Widescreen

In the couple of months around publication of this article, the following film events will have taken place. Francis Coppola’s presentation at Cannes of a longer version of Apocalypse Now. The paperback publication of Michael Powell’s autobiography. The re-release of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. A South Bank Show profile of Ken Russell.

A common note sounds through all these retrospective celebrations which is rather embarrassing for cinema. Paul Schrader got it right a few years ago. “Looking back at my movies is a lose-lose situation,” he said. “If they seem bad, you think ‘my God, I had no talent’;…