derekcreedon Reviews

Apache Drums (1951)

Lewton's Western..... and one in the eye for Zulu....

[7 March 2011]

During Stanley Baker's elaborate tissue of distortions and downright untruths the defenders at Rorke's Drift break into Men of Harlech as a riposte to their war-chanting opponents despite the fact that they were still an English regiment at the time and the concert never took place anyway. And they sing the song in English, not for the Zulus' benefit presumably but as maybe a concession to the film's American backers. The director Cy Endfield had been an old Hollywood hand until he was blacklisted and it's tempting to wonder if he lifted the idea from an identical scene in what proved to be Val Lewton's final production before an untimely death. I've no idea how true to history is the siege of Spanish Boot by the Mescalero Apaches but the presence of Welsh silver-miners among the population - and they were active in New Mexico and elsewhere - no doubt reflected Lewton's interest in ethnic cultures and traditions. And when the time comes they let rip with Harlech in Welsh which, for a Hollywood movie of its day, is doubly pleasing.

Yet another regime-change at RKO had left Lewton out on a limb after his initial run of success and he drifted unhappily between uncongenial assignments at Paramount and MGM before fetching up at little Universal whose budget-restrictions and thematic preferences he found more accommodating. And for the first time he could use Technicolor though the film commences on a dark interior before a door opens onto the outside world (maybe John Ford had been watching it too). Lewton and director Fregonese craft a sturdy morality-tale about an anti-hero who makes good in face of various forms of prejudice. Gambler Sam Leeds (Stephen McNally) kills a man in self-defence but is sent packing as an 'undesirable' along with the local "dance-hall hostesses" whom he later finds massacred after an Indian attack. A notable Lewton touch involves their dying piano-player (Clarence Muse), his scalping concealed under his derby-hat. (Lewton made a point of using black players in impressive cameos e.g. the vivacious Theresa Harris in I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE and the little page-boy in BEDLAM.) Sam returns to warn the town but is disbelieved until the stagecoach comes back bristling with arrows. A young townsman rides for help but is found mutilated down a well, polluting the water-supply. Sam leads an expedition for replenishments and the hellfire preacher (Arthur Shields) who had spoken against him comes to his aid when the party is attacked. (Shields virtually reprises his role from HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, the Welsh and the Irish usually interchangeable in matters of casting.) The chief Victorio is wounded and the Apaches withdraw for the time being. Back in Spanish Boot Sam is arrested for having given a beer to Pedro-Peter,the cavalry-scout(Armando Silvestre) during the waterless interim and is handcuffed to the bar-rail in the saloon. The town's mayor Joe Madden(Willard Parker) who's also the blacksmith and horse-doctor has an ulterior motive. Both men are rivals for Sally (Coleen Gray) the boarding-house keeper who's torn between love and security. But when the town is finally attacked in force she helps Sam get free and everyone takes refuge inside the church. The Apaches call for aid for their dying chief and Joe elects to go out to them but when Victorio dies they kill him. When night falls the "ghost dancers" - young painted braves deliberately sacrificing themselves for immortality - launch an assault on the defenders through the high windows in a wonderfully-lit and eerie sequence, the miners do their battle-song (one of them is actor and singer Sheb Wooley, later to add to Gary Cooper's woes in HIGH NOON) and the bigoted Reverend finds accord with Pedro-Peter as they pray together to their Great Spirit. As both sides fight fire with fire in the blazing finale the Cavalry arrive in a briskly minimalist wrap-up, Sam and Sally lead the congregation into safety and a pet donkey's newborn foal runs to its mother for milk. Solid and atmospheric with fine leads and an intriguing blend of the familiar and the unusual it rightly pleased Universal who wanted to keep Lewton on board but he decided to accept an offer to join Stanley Kramer. Sadly fate intervened and he never saw the release of his swansong.

The Enforcer (1951)

Here's looking at you, Angela Vetto...

[11 February 2010]

Towards the end of 1951 I turned fifteen, just a year away from legal admittance to an X-film. The new certificate, recently introduced, posed an unwelcome obstruction and a moral challenge though I had few problems at my local 'fleapit' where they didn't always question you. Joe Losey's version of M, Cy Endfield's THE SOUND OF FURY and Russell Rouse's THE WELL were stark compelling studies of civil unrest accentuated by the guilty thrill of the 'forbidden' logo. Up the road at the 'de-luxe' however was a different proposition. Amid much larger, grander and more formal surroundings my soul shrank at thoughts of confrontation, of deceptiveness, of "trouble on the door". Sheer funk kept me away from DETECTIVE STORY even with Kirk Douglas in the lead and I let Brando and STREETCAR rattle by unhailed. But then came the crunch, a moment of truth - Humphrey Bogart in MURDER INC. (as it was known over here). What self-respecting film-nut could let that one get away without a struggle. With a grace under pressure Bogie would have endorsed I faced the big guns - the old commissionaire, the manager, the Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan, the lot. "What school do you go to ? What form are you in ? And you're 16 ??" I felt like one of the Bowery Boys in night-court. All I wanted was to see the Main Man in action, not study for a life of crime. Hang in there, Bogie, don't start without me. They finally let me in though I don't think they believed me and it was worth every bead of sweat. It was a shock to see Bogie with an X pinned to his lapel but what went on was rather alarming...

It's an odd item in his chronology, a superior B-picture made apparently to wrap up his Warner contract. Relations with the studio that had made him a star (via some lucky accidents) had long been deteriorating and he was already making films for his own company through a deal with Columbia. As the Assistant D.A. doggedly trying to nail a reptilian crime-boss he was not so much the star here as the host, presiding over a series of flashback sequences before taking over command of the climax. He has no romantic interest (all the women in the film are small-part victims) and no 'personal' story is allowed for. His chief sidekick is a burly Police Captain (Roy Roberts), in effect a precursor of all the TV cop-shows waiting in the wings. The Bogart-link reminds us of his Thirties thrillers but there are no flashy nightclubs here, no wise-cracking molls, no cocky chipmunks fighting for territory. The hoods are murky and nervous in an atmosphere of dread akin to a horror-film which suffuses the whole piece. (It certainly felt like an X at the time). A slickly-wrought compression based on real events it introduced the business of "contract-killing" to the screen and never loses its grip. As others have noted it employs a CITIZEN KANE device - the hunt for a vital clue embedded in the past which may hopefully bring about closure and its nicely apt that Everett Sloane (as Mr. Big) appears in both films.

The more extreme violence is always off-screen, no bad thing, but we do get a splendidly-prepared shoot-out at the end when the D.A. rescues his crucial witness (marvellously etched by Pat Joiner) from a stalking hit-man. Real-life D.As probably don't do that sort of thing but this is Bogie going gat-for-gat against Bob Steele, his old adversary from THE BIG SLEEP. It works perfectly and whatever the studio politics that led to it it's a smashing send-off.

The Innocents (1961)

cat among the pigeons ?

[4 February 2010]

I have never, so far as I am aware, seen a ghost and don't profess to believe in them but like most of us can enjoy pretending that I do when the right story's on offer, teasing the primal imagination down the dark roads of the unknown secure in the knowledge that I can scoot back to the sunny motorway when I want to. For some this simple premise is not always enough so we invite Dr. Freud along to observe, interpret and suggest, the old spoilsport, that it's all in our heads anyway. Henry James' novella The Turn of the Screw has always attracted this kind of dual-response. Are his phantoms 'real' or the product of brain-fever ? Putting it on the screen calls for an interweaving of both ideas so that they come to reflect on and challenge one another. To carry it off with the utmost success needs a poetic singleness of vision that Jack Clayton's film unfortunately lacks. To be sure it draws us back irresistibly into its web with each viewing but its aura of hovering expectation is more interesting to contemplate than to experience. The ambiguities bump and bruise but do not fuse.

A certain conflict of aims is apparent between the director, who favours the spooks, and the writers who struggle with the back-story and the textual detail - and how they struggle. Between book and film there also lies a stage-play and its influence looms far too heavily over the action. When the governess and the housekeeper earnestly confer the film comes to a dead halt and the tortuous revealing of information, one step at a time, feels clunky and unimaginative. And the bland casting doesn't help. Deborah Kerr, much as I loved and admired her, was twenty years too old for her character and her wide-eyed girlish enthusiasm swiftly - too swiftly - turning to hectoring alarm seems misjudged and over-egged right from the start. Megs Jenkins as Mrs. Grose is far too cosy and complacent in the role considering what she's supposed to have been living with. She seems unconflicted and when it comes time for her to divulge the next piece of the jigsaw back comes her answer patly as if it's just occurred to her. And odd that an illiterate character is sometimes given dialogue that makes her sound like a Bronte.

The problematic spectres are seen best at a distance - the film's finest moments courtesy of the cinematographer Freddie Francis, the real star of the show- the first glimpse of Peter Quint on top of the tower in broad daylight like a hallucination brought on by sun-stroke and Miss Jessel's later appearance among the reeds at the side of the lake tap directly into those primal fears of ours, genuinely disturbing, unearthly and in the case of the watching waiting woman blood-freezing. But when the pair start trolling around the house the effects become hokey and conventional and though Jessel's momentary appearance as a sobbing figure in the schoolroom is well handled the scene is marred and the balance upset by having her leave a teardrop behind. This conflict of techniques breaks wide open in a ludicrous episode when we seem to have wandered over to THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL for a spell. The fragrant Deb, candelabra borne aloft, swans around in her nightie checking all is well, accompanied by a full battery of Ghost Train noises, creaking doors, booming voices, mocking laughter, all that's missing is the Skeleton. It's a baffling lapse and quite disgraceful. If it's all in her head God knows, the film's not clever enough to offer the option at this point. Maybe they were trying to outdo Hammer but Hammer at least were never guilty of pretentiousness. All ends in tears and worse with the governess forcing the kids to face the demons - or browbeat them out of their minds, as you prefer - but Clayton finally throws his hat in the ring and gives Quint a full subjective close-up in the garden, the camera peering over his shoulder as he gazes down at his potential victim, all ambiguity abandoned. The children are quite extraordinary and it's a well-meant try but despite its intermittent rewards it's fatally muddled. A clear case of too many witches around the cauldron.

It's interesting to wonder what Lewton, Tourneur and the young Kim Hunter might have made of it.

Me and Orson Welles (2008)

The old Lime-light....

[31 January 2010]

A showbiz-mad Jewish schoolkid from New Jersey lands a bit-role, almost by accident, in Orson Welles' chaotically-born but groundbreaking Broadway production in modern-dress of Julius Caesar in 1937. That's the premise of Robert Kaplow's 2003 novel, one of these uneasy conceits that blur fact and fantasy but which Orson himself, with his love of illusion and fakery, would probably have endorsed even if he does end up as the 'heavy'. Richard Samuels, our hero, is also the narrator, Holden Caulfield dramatised by Neil Simon if that idea grabs you. Salinger's just died so we'll never know what he thought of it either. Accordingly Richard is cute, self-obsessed, sexually reticent and a relentless comedian with a smartass reflex in most situations. While rehearsals press ahead under Orson's galvanising tyranny, egos clash and crises are wrestled with, Richard loses his virginity like clockwork to Sonja, the ambitious production assistant he's been fixated on for a whole week. Before taking him to bed she treats him to a teary cringe-making recital of her rackety emotional life, hatred of her mother etc etc and you long to stop wasting time with these bewhiskered routines and get back to the Mercury and originality. But it gets worse. Richard thinks he's found True Love and when he finds out that Orson shares Sonja's favours as a matter of course stops being a cute comic and gets all serious, wounded and self-righteous, almost coming to blows with the Boy Wonder over his marital infidelity as you would of course (who is this kid ?) Though they appear to make up afterwards, once opening-night has been triumphantly achieved Richard finds himself out on his ear. Disillusioned he must learn to lose before he can win and all the rest of it and giving the whole theatrical experience and Mr. Orson Welles the spiritual finger decides to be a writer instead, what a relief. At least he might have better luck with Gretta, his earnest little girl-friend who's just had a short-story published (thanks to his Mercury connection, it must be said). Out they go sweetly to embrace the Big Apple together as a symbolic bluebird flies up into the sky. You couldn't make it up could you ? Well someone did. And I hope it was meant as a parody.

The movie, thankfully, gets us out of Richard's head and by employing a more slimline approach and eliminating some of the excesses (such as Sonja's maudlin confessional) makes for a reasonably buoyant entertainment despite some curious casting decisions. Richard is less irritating in transition but alas no more interesting since Zac Efron, who occupies his space, fails to transmit any discernible enthusiasm for anything around him. He's so cool he's not there. Sonja, who's twenty in the book, is played by a thirty-year-old actress who doesn't quite capture the image of the company's lust-object. Not that the Mercury boys seem too discriminating. They spend more time in locker-room conversations than the business in hand. Joe Cotten and Norman Lloyd are playfully offered as a dirty-minded double-act but George Coulouris, stiff-necked and warning of disaster, has morphed into Vittorio Gassman with a drawl out of Leslie Phillips. Impossible to swallow if you grew up watching the great veteran in forty years of pictures. But soft, who comes here, 'tis Christian McKay.

McKay is himself a good deal older than Orson was at the time. But then Orson always seemed older than he was anyway. His actual precocious theatrical youth is a veiled object to most of the living world now, imagined through the prism of history and his later greater fame, something heard in radio-recordings or glimpsed in photos and the newsreel in which he earnestly 'apologised' for scaring America witless with his Men from Mars. It's still a stretch to consider that he was no older than James Dean got to be when he played Charles Foster Kane. And for AMBERSONS (his best film potentially, I always think, why don't today's movers and shakers club together to track down the missing footage once and for all ?) he declined to appear as Georgie Minafer, preferring to remain unseen as the 'father' of the production. McKay's about the age Orson was when he played Harry Lime, his best-loved part -an impish monster who can sucker anybody into submission because his talent, self-confidence and sheer cheek seem bigger than the world's. And this is exactly what McKay gives us in his splendidly convincing incarnation, he makes you smile with pleasure. And his moments on stage as Brutus are inspired. The Mercury Theatre's first hour of glory is impressively mounted and rendered, for all the fun and fooling. It gives the film stature and is worth remembering. The teenager-fantasy stuff is negligible and its pygmy-darting won't I think hurt Orson's reputation. He was a magnificent magical maverick - even when he failed - and the world was always more exciting because he was out there somewhere beavering away at his visions and it slumped when he finally left it.

Two items of interest 1. I first came across the title-phrase fifty years ago in John Braine's novel Room at the Top when Joe Lampton joins the Thespians. 2. Though Holden Caulfield supposedly hated movies Salinger obviously named his hero from a picture-ad. William HOLDEN and Joan CAULFIELD in DEAR RUTH, Paramount, 1947.

Footsteps in the Fog (1955)

Bonnie Jean, just too beautiful...

[27 January 2010]

She died last weekend aged 80, a great star whose career never seemed to find a summit, forestalled by middling films and imprecise casting. While this Edwardian Gothic gave her one of her more intriguing roles I've always felt she was too beautiful for it. If Lily the blackmailing housemaid had been less attractive the dangerous affair with her murderous employer would have felt a lot darker, seamier and her final pathos - the little skivvy whose dream-world collapses around her - more acute. When the Grangers are together they look perfectly suited - a married star-team of their day. Full marks to their performances, though.

While one or two plot-twists are far too facile - the brother-in-law mistaking the barrister for Lowry just because he comes out of a room, for instance - Arthur Lubin's direction gets the points across clearly and efficiently though lacking the Hitchcock intensity and lingering touches which might have made this a minor classic. A solid Technicolor production there's nonetheless a certain aura of rush and tweaking here and there with odd continuity slips and scenes that suddenly trail away in mid-sentence. Some bad processing is evident when the rather wet second-leads go driving together in the new horseless-carriage, which at least provides some topically amusing light-relief. But it's a memorable little show overall, good to watch with a last glimpse of Granger that's quite clammy - and now to be cherished more than ever as another movie-icon slips away from us in the dark.

The Spiral Staircase (1946)

Anything can happen in the dark...

[29 June 2009]

Trouble is, not a lot really does, in between the absolutely superb set-pieces that distinguish this piece and compensate for its gradually faltering script.. The opening sequences have a classical brilliance. A lame girl is strangled in a Massachusetts village-hotel one thundery afternoon. Seized from behind she does not struggle with her attacker - identified to us only as a Glaring Eye - but is posed strikingly with convulsed hands above her head like a kind of religious sacrifice. Downstairs in the lobby an early form of motion-picture show is also reaching a tragic end. Among the rapt audience sits Helen (Dorothy McGuire) for whom this world that cannot speak has direct relevance. As a child she had witnessed the deaths of her parents in a fire and has been mute from shock ever since. Which puts her high on the hit-list of the Glaring Eye who's already accounted for several young girls with imperfections. The self-important Constable (James Bell) warns her to get home before dark..

She accepts a buggy-ride from the new young doctor (Kent Smith) who wants her to see a specialist and whose interest seems more than professional. When he's summoned on the road to a case she continues on alone through the tingly-tangly woods to the big old Warren mansion where she lives-in as a domestic. Armed with a piece of branch she runs it along the fence like a child whistling in the dark but fails to notice, as the storm breaks, a figure in oilskins watching her from behind a tree along the drive. As she fumbles for her key in the pelting rain it makes to intercept her but she reaches the front door unaware and unscathed. Inside the house, splendid with spacious vistas and shadowy byways, a sly old matriarch (Ethel Barrymore) dominates the scene, ostensibly bedridden but with a revolver under her pillow. Just as well as Glaring Eye's on the premises, scrutinising Helen from the landing as she studies her reflection in the full-length mirror. Her breath on the glass makes her mouth disappear... Things start spiralling down once we meet the Warren children - playboy son Stephen (Gordon Oliver) and his half-brother Albert (George Brent), a stuffy Professor whose beautiful secretary Blanche (Rhonda Fleming with her old nose) is conducting an uneasy affair with his despised sibling. While this dull trio go through the motions (to increasingly uninspired dialogue) Mrs. Warren keeps warning Helen to quit the house, the tippling cook (Elsa Lanchester) gets drunk and all's set in motion rather too obviously to leave Helen alone with the killer. In all this aftermath four scenes stand out in sharp relief - Helen's daydream of marrying the doc becomes a nightmare, chillingly staged, when she's unable to say "I do" at the ceremony; the murder of Blanche in the wine-cellar, again with disturbingly religious imagery, though prefaced with the hoariest cliché - "Oh it's you !" she exclaims brightly to camera, "You frightened the life out of me !"; Helen's desperate failure to summon help when the Constable calls unexpectedly - and the showdown on the titular staircase, the old lady rising from her bed, gun in hand, to pump some much-needed blood into the climax - and give Helen her voice back...

It was a real treat to discover the source-novel by Ethel Lina White in full online. Set on the Welsh border in the 1930s it has a fuller cast of characters, good conversation and humour, interesting period details, some intriguing twists and turns - and brilliantly extended suspense. And Helen's not mute in the book - a major bonus - and being Welsh (like Miss White) she's got plenty to say for herself.

The Dam Busters (1955)

simply great.....

[5 June 2009]

By which I mean its virtues are modest, matter-of-fact, understated, its values sprung on practical story-telling, symbolised characters and honest sentiment, it's no dazzling blockbuster or searching biography and its special-effects might be termed 'crude-imentary' - yet its cumulative impact, as a tribute to a hazardous undertaking, is extraordinarily inspiring. R.C. Sheriff's scenario involves two missions, one on the ground and one in the air. Barnes Wallis' battle with the bureaucrats, largely hoked-up (and disclaimed by the man himself) is depicted rather like an Ealing comedy, Redgrave's genius boffin scorned and fobbed off by the Men from the Ministry (with the priceless Raymond Huntley at his supercilious best). Having Wallis explain his ideas to the family doctor in the opening sequence clues the audience in to the venturesome possibilities from a cosy domestic perspective (like sitting in a cinema or watching the telly). His progress along the chain of command after he finally gets the go-ahead is laced with a blithe absurdity - he's unable to tell the mission-leader Gibson (Richard Todd) what the specific target is just yet since Gibson's name's not on the secret-list - British humour beautifully nailed.

When Guy Gibson and his crews climb aboard the lorries taking them to the airfield it's a solemn and moving moment edged now with darkness and apprehension. It's a tad confusing during the raids when casualties start and we're not sure who's behind the masks but next morning all is made clear when the survivors return wordlessly to their quarters and some rooms remain unoccupied, some tables in the dining-hall left vacant. In the final scene Wallis and Gibson meet briefly to ponder the triumphs and tragedies of the night, Wallis exiting soberly while Gibson with "letters to write" strides off into the distance from which he himself is later destined never to return. The film suggests that he saw as an omen the death of his dog just before the raid in a hit-and-run. (The car did stop, in reality, but that would have meant another sub-plot). The flickering regret, the fond memory, the gesture of closure, all are perfectly conveyed and could also reflect his feelings about his own mortality. He appears to be single in the film with just the dog as companion but in actual fact had been married since 1940.

Nxxxer as a pet-name was not uncommon in those days along with Snowy, Rusty and indeed Gyp (would the travelling-community be up in arms over this ?). Black people were not a significant presence here then, to most of us they lived in Africa or were characters in story-books. As a child I remember seeing advertisements in shops selling ladies' gloves etc in a shade known as "nxxxer-brown". It was a fashion of the time borne of distance not hostility. Let the record stand, with explanations if need be. You can't point a lesson by cleaning off the blackboard. If Hitler had conquered Britain - as at one stage he conceivably might have done - multiculturalism could never have flowered. Be thankful there were enough Gibsons out there doing the fighting - and the dying - to preserve the right of future generations to ask questions. Don't sully the brave past with inappropriate slurs. I think we owe him a pet-name or two.

Hell and High Water (1954)

a canny madness..

[30 April 2009]

When James Bond reached the big screen in the early Sixties Ian Fleming's baddies - the Russians - were diplomatically changed into Third Force characters playing off the super-powers against each other usually to rack up loot or feed a madman's ego. In the bristling up-and-atom Fifties it was a different tale. With McCarthyism breathing down its neck Hollywood had a vested interest in slagging off the Reds without fear or favour giving rise to - among others - two fascinating collaborations between Sam Fuller and Richard Widmark. Fuller claimed though to eschew ideology in favour of tough tabloid human-interest while Widmark, a noted liberal but not a 'joiner', ducked and dived in the flow of things to keep his career afloat. PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET was a dark urban thriller in which a pickpocket inadvertently pinches top-secret microfilm. He's not a patriot and his subsequent actions are mercenary but the murder of a friend finally triggers personal revenge. Interestingly the Commie spy's also a mercenary, being easier to combat dramatically, I suppose, than a set of alien ideas.

When HIGH WATER took to the waves CinemaScope was in, spreading its wings on a mushroom-cloud explosion near the Arctic circle, an earnest voice-over suggesting It's All True. A busy reel of 'Scope travelogue zaps us around the world (there's a momentary clip from THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN with Maggie McNamara at the edge of frame) as the media buzzes with the sudden disappearance of Professor Montel, top man in his nuclear field - has he 'gone over' ? "Like something out of Inner Sanctum" ex-Cmdr Adam Jones observes on being summoned to a secret meeting in the dead of night (a nice in-joke: Widmark acted in countless radio shows before movie-fame). Get that name, a potent mix of the First Man and the First American Sea-Dog but like the pickpocket this Jones is no flag-waver. He's hired for cash by a civilian consortium of scientists headed by Montel (he didn't defect) to investigate suspicious activity around said Arctic - the film's crafty way of turning the Cold War hot, potentially, without appearing to do so. No governments are officially represented on this "peaceful expedition" and the only Americans involved are the mercenary Jones and his "key men" from World War II. Even the submarine they're using is an old Japanese "sewer-pipe". Jones does insist, against objections, on arming the vessel - not as a political gesture, you understand, but just to cover everyone's butt. So off we go into a delirious farrago of unabashed clichés - the one girl on the sub, the skipper's guilty past (he lost a ship through disobeying orders), the Chinese equivalent of "the good German" etc. knowingly marshalled by Fuller to lively effect mainly within the boat (just as well as the surface-scenes against lurid backcloths are on a par with the worst moments in BEN-HUR).

Montel's on board as expedition-leader along with his fetching assistant Denise who's rejected at first as a 'jonah' by the superstitious matelots but soon wins them round with a gracious plea for tolerance - the brimming eyes probably did the trick. "That's no female - that's a scientist !" Denise can speak umpteen languages but doesn't know what a 'pass' is. She soon finds out, the sailor-boys lining up to make her acquaintance, the jovial Ski with his fake tattoos and a drunken crewman who gets physical till the skipper knocks him cold. "A last-minute replacement," he tells her. Not one of his key men, obviously. Despite occasional frictions with both eggheads Jones does a nifty job of seducing Denise in a quite sexy bunkside dalliance bathed in infra-red during a cat-and-mouse, no-sounds encounter with a Red sub. Chin Lee the cook (who appears out of nowhere via Central Casting) has no English but entertains the crew with comic parodies of popular songs in fluent pidgin-American. When a Red Chinese officer is captured during a contretemps on their island-objective Chin is enlisted to pose as another prisoner to find out what they're up to. He insists on being beaten up by the skipper in person beforehand to make it more convincing - "It won't hurt if you do it" - something rather dark going on here. He secures the vital information but is killed by the Red. They intend dropping a bomb on Korea and Manchuria from a plane with American markings - as they would, of course. (The ultimate paranoid nightmare). Jones' patriotism surfaces - "They're gonna lay the biggest egg in history and we're taking the rap for it. I don't like that !" Quite so. He thereupon orders up every gun the old bucket can muster to knock the Gooks out of the sky. Montel, the man of reason, protests "this insanity" but knows the movie's got him beat and sacrifices himself for the greater commonsense. "Each man has his own reason for living and his own price for dying." (The script got rather fond of this line and tended to repeat it). Mission completed, the world is saved (for the moment) but not without an extra twist of pathos I won't reveal even at this great distance because it's rather good.

By the Sixties the climate had changed sufficiently to allow the nuclear-disaster cycle where someone presses the button - always by accident or delusion and always from our side - and the world comes apart. Widmark returned to Arctic waters as producer and star of THE BEDFORD INCIDENT in which a hawkish destroyer-captain, like a modern Ahab, obsessively stalks and hustles a trapped Russian sub to the point of no return. No girls here, no jokes, no colour and 'Scope. And this time round absolutely no-one gets to "head for home."

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

This crazy Limey nobody digs but you've got to admire his sand

[24 April 2009]

"What's your favourite film, then ?" A dread unsettling question. But if harried by the Turks, say, I'd probably have to admit to this one - while agonisingly conscious of all the other favourite films being elbowed aside. And I write as one not overly enthused about Lean's other epic ventures. RIVER KWAI I find offensive for its wilful neglect of real p.o.w. horror in favour of smugly cooked-up ironies and hack-platitudes. ZHIVAGO is undermined by hollow leads chosen only for their beauty, RYAN'S DAUGHTER is insanely overblown soap-opera while A PASSAGE TO India collapses halfway through when the thread snaps and we're just watching the actors tread water. But LAWRENCE, for me, is the real deal, a bewitching tapestry so successful at what it sets out to achieve it's almost incredible. Gobsmacking to watch and a delight to listen to it makes you feel thrilled that movies were invented.

Sure, it plays games with history. "It's not the real Lawrence, of course," Lean admitted on the box. Quite so. The real Lawrence would require a mini-series or, at the end, a chamber-drama like Anglia's excellent TV film of the Nineties with Ralph Fiennes. The massive river of events, intrigues and personnel as recorded by Lawrence himself (though questioned in some quarters) has been simplified here, channelled into a tributary of pertinent moments and symbols, a loner's odyssey, with key support figures marginalised strategically along its banks. The true extent of Lawrence's role as an Imperialist agent did not begin to be disclosed, officially, until the end of the Sixties. To suit the film's left-wing leanings and better engage with the mass blockbuster audience he's depicted initially as politically naive, an amusingly bumptious misfit with a classical education packed off into the desert, via a wily politico, partly to get him out of the hair of his C.O. who has little faith in him or his mission to foster Arab unity against their Turkish overlords ("A sideshow of a sideshow !"). That celebrated cut from the blowing-out of a match to sunrise on the desert sweeps us literally into a new world (and still does). Lean's staging, Young's photography and Jarre's surging music combine to breathtaking effect. The winsome weirdo who enjoys preening himself and teasing his own flesh is tested against lethal tribal-rivalry but fires them with a bold vision - the taking of Akaba, a sea-port undefended on its landward side. During the long trek to this objective one of his men is lost in the desert. Lawrence goes out of his way to reclaim him, earning the respect of all and they clothe him in the robes of an Arab chieftain. (In real life this was a more pragmatic suggestion from the Brits). A further rite of leadership arises when he takes it upon himself to execute a man for murder, preventing an inter-tribal war. The man he kills is the man he saved (a deft juxtaposition of two separate incidents in real life involving different people). Lawrence is later to confess to his new C.O. that he enjoyed the experience.

Akaba is successfully taken (in a stunning panning-shot) and Lawrence begins to make a name for himself. He gets promoted and becomes a guerrilla-leader in assaults on the Turkish railway. But a turning-point comes when he's captured by the Turks on a reconnaissance, is flogged and (possibly) raped before being released. His bodily integrity shattered he's further disillusioned to discover (in the film) that the promise of independence he's been peddling to the Arabs is a stitch-up to conceal the colonial interests of Britain and France. The self-hurting he once indulged in now penetrates too deeply and the self-image become abhorrent. His request to stand down is refused, he's too important now, and in bitterness and despair takes part in a revenge-massacre of retreating Turkish troops. When Allied victory is secured he's sent home, leaving the politicians to sort things out. While this makes for a fine symbolical end to the drama it also constitutes the film's biggest distortion of history. Prince Feisal effects to dismiss him in the movie while in real life Feisal needed him more than ever in the battle for nation-rights at the Versailles Peace Conference. Feisal, the real fall-guy, was treated very badly by the Europeans and only Lawrence's active intervention as his spokesman won him concessions. It's good that we now have the Ralph Fiennes film which rectifies the record.

Robert Bolt's quirky brilliant dialogue, for Lean, tends to short-change some of the characters, reducing the stature of Allenby and Sheik Auda in a generally cynical view of motives which spurred their descendants to seek redress from the film-makers. At the same time it's all wonderfully entertaining and impeccably played by a sterling cast. Omar Sharif showed potential he never has since. And though Lawrence was never really an 'innocent' Peter O'Toole riding the whirlwind with his piercing charisma (and newly-sculpted nose) has an iconic power that will live in movie-history forever - like Sir David's film the likes of which cannot be replicated now that computers have taken over much of the adventure and the excitement. One last thought - the real T.E. archaeologist and map-maker was involved in re-drawing the map of the Middle East with all its volatile consequences through the 20th century and beyond. The final irony indeed.

Revolutionary Road (2008)

unhappy together and utterly absorbing...

[31 March 2009]

A decade ago Kate and Leo helped salvage the bloated monstrosity TITANIC with a magical chemistry that made their love story touching and important. The chemistry sparks anew in their first screen reunion though for the characters they play here the magic has been draining from their lives. Frank and April Wheeler are a middle-class couple living in Fifties Connecticut with their two children. April's the home-maker while Frank is a sales executive with a machine-manufacturing company in New York where his late father used to work. Their early dreams of being something special have failed to materialise. April, increasingly chafing against domesticity, seeks an outlet in amateur dramatics but everything goes wrong on the night and her confidence is shattered. Frank's attempt at reassurance on the way home she construes as condescension and they have a blazing row.. Frank's approach to his job is a mix of detachment and disdain but leaves him too far into his own comfort-zone to want to break out of it and he takes the opportunity to begin an affair with a receptionist. It's his birthday, as it happens, and he gets home late to find that April and the kids have prepared a party for him which pricks his conscience and brings him to tears.

April's last-ditch idea to revitalise their relationship is for them to uproot permanently to Europe where she would get a job as a secretary in a U.S. Government agency leaving Frank time to "find himself". As his own view of what this might entail seems pretty vague he endorses the notion half-heartedly to keep the peace but when she finds she's pregnant again and he's offered a promotion at work the pipe-dream goes the way of all the others. Back in her trap April makes her own opportunity for extra-marital sex with the guy across the way who secretly fancies her. But it's the unwelcome intrusion of another neighbour into their fragile hearth and home which exacerbates a night of crisis for the pair with April staying out in the woods alone. On what proves to be their final morning together she acts out deliberately and calmly the perfect scenario of the dutiful and solicitous wife before Frank leaves for work and she goes on to trigger, with resolution, an appalling tragedy... Richard Yates' densely-analytical novel, first published nearly fifty years ago, gets a bit oppressive and over-written at times in its relentless dissection of motives and self-deceptions to the extent that its characters begin to feel like specimens under a microscope. And I was less than impressed, in both book and film, with the crude device of the lunatic neighbour. John Givings is an institutionalised man who's had shock-treatment and is released part-time to his family. His mother insists on bringing him along on visits to the Wheelers where his increasingly sardonic and tactless observations - like parting a spider-web with a meat-cleaver - cause Frank to finally rear up and give him a roasting. The mother tearfully protests "He's not well, Frank !" which for me tips the thing for a giddy moment into farce because it kept reminding me irrepressibly of dear old Spike Milligan. (He'd wanted "I told you I was ill" written on his gravestone but they'd only allow it in Irish). Spike was off the wall too but he was also a comic genius. This fellow's just obnoxious though some in the audience found him amusing.

This blip apart, Sam Mendes' magnetic film offers us air and space - I loved the image of the commuters in their trilby hats pouring into the streets - while honouring the text with precision and a remarkable subtlety perfectly reflected by the two leads - the ever-present conflict between what they say and what they feel, what they think they want and what they're prepared to settle for - or finally not, in April's case, bringing a climax of almost unbearable poignancy.

The Big Sky (1952)

Just a step and a holler....

[17 March 2009]

Like RED RIVER it's in black-and-white, which some find disappointing. For me it's always given the material an agreeably unglamourised flavour like its predecessor but then I was raised in the age when b/w was still the norm. A lot of it takes place at night, in any case, in the arc-lit woodlands of RKO, which does develop a certain claustrophobia. It's quite a dark film in many ways with much emphasis on physical pain, injury and impairment. People are whipped, hobbled, stabbed, shot, one guy gets an arrow in the neck, another a burning brand in the face - and the mighty Kirk has a dislocated finger amputated with the help of whisky in a scene angled for comedy but which isn't very funny. Even the head-baddie's a cripple.

As a happy-go-lucky mountain-man who joins a French fur-trading expedition up the Missouri River Kirk starts out amusingly in Ned Land chucklehead mode with even a song thrown in but becomes increasingly brusque and modernistic perhaps to compensate for the fact that he's not the driving force here. At the same time I like the way Hawks makes him a team player, sitting back to listen to other actors doing their thing and not even getting the girl in the end. That prize is won by his buddy, played by the slick shifty-looking Dewey Martin with his Tony Curtis quiff but none of the Curtis charm, unfortunately. Inter-racial love stories in Westerns were all the rage at the time but the Indian bride usually got killed - an idyll denied an ongoing reality. Not here, though. As the Blackfoot princess Elizabeth Threatt is sensational. A tall mysterious lady with a cat-like grace and a haughty mien but with sudden flashes of great good humour she's very much a Hawks Woman - practical, resourceful and able to call her own shots when the time comes - and all without a single word of English dialogue. There are a couple of sly filches from THE OUTLAW (which Hawks was directing before Howard Hughes fired him) including the famous "I'll keep him warm" scene. Rumour has it that Kirk demanded 15 takes just to get it right - no I'm joking but it's a cute thought.

Out on the river in daylight Hawks and Russell Harlan conjure up some marvellously fluid imagery for which Harlan was Oscar-nominated but didn't win. Ditto Arthur Hunnicutt who oozes authenticity as the guide/interpreter with his tall tales and seasoned wisdom. He's also Martin's uncle and there's some deft undercutting of myth when it's revealed that Martin's sledgehammer punches are the result of a bullet-pouch clenched in his fist and that his former prejudice against Indians is based on one of Uncle's stories ("I talk too much."). But he finally renounces prejudice off his own bat without knowing the story to be a lie. Tiomkin's exquisite score is sprung on three main themes - the epic journey, the Indian presence and a beautiful love-song sung by the Frenchmen as a remembrance of home. At the close Martin elects to remain with his bride and her people while his companions prepare to return downriver - for them a thousand-mile journey, for him "just a step and a holler" home to bed. For the audience a classic juxtaposition of movie-dreaming and our own reality. The 'Mandan' and its crew recede into infinity in our minds like a 'trip round the universe', such a long long way. But like Martin we can simply go home now, the show's over. We put on our coats and file out of the old fleapit (I'm talking 1952 here) just a step and a holler from our own private teepees.

To correct a previous poster the guy who got it in the neck was Pascal, played by Booth Colman.

The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)

Preminger presides....

[20 February 2009]

It was known as ONE MAN MUTINY in the U.K. since Billy Mitchell's was not a name to conjure with over here. (Warners had a similar problem with the Alan Ladd vehicle THE McCONNELL STORY which wound up as TIGER IN THE SKY). I'd never heard of Mitchell either before this but had connection at the time with the world of military protocol and what happened when you broke the rules, if only as a humble National Serviceman. A courtroom drama was always a draw, here allied with a recreation of the Twenties in the new CinemaScope and a score by Dimitri Tiomkin which appropriately stiffened the sinews and summoned up the blood. Gary Cooper cut an impressive figure in his uniform and though I now learn that he wasn't everybody's choice for the part his HIGH NOON image - the lone man of integrity at odds with his own community - probably made him more sympathetic.

War-hero Mitchell was tried for insubordination after speaking out of turn to the press about the Army's indifferent attitude to his beloved Air Service - underfunded and undervalued, losing fliers in clapped-out planes (on peacetime exercises and duties) and unconvinced by Mitchell's vision of the future role and importance of aerial combat. Found guilty, which technically he was, he was suspended for five years without pay but later chose to resign (not shown in the film). History was to thoroughly vindicate his stance and the man himself posthumously recognised and honoured (not shown either) but it still seems pretty courageous, in the politically-touchy Fifties, to mount a production in which the military establishment is the 'heavy'. All grist to the mill, however, for Otto Preminger who delighted in giving the censors sleepless nights though Mitchell's attack is somewhat softened. "You want to give the Army a kick in the pants but you want to do it like a gentleman," his counsel wryly observes. In reality the in-fighting was a good deal more abrasive but Coop, true to his movie-code, never sneaks a low blow.

Charles Bickford, in his third and final film for Preminger, heads up the support as Mitchell's austere C.O. who becomes an implacable opponent. Twenty years earlier he was the villain Latigo to Coop's Bill Hickok in THE PLAINSMAN. Ralph Bellamy, for so long the squarejohn who never got the girl in Thirties comedies, bounced back on the screen after ten years away treading the boards with a zesty turn as Billy's attorney whose achieving of a deal with the court is scuppered when his client resolutely refuses to compromise. The young Rod Steiger, back in the days when he was prone to show his teeth and sneer at the camera, gives one of his more modulated performances as the prosecution's hired gun, possibly overawed by Preminger (an even bigger ham on set). I like the way he introduces himself by rapping on the table, as if respectfully knocking at the door before moving in to nail his prey, even sharing a joke with the defendant during their pertinent exchanges. In the film Mitchell is given a bout of malaria to also contend with during the trial. Whether this was authentic or a device to help bolster Coop against the new boy's darting swoops and tricks is interesting to consider. All this is taking place, of course, during Prohibition - which explains why Billy is only offered a glass of milk when he visits the Landsdownes' apartment. Preminger respects his audience sufficiently not to elaborate here though Billy tactfully doesn't drink it. We're left to wonder whether young clean-cut Commander Zack might have a covert bottle or two stashed away. Maybe even Crazy Otto couldn't go that far...

The Clouded Yellow (1950)

Not quite the Master...

[28 January 2009]

CLOUDED YELLOW is a favourite from my schooldays because of its basic ingredients - a haunting mystery, a fascinating chase across England from a deceptively-drowsy Hampshire to the bustle of Liverpool docks, a rousing climax and the only on-screen teaming of two great British stars. Hitchcock was the obvious model, a factor utilised in the marketing of the recent DVD and the director Ralph Thomas actually remade THE 39 STEPS - very flatly - at the end of the decade. Thomas was a prolific journeyman of variable competence, turning out thrillers, war films, adventure stories, historical dramas and comedies (most notably DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE) but lacked the personality to conjure a classic.

David Somers (Trevor Howard) is an M.I.6 agent - a sort of low-key James Bond without the glamour - who's put on the back-burner after botching an operation. He opts for a job cataloguing butterflies (hence the title) at a rural retreat where he involves himself in the troubles of Sophie (Jean Simmons) the young ward of the house who's suspected of murder when the local bad-lad (Maxwell Reed), with whom she'd been quarrelling, is found with a knife in his back. Somers takes it upon himself to extricate this trapped butterfly from police hostility (very Hitch) and smuggle her out of the country with the help of his contacts. Despite the presence of Kenneth More on the sidelines (waiting for the big break so soon to come) there's no (conscious) humour in the film at all and no Hitch-tension between the leads. Though motivated by a romantic attachment as well as the urge to atone for past mistakes Somers seems more a father-figure than a potential lover. No teasy-weasy handcuffs and wet stockings here, it's all very stiff upper-lip and he never questions her innocence though the girl remains an enigma until near the end. As a child she'd witnessed the violent death of her parents but has blocked out the memory (very SPELLBOUND). When she starts to get it back the real perpetrator of crimes past and present turns up in Liverpool to silence her. What follows is like watching MIDSOMER MURDERS turn into THE PERILS OF PAULINE complete with cliff-hanger. Wildly over-the-top and completely illogical it's great hare-brained fun and very gripping. Whether this startling gear-change was originally planned or came about during production is unclear. The film certainly terminates very abruptly with the pair in long-shot walking away together over the rooftops, arms around each other, though the gentleman at this moment looks about a foot taller than Mr. Howard. Hitchcockery is catching. In the changed ending to SUSPICION we're given a back-of-heads shot of Grant and Fontaine where the heads quite obviously aren't theirs.

Ralph Thomas does bring off one nifty Hitch trick quite well. Somers appears to capitulate to pursuing cops and sends them into a restaurant to pick the girl up. When they reach her table she's no longer there and a brassy blonde greets them instead while Somers too has cleared off. Nice one. Hitch would smile.

It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

Limits on infinity...

[20 January 2009]

I never saw it on the big screen. I was ill in bed when it first came out but like thousands of others picked up on it much later via television, which had transformed a half-forgotten curio into a Christmastime classic. A good man, worn down by vicissitudes, is rescued from the abyss and restored to self-worth when the community he's supported rallies round to bail him out of his troubles. Capra's orchestration of human joys and sorrows, of frailties, frustrations, dilemmas and temptations is extraordinarily, dazzlingly, powerfully good. But his tacked-on fantasy elements become irrelevant to a point of annoyance.

His 'hereafter' is a cosy extension of Bedford Falls, just dial a prayer to the Chief who can preside with perfect equanimity over World War II and so on but moves heaven and earth to reclaim one random individual from the (pertinently Catholic) sin of trying to do away with himself. This goes directly to the heart of all that's wrong with organised religion. It's partisan and self-serving. The world-without-George would have been better dramatised as a straightforward nightmare from which he awakes with relief to be saved by his friends. Same story, but without the guardian angel who belongs in a lighter-based film. This alternate world is like a scripting equivalent of trick-photography, a leaf through the family album from which all images of George have been carefully snipped while leaving the space around him intact. He still exists along with his memories and he can interact with other people but he's no longer RECOGNISED by his peers, even his loving mother doesn't accept him. In effect he's been blackballed from the club, his achievements stricken from the record. His ultimate oblivion is that of social exclusion, possibly reflecting the deep-seated fear of a good loyal assimilated immigrant like Capra, the American Dream turning to dust.

This fear induces conformity, the need to stand with the crowd and to view with prejudice the stranger, the outsider, those who don't fit the frame, young girls who become old maids, wear glasses and work in libraries. It's not enough for a man to be heroic he needs a medal to confirm it like little brother Harry who gets to meet the President. Everyone must shape up and show their credentials (even Clarence the trainee angel). Bert the cop and Ernie the cab-driver also went to war, we're hurriedly told, though when we see them at the end they don't really appear to have gone anyplace. The point is well taken - hilariously by some posters - that Pottersville seems more fun (dancing girls and sinful jazz music !)- a welcome relief for many from all that overbearing apple-pie surveillance (guardian angels and nosy neighbours). Paradise, like perfection, is relative. And personal. But the truly great Jim Stewart (not Jimmy, he hated that) triumphantly transcends the naffness and the gimmickry to give us an Everyman for the ages. He's the real classic here.

Champion (1949)

The Mad Russian goes the distance...

[12 December 2008]

He's 92 this week. And at 32 CHAMPION made Kirk a superstar. After playing weaklings, smooth gangsters and suburban husbands the part of Midge Kelly released the dynamic that characterised so much of his future work. The Kirk we came to know was born here. It's probably the role he most identified with at the time. His own experience of a father who never praised him and his consequent desire to prove himself - though not exactly paralleled here - can be echoed in the moonlit scene on the beach when he tells his girl of his ambition. And we know he's going to win.

Stanley Kramer and Carl Foreman thought smaller - and usually better - in those days, causing a stir on behalf of independent production with a series of modest-budget but striking films on social issues e.g. HOME OF THE BRAVE, about racism in the armed forces and THE MEN, about the problems of disabled war vets (which unleashed another giant, Marlon Brando, onto the screen). CHAMPION, though sprung on more generic elements, adds a dark post-war abrasiveness to a familiar milieu and an uncompromising protagonist who takes no prisoners on his rise to the top. Midge becomes a monster and those closest to him get the worst of it before he finally expires, you could say, of an exploded ego. "He was a credit to the fight game" his brother drily observes, reflecting the film's ambivalence towards the sport, condemning what it exploits and vice versa. Midge's manager (Paul Stewart) wants to walk away but can't resist "watching a couple of good boys work out". We still love to 'cheer the champ' today but the physical and mental risks involved are sobering thoughts.

Arthur Kennedy makes a solid presence of the rather thankless part of the kid brother/best friend/voice of conscience who's crippled to boot. The kid brother was usually disabled or a musical prodigy in these ringside sagas and eight years earlier Kennedy himself had gone the musical route in the more sentimental CITY FOR CONQUEST with James Cagney, no less, as his self-sacrificing sibling. The three babes who attend on Midge's life - the good, the bad and the one caught in the middle - are well contrasted with Ruth Roman outstanding as the little shotgun-wife he promptly deserts but returns to for an unforgivable piece of one-upmanship. And yet, despite it all, we retain a sneaking regard for this compelling unstoppable dreadnought. Earlier in the film Midge is ordered to throw a fight, instead he goes on defiantly to win the bout. In the empty stadium he's cornered by the promoter's goon-squad, it's payback-time. But unlike most people in that situation he's got an edge, he knows how to mix it. Before the numbers wear him down he gives them a pasting for their trouble. It's exhilarating to watch. Go get 'em Kirk..... And Many Happy Returns.

Scream of Fear (1961)

There's Method in her madness...

[1 December 2008]

I hate the American title, it sounds like a horror-comic, which this isn't. The British title is sly and insinuating, which this is. The plot's as old as the hills but time-honoured and the presentation here is masterly. Totally artificial but layered with intrigue and capped with a surprise that, on first viewing, really surprises. And continues to haunt and enthral thereafter.. There are little nods to PSYCHO - the dark specs, the eerie score, the wandering corpse - but it parts company with Hitchcock in its preservation of mystery, a commodity he never much cared for. In VERTIGO he disposed of it as soon as he could in favour of the truth, thus heightening the tension between Scottie and the girl(s) while PSYCHO itself is more a study in ambiguity, the why rather than the who. If Hitch had helmed Seth Holt's film - or indeed Michael Anderson's CHASE A CROOKED SHADOW - he would have restructured the scenario to permit the punters access to the heart of the situation via at least one lead character in order for his identification-techniques to come into play. His STAGE FRIGHT had notably failed very lamely because he deliberately lied to the audience and meandered off track (maybe out of desperation).

Here, however, and in Anderson, we're in Agatha Christie country with all the masks firmly in place until the final showdown. The revelation that the 'frightened lady' is actually the steely impostor rather than her persecutors is a powerful reversal-of-form (see Merle Oberon in DARK WATERS for the more conventional approach) and the casting of Lee Strasberg's daughter is marvellously apt. In her quest for answers Maggie must become a Method actress, psyching herself into Penny's 'condition' even when confronting horrors. Who was on the other end of the phone is not explained (neither was the McKittrick Hotel sequence in VERTIGO) but these energetic conspirators did employ a tape-recorder at one point so presumably could patch together anything that crossed their evil minds. What some folk will do for money.

Ben-Hur (1959)

Tell me the old old story...

[28 October 2008]

Despite gaining First Certificates in Temperance and Scripture studies -or maybe because of it - I grew to hate having to go to Sunday-school when I was a kid. It trapped and depressed me, like rehearsing for your own funeral every week, all best-clothed and po-faced. I wasn't a huge fan of day-school either but at least it embraced a broader livelier plain and the brainwashing was less oppressive. This always comes to mind when I watch the last hour or so of BEN-HUR. The fun people have left the building - Messala's bitten the dust and the Sheik's picked up his winnings and taken his horses back home - and we're left with the humourless Hurs looking for a miracle.

On its original release I still paid lip-service to the doctrines and the blend of the secular and the mystical had cast a spell. The continuing-on into other things beyond the blood-and-guts chariot race seemed rather cool and impressive and the film's technical shortcomings - the ultra-cheapo naval battle and some jarring editing slips - could be overlooked. Now that the doctrines have lost their hold the faults are less forgivable and the gear-shift towards the end quite detrimental. The keen edge of narrative-realism gives way to acute New Testamentitis, everyone parroting the legend like they've been hit on the head with a mallet. They know who this Christ is all of a sudden, because they've read the script and been to Sunday-school. The essential mystery of Christ is not explored but ritualised. The hapless Wyler must forsake drama for dramatic cliché (I don't think Gore Vidal wrote these scenes).

On the other hand it doesn't help that for reasons of multicultural politics the Christian story is soft-pedalled. The carpenter is practically knocked off his feet in the film's opening rush to Roman spectacle while the great "no water for him" scene can sustain - despite the organ-music - through sheer humanist power. The road to the Cross is convincingly agonised but the curing of the Hur women through some sort of remote-control amnesty - unlike in the novel - makes no kind of sense. The fine symbolic moment showing Christ's blood flowing out into the world clashes gruesomely with the corny twittering in that cosy little cave. Of course we're glad the family is reunited - a key Wyler concern - but if it had to be done by magic it's a pity the film finally lacked the conviction that my old Sunday-school mentors would have roundly endorsed.

Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)

Don't mention the war ...

[19 August 2008]

Feminists would tear it to shreds and the script's as light as a balloon but this lovely airy fairy-tale about three secretary-birds in romantic old Rome works like a dream - provided you don't dwell too much on certain aspects.. Foreign travel was not a commonplace for most punters back in 1954 so Fox's full-time commitment to CinemaScope opened up the world in more ways than one. With Sinatra on the soundtrack ushering in the Oscar-winning title-song over a scenic tour of the Eternal City the blend of ancient and modern was irresistible. Little Maria from the mid-West (Maggie McNamara) ushers in the story, arriving to work at a U.S. Government Agency. She's hardly got her coat off the first day before she's invited to a cocktail-party where she meets handsome Prince Dino (Louis Jourdan) and is determined to land him. ("Palazzo ? That's a palace, isn't it ?" Clever girl). Her strategy, encouraged by her flatmates, is to find out what his cultural tastes and interests are and then pretend, somewhat sketchily, to share them. This leads to some fatuous conversations which wouldn't fool a ten-year-old and are understandably short on screen. For a knowing Lothario (he'd already tried to lure her to Venice for the weekend) Dino seems remarkably gullible and gets terribly upset when she finally confesses the truth.

Meanwhile,'Big Sister' Anita (Jean Peters),struggling with convention and the agency's strict no-fratting rule, gets close to Giorgio (Rossano Brazzi, lower lip a-quiver) following a not-too-well-done incident with a runaway car. He's a humble interpreter from the wrong side of town who wants to be a lawyer but has to support Mamma and his twenty-five brothers and sisters. When their liaison is discovered by the boss's wife, who seems to be everywhere, Giorgio gets the sack and Anita, feeling responsible, is all set to share his bleak future. It's left to Clifton Webb to play fairy-godfather as the expatriate novelist Shadwell (the man who wrote Winter Harvest, we're told, but we're not told what it's about), smoothly tossing-off a new masterpiece between epigrams and suddenly proposing marriage to Miss Frances (Dorothy McGuire), his loyal secretary for the last fifteen years (remember that) whom the film has been regarding as practically on the edge of the grave because she's 35 and hasn't got a man. (Shadwell's housekeeper kindly offers her a kitten for companionship). But when Shadwell's told he has a brain tumour he reneges on the offer as a moment of madness and won't tell her the real reason. Even after she finds out he won't shift ground so, dejected, she gets drunk and goes wading (not in the Fountain, it's not LA DOLCE VITA). Shadwell takes her home for a dry-out and a heart-to-heart which puts them back on track. Webb and McGuire handle these scenes touchingly, with grace and humour. He thereupon sorts out the younger set's problems with some influential words in the right places and all six reunite at Rome's new tourist attraction to a choral reprise of the theme-song.

No one ever mentions that minor historical disturbance known as World War 11 in which the Eternal City was somewhat heavily involved. This would not be so surprising were it not for the oldsters' pointed references to "fifteen years of contentment" which would have dated from about 1938. As American residents how would they have lived, what were they up to all those years ? Speech-writing for the Fascisti, possibly ? No, I don't think so either. Rather an extreme if not wilfully perverse case of diplomatic forgetfulness in face of a new world-situation, a thriving overseas market and the no doubt enthusiastic goodwill and co-operation of an indigenous people who used to be on the wrong side. History here is reflected not in bomb-sites but in museums basking sedately, like the characters, in perpetual brochure-sunshine.

The Magic Box (1951)

Look to Your Stars..

[25 July 2008]

Whether or not William Friese-Greene was actually the father of motion pictures he was certainly in there trying. And though Edison and some French guys get a mention in passing this beautifully-mounted star-laden tribute to dogged endeavour is all Willie's show - made thirty years after his death and timed for the Festival of Britain. It almost missed the bus in this regard and wasn't generally released until the following year,something charmingly British about that. The film itself is charmingly British too, handling its huge cast and period detail with steady quietly-absorbing assurance. Eric Ambler's deftly-crafted script provides romance, comedy, poignancy and an absolutely splendid pinnacle-scene which sums the picture up both in terms of story and production-plan. His dual-flashback structure, which some find confusing, permits the masterly Robert Donat to re-wind from forgotten old codger to eager young whippersnapper and back again with a shift in the middle for 'changing reels' on the assertion of his second wife that "Willie was before my time". This second marriage assuaged his widower-loneliness and certainly produced quite a brood but was blighted by despondency - he's not mentioned in the Encyclopedia - and his ever-present financial incompetence which severs their union. It's the more distant past, the era of inspiration and achievement, which is the film's ultimate destination.

The cameo stars fall to with aplomb - 'The Play's the Thing, what would you like us to do ?' There's the fun of the Living Statues, Margaret Rutherford at her most formidable, wiping the floor with Mr. Guttenberg, Joan Hickson's cute scene-stealing as the customer with the facial twitch, Muir Mathieson appearing on-screen for once conducting the Bath Choral Society while the only solo male vocalist is miles away chinwagging forgetfully with the inventor of photography. Eric Portman bulldozes through as Willie's irascible business-partner and almost every trade and profession is represented along the way by a famous face - doctors, reporters, bank managers, estate agents, instrument-makers, pawnbrokers and company promoters - this last attributed in the credits to Roland Culver and Garry Marsh who do not appear in the release-prints. The BFI site solves the vexing question of the truncated version short by fifteen minutes which is now apparently the only one that survives. The most illustrious guest is fittingly the last to make an entrance - Olivier as the apprehensive bobby on the beat dragged in off the street by Willie to watch Hyde Park shimmering on a sheet. One of the great scenes in British cinema its magical blend of narrative-significance and emotional realism is in effect the movie's climax. The quibbling over technical inaccuracies here is irrelevant, it's not a documentary and as long as the audience gets the point the purpose is served. Maria Schell is enchanting as the first Mrs. Willie and Jack Cardiff - the Technicolor Kid - would have made our hero proud. It's the visionary labour of Willie and his contemporaries which has given us what we love. To correct another poster the last ironic line in the film after Willie's demise is spoken not by Dennis Price but by Michael Denison.

Atonement (2007)

the Romance that never was ...

[13 July 2008]

It all begins as country-house intrigue with a touch of THE GO-BETWEEN, crucial letters being passed and a confused child gradually overwhelmed by adult carryings-on. Young Briony's initial misunderstanding of an exchange between big sister Cecilia and the housekeeper's son Robbie seems a valid premise but when Robbie gets his letters mixed-up it sounds a warning note that things might not proceed as subtly as hoped for. And so it proves. Briony's shock-horror observations start piling up quicker than corpses in a Christie - sex in the library between Cee and Robbie (high-toned and balletic), another handy letter, the search for the runaway boys, sex in the woods (dirty and grubby) between a pervy guest and Briony's underage cousin - and before you can say Gregory Peck in SPELLBOUND -which also leapfrogged over a trial very glibly - Robbie the working-class scapegoat is banged up in the slammer for rape on the fevered say-so of Briony who'd previously idolised him. The left-wing playwright Lillian Hellman had employed a similar device in THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, dodging the finer details of an enquiry in order to pour coals on the head of her chosen target, the wealthy old lady who'd dared to believe her grand-daughter's story. Human understanding goes out the window when a class-warrior's on the march. Briony here is as much a victim of circumstance - or melodrama - as the hapless Robbie but the film affords her no sympathy then or later. She was only a kid for God's sake - but a Child of Her Class, nuff said. It's tempting to imagine that if Robbie had been a true-born son of the house the film might never have been made. It's also tempting to consider that if he had been a true gent he might have acted less like a chump earlier on - maybe, maybe not. Anyway the family freezes him out on Briony's evidence except for Cee whose (literally) one-night stand has blossomed into True Love.

Extending the Selznick analogy we broaden scale into A FAREWELL TO ARMS one World War down the line. Cee is now a comely nurse in 1940 London and Robbie's a reluctant soldier, released from prison to join the Army. After a pained parting modelled a little too clearly on BRIEF ENCOUNTER Robbie's sent to France where he's caught up in the retreat from Dunkirk. Trudging across country to the beach he has a neat chest-wound and two companions, the regulation bolshie cockney and a large mysterious black corporal with his head bandaged who seems to have been parachuted in via the Twilight Zone from some Regiment of Political Correctness, Rainbow Division. The big beach-scene - much acclaimed - is the Selznick-type set-piece, a technically accomplished interweaving of impressionist elements, singing Tommies, horses being shot (simulated, thankfully), the crowds awaiting evacuation. The inevitable Brenda Blethyn turns up later on in a dream-moment as Robbie's mum who bathes his feet (prior to his Crucifixion ?). Back in London the adult Briony, also a nurse, is introduced in a hospital scene rather like Maria with the nuns in THE SOUND OF MUSIC. We almost expect a number or two but no such luck. She wanders around in a daze seeking redemption after gradually realising She Got It All Wrong through a series of Amazing Coincidences involving some faked-up newsreel footage that are totally unbelievable and the film's clearest indication that it's headed for a defeat that, unlike Dunkirk, won't turn into victory. She pays a visit to the reunited lovers begging forgiveness. Robbie gives her a blistering lecture and sends her off again to Put It All Right.

Another left-wing heavyweight Vanessa Redgrave is enlisted at the end to 'apologise for slavery' so to speak, depicting Briony as finally a cracked and dying old best-selling novelist disclosing in a television interview before the shock-horrified nation, presumably, that the confrontation we'd just seen in the film never took place. Robbie had died from his wound in France and Cee had been killed in a gas explosion on the Underground (suitably spectacular as this is a Big Film don't forget). Briony will Put It All Right by telling their story in her final novel and giving it a 'happy ending'. Ingmar Bergman would have had a field-day with all this narrative-trickery and writer's angst. Unfortunately Joe Wright and his unlucky screenwriter can only adopt a relatively head-on approach in keeping with the nature of the production. (Ingmar didn't do the Odeon). Ironically a tad more of the Selznick spirit might have salvaged the cottage-by-the-sea. Old Hollywood was fond of Ghostly Lovers, David O. certainly was. His adored Jennifer played a ghost in PORTRAIT OF JENNIE and even Pearl Chavez in DUEL IN THE SUN was 're-born' as a desert-flower. Perhaps the real problem here is that the lovers don't register strongly enough in life to become potent symbols of an after-death. They remain Briony's creatures. Maybe they always were...

Land of the Pharaohs (1955)

Pharaoh's just a fella ..........

[22 June 2008]

"I didn't know how a Pharaoh talked," said Howard Hawks in mitigation of his failure to fully engage with what seemed his most untypical enterprise. Pharaoh probably didn't talk much like Jack Hawkins, who looks the part to a coin-stamped T but becomes inescapably sensible, business-like and British every time he opens his mouth. Flying round the sun after death is not, you feel, a belief he seriously entertains but it's there in the script so when in Rome and all that... (where the production was based). In any case if you can accept James Robertson Justice and Dewey Martin as the father-and-son slaves you're in the right frame of mind to discover that what proceeds is not so untypical of Old Howard after all.

I first saw it in a little market-town in the West of England during my National Service hitch. It was the mid-Fifties, the time of burgeoning international epics like ULYSSES, Alexander THE GREAT, HELEN OF TROY, WAR AND PEACE and THE PRIDE AND THE PASSION in Hollywood's relentless drive to whup that pesky little box in the corner of the living-room with grandiose stories, foreign locations and casts of thousands. It was intriguing to see Hawks getting in on this act in tandem with maestro Tiomkin who - as in RED RIVER and THE BIG SKY - supplied the broad strokes and the overview while Howard hunkered down to observe the campfire intimacies - or in this case something older than scholarship, more ancient than the pyramids - the scratch-claw-and-make-up antics of the Sugar-Daddy and the Gold-Digger. "It's good to be back" observes Pharaoh, returning from the wars weighed down with loot, the Living God of Egypt worshipped by his people, rose-petals at his feet, hosannas to his name, a beautiful Number One Wife and any reserves that take his fancy, he's got it all. But he wants more, a monument the size of Fort Knox to house his frame and all his treasures, sealed tight as a drum to keep out the hoi polloi. The awesome logistics of this project, depicted like a documentary, are mind-blowing. But there's a persistent moth fluttering at the perimeter of this Grand Design - Joan Collins, no less, as a hootchy-kootchy Cypriot princess who rapidly becomes Wife Number Two and schemes to reign as Little Egypt all by herself once those in the way have been disposed of.

This brings a nastier edge to a familiar Hawks scenario - the man-with-a-mission distracted by a pushy female who finally ensnares him - firstly because the mission itself, unlike getting the cattle to Missouri or opening up the American wilderness, seems an absurdist indulgence, selfish, deluded and cruel despite the benefit to history in the artefacts left behind. Hawks' inevitable view of Pharaoh removes any mystique. Away from the spotlight and the podium he's just a fella with an outsize ego and domestic problems. His authority seems to shrink, even the slaves keep telling him off. No un-American bowing and scraping here, everyone becomes a democrat whether they like it or not in a management-and-labour deal. And when the last stone fits into place the Secretary of State frees the workers who've survived the course and they all head off to Oregon or wherever. I think Howard's main problem with Pharaoh was that he couldn't imagine inviting him for a drink. As for Our Joanie, after contriving to do Pharaoh in, she gets locked up in the tomb with a whole bunch of men. "I don't wanna die !" she wails (so make the most of it, doll...). Of course if you choose to believe as Pharaoh does, they end up in purgatory together. Never mind flying round the sun, you old goat, what about that trip to Paris ?

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

not bad for an Old 'un ! ... but the film is tired...

[10 June 2008]

The inspiration for Indy,as everybody knows,was the Saturday-morning serial of yesteryear like LOST CITY OF THE JUNGLE, CONGO BILL etc.,that I watched as a boy during the Forties while Indy himself is a handy if improbable amalgam of two archetypes - the action-hero and the old professor. I tended to find the Spielberg versions more exhausting than satisfactory -like having to watch a whole 13 episodes all in one go with no breaks - and while dynamic and amusing and certainly never boring they were somewhat charmless with their constant insistence on grue. Until THE LAST CRUSADE, my favourite,with a more compelling storyline and a massive boost in human interest - warm, witty, even poignant - via the sublime double-act of Ford and Connery. For me the most affecting moment in this belated follow-up was seeing the photos of Connery and the late Denholm Elliott, two old sidekicks from the past now officially deceased. They're sadly missed here.

Ford at 65 keeps his end up superbly well. A pity that the structure he supports should prove so ramshackle and his new associates such a limp bunch. Ray Winstone comes across like a chained bear whose teeth have been removed. He seems dazed and directionless, mechanically changing sides to keep the plot moving. John Hurt gets lots of close-ups but little to sustain them while Indy's putative successor makes so little impression I could hardly remember what he looked like. I did enjoy the long chase through the jungle and Cate Blanchett cuts a cool and eye-catching figure. But the gradual move into alien-visitor territory after quite a robust beginning makes for windy anti-climax. SMALLVILLE on TV has somewhat cornered the market in recent years in terms of continuous cavernous cryptic cosmic jigsaw-puzzles -with engaging characters and a solid back-story - so any similar activity here seems decidedly second-hand. And this referring to Marion as Mary early on so that Indy won't get the connection - unless there's a subtlety that I'm missing - is the sloppiest writing-ploy since Van Heflin sent a love-letter to the wrong sister by mistake in GREEN DOLPHIN STREET many aeons ago. Indy finally makes an honest woman of his old squeeze with the guests applauding madly and grinning like monkeys. It all feels strained and somewhat grim like a forced retirement though no doubt the old legend could do with the rest. I think after this outing we all could.

The High and the Mighty (1954)

Spalding's prayer..... and Maltin's folly

[8 June 2008]

She was always my favourite character in THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY - Spalding the stewardess. Fresh, charming, sympathetic, wistful - with her childlike delight in Frank Briscoe's chiming watch. After the plane lands successfully Hobie Wheeler goes to congratulate her on their mutual survival but withdraws discreetly when he finds her on her knees giving thanks. Just a momentary shot, her back to camera, no dialogue but we love her all the more for it. My favourite part of the film in fact. But on the much-heralded DVD released last year it's not there. It's missing. After all the painstaking Restoration work we're told about everything else seems in place - even those cringe-making flashbacks - but Spalding's prayer goes unrecorded. And unnoticed amid all the documentary information. Leonard Maltin seems unaware. No surprise there. I've grown to dread encountering Maltin on these discs ever since he blithely informed us that Gary Cooper won his only Oscar for HIGH NOON (he already had one, Leonard). We all make mistakes even major ones - but no one else on his team knew enough to prevent it going on the record and out to the world. On this set he tells us that Wayne and Claire Trevor co-starred twice prior to this film (it was three times actually) and that the name Batjac derived from that of Wayne's ship in WAKE OF THE RED WITCH (it was the trading company, Leonard, the ship was the Red Witch, think about it). I wrote to the Paramount office in London last year about this (I wasn't online then) but got no reply. I think Duke's family, who control these releases, owe it to the memory of the lovely Spalding to give the punters an explanation. There are still enough of us 'ancient pelicans' out here.

Elmer Gantry (1960)

Elmer wasn't drunk and he lost his last line.........

[5 June 2008]

A Great American Movie,richly-substanced with its conflicts of heart and mind, the soul and the body. But made in 1960 when the censors were still breathing down necks. The opening shot shows the first page of the source-novel as if to assure literary respectability ("It's in the book") but the book says Gantry was drunk in the bar. He's not drunk in the film, he's perfectly in control of his little audience, telling dirty jokes and getting them to cough up for Jesus at the same time. He wishes Jesus happy birthday, rather brashly. Perhaps this made the censors nervous ("we can say he was drunk"). Elmer's pickup shares his bed that night but she's certainly drunk, face-down and still fully-clothed in the morning, Hollywood moving on but tentatively.. Elmer's a man of the flesh with a grounding in faith, an ex-divinity student expelled for transgressing with the dean's daughter. He joins the congregation in a black church, leading the singing enthusiastically. A man of the people who understands their needs - and the gain to be had from exploiting the Great Mystery. With Sister Sharon's high-pressure operation he becomes the star-performer, a preacher without credentials or commitment, a Player King without a throne. Sharon's sights are fixed on Heaven with her own tabernacle to boost her claim but Elmer persuades her to tarry awhile and share more basic pleasures. (When he leads her into the darkness we get a crashing melodramatic chord that sounds awfully corny today. A bolt of lightning as a follow-up wouldn't have been a surprise). A sweet setup - but when Lulu's back in town for a slice of the action the demands of Heaven and Earth get all snarled up and the edifice starts to crumble.. Sharon dies in the fire because she chooses to martyr herself, consumed by the moment into obeying a perceived destiny that finally puts her beyond all human reach. The crowd, accordingly, deserts her in panic and it's the crowd - the people - that prevent Gantry from saving her. When he leaves town at the end to return to the road selling 'fridges to Eskimos the newsman says See you, brother, to which Gantry replies emphatically See you in Hell, brother. This exchange was censored on the grounds it showed he hadn't 'reformed'. Rather it confirms him as an honest sinner with no illusions about where his own destiny will take him. This cut creates an ugly jump and an awkward silence, marring the film's final effect. Why can't the Restoration boys work a 'miracle' and plug this embarrassing gap ? Burt got his own back in the Seventies by using the line for Ned Buntline's farewell in BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS. I tend to agree to an extent with some comments on Simmons - lovely, skillful, intelligent, deserving of her status but a little too English in her American roles. She never suggests Katie Jones from Shantytown here (any more than Audrey Hepburn did Lulu Mae Barnes in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S) She did become Mrs Richard Brooks soon afterwards so I presume he was biased ! But it's an enthralling grown-up movie with Lancaster in full sail and a special nod to Arthur Kennedy.

The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)

A swell party except for the gatecrashers..

[4 June 2008]

Shortly after Huston's engaging oddity was released in the U.K in 1963 a Sunday Newspaper article 'exposed' the stars-in-disguise as a hoax. I'd just seen the film the previous week and though I'd half-suspected something of the sort I still felt cheated - mainly through the smug 'last bows' of the 'guests' who hadn't even come to the party. Mitchum was obviously an honourable exception, you couldn't mistake him and he had given us an excellent dialect-cameo. Douglas' villain gradually assumed command of the piece and could be excused, I suppose, for sub-letting a disguise or two. His creepy Mr.Phythian was certainly all his own. Mr.Lancaster, on the other hand, was nowhere to be found on the hunting-field. His role was played by Marie Conmee (the surname is peculiarly appropriate under the circumstances) an Irish actress reportedly sworn to secrecy. Sinatra's gypsy was filled-in, it transpires, by Hollywood look-alike Dave Willock. It was an additional marketing-ploy, of course, to bring in the punters and we fell for it. I enjoy the film certainly as an old-fashioned Holmes vs Moriarty intriguer which could have stood alone without the gimmicks.