@Sonero I must say I am very impressed by your unorthodox viewing.
Back to the mudane:
A PASSAGE TO INDIA (1984)
David Lean’s accolade laden career ended with this modest epic set in 1920s India and based on E.M. Forster’s excellent, though long winded novel. It would be fair to say that Lean treats the narrative with the same long-winded high-handedness. The framing of some shots, locations and landscapes is obviously designed to be symbolic, significant or possibly just scenic, but the overall effect is to suggest this is a filmmaker who wants to demonstrate he can do more than simply tell us a story. The problem with Lean’s metaphoric approach is it actually buries the story, which isn’t up to much in the first place. He also removes many of the anti-colonial sentiments of the novel and leaves the British looking foolish, but not devious or callous, and the Indians appear to be pleasant, but headstrong and foolish – their mouths tending to run away with them. Only Rashid Karapiet’s barrister Das shows any kind of etiquette. One feels, in attempting to widen the scope of the novel into something semi-religious, preordained and colourfully laudable, Lean has given himself too much to do. He shuffles-in unnecessary scenes. There is a totally mystifying nighttime shot of a crocodile loping in the Ganges and another of the Brahman Godpole saluting Mrs Moore as she leaves on the train. Latterly, Lean inserts a whole sequence of views of the Himalayas designed to do no more than show them off, and even more of the night sky and the moon. Adela Quested’s sensual journey to a Hindu temple is a misstep inappropriate to the narrative. It’s all very well illustrating your locations lovingly, but this kind of ham-fisted filmmaking panders to the artist not the art.
The problem for Lean is that aside for the good looking cast and a decent performance by Peggy Ashcroft, there isn’t a lot to keep our eyes busy other than those visuals. He wrote the screenplay, directed and edited the result, so there is nowhere else for him to turn to and place the blame. A Passage to India purrs on like a lazy cat. We like the look of it, cuddled and friendly, but it ain’t doing much. Sadly, Maurice Jarre’s music, like Lean’s direction, is merely a regurgitation of past glories. Alec Guinness is horrifically miscast as Godpole and this was widely and rightly criticised at the time; the days of ‘blacking up’ actors should have bitten the dust by 1984. Lean’s return to film after over a dozen years was welcomed by the movie goers and A Passage to India was a huge hit, commercially and critically. It benefitted no doubt from following Gandhi, The Far Pavilions and stuff like that. Tellingly James Ivory [who had just directed the wonderful and superior India-set Heat and Dust] said he could have made the film with half the cost, half the run time and be twice as good. A Passage to India is certainly watchable, but for evidence of David Lean’s true genius I suggest a few hours watching River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Dr Zhivago.
On January 7, 1961 a network of deep cover KGB operatives was arrested in the UK by the MI5.
This network included two British clerks Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee, who had been stealing top secret information from a submarine research center in Portland, UK, their controller Gordon Lonsdale and a middle aged bookseller couple, the Krogers. The Portland spy ring, as it was then called, had been transmitting highly sensitive information to the Soviet Union since 1953.
This movie, Ring of Spies is a factual account of the activities of the group and the events leading up to their arrest.
Starring Bernard Lee, William Sylvester and Margaret Tyzack and directed by Robert Tronson, Ring of Spies is a very interesting counter-espionage movie with a docu-drama feel to it.
The Cuban Missile Crisis and the widespread paranoia of the 60's resulted in the production of some very poignant works of apocalyptic art i.e., Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, On the Beach etc.
This tense and gritty Cold War thriller falls into the same category.
Sailing in the Denmark Strait, the US Navy destroyer USS Bedford detects a Soviet submarine just off the coast of Greenland. The despotic and gung-ho commander of the ship, Captain Eric Finlander (Richard Widmark), obsessively pursues the submarine, all the while enforcing high levels of vigilance and compliance on his ship's crew.
A disquieting tension builds up between the ship's captain and the exhausted under-command.
Tempers flare-up between Captain Finlander and the two new arrivals on the ship, civilian photojournalist Ben Munceford (Sidney Poitier) and the medical officer Lieutenant Commander Chester Potter (Martin Balsam), but the skipper remains resolute.
He is hellbent on forcing the submarine to surface and identify itself, even though the submarine is now in international waters.
This cat and mouse game ultimately ends in tragedy.
A splendid adaptation of Ian McEwan’s splendid novel. It is a hot summer in 1935 and young, impressionable dreamer Briony Tallis is writing stories and fantasising about the handsome gardener and his unrequited love affair with her sister, Celia. By accident and then by design she comes into possession of and reads an explicit letter between the two and her reactions to the knowledge of lust and love among the lilies and libraries leads the nosey 13-year-old to make sudden assumptions that have consequences far beyond an illicit upstairs-downstairs relationship.
Brilliantly acted from a generally young cast, Saoirse Ronan impresses as the young Briony, while Vanessa Redgrave dutifully sheds a tear as her older character, now a successful author seeking redemption for her past mistakes through the printed word – a neat analogy from McEwan kept in the film by writer-adaptor Christopher Hampton. Romola Gari is the least effective of the trio of actresses, chiefly because she spends so much of her time in silent contemplation of her past acts, the acts of others and the future for everyone. Mind you, even she pulls off a remarkably affecting scene comforting a dying soldier. Poor Briony has got herself in right emotional pickle.
Kiera Knightley has probably never been better or as assured playing the bored, but sensually sophisticated Celia. James McAvoy convinces less as a romantic lead than he does as a conscripted soldier trying to flee Dunkirk. Having seen a couple of ‘Dunkirk-specific’ movies recently, it is interesting to recognise that Joe Wright’s version of the chaotic beaches is probably better than both of them, more remarkable given he had to rehearse and prepare a long tracking shot through the soldiers to give the impression of size and scale and numbers; for he actually only had a thousand extras to work with. One must surely thank too cinematographer Seamus McGarvey who controls every sequence with a keen eye for light, colour and detail. The cast and director must be indebted too to Christopher Hampton, who could probably have directed this himself, but nonetheless offers an excellent condensed version of McEwan’s original, a book which really ought to have won the Booker Prize in 2001 – I mean, Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang is a good novel, but it is less accessible and ultimately, who remembers it?
Book musings aside, the story is excellently told and benefits from including actors like Benedict Cumberbatch and Brenda Blethyn in small but important roles. The heart rules the head in this one, even though the intellectual head is clearly important to the story and its ultimate resolution. It perhaps didn’t need Robbie Turner’s strange sickness induced wartime mental breakdown, for the sequences set at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, when the injured are returned from Dunkirk have a better atmosphere of genuine horror and pathos; it is the kind of scene that those ‘Dunkirk-specific’ movies were missing – everyone’s too damn stiff-upper-lip or too damn ‘mother-f**r’ crazy – in Atonement the action is about realism, about the agony of injury, sight loss, death, the fear of the unknown, how people fought back those fears, or released it through vomiting, tears and despair, and soothed each other and the afflicted – even the harsh as nails Ward Sister [Gina McKee – see what I mean about good actors in minor roles?] demonstrates ample compassion when required.
Similarly, the early scenes at the country house idyll have a warmth and carelessness to them which underlines the genteel ignorant existence of the upper classes. One must ask one’s self if this film could have succeeded quite so brilliantly had the film been set among the working classes of Balham or Birmingham. The juxtaposition of the rich suddenly working alongside the poor in the war effort is almost as harrowing as the Dunkirk evacuation. Briony’s well-intentioned but misinformed evidence hints at a class divide [McAvoy’s Robbie openly states it] but in fact her error has more to do with jealousy and her own youthful lusts, which the film doesn’t quite draw out, preferring the angle of ‘atonement’.
A beautiful music score delights for the pastoral scenes and grows despondently morose as the war kicks in; romance meanwhile has the subterfuge of gentle, wispy strings. Composer Dario Marianelli deservedly won an Oscar for his efforts.
Ron Howard’s brilliant true-life drama is as good today as when first released. The third mission to land men on the moon goes drastically wrong when an explosion cripples the spacecraft and ground control battle to get the astronauts home safely.
Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon are the astronauts and Ed Harris and Gary Sinise lead the technicians on the ground. The claustrophobic scenes in the craft are engrossing and the tension racks up, as the seemingly cursed mission from the start, plays out to its conclusion.
I remember watching the dramatic events play out in real-life on the television at home when I was 14. Prayers were said in school assembly for the safe return of the astronauts. This movie brings it all back to mind.
Highly recommended.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
What to say? I'm a history buff, so naturally I enjoyed it. Some has said this is basically the same story as the first Gladiator movie. In my opinion it's different enough not to be a problem, for me at least. One problem this movie inherits from the first movie is not having enough colour. Statues were painted in lively colours back then. Interior walls in rich homes had mosaics or carpets, They weren't beige as we often see here. This is worse in recent medieval movies that are unrealisticly drained of colour. Black leather armour simply wasn't a thing back then.
While the opening battle in Gladiator II is impressive, I very much question if anyone did amphibious assaults on fortified enemies in ancient times. I can't think of any examples of this happening before WWII, but I'll have to check.
Back to the movie. When I saw the first Gladiator movie I remember wishing they had shown a staged sea battle in the arena, and I'm happy to say we get one here. As one would expect the fights are first rate and full of spectacle. But Scott hasn't forgotten character and drama, and in my opinion this is doen well too. Denzel Washington's Machiavellian character is a standout. Paul Mescal's gladiator is worth a special mention because he is mentioned as a possible James Bond. When Russel Crow starred in the first movie it was obvious that we were watching a star in the making. Mescal is nearly there, but not quite. He does the drama and fighting very well though. I also have to mention his voice. Most Bond actors had very good voices, with Brosnan and perhaps Lazenby as possible exceptions. Unlike most of the candidates mentioned as possible Bond actors these days, Mescal has a a deep, sonorous voice. That's a plus. Mescal doesn't come across as classically handsome, but neither is Craig.
I very much like that this is blockbuster cinema at it's best. Spectacle and drama that's not from some comic book is something we see far too rarely in cinemas these days, and to me Gladiator II is very welcome!
Thanks for that review @Number24 it is nice to hear a contrary opinion to the critical response.
HUMMINGBIRD aka Redemption (2013)
A British thriller starring Jason Statham should be a reason to celebrate, but Steven Knight, who writes plenty of decent screenplays, isn’t quite as hot a director as you might want for a Jason Statham flick.
Statham plays a PTSD suffering ex-commando on the run from a court martial after he committed a war crime in Afghanistan. Down and out on the streets of London, he falls foul of some local drug dealers, falls into an empty luxury apartment and starts turning his life around – if working for the local Chinese mafia, distributing drugs, people smuggling, murder and seducing nuns can be termed ‘life turning’. Covent Garden and the surrounding Soho areas are prominently featured, which makes it a location spotter of a film if you know the area, otherwise it’s a brutal exercise with some heart but singularly lacking in any lighthandedness. A miserable exercise with a few notable moments of action. Our man Jason is watchable when he isn’t playing drunk, but there’s not much else to comment on.
I wouldn’t have watched it, only the TV listings had it advertised under its US title and I thought it was a Statham film I hadn’t seen. Should have done more research, I guess.
A beautiful and mysterious art film made by Sergei Parajanov, presenting the life and times of the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova in a series of tableaux vivants.
GLADIIATOR (and yes, that's how the title is revealed to begin the film).
This falls into the 'pretty good' category. It's not in the same league as the first film but it's solid enough for what it is. I'd call it a mid-tier Ridley Scott effort when all is said and done.
I have two major issues with the film, and I'm serious...they're huge issues.
Paul Mescal is miscast. He's good in terms of 'acting' but he lacks the presence and charisma to anchor the film. Russell Crowe was a force of nature in the first film and 100% believable in every single scene he's in. Paul is fine, but there's nothing about him or his performance to make you BELIEVE in him. I definitely don't see him as James Bond after this, that's for sure. If he gets the gig, I'll seriously have to reconsider my loyalty to the franchise.
No Hans Zimmer score. The first film works and excels because of a number of ingredients coming together perfectly. One of the big ingredients was that magnificent score. What we get here is fairly anonymous and generic. It borderline sucks, to be honest. It's sprinkled with musical cues from the first film that hit you like a breath of fresh air...and then they're gone.
Of the other actors, Connie Nelsen fares the best. Pedro Pascal feels miscast as well but nothing too egregious. Denzel is Denzel playing Denzel again...he's fine. He brings some oomph to the proceedings if nothing else.
Good fights and spectacle to be had. The CGI backgrounds are much better here than in GLADIATOR but that's to be expected considering 24 years of tech improvements. The only real duff CGI is on some monkeys that simply do not convince.
Again...pretty good, not great. Lower your expectations.
A star Bellus with its accompanying planet Zyra is on collision course with Earth and will impact in 8 months time.
Much to the dismay of Dr. Cole Hendron, who tries to convince the world's leaders of the impending disaster...all evidence is ignored.
With the help of wealthy financiers, Dr. Hendron and his team assemble a spaceship with the capacity to carry 45 passengers, livestock and rations, with the hope that a safe landing on Zyra can be accomplished.
As Zyra makes a close approach towards Earth...massive tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions wreak havoc all across the globe.
He controls a business espionage ring operating in London.
Once a lucrative and powerful position opens up for him back home, he is advised to dispose of his network.
Being the criminal mastermind that he is, he devises an ingenious plan, by virtue of which he aims to get rid of all four members of his espionage circle without leaving a trace of his involvement.
Everything goes according to plan...with some minor hiccups.
In the end, Elliot receives a congratulatory message from the black hand of fate.
Directed by Ken Hughes and starring James Coburn and Lee Grant, 'The Internecine Project' is a tense thriller.
Yes, that one just about succeeds. In my review in 2022, I said the main achievement was to make Coburn's fairly ugly character sympathetic.
Lots of really good films on last night, all at once, so I watched the worst of them quite deliberately.
CLINIC EXPLOITATION (1972)
A peculiar sex-thriller.
Georgina Ward plays Julie Mason, owner of a health clinic who extracts large fees from her clients for sexual favours and even bigger fees for blackmailing them. When she rejects the advances of a rich lesbian, her ambitions start to fall apart and her criminal past catches up with her. Plenty of coy nudity from the heroine and not a lot of reasonable plot – the scene where she is seduced over a pinball machine proves embarrassing and entirely unnecessary – Julie proves remarkably dumb for a woman used to exploiting innocents. Director Don Chaffey made his name on fantasy projects like Jason and the Argonauts but the material probably needs a darker touch than he or the screenplay offers.
As a side note, Georgina Ward was elected to stand as a Labour candidate in the 1975 election, but withdrew when newspapers ran stories and photographs about the film. Both her film career and her political ambitions ground to a halt.
The last film directed by Jacques Becker before his untimely death, Le Trou is based on a real escape attempt of five prisoners from the La Santé prison in France in 1947.
Martin Scorsese has made a few great films, several good ones and a bunce of turkeys. There is always something interesting in the movies he makes, particularly his understanding of music and how its use in a film can lend character, increase or decrease tension, or galvanize a story which otherwise may appear slight. The use of the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana to accompany the opening credits of Raging Bull his 1980 biopic of Jake La Motta is one such case of where his true cinematic genius can be witnessed.
The anti-hero of Mascagni’s opera is Turridu, a man who betrays those who love him most in pursuit of brief moments of happiness; the intermezzo is a rare moment of peace in his tragic and stormy life. Similarly the accompanying slow motion images of Robert De Niro’s Jake La Motta, shadow boxing in the ring before a championship fight, is a rare moment of catharsis for this very modern, stormy anti-hero, whose ideas of chivalry revolve solely around respect garnered through the physical violence of pugilism.
La Motta, the Bronx Bull, was a beast, both in the ring and out of it; his autobiography, entitled Raging Bull, testifies to this and De Niro holds nothing back in pursuit of authenticity. His performance is as powerful as a real boxer’s punch. Thanks to De Niro’s exquisite and extraordinarily vile performance, it is clear from extremely early in the movie that La Motta is impulsive, degenerate and quick thinking, good for boxing but no good for real life. He makes bad decisions and his intuition lets him down. When he sees weakness in others he exploits it, yet he is equally open to the exploitation of others. This leads him to make a series of poor decisions, including throwing a fight, consorting with the mob, abusing his wife and family and later, when he embarks on an entertainment career, falling foul of the underage drinking laws. Time and again we see his errors and we wait, urgently, for his ultimate downfall. When it comes he abuses himself – the only person he has left to punish – and a purgation of sorts takes place. He rebuilds a semblance of a good life from decades of delinquency, brawling and debauchery.
“I was never down, Ray,” La Motta says to his biggest rival, Sugar Ray Robinson, and you sense this may just be the epitome of his whole life. Unable to express himself except through violence and rage, it is no surprise he holds both admiration and contempt for the people he fights, both in and out of the ring, for the vacuous environment of boxing invades every pore of his being. “I’ve done a lot of bad things, Joey,” he tells his brother, “maybe it’s coming back to me.”
There isn’t much to like about Jake La Motta, yet his life story feels triumphant. He ascended the pinnacle of his profession. He also reached the lowest ebb. When we meet him, he has suffered and is passing his latter days virtually alone and unheralded in one of his seedy bars reliving past glories, but mercifully alive. Like the lost prodigal, his subsequent return to New York brings partial redemption. Latterly, he quotes Bud Schulberg’s famous lines for Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront when Terry Malloy blames his brother for his failings: “It was you, Charley… You should’ve looked out for me instead of making me take them dives.” La Motta recreates Brando’s performance to exonerating his own appalling behaviour and thus attaches all blame to his brother. La Motta of course is unaware of the true irony: that the fault lines of his life are entirely of his own engineering. “Once I was blind and now I can see,” said the blind man to the pharisee – only Paul Schraeder’s update of Schulbergs script tells us refutably this is not true.
Excellent performances abound, from De Niro, Joe Pesci as his brother Joey, Frank Vincent as the mob fixer Salvy, Cathy Moriarty as Jake’s young wife Vickie – whatever happened to Cathy Moriarty? The screenplay is compulsively pulsating and in-your-face and allows the audience no opportunity to relax, no hiding place. We are as involved in Jake’s rise and fall as the characters on screen, immersed in his own spiteful existence; when he is up, so are we, when he declines, we succour to him. We wait, like he does, like his acquaintances do, wary for the next unexpected explosion of viciousness.
Scorsese directs with his customary zeal aided by superb monochrome cinemaphotography from Michael Chapman and a series of designers, costumers and location finders who allow the two men to faithfully recreate the grainy look of the forties and fifties. It helps immeasurably that, unlike say Sylvester Stallone [whose crude sequel movie Rocky Balboa was on the other channel] Scorsese doesn’t like boxing and is unafraid to show the worst excesses of what was, in the 1940s, a brutal sport. This is no Rocky fairy tale. People get seriously beat up in Scorsese’s ring. The fight footage feels very genuine, although the actors still tend to throw too many single handed combinations. Chapman’s impressive newsreel quality photography lends the subject authenticity. We should be merciful all that blood is in black and white. The only colour arrives during a series of cheerful home movies, suggesting these few brief chapters are all the happiness and light La Motta ever inhabited. Vivid editing from Thelma Schoonmaker won her an Oscar. One might perhaps be disappointed the movie doesn’t follow La Motta’s deposition against the boxing authorities and how revealing his experiences helped remove the mob and the ‘fixed fight’ from the sport.
As with most Scorsese movies, there is no music score; the story is played out against the soundtrack of the character’s lives, scratchy joyous tunes from the forties and fifties, Italian opera classics, further melding the vision of apparent truth and tranquillity.
There are many reasons to admire Raging Bull. It is a sports movie, a human interest movie, a love story; it also a superb film, regularly ranking at the top of most ‘best of all time’ lists. I enjoy lists, they provide excellent debating topics. I can’t fault a movie as good as this. It deserves the praise it received and still receives. For me, while you can debate it if you want, there is no debate for me, Raging Bull is Martin Scorsese’s best movie and is the best movie made in the 1980s. A genuine classic cinematic experience of heart, soul, head and endurance.
Two days after the invasion of Holland by Nazi Germany on May 10, 1940, a secret team of two Dutch diamond experts (Walter Keyser and Jan Smit) and a British intelligence officer (Major Dilllon) is dispatched to Amsterdam to secure all industrial diamonds and smuggle them out of the country before the Nazis get hold of them and utilize them in the manufacture of tanks and airplanes.
They are aided in their efforts by a brave local woman Anna, who works for the Dutch War Ministry.
As society collapses around them and fifth columnists fight the Dutch army in the deserted streets of the city, the team needs to rush in order to recover the remaining diamonds from a time-locked bank vault.
Finely acted with a strong storyline, Operation Amsterdam is a well-crafted espionage movie, based on real events.
Our own Lewis Gilbert directs this sprawling saga based on Harold Robbins’ 1966 multi-million bestseller. It has an impressive cast including Candice Bergen, Ernest Borgnine, Rossano Brazzi and Olivia de Havilland. Unfortunately, he’s saddled with a dull-as-ditchwater performance from Bekim Fehmiu as the leading character, Dax. Our own Angela Scoular and Lois Maxwell have small roles.
After a violent opening of murder and rape, the child Dax (much more accomplished than his future adult self) grows up in a revolutionary camp before getting into politics. Robbins’ story works better in prose than on screen, and Gilbert struggles to meld together the confusing plotlines and he doesn’t seem to be enjoying portraying the sex and violence required in such a story.
It all becomes overblown and tedious and you long for the ending to be much sooner than it is.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
I've never seen or even heard of that one @CoolHandBond .
Sutton seems to have two new [newish - I have no idea when tehy opened] cinemas. An OMNIPLEX - which used to be the Empire or something and lookd suspiciously liek an Odeon. They have 10 screens, all relatively small, but with good vision and acoustics and plenty of disabled space for wheel chair access.
The Throwley Yard cinema has fewer screens [I have not watched a movie in it yet] but must have plenty of space as it occupies the site of a couple of nightclubs and a Wilko store. They use the lobby for local functions.
Prices for both? Well, about a tenner. Food and drink eyewatering.
I watched, at the Omniplex:
HERETIC (2024)
Hugh Grant excels as Mr Reed, a vicious, fanatical religious psychopath, a man with arguments about deities and organised religion that sound reasonable but in fact only underline his overriding belief in hostile control. Reed lives alone in a hilltop clapboard hexagonal house and kidnaps unsuspecting visitors. His targets today are two pretty Mormons, evangelical missionaries of uncertain faith, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes [Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher]. Excellently directed, the initial confrontation is almost entirely filmed in facial close-up. We can see the creases on Grant’s eyelids as he inspects the girls’ with a practiced gaze. We note the twitching lips and anxious hands of the girls. a bead of moisture. The film at this point feels as if it will develop into a strange sex-fantasy, as Mr Reed quizzes his visitors about polygamy, trust and faith; where, we keep asking, will this story lead us? The girls are asking the same question…
Where it does lead won’t surprise too many people, although the filmmakers employ a few awkward hallucinogenic cutaways that don’t make a whole lot of sense to the overall intellectual narrative. The theme of religious coercion, conversion and control is a good one, one ripe for cinematic inspection. It has of course been done before [Elmer Gantry, The Prophet, for instance] and the script hints at a bigger subtext that simply doesn’t emerge. Codirectors and writers Scott Black and Bran Woods crank up the tension and the first half is grandly suspenseful and intriguing in true Hitchcockian style. The back and forth religious discussion that permeates this section gives a unique touch to proceedings; rarely has a film made religion appear so frighteningly irrelevant.
Unfortunately, the resolution is contrived, although getting there is certainly worth an hour’s watch. The trio of players are uniformly brilliant, with Grant in particular playing against type and being chillingly calculating as a smart speaking sceptic. While Chloe East copes well as the nominal nervy heroine, it is Sophie Thatcher’s more obviously clearheaded and antiauthoritarian turn that surprises and rewards. Once the blood starts flowing, proceedings get a little silly, but this needs to be tempered by the atmospheric sense of doom and gloom and inevitability. It’s dark in tone and in look.
Certainly not your average horror film. Rather good, I feel.
As D-Day edges close, British intelligence is tasked to plant a seed of suspicion in Berlin.
Major Harvey (Sir John Mills) and Colonel Logan (Cecil Parker) from British intelligence cook up an ingenious subterfuge.
The Nazi high command is to be tricked into believing that the invasion of France will be carried out by Allied forces stationed in North Africa, who will infiltrate France from the south.
In order to sell the ruse, an elaborate plan is set into motion.
Lieutenant Clifton James of the Army Pay Corps, who bears an uncanny resemblance to General Bernard Montgomery, is trained in the mannerisms of the officer and visits Gibraltar and Algiers disguised as the General, where he meets with military commanders. These special appearances spike the interest of Nazi spies in the region, who fear Montgomery might spearhead an Allied invasion from the south.
Based on the real WW2 mission 'Operation Copperhead', the movie stars the actual doppelganger Clifton James, who gives a brilliant and riveting performance as himself.
I have been very lucky these last few days as thre eof my favourite movies have been on the Beeb. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Raging Bull and now this one -
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1945)
I have written a review of this film before – about three years ago if memory serves – and I talked it up to the nines. And I frequently do talk it up in conversation: “What’s your fav movie, Chris? – What’s the best war film? – They don’t make movies like that anymore – British films are toilet.” You know the kind of thing, pint in the hand, fag in the other [or Walkers crisp packet as it might be these days] ruminating over the state of the arts…
Thing is, I am a big fan of Powell and Pressburger’s Archers productions. They seem to inhabit a time warp of cinematic history, where great films were made on comparatively small budgets, where directors and production crews worked miracles and were creative, inventive and innovative, where films both large and small deemed to be taken seriously and covered subject matter that informed and provoked. The Archers output was tremendously consistent over ten to fifteen years or so and their movies remain watchable despite a creaking ‘Englishness’ that doesn’t sound quite modern enough for the 21st Century. Still at least you can hear what people are saying all the time because one of the fundamentals of Powell and Pressburger’s work is the storytelling – not the narrative and the images, which are startling and seductive enough – but through the power of words and character. I recently reviewed the magnificent fake-biopic Colonel Blimp, ever thankful for the excellent vocal performances and the intense and rewarding characterisations, especially of Roger Livesey in the title role.
Livesey’s here again, this time as a supporting player to David Niven and Kim Hunter, whose burgeoning, idealised romance exists only through the crackling airwaves of a Lancaster bomber’s radio transmitter. Livesey’s Dr Reeves is the axle around which the story resolves itself, a man of principle and much integrity who pleads in the after-world for the life of his patient Peter Carter [Niven], a poet and bomber pilot shot down over the North Sea who ought to be dead but survives due to a fortuitous mishap which creates administrative chaos in a world beyond the stars. You might call it heaven. Richard Attenborough’s young gunner certainly thinks it might be [“This is heaven,” he ambiguously remarks]. Or you might just call it an imagination. There’s plenty of room for that: “This is the universe,” states the film’s opening narrator, “big, isn’t it?”
It is important that Carter is a poet because the film, with all it wordsmithery and flights of fancy, takes place in his imagination, an imagination damaged by chronic adhesive arachnoiditis which occurred in action a couple of years earlier and has been affected anew by his fall from a plane without a parachute. No James Bond heroics here. Carter falls to his supposed death. Only in a peasouper of a fog, his ‘Conductor’ – an effete aristocrat from the French Revolution referred to as Conductor 71 – ‘missed’ him and Carter splashes down unharmed, only to meet June, the American radio operator who coaxed him through his final minutes. Instantly they recognise each other, she seduced by his poetic dialogue, he by her homespun compassion. We instantly recognise something is amiss in the world Carter wakes up to. First, he is entirely undamaged; second, his recurring final words “prop or wings” repeat over and over in his mind as the screen fades into generous black and white and we view the after-life, an art-deco paradise of enormous landscapes, where the clocks beat a monotony of ‘prop or wings’; third, a naked boy goatherder plays his flute on the beach [an incident of Grecian myth later referred to during Carter’s supernatural ‘trial’]; fourth, he immediately meets June exactly where she said she would be; fifth, at his recovery hospital the staff are in the throes of rehearsing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the most hallucinogenic of Shakespeare’s plays; lastly, his world is several times ‘stopped’ allowing Conductor 71 to converse with him in witty dialogue about the problems he has caused to the order of things by not dying and outstaying his welcome on Earth: “After all, what is time? A mere tyranny.”
Conductor 71 might be an angel, he might not. The after-life may be heaven, it may not. The stern judge may be a God – or not, the same actor is revealed as the genius surgeon who operates on Peter Carter’s cracked cranium – now there might be an irony. The American flyers may be dead or not; the same actors [all uncredited] play duplicate roles. What we do recognise is that Carter is fighting himself, that his efforts to stay alive are manifestations of his own hopes and dreams and a little fear. He discusses all either through his own mouthpiece or those of his performers Dr Reeves, Conductor 71 and Abraham Farlan, the philosophy of love, the theory of heaven and hell, the purpose of humanity and the way to freedom – is it through power and might, or love and compassion?
“Do you believe in the survival of human personality after death?” asks Dr Reeves, hinting again that Carter is enacting the whole saga to escape his own terminus. Even Carter’s chess game suffers, but Alekhine’s book My Best Games of Chess 1924 – 1937 remains steadfastly in his pocket – Carter believes Conductor 71 stole it, but June unpacks it from his case during his recover from surgery. So, was everything we saw a figment of his imagination, a personal fairy tale as potent as The Wizard of Oz? Powell and Pressburger employ the same trick used by Victor Fleming and producer Mervyn Le Roy on that famous musical by swapping monochrome for technicolour. Only here the reverse of the expected occurs. War, love and life are presented in bright, exhuming colour while the supposed after-world and its gigantic fantastic brilliance comes smothered in monochrome grey. “One is starved for technicolour up there,” sighs Conductor 71, sniffing his suddenly red carnation; they must be starved of scent too, although his perfume is one of fried onions according to Peter Carter.
While the debate about what may or may not be real passes us on-and-off throughout the film, it is worth remembering there is a romance underplaying the narrative, a slight one, but a very real one, a passion born out of desperation, some clever incisive phrases and a huge dollop of emotive ardour, wrestled not by physical action but by a few creased tears. You are not supposed to start weeping at the very beginning of a movie, but A Matter of Life and Death succeeds in that by bringing Peter and June together, playing out their love affair in miniature as his Lancaster nose dives, before he suicidally jumps – parting them almost as immediately as they met: “You’ve got a good voice. You’ve got guts too. It’s funny, I’ve known dozens of girls and I’ve been in love with some of them, but an American girl whom I’ve never seen and who I never shall see will hear my last words… June, if you’re around when they pick me up, turn your head away.”
Of course, June [Kim Hunter, very young] does not turn away, not once, despite only knowing Peter Carter’s voice. That is the romance of love, of poetry, of the imagination. The movie was made at a time when Anglo-American relations were being redefined thanks to the purgatory of six years of war. Unlike Colonel Blimp, which Churchill despised, the War Office encouraged the subtext of this film as a morale booster for both nations, to demonstrate that friendship, conciliation and love can foster across cultures even in such environments as the battlefield. It may not be a war film of attrition and horror, but A Matter of Life and Death occupies a place in the war genre for suggesting that love blossoms in the most unexpected and remote places, and that even in times of great despair, there is still a place for compassion and passion to flourish. Freedom fighter and warmonger Abraham Farlan has good reason to dislike the English, for he was shot and killed by colonial soldiers, but when a beautiful woman from his own town falls in love with an Englishman you sense his arguments however stern are always going to fail. Dr Reeves, in comparison, provides the evidence of desire: those tears we were speaking of earlier. Will Peter Carter, poet and pilot, live to fight and write another day? The resolution, committed on an impressive stairway to heaven, lined with the great philosophers, artists and politicians, is not unexpected and a tad simplistic – but then love always is isn’t it?
Ultimately, so too is the matter of life and death as suggested by the film’s title, although for the Archers it isn’t as simple as a religious belief or an intellectual one, it is a more humanist issue, to do with what invigorates the soul and the heart and influences across barriers of time and culture: the simple condition of ‘love’. Mind, if a victim is as good looking as David Niven was in 1945, you do always think any jury is going to side in his favour.
Photography, set design, editing, visual and effects, music, all well above scratch. Direction candid and swift. Script smart and sharp, amusing, sensitive and solemn. I talk about this film too much and repeated viewings sometimes dull the memorial impression, but visually and intellectually A Matter of Life and Death is still mightily and marvellously impressive.
A new version of Stephen King’s vampire tale revisits the original television mini-series rather than the novel. Character development is jettisoned for gory scares and although the portrayal of small town America looks good, it’s basically soulless. This sort of novel warrants an 8 episode mini-series where character and story can unwind at a more leisurely but tense pace.
Author Ben Mears returns to his home town in search of inspiration but uncovers a nest of vampires instead.
Fans of the novel will be disappointed.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
An early Micheal Powell film set on the Hebridean isle of Hirta. Inspired by the story of the St Kilda evacuations of the 1920s, Powell had wanted to make the film for some years, which certainly shows ambition for a young moviemaker. Unusually for a 1930s film, he was able to film entirely on location, although not at St Kilda itself. Instead he used one of the other farthest western islands of the British Isles, Foula, and utilised the local population as extras and, sometimes, actors. Powell films the residents, who are mostly island crofters, sheep herders or fishermen, about their daily businesses and interweaves these documentary scenes with the fictional narrative, that of a looming abandonment of Hirta and St Kilda in favour of mainland Scotland, a decision brought about by the encroachment of modern technology on the island’s economy and social structure.
John Laurie is outstanding as Peter Manson, a God fearing traditionalist, whose daughter Ruth [Belle Chrystall] is in love with the neighbouring fisherman, Andrew Gray [Niall MacGuinness]. James Gray, Andrew’s father [a fine role for Finlay Currie] is a forward thinking headsman who attempts to sway Peter Manson from his archaic views, but with little success. When Manson’s son Robbie returns from working abroad full of the joy of modern industry and sensing an inevitable end to the pastoral island life, sceptic Andrew Gray challenges him to cliff-climb which leads to tragedy and alters everyone’s point of view of the future and the past.
Beautiful poignant, superbly shot, with an emphasis on real experiences and with the actors and extras performing all of the stunts and everyday activities, thus informing us of both the hardship and the idyll of the far isles, The Edge of the World is a grippingly tragic delight. Powell already displays a sure hand with both actors and action, extracting good performances and ensuring the moments of drama and tension are fully exploited. The fearful cliff-climb is a high point, replicated in similar fashion at the film’s tragic end, yet losing none of its ability to shock. Vocal silence is paramount, and much character is provided through mine and expression; a choral soundtrack ebbs and flows through the entire 70min runtime. Our sympathies lie primarily with the young lovers Andrew and Ruth, thwarted by circumstance and by Manson’s obstinacy. A happy ending seems to be in the offing before those circumstances conspire against the families. Nonetheless, Powell and particularly John Laurie, are able to imbue us with a sense of sadness over the evacuation, opposed by Manson on principle, yet accepted as inevitable. It is the realisation that for family life to continue in any form for the St Kilda’s, new worlds must be sought.
Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly and Ernest Palmer must take the plaudits for the grimly realistic photography, especially the forbidding features of the Foula sea cliffs, some of the mightiest in Britain, and the mist shrouded views of the Scottish Hills, adding a rare touch of mysticism to the overriding realist experience. One may find some of the acting a tad stagey, but I can accept this given that the setting isn’t daubed in some crooked fantasy island repose like Summer Isle from The Wicker Man. Far better to have stilted uncertainty than RADA trained niceties for a sense of genuine pragmatism. The director himself and his then wife Frankie Reidy provide enough of that as curious tourists in the opening scenes.
A very fine film of much emotive drama.
RETURN TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (1978)
The BBC also showed this fascinating short documentary made by Micheal Powell about the island of Foula and how it has gradually adjusted to the modern world following the release of the film decades before. He revisited it with members of the original production crew, including star John Laurie. The scenery is even more lovely and even more forbidding in technicolour. While cars, air transport and communication had come to Foula, it is noticeable that much had remained the same despite four decades of opportunity. The same families still live there. They still play and sing the old songs. One of the real life island women had come to resemble Ruth’s grandmother from the film, sitting in the open air wrapped in a shawl tending her knitting. While there is no wish expressed by the population to abandon Foula, it was still considered a far outpost of the UK and is about as isolated in 1978 as a community can be – they even make their own fiddles from driftwood and sheep gut.
Many thanks @Sonero ... and there is more Michael Powell to come...
THE RED SHOES (1948)
Another Powell and Pressburger masterpiece [masterclass, perhaps?] in cinematic storytelling is a reimagining of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, which in many ways sums up their freewheeling attitude towards cinematic storytelling: that it is really all make-believe and fairy tales for adults. The Red Shoes has a dark subtext about control and latent desire, in relationships both personal and vocational, and in ambition. Here, art genuinely appears to imitate life.
Vickie Page is a young ballerina picked almost from the gallery who becomes a star under the tutelage of impresario Boris Lermontov, an almost demented Anton Walbrook. Walbrook’s performance is an example of high intensity and huge return; he is outstanding as a driven, power hungry abuser, a man who will stop at nothing and at nobody in pursuit of his art – the emphasis being entirely on the ‘his’ – for he is completely self-obsessed. In work, everyone is his subordinate, everyone kowtows to his command, nobody questions him, nobody presumes for him; his producers, artists, choreographers and conductors spend their time pacing nervously around him, waiting for an opportunity to speak, waiting for a pronouncement, barely uttering a whisper of discontent. Only poor Vickie Page objects. Unable to sustain her training routine, the affects of fame and fortune, she metaphorically falls into the arms of talented genius composer Julian Craster [Marius Goring at his romantic best]. Moira Shearer, an actual prima ballerina with the Sadler’s Wells Company who could also act some, is equally fine as the frightened and flustered Vickie, a woman torn between love for a man and love for dancing. Hans Anderson’s Red Shoes and the accompanying beautiful, forceful and tragic stage show Vickie stars in are an allegory of her desires.
Micheal Powell directs the dancing sequences with much verve and power. They are a true ‘opening out’ of the ballet which begins with the curtain raised on Leonide Massine’s Shoemaker, who is demonstrating his new red ballet shoes to the audience. The sets, costumes and staging of the entire 17-minute sequence puts anything offered by Hollywood before 1948 to shame; perhaps only Astaire and Rogers at the climax of Top Hat could match it. The camera swirls, the sets pull apart and reweld, dancers become inanimate objects. Brian Easedale’s triumphant and melancholic music rightfully won an Oscar, as did Hein Heckroth’s fantasy designs. You wonder why cameraman Jack Cardiff was overlooked, the thing is so bright, then dark, licked with shadows and splashes of sudden echoing light; similarly the thrusting, snap-and-whip editing by Reginal Mills that imitates the music and the dancing at once. Vickie’s Dancer is given the red shoes by the Shoemaker and they magically jump onto her feet [a neat cinematic effect]. As she dances and dances and dances, nearing exhaustion and destitution, her Lover [a young Robert Helpmann] alters shapes and personalities – including at one point a floating newspaper, quite possibly one of the most magical musical moments ever presented on the cinema screen – before finally as a pastor he presides over her funeral and the shoes are cut off the Dancer’s feet. The Shoemaker, who himself has followed the Dancer and encouraged her to dance and dance, becoming increasingly demented in his entreaties, collects the Red Shoes and returns them to his shop.
The inference is clear: Lermontov is the crazed Shoemaker and Julian the Lover who will preside over her funeral. The future is mapped for this subtly warring trio. They pursue each other and each other’s desires around Europe before eventually the tragedy unfolds in a riot of sudden emotional ecstasy where claim, counter claim, understanding and misunderstanding, default and desire are intermingled and unresolved. As Vickie Page’s world collapses, her feet can only dance and dance and dance all the way to her doom.
A fairy tale of supreme intensity, emotional drive and much Freudian subtext. An enormous hit in its day, a film that sparked dancers such as Gene Kelly to create miniature ballets in their own movies [he was already attempting it with The Pirate, but An American in Paris, Singing in the Rain and the neglected wonder that is Invitation to the Dance demonstrate where his balletic choreography was best realised]. Some may find it too stagey; I did on first viewing back in my very early twenties. I watched it because I wanted to fathom out what all the fuss was over that Kate Bush album of the same name. Still can’t tell you that. What I can tell you is The Red Shoes is a wonderful musical film, although it isn’t a musical show of a film, that remains a crowning achievement not only for British cinema but cinema worldwide. Directors have imitated its presentation of dance before, on and beyond stage in numerous fashions ever since.
@chrisno1 The Red Shoes is one of the most beautiful films ever made and a masterpiece of cinema. Great review.
ABOVE US THE WAVES 1955
The film details the attack on the German battleship Tirpitz by British Commando frogmen in September 1943.
Tirpitz, the heaviest battleship serving in Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine and hidden deep inside a Norwegian fjord, was a major threat to Allied operations in the Norwegian Sea.
Using six X-class mini-submarines, the Royal Navy succeeded in badly damaging the ship, knocking it out of active service till April 1944 after which it was completely destroyed by RAF Avro Lancasters.
The film, based on the real WW2 Operation Source, is a dramatic retelling of this story of valor.
Comments
@Sonero I must say I am very impressed by your unorthodox viewing.
Back to the mudane:
A PASSAGE TO INDIA (1984)
David Lean’s accolade laden career ended with this modest epic set in 1920s India and based on E.M. Forster’s excellent, though long winded novel. It would be fair to say that Lean treats the narrative with the same long-winded high-handedness. The framing of some shots, locations and landscapes is obviously designed to be symbolic, significant or possibly just scenic, but the overall effect is to suggest this is a filmmaker who wants to demonstrate he can do more than simply tell us a story. The problem with Lean’s metaphoric approach is it actually buries the story, which isn’t up to much in the first place. He also removes many of the anti-colonial sentiments of the novel and leaves the British looking foolish, but not devious or callous, and the Indians appear to be pleasant, but headstrong and foolish – their mouths tending to run away with them. Only Rashid Karapiet’s barrister Das shows any kind of etiquette. One feels, in attempting to widen the scope of the novel into something semi-religious, preordained and colourfully laudable, Lean has given himself too much to do. He shuffles-in unnecessary scenes. There is a totally mystifying nighttime shot of a crocodile loping in the Ganges and another of the Brahman Godpole saluting Mrs Moore as she leaves on the train. Latterly, Lean inserts a whole sequence of views of the Himalayas designed to do no more than show them off, and even more of the night sky and the moon. Adela Quested’s sensual journey to a Hindu temple is a misstep inappropriate to the narrative. It’s all very well illustrating your locations lovingly, but this kind of ham-fisted filmmaking panders to the artist not the art.
The problem for Lean is that aside for the good looking cast and a decent performance by Peggy Ashcroft, there isn’t a lot to keep our eyes busy other than those visuals. He wrote the screenplay, directed and edited the result, so there is nowhere else for him to turn to and place the blame. A Passage to India purrs on like a lazy cat. We like the look of it, cuddled and friendly, but it ain’t doing much. Sadly, Maurice Jarre’s music, like Lean’s direction, is merely a regurgitation of past glories. Alec Guinness is horrifically miscast as Godpole and this was widely and rightly criticised at the time; the days of ‘blacking up’ actors should have bitten the dust by 1984. Lean’s return to film after over a dozen years was welcomed by the movie goers and A Passage to India was a huge hit, commercially and critically. It benefitted no doubt from following Gandhi, The Far Pavilions and stuff like that. Tellingly James Ivory [who had just directed the wonderful and superior India-set Heat and Dust] said he could have made the film with half the cost, half the run time and be twice as good. A Passage to India is certainly watchable, but for evidence of David Lean’s true genius I suggest a few hours watching River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Dr Zhivago.
@chrisno1 Thank you for the kind words Sir.
RING OF SPIES (1964)
On January 7, 1961 a network of deep cover KGB operatives was arrested in the UK by the MI5.
This network included two British clerks Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee, who had been stealing top secret information from a submarine research center in Portland, UK, their controller Gordon Lonsdale and a middle aged bookseller couple, the Krogers. The Portland spy ring, as it was then called, had been transmitting highly sensitive information to the Soviet Union since 1953.
This movie, Ring of Spies is a factual account of the activities of the group and the events leading up to their arrest.
Starring Bernard Lee, William Sylvester and Margaret Tyzack and directed by Robert Tronson, Ring of Spies is a very interesting counter-espionage movie with a docu-drama feel to it.
Excellent film.
THE BEDFORD INCIDENT (1965)
The Cuban Missile Crisis and the widespread paranoia of the 60's resulted in the production of some very poignant works of apocalyptic art i.e., Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, On the Beach etc.
This tense and gritty Cold War thriller falls into the same category.
Sailing in the Denmark Strait, the US Navy destroyer USS Bedford detects a Soviet submarine just off the coast of Greenland. The despotic and gung-ho commander of the ship, Captain Eric Finlander (Richard Widmark), obsessively pursues the submarine, all the while enforcing high levels of vigilance and compliance on his ship's crew.
A disquieting tension builds up between the ship's captain and the exhausted under-command.
Tempers flare-up between Captain Finlander and the two new arrivals on the ship, civilian photojournalist Ben Munceford (Sidney Poitier) and the medical officer Lieutenant Commander Chester Potter (Martin Balsam), but the skipper remains resolute.
He is hellbent on forcing the submarine to surface and identify itself, even though the submarine is now in international waters.
This cat and mouse game ultimately ends in tragedy.
A terrific film and one of the best Cold War thrillers to grace the cinema screen.
ATONEMENT (2007)
A splendid adaptation of Ian McEwan’s splendid novel. It is a hot summer in 1935 and young, impressionable dreamer Briony Tallis is writing stories and fantasising about the handsome gardener and his unrequited love affair with her sister, Celia. By accident and then by design she comes into possession of and reads an explicit letter between the two and her reactions to the knowledge of lust and love among the lilies and libraries leads the nosey 13-year-old to make sudden assumptions that have consequences far beyond an illicit upstairs-downstairs relationship.
Brilliantly acted from a generally young cast, Saoirse Ronan impresses as the young Briony, while Vanessa Redgrave dutifully sheds a tear as her older character, now a successful author seeking redemption for her past mistakes through the printed word – a neat analogy from McEwan kept in the film by writer-adaptor Christopher Hampton. Romola Gari is the least effective of the trio of actresses, chiefly because she spends so much of her time in silent contemplation of her past acts, the acts of others and the future for everyone. Mind you, even she pulls off a remarkably affecting scene comforting a dying soldier. Poor Briony has got herself in right emotional pickle.
Kiera Knightley has probably never been better or as assured playing the bored, but sensually sophisticated Celia. James McAvoy convinces less as a romantic lead than he does as a conscripted soldier trying to flee Dunkirk. Having seen a couple of ‘Dunkirk-specific’ movies recently, it is interesting to recognise that Joe Wright’s version of the chaotic beaches is probably better than both of them, more remarkable given he had to rehearse and prepare a long tracking shot through the soldiers to give the impression of size and scale and numbers; for he actually only had a thousand extras to work with. One must surely thank too cinematographer Seamus McGarvey who controls every sequence with a keen eye for light, colour and detail. The cast and director must be indebted too to Christopher Hampton, who could probably have directed this himself, but nonetheless offers an excellent condensed version of McEwan’s original, a book which really ought to have won the Booker Prize in 2001 – I mean, Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang is a good novel, but it is less accessible and ultimately, who remembers it?
Book musings aside, the story is excellently told and benefits from including actors like Benedict Cumberbatch and Brenda Blethyn in small but important roles. The heart rules the head in this one, even though the intellectual head is clearly important to the story and its ultimate resolution. It perhaps didn’t need Robbie Turner’s strange sickness induced wartime mental breakdown, for the sequences set at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, when the injured are returned from Dunkirk have a better atmosphere of genuine horror and pathos; it is the kind of scene that those ‘Dunkirk-specific’ movies were missing – everyone’s too damn stiff-upper-lip or too damn ‘mother-f**r’ crazy – in Atonement the action is about realism, about the agony of injury, sight loss, death, the fear of the unknown, how people fought back those fears, or released it through vomiting, tears and despair, and soothed each other and the afflicted – even the harsh as nails Ward Sister [Gina McKee – see what I mean about good actors in minor roles?] demonstrates ample compassion when required.
Similarly, the early scenes at the country house idyll have a warmth and carelessness to them which underlines the genteel ignorant existence of the upper classes. One must ask one’s self if this film could have succeeded quite so brilliantly had the film been set among the working classes of Balham or Birmingham. The juxtaposition of the rich suddenly working alongside the poor in the war effort is almost as harrowing as the Dunkirk evacuation. Briony’s well-intentioned but misinformed evidence hints at a class divide [McAvoy’s Robbie openly states it] but in fact her error has more to do with jealousy and her own youthful lusts, which the film doesn’t quite draw out, preferring the angle of ‘atonement’.
A beautiful music score delights for the pastoral scenes and grows despondently morose as the war kicks in; romance meanwhile has the subterfuge of gentle, wispy strings. Composer Dario Marianelli deservedly won an Oscar for his efforts.
Brilliant.
APOLLO 13 (1995)
Ron Howard’s brilliant true-life drama is as good today as when first released. The third mission to land men on the moon goes drastically wrong when an explosion cripples the spacecraft and ground control battle to get the astronauts home safely.
Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon are the astronauts and Ed Harris and Gary Sinise lead the technicians on the ground. The claustrophobic scenes in the craft are engrossing and the tension racks up, as the seemingly cursed mission from the start, plays out to its conclusion.
I remember watching the dramatic events play out in real-life on the television at home when I was 14. Prayers were said in school assembly for the safe return of the astronauts. This movie brings it all back to mind.
Highly recommended.
Gladiator II (2024)
What to say? I'm a history buff, so naturally I enjoyed it. Some has said this is basically the same story as the first Gladiator movie. In my opinion it's different enough not to be a problem, for me at least. One problem this movie inherits from the first movie is not having enough colour. Statues were painted in lively colours back then. Interior walls in rich homes had mosaics or carpets, They weren't beige as we often see here. This is worse in recent medieval movies that are unrealisticly drained of colour. Black leather armour simply wasn't a thing back then.
While the opening battle in Gladiator II is impressive, I very much question if anyone did amphibious assaults on fortified enemies in ancient times. I can't think of any examples of this happening before WWII, but I'll have to check.
Back to the movie. When I saw the first Gladiator movie I remember wishing they had shown a staged sea battle in the arena, and I'm happy to say we get one here. As one would expect the fights are first rate and full of spectacle. But Scott hasn't forgotten character and drama, and in my opinion this is doen well too. Denzel Washington's Machiavellian character is a standout. Paul Mescal's gladiator is worth a special mention because he is mentioned as a possible James Bond. When Russel Crow starred in the first movie it was obvious that we were watching a star in the making. Mescal is nearly there, but not quite. He does the drama and fighting very well though. I also have to mention his voice. Most Bond actors had very good voices, with Brosnan and perhaps Lazenby as possible exceptions. Unlike most of the candidates mentioned as possible Bond actors these days, Mescal has a a deep, sonorous voice. That's a plus. Mescal doesn't come across as classically handsome, but neither is Craig.
I very much like that this is blockbuster cinema at it's best. Spectacle and drama that's not from some comic book is something we see far too rarely in cinemas these days, and to me Gladiator II is very welcome!
Seeing that tonight!
Thanks for that review @Number24 it is nice to hear a contrary opinion to the critical response.
HUMMINGBIRD aka Redemption (2013)
A British thriller starring Jason Statham should be a reason to celebrate, but Steven Knight, who writes plenty of decent screenplays, isn’t quite as hot a director as you might want for a Jason Statham flick.
Statham plays a PTSD suffering ex-commando on the run from a court martial after he committed a war crime in Afghanistan. Down and out on the streets of London, he falls foul of some local drug dealers, falls into an empty luxury apartment and starts turning his life around – if working for the local Chinese mafia, distributing drugs, people smuggling, murder and seducing nuns can be termed ‘life turning’. Covent Garden and the surrounding Soho areas are prominently featured, which makes it a location spotter of a film if you know the area, otherwise it’s a brutal exercise with some heart but singularly lacking in any lighthandedness. A miserable exercise with a few notable moments of action. Our man Jason is watchable when he isn’t playing drunk, but there’s not much else to comment on.
I wouldn’t have watched it, only the TV listings had it advertised under its US title and I thought it was a Statham film I hadn’t seen. Should have done more research, I guess.
THE COLOR OF POMEGRANATES (1969) (Yutkevitch Cut)
A beautiful and mysterious art film made by Sergei Parajanov, presenting the life and times of the Armenian poet Sayat-Nova in a series of tableaux vivants.
Avant-garde cinema, at its finest.
GLADIIATOR (and yes, that's how the title is revealed to begin the film).
This falls into the 'pretty good' category. It's not in the same league as the first film but it's solid enough for what it is. I'd call it a mid-tier Ridley Scott effort when all is said and done.
I have two major issues with the film, and I'm serious...they're huge issues.
Of the other actors, Connie Nelsen fares the best. Pedro Pascal feels miscast as well but nothing too egregious. Denzel is Denzel playing Denzel again...he's fine. He brings some oomph to the proceedings if nothing else.
Good fights and spectacle to be had. The CGI backgrounds are much better here than in GLADIATOR but that's to be expected considering 24 years of tech improvements. The only real duff CGI is on some monkeys that simply do not convince.
Again...pretty good, not great. Lower your expectations.
WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (1951)
The news is grim.
A star Bellus with its accompanying planet Zyra is on collision course with Earth and will impact in 8 months time.
Much to the dismay of Dr. Cole Hendron, who tries to convince the world's leaders of the impending disaster...all evidence is ignored.
With the help of wealthy financiers, Dr. Hendron and his team assemble a spaceship with the capacity to carry 45 passengers, livestock and rations, with the hope that a safe landing on Zyra can be accomplished.
As Zyra makes a close approach towards Earth...massive tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions wreak havoc all across the globe.
Now the final impact with Bellus awaits...
Directed by Rudolph Maté and running at 83 minutes, 'When Worlds Collide' is a fantastic sci-fi film.
Highly recommended.
THE INTERNECINE PROJECT (1974)
American economist Robert Elliot hides a secret.
He controls a business espionage ring operating in London.
Once a lucrative and powerful position opens up for him back home, he is advised to dispose of his network.
Being the criminal mastermind that he is, he devises an ingenious plan, by virtue of which he aims to get rid of all four members of his espionage circle without leaving a trace of his involvement.
Everything goes according to plan...with some minor hiccups.
In the end, Elliot receives a congratulatory message from the black hand of fate.
Directed by Ken Hughes and starring James Coburn and Lee Grant, 'The Internecine Project' is a tense thriller.
(89 minutes)
Yes, that one just about succeeds. In my review in 2022, I said the main achievement was to make Coburn's fairly ugly character sympathetic.
Lots of really good films on last night, all at once, so I watched the worst of them quite deliberately.
CLINIC EXPLOITATION (1972)
A peculiar sex-thriller.
Georgina Ward plays Julie Mason, owner of a health clinic who extracts large fees from her clients for sexual favours and even bigger fees for blackmailing them. When she rejects the advances of a rich lesbian, her ambitions start to fall apart and her criminal past catches up with her. Plenty of coy nudity from the heroine and not a lot of reasonable plot – the scene where she is seduced over a pinball machine proves embarrassing and entirely unnecessary – Julie proves remarkably dumb for a woman used to exploiting innocents. Director Don Chaffey made his name on fantasy projects like Jason and the Argonauts but the material probably needs a darker touch than he or the screenplay offers.
As a side note, Georgina Ward was elected to stand as a Labour candidate in the 1975 election, but withdrew when newspapers ran stories and photographs about the film. Both her film career and her political ambitions ground to a halt.
Clinic Exploitation? I’ve never heard of this film before. Good to see I’ve dragged you down to my level at last 😂
The Internecine Project is really good, Coburn is a fine actor.
LE TROU (1960)
The last film directed by Jacques Becker before his untimely death, Le Trou is based on a real escape attempt of five prisoners from the La Santé prison in France in 1947.
Painstakingly thorough with meticulous attention to detail and real grit...
Le Trou is an authentic masterpiece.
THE TRAITORS (1962)
Fast paced and engaging counter-intelligence movie set in London.
Blue prints of a top secret project in microfilm are discovered from the wreckage of a plane crash, alerting British and NATO intelligence services.
One of the scientists working on the project is leaking sensitive information to the Soviets.
The joint investigation leads to the office of physician Dr. Lindt.
A deep cover espionage network is discovered and then tracked.
Directed by Robert Tronson, 'The Traitors' is a well-made spy thriller.
(71 minutes)
RAGING BULL (1980)
Martin Scorsese has made a few great films, several good ones and a bunce of turkeys. There is always something interesting in the movies he makes, particularly his understanding of music and how its use in a film can lend character, increase or decrease tension, or galvanize a story which otherwise may appear slight. The use of the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana to accompany the opening credits of Raging Bull his 1980 biopic of Jake La Motta is one such case of where his true cinematic genius can be witnessed.
The anti-hero of Mascagni’s opera is Turridu, a man who betrays those who love him most in pursuit of brief moments of happiness; the intermezzo is a rare moment of peace in his tragic and stormy life. Similarly the accompanying slow motion images of Robert De Niro’s Jake La Motta, shadow boxing in the ring before a championship fight, is a rare moment of catharsis for this very modern, stormy anti-hero, whose ideas of chivalry revolve solely around respect garnered through the physical violence of pugilism.
La Motta, the Bronx Bull, was a beast, both in the ring and out of it; his autobiography, entitled Raging Bull, testifies to this and De Niro holds nothing back in pursuit of authenticity. His performance is as powerful as a real boxer’s punch. Thanks to De Niro’s exquisite and extraordinarily vile performance, it is clear from extremely early in the movie that La Motta is impulsive, degenerate and quick thinking, good for boxing but no good for real life. He makes bad decisions and his intuition lets him down. When he sees weakness in others he exploits it, yet he is equally open to the exploitation of others. This leads him to make a series of poor decisions, including throwing a fight, consorting with the mob, abusing his wife and family and later, when he embarks on an entertainment career, falling foul of the underage drinking laws. Time and again we see his errors and we wait, urgently, for his ultimate downfall. When it comes he abuses himself – the only person he has left to punish – and a purgation of sorts takes place. He rebuilds a semblance of a good life from decades of delinquency, brawling and debauchery.
“I was never down, Ray,” La Motta says to his biggest rival, Sugar Ray Robinson, and you sense this may just be the epitome of his whole life. Unable to express himself except through violence and rage, it is no surprise he holds both admiration and contempt for the people he fights, both in and out of the ring, for the vacuous environment of boxing invades every pore of his being. “I’ve done a lot of bad things, Joey,” he tells his brother, “maybe it’s coming back to me.”
There isn’t much to like about Jake La Motta, yet his life story feels triumphant. He ascended the pinnacle of his profession. He also reached the lowest ebb. When we meet him, he has suffered and is passing his latter days virtually alone and unheralded in one of his seedy bars reliving past glories, but mercifully alive. Like the lost prodigal, his subsequent return to New York brings partial redemption. Latterly, he quotes Bud Schulberg’s famous lines for Marlon Brando in On The Waterfront when Terry Malloy blames his brother for his failings: “It was you, Charley… You should’ve looked out for me instead of making me take them dives.” La Motta recreates Brando’s performance to exonerating his own appalling behaviour and thus attaches all blame to his brother. La Motta of course is unaware of the true irony: that the fault lines of his life are entirely of his own engineering. “Once I was blind and now I can see,” said the blind man to the pharisee – only Paul Schraeder’s update of Schulbergs script tells us refutably this is not true.
Excellent performances abound, from De Niro, Joe Pesci as his brother Joey, Frank Vincent as the mob fixer Salvy, Cathy Moriarty as Jake’s young wife Vickie – whatever happened to Cathy Moriarty? The screenplay is compulsively pulsating and in-your-face and allows the audience no opportunity to relax, no hiding place. We are as involved in Jake’s rise and fall as the characters on screen, immersed in his own spiteful existence; when he is up, so are we, when he declines, we succour to him. We wait, like he does, like his acquaintances do, wary for the next unexpected explosion of viciousness.
Scorsese directs with his customary zeal aided by superb monochrome cinemaphotography from Michael Chapman and a series of designers, costumers and location finders who allow the two men to faithfully recreate the grainy look of the forties and fifties. It helps immeasurably that, unlike say Sylvester Stallone [whose crude sequel movie Rocky Balboa was on the other channel] Scorsese doesn’t like boxing and is unafraid to show the worst excesses of what was, in the 1940s, a brutal sport. This is no Rocky fairy tale. People get seriously beat up in Scorsese’s ring. The fight footage feels very genuine, although the actors still tend to throw too many single handed combinations. Chapman’s impressive newsreel quality photography lends the subject authenticity. We should be merciful all that blood is in black and white. The only colour arrives during a series of cheerful home movies, suggesting these few brief chapters are all the happiness and light La Motta ever inhabited. Vivid editing from Thelma Schoonmaker won her an Oscar. One might perhaps be disappointed the movie doesn’t follow La Motta’s deposition against the boxing authorities and how revealing his experiences helped remove the mob and the ‘fixed fight’ from the sport.
As with most Scorsese movies, there is no music score; the story is played out against the soundtrack of the character’s lives, scratchy joyous tunes from the forties and fifties, Italian opera classics, further melding the vision of apparent truth and tranquillity.
There are many reasons to admire Raging Bull. It is a sports movie, a human interest movie, a love story; it also a superb film, regularly ranking at the top of most ‘best of all time’ lists. I enjoy lists, they provide excellent debating topics. I can’t fault a movie as good as this. It deserves the praise it received and still receives. For me, while you can debate it if you want, there is no debate for me, Raging Bull is Martin Scorsese’s best movie and is the best movie made in the 1980s. A genuine classic cinematic experience of heart, soul, head and endurance.
Astonishingly brilliant.
Rocky Bilbao was on the other side, though.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Who's Rocky Bilbao ? 😁 I did mention it in my review...
OPERATION AMSTERDAM (1959)
Two days after the invasion of Holland by Nazi Germany on May 10, 1940, a secret team of two Dutch diamond experts (Walter Keyser and Jan Smit) and a British intelligence officer (Major Dilllon) is dispatched to Amsterdam to secure all industrial diamonds and smuggle them out of the country before the Nazis get hold of them and utilize them in the manufacture of tanks and airplanes.
They are aided in their efforts by a brave local woman Anna, who works for the Dutch War Ministry.
As society collapses around them and fifth columnists fight the Dutch army in the deserted streets of the city, the team needs to rush in order to recover the remaining diamonds from a time-locked bank vault.
Finely acted with a strong storyline, Operation Amsterdam is a well-crafted espionage movie, based on real events.
(104 minutes)
THE ADVENTURERS (1970)
Our own Lewis Gilbert directs this sprawling saga based on Harold Robbins’ 1966 multi-million bestseller. It has an impressive cast including Candice Bergen, Ernest Borgnine, Rossano Brazzi and Olivia de Havilland. Unfortunately, he’s saddled with a dull-as-ditchwater performance from Bekim Fehmiu as the leading character, Dax. Our own Angela Scoular and Lois Maxwell have small roles.
After a violent opening of murder and rape, the child Dax (much more accomplished than his future adult self) grows up in a revolutionary camp before getting into politics. Robbins’ story works better in prose than on screen, and Gilbert struggles to meld together the confusing plotlines and he doesn’t seem to be enjoying portraying the sex and violence required in such a story.
It all becomes overblown and tedious and you long for the ending to be much sooner than it is.
I've never seen or even heard of that one @CoolHandBond .
Sutton seems to have two new [newish - I have no idea when tehy opened] cinemas. An OMNIPLEX - which used to be the Empire or something and lookd suspiciously liek an Odeon. They have 10 screens, all relatively small, but with good vision and acoustics and plenty of disabled space for wheel chair access.
The Throwley Yard cinema has fewer screens [I have not watched a movie in it yet] but must have plenty of space as it occupies the site of a couple of nightclubs and a Wilko store. They use the lobby for local functions.
Prices for both? Well, about a tenner. Food and drink eyewatering.
I watched, at the Omniplex:
HERETIC (2024)
Hugh Grant excels as Mr Reed, a vicious, fanatical religious psychopath, a man with arguments about deities and organised religion that sound reasonable but in fact only underline his overriding belief in hostile control. Reed lives alone in a hilltop clapboard hexagonal house and kidnaps unsuspecting visitors. His targets today are two pretty Mormons, evangelical missionaries of uncertain faith, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes [Chloe East and Sophie Thatcher]. Excellently directed, the initial confrontation is almost entirely filmed in facial close-up. We can see the creases on Grant’s eyelids as he inspects the girls’ with a practiced gaze. We note the twitching lips and anxious hands of the girls. a bead of moisture. The film at this point feels as if it will develop into a strange sex-fantasy, as Mr Reed quizzes his visitors about polygamy, trust and faith; where, we keep asking, will this story lead us? The girls are asking the same question…
Where it does lead won’t surprise too many people, although the filmmakers employ a few awkward hallucinogenic cutaways that don’t make a whole lot of sense to the overall intellectual narrative. The theme of religious coercion, conversion and control is a good one, one ripe for cinematic inspection. It has of course been done before [Elmer Gantry, The Prophet, for instance] and the script hints at a bigger subtext that simply doesn’t emerge. Codirectors and writers Scott Black and Bran Woods crank up the tension and the first half is grandly suspenseful and intriguing in true Hitchcockian style. The back and forth religious discussion that permeates this section gives a unique touch to proceedings; rarely has a film made religion appear so frighteningly irrelevant.
Unfortunately, the resolution is contrived, although getting there is certainly worth an hour’s watch. The trio of players are uniformly brilliant, with Grant in particular playing against type and being chillingly calculating as a smart speaking sceptic. While Chloe East copes well as the nominal nervy heroine, it is Sophie Thatcher’s more obviously clearheaded and antiauthoritarian turn that surprises and rewards. Once the blood starts flowing, proceedings get a little silly, but this needs to be tempered by the atmospheric sense of doom and gloom and inevitability. It’s dark in tone and in look.
Certainly not your average horror film. Rather good, I feel.
I WAS MONTY'S DOUBLE (1958)
As D-Day edges close, British intelligence is tasked to plant a seed of suspicion in Berlin.
Major Harvey (Sir John Mills) and Colonel Logan (Cecil Parker) from British intelligence cook up an ingenious subterfuge.
The Nazi high command is to be tricked into believing that the invasion of France will be carried out by Allied forces stationed in North Africa, who will infiltrate France from the south.
In order to sell the ruse, an elaborate plan is set into motion.
Lieutenant Clifton James of the Army Pay Corps, who bears an uncanny resemblance to General Bernard Montgomery, is trained in the mannerisms of the officer and visits Gibraltar and Algiers disguised as the General, where he meets with military commanders. These special appearances spike the interest of Nazi spies in the region, who fear Montgomery might spearhead an Allied invasion from the south.
Based on the real WW2 mission 'Operation Copperhead', the movie stars the actual doppelganger Clifton James, who gives a brilliant and riveting performance as himself.
A fascinating film.
(99 minutes)
I have been very lucky these last few days as thre eof my favourite movies have been on the Beeb. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Raging Bull and now this one -
A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (1945)
I have written a review of this film before – about three years ago if memory serves – and I talked it up to the nines. And I frequently do talk it up in conversation: “What’s your fav movie, Chris? – What’s the best war film? – They don’t make movies like that anymore – British films are toilet.” You know the kind of thing, pint in the hand, fag in the other [or Walkers crisp packet as it might be these days] ruminating over the state of the arts…
Thing is, I am a big fan of Powell and Pressburger’s Archers productions. They seem to inhabit a time warp of cinematic history, where great films were made on comparatively small budgets, where directors and production crews worked miracles and were creative, inventive and innovative, where films both large and small deemed to be taken seriously and covered subject matter that informed and provoked. The Archers output was tremendously consistent over ten to fifteen years or so and their movies remain watchable despite a creaking ‘Englishness’ that doesn’t sound quite modern enough for the 21st Century. Still at least you can hear what people are saying all the time because one of the fundamentals of Powell and Pressburger’s work is the storytelling – not the narrative and the images, which are startling and seductive enough – but through the power of words and character. I recently reviewed the magnificent fake-biopic Colonel Blimp, ever thankful for the excellent vocal performances and the intense and rewarding characterisations, especially of Roger Livesey in the title role.
Livesey’s here again, this time as a supporting player to David Niven and Kim Hunter, whose burgeoning, idealised romance exists only through the crackling airwaves of a Lancaster bomber’s radio transmitter. Livesey’s Dr Reeves is the axle around which the story resolves itself, a man of principle and much integrity who pleads in the after-world for the life of his patient Peter Carter [Niven], a poet and bomber pilot shot down over the North Sea who ought to be dead but survives due to a fortuitous mishap which creates administrative chaos in a world beyond the stars. You might call it heaven. Richard Attenborough’s young gunner certainly thinks it might be [“This is heaven,” he ambiguously remarks]. Or you might just call it an imagination. There’s plenty of room for that: “This is the universe,” states the film’s opening narrator, “big, isn’t it?”
It is important that Carter is a poet because the film, with all it wordsmithery and flights of fancy, takes place in his imagination, an imagination damaged by chronic adhesive arachnoiditis which occurred in action a couple of years earlier and has been affected anew by his fall from a plane without a parachute. No James Bond heroics here. Carter falls to his supposed death. Only in a peasouper of a fog, his ‘Conductor’ – an effete aristocrat from the French Revolution referred to as Conductor 71 – ‘missed’ him and Carter splashes down unharmed, only to meet June, the American radio operator who coaxed him through his final minutes. Instantly they recognise each other, she seduced by his poetic dialogue, he by her homespun compassion. We instantly recognise something is amiss in the world Carter wakes up to. First, he is entirely undamaged; second, his recurring final words “prop or wings” repeat over and over in his mind as the screen fades into generous black and white and we view the after-life, an art-deco paradise of enormous landscapes, where the clocks beat a monotony of ‘prop or wings’; third, a naked boy goatherder plays his flute on the beach [an incident of Grecian myth later referred to during Carter’s supernatural ‘trial’]; fourth, he immediately meets June exactly where she said she would be; fifth, at his recovery hospital the staff are in the throes of rehearsing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the most hallucinogenic of Shakespeare’s plays; lastly, his world is several times ‘stopped’ allowing Conductor 71 to converse with him in witty dialogue about the problems he has caused to the order of things by not dying and outstaying his welcome on Earth: “After all, what is time? A mere tyranny.”
Conductor 71 might be an angel, he might not. The after-life may be heaven, it may not. The stern judge may be a God – or not, the same actor is revealed as the genius surgeon who operates on Peter Carter’s cracked cranium – now there might be an irony. The American flyers may be dead or not; the same actors [all uncredited] play duplicate roles. What we do recognise is that Carter is fighting himself, that his efforts to stay alive are manifestations of his own hopes and dreams and a little fear. He discusses all either through his own mouthpiece or those of his performers Dr Reeves, Conductor 71 and Abraham Farlan, the philosophy of love, the theory of heaven and hell, the purpose of humanity and the way to freedom – is it through power and might, or love and compassion?
“Do you believe in the survival of human personality after death?” asks Dr Reeves, hinting again that Carter is enacting the whole saga to escape his own terminus. Even Carter’s chess game suffers, but Alekhine’s book My Best Games of Chess 1924 – 1937 remains steadfastly in his pocket – Carter believes Conductor 71 stole it, but June unpacks it from his case during his recover from surgery. So, was everything we saw a figment of his imagination, a personal fairy tale as potent as The Wizard of Oz? Powell and Pressburger employ the same trick used by Victor Fleming and producer Mervyn Le Roy on that famous musical by swapping monochrome for technicolour. Only here the reverse of the expected occurs. War, love and life are presented in bright, exhuming colour while the supposed after-world and its gigantic fantastic brilliance comes smothered in monochrome grey. “One is starved for technicolour up there,” sighs Conductor 71, sniffing his suddenly red carnation; they must be starved of scent too, although his perfume is one of fried onions according to Peter Carter.
While the debate about what may or may not be real passes us on-and-off throughout the film, it is worth remembering there is a romance underplaying the narrative, a slight one, but a very real one, a passion born out of desperation, some clever incisive phrases and a huge dollop of emotive ardour, wrestled not by physical action but by a few creased tears. You are not supposed to start weeping at the very beginning of a movie, but A Matter of Life and Death succeeds in that by bringing Peter and June together, playing out their love affair in miniature as his Lancaster nose dives, before he suicidally jumps – parting them almost as immediately as they met: “You’ve got a good voice. You’ve got guts too. It’s funny, I’ve known dozens of girls and I’ve been in love with some of them, but an American girl whom I’ve never seen and who I never shall see will hear my last words… June, if you’re around when they pick me up, turn your head away.”
Of course, June [Kim Hunter, very young] does not turn away, not once, despite only knowing Peter Carter’s voice. That is the romance of love, of poetry, of the imagination. The movie was made at a time when Anglo-American relations were being redefined thanks to the purgatory of six years of war. Unlike Colonel Blimp, which Churchill despised, the War Office encouraged the subtext of this film as a morale booster for both nations, to demonstrate that friendship, conciliation and love can foster across cultures even in such environments as the battlefield. It may not be a war film of attrition and horror, but A Matter of Life and Death occupies a place in the war genre for suggesting that love blossoms in the most unexpected and remote places, and that even in times of great despair, there is still a place for compassion and passion to flourish. Freedom fighter and warmonger Abraham Farlan has good reason to dislike the English, for he was shot and killed by colonial soldiers, but when a beautiful woman from his own town falls in love with an Englishman you sense his arguments however stern are always going to fail. Dr Reeves, in comparison, provides the evidence of desire: those tears we were speaking of earlier. Will Peter Carter, poet and pilot, live to fight and write another day? The resolution, committed on an impressive stairway to heaven, lined with the great philosophers, artists and politicians, is not unexpected and a tad simplistic – but then love always is isn’t it?
Ultimately, so too is the matter of life and death as suggested by the film’s title, although for the Archers it isn’t as simple as a religious belief or an intellectual one, it is a more humanist issue, to do with what invigorates the soul and the heart and influences across barriers of time and culture: the simple condition of ‘love’. Mind, if a victim is as good looking as David Niven was in 1945, you do always think any jury is going to side in his favour.
Photography, set design, editing, visual and effects, music, all well above scratch. Direction candid and swift. Script smart and sharp, amusing, sensitive and solemn. I talk about this film too much and repeated viewings sometimes dull the memorial impression, but visually and intellectually A Matter of Life and Death is still mightily and marvellously impressive.
A huge thumbs up any day.
‘SALEM’S LOT (2024)
A new version of Stephen King’s vampire tale revisits the original television mini-series rather than the novel. Character development is jettisoned for gory scares and although the portrayal of small town America looks good, it’s basically soulless. This sort of novel warrants an 8 episode mini-series where character and story can unwind at a more leisurely but tense pace.
Author Ben Mears returns to his home town in search of inspiration but uncovers a nest of vampires instead.
Fans of the novel will be disappointed.
A vampire should be soulless, you know .... 😉
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (1937)
An early Micheal Powell film set on the Hebridean isle of Hirta. Inspired by the story of the St Kilda evacuations of the 1920s, Powell had wanted to make the film for some years, which certainly shows ambition for a young moviemaker. Unusually for a 1930s film, he was able to film entirely on location, although not at St Kilda itself. Instead he used one of the other farthest western islands of the British Isles, Foula, and utilised the local population as extras and, sometimes, actors. Powell films the residents, who are mostly island crofters, sheep herders or fishermen, about their daily businesses and interweaves these documentary scenes with the fictional narrative, that of a looming abandonment of Hirta and St Kilda in favour of mainland Scotland, a decision brought about by the encroachment of modern technology on the island’s economy and social structure.
John Laurie is outstanding as Peter Manson, a God fearing traditionalist, whose daughter Ruth [Belle Chrystall] is in love with the neighbouring fisherman, Andrew Gray [Niall MacGuinness]. James Gray, Andrew’s father [a fine role for Finlay Currie] is a forward thinking headsman who attempts to sway Peter Manson from his archaic views, but with little success. When Manson’s son Robbie returns from working abroad full of the joy of modern industry and sensing an inevitable end to the pastoral island life, sceptic Andrew Gray challenges him to cliff-climb which leads to tragedy and alters everyone’s point of view of the future and the past.
Beautiful poignant, superbly shot, with an emphasis on real experiences and with the actors and extras performing all of the stunts and everyday activities, thus informing us of both the hardship and the idyll of the far isles, The Edge of the World is a grippingly tragic delight. Powell already displays a sure hand with both actors and action, extracting good performances and ensuring the moments of drama and tension are fully exploited. The fearful cliff-climb is a high point, replicated in similar fashion at the film’s tragic end, yet losing none of its ability to shock. Vocal silence is paramount, and much character is provided through mine and expression; a choral soundtrack ebbs and flows through the entire 70min runtime. Our sympathies lie primarily with the young lovers Andrew and Ruth, thwarted by circumstance and by Manson’s obstinacy. A happy ending seems to be in the offing before those circumstances conspire against the families. Nonetheless, Powell and particularly John Laurie, are able to imbue us with a sense of sadness over the evacuation, opposed by Manson on principle, yet accepted as inevitable. It is the realisation that for family life to continue in any form for the St Kilda’s, new worlds must be sought.
Monty Berman, Skeets Kelly and Ernest Palmer must take the plaudits for the grimly realistic photography, especially the forbidding features of the Foula sea cliffs, some of the mightiest in Britain, and the mist shrouded views of the Scottish Hills, adding a rare touch of mysticism to the overriding realist experience. One may find some of the acting a tad stagey, but I can accept this given that the setting isn’t daubed in some crooked fantasy island repose like Summer Isle from The Wicker Man. Far better to have stilted uncertainty than RADA trained niceties for a sense of genuine pragmatism. The director himself and his then wife Frankie Reidy provide enough of that as curious tourists in the opening scenes.
A very fine film of much emotive drama.
RETURN TO THE EDGE OF THE WORLD (1978)
The BBC also showed this fascinating short documentary made by Micheal Powell about the island of Foula and how it has gradually adjusted to the modern world following the release of the film decades before. He revisited it with members of the original production crew, including star John Laurie. The scenery is even more lovely and even more forbidding in technicolour. While cars, air transport and communication had come to Foula, it is noticeable that much had remained the same despite four decades of opportunity. The same families still live there. They still play and sing the old songs. One of the real life island women had come to resemble Ruth’s grandmother from the film, sitting in the open air wrapped in a shawl tending her knitting. While there is no wish expressed by the population to abandon Foula, it was still considered a far outpost of the UK and is about as isolated in 1978 as a community can be – they even make their own fiddles from driftwood and sheep gut.
@chrisno1
Thank you for the movie suggestion and the excellent review...as always.
A heartfelt and beautiful film with a bittersweet ending.
I enjoyed the revisit to Foula as well.
Many thanks @Sonero ... and there is more Michael Powell to come...
THE RED SHOES (1948)
Another Powell and Pressburger masterpiece [masterclass, perhaps?] in cinematic storytelling is a reimagining of a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, which in many ways sums up their freewheeling attitude towards cinematic storytelling: that it is really all make-believe and fairy tales for adults. The Red Shoes has a dark subtext about control and latent desire, in relationships both personal and vocational, and in ambition. Here, art genuinely appears to imitate life.
Vickie Page is a young ballerina picked almost from the gallery who becomes a star under the tutelage of impresario Boris Lermontov, an almost demented Anton Walbrook. Walbrook’s performance is an example of high intensity and huge return; he is outstanding as a driven, power hungry abuser, a man who will stop at nothing and at nobody in pursuit of his art – the emphasis being entirely on the ‘his’ – for he is completely self-obsessed. In work, everyone is his subordinate, everyone kowtows to his command, nobody questions him, nobody presumes for him; his producers, artists, choreographers and conductors spend their time pacing nervously around him, waiting for an opportunity to speak, waiting for a pronouncement, barely uttering a whisper of discontent. Only poor Vickie Page objects. Unable to sustain her training routine, the affects of fame and fortune, she metaphorically falls into the arms of talented genius composer Julian Craster [Marius Goring at his romantic best]. Moira Shearer, an actual prima ballerina with the Sadler’s Wells Company who could also act some, is equally fine as the frightened and flustered Vickie, a woman torn between love for a man and love for dancing. Hans Anderson’s Red Shoes and the accompanying beautiful, forceful and tragic stage show Vickie stars in are an allegory of her desires.
Micheal Powell directs the dancing sequences with much verve and power. They are a true ‘opening out’ of the ballet which begins with the curtain raised on Leonide Massine’s Shoemaker, who is demonstrating his new red ballet shoes to the audience. The sets, costumes and staging of the entire 17-minute sequence puts anything offered by Hollywood before 1948 to shame; perhaps only Astaire and Rogers at the climax of Top Hat could match it. The camera swirls, the sets pull apart and reweld, dancers become inanimate objects. Brian Easedale’s triumphant and melancholic music rightfully won an Oscar, as did Hein Heckroth’s fantasy designs. You wonder why cameraman Jack Cardiff was overlooked, the thing is so bright, then dark, licked with shadows and splashes of sudden echoing light; similarly the thrusting, snap-and-whip editing by Reginal Mills that imitates the music and the dancing at once. Vickie’s Dancer is given the red shoes by the Shoemaker and they magically jump onto her feet [a neat cinematic effect]. As she dances and dances and dances, nearing exhaustion and destitution, her Lover [a young Robert Helpmann] alters shapes and personalities – including at one point a floating newspaper, quite possibly one of the most magical musical moments ever presented on the cinema screen – before finally as a pastor he presides over her funeral and the shoes are cut off the Dancer’s feet. The Shoemaker, who himself has followed the Dancer and encouraged her to dance and dance, becoming increasingly demented in his entreaties, collects the Red Shoes and returns them to his shop.
The inference is clear: Lermontov is the crazed Shoemaker and Julian the Lover who will preside over her funeral. The future is mapped for this subtly warring trio. They pursue each other and each other’s desires around Europe before eventually the tragedy unfolds in a riot of sudden emotional ecstasy where claim, counter claim, understanding and misunderstanding, default and desire are intermingled and unresolved. As Vickie Page’s world collapses, her feet can only dance and dance and dance all the way to her doom.
A fairy tale of supreme intensity, emotional drive and much Freudian subtext. An enormous hit in its day, a film that sparked dancers such as Gene Kelly to create miniature ballets in their own movies [he was already attempting it with The Pirate, but An American in Paris, Singing in the Rain and the neglected wonder that is Invitation to the Dance demonstrate where his balletic choreography was best realised]. Some may find it too stagey; I did on first viewing back in my very early twenties. I watched it because I wanted to fathom out what all the fuss was over that Kate Bush album of the same name. Still can’t tell you that. What I can tell you is The Red Shoes is a wonderful musical film, although it isn’t a musical show of a film, that remains a crowning achievement not only for British cinema but cinema worldwide. Directors have imitated its presentation of dance before, on and beyond stage in numerous fashions ever since.
Bloody, brutally, brilliantly marvellous.
@chrisno1 The Red Shoes is one of the most beautiful films ever made and a masterpiece of cinema. Great review.
ABOVE US THE WAVES 1955
The film details the attack on the German battleship Tirpitz by British Commando frogmen in September 1943.
Tirpitz, the heaviest battleship serving in Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine and hidden deep inside a Norwegian fjord, was a major threat to Allied operations in the Norwegian Sea.
Using six X-class mini-submarines, the Royal Navy succeeded in badly damaging the ship, knocking it out of active service till April 1944 after which it was completely destroyed by RAF Avro Lancasters.
The film, based on the real WW2 Operation Source, is a dramatic retelling of this story of valor.
A very fine British war film starring the great Sir John Mills.
(99 mins)