The same happens when the scene turns serious, when Jeffrey sees Frank (Dennis Hopper) rape Dorothy, and is discovered by Dorothy who begs him to beat her. Jeffrey leaves the scene a changed man and the audience has learned many elements of the story. We can’t pull out – like the relationship now between Jeffrey and Dorothy. There’s a charge from having simple camera angles, subdued acting, and putting the action in the middle ground. Worst Scene: ‘Moulin Rouge’ (Baz Luhrmann, 2001)Here is style over substance – as opposed to Blue Velvet’s substance supported by style.

The first pivotal scene between the lovers Satine (Nicole Kidman) and Christian (Ewan MacGregor) should clearly draw the audience in, but when Satine is introduced I was repelled. She enters on a swing singing “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”. There are midget dancers, fat ladies with heavy bosoms, flash, flash, flash; outrageous costumes with the camera constantly on the move This is eye candy at the expense of the story. This rock’n'roll operatic style is exhausting and it’s difficult to pay attention to, which is a shame because the story is quite beautiful.. George Steiner famously declared that the Holocaust had made tragedy impossible, but movie-makers don’t read much literary criticism. With varying degrees of cynicism, directors from Jerry Lewis to Roberto Benigni to Gillian Armstrong have used depictions of the Nazi death camps as a way of persuading an audience that their work has moral weight and value. This kind of ethical legerdemain is something that Costa-Gavras, the veteran Greek auteur behind politically-inflected dramas such as Z (1969) and Missing (1982), has noted, with disgust.

So when he came to make Amen, (see Anthony Quinn’s review) a film whose central character is an SS hygienist assigned to the extermination programme, he was determined not to add insult to atrocity. I suppose I could have got together some extras, and said to them: ‘Go get naked, now you’re going to go into this room and you’re going to be gassed.’ But just saying those words to you makes me feel uncomfortable, indecent.”He originally wanted to make a film of Robert Merle’s Death is my Profession, a novel narrated by Rudolf Hoess, the last and most efficiently murderous commandant of Auschwitz. (The book deals with the daily problems of Hoess’s job: how, for instance, does one incinerate 1,000 people in a day, when there are only facilities to despatch 500?) The director was unable to find producers willing to put their money into such a production, or an actor willing to take on such a part. Then he remembered The Representative, a play that became a cause c?bre when it was performed in Paris in 1963. A more accessible work, Rolf Hochhuth’s drama related the true story of Kurt Gerstein, an SS officer who risked his life to pass information about the extermination programme to the Allies, the Pope, and the German churches.