Composure Completion
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If you cannot find the cinema culture you want then you’ve got to create it yourself, and making films is the most powerful way to do that. This has always been the driving idea behind my work. It started with my first feature film, Noir-ish Project in 2014, and continued with Distracted in 2017, and now I hope to complete this informal trilogy of films with Composure, my most artistically ambitious project to date.
Composure is an absurd, mystery noir, a psychological twilight thriller, situated in a fictional world somewhere between Old Hollywood and European arthouse. It’s about Webster, a criminal mastermind who’s lost the plot, an urbane villain in catastrophe. When the man who’s blackmailing him mysteriously vanishes, Webster sets out to discover what happened. His journey takes him back through cheap underworld culture of which he’d been a part, but that too is vanishing as those he knows flee their crimes. Composure will be shot in elegant black and white, and feature snappy dialogue with true acting.
Now I am reaching out to the community, to those who are passionate about cinema and about culture, and invite you to help this unique feature film get made.
Thank-you for taking the time to read my message and I hope to welcome you as backer of Composure.
Director’s Statement
Composure is a neo-absurdist mystery noir, a psychological twilight thriller, set in a fictional world somewhere between Classical Hollywood and European art-house. Webster is an urbane villain in catastrophe, a criminal mastermind who’s lost the plot. The film charts his melancholy decline into sadness, delusion and alcoholic psychedelics.
When the man who’s blackmailing him mysteriously vanishes, Webster sets out to discover what happened. His journey takes him back through the cheap, underworld culture of which he’d been a part, but he discovers that too is vanishing, as those he knows flee their crimes. Webster is left holed-up in his isolated beach-house, bewildered and vulnerable, with only his fears and a bottle of Scotch for company. Can he piece together the fate of his blackmailer from the fragments of evidence around him and so save his sanity?
Composure uses the crime genre to examine the fragility of the carefully composed personalities people present to the world, how they fray and crack and fragment under pressure, revealing the paradoxes that rest at their heart.
Thinking about Marcello Mastroianni.
Gently tragi-comic, Composure will be given it’s expression through the use of the history and art of cinema, and through careful, patient rhythms, rather than the smug, shock tactics of contemporary movies. It will strive to obtain some of the elegance of classical-era Hollywood, and will owe something to Pietro Germi’s comic-noir aesthetics of Divorce Italian Style. The acting and dialogue will be snappy and precise, and will be forever indebted to Ray Milland, who’s work influenced the direction of the central character. Composure will be in elegant black and white, and concludes the triptych that began with Noir-ish Project and continued with Distracted.
James Devereaux
FURTHER
Ray Milland And Composure
Find out more about my previous films at JamesDevereauxVOD
Composure – Completion Funds
An absurd noir-thriller about a criminal mastermind who’s lost the plot.
Written and directed by James Devereaux.
£110 raised of £910
Campaign ends midnight of March 31st
We’ve been working on Composure for over three years – it’s been a long and winding road but now the end is in sight. We are reaching out to the community to help us fund the filming of the final scenes for Composure and so complete the film.