Blitz (Movie)

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    How ‘Blitz’ Recreates War-Torn London

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    Steve McQueen’s latest film, set in 1940 during Germany’s bombardment of the British capital, draws extensively from contemporary photos, and was shot entirely outside London.In a London train station, a young Black child clutches a suitcase with both hands. Drowning in his coat, he wears a flat cap and a stoic expression, striding toward his future as an evacuee. The photograph, taken during the eight-month-long bombardment of British cities by German forces during World War II, was one of the images that inspired Steve McQueen’s new film “Blitz,” currently in select theaters.The boy, carrying his small suitcase as he evacuated London in 1940, inspired the character of George in “Blitz.”AlamyThe film is told from the perspective of George (Elliott Heffernan), a biracial 9-year-old who is evacuated from London to the countryside as bombs descend on his hometown. Mid-journey, he escapes the train, abandoning his suitcase and weaving his way back to his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan), in east London.Doing research for the film, McQueen and its production designer, Adam Stockhausen, were struck again and again by “the incongruity, and the heartbreak,” of images of life in London during the bombing, Stockhausen said in a recent interview. McQueen would see a photo of a woman sweeping out her ruined house or one of a man sitting in a chair and smoking a cigarette, the home around him reduced to rubble, and build a scene around it, Stockhausen added.The film’s production design is meticulous — Stockhausen previously collaborated with McQueen on “12 Years a Slave” and “Widows” — and seen through George’s eyes, 1940s London is a sprawling labyrinth. Depicting the sweep of the city was essential to the narrative, Stockhausen said, but shooting in London would have been too difficult and expensive, and the team wanted to avoid a C.G.I. set.Adam Stockhausen, left, the film’s production designer, and Steve McQueen, the director, working on set.via AppleWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Watch a Nightclub Scene in ‘Blitz’

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      The writer and director Steve McQueen discusses a sequence set in the Café de Paris in London.The writer and director Steve McQueen narrates a sequence from his film set in London during World War II.Apple TV+ In “Anatomy of a Scene,” we ask directors to reveal the secrets that go into making key scenes in their movies. See new episodes in the series on Fridays. You can also watch our collection of more than 150 videos on YouTube and subscribe to our YouTube channel.The film “Blitz” primarily deals with the trials of a mother (Saoirse Ronan) and son (Elliott Heffernan) during World War II in London. But the film expands out to look at the ways the war was affecting the entire city.Narrated by the writer and director Steve McQueen, the sequence featured here doesn’t include the principal actors. It takes place in the Café de Paris, a popular nightclub in the city. The scene’s appearance in the film feels like a diversion, but that’s exactly what those inside the club are seeking.“The symbolic nature of the Café de Paris in the movie,” said McQueen in his narration, “is to show the divide between the rich and poor.”The camera glides through an audience and dancers to get to a stage with a band playing, led by Snakehips Johnson (Devon McKenzie-Smith). A spirited, and somewhat provocative, song is performed by Anita Sinclair (Celeste) that has significance because, McQueen said, it was “what was being played just before the bomb hit that club.”Read the “Blitz” review.Sign up for the Movies Update newsletter and get a roundup of reviews, news, Critics’ Picks and more. More

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      Best Movies and Shows Streaming in November: ‘Bad Sisters,’ ‘Cruel Intentions’ and More

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      “Cruel Intentions,” “Music by John Williams” and “Dune: The Prophecy” arrive, along with “Bad Sisters” Season 2.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to their libraries. Here are our picks for some of November’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Cruel Intentions’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 21The 1999 movie melodrama “Cruel Intentions” became a box office hit and inspired multiple sequels, thanks to its twisty plot and sexual frankness, all borrowed from the novel, play and film “Dangerous Liaisons.” The new TV version carries on the tone of the films, following the bed-hopping and betrayals among a group of rich young men and women. Set at a prestigious college, the “Cruel Intentions” series is mainly about two stepsiblings, Caroline (Sarah Catherine Hook) and Lucien (Zac Burgess), who are adept at seducing and manipulating their classmates. The pair never seems to care how many enemies they make, so long as everyone fears them.Also arriving:Nov. 1“Libre”Nov. 7“Citadel: Honey Bunny”“Look Back”“My Old Ass”Nov. 8“Every Minute Counts”Nov. 14“Cross” Season 2Nov. 19“Abigail”“Jeff Dunham’s Scrooged-Up Holiday Special”Nov. 20“Wish List Games”Nov. 21“Dinner Club”Nov. 26“It’s in the Game”Nov. 28“Oshi No Ko”Nov. 29“The World According to Kaleb: On Tour”A scene from “The Creep Tapes,” new to AMC+.ShudderNew to AMC+‘The Creep Tapes’ Season 1Starts streaming: Nov. 15The “Creep” franchise of found footage horror films features Mark Duplass (who also co-wrote the series with the director, Patrick Brice) as a serial killer who hires aspiring filmmakers to help him make movies, which inevitably end in actual murders. “The Creep Tapes” offers bite-size versions of this premise, with episodes running under a half an hour and featuring a variety of scenarios. Duplass is back as the villain, who changes his name from victim to victim. His vibe rarely changes, though. He is overly friendly and pushy, to the point of being unpleasant; and yet he also seems pretty harmless, right up to when his shtick turns deadly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Blitz’ Review: Love in the Ruins

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      Steve McQueen’s World War II drama may appear conventional on the surface, but don’t miss what it’s really doing.World War II is almost certainly the big screen’s most immortalized conflict, and for good reason. It broke just as cinema was beginning to mature as a form of entertainment, and footage from the front narrated by peppy tales of victory was part of many people’s moviegoing experience. What’s more, though, the outlines of World War II could be boiled down to clean tales of good versus evil, bravery versus cruelty — the sort of stories that make good two-hour feature films.As the historian Elizabeth Samet argues in her excellent 2021 book “Looking for the Good War,” the heroism performed in Hollywood’s World War II movies soon became the filter through which all American involvement in foreign wars was seen and encouraged. In the aftermath of war, she writes, “causes are retrofitted,” and “participants fondly recall heroic gestures.” The tendency extends far beyond America, because the tale of valor richly rewarded and goodness winning the day is the kind of World War II movie we want to see — and the kind we mostly have.Yet most stories during the war didn’t end in glory and goodness. They ended in death and dismemberment, heartache and trauma, lives destroyed, families ripped apart. Yes, the good guys won. But winning a war still means losing.The British film industry is hardly immune to the triumphalist tales, and watching “Blitz,” I began to have a strong suspicion that those are precisely the movie’s target. The filmmaker Steve McQueen, whose film “12 Years a Slave” won the Oscar for best picture in 2014, works with the eye of a protesting artist, as aware of form as he is of content.In his 2018 film “Widows,” about women pulling off a heist, the form is that of a crime thriller. But the real subject is the class and economic contradictions of Chicago, which McQueen paints into the background except in one subtle, unforgettable scene: As characters have a conversation of some note in a car, the camera stays resolutely pointed out through the windshield, and we watch the setting starkly change from run-down projects to exquisite mansions in a matter of minutes. It’s a gutting accompaniment to the machinations of power being discussed in the car. You can’t really take one without the other.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Saoirse Ronan Has Lived, and Acted, Through a Lot

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      “I wish I could live through something,” says the teenage title character in the 2017 movie “Lady Bird,” yearning for a life beyond suburban Sacramento.The actor playing her, Saoirse Ronan, had, at that point, already lived through enough for several lives. Then 23, she’d been acting since she was 9, and had already garnered two Oscar nominations. “Lady Bird,” Greta Gerwig’s debut as a solo director, would earn Ronan a third. Another followed, in 2019, for her role as Jo March in Gerwig’s “Little Women.”This year, Oscars buzz surrounds Ronan once again, thanks to her leading roles in Nora Fingscheidt’s “The Outrun,” which opens in theaters Friday, and Steve McQueen’s “Blitz,” out Nov. 1st.Ronan’s career reads as a series of evolutions, pushing into new territory with every role — over the years, she has also played a 1950s Irish immigrant in New York, a child assassin, a vampire, Lady Macbeth and Mary, Queen of Scots. Now 30, with over two decades of experience in front of the camera, the Irish actress has committed herself in “The Outrun” to a character containing multitudes: a woman raised in a remote island community, who returns to recover from her addiction to alcohol.In “The Outrun,” Ronan’s character, Rona, returns home to the Orkney Islands in Scotland to recover from her alcohol addiction.Martin Scott Powell/Sony Pictures Classics“It was so much more than just making a film for me,” Ronan said, in a video interview from New York. She described an experience that was both physically and emotionally demanding: “I think actors are sponges, you’re able to open yourself up to everything around you.” For “The Outrun,” that meant swimming in the icy sea, delivering lambs on-camera and going deep into the psyche of a woman in crisis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More