Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 18/9/2014)

As David Dimbleby recalls, his reporter father Richard was present when the horrors of Bergen-Belsen were exposed and his graphic report for the BBC was initially withheld until its content could be verified. But, as Royal Artillery major Leonard Berney remembers, Army cameramen Mike Lewis and William Lawrie wasted no time in capturing the hideous scene before them. Their footage reached SHAEF and Sidney Bernstein, the chief of the Psychological Warfare Film Section, was ordered to compile a systematic record of a genocide that immediately appeared unprecedented in recent human history.

Having supervised production for the Ministry of Information, Bernstein quickly assembled an editorial team that included Steward McAllister, Peter Tanner and John Krish and set assistant Richard Crossman the task of scripting a commentary with the aid of Australian journalist Colin Willis. It soon transpired that US Army cameramen like Arthur Mainzer were shooting equally disturbing footage, as were such Red Army operatives as Aleksander Vorontzov. Realising that he needed someone with the cinematic sophistication to co-ordinate the project, Bernstein contacted Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he had collaborated on the French-language MOI shorts, Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache (both 1944).

Although the pair were partners in the newly formed Transatlantic Pictures company, Hitchcock was unable to make the dangerous crossing to Britain, as he was deeply involved in his latest feature, Notorious (1946). However, he was well aware that fellow film-makers like Paul Rotha had criticised him for remaining in Hollywood for the duration of the war and he clearly felt that Bernstein's invitation was a chance to silence his critics, while also salving his own conscience. While still in the States, Hitch seems to have instructed the army camera crews to avoid potential accusations of fakery by employing long takes that placed victims and perpetrators in the same frame or sequence. He also suggested that dignitaries and ordinary residents from the communities closest to the concentration and extermination camps were coerced to witness the deeds sanctioned by their leaders, as German audiences would be more persuaded to accept the truth of the situation if they could see compatriots witnessing it at first hand.

Tanner and Krish recall the influence that Hitchcock's ideas had on the project. But much of the Crossman script had been completed by the time he arrived in London in late June. Moreover, three of the proposed six reels had already been approved. Nevertheless, Hitchcock forced himself to spend hours each day viewing rushes from the camps in a small Soho screening room and helping select the most impactful imagery. Yet SHAEF was growing impatient with Bernstein, who has struggling to persuade the Red Army to share footage with its allies. As a consequence, the Austrian-born Hollywood director Billy Wilder was asked to produce a 20-minute short entitled Death Mills, which took scenes from the Bernstein archive and arranged them in trenchant segments that were accompanied by a pugnacious commentary that left the audience in little doubt who was to blame for this crime against humanity.

Yet, as Hitchcock returned to California and Bernstein continued to await Soviet co-operation, political strategists were becoming concerned that a film that presented the Final Solution in such uncompromising detail might be bad for German morale, just as the West would require the soon-to-be divided state to act as a bulwark against the advancing Communists. Thus, five days before SHAEF was dissolved on 14 July, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey was cancelled and the materials were filed away after a single screening of the unfinished picture on 1 September.

Labelled F3080, this trove of damning evidence remained in the Imperial War Museum vaults between 1952 and 1984, when PBS broadcast the five reels of edited footage under the title Memory of the Camps. Hitchcock was credited as `treatment adviser', while Trevor Howard read the commentary, which concluded with the lines: `Unless the world learns the lesson these pictures teach, night will fall. But, by God's grace, we who live will learn.'

Despite Bernstein's determination that his film would prevent the repeat of such barbarism, recent events around the world suggest that few lessons have been learned from the Holocaust. But no one viewing this powerful document can be left unmoved by the incontrovertible evidence and by the courage of such survivors as Mania Salinger, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Eva Mozes Kor, Tomy Shacham, Vera Kriegel, Menachem Rosensaft (who was born in the displaced persons camp at Belsen) and Branko Lustig, who lived through Auschwitz to produce Steven Spielberg's lauded adaptation of Thomas Keneally's Schindler's List (1993).

Among the other speakers are Toby Haggith and Kay Gladstone of the Imperial War Museum, Raye Farr of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, medal-bedecked Soviet soldier Matvey Gershman and Benjamin Ferencz, who liberated camps as part of General Patton's Third Army before prosecuting war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. His recollection of peering into Hell at Dachau leaves a deep impression and it is to be hoped this fine film and the finally completed German Concentration Camps Factual Survey will be widely seen after the latter premieres at the London Film Festival.

Much has been made of Hitchcock's part in the proceedings. But the driving force was clearly Bernstein, the future founder of Granada Television who gives his side of the story in an archived interview. Given the distinctive treatment that Singer approved as executive producer of The Act of Killing (2012), Joshua Oppenheimer's unsettling record of slaughter in 1960s Indonesia, it comes as something of a relief that he has adopted a more conventional approach in this challenging inquisition into documentary objectivity, the responsibilities of actuality film-makers and the extent to which moving images can and cannot alter history. Helena Bonham Carter provides the sober narration, while Jasper Britton reads the extracts drawn from primary sources. But, perhaps most significantly, editors Arik Leibovitch and Stephen Miller cut judiciously between Richard Blanshard's talking head contributions and the restored monochrome imagery, which has lost none of its shaming potency over time.

The recent pursuit of the Yazidi people by jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant demonstrates the continued existence of ethnoreligious hatred in the world, as does the execution of two American journalists and a British aid worker. It's more than a little unfortunate, therefore, that two films recalling the best-known beheading in history should be showing together in a one-off presentation this Sunday.

Directed by Al Pacino, Wilde Salomé is a documentary about the actor's supposed fascination with Oscar Wilde's 1891 play, Salomé, which Pacino filmed in around a week in 2006, while also appearing in a Los Angeles stage reading, directed by Estelle Parsons. It seems odd that these features have taken so long to emerge and that they are only being made available in this country for a single day. However, the analysis of the play is nowhere near as insightful as it was in Looking for Richard (1996), Pacino's treatise on Shakespeare's Richard III, while the performance picture is a curious mixture of experimentation and excess that still manages to convey something of the power of both the biblical story and Wilde's deeply personal socio-sexual subtext.

Inspired by Steven Berkoff's 1998 adaptation, Pacino and Parsons had collaborated on a read productionn of Salomé in 2003 and Pacino confides in voiceover at the start of Wilde Salomé that he has been hooked on the scenario and its author ever since. Over clips of the silent pastiche created by Peter Jackson for the mockumentary, Forgotten Silver (1995), Pacino outlines the plot while conducting negotiations with Parsons at the Wadsworth Theatre and with French cinematographer Benoît Delhomme on the small soundstage where he intends shooting a simple, modern-dress dramatisation in a mere five days.

Producers Robert Fox and Barry Navidi express their concerns that Pacino is pushing his luck in trying to make two films while rehearsing a play, but he throws himself into researching Wilde's background and even visits the gay and lesbian bookshop named in his honour in New York. Frankly, neither Pacino nor manager Kim Brinster offer much wit or wisdom on the subject and it comes as something of a relief when the focus lurches on to the ruins of Herod Antipas's palace at Masada. But this setting merely convinces Pacino that he needs to film in the Mojave Desert and he appears in a scruffy keffiyeh leading a camel before he concentrates on directing an entirely different cast sporting ancient attire in a scene around a grilled well.

Ranting about the press calling his return to the stage a comeback, Pacino discusses the play with Jessica Chastain, (then still a relative unknown) who has been cast in the title role. He describes how Salomé leaves a banquet being hosted by Herod (the tetrarch of the Roman province of Judea) and causes a young Syrian captain in love with her to commit suicide after she insists on meeting and then attempting to seduce Jokonaan, the baptist prophet who has been confined to a dungeon since denouncing Herod's marriage to his murdered brother's widow, Herodias, who is also Salomé's mother.

However, this being a restlessly roving investigation, Pacino is soon on the move again and he fetches up in Dublin to be shown around Wilde's childhood home by Professor Nicholas Grene before he receives an award at Trinity College and checks out the John the Baptist paintings in the National Gallery of Ireland that Wilde would probably have seen in his youth. Cross-cutting between his Irish perambulations and the Mojave footage, Pacino dwells on the film scene of Salomé trying to tempt Jokonaan into kissing her. Pacino opines that this is a play about danger and warnings and he speculates that Wilde wrote it as a way of exploring his own burgeoning homosexual desire.

Having nearly knocked on the wrong door in Tite Street, Pacino finally gains entrance to the Chelsea home that Wilde shared with his wife Constance and their two sons. Grandson Merlin Holland avers that Wilde loved Constance and so adored the boys for whom he wrote such enchanting stories that it broke his heart when their mother changed their surname to Holland after his fall from grace. Holland also asserts that the Victorians were afraid of Wilde and his subversive writings and, as Pacino visits the Cadogan Hotel where he was arrested in 1895, Bono declares Wilde a champion of the marginalised, while Gore Vidal proclaims his a pioneering socialist. Indeed, Vidal agrees with Pacino that Wilde was persecuted for his ideas rather than his supposed indecency with another man.

Pacino reads an extract from one of Wilde's prison letters to Lord Alfred Douglas, in which he reassures him that he doesn't blame him in the slightest for his predicament. Instead, he curses Bosie's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, and Tom Stoppard recalls the series of trials that followed the Scottish nobleman's public accusation that Wilde was posing as a sodomite. Holland claims that the government wanted Wilde silenced and Stoppard suggests that he opted for martyrdom rather than taking the offered opportunity to escape. Pacino essays Wilde in one of two awkwardly cross-cut reconstructions of his farewell to Bosie and fellow playwright Tony Kushner backs Stoppard in concluding that Wilde was the victim of a frightened establishment.

Wilde was sentenced to two years' hard labour and Pacino marvels at the works inspired by his time as prisoner C33, De Profundis and The Ballad of Reading Gaol (both 1897). He hosts a dinner party for the cast, which he will later use to provide footage for the banquet scenes that first inflame Herod's lust in Salomé. Chastain confides to a companion that she is finding everything a bit confusing and it is easy to sympathise with her, as Pacino seems to be floundering in his bid to gain a greater understanding of the text by contextualising it.

He cuts abruptly to Herod's entrance on the palace terrace, as he searches for his stepdaughter. Herodias chides him for the way he leers at the girl and urges him to return to his guests when he complains about hearing the beating of giant wings. Jokonaan had already heard the Angel of Death before the Syrian's self-slaughter and his voice rises up from the depths again, as he castigates Herodias for her murderous adultery. She begs Herod to punish him, but he suspects that Jokonaan is a holy man and is keen to keep him safe from his wife and the Jewish leaders who wish to persecute him.

These scenes reveal the fey intonation that Pacino has chosen to adopt and he rolls his eyes when journalist Lawrence Grobel asks why he is playing Herod as a bisexual. He says he delights in exploring witty, child-like and slightly eccentric characters and claims these as key characteristics of Wilde's. But it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Pacino is hamming it up as he ogles the redheaded Chastain and promises her anything she desires if she will dance for him.

Despite this being a pivotal moment in the play, Pacino cuts away to show the cast preparing backstage for opening night at the Wadsworth. He jokes about the tickets being priced so high that only doctors and dentists will be able to attend and he hopes that they will appreciate that Parsons's decision to have the cast reading from podiums dotted across the stage is designed to enable them to concentrate on the poetry and not be distracted by the performance. Out of nowhere, Pacino begins to wax lyrical about Richard Strauss's operatic interpretation of Wilde's play and then cuts in talking-head shots of Bono, Stoppard and Vidal dismissing Bosie as an excrescence who refused to visit Wilde in prison and then rejected him when his erstwhile lover tracked him down to Italy. Consequently, they blame Bosie for the fact that Wilde retreated to a dingy room in the Hôtel d'Alsace in Paris (`Either this wallpaper goes, or I do.') and died there at the age of 46 from cerebral meningitis, which had been caused by an ear infection that he had contracted in jail

As Bono compares Wilde to Shakespeare and Vidal declares The Importance of Being Earnest (1895) the funniest play ever written, Stoppard laments that Wilde was crushed rather than fortified by his experiences. Avowing that he would have adored Wilde because of his civility, Pacino reads a passage in which he curses himself for becoming a slave to his passions and, thus, becoming the author of his own downfall. But Pacino is keen to forgive Wilde and states that actors owe writers such huge debts that he often feels as though they have inter-locked souls.

Such musings are soon forgotten as Pacino's entourage take a pop at the LA Times critic whose negative review of the stage show is dismissed as the rambling of a nobody trying to make a name for himself. However, it's clear that some patrons feel cheated by what they consider to be a non-show and Pacino has to do a round of interviews to justify his artistic decisions. These sessions cut into the film schedule and Pacino pleads with Navidi to buy him more time, as he wants to honour a play that he has always seen as Wilde's prophecy of his own doom.

Dipping back briefly into the drama, as Herod begs Salomé to dance for him, Pacino flits off at another tangent, as he reveals that Wilde wrote the play in French for Sarah Bernhardt. He leafs through some sketches and is surprised by the amount of nudity in the original designs, while Chastain avers that she would have no problem appearing topless if it would benefit the film. As if by magic, Pacino cuts to the dance sequence, which alternates between close-ups of Salomé't writhing torso and Herod's lecherous expression. Moodily lit by Delhomme with a red glow to match the veil that Salomé uses to cover her nakedness, the scene reaches a crescendo when Salomé demands Jokonaan's head on a silver charger and Herodias incurs her husband's wrath by applauding her daughter's tactics.

While viewing a playback, Pacino is interrupted by a phone call and he complains that money dictates everything in modern movies. He explains to Navidi that he can't just act on demand and that he needs to be allowed to work according to his own rhythms if he is to put his soul on the screen. However, it's hard to see such intensity in Pacino's calculated display, although he warms to the task of urging Chastain to change her demand by listing the riches with which he would shower her if she would only reprieve the Baptist. Her coquettish smiles as he paws her limbs are cross-cut with close-ups of the guests and guards watching the tetrarch demean himself and it's apparent that his authority has been undermined regardless of whether he keeps his word.

Travelling home on the train, Pacino reads The Ballad of Reading Gaol and notes the passage in which Wilde states that each man kills the thing he loves. As Wilde declares that a coward uses a kiss and a brave man a sword, Pacino cuts back to the film, just as the slave sent to decapitate Jokonaan loses his nerve and a soldier is sent to dispatch him, as Herod looks distraught amidst the sound of beating wings. Salomé cradles the severed head and mocks it for daring to question her chastity. However, she is overcome with grief at willing the demise of the only man she has ever loved and, as she kisses the bloodied mouth, Herod accuses her of committing a crime against an unknown god. Deeply afraid, he makes to leave, as Salomé wonders whether the bitter taste on the Baptist's lips was undeclared love. But Herod refuses to let her enjoy her triumph and, he orders her death as the stage is plunged into silhouetted darkness.

When the lights come up again, Pacino is in a screening room, where everyone looks glum. He sighs that they will need to go back to the desert for retakes in order to salvage the picture before he storms out. He is next seen in his headdress, as he walks towards the crew standing in a crescent formation in front of their trucks and trailers. On the soundtrack, Pacino reads the section in De Profundis in which Wilde mourns the fact that he will no longer be entitled to his place in society and will have to take refuge in Nature. But, as the picture ends, Pacino rubs his brow in frustrated close-up, as though he has run out of ideas for how to make this over-ambitious project work.

Alongside the closing credits, a series of irised captions reveals that Salomé was only performed once in Wilde's lifetime, in Paris inn 1896. But, as a dire U2 song blares in the background, Pacino makes no mention of the fact that the Lord Chancellor primarily prevented the play from being performed in Britain because of a ruling against the depiction of biblical characters on stage. Indeed, it would take the notorious 1918 Billing trial (in which the play was described by one Dr Clarke as `a perfect museum of sexual pathology') before before Salomé had its UK premiere in 1931 and such omissions only reinforce the impression that this documentary is less a considered disquisition than a cobbled muddle that seemingly sat on a shelf while someone tried to fathom a way of making it seem more coherent and sapient.

It's not without its moments of interest. But Pacino consistently indulges himself in much the same way that Kevin Spacey did in Jeremy Whelehan's NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage. The filmed play is more compelling, even though the majority of the key moments are shown almost in their entirety in the documentary. Pacino preens unpersuasively and comes perilously close to channelling Herod through Tony Montana (the gangster he played in Brian De Palma's Scarface in 1983). But Chastain makes a fiery temptress, as she explores the new power she has acquired through her pulchritude. Roxanne Hart also impresses as Herodias, as she draws Pacino into some cuttingly droll badinage. But Kevin Anderson booms in the wilderness without any of the charisma that evidently enticed Salomé, while Geoffrey Owens and Joe Roseto do what they can with the thankless roles of the Roman visitor Tigellinus and the lovesick captain.

On the technical side, Delhomme's photography is perfunctorily atmospheric, while David Leonard, Jeremy Weiss and Pasquale Buba's editing is markedly less dynamic than it is in the documentary. Which is perhaps just as well, as they are almost overwhelmed by the demands placed upon them by Pacino's scattershot screenplay, which singularly fails to explain either the his fixation with Wilde or his lurid chronicle of a death foretold.

Despite the fact that it was directed by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, 20,000 Days on Earth is as much a vanity odyssey as Wilde Salomé. Instead of investigating an iconic author, Nick Cave puts himself in the spotlight in an achingly hip picture that is more a playful piece of self-promotion than an in-depth profile. Flitting between diary entries, archive clips, musical interludes and staged conversations, this will be essential viewing for fans of the innovative Australian post-punk. But it also provides a teasing introduction for newcomers, who will be intrigued as much by the man, as by his legend and legacy.

Following a split-screen rattle through the personal and historical events that have occurred during Nick Cave's first 19,999 days on the planet, he announces laconically in voiceover that he ceased to be a human being at the end of the 20th Century. Fortunately, he doesn't consider this to be a bad thing, as he is can still write, eat and watch television. Cave reckons himself to be something of a cannibal, who is forever looking for things to cook in the pot of his songs, and he wonders how wife Susie Bick can cope with his monstrous habit of turning every event and emotion into a lyric.

As Forsyth and Pollard show Cave jamming half-heartedly with Warren Ellis, he admits that he would struggle to define his style and concedes that many of the characters in his tunes are essentially crooked versions of himself. What he does know, however, is that songwriters have to take risks and if creativity requires the mental equivalent of placing a child in a room with a Mongolian psychopath and a clown (and, then, killing the clown), then so be it. Every now and then, however, Cave will realise that the melody he has been working on sounds uncannily like Lionel Ritchie's `All Night Long'.

Cave has lived in Brighton for many years and, as he drives around in his Jaguar, he both complains about the endless cold and rain and extols the virtues of the seascape and clouds. He has an appointment with psychoanalyst Darian Leader, who asks him predictable questions about his first memories of a female body (a 15 year-old with white Kabuki make-up named Janine, who used to conspire with her best friend to dress him in women's clothing) and of his father (a reading from the first chapter of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, which exerted a profound influence on Cave's understanding of language).

Having cut away to an impromptu session in what seems to be a home studio, the focus returns to the therapy session, as Leader asks Cave if his father ever saw him play live. He fondly recalls his father's comment after a gig in New York that he looked like an angel on the stage and this reminds Cave that his father had a talent for being present when least expected (which he backs up with an anecdote about swearing in the darkness in a bid to cheer up his melancholic younger sister and realising too late that his father was still by the bedroom door after lights out). Cave recalls jumping off a railway bridge into a river as part of his happy childhood and wishes that modern kids were still as active. He muses on the importance of memory and suggests that his songs are a way of preserving priceless recollections.

The significance of the past is readily evident, as Cave sings `Give Us a Kiss' at the studio piano. He wonders why some numbers have the power to make him feel godlike and Leader points out that responsibility appears to be a key theme in his work. Cave jokes about getting religion when he was a junkie and promising Susie that he would give up God once he had cleaned himself up. Changing the subject, Leader asks Cave if he feels like an outsider when he performs and he replies that he enjoys the communal element of transforming before an audience. In order to clarify, he remembers introducing Nina Simone and being struck by how quickly this demanding diva, who had stuck her wad of chewing gum to the piano while she sang, became a superstar as she responded to the audience's affection.

Leader decides to end the consultation when Cave is taken aback by a question about his father's death (Cave was 19 at the time) and he appears to drive away in the company of Ray Winstone, who asks if he worries about getting old. Now 56, Winstone reveals that he still enjoys the chance that acting gives him to become someone else. But Cave says a rock star is trapped by his persona and they wonder how much enjoyment The Rolling Stones still get out of playing live after all these years. Cave says he lives to perform, as he feels unbeatable with an audience in the palm of his hand. However, he recalls how dismayed he once felt when somebody on the front row had yawned and Winstone reveals that he felt the same way when his pleasure at playing Henry VIII was deflated by his agent's mother voicing her disapproval of his approach.

Cave drives to a house with white cliffs in the near distance and Ellis cooks him eels for lunch. Ellis remembers that `Dr Simone' (as she had insisted on being called) had wanted champagne, cocaine and sausages before her concert and segues into a reminiscence about a Jerry Lee Lewis gig and the force of his magnetism, even though he was so old and wasted that he had to be given a boost in order to play the piano with his feet. Cave leaves to keep an appointment at his archive. But the film actually cuts to Ellis translating for the choir of French children providing the backing vocals for `Jubilee Street'. This episode seems to confirm Cave's contention that it is vital both to know one's limitations and to enter into collaborations with those who can help improve ideas that have stubbornly refused to coalesce.

This theme is also taken up by former Bad Seeds guitarist Blixa Bargeld, who explains from the passenger seat of the Jaguar that he left Cave's band in order to save his marriage. Cave admits that he misses Bargeld, as he was always able to cut through the cant. But he still enjoys letting songs spiral out of control before finding their length and level, as he tends to lose interest in them once he has fathomed them out. He performs `Higgs Bosun Blues' in the studio and confides in voiceover that life makes no sense while it is being lived and only acquires its true meaning when its facts are being related to prevent them from dissolving into darkness.

Arriving at the archive, Cave looks at school photographs and jokes about his haircut. He is delighted to see a shot of Birthday Party bassist Tracy Pew being urinated on by a German fan and recalls, with some pride, that the band was once hailed the most violent live act in the world. But he concedes that gigs quickly became a trial, as people came expecting a fight rather than a show. As he rummages through the ephemera, he finds an early will that left all his money to the Nick Cave Memorial Museum and he is amused that he managed to keep his effects together in view of the chaotic nature of his peripatetic lifestyle.

He unearths a snapshot of his flat in Berlin and recalls how an upstairs neighbour named Chris had decorated his room with items relating to the Nativity. However, this act of innocent piety hid a secret, as when the lighting was changed, the holy pictures disappeared to be replaced by images of softcore pornography. Cave laments that the best he could manage to brighten up his digs were the long strands of hair he had affixed to the wall and he wonders what happened to the man upstairs who had achieved such sad beauty.

Following another musical digression, as The Bad Seeds rehearse `Push the Sky Away', Cave comes across his old weather diaries. He recalls the trepidation he felt when Susie was carrying twins and ruminates on the fact that he can be quite superstitious for such a rational man. As night falls and he considers the notion that Nature has sent weather to exact her revenge upon humanity, Cave is joined in his car by Kylie Minogue. She sits in the back seat and remembers the fuss that her management made when Cave asked her to sing on `Where the Wild Roses Grow' in 1995. Ultimately, Cave reached her through then-boyfriend Michael Hutchence and they appeared together on Top of the Pops.

Back in the archive, he thumbs his copy of Lolita and restates his views on songs being aides-memoires. The archivist shows him a slide of Susie and he plays an audio clip in which Cave described how she had epitomised every woman he had ever fantasised about when he first saw her at the Victoria and Albert Museum. It's a charming and sincere litany and may well be the highlight of the entire film. He declares that ghosts from his past are crowding in on him at such a rate that he will have to squeeze some of them into the future in order to have enough time to deal with them. Kylie recalls seeing Cave live and compares him to the silhouette of a tree in an Alfred Hitchcock film. They laugh at the pomposity of her remark and share a concern about being forgotten. Kylie boasts that she once had five waxworks of herself (only the Queen had more) and Cave regrets that he cannot communicate with a crowd like Hutchence could.

However, he seems to be connecting with the girls on the front row of a concert as he performs `Higgs Bosun Blues'. As if to remind us that this is only a job, Forsyth and Pollard cut to Cave and sons Arthur and Earl eating pizza while watching Scarface on the settee. But the co-directors know what the audience wants to see and they switch back hurriedly to Cave in a shiny gold shirt belting out `Stagger Lee'. The roar at the end of the song contrasts with the more restrained welcome that Cave receives when he plays Sydney Opera House. But `Jubilee Street' goes down well and the screen fills with images from across Cave's career to chime with the phrase `look at me now' in the lyrics.

Cave proclaims that all our days are numbered and that it is better to act on a bad idea than not act at all. Sometimes, he continues, a tiny idea can grow into something world-changing. But it isn't always easy to tell the difference between the good and the bad, especially when one is trying to lure a monster from the depths to break through the placid surface. As the film ends, Cave claims that love and ideas come from the conjunction of reality and imagination and life and art are only worthwhile when everything aligns.

Considering that this picture masquerades as a documentary, a considerable amount of legerdemain has been employed in its production. The implication is that much of the film takes place over 24 hours, as Cave drives around Brighton. However, the album Push Back the Sky was recorded at La Fabrique, a 19th-century mansion in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, while the Nick Cave Archive is actually in Melbourne rather than Sussex. Moreover, Warren Ellis has lived in Paris since 1998 and doesn't have a cosy cottage with a view of the south coast, while Darian Leader met Cave for the first time on the day that they recorded their scenes.

Although one shouldn't be surprised by such fashioned reality, the casual duplicity does make one wary about the veracity of Cave's more intimate revelations. If they are as manufactured as some of the images, they surely lose much of their value and, instead of being a poignant insight into the life and mind of a distinctive artist, this movie merely becomes another act of self-promotion by an insecure narcissist.

Cave has always given the impression that he is above such media/arty-farty games, while Forsyth and Pollard have made much in their previous outings (including the Do You Love Me Like I Love You project with Cave) of exposing the contradictions and humbug of the music business. But, while he is never anything less than good company, and notwithstanding Erik Wilson's confidential cinematography, Jonathan Amos's crisp editing and Joakim Sundström's beguiling sound design, this guyingly pretentious slice of docu-mythology simply isn't on a par with such supposed models as Jean-Luc Godard's Stones opus, Sympathy for the Devil (1968), or Joe Massot and Peter Clifton's Led Zeppelin homage, The Song Remains the Same (1976).

If Cave basks somewhat preeningly in the self-adulation, the same could not be said of the celebrated French author at the centre of Guillaume Nicloux's crime comedy, The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq. Speculating on Houellebecq's unexplained disappearance for several days during a book tour in 2011, this is a consistently amusing satire on contemporary French society that has drawn comparisons with a couple of innovative sitcoms, Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Michael Winterbottom's The Trip. In fact, this owes much to those postmodernist digressions that Quentin Tarantino used to delight in inserting into his early pictures and the sight of the author of Whatever (1994), Atomised (1998) and Platform (2001) debating the merits of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings with a body builder and a mixed martial arts fighter should set highbrow pulses racing

During the course of a perfectly ordinary Parisian morning, Michel Houellebecq catches up with a little reading and tries to write some poetry before contacting architect François Samuelson to discuss renovations to his kitchen. The grouchy, dishevelled chain-smoker is not afraid to express his opinions and dismisses Le Courbusier and Scandinavian interior design with the same querulousness with which he trashes Mozart during a later conversation with old friend Françoise Lebrun, whose piano playing he criticises without compunction. However, he is more flirtatious with Béatrice Mendy when he goes to buy vegetables and it's possible that they may once have been more than just shopkeeper and customer.

But as Houellebecq goes about his day, as it becomes clear that he is being followed back to his plush high-rise apartment by Maxime Lefrançois and Mathieu Nicourt. The bodybuilder and the MMA bruiser are hardly the stealthiest stalkers in the history of kidnapping, but they succeed with surprising ease in bundling their quarry into a coffin-like metal box (with drilled air holes) and carry him to their vehicle in broad daylight, without arousing any suspicion whatsoever.

Driving into the deepest suburbs, they arrive at a village where ringleader Luc Schwarz's parents live in what seems to be a motor scrap yard. Initially, Houellebecq resents being chained to a bed in a girl's room, especially as he has had his lighter confiscated. However, André and Ginette Suchotzky are clearly excited at having a famous person under their roof and they start fussing over Houellebecq, as they ply him with Polish sausage and Spanish wine. His unmasked abductors also start to take a shine to him and Houellebecq is soon involved in earnest discussions on everything from art and HP Lovecraft through the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to the plight of Europe and the state of French democracy. Although he calls for a war against Belgium, much of his ire is directed at President François Hollande. But Houellebecq is also prepared to debate the creative process and the secret of Alexandrine poetry in return for some boxing lessons from Lefrançois and Nicourt.

One thing bothers Schwarz, however. Nobody seems particularly willing to pay a ransom. He has been negotiating with lawyer Karim Achoui, who represents the unknown person who sanctioned the snatch. But he proves evasive and Schwarz begins to wonder whether Houellebecq has arranged the entire charade to garner a little publicity. However, he seems increasingly content in his captivity, as not only does he have a willing audience for his often inflammatory views, but he is also being treated more like an honoured guest than a hostage. Indeed, he is even presented with prostitute Marie Bourjala to help celebrate his birthday, while a doctor is summoned when he complains of earache.

But something has to give and this is where Nicloux's droll divertissement starts to come unstuck. Back in 2011, rumours had circulated that Houellebecq had been targeted by Al-Qaeda for his contentious statements on Islam. But, when he resurfaced after several days, the fiftysomething provided no explanations and this sense of anti-climax carries over into the film. It's not a serious flaw, as the main pleasures come from watching Houellebecq (who had himself murdered in his 2010 novel, The Map and the Territory) bantering in a semi-improvisatory, misanthropic manner with a trio of fellow non-actors, who prove surprisingly sharp for a bodybuilder, an MMA pug and a former Israeli soldier who worked a security guard for Karl Lagerfeld.

Amusingly designed by Didier Abot and Olivier Radot, Houellebecq's prison is cosily kitschy and contrasts markedly with his ultra-chic abode. But the craft credits are uniformly solid, with Christophe Offenstein's prying camerawork and Guy Lecorne's twitchy editing nicely tempering the toing and froing of the badinage with a hint of suspense. Building on the reputation forged with La Poulpe (1998) and The Stone Council (2006) for wry comedy and unpredictable thrillers, Nicloux indulges himself with an in-joke, as he has Houellebecq read the tie-in edition of Denis Diderot's The Nun that accompanied his 2013 screen adaptation. But, for the most part, he directs with a light touch that allows his unconventional leads to explore both their unique chemistry and some genuinely outrageous sentiments.