edmund-marlowe Reviews

Ivanhoe (1982 TV Movie)

Excellence and gross tackiness intertwined

[6/10 · 1 February 2017]

Sir Walter Scott's novel, Ivanhoe, is about a "Saxon" noble championing the cause of justice, nebulously represented by the absent King, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, against the machinations of the King's brother John and his wicked Norman barons. It is undoubtedly a great work of literature, and, in its romance and excitement, so well-suited to adaption to the screen that it has been done multiple times. The central historical theme of patriotic, so-called Saxons defying their oppression by the Normans is redolent of a peculiarly early modern, romantic and anachronistic view of English society in 1194 and Scott took considerable liberties with the known facts, avoiding anything that would have diminished the drama, such as John's flight to Normandy to avoid Richard. I merely point this out for those who might think they are being treated to a story that could have taken place, while realizing that if one is to criticize such a part of the British literary canon on these lines, one would have also to damn Shakespeare's Macbeth and Polanski's masterful film of it.

Accepting, then, that this a great story crying out to become a great film, I was most excited to discover a version played by a cast of absolutely first-rate actors, and they certainly didn't disappoint. Olivia Hussey was especially good and moving as the beautiful Rebecca, better than I had ever seen her except in that greatest of all films, Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. The expected setting of castle and forest was all fine too.

So what went wrong? I'm afraid I laughed during the opening scene when James Mason, playing Rebecca's viciously ill-treated Jewish father (whom one would have expected to keep a low profile while traveling through a lawless land), appeared wearing an absurdly exotic Burmese peasant's hat, which he never then took off. Thus harshly alerted to a costume designer who should never have been allowed near a children's pantomime, I could not avoid having my attention undermined throughout by the invariable cheap and tacky props, including jewelry, ornaments and weapons that looked and sounded much too obviously like cheap plastic, and the factory-made printed shields, one of which could be seen to bounce back into shape like rubber after being bent in half.

Nor I'm afraid was the costume designer the only one at fault; the script writer should also have joined him on the dole. He was unsurprisingly fine when he stuck to Scott's fine words, but a disaster when left to use his imagination. The climactic battle scene consisted of a small band of men taking perhaps an hour to capture the castle, ultimately by knocking on the door with a ram. Had he never heard of moats or portcullises or that, without treachery, such a castle could only be captured by a large army after a siege of months? I cannot imagine what the producers were thinking to invest in such high-profile actors for an excellent story, only to wreck it through inept and stingy disbursement in other directions. The tacky props, when combined with the swashbuckling tone and slightly corny bombast, reminded me of some best-forgotten historical films from the fifties, so that I wondered whether it was unfair to blame the filmmakers for not having then had the technical means to produce anything faintly resembling Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones. Then I remembered that the other two films I have mentioned, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth were made a decade earlier than Ivanhoe without these faults, and realized there was no excuse.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a novel about Eton, amazon.com/dp/1481222112

Passengers (I) (2016)

Genuinely imaginative sci-fi

[9/10 · 2 January 2017]

I am definitely not a sci-fi enthusiast, and I am inspired to write this review by its being the film of this genre that I have enjoyed the most. I realize this is not a popular view, but I am hoping that its being unusual is what makes it worth presenting. Since much of what I like so much about it bears implicitly on what I generally dislike about the genre, it might be better to skip this review if you are a devotee of the latter.

Jim Preston, a would-be space colonist accidentally and irrevocably brought out of hibernation only thirty years into a hundred-and-twenty year voyage, finds himself alone among the five thousand unconscious passengers, and, after a year of miserable loneliness, succumbs to the temptation to awaken Aurora Lane, a beautiful and lively young woman, to be his companion. A love affair soon blossoms, but without her realizing she has been deliberately awoken. …

Though the science involved is well beyond our present reach, in its effects it is readily understandable and credible, while still being dramatic and sometimes visually stunning. Too often in science fiction, far-fetched ideas and absurd aliens are offered as a pathetic substitute for the real feast of the imagination to which we are treated here, where we are confronted by how human beings might behave under extreme but imaginable circumstances which force them to ponder the point of their existence. The setting of outer space is beside the point as regards the dilemmas raised. The question, for example, of what might motivate a space traveler to abandon for ever the world and people he has known is not very different to that which has confronted colonists for the last three thousand years. Nuance too reigns in this story, not simplistic black and white morality: can any man honestly say he would have felt no temptation whatsoever to awaken Aurora?

The humour is rich, gentle and often ironic, never coarse or in one's face. There is easily enough of it to stop the film taking itself too seriously, while it complements rather than undermines the dramatic tension, an example being when Jim sends a desperate communication to Earth about his predicament only to learn a reply will be forthcoming in an estimated fifty-five years. The android bartender is a delightful third character, his apparent decency and humanity cleverly juxtaposed against the reality that he is not human and feels nothing.

There is only one other, minor character, making the film dangerously dependent on the acting of the two main characters, but the film-makers were well rewarded for the risk they took: Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence play them superbly.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a novel, amazon.com/dp/1481222112

Centurion (2010)

Gritty fantasy

[5/10 · 19 January 2015]

Watchable because it is well acted (especially by Dominic West), starkly beautiful in its cinematography and grittily realistic in its depiction of warfare, this account of the disappearance of the Romans' Ninth Legion in Caledonia is also shameful in its contempt for historical truth or realism. If you prefer fantasy to historically realistic fiction, fine, but there is no need to deceive the unwary into thinking it depicts something that could have happened. That is taking advantage of and reinforcing a popular ignorance and lack of imagination miserably dominant regarding anything that happened more than a few centuries ago.

The only historical character depicted is the Roman governor of Britain, Agricola, shown here in AD 117 as an old man anxious to escape his responsibilities in favour of Roman politics. This is turning the truth on its head as far as possible, for Agricola was governor forty years earlier and in the prime of his life. He is well remembered as having achieved far more than any other Roman governor and having been reluctantly recalled by a jealous emperor because of that. Straying into deeper matters, a Roman legion consisted of about five thousand soldiers, so it is incomprehensible that the commander of the Ninth would have advanced into enemy territory with the few dozen depicted, and in winter when no one campaigned because the invaded would have held all the advantages. But these criticisms suggest taking the film as potentially serious history. I'm afraid challenging it as the latter may be a lost cause as regards anyone so deluded by modern, feminist propaganda as to manage avoiding laughter or despair when presented with the fantasy of primitive ancient viragos even aspiring to slaughter in single combat the best trained soldiers of the age, (and before someone mentions Boudicca, I had better mention that though she rode in a chariot, no ancient source suggests she fought in the battles she presided over).

Both this and The Eagle, the other film about the lost Ninth Legion, seem more sympathetic to the Romans than the Picts, the telling fact here being that the Romans speak English while the Picts speak an invented language. I found that interesting just because it was not what I would have expected from 21st century sentiment.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a love story, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112

The Pillars of the Earth (2010)

Pillars built on false foundations

[5/10 · 13 January 2015]

To explain why this television series is a disappointment, it suffices to compare with historical reality the outline of events depicted in just the first few minutes. We begin with a brief depiction of the White Ship, with English King Henry I's only son and heir and his wife on board, going down in fictitious flames "off the coast of England". Actually, it struck a rock just off the coast of Normandy and the prince's wife was far away. The King is dismissive of the promise of his little daughter Maud (actually then a married adult living faraway in Germany) to provide him with heirs, while his unhistorically wicked nephew Stephen (whose real decency is well-known as his undoing) plots his own succession. We then flash forward to 1138 when Henry I (actually already dead for three years) celebrates the birth in Winchester of Maud's son Henry (actually born five years earlier in France) as his prospective heir. The old king then promptly drops dead of a poisoning that has no basis of suspicion in reality and his grieving daughter (actually then in France and at war with her father) narrowly escapes abroad.

Dramatic purpose may justify distortions of historical truth such as making the wrecking of the White Ship sabotage, but the other deviations from the most basic unfolding of events known to every English schoolchild brought up on a potted account of his country's history seem absurdly pointless. They are so relentless that I found myself cringing in expectation every time the action switched from fictitious characters to historical ones.

Could all have been well if the allusions to real people and events had been dispensed with? Sadly not, because the distortion of them is nothing besides the much more important misrepresentation of what twelfth-century society was about. The underlying story of the marriage of an earl's daughter to one stonemason and her love for another is itself intrinsically unhistorical, a fantasy about how 21st-century people would have liked 12th-century women to behave rather than how they ever did. Still, exceptions can always be imagined and this one could happily be swallowed on its own. Unfortunately, though, it is symptomatic of a pervasive malaise. The people of fictitious Kingsbridge unfailingly think and behave like 21st century people. Within a few minutes of the final episode, we are called upon both to accept that the monk Remigius is an unhappy victim of homophobia rather than the unscrupulous schemer hitherto presented, and that William's villainy has reached new heights through his bedding his 13-year-old bride, though anyone in the 12th century would have thought it strange if he had not.

It is the fact apparent from almost every review that most people are accepting it as a possibly (even if only vaguely) authentic depiction of the twelfth century that alienates me. In case this seems uncharitable, I would point out how extremely easy it would have been to have edited the most basic events and attitudes for truth without affecting anything that makes the story of fictitious cathedral builders and priests otherwise good. That this was not attempted is an indication of the script-writer's contempt for the truth and confidence in popular ignorance.

Why then does this travesty deserve five stars rather than the minimum one? It is never boring because it is often visually splendid, and is undoubtedly well acted by a broad range of great performers who have given it much more than it deserves. Do not think this implies it is good drama though, for the acting is severely undermined by a childishly melodramatic script. With the sole exception of Remigius, with his anachronistic second dimension, the characters are black and white and meet their deserved fates with tiresome predictability. The villains are purely and irrationally evil; the scene when William in a petulant rage murders his doting mother and throws her in a moat is simply too silly to be shocking.

Amusing enough for those indifferent to history, but seriously recommended only as a pantomime for children who have been warned it is fantasy.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a novel, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112

A Good Boy (2008 TV Movie)

Love Life in the Fourth Reich

[8/10 · 19 December 2014]

Two good-looking boys are flirting. Sven encourages Patrick to try different poses before his camcorder. A laughing Patrick mischievously flashes his naked bottom at him and blows kisses. It is a charming scene full of laughter and youthful spontaneity. Surely only homophobic dinosaurs could object? But wait, I failed to mention that Sven is 17 and Patrick looks, horror of all horrors, only 13 or 14, an age gap about as grotesque as that between Romeo and his 13-year-old Juliet. Besides, this is the 21st century, not the barbarous Renaissance, and we are looking at this literally through the eyes of Sven's father Achim, watching the scene recorded on his son's camcorder, not through the eyes of the misguided or socially irresponsible bard. By this stage we have been left in no doubt that Achim is a genuinely loving parent, but as in other respects he is a quite ordinary, decent, modern bloke (a divorced taxi driver), he naturally cannot control his visceral revulsion. "You disgusting, dirty pig!" he shouts as he punches his son hard in the face, leading the boy to attempt suicide.

Sven is adamant he loves Patrick and could never therefore hurt him. This failure to see things the correct way unsurprisingly infuriates his father. Achim, whose socially acceptable love life consisting of a failed marriage, a failing relationship and a visit to a prostitute, runs in interesting juxtaposition to Sven's forbidden one, is certain enough of knowing what real love is to assure his son he knows nothing about it. Unfortunately, Sven is not convinced, possibly because Achim sees no need to offer a rational explanation for something so obvious, and asks his father to lock him up in his bedroom to stop him following his longings for younger boys. Only Achim's girlfriend Julia realizes what Sven needs is "help", in other words having his mind reprogrammed enough to understand that what he has experienced as impulses to love are really so unspeakably evil that he will no longer wish to act on them, and may thereby come to terms with an emotionally and sexually sterile life. But silly Achim won't subscribe to the modern dogma of immutable orientation and clings with predictably tragic consequences to the belief his son can be changed.

There is one serious incongruity, which nearly derails this as a story with clear meaning. Almost the entire story of Sven's love life concerns the clearly pubescent Patrick, who is not only encouraging rather than merely consenting, but even after his mother discovers enough of the truth to denounce Sven and Sven calls off their friendship, continues to pursue him to his home and to try to undermine his resolve with dazzling smiles and more blown kisses. And yet what actually seals Sven's fate is picking up on a train and attempting to seduce a boy of ten who looks even younger and obviously uncomfortable. Though Achim warns Sven he could have gone to prison or a mental asylum for what he did with Patrick, had he actually done so, it would require looking at their story with myopically jaundice-tinted 21st-century glasses to see Sven rather than society as the abuser. The ten-year-old who is frightened enough to run away is a very different matter and out of character. It is as if the script-writer realized at the last moment that what he had written looked dangerously discernible as an indictment of society rather than a look into the quandary of how to control Sven, so brought in the little-boy scene in a clumsy effort to restore the balance.

There was a time about halfway between the Third Reich and today when most Germans' reactions to Sven's feelings for Patrick would have been far more indulgent. Germany and other countries that had experienced National Socialist rule were then what were derisively known as permissive societies, which is to say they were taking deeply to heart the lessons from the generation before and flirting with freedom and toleration. Guter Junge illustrates how thoroughly these lessons have now been forgotten. Even as I write, the grandchildren of the Third Reich have whipped themselves up into such fury that they may not be able to send one of their M.P.s to prison for having pictures of naked boys innocently playing out of doors, once an everyday sight in the warmer parts of the world, that they are introducing new thought-crime laws to imprison anyone having pictures of even clothed children that in the imagination of their judges are felt to be erotic. I am sure Herr Hitler would be proud of them; without doubt it will help restore prison numbers to the impressive levels of his day.

Watching this film, it is much easier to understand how ordinary Germans could once have felt such effortless hatred and contempt for innocent Jews; it is a deeply chilling reminder of how easily people who believe in their own decency can be led into such a total lack of sympathy or understanding for those classed as "others" that they feel sure of seeing wrong where there is none. The Germans today are still more humane than many in the particular mania that ruins Sven's life, but it is especially poignant in their case.

One thing I will say for modern Germany though is that in none of the three countries most responsible for ending the Third Reich would it be possible to produce a film for television nearly so honest and neutral on this subject. It is excellently acted by the main protagonists. The varied music is especially well chosen and holds the audience's attention during the more meandering scenes of this good but very depressing story.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, amazon.com/dp/1481222112 another boy's tragedy.

My Girl (2003)

The power of simplicity

[9/10 · 23 August 2014]

By far the best of the many Thai films I have seen, this will utterly astonish anyone expecting the melodrama and poor acting so often encountered in Thai cinema. As even by the standards of the latter, its budget was low, it shows in the tradition of which The Bicycle Thieves is perhaps the most spectacular example, that with fine acting and masterful direction, depiction of the emotions in a simple story can trump a budget of any size.

A young man called Jeap is invited to the wedding of his long-lost childhood friend Noi-Naa. His initial decision to give precedence to a prior engagement is soon abandoned when in his car he listens to the musical hits of his childhood and memories flood back in the way old music is perhaps uniquely powerful in making them do. Most of the story then focuses on Jeap as a ten-year-old agonisingly torn between the super-girlish circle of his oldest friend and neighbour Noi-Naa and a gang of characterful boys led by an amiably-roguish fat bully called Jack. Extremely nostalgic and wittily recounted, it is definitely a story to make one both laugh and cry. The acting is superb.

The title and cover are misleading. Touching as the deeply-felt friendship of Jeap and Noi-Naa is, Fan Chan is not a romance, but a story about friendships and their meaning in the emotional world of the nearly pubescent boy. The idea of its being romantic is actually deeply ironic, for what it does perhaps most convincingly and interestingly is to remind us of a truth that was obvious to everyone until a generation or two ago: that beyond his mother's love, a boy's needs until well into adolescence are for his own sex. Nowadays this tends to be obscured by contrived gender-blindness combined with a silly and uncomfortably half-hearted wish to see children prematurely aping their parents' romantic antics.

Unfortunately, the full mind-blowing emotional impact will only be felt by those with nostalgic memories of the lost simplicity of rural Thailand in the 1980s, and especially those who were children then. These above all accounted for its being the extraordinary and unexpected local hit it was, but even with its impact diluted, it fully deserves a global audience.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a novel of boyhood, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112.

Un enfant dans la foule (1976)

Revelations from the unwritten history of boyhood

[9/10 · 8 August 2014]

The story is only partly autobiographical according to the director, but it seems to have been true in all its important elements, as at least the following applies to both Gérard Blain and his creation Paul: a lonely boy, whose father had abandoned the family years before, and who gets on badly with his mother and only sibling (an elder sister), leaves school prematurely and finds himself, aged thirteen and a half in the summer of 1944, half-living on the streets of Paris; good-looking, he is soon embroiled in a series of short affairs with adults of both sexes until he receives an offer to be in a film. This is surely enough true story to explain the film's extraordinary emotional authenticity.

The historical setting of the liberation of Paris provides a fortuitously excellent dramatic background to what one might expect from the foregoing to be a steamily sensational story, but is instead something much greater: a heart-wrenching story of an eminently lovable boy's unsuccessful quest for love, told with unfailing tenderness and honesty.

I know of no other film which depicts nearly so well the emotional longings of the pubescent boy who for one reason or another is not getting the love he needs. Naturally satisfying his new sexual longings will become wrapped up in his quest for love, and it is only sound good sense that, allowed the freedom afforded to Paul by an uninterested family and the chaos of war, he will seek for love the way Paul does. Honest portrayal of this has become virtually impossible since the film was made due to the new hysteria surrounding pubescent sex. This doubtless explains why it is not receiving the acclaim it deserves, even though Blain leaves the sex underpinning some of Paul's emotional involvements to be inferred. Important truths are daringly exposed that are generally forgotten or misunderstood. The pubescent boy's new capacity for bonding with adults through sexual intimacy has historically often been his most natural and powerful means of survival until he can compete as an adult, and why disdain such a weapon? That the film is entirely non-judgmental about all involved in this is another indication of its obstinate honesty in the face of popular prejudice.

An associated modern fiction the film refuses to indulge is that a boy like Paul and his various male special friends must be gay. Sexual orientation is simply not an issue in the film just as it generally has not been for boys of thirteen who have not been indoctrinated otherwise (as all are today). Like most men attracted to adolescent boys in the not-so-very-old days before this form of love was singled out for savage suppression, the men attracted to Paul are, excepting a presumably still unmarried young man, shown to be genuinely devoted to their wives and children, whose photos they show him without sense of conflict, and not therefore gay either.

The story is tragic because Paul's quest for love is so relentlessly and undeservedly unsuccessful. Cursed with a brutally unfeeling mother who is the only real villain in the story, some of the most affecting scenes concern his touching and vain attempts to win her affection. The vicissitudes of war see off his German and American soldier lovers. An affectionate married teacher ends their liaison by frankly admitting circumstances don't allow him to give him the love he needs. The pathos of all this is greatly increased by Paul's tender disposition. Never does he react with anything but understanding to repeated rejection, nor does bitter experience diminish his own tenderness, most hauntingly captured when he alone does not join the baying crowd taunting a woman stripped naked and shaven-headed for having slept with a German, but instead gently puts his hand on her shoulder in a sign of compassion, surely one of cinema's greatest moments.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, the quest for love of another boy this age, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112

Death in Venice (1971)

Not quite flawless

[9/10 · 31 July 2014]

Some others here have written so eloquently and fully about this film's many virtues that I see no point in saying more about them. I shall instead say why I find it not quite flawless, but first I shall underline my appreciation of it by observing I love this film despite being intensely bored by some acclaimed films with little dialogue or action. Mostly I think this must come down to the film being such a rich visual treat, but hearing that some find it boring despite that, I wonder if this might not be a rare case where it is a great advantage to have read the novella first, as I did, for Mann's description of Aschenbach's developing and conflicting emotions is absolutely masterful. Perhaps this helps one feel as Aschenbach feels more than one could just from Bogarde's excellent acting.

Visconti allowed himself more than two hours to bring to life a very short novel. There was thus none of the usual necessity to cut any of the novel, and since the latter is a masterpiece, every reason to be faithful to it. Nothing that matters has been cut and the film is generally faithful. Nevertheless, its only slight flaws come from being not faithful enough.

The main change in the story is that Aschenbach is changed from a writer to a musician. The reasons are understandable and I don't think it matters much except that Visconti made it the basis for a series of flashbacks in which Aschenbach has slightly corny debates about the purpose of musical creation. I find these tiresome distractions.

A lesser flaw for me is the choice of 16-year-old Björn Andrésen to play 14-year-old Tadzio. I realise from the numerous superlative remarks made about his beauty that most will disagree with me on this. I agree with others it was critical to the film's success that Tadzio's actor be beautiful and I can appreciate Andrésen's beauty enough to understand how Visconti's choice succeeded. Though personally I find him too pallid (and his hair too '70s for an otherwise wonderfully authentic depiction of 1911), my objection is not that he was not beautiful enough, but that it would have been easy and better to find an equally beautiful 14-year-old to play the role. There is quite a difference between boys of 14 and 16 and Mann had his reasons for depicting Tadzio as looking 14. Andrésen's rather feminine appearance for his age is a poor substitute for the more natural androgyny of 14. I think Mann's choice of 14 was intended both for the broad appeal of this quality and in considered juxtaposition to Aschenbach's age: the one near the beginning of his romantic sensibility while the other was at its end. Much to his credit, Visconti did set out to find a younger boy, so he was not making the ignoble concession to social correctness other directors have made under similar circumstances, and I would not mention it if the film was not otherwise so nearly perfect.

As many appear still to be unaware of it, it may be interesting to mention that Death in Venice is partly a true story. Mann having already decided to write a story about a great writer who succumbs to passion for a youngster and to base the writer physically on the recently deceased composer Mahler, the rest of the story fell into place in detail when he arrived in Venice and promptly fell in love with a boy; in his own words, "nothing was invented." Gilbert Adair wrote a book on this called The Real Tadzio, exploring also the life of Wladyslaw Moes, who claimed to be the real boy (which I doubt for reasons I have explained in a review of it).

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a story of similar but requited love, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112

Romeo & Juliet (II) (2013)

Perhaps the most inferior remake yet

[6/10 · 23 June 2014]

Usually I award six stars to a film I consider to be of watchable quality, but no better. In this case I would add the caveat that it is nevertheless not actually worth watching when you could instead be seeing Zeffirelli's version, even if for the umpteenth time. As I regard the latter as the best film ever made, you may suspect I went into Carlei's version with a closed mind, but I think not. The makers of this film must surely be aware how very often good films are remade disastrously, so I saw it having imagined they would at least have made a valiant effort to compete with such a peerless film. I was wrong. I had also thought they deserved interest for their sheer nerve in taking it on. In the event, the idiocy of mounting such a feeble challenge undermined the sympathy I might have had for the time and money they wasted.

The screenplay writer is either arrogantly stupid to think he can improve on Shakespeare, most of whose dialogue has been done away with, or so patronising he assumes the audience is too stupid to understand Shakespeare.

The acting of the two leading roles was atrociously wooden. The Juliet was fatally lacking in both beauty and spark. The Romeo was good-looking enough, but in the wrong way: too self-consciously so and without the captivating touch of melancholy that made Whiting perfectly-cast in Zeffirelli's film. This most famous of all love stories has one bedroom scene; if there is one moment in the whole of cinema where some frank homage to the eros that underpins youthful passion is strongly called for, it is here. Zeffirelli did so with a few exquisitely tasteful nude shots. Carlei's failure to do likewise is unforgivable. If he is too much in thrall to the sour attitudes of the day towards celebrating teenage beauty, that alone was reason enough to desist from making a film obviously better suited to a more romantic age.

The redeeming feature was the sumptuously beautiful scenery and cinematography, but even here the old film was as spectacular and its costumes more so.

Only months after seeing it, that is about all I can still remember about this forgettable film.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a modern tragedy of forbidden love, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112

Romeo and Juliet (1968)

The greatest film yet made

[10/10 · 18 June 2014]

This is as near perfection as I can conceive a film coming. Though I have limited toleration of reseeing films, I have seen this one about a dozen times. I am still in awe of its beauty and invariably streaming with tears at its ending.

If aspiring to make a stupendous film about love, it does of course help to choose a story standing so high above others of its kind that it has become a byword for romance. As one should be able to (but cannot) take for granted with a dialogue already supplied by the greatest playwright ever, it has been only occasionally and gently edited for vocabulary. Zeffirelli made however some very judicious cuts to bring his film down to a suitable length. Gone therefore are most of Romeo's professions of love for Rosaline, his duel with Paris and the little detective story near the end whereby the love story is finally explained to all. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I would say Zeffirelli improved Shakespeare's story with the removal of these distractions.

I found every single actor well-cast and brilliant, the nurse possibly the best. The only fault I found was that Friar Lawrence's incongruous Irish accent grated a little. The lovers were suitably beautiful, which again one might hope one could take for granted with such a topic, but cannot. It is extraordinary that Zeffirelli was the first film director to have the sense to cast teenagers in the leading roles, as Shakespeare obviously intended. Both story and dialogue are otherwise patently absurd. Not only Romeo and Juliet, but also their companions impart perfectly the innocence, passion, swagger, spontaneity, charm and eros of Renaissance youth.

The mild but exquisite eroticism of the bedroom scene was essential; there can be no moment when beautiful nudity is more strongly called for than in the sole such scene of a film celebrating young physically-inspired love. I only wish Zeffirelli could have gone further despite our puritanical society. It is a particular shame as he had the sense and good taste to pay homage to the beauty of both sexes.

The period-perfect Italian settings and ravishing costumes are so authentic and beautiful that many of the scenes look exactly like Renaissance paintings, in other words some of the most beautiful images ever made. For me, however, the crème de la crème is the one of these visual feasts where we are simultaneously treated to a youth's singing of the superbly apt theme song, What is a Youth?, itself the most beautiful song I know of.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a modern tragedy of forbidden love, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112

This Special Friendship (1964)

Heartrending portrayal of a misunderstood passion

[8/10 · 29 January 2013]

This is the film adaptation of Roger Peyrefitte's novel telling the deeply moving love story of brilliant 16 year-old aristocrat Georges de Sarre and beautiful 12 year-old Alexandre Motier at St. Claude's, a French, Catholic boarding-school in the 1920s. Though chaste, their love is passionately expressed through poems, gazes and the odd kiss, and there is no mistaking the sensuality underpinning it.

Whether consummated or not, for many centuries such intense love affairs between younger and older boys were a feature of boarding-school life that brought joy and relief to some of the more feeling and less hung-up sort of adolescents, as well as grief and catastrophe to the minority whose liaisons were discovered and crushed by the Christian authorities. They were essentially pederastic, satisfying different emotional needs in the younger and older participants, though the disparity in age lent them special intensity for both.

This ancient tradition more or less died a generation or so ago; the boys who would once have partaken or at least have approved of romantic friendships nowadays either never see their appeal, brought up as they are in a society so antagonistic to them, or shun them through terror of being misunderstood and branded as gay. Indeed, the number of reviews of this film implying gayness is proof they are right to fear it is now practically impossible to escape being judged according to the new dogma insisting on a fixed sexual orientation for even early teens.

It is salutary to remember that however responsible the priests at St. Claude's were for the tragedy of Alexandre and Georges and however misguided the abhorrence of sin that drove them to act as they did, they acted as gentle lambs compared to the savagery with which their post-Christian successors today would crush an affair that any older and younger boy had the temerity to get embroiled in. Our new moral dictators would of course destroy Alexandre to save him from an unequal relationship rather than from the sin of homosexuality, but that would make no difference to either the cruel outcome or the monstrous bigotry behind it. Ironically it would actually increase the perverse injustice of such interference: Alexandre is typical of the younger boy in a special friendship in that his emotional need for it is evidently greater and so it is even more vital to his happiness than to Georges's that it should not be broken up.

Considering special friendships at boarding-school seem to have disappeared from our emotional landscape and are now so badly misunderstood, we must be forever thankful that in the short space of time when they were still fairly widely understood and it had also become possible to write candidly about such delicate matters, not only did such a talented writer as Peyrefitte preserve their character for us so evocatively, but that a film was made of it before the moral panic about teenage sexuality which arose in the 80s made such an undertaking unthinkable.

Unsurprisingly, the film is not as outstanding as the novel, though mostly faithful to it. The most significant change is that, in the novel, Georges was only fourteen, but as he seemed a little improbably sophisticated for even a French patrician of that age, this was actually an improvement. The problem with the adaptation to film is largely the common one of condensation. Because we do not get to know the protagonists quite so well, it is harder to be so deeply moved by their plight. Mostly gone too is the richly elaborated conflict in the boys' minds between the influences of puritanical Christian doctrine and the boy-admiring Graeco-Roman attitudes it drove into hiding. Nevertheless, the film is well acted, atmospheric and near the end soars towards the heights of aching pathos achieved in the novel.

Peyrefitte was much involved in the making of the adaptation to film, which makes for a fascinating footnote: he was rewarded by meeting on the set the love of his life, 12-year-old Alain-Philippe Malagnac, who had a minor role in the film as a choirboy and introduced himself to the author as a fan of the novel, a story Peyrefitte recounted in Notre amour (1967).

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, an Eton love story, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112

Paper Tiger (1975)

As simple as a paper animal, but as warm as any living one

[9/10 · 27 January 2013]

The story is admittedly very simple: elderly British "Major" Walter Bradbury (David Niven) is engaged by the Japanese ambassador to an unnamed Southeast Asian country, Kagoyama (Toshirô Mifune) as tutor to his enchanting 11-year-old son Koichi (Kazuhito Ando). "Mister Bladbelly" soon wins the reverence of the ever-trusting and perfectly-mannered Koichi by spinning yarns about his heroic wartime exploits that could hardly be further removed from his quiet nonentitous life, but is unexpectedly and severely put to the test when they are both kidnapped by guerrillas.

However simple though, the story is still a good one and it is fantastically well and charmingly acted by all three of the main characters. Anybody who has known a paper tiger, especially the more amiable types who, like Niven, have twinkles in their eyes gently hinting at their harmless fraud, will surely warm to his authentic depiction of one.

Paper Tiger is a gripping story, alternately funny, tense and moving, but above all it is a thoroughly warm-hearted and tenderly told tale of redemption.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a novel of Eton, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112

Dreaming Youth (1974)

The purest breath of fresh air

[10/10 · 26 January 2013]

A poetic version of the autobiographical novel of the same name by the Hungarian Jewish film critic Béla Balázs, brilliantly depicting the conflicts over changes come to a provincial town in Hungary at the end of the nineteenth century, including the screening of the first motion picture there. These are seen through the critical and idealistic eyes of 12 year-old Herbert Bauer (as Balázs was then named), played by blond Zoltán Csoma.

I saw this film in California thirty years ago when Mr. Rózsa himself presented it to discuss with the audience afterwards. The Cold War was still raging and though communism was not mentioned, it was quite an experience for a foreigner to see the unintended ideological challenges presented for Americans by a story told without the usual compromise towards their sensibilities. When a deeply puzzled young Herbert asks his best friend why he intends one day to emigrate to America and his friend replies "to get rich", Herbert exclaims with heartfelt disgust something like "You would abandon your country and your family for money?!" and there was a distinct squirming in seats around the cinema. Afterwards, Rózsa took questions from the audience. Some Hungarian Americans had come along and displayed the rabidly ignorant, bigoted nationalism only too typical of immigrant communities in the United States: one raged at length against the film's depiction of discrimination against racial minorities, insisting that no one except the Hungarians themselves had ever been discriminated against in the Hungary of that era.

The greatest culture shock came, however, when the director talked of what inspired him most about his film, proclaiming his love for his young star Zoltán and his fervent admiration of his beauty. A silent tremor shook the cinema, though Rózsa's innocence and sincerity as he said this were blatantly obvious enough to be realized by even an audience immersed in mass hysteria over attraction to children, and no earthquake ensued.

As I can only therefore imagine the director intended, Dreaming Youth is foremost an unabashed celebration of the beauty of one boy. However, it is by no means just about his physical beauty, remarkable though that is, but also about his beauty of spirit and the beauty of boyhood itself, especially at that critical age.

There is no film I would like to see a second time more than this, and for many years I have looked out in vain for a DVD of it.

Edmund Marlowe, author of Alexander's Choice, a boy's love story set at Eton, www.amazon.com/dp/1481222112