Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 16/4/2015)

The inspiration for Home From Home: Chronicle of a Vision came from a letter that Reitz received from a nurse in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre informing him that he had the same surname as her boss and from the discovery after his death in 2008 that Reitz's younger brother Guido had been an expert in South American indigenous languages without ever having lived outside the Hunsrück, the rural corner of the Rhineland-Palatinate close to the Luxembourg border where Reitz had set Heimat (1984), Die Zweite Heimat (1992) and Heimat 3 (2004). This triptych in 20 parts runs almost 55 hours, so this 230-minute monochrome saga is something of a miniature by comparison. But, by revisiting the Simon clan and its neighbours, Reitz has been able to cast a unique perspective on the connection between the semi-feudal kingdom still reeling from the humiliations of the Napoleonic Wars and the reunited nation that is seen as the land of milk and honey by economic migrants from every continent.

As he records in his new journal in 1842, Jakob (Jan Dieter Schneider) is the adolescent son of blacksmith Johann Simon (Rüdiger Kriese) and his wife, Margarethe (Marita Breuer). With his older brother Gustav (Maximilian Scheidt) away on conscripted service in the dragoons, he is expected to pull his weight around the forge and help out with the few crops the villagers are able to plant in the fields beyond Schabbach. Completing the household are Johann's mother (Eva Zeidler), clubfooted wait Margotchen (Zoé Wolf) and an elderly uncle (Reinhard Paulus), who hides the books that Jakob is forbidden from reading during working hours.

He is obsessed with the Amazonian tropics and, having seen the long lines of heavily laden wagons heading from the Hunsrück to Hamburg, he has promised himself that he will apply for an emigration permit for Brazil as soon as he is legally able. However, Jakob has also discovered girls and he is reading in the woods when he catches sight of Henriette (aka Jettchen; Antonia Bill) and Florine (Philine Lembeck) rolling naked down a grassy incline because old wives insist that this is a cure for the rash the latter has discovered on her arm. Emerging from his hiding place, Jakob gives Henriette the handsome feather he had been using as a tribal headdress and she hides a smaile as she rushes back the watermill where she lives with her mother Lotte (Barbara Philipp) and father, the gem cutter Fürchtegott Niem (Martin Haberscheidt), who has not uttered a word in the 15 years since the local agate supply gave out. He shows her a red-tinted stone and she is enchanted by its colours.

Florine resides at the nearby tannery with her older brothers (Jan Peter Nowak and Johannes Große) and is delighted when she meets up with Henriette to reveal that her skin condition has cleared up. They are walking through the fields when they see the young baron (Konstantin Buchholz) pass in his buggy and show him the way to Shabbach when a wheel breaks off on a rutted road. The girls flirt with Jakob, but he is more interested in the travel book that the baron is reading and he allows him to keep it, as he is so amused that a youth of such low breeding can read so well and have such an extensive knowledge of the New World.

Johann is furious that his son is shirking his chores and Jakob takes refuge in the fields. He dozes off and wakes to find Lotte searching for her husband. Jakob offers to help and they find Fürchtegott cowering in the water beneath his waterwheel. Reluctant to return home until his father's temper has cooled, Jakob hitches a ride on a river barge to Wolf an der Mosel, where his sister Lena (Mélanie Fouché) lives in a vineyard with her husband, Walter Zeitz (Martin Schleimer). She welcomes Jakob eagerly, as she has been barred from returning home by Johann, who has not forgiven her for marrying a Catholic. Lena is amused that Henriette is so intent on flirting with Jakob that she ignores a warning about drinking too much fresh grape juice and subsequently gets a stomach ache while Jakob is giving her a moonlight lesson in the Brazilian tribal languages discovered by missionary Paulinho Reitz.

While Jakob is away, however, his uncle dies and Gustav comes to bring him home for the funeral. Margarethe finds a louis d'or hidden in his best jacket and she hides it away for an emergency. Shortly after Pastor Wiegand (Andreas Külzer) buries uncle in Shabbach churchyard, the village hosts the Schmierkäse festival, which takes place each November. Henriette and Florine munch on fresh Schmierkäse cake and the latter plays a horn as her siblings provide a comic song in the barn for the amusement of their neighbours. Gustav and Henriette dance to the music and Jakob watches on bashfully. However, the Morsch brothers quickly lose their good humour when the innkeeper (Werner Klockner) informs them that they can only drink win provided by the baron and they cause such a scene in protesting against the inflated prices that one is detained for subversion by the militia. Having seen Henriette and Gustav emerge sheepishly from a dark corner, the heartbroken Jakob has no desire to remain and gets himself arrested for cheeking an officer of the law.

Margarethe risks her fragile health to walk several miles across country to the prison where Jakob is being detained. She offers him the louis d'or to bribe the guards, but he says he is being protected by Franz Olm (Christoph Luser), an engraver who has been jailed for debt. Meanwhile, a comet passes over Shabbach and it is taken as an ill omen when the steam engine that Gustav has been building explodes during a test run. However, he receives more shocking news when Lotte informs him that Henriette is pregnant and she urges him to do the decent thing and ask for her hand before the bump begins to show.

It rains on their wedding day and Pastor Wiegand hurries them into the church for the ceremony. The streets are empty, therefore, when Jakob and Franz arrive after being released and grandmother curses that they should show up today of all days. Seeing his brother and sweetheart together, Jakob runs away and the misfortunes are completed when Lotte gets home from the celebrations to discover Fürchtegott hanging from the rafters in his workshop. The villagers solemnly follow the coffin and Henriette consoles her mother, who is suddenly left alone at the mill.

Meanwhile, Jakob moves in with Franz and his wife and two daughters in their comfortable home in the nearby town. He gives them the golden coin to pay off their debts and convinces them to join him in the Indies. However, he is summoned home when Margarethe falls dangerously ill and he runs the entire way to reach her bedside. Dr Zwimer (Rainer Kühn) tells Johann that his wife's lungs are congested and recommends that she improves her diet and gets plenty of fresh air. Knowing they can only feed her on potatoes, Gustav and Jakob start carrying their mother on a chair into the fields, where reminds them how lucky they are to be alive, as she has buried six other children. The brothers look sombre as she recalls each lost infant and Gustav vows to let nothing happen to his newborn daughter, Mathilde.

Midwife Sophie Gent (Julia Prochnow) keeps an eye on Margarethe and the baby as the cold winter of 1843 begins to bite. Franz receives notification that their passage to Brazil has been confirmed and Jakob is ecstatic at finally being able to leave. But Mathilde succumbs to an outbreak of diphtheria that also claims several other lives in the village and Wiegand orders the coffins to be guarded on the bridge, as the ground is too frozen for the gravediggers to work. The distraught Gustav and Henriette lock themselves in their room and Johann breaks down the door to ensure they haven't done anything foolish. But they have been making plans and they announce their intention to emigrate to Brazil in front of the congregation during the Sunday service.

Having decides against sailing with the Olms, Jakob is furious that Gustav has not only stolen his girl, but also his destiny and they fight in the mud of a thawing field. The need to get their mother into the open means that they soon settle their differences. But Margarethe has a relapse while sitting under a tree and Gustav dashes back to Shabbach for help while Jakob tries to keep her conscious. Sophie leads a deputation into the wilds to treat Margarethe and Johann (who had been delving in a nearby ruin for a fabled stash of highwayman's treasure) is so mightily relieved that she survives that he accepts Lena and Walter when they come to take their farewell of Gustav and Henriette.

As the family spends its last night together, Henriette coaxes Jakob into a quite corner under the stars. She whispers the tribal phrases he taught her all those months ago and he is so touched that he makes no attempt to resist when she seduces him. The following morning, Lotte makes a scene as her daughter climbs aboard the cart for the coast and she pleads with Jakob not to abscond instead of escorting the horses back to the stable. He reassures her that he knows his place and he looks back at his assembled clan as he slowly trots behind the caravan winding along the dusty road.

Shortly afterwards, Margarethe asks Jakob why he has never considered taking Florine for a wife. He tries to protest that he is too busy corresponding with learned men in Berlin, but he marries the comely Florine and she willingly takes over running the household so that her mother-in-law can rest. One day, while Jakob is out with his mother, he receives a visit from the renowned scientist Alexander von Humboldt (Werner Herzog), who is surveying the area with his assistants. Disappointed at not meeting a man of such rare learning, Humboldt leaves a letter that causes Jakob to swell with pride and, suitably inspired, he devises a centrifugal governor that regulates the steam engine so that it can keep running unattended.

Thirteen months have passed since Gustav and Henriette departed and Margarethe grows increasingly anxious for news. She sits under her tree and wishes she could fly to her childhood home in Hennweiler and smiles up at her son. However, she doesn't live long enough to see the postman deliver a missive from the exiles, in which Henriette outlines the hazardous nature of the voyage across the Atlantic and the delays in handing over the tracts of land promised by the emperor, Pedro II, while Gustav reports that they have a new daughter named Jakobine and are raising 40 head of cattle, as well as growing crops. He also passes on news of the Olms and the Morsch brothers and Jakob almost bursts into tears when Henriette laments that there are no natives for her to greet with the phrases he taught her. Florine smiles bravely as she sees the love her husband still bears her old friend and the regret he clearly feels that he is not sharing her home from home. But Jakob knows where his duty lies and he pushes the letters under the foliage on Margarethe's freshly dug grave, as the camera rises above the crosses in the cemetery to the sun peeking through the Hunsrück trees.

Many were concerned that Edgar Reitz's monumental achievement would culminate in the random clutch of outtakes assembled in Heimat Fragments: The Women (2006). But this underrated summation of the key themes of the Heimat series has proved not to be the final word and the 81 year-old Reitz has hinted in interviews that he has plenty of ideas along similar lines in development. Quite whether these will follow German history from the 1848 revolutions through the Bismarck era and up to the outbreak of war in 1914 is anyone's guess. But this non-prequel is as shrewd as it is audacious and, even if Reitz never gets round to following the trail to the dawning of Weimar, he has given devotees the delicious opportunity to speculate and anticipate.

This same coterie will relish the grace notes punctuating Reitz and Gert Heidenreich's screenplay, which provide a poignant sense the communal continuity between this narrative and its predecessors. The presence of Marita Breuer (who played Maria Simon in Heimat) is similarly reassuring and she stands out from an ensemble of professional actors and newcomers. Mainz medical student Jan Dieter Schneider struggles at times to convey the complex emotions that Jakob experiences, but he grows into the role alongside Antonia Bill, Maximilian Scheidt and Philine Lembeck, who all had a degree of prior stage or screen experience. The latter is particularly affecting, as the loyal support she provides to her best friend is deftly transferred to a husband who doesn't really deserve her.

As always with Reitz, the production values are first-rate. Sadly, designer Toni Gerg died shortly after shooting began. But he and Hucky Hornberger worked wonders to recreate a rustic Prussian village from scratch and Esther Amuser's costumes also appear impeccably authentic in the digital monochrome images captured by Gernot Roll (returning to the franchise after missing Heimat 3). However, the occasional flecks of colour used for the piece of agate and the golden coin feel forced and represent a rare miscalculation.

Composer Michael Riessler proves an admirable replacement for the late Nikos Mamangakis, as he alludes to the scores of the previous pictures while remaining true to the period. Some of the subtitles disappoint in this regard, however, as modern locutions are used far too frequently. But, otherwise, Reitz conveys the pace and grind of daily life with typical finesse, with his affinity for the locale being readily evident in the glorious vistas, which are the scene for some subtle, if not entirely successful moments of mystical rather than magic realism. Contrasting with the vast skies and tracts of unspoilt land, the humble interiors filmed in natural light seem both cramped and cosy. But nothing is romanticised, as quotidian tasks are performed according to the changing seasons and the unrelenting cycle of life and death.

The constant rattle of cart wheels along the rocky road out of the Hunsrück also precludes any hint of sentimentality, as Reitz reveals that this idyllic homeland was once a place to leave in order to escape from the petty restrictions imposed by the grasping junker nobility and the sheer arduousness of subsistence. Clearly intended as a plea for greater tolerance of those seeking to make a new life in Germany, this is a bold message and counters accusations that the series to date has exhibited a naive political conservatism. Reitz has stated that `the term Heimat could cover a multitude of stories' and one hopes that he is able to bring some of them to the screen. But, if this beginning does turn out to be the end of the road, this will still have been the most remarkable and compelling journey in cinema history.

Moving forward exactly a century, the Germans are cast in a very different light in Robert Glinski's Stones for the Rampart: The Battle for Warsaw, an adaptation of the landmark 1943 novel by Aleksander Kaminski novel that was filmed in 1978 under the title Operation Arsenal by Jan Lomnicki. Following Agnieszka Holland's In Darkness (2011), Kordian Piwowarski's Baczynski (2013) and Jan Komasa's Warsaw 44 (2014) in commemorating the 70th anniversary of various pivotal events in the Second World War, this has attracted much negative publicity back home for trivialising the sacrifices made by the members of the Szare Szeregi or `Grey Ranks', a covert paramilitary wing of the Polish Scouting Association that conducted such minor acts of sabotage as ripping down swastika flags, hanging Nazis in effigy and smoke-bombing cinemas showing German movies. Yet, by revealing these young men and women to have normal adolescent attitudes and appetites, Glinski (whose mother served in the Grey Ranks) is being much truer to life than those who extolled patriotic heroism in such a po-facedly propagandist manner in the Socialist Realist war pictures made in the Communist era.

Each Grey Ranks volunteer has a code name and, in Warsaw in 1943, Jan Bytnar is known as Rudy (Tomasz Zietek), while his friends Tadeusz Zawadzki and Maciej Aleksy Dawidowski are Zoska (Marcel Sabat), and Alek (Kamil Szpetycki) respectively. They serve in a unit commanded by Stanislaw Broniewski, who operates under the name Stefan Orsza (Wojciech Zielinski) and reports directly to Major Jan Kiwerski of the Home Army (Andrzej Chyra). The cadre is also responsible for a small arms cache and some of its weapons are used in a raid on a Nazi vehicle that costs the life of Pawel (Piotr Bondyra) and causes Kiwerski to reprimand Orsza for not having control of his troops.

Shortly after Pawel's death, Rudy is arrested by the Gestapo and he is subjected to torture by Rottenführer Ewald Lange (Wolfgang Boos) and Oberscharführer Herbert Schultz (Hans Heiko Raulin), who resort to barbaric methods in order to gain information on Grey Ranks agents. However, Rudy is made of stern stuff and only gives the names of dead friends, even though this prompts the sadistic Lange to order his body burned with cigarette ends and scalding water from the kettle.

Zoska is desperate to deliver his pal from his ordeal and confides his sense of helplessness to girlfriend Hala Glinska (Sandra Staniszewska). He begs Orsza for permission to lead a mission and is frustrated when he insists that he cannot act without Kiweski's express sanction. Eventually, however, news comes from the spy network operating within Gestapo headquarters (where a chocolate maker picks up secrets while selling his wares) that Rudy is to be transferred to another prison and Kiwerski gives the go ahead for Operation Arsenal. But a fatal delay complicates matters and two of the party are killed. Moreover, Rudy dies of his injuries soon after reassuring Kiwerski that he has not betrayed his comrades or his country.

Lange is enraged by the audacity of the Grey Ranks and orders the rounding up of 200 civilians, who are summarily executed to teach the resistance a lesson. Zoska is distraught and only Hala prevents him from committing suicide in shame at causing the deaths of so many innocent people. But his despair turns to fury when he discovers that his father, Josef (Krzysztof Globisz), had played a part in the holding up Rudy's rescue bid and he disowns him. He channels his rage into an attack on the Lange and Schultz. But, when he is cornered by a German soldier on his next mission, Zoska allows himself to be gunned down.

Janusz Kaminski based his novel on actual events and Glinksi has incurred the wrath of his grandson (among many others) for turning the struggle of a selfless generation into a Boy's Own Adventure. There is no question that Zietek and Sabat have been chosen as much for their good looks as for their acting ability. Indeed, with their tousled hair and muscular bravado, they seem far too modern and well fed for youths trapped in a living nightmare. But, while he overdoes the close-up detail during the interrogation scenes, Glinksi has every right to show Sabat and Staniszewska making out, as it would be preposterous to suggest that kids had any less interest in sex simply because there is a war going on. In fact, those fighting with the partisans would have been more prepared than most to seize each fleeting moment of pleasure or intimacy, as they never knew if another opportunity would ever arise.

Screenwriters Wojtek Palys and Dominik Wieczorkowski-Rettinger make sensible contributions about the difference between patriotism and heroism and the notion that sometimes the individual has to be sacrificed for the greater good. They also touch upon the fact that Grey Ranks recruits came from very different social backgrounds and more might have been made of this in the wider discussion of camaraderie. But, once again, the dialogue relies upon a distractingly anachronistic argot and this only serves to emphasise the stereotypical depiction of the Gestapo and the idealised presentation of the gung-ho scouts. Nevertheless, the performances are solid enough, as is Ewa Skoczkowska's production design, which most intrigues during the harrowing sequence in which the blood-spattered and battered Rudy crawls across the floor in front of a screen showing the Polish-born actress Pola Negri acting in Fritz Kirchhoff's melodrama about loyalty and betrayal, Tango Notturno (1937). But the standout craft contribution comes from cinematographer Pawel Edelman, who is no stranger this period after filming Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002) and Andrzej Wajda's Katyn (2007).

Setting a good example to the younger generation is also the theme of Robert Siodmak's film noir, Cry of the City (1948), which is being reissued in cinemas as part of BFI Southbank's tribute to the master of brooding shadows and moral dilemmas. Adapted by Richard Murphy and Ben Hecht from Henry Edward Helseth's novel, The Chair for Martin Rome, this has always been regarded as the weak link in the `gangster' trilogy that also included The Killers (1946) and Criss Cross (1949), which were respectively culled from works by Ernest Hemingway and Don Tracy. Seen in isolation, however, this is a gripping and delectably convoluted thriller that is evocatively photographed by Lloyd Ahern, who had debuted so promisingly with John Brahms The Brasher Doubloon (1947), but lost his way after this stylish credit and drifted into television in 1955.

As parents Tito Vuolo and Mimi Aguglia pray at his bedside in a New York hospital, Richard Conte hovers between life and death after killing a cop during a bungled robbery. Childhood pal Victor Mature waits in the corridor with NYPD partner Fred Clark to question Conte about the incident, while shady lawyer Berry Kroeger seeks to convince him to take the rap for a murder of a woman who was tortured for her jewellery instead of the innocent man who has been arrested for the crime.

Recovering from surgery, Conte refuses to have anything to do with Kroeger and promises Mature that he had no idea that the rings found in his possession were hot, as he had won them in a crap game. No sooner has Mature left, however, than Conte charms nurse Betty Garde into taking a note to sweetheart Debra Paget urging her to go into hiding before she is arrested as his accomplice. But Kroeger refuses to take no for an answer and offers to defend Conte for the cop killing if he confesses to the jewellery slaying.

Mature, meanwhile, has gone to Little Italy to take advantage of the fact he has known Vuolo and Aguglia since he was a boy and ask if they know about Conte's love life. But he is called away when trustee Walter Baldwin helps Conte escape from thuggish jailer Roland Winters with a duplicate key after being moved to a nearby prison and Mature gets a tip that he is hiding out at Paget's apartment. Instead, he and Clark find Conte's teenage brother, Tommy Cook, and Mature is worried that he will be led astray by Conte's bad example.

Across the city, however, Conte is getting into more trouble, as he descends on Kroeger and pulls a knife while raiding his safe. A struggle breaks out when he finds the stolen jewels and the lawyer is killed by his own gun. Desperate to find a hiding place, Conte returns to the family home. But, while Aguglia wants to help her child, Vuolo orders him to leave and Conte takes refuge with old flame Shelley Winters, who takes him to unlicensed doctor Konstantin Shayne after masseuse Hope Emerson turns him away. However, Conte lets her know that he suspects her of being Kroeger's accomplice and offers to swap her the contraband for a car and $5000 in cash so he can make a getaway.

Emerson agrees to conclude the deal the following day. But Mature has managed to track down Shayn, who admits to treating a wounded fugitive in order to care for his ailing wife and a phone call to headquarters tips him off about Conte and Emerson's rendezvous. Consequently, he is waiting at the left luggage lockers at the subway station when Emerson tries to double-cross Conte by pulling a loaded gun. She is arrested, but Conte manages to slip away in the mayhem. Despite being shot in the shoulder, Mature tracks Paget down to Garde's lodgings, only to discover that she has arranged to meet Conte at the local church.

Conte has also summoned Cook and orders him to steal their mother's savings and bring them to him. As he disappears, Paget arrives and informs Conte that she no longer loves him and doesn't want to go to South America with him. Mature finds them together and urges Paget to leave. Realising he is too weak to resist, Conte surrenders his weapon. But, as they reach the street, he hits Mature and tries to limp away. In excruciating pain from his wound, Mature fires and Cook arrives back in time to see his brother lying dead on the pavement. He tells Mature that he couldn't steal from Aguglia and he bursts into tears after helping Mature into a waiting car.

Demonstrating his usual flair for capturing the look and feel of his settings, Siodmak paces this cat-and-mouse tale to perfection. He is splendidly served by Mature and Conte, who belie their reputation for stiffness by delivering performances that stand in fascinating contrast to Clark Gable and William Powell as the orphaned buddies who grow up on opposite sides of the law in WS Van Dyke's Manhattan Melodrama (1934). The support playing is also strong, with Paget, Winters, Emerson and Garde being particularly impressive as the women in Conte's life.

The message that crime doesn't pay comes over loud and clear. But Siodmak also shows that upholding the law is a dangerous and unglamorous job that sometimes puts Lieutenant Mature at odds with his own kind. However, this is much more a study of a neighbourhood and its ambience than an exercise in hard-boiled pulp, with Siodmak and Ahern making docu-poetic use of the rain-soaked tarmac and neon lighting, which is evocatively complemented by the hum of distant traffic and police sirens in the Roger Hernan and Eugene Grossman sound mix that jags beneath Alfred Newman's sublime score. Thus, while Siodmak would make more gripping thrillers, he would rarely better this masterly evocation of an urban enclave and its populace.

A familiar name makes an unexpected return at the start of Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Fifteen years after it closed for business with Lance Hool's One Man's Hero (1999), Orion Pictures re-emerges as an offshoot of MGM. One suspects this won't be the same rollercoaster ride that the company enjoyed after it was founded by former United Artists chairman Arthur B. Krim and four cohorts in 1978. And, if this remake of Charles B. Pierce's cult 1976 slasher offering is anything to go by, it won't be reliving the glory days when it won the Academy Award for Best Picture for Milos Forman's Amadeus (1984), Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990), and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

The main problem with this grindhouse rehash is that it's far too pleased with itself and simply cannot resist the temptation to flex its metatextual muscles at every opportunity. Fans of the original, which starred Ben Johnson, Dawn Wells and Pierce himself (as the bungling cop nicknamed `Sparkplug'), will either be hacked off by the clumsy pastiches and in-jokes or tickled to see the director of Glee and American Horror Story (working in tandem with ace TV creator Ryan Murphy) taking a valiant stab at recreating the crimes of a real-life serial killer, who was known as The Phantom and remained at large after attacking eight people on the Texas-Arkansas border between February and May 1946.

Although Spencer Treat Clark thought that the best way to spend Halloween in Texarkana was to watch The Town That Dreaded Sundown at the local drive-in, girlfriend Addison Timlin is anything but impressed. Consequently, they drive into the woods and are having a smooch when Timlin announces that she has just seen The Phantom (whom she recognises from the sack over his head) watching them from behind a tree. But, before they can leave, somebody smashes a window and forces the couple to get out of the car at gunpoint. Ordering Timlin to turn around, he forces Clark to remove his trousers before he brutally murders him.

As Timlin tries to flee, The Phantom catches up with her and tells her to inform the townsfolk that he wants them to remember Mary. Having been interviewed by the police while recovering from her trauma in hospital, Timlin attends Clark's funeral and asks grandmother Veronica Cartwright what she remembers of the Phantom assaults of the 1940s. She proves evasive, however, as she is trying to protect Timlin from an incident in her own past that partially explains her psychological flakiness. Nevertheless, Timlin starts making enquiries around the town.

As Thanksgiving approaches, Morganna May meets soldier boyfriend Wes Chatham at the airport and they check into a motel. However, as May waits for Chatham to return with a post-coital snack, The Phantom crashes through the window brandishing his severed head and May breaks both legs in a desperate leap from the bathroom window. However, having crawled to her vehicle, she is butchered and Timlin gets a call from Clark's phone, in which a voice promises to keep massacring folks until they remember.

Timlin is receiving police protection from Joshua Leonard and she tells him about the call, as the zealous Christians among her neighbours (who hate the Pierce film and its glorification of a local tragedy) hold a meeting demanding that sheriff Ed Lauter catches the killer pronto. As a result, Texas Ranger Anthony Anderson is placed in charge of the investigation and he dismisses the evidence that Timlin has amassed with archivist and former classmate Travis Tope. He accompanies her to a memorial service for the victims and together they witness a Marine shoot and kill The Phantom as he lurks on the periphery of the ceremony. But, as the celebrations continue into the night, musicians Jaren Mitchell and Kurt Krause ignore deputy Gary Coles warning to go straight home and perish in a deserted junkyard when the killer attaches a knife to the slide of a trombone.

While Leonard informs Timlin that the vigil victim was a suicidal kid, Anderson and Cole discover that the e-mail she received from the `Texas Phantom' was actually sent from the church by pastor Edward Herrmann. However, they don't suspect him of being a serial killer and Cole goes off duty on Christmas Eve to find himself invited home by a stranger. But, as she is pleasuring him, Cole is shot through the eye and the woman is stalked by The Phantom as she tries to escape across a field.

Meanwhile, Timlin and Tope have discovered that the son of film-maker Charles B. Pierce (played by Denis O'Hare) lives on a boat in Texarkana and he speculates that the killer is the grandson of the sixth victim of the original madman and Timlin is shocked when he reveals that his wife's name was Mary. However, she is about to leave town to start college in California and she sleeps with Tope on her last night. She sets off next morning, however, without knowing that he has been slain while walking home alone. But she finds his corpse on the train tracks after The Phantom ambushes her at the petrol station and shoots Cartwright as she waits in the passenger seat.

Timlin tries to run, but she is wounded by an arrow and collapses. Looking up, she sees two Phantoms approaching her and they turn out to be Leonard and Clark, who had faked his death in the woods. However, Leonard (who is Mary's grandson) no longer has any use for Clark and dispatches him before turning on Timlin. But she has the presence of mind to grab his gun and shoot him, although any hopes she has of starting afresh at university seem to be in jeopardy when the shadow of The Phantom appears on the wall behind her.

Drowning in postmodern smugness, but utterly devoid of wit or suspense, this has misfire written all the way through it. Michael Goi's camera picks its way through the parked cars creepily enough in the opening scene, but Gomez-Rejon and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa never come remotely close to reproducing the scares that Pierce achieved, even though they re-stage many of the murders in a slavish homage that seems wilfully oblivious to post-Scream irony. The trombone episode, for example, is almost risible in comparison with the gruesome attack on Cindy Butler in the 1976 version, while the use of split screens, jolting visuals and blaring music leaves one wondering what Pierce must have been thinking as he cameoed as a customer in the diner. The only possible excuse Gomez-Rejon has is that he was apparently coerced into cutting 15 minutes from the picture and that the logic of the plot and much of its knowingly macabre humour were lost in the process.

The mood changes markedly for The Invisible Life, which marks the return to directing for Vítor Gonçalves for the first time since he made ripples on the festival circuit with A Girl in Summer (1986) and puzzled Portuguese television audiences with the now seemingly lost drama, Midnight (1988). The late Manoel De Oliveira claimed that the former was suffused with sadness and a similar sense of brooding melancholy seeps into every frame of an overdue sophomore outing that is so full of obtuse references to national history that only Lusocentric audiences are going to detect them all. Nevertheless, with its slow-burning non-narrative and striking 8mm interludes, this is a work to challenge both adherents of slow cinema and those who prefer to engage with a film rather than be passively entertained by it.

A few background details might help make the action more comprehensible. Civil servant Filipe Duarte works in the Terreiro do Paço building on Lisbon's Praça do Comércio. For centuries, this square was home to the Ribeira Palace, but this was destroyed during the Great Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and the reconstructed Palace Square became known as the Square of Commerce. At its centre stands an equestrian statue of King José I and it was here that King Carlos I was assassinated as he travelled with his family in an open coach in 1908. This was also the place where Fascist dictator Antonio Salazar gave speeches to throngs grateful to him for keeping Portugal out of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. However, within four years of his death, the Carnation Revolution of 1974 (which also utilised the square as its focal point) brought democracy back to a nation that was still divesting itself of the colonies that were a painful reminder of its former imperial glory.

In the months that followed the overthrow of authoritarianism, General Vasco Gonçalves became prime minister and sought to introduce a socialist agenda. The son of a Benfica midfielder (after whom he named his son), Gonçalves remained in power for little over a year and his removal summed up the indecision and drift that was reflected in the storyline of A Girl in Summer. In many ways, therefore, The Invisible Life is the second part of a diptych on missed opportunities and the extent to which Portugal has struggled to find a new direction and a place in a much-changed Europe. So, whenever Duarte wanders the corridors to see empty offices or looks out of his window on to the square below, he is contemplating not only his own fate, but also that of his homeland.

Completing the contextual aspect is the fact that the relationship between Duarte and his superior João Perry draws on Gonçalves's own sodality with António Reis (1927-91), the Oporto-born poet who assisted De Oliveira on his radical masterpiece, Rite of Spring (1962), and helped shape the brand of ethnographic lyricism that the pair would teach at the Lisbon Theatre and Film School and that Reis would develop in tandem with his psychiatrist wife, Margarida Cordeiro, in such films as Jaime (1974), Trás-os-Montes (1976), Ana (1985) and The Sand Rose (1989). But, just as Reis was Gonçalves's mentor, so he guided Pedro Costa through his debut feature, O Sangue (1989), and it's worth noting that cinematographer Leonardo Simões also shot Costa's epic docudrama, Colossal Youth (2006).

As the action commences, Duarte confesses that there was a night when he couldn't face going home. But he doesn't reveal the reason why or when this crisis occurred. Consequently, Gonçalves immediately places puts the audience at a disadvantage and keeps them guessing as he pieces together fragments of memories, dreams and imaginings that prove every bit as enigmatic as the encounters in Alain Resnais's existentialist masterpiece, Last Year At Marienbad (1961).

One day, Perry calls Duarte into his office and informs him that he is going into hospital for treatment on a recurrence of his cancer. The news dismays Duarte, as, while he is not exactly friendly with Perry, he has always admired him and the way in which he treats his staff. Moreover, he is worried how Perry's absence will impact upon the department, as cutbacks have led to so many redundancies that the entire floor above them has fallen silent.

Despite entering middle-aged, Duarte seems to have few friends and spends his evenings alone in a small part of his cavernous apartment. He thinks back to his time with girlfriend Maria João Pinho, whom he hasn't seen for a couple of years. She had given up her career as an architect and become an air hostess and she evades his suggestion that they get back together, as she insists they are bad for one another.

During a visit to the hospital, Duarte discovers that Perry has made him a legatee. Thus, when he dies, he goes to his apartment to go through his belongings prior to settling his affairs. He finds a collection of 8mm films and is surprised to discover that they contain silent images of caves and skies, sailing boats on vast expanses of sea and mists and clouds hovering over mountain tops. Although he is puzzled by the content, Duarte finds himself deeply moved by the films and, as he moves the rocks and ornaments around in the empty fish tank that dominates his apartment, he wonders why Perry was so insistent that he keeps them for himself.

As Duarte feared, Perry's death makes life more difficult at the office and the combination of grief and anxiety prompts him to assault the persistently irksome Pedro Lamares for showing insufficient respect for their lamented colleague. Duarte is fired and he returns home to watch the reels bequeathed to him. He slowly realises that they are Perry's way of encouraging him to broaden his horizons and he wonders if he should contact Pinho to ask if she would share the adventure with him. But he concludes that he is better off as a loner, like Perry, and the film ends with him resigned to his fate, if not exactly content with his lot.

There's no question that this gnomic style of film-making is an acquired taste. But those willing to keep their eyes open and read between the lines will be rewarded and not solely by the visual pleasures provided by Simões and British artist Julie Brook, who designed and filmed the Super 8 segments. The sight of Duarte staring into space, as he washes the dishes or waits for a meal to cook in the microwave may not seem captivating. But Gonçalves uses these scenes of seeming inactivity in much the same way that Yasujiro Ozu employed `pillow shots', to allow the audience to reflect upon the action they have just watched and speculate upon how it will affect the characters and the wider story.

Duarte may not always be the most animated of actors, but there is a vulnerability (as well as saudade) about his exchanges with Perry and Pinho that make his attempt to throttle Lamares seem all the more shocking. Gonçalves also imparts a degree of dramatic tension by pacing the action so deliberately and leaving viewers to guess whether it's taking place in the past or present. But what leaves the longest impression is the poignant recognition that so many people fail to live life to the full and only realise when it is too late that they have run out of time to rectify the situation. The message may apply as much to Portugal as Duarte, but it also appears to be a very personal acknowledgement from a grateful protégé.

The scene shifts to Bogotà for Franco Lolli's Gente de Bien, which confirms that South American cinema is currently on a bit of a roll when it comes to films about children. Coming after Venezuelan Mariana Rondón's Pelo Malo and the Uruguayan duo of Alfredo Soderguit's Anina, Ana Guevara Pose and Leticia Jorge Romero's beautifully judged So Much Water (all 2013), this Franco-Colombian co-production is not strictly a kidpic. Indeed, it has more in common with Vittorio De Sica's neo-realist gem Bicycle Thieves (1948), in which the adult world is viewed through the eyes of a perceptive, if confused innocent. But Lolli and co-scenarists Catherine Paillé and Virginie Legeay are as much interested in the nature of charity and gratitude as they are in appreciating the emotional strain that being rootless and poor has on an impressionable young mind.

When single mum Adríana Santos gets the chance of some seasonal work in another part of Colombia, she opts not to take 10 year-old son Bryan Santamarià with her. As he has been getting in with the wrong sort, she decides that he needs a little discipline and foists him on carpenter father Carlos Fernando Perez, who lives in a small room in a crowded boarding house with cramped cooking facilities. Even though he has been allowed to bring his beloved dog, Lupe, Santamarià soon realises that this is not a home from home and complains bitterly about the poor conditions. Yet, despite not having seen his father in several years, he eventually bonds with Perez when they breakdance together to the song `Your Body Calls Me'.

University lecturer Alejandra Borrero is one of Perez's regular clients and she feels sorry for him, as she knows he is a decent man who works hard and tries to do the right thing. She is also taken by Santamarià, even though he has a tendency to speak his mind and use words that a child of his age should not be uttering. Borrero urges her son Santiago Martínez to play with Santamarià and he is soon having fun shooting hoops and mastering the Nintendo Wii. However, he has no sense of social decorum and, thus, refuses to let other people have a turn and clings on to toys when it's time to go home. Borrero makes allowances for his behaviour and invites Santamarià on trips to the pictures and the ice-cream parlour. Moreover, she makes Martínez root out some old clothes to give to his new friend and finds Perez some extra chores to do, as Christmas is coming and she knows that work is scarce.

On hearing that Perez may well be evicted over the holiday, Borrero suggests that he and Santamarià spend the festive season with her family at their villa in the country. They readily accept and travel in a state of great anticipation. But, instead of being house guests, Perez and Santamarià discover that they have been billeted in a shack near the swimming pool and the former's gratitude quickly turns to resentment as Borrero keeps him busy and points out that they money he is earning can go towards new accommodation in the capital.

While Perez begins to feel like an indentured lackey, Santamarià enjoys himself with Martínez and his cousins, Juan David Lovera and Yúbeli Cardona. He plays in the pool and enjoys the fuss that Borrero makes of him (especially as she makes excuses for his bed-wetting). But Martínez deeply resents having to entertain a servants kid and the cousins start to ostracise Santamarià, who cannot understand what he has done wrong and fights his corner, in spite of the taciturn Perez's warnings to watch his step.

However, even Perez can only take so much and, even though he knows Borrero means well, he feels so embarrassed by her small acts of charity that he is relieved to hear that Lupe is having problems at the dog pound and uses this as an excuse to return to Bogotà. No sooner has he gone, however, than Santamarià starts to miss him and, having no release valve, he starts to snap back at the cousins and mouth off at his hostess. Borrero tries to jolly him along. But, when she offers him a sandwich with cooing persistence, he slaps it out of her hand and he is promptly dispatched back to the city. Perez meets him and they take Lupe to the vet, where she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Much as he loves his pet, Santamarià agrees with his father that it would be much kinder to put her out of her misery.

Back in the 1970s, a sub-genre of grinding realist pictures was branded `pornomiseria' because its makers seemed to linger on the suffering of the working poor and the disenfranchised. Among the Colombian films to earn the tag was Ciro Durán's documentary study of street children, Gamín (1978), which was released in the same year as Carlos Mayolo's Agarrando Pueblo, which satirised the `misery porn' style practiced by the Grupo de Cali, whose methods became so formulaic that the term `Caliwood' was applied to any worthy attempt at social realism.

Although born in Colombia, Lolli was trained in France and he cleaves much more closely to Italian neo-realism and classical offshoots like Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados (1950) than the Caliwood model. Consequently, this is a consistently shrewd insight into the class chasm and the subtle difference between the meaning of the phrase `gente de bien', which can signify both `decent people' and `rich folks'. Production designer Marcela Gómez Montoya admirably reinforces the ironic contradiction with the contrast between the boarding house and the villa, although cinematographer Óscar Durán also tweaks his use of light and colour to drive the point home. The script similarly avoids momentous pronouncements and it is only when Santamarià openly rebels against Borrero that the mask of bourgeois liberalism slips (although, in all honesty, he thoroughly deserves to be sent packing for his intemperate petulance).

As the only professional actor in the cast, Borrero does well to prevent her experience from colouring her performance and, thus, overshadowing her co-stars. But she still captures the aura of unintentional superiority that Good Samaritans so often give off as they minister to their charges without stopping to think how it might feel to be on the receiving end of handouts and cast-offs.

Perez conveys a nice sense of wounded pride and paternal shame at not being able to give his boy a better life. But the revelation is Santamarià, who flits between embarrassment at his lowly status and both excited pleasure at discovering an undreamed of world and brattish entitlement, as he sees the trappings of leisure and luxury being taken away from him before he has had his fill. He may never act again, but just watch Santamarià's face during the reverie played out to a flamenco rendition of `My Way', as he waves to the onlookers while riding through the streets on a horse, and it is easy to see how he fits into the long line of movie boys that stretches from Jackie Coogan and Enzo Staiola through to Salvatore Cascio and Ellar Coltrane.

Timing is everything when it comes to capturing the public imagination and one cannot help but feel that the decision to release Louise Osmond's documentary, Dark Horse: The Incredible True Story of Dream Alliance, the Friday after the Grand National had been run at Aintree smacks somewhat of stable doors and bolting quadrupeds. This is a shame, as this stirring tale brings back memories of Aldaniti, the brave horse ridden to victory in the 1981 National by the equally courageous Bob Champion, whose dual exploits were celebrated in John Irvin's biopic, Champions (1983). Indeed, it would not have been too fanciful to have recounted Dream Alliance's remarkable achievement in a feel-good saga along the lines of Brassed Off (1996) or The Full Monty (1997). But Jan Vokes is such a natural raconteur that it would have been a travesty if she had not been able to tell her own story in her own words.

Prior to Dream Alliance making the headlines, the town of Blackwood near Caerphilly in South Wales was best known for the fact that amateur radio enthusiast Artie Moore picked up distress signals from the Titanic in April 1912. Almost a century later, barmaid Jan Vokes had her radar switched on in early 2000, as local tax adviser Howard Davies was reminiscing about the time he owned a share in a racehorse while drinking in Blackwood Working Men's Club. Although she had been breeding prize-winning pigeons and whippets in the village of Cefn Fforest for several years, Vokes had never considered owning a horse. But the idea appealed and husband Brian (who is known to all and sundry as Daisy) was prepared to back her all the way, as were Davies and his wife Angela and neighbours Maureen Jones and Tony Kerby.

The problem was, breeding and rearing a foal cost money, and times had been hard in the area since guaranteed employment had become a thing of the past following the closure of the four nearby pits. When not behind the bar, Jan also worked as a cleaner as Asda and she knew she would never be able to afford to fulfil her dream on her own. In true Ealing spirit, however, she decided to place an advertisement inviting people to join her in a syndicate that would fund the siring and raising of the colt for the princely sum of £10 a week. She hoped that 30 people would join her cartel, but was sufficiently buoyed by the fact that 25 signed up to acquire a mare named Rewbell for £300 and mate her for a knockdown price with the thoroughbred stallion, Bien Bien.

Born on 23 March 2001, Dream Alliance (who was named after the partnership supporting him), lived on a slagheap allotment on the edge of the village before he was moved to a hay farm in Hereford to learn some equine manners. When he was three, trainer Philip Hobbs agreed to put Dream through his paces at the Sandhill Racing Stables near Minehead in Somerset. Neither of the chestnut's parents had been a champion and it soon became clear to Hobbes and assistant Johnson White that he had more character than class. Yet his willpower convinced Jan (a mother of two with a grandson) to keep working all hours in order to pay for his £315 weekly upkeep.

Dream Alliance came in a creditable fourth on his debut at Newbury in November 2004 and he followed it up with a second at Cheltenham and a third back at Newbury before winning fourth time out over the hurdles at Chepstow in January 2006. However, a second victory at Haydock a month later seemed to rob the plucky horse of his will to compete and the villagers started calling him `Sick Note' as his owners and trainers puzzled over what could be ailing him. But Dream wasn't down for long and he followed a Perth Gold Cup win in April 2007 with a second place in the prestigious Hennessy in November and it was decided to enter him in a handicap hurdle before the Grand National the next spring.

However, the Vokeses didn't travel to Liverpool, as Rewbell was about to give birth to a foal. Sadly, she died the night before the race and Jan was already feeling tearful when Dream Alliance was suddenly pulled up by jockey Richard Johnson. As a screen was placed around him on the course, Jan was convinced her cherished horse was about to put him down. Yet, even though Dream had sliced a tendon when his rear hoof cut through the back of his front leg, Howard Davies asked the vets to spare him as he was more of a pet than an asset. Indeed, so important had Dream become to the community that it was agreed that £20,000 should be drawn from his winnings to pay for stem-cell surgery at the Royal Veterinary College in Liverpool.

Few expected him to race again, but his recovery kept Jan going as she mourned the loss of her father and nursed her mother through a serious illness. Indeed, her visits to the stables reminded her that she was a racehorse owner and not just a cleaner with multiple jobs whose life was falling apart around her. After 15 months of rehabilitation, Dream started to gallop again and Brian swears that he winked at him as if to prove he was back on form. Hobbs was amazed and suggested that he made an audacious comeback in the Welsh Grand National at Chepstow in December 2009.

Despite being a rank outsider, Dream Alliance came home first at 60-1 and, suddenly, every journalist in the country wanted to speak to Jan and Brian and photograph them with their Blackwood Beauty. Moreover, nobody seemed to care when he trotted to a halt seven fences from the end of the Aintree National in April 2010, as he had already secured his place in history. He ran unplaced in a few more races and, when it was discovered that he had a lung condition, he was retired in 2012. He had won £137,000 in prize money and not only brought joy to all 23 of his co-owners, but he had also restored some pride in a beleaguered part of South Wales.

Osmond might have avoided the soft-focus recreations that help move the story along, but, otherwise she and editor Joby Gee make solid use of racing footage and archive photographs. However, the key to the picture are the talking-heads, with pensioner Maureen and likely lad Tony speaking for the syndicate and Howard and Brian providing amusing back-up to the warm, witty and charmingly down-to-earth Jan, whose passion for Dream Alliance is matched by her touching acceptance of the fact that she will always have to struggle to make ends meet and will always be something of an outsider in racing circles. But she lived her dream and she isn't quite done yet.

Finally, this week, the excellent Exhibition on Screen series continues with Vincent Van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing, which has been made to mark the re-hanging of the paintings held by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam in November 2014. Directed by David Bickerstaff, this is a splendid introduction to one of the most iconic of all artists, whose troubled life and beloved works have already been depicted in biopics as different as Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956), Robert Altman's Vincent & Theo (1990) and Maurice Pialat's Van Gogh (1991), as well as in Paul Cox's fine documentary, Vincent (1987). Following the latter's lead, the screenplay by Bickerstaff and producer Phil Grabsky returns regularly to Van Gogh's letters to his younger brother, Theo, which not only offer unique insights into the state of his fragile psyche, but also into his ideas on art and the extent to which his work reflected the world around him. By lingering in the landscape that Van Gogh would have known and by juxtaposing these vistas with the paintings and drawings on display in the museum, Bickerstaff succeeds laudably in taking the audience both into the mind of the artist and into the heart of the exhibition.

Given the extensive nature of the redesign, it's perhaps surprising that more time has not been devoted to the reasons for the changes and the effect they will have on viewing Van Gogh's work on its own terms and in relation to the canvases that inspired him. Museum director Axel Rüger explains that there were shortcomings with the previous layout and curator Nienke Bakker and senior educator Ann Bloklund agree that the previous display didn't always encourage visitors to explore beyond the famous pictures they had primarily come to see. As curator Maite Van Dijk points out over a shot of `Self-Portrait With Straw Hat' (1887), the man and the myth are indivisible where Van Gogh is concerned. But the museum now reveals how the art grew out of his relationships with other people and the places in which he lived, as well as the psychological anguish that eventually would drive him to cut his ear and take his own life.

However, it's surely worth stating somewhere within the film that the key pictures in the Van Gogh Museum had previously been confined to the first floor of a four-storey building and that this arrangement had invariably led to crowding that precluded the opportunity to study and appreciate at leisure. By spreading the masterworks around the venue and presenting them in their chronological context, the new design allows for informed and unhurried contemplation and, thus, a greater understanding of the human being and his artistic achievement.

When Vincent died, his brother Theo was left with over 450 unsold paintings and many hundreds of drawings. His great grandson, Vincent Willem Van Gogh, recalls how many of these had hung in the family home after his grandfather had decided in the 1930s to loan around half of their number to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. However, the full collection of 200 paintings, some 500 drawings and the 700 letters that the siblings had exchanged throughout their adult lives was moved to the purpose-built Van Gogh Museum in 1973. As Marije Vellekoop (the Head of the Arts Department) avers, it greatly benefits visitors and scholars to have so many items in one location and she agrees with Rüger that the letters provide invaluable information about Van Gogh's development as a person and as an artist.

Bickerstaff contrasts various self-portraits with intense close-ups of Jamie de Courcey, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Van Gogh and whose likeness is shrewdly used during Jochum ten Haaf's voiceover reading of letter extracts to bring a sense of immediacy to the prose. But, as Rüger explains why it was decided to hang 12 self-portraits in a single room at the start of the exhibition, artist Lachlan Goudie supports Van Gogh's contention that it is difficult for artists to paint themselves, even though they make uncomplaining models and afford the opportunity to experiment without offending the sitter. Curator Fleur Roos Rosa da Carvalho claims that Van Gogh used such images to practice, as much as reveal psychological secrets. But researchers Louis Van Tilborgh and Teio Meedendorp insist that the self-portraits convey something of the artist's obsessive and changeable nature, while also revealing the drive to improve his technique and produce truthful and worthwhile work.

At this point, narrator Glen McReady informs us that Van Gogh was born in the rural village of Zundert near the Belgian border in 1853. The oldest of six children born to a Protestant preacher and his wife, Vincent was educated in a boarding school, where he learned several languages and became a voracious reader. Although he enjoyed long walks in the countryside, Van Gogh was sent to the city to work for his Uncle Vincent's art dealership, Goupil & Cie, and he soon became familiar with the workings of the art world and the content of some of Europe's finest galleries and museums. He developed strong opinions and enjoyed sharing them with his brother Theo, when he also joined the firm. But, as Van Tilborgh recalls, Vincent was not suited to the commercial side of the business and became increasingly interested during a sojourn in London in the condition of the lower classes.

While living in Brixton, Van Gogh began having misgivings about his chosen career and left Goupil & Cie soon after being transferred to the Paris office in 1875. He took up a teaching post at a boys' school in Ramsgate and sent Theo drawings of the view from the window. However, he soon relocated to Isleworth, where he worked as a supply teacher while reading dense religious tomes, as well as the works of Shakespeare, Dickens and Hugo. He started trying to write sermons and strove to evangelise the poor, but his indifferent health forced him back to the Netherlands, where he decided to attempt the Theology entrance exam in Amsterdam.

On discovering he was not cut out for a life of study, Van Gogh went to Brussels to train as a preacher. But a visit to the Marcasse mine in the industrial Borinage region refocussed his mind on social problems and he wrote to Theo in some indignation about the conditions endured by the workers and their families. He began drawing what he saw and Bickerstaff cross-cuts intelligently between images of a contemporary edifice and `Coke Factory in the Borinage' (1879), which Bakker reveals is one of the museum's earliest possessions. She points out how the technique is a little naive, but deduces that Van Gogh probably sketched the scene in pencil before adding watercolour touches at his home in the village of Petit Wasmes.

We see the interior of this house and the one at Cuemes, to which Van Gogh moved after he lost his position as a preacher for producing long and overly rhetorical sermons. Meedendorp concedes that little is known about Van Gogh in this period, as he stopped writing to Theo. But his brother made a decisive intervention in 1880, when he suggested that Vincent should take up painting full time and he responded eagerly in letters, in which he revealed that he had been busy making copies of Jean-François Millet's `The Sower' (1850) and `The Four Hours of the Day' (1860). Van Tilborgh admits over images of `The "Au Charbonnage" Café' (1878), `Woman on Her Deathbed' (1880-81) and `Winter Landscape With Hut and Figure' (1881) that Van Gogh wasn't a natural talent and had to work long hours in order to improve. He puts this down to his Protestant work ethic, which also prompted him to eschew a formal artistic education, as he felt it was his duty to develop any talent he might have through his own efforts and eventually produce work that defined him as a man.

Intent on making something of himself, Van Gogh arrived in The Hague in 1881 to study with his cousin by marriage, Anton Mauve, a member of the Hague School whose works included `Donkey Stand on the Beach at Scheveningen' (1876). However, as Van Dijk divulges, Van Gogh disliked being taught and abandoned the Academy almost as soon as he had enrolled to bury himself in textbooks and the works of historical and contemporary artists. Indeed, for much of this five-year `Dutch period', Van Gogh revealed himself to be more of traditionalist than an avant-gardist, as he devoted his time to drawing and Da Carvalho explains that he concentrated on figures because he hoped to become a newspaper illustrator.

As the viewer is shown `Worn Out', `Old Man in a Tailcoat', `Country Road', `Pollard Willow', `Digger' (all 1882), `Girl With a Shawl' and `Head of a Fisherman With a Fringe of Beard and a Sou'wester' (both 1883), Da Carvalho concedes that while several works from this period have an alluring expressiveness, many are technically crude. Indeed, Meedendorp points out that Van Gogh had considerable difficulty mastering perspective and an extract from a letter to Theo describes how he invented a frame to help him define outlines and proportions.

Yet, while works like `Cradle With Child by the Stove', `Sorrow' (both 1882) and two canvases labelled `Head of a Woman' (1882-83 & 1883-84) reveal Van Gogh's struggle to master his craft, they also offer insights into one of the few periods of personal contentment he ever enjoyed. While in The Hague, he had befriended pregnant prostitute Clasina Maria `Sien' Hoornik and he cared for her five year-old daughter and new-born son with the money that Theo sent him, until their disapproving father discovered the liaison and ordered the couple to part. The 30 year-old Van Gogh moved north to Drenthe, where he lived a hand-to-mouth existence while producing works like `Landscape in Drenthe' (1883). Eventually, however, he moved in with his parents in the village of Nuenen, where he ignored gossip that he was an eccentric to complete such as `Head of a Young Man With a Pipe' (1884-85).

According to Meedendorp, Van Gogh began working with paint and big brushes around this time and Van Dijk confirms that items like `Head of a Man' (1884-85) and `Head of a Woman' (1885) revealed the influence of Barbizon School members like Charles-François Daubigny, whose `October' (1850-78) and `Sunset at Villerville' (1874) hang alongside Millet's `Girl Carrying Water' (1855-65) at the Van Gogh Museum. Equally significant was Jules Dupré's `Autumn' (1865), which inspired works like `Two Women on the Heath' (1883), which found echo in such depictions of peasant life as `Cottages' (1883), `Woman Lifting Potatoes' and `Still Life With Earthenware and Bottles' (both 1885), which Van Gogh hoped would teach city folk something about life in the country.

He enthuses in letters to Theo about `bacon, smoke, potato steam'' and `guano and manure' and Van Dijk examines how a picture like `Birds Nests' and two entitled `Head of a Woman' (all 1885) were crucial to the evolution of the rustic style that reached its apogee in `The Potato Eaters' (1885). Bearing the hallmark of Rembrandt in its use of chiaroscuro, this was Van Gogh's most important painting to date and, over shots of `Head of a Man' (1884-85), `Four People Sharing a Meal', `Study for The Potato Eaters', Head of a Woman' and `The Cottage' (all 1885), Van Dijk discusses the skill of fitting so many figures in such a confined space while ensuring that the fine details are as accurate as the perspective. She also extols the lack of sentimentality in the presentation of hard-working people and compares them to such works hanging nearby as Josef Israels's `Peasant Family at the Table' (1882) and Anthon von Rappard's `Tile Painters' (1883). However, she also draws a comparison between the ravages of toil that Van Gogh captures and his own struggle finally to reap what he had sewn.

Van Gogh was so infuriated when neither Theo nor Van Rappard rated `The Potato Eaters'' that he went to Antwerp, where Meedendorp discloses that he discovered the work of Peter Paul Rubens and started to view paintings for their technique rather than their theme. But, while he produced pieces like `The Grote Markt' (1885) and `Head of a Skeleton With a Burning Cigarette' (1886), Van Gogh failed to fit in at the Academy and decided to join Theo in Paris in the hope of furthering his career and finding new sources of inspiration. He enrolled in classes at the Montmartre studio of Fernand Corman, where he found the company of Émile Bernard, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and John Russell more convivial than the tuition. Van Dijk considers these friends part of a new generation that was keen to go further than Impressionists like Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro had done in the 1870s, and Van Gogh's fervour is evident in a letter that is read over a montage comprising `Vase With Gladioli and Chinese Asters', Nude Girl Seated' (all 1886), `Studies of a Seated Girl, L'Ecorché and Venus', `Self-Portrait With Straw Hat and Pipe' and `Kingfisher By the Waterside' (all 1887).

However, he also lets slip that he often misses meals in order to paint and laments that his constitution is not stronger. Perhaps concerned about his brother's well-being, Theo suggested they shared an apartment at 54 Rue Lepic, where Vincent worked relatively happily on such pictures as `View From Theo's Apartment', `Montmartre: Windmills and Allotments' and `Self-Portrait' (all 1887). As Bakker recalls, he also made a substantial leap forward with `Garden With Courting Couples, Square Saint-Pierre' (1887), in which he used complementary colours and a free pointillist style. He was invited to exhibit the painting in 1888 and this gave him the confidence to see such rival works as Georges Seurat's `The Seine at Corbevoie' (1883-84) and Paul Signac's `Railway Junction Near Bois-Colombes' (1884-85) and retain faith in his own style in items like `A Man and a Woman Seen From the Back' (1886) and `Couple Out for a Stroll' (1887).

Van Dijk notes the speed with which Van Gogh's use of colour and brush strokes changed during his 18 months in Paris. Clearly, the milieu had an enormous influence on his mindset and his painting, with subjects like `Montmartre: Behind the Moulin de la Galette' and `In the Café: Agostina Segatori in Le Tambourin' (both 1887) being boldly modern. The latter featured Van Gogh's last paramour, although Van Tilborgh doubts whether he had the capacity for love and it is perhaps more significant that the café owner allowed Van Gogh to hang some of his newly acquired Japanese prints on the walls. Toulouse-Lautrec similarly captured the independent streak of the fin de siècle female in `Young Woman at a Table, "Poudre de riz"' (1887). But Meedendorp points out the differences in their technique, as Van Gogh applied paint much more heavily in items like `Glass With Roses' (1886) before he started diluting his paints with oil to emulate Lautrec's smaller brush strokes.

Another major influence were Japanese artists like Hiroshige Utagawa and Keisai Eisen, whose works Van Gogh respectively copied in `Flowering Plum Orchard' and `Courtesan' (both 1887). However, Van Dijk and Bakker explain that the mad whirl of Paris eventually took its toll and Van Gogh moved to Arles in Provence for its warmer climate and radiant light. Rising early, he would venture into the countryside to produce exquisite works like `Wheatfield', `The White Orchid' and `Fishing Boats on the Beach at Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer' (all 1888). Goudie explains how the quality of light dictates the tone of a painting and Grabsky ably demonstrates the difference between the shimmering sunlight and the cooler shades that Van Gogh captured in `The Pink Orchard', `The White Orchard' and `Almond Tree in Blossom' (all 1888), which revealed the influence of Hiroshige and Eisen and showed Van Gogh seeking to attract potential buyers by plumping for cheerful subjects.

In a letter to Bernard, Van Gogh gushes that the light and colour around Arles rival anything in Japan and items like `The Sower' and `The Zouave' (both 1888) convince Goudie that Van Gogh was a painter who was energised by the moment and was open to any chance occurrence or experience that he could incorporate into his art. Yet Bakker suggests that Van Gogh had ambitions around this period to become a portraitist and `The Old Woman of Arles', `Portrait of Camille Roulin' and `Portrait of Marcelle Roulin' (all 1888) reveal his affinity with the common folk. Such was his comparative contentment that he rented the four-roomed wing of the townhouse he captured in `The Yellow House (`The Street')' (1888).

He wrote to Theo about the space at his disposal and hopes that some of his Parisian friends will come to stay with him. The only one who did, however, was Paul Gauguin, who arrived after lengthy negotiations and stayed for several weeks. According to Van Dijk, Van Gogh painted such masterpieces as `Sunflowers' and `Bedroom in Arles' (both 1888) to cheer up the walls of the Yellow House and he worked tirelessly on images that he thought Gauguin might enjoy. His visitor responded by proving a genial working and drinking companion and he painted `Vincent Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers' (1888) on a kind of burlap canvas with which they agreed to experiment while painting identical subjects from differing angles. However, the pair were fiercly passionate about art and their arguments often grew heated. Following one row, Van Gogh cut off part of his ear and Gauguin left, leaving his host to check into the local hospital. Yet, as Da Carvalho recalls, he continued producing masterly ink drawings like `Garden of the Asylum' (1889), whose complexity is astonishing considering the state Van Gogh must have been in after his ordeal.

Senior Conservator Ella Hendriks also marvels at the variety of styles Van Gogh employed. She is restoring `Field With Irises Near Arles' (1888) by removing the varnish that a predecessor had applied in 1927 and she explains how she is using a reed pen drawing to gauge Van Gogh''s original intentions. But he had no such guides to rely on when he returned to the Yellow House and realised that his dreams of an artistic colony had been shattered. Rather than face the disappointment alone, therefore, he checked into the asylum at Saint-Rémy and wrote to Theo to justify his decision. Van Dijk reveals that he spent over a year in care, although no one really knows the precise nature of his ailment, despite one doctor noting that he suspected a form of epilepsy.

As the camera alights on `Self-Portrait As a Painter' (1887), Goude asserts that painting is a physically and emotionally demanding occupation and wonders whether Van Gogh was simply worn out by the need to create. Yet Bakker draws attention to the fact that this was a prolific period that yielded such works as `Wheatfield With a Reaper' (1889), `Irises', `Almond Blossom' and `Cypresses and Two Women' (all 1890). Vincent also asked Theo to send him prints to copy. But, while works like `Pietà (After Delacroix)' and `The Sheepshearer (After Millet)' (both 1889) are as fascinating as they are delightful, they also reveal how Van Gogh believed he could cure himself by remaining busy and Bakker reveals that he even had his own small studio at Saint-Rémy.

Eventually, Van Gogh felt strong enough to return to the world and wrote to Theo about how much he was looking forward to meeting his wife, Johanna Bonger, and their infant son, Vincent Willem. Theo felt that Paris would impose too much of a strain and took the advice of Pissarro before finding Vincent lodgings in Auvers-sur-Oise, where he could be monitored by Dr Paul Gachet, a physician who had treated a number of artists and was himself a keen collector. Van Gogh confided in a letter to Theo and Jo that he thought Gachet was as disturbed as himself, but he painted his portrait in 1890, along with works like `Farmhouse', which showed that Van Gogh had lost none of his genius for capturing the look and ambience of a place.

Dominique-Charles Janssens, the supervisor at the Auberge Ravoux, describes how Van Gogh took the cheapest room in the village when he arrived on 30 May 1890. He would reside in that second-floor garret beneath the roof for 70 days, during which time he completed 80 pictures. In letters to Theo, he vowed to make his living mounting small exhibitions in the local cafés. But Meedendorp recalls that other missives were full of regret for his failures as a painter and as a man and Van Tilborgh suggests that one of the reasons why he worked so hard during his last six weeks was to keep such defeatist thoughts at bay.

In his last letter to Theo, Van Gogh cursed the `pointlessness of it all' and, five days later, on 27 July, he returned to the Auberge Ravoux from a walk in the surrounding countryside to confess that he had shot himself in the chest. Gachet dressed the wound and Theo arrived the next day, as Van Gogh smoked a pipe and tried to make conversation. But he passed away in his brother's arms on 29 July 1890, with his final words being: `I want to die like this.'

Theo arranged the funeral for 2.30pm the following day. But the local Catholic priest refused to preside over the burial, as Van Gogh was a Protestant suicide. So, Theo placed the coffin on a table at the inn and surrounded it with paintings. He gave many of them away to friends and colleagues and Janssens explains that this is why there are so few from this period in the Van Gogh Museum, as they have since been acquired by private collectors.

Van Tilborgh introduces the last two paintings that Van Gogh produced - `Wheatfield With Crows' and `Tree Roots' (both 1890) - and suggests that the gnarled dilapidation depicted in the latter was a form of suicide note. The narrator takes over to reveal that a heartbroken Theo swore to convince the art world of his brother's talent. But he died of syphilis in Utrecht just six months later and Jo had his body reburied beside Vincent in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1914. Their great-grandson declares that Van Gogh's peers appreciated him as the greatest avant-garde painter of all time, even though he enjoyed little commercial or critical success. Van Dijk, however, suggests that his appeal lies in the fact that he sought answers to everyday questions about existence and reckons that his reputation will endure because he knew how to connect with ordinary people. But, in a letter to Theo, Van Gogh claimed that he painted because humankind should strive to arrive at nobility through achieving great things and outgrowing `the vulgarity in which the existence of almost all individuals drags on'.

It's impossible not to be moved by such words or by the tragic nature of Van Gogh's life and the courage and beauty of his art. However, Bickerstaff and Grabsky are more in the mood to celebrate than mourn, as they explore the different interpretations of their subtitle, `A New Way of Seeing'. We have already mentioned the fact that more might have been made of the re-hang that allows visitors to see Van Gogh's work in new relationships with other pictures in the collection and with the gallery space itself, But the film doesn't place enough emphasis on how Van Gogh saw the world and transferred his vision to canvas.

Clearly, these films are not forums for in-depth artistic analysis, but surprisingly little attention is paid to Van Gogh's evolving technique and the epistolary clarification for such shifts. How did he see the world and what was so different about his way of conveying what he saw? What role did his mindset or his wanderlust play in his efforts to challenge artistic convention? Did he consciously rebel against what he saw in galleries during his time as a dealer or did he seek to use his art to politicise the lot of the lower classes after his sojourn in London? There are passing references to brush sizes, paint thickness, burlap canvases and the various uses of strokes and points to apply the paint. But much more was made of such details in the recent Vermeer and Rembrandt entries and the shortage of similar discussion here is all the more disappointing given the claims (made, admittedly, by his great grand-nephew) that Van Gogh is the greatest avant-gardist in art history.

Vincent's subject matter is also given short shrift, as only a couple of paintings are analysed in any detail. Once again, earlier films spent more time assessing individual pictures and outlining the significance of their content, as well as their form. They also frequently revealed the trade secrets that artists employed to achieve certain effects, while also summing up whether they had succeeded in fulfilling their ambitions for a particular canvas. Also notably absent is any sense of the contemporary critical view of Van Gogh's work or how and where his work was exhibited (if it was at all). There is also no mention of the fact that he only sold one picture, `The Red Vineyard Near Arles' (1888), during his lifetime. The script does refer to Theo sending him money, but a little more on his domestic arrangements and the effect that this had on his prolificity might have been valuable. The Protestant work ethic is one thing, but hard facts about the means to purchase materials, afford rent and meet household expenses are another.

Much more impressive is the way the paintings are slotted into the chronology, as it is always abundantly clear what type of pictures Van Gogh was producing and where during the different stages of his all-too-brief maturity. The biographical information is also presented succinctly and accessibly by the narrator and the museum specialists, with the readings from the letters giving the facts a poignant personal feel. What helps here is the brilliance of some of the editing, which deftly matches the paintings to the landscape as it exists today. The use of the lookalike is also very neat in this regard, particularly when close-ups are melded with the self-portraits, while the intensity of the actor's furrowed gaze into the lens also reinforces the emotional power of the letters being read on the soundtrack.

As always with Exhibition on Screen, the photography of Bickerstaff, Hugh Hood, Jorne Tielemans and Oggi Tomic is superb, with the lighting of the exteriors at Marcasse, Arles and Saint-Rémy being particularly evocative. The presentation of the paintings is also admirable, with medium shots giving way to detailed close-ups when required. There may be fewer gallery shots than in previous outings and, as a result, it isn't always clear where pictures are hanging in relation to others contained in the same slickly assembled montage sequences. But this remains an engaging tour of a magnificent institution and there is plenty to intrigue newcomer and aficionado alike about Vincent Van Gogh's life and work.