Parky at the Pictures (DVD 23/7/2015)

According to Sam Firstenberg, Menahen Golan was the founder of Israeli cinema. He began making films with his younger cousin Yoram Globus in the mid-1960s and with Tevye and the Seven Daughters (1968) hit upon the formula of cashing in on popular successes in order to make a quick buck. Willing to exploit the political situation in the Middle East, Golan recreated the raid on Entebbe Airport in Operation Thunderbolt (1977) and encouraged Boaz Davidson to include as much nudity and gross-out comedy as he could squeeze into Lemon Popsicle (1978), a rite-of-passage farce that bore a marked similarity to John Landis's National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) and remains one of the most profitable Israeli pictures of all time.

The success of these crude crowd-pleasers convinced Golan and Globus that they were ready to take a tilt at Hollywood and set their sights on Cannon Films, which had enjoyed a few minor hits under founders Dennis Friedland and Christopher Dewey. Several were dubbed European imports, but John G. Avildsen's Joe (1970) was much admired for its insights into contemporary America. But Nicholas Sgarro's ambitious take on Xaviera Hollander's The Happy Hooker (1975) emptied the coffers and the Go-Gos took over the reins in time to star Klaus Kinski in David Paulsen's Schizoid (1980) and team Martine Beswick and Phil Silvers in Alan Roberts's The Happy Hooker Goes to Hollywood (1980).

Beswick felt they were shysters and resented the amount of nudity they requested. But Davidson was happy to come to Hollywood to make X-Ray (1982) and Avi Lerner suggests that they helped transform the way in which mid-budget movies were made in America by raising funds on the strength of titles, straplines and posters. Actor Robert Forster remembers them huckstering at festivals, but the established companies regarded them as carpetbaggers and they were always denied access to the studio inner circle. Catherine Mary Stewart suggests that they never quite acclimatised to the American way of doing things and recalls Golan ignoring all advice against including a bedroom song entitled `I'm Coming' in his 1980 musical, The Apple, which he hoped would outdo Ken Russell's Tommy (1975). Tobe Hooper regrets that their enthusiasm for movies wasn't matched by their taste or attention to detail, while Sybil Danning praises them for being proactive and getting pictures made. But Lucinda Dickey is less complimentary and makes a couple of crass Jabba the Hutt jokes at his expense.

British horror director Pete Walker had a reasonable experience of collaborating with Cannon on House of the Long Shadows (1983), although he smiles at the fact that, in spite of starring Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and John Carradine, it was branded a `family horror movie' and received a PG certificate. Not everyone had such a pleasant time, however, as Sylvia Kristel was drunk and doped out her mind when Just Jaeckin directed her in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1981) and Mata Hari (1985) and co-star Oliver Tobias regrets that Golan exploited her condition to ensure she was topless in as many scenes as possible. Diane Franklin similarly questions the duo's judgement in cross-cutting between an abortion and a pizza being sliced in Davidson's Lemon Popsicle remake, The Last American Virgin (1982), and Charles Matthau wonders whether Golan and Globus often made a rod for their own backs by bringing Israelis to California to make American movies when they dozens of indigenous directors who could have done a better job were kicking their heels.

Their most notorious import, however, was Michael Winner, who consistently set out to shock the censor and the public. He reunited with Charles Bronson for Death Wish II (1982) and screenwriter David Engelbach was appalled by the way in which he made the rape scene so graphic. Robin Sherwood describes the humiliation she endured while shooting the action and Marina Sirtis levels similar accusations about the sequence in which she was whipped while naked by Faye Dunaway in The Wicked Lady (1983). Actor-director Alex Winter calls Winner a psycho and Tobias concurs that he had a genius for making people feel used and uncomfortable.

Always on the lookout for the next box-office trend, Golan moved into the martial arts arena with Enter the Ninja (1981) after they bumped into Franco Nero at the Manila Film Festival. Golan also handled the sequel, Revenge of the Ninja (1983), but was running out of ideas when he decided to mix The Exorcist (1973) and Flashdance (1983) to make Ninja 3: The Domination (1984), which starred Lucinda Dickey as an aerobics instructor who is possessed by the spirit of a deceased male ninja and becomes a killing machine until the curse is lifted. Unsurprisingly, this flopped calamitously, but Golan blamed the audience for being unable to accept the notion of a female ninja.

The Go-Go Boys were not alone in being ready to let someone else carry the can. Given the chequered nature of his career at MGM, Frank Yablans has a cheek scoring cheap shots by ridiculing the quality of Cannon's output during the time it had a distribution deal with the once glamorous studio. Andrew McLaglen's Sahara (1983) may not have succeeded in its bid to combine Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Great Race (1965) and The Blue Lagoon (1980), but Yablans and Winter mock their brand of `Frankenstein' movies with a relish that suggests their opinion is less than purely objective. Ambition often exceeded resources and sometimes even technology, as Luigi Cozzi had great plans for Hercules (1983) with Lou Ferrigno, but the special effects simply looked cheap and the spectacle was compromised. Yablans concedes it was better than most Cannon offerings, but dismisses it as a flop, while Cozzi protests it was a hit.

The company did have commercial success, though. Joel Silberg's Breakin' (1984) showed Cannon with its finger on the pulse of urban youth and star Michael Chambers (aka Boogaloo Shrimp) proclaims it the Enter the Dragon of hip-hop movies. Adolfo Quinones (aka Shabba-Doo) jokes that he was the Dean Martin to Chambers's Jerry Lewis. But, even though there were tensions with Dickey, a gymnast with jazz dance experience who felt like an outsider on the set, Quinones avers that the film succeeded where the United Nations failed in showing how to bring about racial tolerance. Typically, Golan and Globus rushed into production on the sequel, Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984), in the hope of scooping another $56 million gross. But, while Chambers got to dance on the ceiling like Fred Astaire in Stanley Donen's Royal Wedding (1953), the picture was short on street grit and wound up feeling like a cartoonish rainbow.

Keen to impress the critics with a weighty drama, Golan hired Elliott Gould for Over the Brooklyn Bridge (1984), only for them to fall out over their interpretation of a love scene with Margot Hemingway. Bo Derek also raises their penchant for female nudity in recalling the making of Bolero (1985). Yet, in lambasting him for ruining a beautiful film, she conveniently forgets to mention that this update of Rouben Mamoulian's Blood and Sand (1941) was directed by her husband, John Derek. Co-star Olivia D'Abo looks back on the shoot with embarrassed amusement, but Yablans can't resist another opportunity to put the boot in, as he declares them vulgarians. Interestingly, at this point, Hartley mentions that the Go-Gos had to put up with such nicknames as Mayhem and Urine and The Bad News Jews and Mark Rosenthal states that anti-Semitism underpinned much of the hostility towards the pair. But Davidson prefers to think that they were rule-breakers who ruffled feathers and failed to fit in because they insisted on doing things the Israeli way.

In 1986, screenwriter David Engelbach turned director with America 3000, which imagined a world in which women ruled a civilisation of men and mutants. He insists it was an empowering topic, but Laurene Landon is so ashamed at being its female star that she tries to set light to a DVD copy and, in recalling how poorly the crew were paid, she asserts that Golan and Globus had a cash register where a heart should have been. Yet, they were prepared to sign Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris to long-term contracts, with the latter becoming a major action star after the unexpected success of Joseph Zito's Missing in Action (1984) and Lance Hool's Missing in Action: The Beginning (1985). Indeed, they became so influential within the company that script reader David Van Velle recalls that they were considered for every project, even if it was Wuthering Heights.

Norris could be difficult, however, and he refused to do Sam Firstenberg's American Ninja (1985) because his face would be covered. The role passed to Michael Dudikoff, who was announced as the new James Dean and plans were made to star him in a new version of Spider-Man. But, as he reflects wistfully, they bungled his big break and he became just another nearly man. Indeed, Cannon had the misfortune to hold the rights to Spidey, Superman and Captain America at a time when comic-book superheroes were considered naff. Ah, the good old days!

But every project was a potential gold mine as far as the Go-Gos were concerned. Richard Kraft recalls how they used to base themselves in the Carlton Hotel and spend the entire Cannes fortnight trying to flog shares in pictures that existed solely as titles, posters and plot pitches. Del Velle muses that they would have starred Charles Bronson in The Golem if they could have secured pre-sale funding. But, even though the odd effort could seem eerily prophetic, like Joseph Zito's Chuck Norris outing, Invasion USA (1985), Cannon had a habit of cobbling stories around action set-pieces, with the result that a lot of their movies made little or no sense. Mark Goldblatt and Mark Helfrich acknowledge that Golan was a workaholic, but complain bitterly about his philistinic editing approach. Director Stephen Tolkin agrees that they loved cinema in the abstract, but failed to pay close enough attention to detail, while Rosenthal claims that a monkey could pick 70 scripts from 500 and not do a worse job than Golan and Globus.

Tobe Hooper hoped Lifeforce (1985) would be his Ben-Hur (1959). It starred Mathilda May as a mostly naked alien and boasted the biggest budget and most sophisticated SFX of the Cannon era. But the production was allowed to spiral out of control, with Golan contributing a non-stop stream of ideas. He saw himself as a latterday David O. Selznick, but he often came across more like Samuel Goldwyn, most notably when he insisted on personally pitching Davidson's Ben, Bonzo and Big Bad Joe (which was originally released as Going Bananas, 1987) to Manis, the orangutan who played Clyde in Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way comedies. Ultimately, they made the movie with a midget in a monkey suit and Davidson winces as he recalls his embarrassment at shooting such tripe in Africa.

As Winner took offensiveness to new levels with Death Wish 3 (1985) and Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987), Bronson begged to be given better assignments, as he still saw himself as a serious actor. Yet director John Frankenheimer insists that Golan and Globus were much more than schlockmeisters and sought projects that would bring them respectability. Franco Zeffirelli praises them for allowing him to make Otello (1985) without interference and Barbet Schroeder is equally effusive about his supervision of Barfly (1987). However, Golan wanted to cut 50 minutes from John Cassavetes's masterly Love Streams (1984) and, having signed the contract on a napkin, persuaded Jean-Luc Godard to make King Lear (1987) with Molly Ringwald, Burgess Meredith, Norman Mailer and Woody Allen. Critic Quentin Falk rightly points out that they tried to make significant pictures, but even genuine gems like Andrei Konchalovsky's Oscar-nominated Runaway Train (1985) were derided by Hollywood competitors and they largely sank without trace.

In a bid to tilt the table in their own favour, Golan and Globus came to Britain to acquire Thorn-EMI, Pathé Film Library, Elstree Studios and the ABC cinema chain. They also had assets in Italy and the Netherlands and could raise $300 million in bond trading to maintain production levels the other studios could only dream of, as they struggled to release six or seven titles a year. But, while they were undeniably shrewd business operators, their creative instincts often let them down. Richard Chamberlain and Cassandra Patterson ruefully reminisce about J. Lee Thompson's King Solomon's Mines (1985), which they had been promised would be a Raiders of the Lost Ark-like adventure. Instead, it and Gary Nelson's Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold (1986) proved deeply unpleasant experiences because co-star Sharon Stone insisted on being such a diva. Chamberlain recalls how the South Africans on the set used to pee in her bath water and reveals that she had only been cast because Golan had meant Romancing the Stone's Kathleen Turner when he ordered an underling to `get that Stone woman'.

Blundering on regardless, Golan ripped The Delta Force (1987) from the headlines and teamed Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin in a reconstruction of the TWA hostage crisis at Beirut Airport. Robert Forster declares himself happy with a film that saw Golan feuding on a daily basis with Shelley Winters. But its anti-Arab sentiments were distasteful in the extreme and it remains the darkest blot on the Cannon copybook. Ledgers of another sort were being examined by the American Securities and Exchange Commission, as Golan fell out with Tobe Hooper on Invaders From Mars (1986). This was supposed to be an hommage to 1950s sci-fi, but Hooper wanted to incorporate some of the bleak humour he had brought to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Golan berated him for playing down the schlock in favour of the yuks.

Fellow director Albert Pyun says they were old-fashioned conservatives who weren't on the same wavelength as the new generation of film-makers or their audience. Consequently, they offered Sylvester Stallone an eye-watering fee (between $12-25 million depending on who Hartley asks) to make Golan's misguided arm-wrestling saga, Over the Top (1987). Charles Matthau and Jerry Schatzberg agree that the Go-Gos simply didn't know how to connect with the kids now making up the bulk of the cinema audience. Hence, they allowed Christopher Reeve to choose a plot about the eradication of nuclear weapons for Sidney J. Furie's Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). However, facing losses of $90 million for 1985-86, Globus was forced to slash the budget from $30 to $17 million and the picture suffered as a consequence and merely added to their problems.

Cutting corners proved even more ruinous on Gary Goddard's Masters of the Universe (1987), which was supposed to be a shoo-in hit because of the popularity of the Mattel toy franchise. Golan once said he would rather make 30 films than spend $30 million on one, but his over-vaunting ambition got the better of him. Robert Thompson insists they failed to learn from their mistakes and kept making poor pictures in the hope of tapping into the ever-changing public taste. Albert Pyun recalls how he was asked to complete Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1988) after Rusty Lemorande's departure when there was no money left for effects work. Similarly, he saw Jean-Claude Van Damme take over the cutting of Cyborg (1989) and convince Golan that he was the next big thing when the film made an unanticipated profit.

But the cousins were starting to disagree over how to cope with Cannon's mounting debts. They had hoped that Giancarlo Parretti and Credit Lyonnais would bale them out. But he proved not to be the white knight they needed and Golan struck out on his own by forming 21st Century. As Parretti acquired MGM and merged it with Cannon to create MGM-Pathé Communications, Golan and Globus made competing lambada movies - Graydon Clark's The Forbidden Dance and Joel Silberg's Lambada (both 1990) - and proceeded to split the market for a dance craze that never happened.

It was a sorry way for a bold enterprise to end. Tolkin suggests they fell victim to the snobbery of the Hollywood establishment as much as their own shortcomings, with Golan being dismissed as a director who used his heart more than his head. But they shook up Tinseltown with their can-do attitude and changed the way in which the studios operated with their pre-sale template. Ultimately, Golan and Globus were dreamers who exceeded their initial expectations, but they didn't have the artistic refinement or business nous to respond to the changes they had wrought upon an industry in transition.

As in Not Quite Hollywood (2008) and Machete Maidens Unleashed! (2010), which respectively covered Ozploitation and Filipino action movies, Mark Hartley tells his tale with considerable panache and insight. His scattershot approach forces the viewer to pay attention to follow his lines of argument. But he and co-editors Jamie Blanks and Sara Edwards make fine use of clips from the Cannon canon and Hartley should be commended for amassing over 80 talking heads to offer their opinions on the cousins who are conspicuous by their disapproving absence. He might have been advised to have included a couple of fanboy critics to balance the carping of the detractors, but it is clear that few have little love or respect for Golan and Globus, who sought to storm Hollywood and reinvent it in their own image rather than become part of the furniture.

Hartley rather rushes the conclusion and more might have been made of Parretti's role in proceedings. He might also have said more about the post-Cannon relationship between the Go-Gos, as Golan racked up 210 producorial credits before his death in 2014. But this probably tells the casual viewer more than they will ever need to know about the twosome who paved the way for such maverick combines as Carolco, Miramax and Millennium Films, while those wishing to know more should check out Andrew Yule's well-researched 1987 tome, Hollywood a Go-Go.

Although it has action hero pretensions, Marshall Curry's Point and Shoot has all the hallmarks of a YouTube video made by a narcissist with a screw loose. This is a disturbing documentary on many levels, but what dismays most is that it has been compiled by a director who has demonstrated an affinity with obsessive personalities in the Oscar-nominated duo of Street Fight (2005) and If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front (2011), as well as in Tom Berninger's Mistaken for Strangers (2013), which Curry executive produced to allow the psychologically brittle director to explore his rivalry with his brother Matt, who is the frontman for the indie rock band, The National. Fittingly, they provide the soundtrack for this profile of Matthew VanDyke. But, for reasons never made clear, Curry seems unwilling to challenge his self-glorifying account of events that can only appal right-minded audiences.

Raised by his mother Sharon in a comfortable home in Baltimore, VanDyke spent much of his youth watching Alby Mangels safari shows, reading adventure books and playing video games. Despite suffering from an obsessive compulsive disorder that rendered him germophobic and terrified of hurting people, he followed a degree in Political Science with a masters in Security Studies, with an emphasis on the Middle East. But, while he seemed settled in a relationship with Lauren Fischer, VanDyke craved excitement and, in 2007, he embarked upon a motorcycle ride across North Africa, which he recorded with the intention of posting the footage online.

Some of the early shots taken in Gibraltar are amateurish in the extreme. But VanDyke quickly picked up a serviceable camera technique that would not be out of place in a standard adventure travel movie and Curry includes some amusing footage of him setting up images in the back of beyond that present him as some sort of macho daredevil. However, hurtling his Kawazaki through Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan and Syria failed to satiate VanDyke's wanderlust and, in 2010, he spent six months venturing from Iraq to Afghanistan via Iran.

At one point, he convinced the cash-strapped Baltimore Examiner to hire him as a war correspondent and he quickly discovered that the American troops with whom he was embedded were just as eager to have something dramatic to put on their Facebook pages as he was. But Curry opts not to reveal that the paper folded soon after VanDyke filed his sole report. Moreover, he fails to press VanDyke in the interview clips that pepper this slickly edited odyssey about why he felt the need to adopt the name Max Hunter and pass himself off as a fearless man of danger.

Even more egregiously, Curry decides not to delve too deeply when VanDyke explains why he elected to go to Libya in the spring of 2011, harbouring visions of becoming the new Lawrence of Arabia. Instead, he lets VanDyke reminisce about encountering charismatic free spirit Nuri Funas during his 35,000-mile road trip and reveal how his friend's online pleas for the outside world to support the revolution against Muammar Gaddafi both pricked his conscience and fired his desire to prove himself as a man. Clearly Curry is under no obligation to point out the problems that VanDyke might cause his putative brothers-in-arms by being unable to speak their language and having no military experience to contribute to their cause. But it feels like a dereliction of the documentarist's duty to leave commenting on this recklessly self-aggrandising behaviour to a girlfriend whose understandably wounded interjections are nowhere near as eloquent as the silence of VanDyke's conspicuously absent mother.

Welcomed by as a hero by Funas and his friends, VanDyke made himself useful filming their activities. But, in addition to capturing some truly visceral combat imagery, VanDyke also began recording posturingly triumphalist gun- and camera-brandishing selfies that flagrantly expose the egotistical, thrill-seeking naiveté underlying his new-found activism. However, on 13 March, he was injured during an ambush at Brega and found himself in the notorious Maktab al-Nasser prison in Tripoli, where he was held in solitary confinement in a tiny cell, with only a small skylight in the ceiling.

Curry enlists the help of animator Joe Posner to provide a lowering, first-person perspective of this 81-day ordeal. But VanDyke's recollections shed little light on either his treatment or his psychological state. He is no more forthcoming in describing how he escaped and came to join the National Liberation Army, in spite of pleas from non-governmental organisations like Human Rights Watch - as well as his mother and girlfriend - to return to the United States. However, the sight of VanDyke being filmed firing at a sniper confirms the extent to which he had committed himself to both a cause he barely understood and a romanticised version of himself that bordered on the sociopathic. But, while this woefully self unaware adrenaline junkie might have fooled himself into thinking that he had helped secure victory, Curry surely has a responsibility to point out that the capture and slaughter of Colonel Gadaffi did not bring victory and peace to a country that has since become a virtual no go zone.

However, Curry hides throughout behind the conceit that this is VanDyke's story and that he has refrained from any sort of editorialising out of respect for his subject. Yet, even though VanDyke takes a producer's credit, Curry is keen to stress that he had no creative control over the use of his own material in the finished film - which leaves one to wonder whether Curry really believes that intelligent viewers will buy into the stratagem that he is an honest broker who has merely pieced fragments together into a cohesive, but entirely detached mosaic. This might wash in the case of VanDyke's Syrian Civil War apologia, Not Anymore: A Story of Revolution (2013), but surely one has the right to expect more from a professional film-maker with something of a reputation for balancing empathy with objectivity?

The failure to tell the truth about the ongoing situation in Libya is regrettable, as is the missed opportunity to explore the effect that the presence of a lens has on the actions of combatants. But the decision to celebrate entirely unwarranted American exceptionalism is utterly despicable and one can but hope that UK audiences prove more discriminating than their US counterparts, who have showered this decidedly dubious enterprise with accolades and festival awards. To mix quotations from Monty Python's Life of Brian and Dad's Army, Matthew VanDyke is not a hero, he's a very stupid boy who viewed the Arab Spring as a suitable arena for exorcising his insecurities through `a crash course in manhood'. It say much for the state of actuality in the social media age that such vainglorious folly should have been treated with anything more than pity or contempt.

The rapumentary is fast becoming a staple of the music actuality scene and Mike Todd's Hustlers Convention is bound to entice students of the history of hip-hop. Released in 1973 on the Celluloid Records label, Lightnin' Rod's 12-track album has been cited by many as the prototype rap platter. Indeed, Todd has corralled the likes of Grandmaster Flash, Ice-T, Immortal Technique, KRS One, MC Lyte, Ice T, Chuck D and Melle Mel to discuss the debt they owe to a largely forgotten Muslim poet who took street rhyming into the recording studio and fused it with jazz, funk and the black prison slang known as toasting to produce a distinctive sound that sparked a musical revolution.

Alafia Pudim was born in Brooklyn in 1944. Having been forced to join the US Army as a way of getting out of jail, he served as a paratrooper before getting into trouble for refusing to salute the Stars and Stripes. Following a spell as a banker on Wall Street, he recorded the poem `E-Pluribus Unum' on Axiom records and converted to Islam. Converting to Islam, he changed his name to Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin and developed the art of spiel, a variation on the ad hoc percussion rhythms created by African-American prisoners.

He dubbed his technique `spoagraphics' and employed it when he joined The Last Poets in the late 1960s, alongside Umar bin Hassen, Abiodun Oyewole and percussionist Nilija. Various line-ups of this pivotal combo existed around this period. But this quartet was responsible for the 1970 album, The Last Poets, that created a ground swell in African-American music that became even more seismic when Nuriddin adopted the pseudonym Lightnin' Rod to work on the Hustlers Convention project, which began when producer Alan Douglas persuaded Nuriddin to record a poem he had written about brothers Sport and Spoon that culminates in the former winding up on Death Row.

Reflecting the state of African-American society in the wake of the Civil Rights campaign, the proto-gangsta lyrics pulled no punches in describing life in the ghetto, the temptations of hustling, the pleasures and perils of drug-taking and gambling, and the stark fact that most black males learned how to cope with life while behind bars. But these hard-hitting words only came to life when Nuriddin jammed with such major artists as Tina Turner and the Ikettes, Bernard Purdie, Billy Preston, Cornell Dupree and Kool and the Gang.

Joining the 70 year-old Nuriddin on a tour of his old haunts, Todd strives to recreate the socio-political and cultural landscape in pre-rap America. He makes innovative use of archive footage and animation to convey the bitter realities of a milieu in which poverty and prejudice ran rampant. Nuriddin proves an accomplished raconteur, but the energy levels rise when Todd consults those who came after about the importance of Hustlers Convention, whose reputation was spread by word of mouth alone.

Nevertheless, much more could have been made of the way in which street poetry was used to educate, empower and rabble-rouse disenfranchised blacks, who didn't recognise their own experience in the more manufactured sounds of soul and disco. Similarly, Todd could have gone into greater depth in outlining the problems associated with releasing the LP (when United Artists threatened legal action because Kool and the Gang were signed exclusively to them) and in explaining the part that it subsequently played in the evolution of hip-hop, with `Sport', for example being sampled in such tracks as `Eggman' by The Beastie Boys, `Method Man' by Wu-Tang Clan and Nas's `Sekou Story'. But for those coming to this epochal disc for the first time, this is a respectful and respectable introduction.

Finally, the past and the present overlap in Frédéric Tcheng's Dior and I, which provides an intimate record of the eight weeks in spring 2012 that new creative director Raf Simons was given to compile his first collection for the prestigious Parisian fashion house, Christian Dior. Having served as co-editor on Matt Tyrnauer's Valentino: The Last Emperor (2008) and having co-directed Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2011) with Lisa Immordino Vreeland and Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt, Tcheng is the rising star of the fashion documentary. But, while it offers some shrewd insights into life in an haute couture atelier and draws some well-observed comparisons between Dior and Simons, this stylish and slickly structured picture opts to turn a blind eye so often that it winds up feeling more like an infomercial than an objective overview.

Known for the minimalist men's clothing he created with Jil Sander, Belgian Raf Simons was something of a surprise choice to succeed flamboyant Brit John Galliano when the latter was dismissed following a very public racist and anti-Semitic tirade. Yet no mention is made of these shameful circumstances and, thus, it becomes apparent from the outset that Tcheng has had to make compromises in order to obtain his remarkable access to Simons and his new staff.

Speaking little French and relying heavily on trusted assistant, Pieter Mulier, Simons decides to base his debut collection on the New Look range that made Christian Dior a household name in 1947. Indeed, Tcheng is quick to spot the similarities between the taciturn founder and his publicity shy successor and uses passages from the autobiography Dior et Moi (read by Omar Berrada) to establish personal and artistic connections between the pair. But Dior isn't Simons's sole inspiration, as he draws on the paintings of Gerhard Richter and Sterling Ruby to devise a patterned thread that would offset the weave of the fabric. Moreover, he is also taken by `Puppy', a 1992 Jeff Koons piece at the Guggenheim in Bilbao that carpets a giant West Highland terrier in bedding plants. However, as he is not a skilled draftsman, he has to create mood boards to convey his ideas and hopes that Mulier can conspire with premières Florence Chehet and Monique Bailly to realise his vision.

This middle-aged pair are much more gregarious than Simons and Tcheng gratefully seizes upon them as an alternative focal point. Indeed, so key are they to the success of the brand that Simons is upbraided when he protests that one has crossed the Atlantic to supervise a personal fitting for a client who spends a six-figure sum with Dior each season. Stylist Hongbo Li might get misty eyed at the sight of Simons's creations, but president and chief executive officer Sidney Toledano and chairman Bernard Arnault (who holds the same post at the luxury goods conglomerate Moët Hennessy • Louis Vuitton, aka LVMH) keep their sights fixed firmly on the bottom line.

What emerges as the time ticks away is that the atelier could quite easily cope without Simon, who can barely speak a word of French and often struggles to get his ideas across. But Dior would be lost without the commitment to the brand and the sheer professionalism and craftsmanship of its cutters, seamstresses and stylists. Thus, while Simons is lining up a swanky mansion for the runway show, his staff work long hours to ensure everything will be ready on time - even the jacket that Simons decides needs to be spray-painted black just before the curtain goes up.

Fortunately, the collection gets the critical nod, but Tcheng's film is markedly more problematic. He makes a decent job of combining observational material with interview clips and movie buffs will enjoy seeing the likes of Sharon Stone, Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Lawrence making guest appearances alongside fashion priestess, Anna Wintour. However, cineastes will be more appreciative of the way in which editor Julio Perez nimbly cross-cuts between Gilles Piquard's refined imagery and archive clips of Dior launching the New Look in a Paris that needed a definitive statement to restore its authority after the Occupation. But Tcheng decides not to mention that Dior dressed the wives of Nazi officers and Vichy collaborators while working for Lucien Lelong. He similarly overlooks the fact that Dior's creations helped foster the enduring culture of elitism within haute couture because they required vast amounts of expensive fabric at a time when it was still rationed.

Despite wallowing in the pomposity of his milieu, Tcheng also struggles to generate any sense of tension during the run-in to the launch. But he is more successful in finding matching personality traits between Dior and Simons, whose confidence in his work contrasts so starkly with his aversion to the limelight. However, it should be noted that he handles his big day with considerable savoir faire and is more than eager to bask in the acclaim. Those watching after the event, however, will know how much he owes to Mulier, Chehet and Bailly, who not only get the credit they deserve, but they also steal the film.