees his protection.

Yet one of Podalydès's goons bursts into the office and hauls Cluzet to a waiting people carrier. Taunting him that he won't need a hood this time, the heavy shows him the surveillance photos from the crime scene and shakes his head in amusement. But Cluzet lurches forward and wraps his arm around the driver, causing him to crash. He scrambles out of the vehicle and is taken to Bouajila, who informs him that Podalydès believes he has the notebooks and will do anything to recover them.

Returning to his flat to find it has been trashed, Cluzet fears that Rohrwacher has been kidnapped as a bargaining chip. Bouajila orders him to have patience. But Cluzet spots the business card that Résimont had given him and realises that he owns the company that had rented the apartment to Podalydès. He tracks him down to a hall where Szternberg is about to address a rally and asks why he sold him out. Résimont insists he was simply trying to help a pal on his uppers, but Cluzet smashes his hand with a hammer in order to get a number to call Podalydès.

Acting under Bouajila's instructions, Cluzet arranges a rendezvous to secure Rohrwacher's release and then accompanies Podalydès to an empty sports stadium where the notebooks (which Cluzet knows don't exist) will be handed over. Bouajila has marksmen stationed around the stands and he uses a hidden microphone to put them on standby. However, Podalydès has a proposition. As Szternberg is sure to win the election, Bouajila risks being discharged for obstructing the new leader of France. So, Podalydès suggests that Bouajila drops the inquiry and lets him leave with Cluzet. Realising he is being set up, Cluzet blurts the code word into Bouajila's mike and the snipers kill Podalydès and his bodyguards with three bullets.

As the film ends, Bouajila lets Cluzet walk free over news reports of President Szternberg meeting the freed hostages at the airport. But he is determined to put the ordeal behind him and goes to the hospital where Rohrwacher volunteers and hopes that she can forgive him and make a fresh start.

François Cluzet has always borne a marked resemblance to Dustin Hoffman and he frequently juts his jaw in a Marathon Man manner in this diverting, if not entirely convincing thriller. The pieces slot into place like Cluzet's jigsaw. But some need more persuading than others, particularly after the appearance of Abkarian, whose motives are never satisfactorily explained and who seems to slip through Podalydès's defences with ridiculous ease. The chance meeting with Résimont and the tentative romance with Rohrwacher also seem overly convenient, as is the fact that a middle-class man in his sixties would be so wholly disengaged from the affairs of state and the machinations of its political leaders.

Nevertheless, Cluzet is typically engaging as the hapless anti-hero, even though his sudden resourcefulness as the denouement approaches somewhat strains the picture's already fraying credibility. The support playing is admirable, although few dramatic demands are made of Podalydès, Abkarian, Bouajila and Rohrwacher, as they do their bit to move along the Kruithof and Yann Gozlan narrative, which slips in some judicious digs at the mistrusted transatlantic political élites. Grégoire Auger's insinuating score and Alex Lamarque's lithe visuals also make serviceable contributions, while Kruithof makes a decent first-time showing with his pacing and camera placement. But the standout is Thierry François's production design, as rarely has a drab, empty room seemed so menacing.

The school holidays start this weekend, but it seems unlikely that many kids will be pestering the grown-ups to take them see Benny Chan's Meow. This is largely because it's hard to see who this breakneck romp has been aimed at. Anyone over the age of eight will be mortified by the suggestion that they are right for its relentless blend of cuddlesome sentiment and wacky knockabout, while the tinies who might be charmed by the giant marmalade space moggie at the heart of the mayhem will struggle to cope with the complex subtitles, let alone the convolutions of a quirkily serpentine plot. As for the poor adults, they will be clawing the seat within seconds of the credits rolling. Yet, for all its flaws and oddities, this is just bonkers enough to be a guilty pleasure.

On the edge of the Milky Way lies the planet Meow. It is populated entirely by cats and its ruler wishes to know how the mission to colonise Earth is going because the once-thriving civilisation is under threat from meteor showers. He selects ace fighter Pudding to fly through the galaxy and initiate an invasion plan and presents him with a secret weapon that not only gives him a death glare, but which also prevents his Meowian body from disintegrating in Earth's atmosphere. Bristling with pride, the blue-and-white space cadet blasts off. However, he crash lands in bad weather and loses his jade powerball and finds himself outside the Hong Kong home of Louis Koo, his actress wife Mary Ma and their children, Andy Huang and Jessica Liu.

Since retiring from being a top goalkeeper, Koo has struggled to make his way as an inventor and he is crushed when his audition to become a football commentator goes badly wrong, in spite of his ability to speak slo-mo. Ma wishes he would get a proper job, but her own career has stalled and she has to resort to being mucked around on advert shoots or being mistaken for Nicole Kidman and Vin Diesel while doing promotions work. However, she has great ambitions for Huang (who wants to be a film director, but keeps misfiring with his online clips) and Liu, even though she has calipers on her damaged left leg and keeps being fussed over by teacher Michelle Wai.

As luck would have it, Liu wishes for a new best friend shortly before Pudding becomes stranded. But his fur is beginning to disintegrate and he has to morph with the ginger cat that Koo has agreed to mind while its owner is on holiday (and which promptly runs away and is never seen again). He thinks it's odd that Xixili is so enormous, but Liu takes an immediate shine to him and he is welcomed with no further questions asked. However, Pudding is appalled by his new look and detests being petted. He is also aghast at not being able to use his glare and simply wants to meet up with the feline agents from Meow and return home as quickly as possible. But, on summoning them to the Cats Café, he is shocked to see how domesticated and docile his fellow Meowians have become and fears that taking over Earth might be more difficult than he had envisaged, even taking the idiocy of the Koo clan into consideration.

Deciding to break up the family as part of the great cat fightback, Xixili finds a knife and stalks Koo and Ma. However, she is having a sleepwalking dream that she is a vampire and knocks him over, while Huang pelts him with a pellet gun before he gets an electric shock from a remote control device. Heeding Liu's warning to go to sleep before he gets told off, Xixili dozes off on the rug and dreams of vengeance on the morrow. However, having turned down everything Koo offers him to eat, the best Xixili can manage is to turn the house upside down while everyone is out and Koo only stops Ma from attacking the cat with a broom by kissing her full on the lips (the only means of calming down her temper). But rather than making the family angry, he delights them because each one finds something they had lost and Xixili grimaces in fury at having being foiled.

He plots his revenge by putting chemicals in the salmon soup, only to find it has been made for him as a treat and he gets terrible wind after eating some. While he is recovering in the garden, he spots a pair of crooks in hooped shirts trying to break in. Reasoning that the family will fall apart if their prized possessions are stolen, Xixili opens the gate. But he is so touched when the children urge him to hide so he doesn't get hurt by the intruders that feels obligated to help them and knocks out the thieves with a single blow of his front paws.

Rather enjoying the sensation of being hugged, Xixili repays the kindness when Liu needs a parent to see maths teacher Harriet Yeung after she got low marks on a test. Seeing the cat tangled in one of her mother's tops, Liu puts Xixili in a skirt and blazer and informs Yeung that she has to wear a mask over her face as she is sick. Unconvinced in her thick glasses, Yeung asks Xixili to remove the mask. But she sneezes and blows it into the teacher's face and, when Xixili goes charging into the playground after a bird, she readily believes Liu when she bawls that her mother has a rare disease that is turning her into a cat.

A song montage follows, as Koo tries to teach Xixili to fetch in the park, while Liu makes him balance on one leg while she draws him. He wears a cape and crown to play princes and shows a talent for hula-hooping, as he truly becomes one of the family. But nothing seems to run smoothly, as no sooner has Koo agreed to help out with the school sports day (because Wai is a huge fan) than he discovers that friend Lo Hoi Pang has saddled him with a debt after borrowing the money to pay it. Ma is furious with him and begins beating him with a foldaway stool when Koo kisses her and Huang gets a phone call that his video of Xixili has gone viral and that he is in huge demand for movies and commercials.

Everyone cheers, as another crisis is temporarily averted and a montage shows the family starring in ads for cod liver oil, toilet paper and potato chips. The latter sees Xixili dressed as the Monkey King, but he is further drawn towards Koo when he saves him from a falling light while shooting a boxing sequence and he has to admit to the café cats that things are not going the way he intended.

The same is true for Koo and Ma, as not only has Wai developed a crush on her onetime sporting hero, but Ma runs into old classmate Louis Yuen, who had adored her when he was a tubby nobody. Now, he is handsome and powerful and he longs to hear Ma declare her love for him. Koo gets jealous when Ma comes home wearing Yuen's jacket and is so preoccupied setting up a deal for Xixili to star in a Drunken Cat movie with Jackie Chan (with whom Benny Chan had made Who Am I?, 1998; New Police Story, 2004 and Rob B-Hood, 2006) that he allows himself to be duped into parting with his savings to buy treasure maps sold to him in a bar by con men Edmond So and Remus and Calvin Choy. The banks calls Ma and she comes speeding over just as Koo bumps into Wai and the crooks mistake her for his wife. Ma punches Wai, but can't stop the rogues escaping with the cash (after pausing for a selfie with an unsuspecting Xixili). She curses Koo for being so stupid and not even a kiss can pacify her, as the money had been put aside to pay for surgery to correct Liu's leg.

Xixili looks as sad as Huang and Liu as they are bundled away by their mother. But he helps Koo fight back by bopping Yuen on the nose when he takes Ma to dinner and pleads with her to say she loves him. Meanwhile, Liu hits upon an idea to get everyone back together when Wai announces that families of four are needed to compete in the relay at Sports Day. Ma and Huang fear she will hurt herself, while Koo is too drunk to do anything. But Xixili drags him to the sports ground and sobers him up by putting him in goal and showing him the picture that Liu has drawn of them competing together. He is determined to stop the break-up he had once planned. Yet, as he pads around the empty house, he spots the jade amulet glinting in the sun in a tree in the back garden and he realises that his time must have come to return to Meow.

At the school sports field, Koo tries to persuade Ma that he has learnt his lesson. But she is tired of his get rich quick schemes and wants him to stop falling for cons. They are still arguing when Liu falls in a hurdle race and they rush over to check on her. Huang and Xixili also arrive and they all hold hands so that the cat can use his amulet to speak to them. Naturally, they are astonished, but listen as he tells Koo to grow up, Ma to calm down and Huang to keep pursuing his dream. He also thanks Liu for teaching him about love and, as they enter the relay together, Xixili uses his power to shatter the brace on Liu's leg as she comes into the finishing straight and the crowd go wild when she shows the courage to finish last.

When she turns to see Xixili, however, he has already gone to be beamed up into the mother ship. It passes over the arena and zaps down a ray that erases the memories of everyone who has seen Pudding in his new form. Back on Meow, he tells the king that Earth is a ghastly place and that they would be well advised to steer clear. However, as he has failed in his mission, Pudding is forced to dig for potatoes and shed a fond tear for the family he left behind. But, one day, a spacecraft lands from Woof and he swaps some spuds for a ride to Earth. He arrives home hoping for a warm welcome, but he had forgotten the wiping ray. Fortunately, he had made such a deep impression on their hearts that Koo, Ma, Huang and Liu have remembered him and Xixili squeezes through the front door to enjoy the rest of his nine lives.

As the credits roll, a news report informs us that the fake maps Koo bought were real after all and the family laughs uproariously at its good fortune before we are treated to a clutch of out-takes and a kitty dance sequence. Some might call it overkill, but Chan can't be accused on stinting on the entertainment in his 25th feature. It seems a curious step to take after making his name with action movies (he started out as an assistant to Johnnie To) and recently garnering solid reviews for the `heroic bloodshed' outing The White Storm (2013) and the 1920s `wuxia' actioner Call of Heroes (2016). But this appears to have been a pet project in every sense of the term and he clearly had a ball putting it together.

Much of the budget was spent on the special effects to generate Xixili's facial expressions, but it's pretty obvious that he is predominantly played by a mascot actor in a cat suit. This shouldn't bother the youngest viewers, as the tabby blob with the white whiskers is hugely engaging. But not everyone will be as forgiving, especially as the script (which has nothing to do with the 2016 TV series, My Lover From Planet Meow) veers so randomly between episodes to the accompaniment of an ultra-cheesy score. Koo and Co. do what they can by playing every scene to the hilt. But there's no escaping the fact that this is a madcap cornball curio that might just spawn a sequel.

There have been a number of documentaries about cinematography down the years. In addition to general overviews of the artform like Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy and Stuart Samuels's Visions of Light (1992) and Jon Fauer's Cinematographer Style (2006), there are also studies of individual masters, such as Arthur M. Kaye's James Wong Howe: Cinematographer (1973), David M. Thompson's Writing with Light: Vittorio Storaro (1992), Carl Gustav Nykvist's tribute to his father Sven, Light Keeps Me Company (2000), Mark Wheeler's Haskell Wexler profile, Tell Them Who You Are (2004), Yves Montmayeur's insight into Christopher Doyle, In the Mood for Doyle (2007), and Craig McCall's Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff (2010).

Joining the list this week is Fariborz Kamkari's Water and Sugar: Carlo di Palma, the Colours of Life, which allows Adriana Chiesa to reminisce about her late husband with some of his best-known collaborators and admirers. A notable absentee (although this is sort of understandable in the circumstances) is muse and longtime lover Monica Vitti. But this affectionate blend of clips and anecdotes rightly sheds more light on the deceptive simplicity of Carlo Di Palma's visual style than on his personality and private life.

As Adriana Chiesa explains why she felt the time was right to pay tribute to her much-lamented partner, we see the opening credits of `Roma', Michelangelo Antonioni's contribution to 12 registi per 12 città (1989), and footage of Carlo Di Palma revisiting some of his childhood haunts, as he recalls the colours that used to fill his mother's flower shop near the Spanish Steps. Sitting on a Roman tram, director Carlo Vanzina describes how she used to send him out in a clean shirt to make an impression on the city's artists and intellectuals and daughter Valentina Di Palma and director Giuliano Montaldo suggest he was a shy boy, who liked to keep busy and was always willing to help out.

In an old interview, Di Palma remembers his father repairing cameras and his brother managing the Safa Palatino studio across the road from his school. Christian De Sica suggests that his father Vittorio and Roberto Rossellini would have been pioneering the neo-realist style at the time. De Sica gave Di Palma his first camera and he began taking photographs and learning how to capture light and shadow and how to alter the image while developing it. At just 15, he served as focus puller on Luchino Visconti's Ossessione (1942) and we see a shot containing a swish pan and a dolly, as Massimo Girotti picks up a plate from the diner table and wanders to the kitchen to speak with Clara Calamai.

Director Otto Maselli tells Chiesa how Di Palma had an intellectual curiosity about cinema and learnt a lot from Visconti and Aldo Tonti, who had devised a hard-edged form of monochrome lighting that became synonymous with postwar Italian cinema. It amazes director Paolo Taviani that Di Palma was involved with some of the greatest films of the period and Bernardo Bertolucci mentions his role as an assistant cameraman on Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945).

Chiesa drives to the Centro Sperimentale film school to watch priest Aldo Fabrizi go to his death with veteran cinematographer Giuseppe Lanci. They sit at an editing desk, as the celluloid whirrs round the apparatus and the boys in their short trousers walk back into the capital, with St Peter's on the horizon. Centro director Marcello Foti explains how all the film-making crafts were taught at the school when Di Palma studied there and, as we see a clip from Rossellini's Paisà (1946), Ken Loach takes up the idea of cine-communality among the conquerors of fascism.

Over the opening credits of De Sica's Shoeshine (1946), Torono Film Festival director Piers Handling tells Chiesa about neo-realism transforming world cinema. Director Francesco Rosi claims his generation got the film bug because pictures like Visconti's La terra trema and De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (both 1948) fired their imagination because they were being shot on the streets. Wim Wenders envies Di Palma the privilege of having been present at the making of such masterpieces, while Carlo Lizzani suggests that their significance is down as much to their look as their stories. But Loach laments that this sense of unity didn't last once the cult of individualism emerged and he gives a big old Corbynista sigh for the lost era of Attleean and neo-realist socialism.

Centro president Caterina D'Amico recalls Di Palma telling her how he used to scrounge film from the Allied troops based at Cinecittà and how he later discovered that the person who had given him the off-cuts that were used on Rome, Open City was none other than Sven Nykvist. However, neither knew the other's identity until they met over dinner with Woody Allen and Nykvist recognised Di Palma. Bertolucci marvels that he provided such a link of continuity to the greats of the past and Di Palma avers that the cinematographer comes second only to the director where a film's visual tone and texture are concerned, as he has such a say in the lighting and the camera movement.

Having served his apprenticeship, Di Palma made his mark with Florestano Vancini's It Happened in ’43 (1960) and Montaldo recalls visiting the set and the atmospheric lighting that Di Palma had created on the De Paolis soundstage. Journalist Luciana Castellina declares that Di Palma was part of a generation that wanting to change things and, consequently, he harnessed his father's anti-Fascist spirit and worked on pictures designed to make a difference to people's lives rather than coin in cash for their makers. Among them was Gillo Pontecorvo's Kapò (1960), which centred on Susan Strasberg's efforts to survive in a Nazi concentration camp.

Screenwriter Furio Colombo suggests Di Palma's work reflected his political convictions. But he could also bring a touch of class to comedies like Pietro Germi's Divorce Italian Style (1961), which Taviani, director Valerio Jalongo and academic Richard Peña commend for the agility of Di Palma's camerawork. Castellina remembers the co-operation between artists and artisans on the set and Di Palma waxes lyrical about his time focus pulling for his idol, Gianni di Venanzo, who made his name with Antonioni in the 1950s. Rather oddly, Kamkari shows a clip from Story of a Love Affair (1950), on which Di Palma acted as camera operator for Enzo Serafin rather than Di Venanzo.

The scene shifts abruptly from a rain-streaked monochrome street to St Basil's Cathedral in Moscow, where Chiesa has gone to meet Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov. He explains how the black-and-white imagery that Di Venanzo achieved in films like Il Grido (1957) influenced Di Palma's use of colour in later Antonioni outings like Red Desert (1964) and Blow-Up (1966). Peña opines that the former was the first feature to use colour aesthetically, while Loach suggests that colour excited the pair after filming for so long in monochrome. In an archive interview, Di Palma reveals that they experimented like painters mixing shades (and even repainting the landscape) to get the desired colour and Antonioni concurs that he wanted hues to reflect the emotions of the characters.

Handling avers that the industrial landscapes in Red Desert were epochal and cinematographer Blasco Giurato agrees, as he wanders through Cinecittà with Chiesa. He remembers Antonioni and Di Palma justifying the abstraction in Blow-Up and how they painted grass and trees to get the precise colours they wanted. Peña praises Di Palma for having the imagination and the ingenuity to capture Antonioni's vision. But Taviani also compliments him on the other masterpiece he worked on in 1966, Mario Monicelli's Brancaleone's Army, which was a Rabelasian period romp that screenwriter Giacomo Scarpelli (whose father Furio co-scripted with Agenore Incrocci) claims was revolutionary in its approach to storytelling. Director Lina Wertmüller also enthuses about Di Palma's vitality and how it encapsulated the mood of Italian cinema at the time.

Lawyer Giovanna Cau particularly remembers his liaison with Monica Vitti after she separated from Antonioni. Scarpelli implies that Di Palma gave Vitti greater confidence on screen and we see newsreel footage of her filming Jealousy Italian Style (1970) on a cold Roman night and cut to director Ettore Scola lauding Di Palma for always getting the soul of an image through his use of colour and light. He notes that he was one of the few cinematographers who bothered to read the script because he knew that colour was key to telling the story in the right way. Actor Giancarlo Giannini recalls the shoot fondly and how Di Palma was constantly striving for something new.

Eventually, he decided the only way to express himself fully and he directed three pictures for Vitti: Teresa the Thief (1973), Blonde in Black Leather (1975) and Mimi Bluette...Flower of My Garden (1976). Over clips from the first title, Giacomo Scarpelli remembers his father being proud to work on Di Palma's debut, while Riz Ortolani sings along at the piano to the tune he composed for the enchanting waltz sequence. Actor Michele Placido smiles as he recalls Di Palma feeding him up between takes because he felt he was too skinny. The picture won coveted Golden Globes and this success led to a second outing, which screenwriter Barbara Alberti recalls being tense because the romance with Vitti was ending, while co-star Claudia Cardinale was breaking up with producer Franco Cristaldi. Yet, working with his nephew Dario behind the camera, Di Palma captured treasurable moments like the motorbiking silhouettes against the sunset.

Around this time, Chiesa and Di Palma met in Tehran and quickly became inseparable. But the film rather leaps forward, as Di Palma steps in for Vittorio Storaro on Bertolucci's The Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man (1981). Producer Michyiio Yoshizaki jokes that he almost became Bertolucci's mistress away from wife Storaro and the director admits he allowed himself to get carried away with the elegance and slight snobbery that Di Palma had acquired from Antonioni. Camera operator Massimo Di Venanzo recalls the fogs that descended on Parma during the shoot and they recreated them on Antonioni's Identification of a Woman (1982). Chiesa goes to see Antonioni's widow, Enrica, and she suggests that they were simpatico and competitive and that this desire to achieve greatness drove them on.

A match cut between opening doors drags the documentary away from Italy and plonks it in the Manhattan of Woody Allen, with whom Di Palma would make 12 features (including the 1994 teleplay, Don't Drink the Water). Having failed to land him for Take the Money and Run (1969), Allen finally got his man for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), where they overcame a minor language barrier with their shared tastes in cinema and how it should look. Taking to New York, Di Palma brought a European sensibility to Allen's work and he explains how he was inspired by the colours of the Sistine Chapel, which he got to see at close quarters while making Antonioni's 1989 documentary about the restoration of the frescoes.

Allen suggests Di Palma most enjoyed working on period pictures like Radio Days (1987) because they enabled him to explore the poetry of colour and production designer Santo Loquasto tells Chiesa how much he learned about how to bring light to his sets through his use of candles on September (1987). He describes his spontaneity on set and Di Palma insists that his refusal to be bound by storyboards prevented him from working in Hollywood. Alec Baldwin claims that art is almost accidental where studio projects are concerned, as making money is the main aim. But Allen enjoyed the haphazard nature of their relationship, which was based on trust and a certainty that whatever shot Di Palma lined up was going to look good.

Cannes supremo Gilles Jacob declares that Di Palma was popular with directors and performers because he always did well by them. Certainly Baldwin appreciated the little nods of approval that Di Palma gave him while making Alice (1990), while German director Volker Schlöndorff and Berlin festival director Dieter Kosslick are happy to say nice things, as is fellow cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who claims they shared a love of films with an emotional core.

Yet, as he proved with Husbands and Wives (1992), Di Palma could also do jagged handheld imagery that suggested the dislocated world of the characters. Then, on Deconstructing Harry (1997), he created nightmarish images (as well as the hilarious joke about Robin Williams being out of focus) that director Abel Ferrara avers were typical of his ability to take film-makers out of their comfort zones. But Allen regards him as one of the few friends he has made in movies and used to enjoy having lunch and dinner with him because they always had so much to talk about.

After 17 years in New York, however, Di Palma began to miss Italy and Chiesa catches up with Mira Nair in Venice so she can extol his virtues. Loach pops up again to claim Di Palma as a man of the people who eschewed the greed of the film business, while critic Fabio Ferzetti says he would tell modern film-makers to trust their eyes more and rely less on clever machines. Rome festival director Antonio Monda and record producer Caterina Caselli agree that Di Palma would advocate taking risks in order to further the artform. But Richard Peña and Wim Wenders hit the nail on the head when they assert that the secret to Di Palma's work was that he understood people and sought to show them themselves on the screen.

A montage of close-ups follows, as Wenders recalls how well he caught the expressions in an actor's eye. But Roberto Cicutto, the president of Instituto Luce, warns that Di Palma's legacy should not be viewed purely in nostalgic terms, as future Italian cinema has to learn from his example. In closing, Chiesa states that his work was rooted in his origins and had the simplicity of the sugar and water drink that the tram drivers used to give him when they were babysitting for his mother. It's a nice thought to end on, as it's the little things in life that often have the most lasting effect upon us. But it does leave us hanging about the last seven years of Di Palma's life and why he didn't resume his career in Italy after Deconstructing Harry outside filming the Jubileum concerts that Enrico Castiglione staged in various Roman basilicas between 1998-2000.

Indeed, there are many moments when one wishes that Kamkari had cut down on the number of talking heads (several of whom appear en passant to embrace Chiesa and spout a platitude) and allow the more important collaborators and admirers to discuss Di Palma's technique and attitude to life and art in more detail. It's impossible to do justice to a career spanning six decades in 90 minutes, especially when it touches on so many key creative periods. But a little more analysis of the extracts in order to enlighten the audience about how Di Palma worked and what set him apart from his peers would not have gone amiss. Instead, there is a surfeit of fulsome praise that often says more about the speaker than the subject.

Nevertheless, Kamkari and Chiesa make intelligent choices when it comes to the clips and undoubtedly succeed in inspiring viewers to revisit a filmography strewn with classics. It's just a shame that so few of them are readily available on disc or download in this country.

One suspects that Barnaby Clay is familiar with Bob Fosse's All That Jazz (1979), as the stylised heart surgery sequences in his documentary, SHOT! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock, bear more than a passing resemblance to those in the Oscar-winning musical. Tracing the highs and lows of 69 year-old photographer Mick Rock's colourful career, this is a personal reflection rather than an analytical appreciation. There are no pally anecdotes from fellow survivors of the glam and punk eras, as Rock does most of the talking in reflecting on the friendships that he forged with some of the biggest names in the music business and the excesses that nearly cut his life drastically short.

Lying in a mocked-up operating theatre wearing sunglasses and an oxygen mask, Michael David Rock has a multi-coloured flashback of his time photographing icons like David Bowie, Queen and Debbie Harry. The echoey sound of Iggy Pop's `I Wanna Be Your Dog' accompanies emergency service radio chatter, as Rock stands aside from himself and relives the heart attack he suffered in New York in 1996. A taped conversation with Lou Reed joins the mix, as Rock (who considers himself to be an assassin seeking his subject's aura) declares that he is a man who always fulfils.

Returning to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, Rock wanders through the dining hall and punts along the Cam while recalling how his mother pushed him to rise above his humble London background and project himself. He cites the influence of the Romantic, Symbolist and Beat poets on his emerging sense of self, which was given a boost by the lycergic experiences that opened his third eye. Over stylised visuals suggesting the trip, Rock explains how the teachings of Yogi Bhajan could produce a similar feeling of release and the world looked a very different place when he combined the two.

While under the influence in 1967, Rock picked up a friend's camera and was soon hooked on the way a subject changes between two clicks. Heading to London in the Summer of Love, he started making home movies and became friends with Syd Barrett, who was emerging as the leader of Pink Floyd. When he went solo, Barrett asked Rock to shoot the cover image for The Madcap Laughs (1969). Standing over a long light table, Rock flicks through discarded shots and remembers the painted floorboards and Barrett's naked girlfriend shaping the concept. But, within two years, Barrett had lost interest in music and had retreated to Cambridge, which Rock feels is a great shame because he had the soul of a Rimbaud or a Baudelaire.

He quickly found a new star to follow, however, after he covered a David Bowie gig at Birmingham Town Hall in 1972. Nobody would have backed Ziggy Stardust as a winner, but something appealed to Rock and he hitched his wagon. He was lucky in that Bowie felt Rock viewed him as he saw himself and he trusted him sufficiently as an insider to offer him seismic moments such as kneeling on stage at Oxford Town Hall to bite Mick Ronson's guitar. Moreover, he hired him to direct the videos for `The Jean Genie' (1972) and `Life on Mars' (1973) and Rock muses on the irony that Bowie made himself a star by acting as one when he was still a relative unknown.

Bowie introduced Rock to Lou Reed at a Save the Whales concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Rock realised how much in awe Bowie was of Reed and he claims they were the light and dark sides of a symbiotic entity. While photographing him at the Scala in 1972, he took the shot (for which he got £100) that ended up on the cover of the seminal Transformer album. One week later, at the same venue, he got the image that would adorn Iggy Pop's Raw Power. Talk about being in the right place at the right time. Comparing him to an iguana, Rock recalls how still the audience was, as though it had no idea how to respond to Iggy's new brand of rock. He claims Syd, Reed, Bowie and Iggy were chimeras and he felt the magic emanating from them and became addicted.

Four decades on, Rock still feels that glam was the avant-garde in drag and he notes how the likes of Mick Jagger, Elton John and Rod Stewart latched on to it. He credits Marc Bolan as its founder, as he looks through snaps he took at trendy haunts like Biba, where Bryan Ferry was a regular. As one of the gang, Rock dutifully applied his make-up and - as a gaggle of white-coated medics shuffle in and out of the operating theatre - he got to photograph the cast of The Rocky Horror Show, as well as everyone from Jerry Garcia and Marianne Faithfull to Mott the Hoople and Thin Lizzy. The montage of images, as Rock rootles around in a cluttered storeroom in his house, confirms his status as the shutterbug to the stars. But he plays down his role with the self-guying modesty of someone clinging on as best he could at a time when being prolific was the only way to make a decent living.

Freddie Mercury approached Rock in 1973 and he first photographed Queen at Imperial College. Needing an image boost, the band allowed Rock to call the shots and he drew inspiration from a glamour still of Marlene Dietrich with her hands crossed over her chest in Josef von Sternberg's Shanghai Express (1932) that led to an iconic shot of Mercury and the cover of Queen II (the blocking of which would recur in the video for `Bohemian Rhapsody' in 1975). Standing at the light table, Rock remembers Roger Taylor joking that Mercury knew where he wanted to go and suggests that he was playing coliseums in his mind long before Queen hit the big time.

As he works with a female model, Rock declares that photography should be kept simple. Rather pretentiously, Clay uses a red filter for a close-up as Rock cites the influence of German photographer Horst P. Horst's single-light working method and Russian theatre director Konstantin Stanislavsky's theory of feeding off the energy of a space. He explains how he uses power-breathing, yoga and mantras to focus himself and relies on an alliance between his eye and his gut to get the best shots. Debbie Harry once claimed that his drag name would be Miss Direction because he had a habit of catching people off guard, as a montage follows that includes such familiar faces as Bowie, Ferry, Andy Warhol and Truman Capote, Ray Davies and Cat Stevens.

Following a dolly through an avenue of blown-up images, Rock shows us a selection of party pictures featuring Bowie (kissing Lou Reed), Iggy and Mick Jagger. He claims to have been an insider looking in rather than a paparazzo, but there is something reportagic about these shots, especially when he captured Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Rod Stewart having a snorting session interrupted by the cops. But he remained a poet at heart and set off to New York to work on stage and album concepts with Reed that resulted in the covers of Rock and Roll Heart and Coney Island Baby (both 1976). He likes the pictures Reed took of him in this period and is particularly pleased with snaps of Reed with Nico and John Cale. But he never got all the members of The Velvet Underground in the same room at the same time.

As we hear Reed and Rock discussing the meaning and impact of the song `Heroin', the latter claims that he used to love getting up to mischief around 4am (`the hour of the wolf') and he jokes about the girls and his prudish visits to S&M clubs as Clay creates a blur of negative strips to convey the craziness of the time. But things were about to step up a notch, even though Reed confides on tape that he hates punk and thought The Ramones were dirty and talentless.

Rock first saw them at CBGB in 1974 and he recalls the place being empty. But he overcame his conviction they were the ugliest combo around to shoot the cover for End of the Century (1980). Back in Blighty, he answered Malcolm McLaren's call to photograph The Sex Pistols and his portrait of Johnny Rotten made the cover of High Times magazine in October 1977. He also did the Penthouse cover for Debbie Harry in February 1980 and suggests she was like Marilyn Monroe and Bowie in that it was impossible to take a bad picture of her.

Around the same time, Rock did the covers for Talking Heads (77), The Dead Boys (We've Come for Your Children, 1978), Joan Jett (I Love Rock`n'Roll, 1981) and reveals how he based the respective images on the Midwich Cuckoos, The Rolling Stones and Elvis Presley. He mentions Carl Jung in trying to explain why certain images work and others endure. But he ties himself in knots and has to admit that he doesn't know. Moreover, Rock struggles to understand how he managed to get so much good work done when he was taking so much cocaine and speed that professionalism sometimes went out of the window. Yet, during the seven-day benders, he could do covers like Carly Simon's Come Upstairs (1980) and such videos as Saratoga's `Hall of the Mountain King' and Ace Frehley's `Insanity' (both 1987), which provoke chuckles of recognition.

Yet, while he worked with Mötley Crüe and Madonna, Rock could feel himself losing his grip. He missed Lou Reed's wedding and felt he needed to clean up his act before he approached him and Bowie again. But he suffered his heart attack first and Clay intercuts between a recreation of the incident on location in the West Side, the Robert Palmeresque medics entering the operating theatre and bleached-out negative images of his gurney being wheeled through a hospital corridor, as Rock recalls reciting Psalm 23 as he teetered on the edge of the precipice his mother had warned him about.

Using a throbbing light on his chest to disorientate, Clay has Rock read Baudelaire in French over a shot of him walking along a New York dockside. The camera approximates a fast track through an artery, as Bowie's taped voice declares that he, Dylan, Lennon and Bolan are false prophets and fake gods because the artist only exists in the mind of the fan. Yet, as the Doctor Who-like psychedelic time tunnel montage ends on a monochrome shot of Rock wired up in a hospital bed, he announces that he doesn't want to talk about three heart attacks and quadruple bypass surgery in his forties, as it's something he prefers to acknowledge rather than analyse.

He claims he owes his survival to Andrew Loog Oldham and Allen Klein (who had connections with the Stones and The Beatles). Now, he is working again and younger artists clamour for him because he still hangs out with Bowie, Iggy, Debbie and Ferry. He would rather be known as `the man who shot the 70s' than be forgotten and finds it droll that his pictures of the subversive rebels of yesteryear are now hanging in establishment galleries. At the 2013 Scala launch of his book on Transformer, he and Reed admit that they got lucky more often than other people, while Rock himself suggests he is merely someone with a gift for being fascinated.

Ending on a flurry of grainy `at work' shots that show Rock has lost none of his irreverence, wit or energy, this is a lively and laudably candid account on Mick Rock's life and times. Clay occasionally strays into hallucinatory self-indulgence, but his enthusiasm for Rock and the milieux he haunted is readily evident and he finds a willing accomplice in a subject whose plain-speaking gift of the gab chips away some of the cant that keeps threatening to creep in. Working with a range of formats, cinematographer Max Goldman holds his own against the stills and home movies edited with chic dexterity by Drew Denicola and Michael Dart Wadsworth.

Might this have benefited from a few objective opinions? Perhaps. But Rock knows enough about his specialist subject to ensure that his recollections remain fresh and insightful, especially where his own shortcomings are concerned. Moreover, he gives Clay his head in the same way the Bowie and Reed trusted him and this speaks volumes for the man and the way he created his art.