Focus on James Mason
by Billy Stanton Saturday 26th May saw a very special event at Birkbeck cinema: the launch of Sarah Thomas’ BFI Film Stars book on James Mason, accompanied by papers from Thomas and Adrian Garvey, and a presentation of a rare 35mm print of Max Ophüls’ classic noir-melodrama The Reckless Moment (1949). In front of a room packed with Mason aficionados, Adrian Garvey put James Mason’s career in both the British and American film systems in context, placing him as a ‘homme fatale’ standing in contrast to the more familiar ‘femme fatale’ of noir studies. Garvey traced Mason’s history from bit-part tough in Gainsborough melodramas to…