Gilbert Adair(1944-2011)

For a few years in the 1980s, he contributed a regular column to "Sight And Sound", the British Film Institute's house magazine, under the pseudonym of "Heurtebise" (a name taken from the poetry of Jean Cocteau). In this column, he poured scorn on the notion of "British Film Year", which was designed to get the British back into a cinema-going habit (the year in question being 1985). He also said that the British were better off watching films on TV or as videos whilst British cinemas maintained such a poor standard. However, under his real name, he was the co-author of a book called "A Night At The Pictures", a celebration of... British Film Year.

The real problem with "minimal" art is not that it's minimal, but that it's not. The eye strays. In the cinema, it has been trained to do so, often with aberrant results. Though I doubt if I could coherently relate the plot of "North By Northwest", a movie I must have seen four or five times, I believe I'll remember to my dying day the color of Cary Grant's socks as he flees from the crop-dusting plane.