Indeed it was. I think if Lee had been involved then Drac would have had a bigger role than two minutes at the start and another two at the end which would certainly have improved things. As you say, Cushing is pretty much the only thing worth watching here and he's surprisingly energetic in some of the fight sequences for his age.
When little Jimmy Hunt wakes up in the middle of the night to see a flying saucer land nearby, no one will believe him, and he finds that most of the adults have been taken over by aliens. Though a low budget restricts the scale of things this a taut little sci-if thriller and some of the sets are really good. For a long one the twist ending was oddly removed from European prints but this one I saw has it, and it’s a nice ending.
Worth watching.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Our own Steven Berkoff was the 1980s rent-a-villain, along with Octopussy he was of course in Rambo II, and he's in this action comedy too. A starring vehicle for Eddie Murphy and highly effective, even if originally when you hear him speak you hear Donkey from the Shrek movies, that characteristic indignation and fretful outrage at some mistreatment.
Now a Bond fan checking out this new kid on the movie block may feel there's no real contest. The last two Bonds began with amazing aerial action - 007 hanging off a helicopter above London's Battersea, or piloting an Astrojet plane in some undiagnosed location. This? Undercover police officer Axel Foley is hanging off the back of a lorry as the low-life drug dealer makes his getaway in suburban Detroit, smashing up many cars as he does, to the sound of a contemporary slice of 80s pop. Still, it has a simplistic bravura feel to it. Maybe that's why the next Bond had the main guy tearing up San Franscisco in a fire engine the following year.
Comparisons are apples and oranges; BHC is meant to be a smart, credible flick unlike Bond's escapist fare. That said, the film soon reveals itself to be as far-fetched and escapist as any Moore Bond film as Murphy pulls up in his battered old car outside a fine Beverely Hills hotel (not the finest, it's pointed out, to be fair) and okay, he's smart casual but no Sidney Poitier, the young, eager doorman doesn't ask him to move on but asks if he'd like to check in and can he take his car. And it's kind of like that the whole way through, everyone is happy or about to be happy with each other, it's all rather lovely. It starts kind of slow and conventional but gathers momentum in a way that Bond films tend not to these days.
At no point does Murphy's character face any racial abuse even from the bad guys, the only time the 'n' word is used is by him to stoke up an imaginary row to blag something. Of course, he runs into a white female old pal and there's no sense of anything sexual having happened or about to happen, though she plays the damsel in distress role at one point, I guess it's too early to see a black lead make out with a white woman and still that seems to be the case, over half a century after Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? For all that, as with other 1980s movies such as Midnight Run and Die Hard, the lack of on-screen sexual shenanigans makes the film more wholesome and high-minded. Of course, the older cop Taggart in this went on to play Robert DeNiro's chain-smoking rival bounty hunter in Midnight Run, something it took me decades to learn. His boss is the main villain of course in Arnie's Total Recall.
It's not just Murphy who shoots Berkoff, but his boss too. Is that to alleviate the sense of a black guy taking a gun to a white guy? Or just a plot point to show that Murphy won't be made the fall guy? Do we see his character shoot many white folk in the movie? (For all that, it's good to see he has a black boss back in Detroit.) There's lots of silly gunfire from the bad guys in this where for the most part no bullets ever hit anyone.
Beverly Hllls Cop anticipates films like Crocodile Dundee and Die Hard with its fish out of water theme - Murphy is a Detroit cop heading to Beverley Hills to investigate a friend's death. And, to some extent, Lethal Weapon... the pleasing inter-racial harmony. The comedy grows nicely but to have room to do this, the plot is virtually nonexistent. We don't care much about Murphy's pal who died and just as well, we don't want that hanging over the movie, he's just a McGuffin. Much of the investgation consists of Murphy gatecrashing Berkoff's office, restaurant, factories etc in a manner that anticipates Ferris Bueller in his sausage king of Chicago mode, not to mention Riggs with the late Joss Ackland.
Pleasingly, I think all the players including Berkoff are still alive though of course we could have said that about Lethal Weapon 2 a few weeks ago.
The film spawned two belated sequels but never became a thing, though you'd imagine the Axel F theme - a big hit in the UK, one of the Top 30 best-selling records of the year - might compete with the James Bond Theme, that said, the former only does sneaky spying scenes while the latter is brilliant because it accompanies both spying scenes AND breakout triumphant action thanks to its chorus. The very title Beverley Hills Cop doesn't encourage a franchise as of course he's not one, he's a Detroit cop relocated and much of the entertainment lies in the culture clash; you can't do that twice, it's diminishing returns.
Bond fan Kingsley Amis dubbed this a 'comedy masterpiece' I think.
Edit: Turns out there'll be a Beverly Hills Cop 4 out next year, with much of the original cast rejoining.
Also, I knew I'd seen him, but the actor who plays Berkoff's main hitman in this, went to to play gruff fixer Mike Ermentrout in Breaking Bad... Jonathan Banks.
Ridley Scott's "Napoleon" starring Joachim Phoenix is my kind of movie! You may have noticed I'm a history nerd and I like seeing historical epics in the cinema instead of all the superhero movies. Obviously the movie has spectacular battle scenes and Scott does a great job giving each battle a seperate identity, such at battle on ice or battle in the rain. The battles are also very brutal as they must've been.
But the movie focuses even more on Napoleon's relationship with his Josephine. This works very well, giving the viewer pauses between the battles and does a lot to flesh out Napoleon's personality. Josephine is portrayed as a strong and interesting woman (not in a clishe way), who has lovers and the movie doesn't judge her for being unconventional.
While the movie shows Napoleon as a military genius, this isn't a portrait of a hero. He is shown as being immature, not to far from Phoenix' emperor in Gladiator. Phoenix does a great job, and so does Vanessa Kirby as Josephine.
The movie is about two and a half hours long, because Scott understands people need to go to the toilet. This means a lot of the story needs had to be cut. Italy and Spain are among the "small incidents" we don't get to see. But I think this is a good thing because the movie can't be five hours long. Stanley Kubrick tried to include everything in his planned Napoleon movie, but after years of research he didn't manage to finish it. Great movie!
Cage is on restrained form as a vagrant-type woodsman in a shack who makes a living from his truffle pig, selling truffles. Said valuable pig is stolen, however.
To some extent this is an odd, OMG WTF movie so the less said about it the better, but if you see it coming up on Film4 again in the next fortnight I recommend it. You do wonder where it is going and after an hour or more it seemed to have been on only 15 minutes to me - a compliment. It just doesn't follow the usual by numbers filmmaking to me.
I have heard of this sci-fi classic for decades, but now is the first time I've watched it. An UFO lands in Washington D.C. I was glad to see the aliens favour the classic school of UFO design. Out comes an alien who looks like a human man and a gigant metal robot that can shoot with lasers from his head. Are they friend or foe?
The movie looks to me like it had a bigger budget than the typical 1950's sci-fi movie. I like the story and the acting is also largely okay. The actor playing the alien is tall, handsome, stoic and calm, much like Keanu Reeves in the moden re-make. His character also has some simularities with a certain JC (not John Cleese), but the director claims this was never on their minds making the movie.
The score sounds stereotypical 50's sci-fi now, but apparently it was groundbreaking then and I think it elevates the movie. Danny Elfman, Tim Burton's go-to musician, says this score was what inspired him to become a musician. The simularities are obvious.
I also think the special effects are good for the time and genere. There's scene that reminds me of a scene in DAF, and in my opinion the effects are at least as good in this movie.
There are reasons why this is a sci-fi classic, and if you're into that sort of thing you should watch this movie.
Another story about a man with strong affection for an animal, this time the man is Oliver Reed, a PoW zoo keeper in WWII (was that ever a thing?) while the animal is an elephant called Lucy. When the Munich zoo is bombed near the end of the war, he is asked to relocate the creature to a Innsbruck zoo by train. Carriage in said train is then commandeered by the Gestapo who suggest they make the journey by foot, presumably another train not being offered or made available (I only think of these plot holes once I type out the review).
However, events conspire to prompt Reed, or 'Brooksie', to make the journey part of an escape plan to Switzerland, across the Alps or something, hence the name (referenced only once in the film) owing something to the Roman commander of legend who led elephants into battle.
Some of us may recall seeing this film on the BBC in the late 70s and it holds up well in my view. Reed has the right amount of danger in his persona to make the film less cute or Disney than it might be. It seems to owe something to other 1960s films shown on telly from 76 onwards - The Sound of Music, The Great Escape, Goldfinger (the scenery, the blonde with a headscarf). There's even a bit of stuff with a cable car that owes something to Where Eagles Dare or that year's OHMSS, or especially Moonraker a decade later.
It's nonsense really but it has a certain charm. Michael Winner directs - he once joked about how he'd been offered a Bond movie once but turned it down and looking back didn't know why, and I can sort of see how he could do an 70s Bond film given this, rather than the Death Wish movies. I guess he might have wanted a bigger cut of the profits though, something the producers never wanted to offer. I could be wrong. Some of the explosions however, while a spectacle, didn't look quite realistic - they did look a bit too incendiary.
This sort of larky, visually appealing war comedy thriller was surely the last of its kind, before the grime and grit of the 70s kicked in.
Stanley Holloway, George Relph, Hugh Griffith and John Gregson enjoy themselves immensely as locomotive enthusiasts who resurrect the local branch line railway from Titfield to Mallingford against opposition from the bus company and the national government. Sticking a finger up at the National Rail Network of the fifties, the movie is inspired by the true story of the Tallylyn Heritage Railway in Wales. Ultimately, this version is rather silly, but the good natured, harmless antics enchant and Douglas Slocombe’s colour photography offers a ravishing view of the English countryside, steam trains and all. Not one of the very best Ealing Comedies, but good nonetheless and a veritable pre-empting of the rural concerns which followed the Beeching report of 1962. A lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Hywel Bennett gives a good performance as a young man with severe personality problems. When he is suffering from stress he goes back to being a 6-year old child and when it gets really bad he does really bad things like stabbing his stepfather to death. He becomes obsessed with his landlady’s daughter (Hayley Mills) and her life is suddenly in danger. Director Ray Boulting gives a Hitchcockian feel to the movie with some imaginative camera angles and a score by Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock may well have seen this because Barry Foster and Billie Whitelaw both turn up in his 1972 movie, Frenzy.
Worth a look.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
DRACULA (1958) Director Terence Fisher (US Title HORROR OF DRACULA)
Over two days I found myself watching the above two versions of the famed Bram Stoker novel, plus the first again with audio commentary (which explains why I know some of the obscure details below).
It’s unfair to judge the two against each other, but I think it might be the best way to discuss them. The earlier version came at the start of the talkies and Hollywood had still not solved all of the problems that came with sound movies, which does explain some of its drawbacks. For example, there is no music apart from over the titles (and a very quick snatch of classical music when Dracula attends a concert) which doesn’t help the atmosphere at all- but “Frankenstein”, released later that year, didn’t have a score either and it works a lot better.
Neither version is very faithful to Stoker, for different reasons. The 1931 Universal film doesn’t come directly from the novel but via the contemporary stage play (and it’s taken from the US version which was itself adapted from the British one) so changes from the novel were clearly going to happen. The 1958 Hammer film isn’t faithful for a different reason, Hammer’s usual one- money. It was shot on a very restricted budget which limited the number of locations, sets, and cast. No trips to Victorian London, sea journeys, etc, here.
Tod Browning was apparently not too interested in “Dracula” and it was reported later by the cast that very often he simply wasn’t there, leaving cinematographer Karl Freund to handle things. The opening sequences set in Transylvania are atmospheric, use a moving camera part of the time, and are the best in the whole thing. I’m prepared to believe that Freund was in charge of those scenes- a man whose CV includes “Metropolis” and the 1932 version of “The Mummy” is obviously capable. Browning, on the other hand, basically photographed a stage play- there’s a scene about halfway through involving Mina, Van Helsing, and Jonathan Harker where the camera stays stock still for four minutes of not very riveting dialogue.
For Hammer, Terence Fisher provided a lively mini-epic utilising his small budget wisely (with a lot of help from the production design, costumes, and set decoration). The plot keeps moving, and we see a lot of S/E Engla…. er, Transylvania. An easily spotted aspect of the budget restraints is that Dracula has only one (very attractive) “bride” while in the 1931 he has three, as per novel. Another is that we don’t see Harker’s initial coach ride, he simply tells us about it in narration.
Sex and violence: for a story with a strong and much written about sexual subtext (in some versions it is plain text, of course) which was made pre-code, the 1931 is very restrained and takes no chances with what it shows the audience. We don’t even see Van Helsing staking Dracula at the end (sorry if that spoils the plot for anyone who doesn’t know), just some groans from offscreen. Hammer don’t show us the actual stakings (yes, plural) that occur but they get a lot closer to it. The ladies in 1958 are also more explicitly sexual (Mina, part of one now restored scene being “lost” for over 50 years) and wearing less (the “bride”, whose cleavage was very daring for the time).
The supporting cast in both versions varies from unforgettable (Dwight Frye as Renfield in 1931) to hammy (Michael Gough as Arthur Holmwood in 1958) to moving wallpaper (David Manners as Jonathan Harker in 1931). The livelier performances tend to be in the later film, Frye aside. David Manners would play pretty much the same part in other films (“The Black Cat” in 1934, the aforementioned version of “The Mummy”) and he’s not alone in this.
Supporting cast aside, there are really only two parts which matter. Van Helsing in 1931 was played very stuffily by Edward Van Sloan, who had played the part on stage and would again (inexplicably as “Von” Helsing) in “Dracula’s Daughter”. As with Manners, he would play pretty much the same part in other films (Professor Waldman in “Frankenstein”, Dr Muller in “The Mummy”). They’re all interchangeable and while Van Sloan is not actually bad (*cough* Michael Gough *cough*) he doesn’t stick in the memory. Hammer had Peter Cushing. I should stop right there and admit (if anyone has been reading my movie reviews it’ll be no surprise) that I am an unashamed Cushing fanboy and could easily gush for several paragraphs. I’ll keep it brief- he knocks Van Sloan out of the room, gives later Van Helsing Anthony Hopkins some lessons in how to act, and hands even later Van Helsing Hugh Jackman his arse. He would be back as Van Helsing more than once- sometimes the film wouldn’t be up to much (“The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires”) but he remains superb.
And the other part, which for many is the only one that matters, is the Count himself. Bela Lugosi vs Christopher Lee? Really, I think it’s all down to personal taste or your experience. It’s been said here often that a fan’s favourite Bond is the one he saw first (and no, sit down the member shouting “Barry Nelson”- I’m not that old). Bela Lugosi died before I was born, and it was only much later that I watched his movies on late-night TV. By then I had seen Sir Christopher many times and it was he whose image (and that voice, of course) which imprinted itself indelibly on what passes for my brain as the incarnation of Count Dracula. Lugosi is great, of course, and I think that today he’s probably the only reason to watch the 1931 “Dracula”.
Not a film I would have chosen myself, but I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. It’s a surprisingly faithful version of the Charles Dickens classic, only with added Muppets. They play most of the main characters as well as lots of minor ones.
Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, and company are all present and correct but their show is stolen by The Great Gonzo and his sidekick Rizzo The Rat who narrate as, respectively, Charles Dickens and, er, Rizzo The Rat.
Underpinning all the muppetry like a bass part in music is a serious and convincing performance by Sir Michael Caine. He’s one of the best Scrooges I’ve seen and holds this movie together, providing gravitas and pathos where needed.
It's my favorite version of the story. If you've held off on watching this due to the fact that it's a Muppet version, reconsider...Michael Caine came to deliver, and his Scrooge is absolutely my favorite iteration of the character. He absolutely could have phoned this performance in but, to his everlasting credit, he delivered 110% instead. It's marvelous.
This is my favourite version of A Christmas Carol also. I didn't watch it this year [was it on?] but have fond memories of the Sutton Empire in Dec 1992 surrounded by youngsters with parents who simply didn't get the jokes or the Dickensian references. Me and my mate Gavin were cracking up. Although the three pints of Guinness I sank before the show probably helped immensely. It's a real treat.
I have been out of touch a while with AJB as things at home have been tough. We are settling down though and as all funeral and bereavement arrangements are on hold over Christmas there was little to do than watch a few movies and eat lots of food.
I will offer a few of my thoughts over the next few days.
I reviewed this movie a couple of years ago, when I watched it with Mum. This year I watched it with Dad and he remarked how she would have liked the dancing sequences because you could see the dancer's legs and feet all the time - exactly my comment below in my reproduced review. I love this film, a quintessential timeless piece of yuletide entertainment:
WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954)
A film which needs no introduction. The sort of film they simply don’t make anymore. The first ever VistaVision Warner Bros production, totally studio bound. Lush photography anyway, the film looks as pristine as a roasted goose or a royal iced Christmas cake. Bing Crosby is in his 50s prime. Danny Kaye is also at the height of his fame. Rosemary Clooney is a post-war sweetheart. Elegant costumes. A script ridden with cliché and yet still an entertaining, spry affair with a character driven plot. Super dance numbers (The movie was meant to reteam Fred Astaire with Crosby to reprise their partnership from Holiday Inn, of which this is a remake.)
Michael Curtiz directs with assurance; he’s not flashy, he sets up the stage and rolls with it. Note to the camera directors on Strictly Come Dancing: we can see all the dancers feet all the time. Great songs from Irving Berlin. Great vaudeville style performances. A shamelessly sentimental story that pours the sugar on at the start and keeps on pouring. The worst and best of it is you know you are being emotionally manipulated and you don’t care. Oh. And that Christmas song. Here we go: I’m dreaming of a white Christmas / just like the ones I used to know....
Yeah. They really don't make movies as good hearted and beautifully crafted as this anymore.
Among all the assorted holiday fare churned out by Hallmark TV and shown from as early as July on Great Movies Christmas and the ilk, The Bishop’s Wife rather passes by without a mention. Made in the wake of It’s A Wonderful Life, compared unfavourably to it but based on a much earlier novel, Henry Koster’s quasi-religious fantasy is a little slice of Christmas bliss. Cary Grant is excellent as Dudley, the mischievous angel sent to ‘help’ David Niven’s troubled Bishop. The trouble is, Bishop Brougham doesn’t know what kind of help he wants. By advertently or inadvertently affecting the people who surround the Bishop, Dudley ensures a happy ending for all in time for Christmas Eve. Loretta Young is goodness personified as the Bishop’s titular wife. While the script touches on issues of faith and the struggle of religious service in the modern day, where selfishness – that epitome of the Deadly Sins – rears its head constantly, it doesn’t forget to tell the story with a little twinkle in the words. The screenplay was touched up by comic masters Billy Wilder & Charles Brackett, so the dialogue is deft and crisp and thus the actors can create believable characters among unbelievable situations, something which I struggle with when watching James Stewart having and escaping an emotional crisis in Wonderful Life. Here, the primary and underplayed emotion is happiness. This driving force for good is orchestrated through the joy of memories and a hefty amount of sherry drinking. Cary Grant enjoys himself immensely, one feels, as Dudley candidly observes, assists and thwarts David Niven’s evangelical plans. Primarily this involves Dudley’s pretend seduction of Loretta Young, which seems a little naughty of an angel. But then, as Grant says: “Not all angels have wings.” Beautiful photographed in black and white by the brilliant Gregg Toland, with a music score from Hugo Friedhofer which evokes Christmas carols and assured acting across the board, the film is gentle and amusing and prettily perfect. Several scenes demand our attention, both for their comic and emotional intensity. A rare treat, this film is one of the best Christmas movies, from during a time of many great Christmas movies. Perhaps the only downside is the clumsy ice skating sequence which couldn’t be performed without very obvious doubles. The special effects appear somewhat rudimentary, but they were state of the art in 1947. You can forget about the remake with Whitney Houston, it really isn’t worth watching after this.
A Christmas cinematic classic offering no illusions about the fantasy it weaves for us as Edmund Gwenn’s Kris Kringle becomes employed as a stand-in Santa Claus by Macy’s department store and ushers in a whole new style of benevolent commercialism. A brilliant witty script and a whole plethora or teary moments keep the holiday magic alive, certainly in this house. If Edmund Gwenn deservedly won awards for his support role as the kindly and possibly genuine Santa Claus, it is little Natalie Wood as a child who doesn’t believe in Father Christmas who really excels. Just watch her coy and knowing glances when she first meets Mr Kringle, unsatisfied with his honest answers and believing him to be merely a very good actor. She’s equally good with the sugary stuff too, like monkey impersonations [“Don’t forget to scratch!”] and tearing up the driveway of her dream home – one her mother and future stepdad simply must end up buying because it has a swing in the yard and a candy cane in the corner. Watch her expression change from confusion to wonderment and back again as Kris Kringle explains ‘imagination’ to her. Just wonderful. The film isn’t all Christmas fluff, but it is neigh on close to it. Somehow you don’t seem to care. When Gwenn’s Santa talks Dutch to the war refugee, or discusses the goodness of Christmas with a youthful janitor, you simply revel in the joy. Maureen O’Hara is the promotions executive who hires Kringle and gets her and her daughter involved in a sleighful of trouble. John Payne is her lawyer boyfriend. George Seaton directs with a firm yet gentle hand. Amazingly the movie was originally released in the summer of 1947 as 20th Century Fox didn’t think the central story of putting Santa Claus on trial was very appropriate for a seasonal movie. How wrong they were. Delightful on many levels and a brilliant piece of filmmaking across the board.
MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1994)
There wasn’t really any need to remake this Christmas classic, but I am rather glad they did. As star Richard Attenborough explained, the remake delivers the sugary goods of the original but wraps it up in the pretty technicolour packaging of the 1990’s John Hughes generation. Some of the themes have changed too – there is more emphasis on the cynical edge of Christmas commercialism, as well a focus on the treatment of the mentally ill – but it is still the same basic story as before and features many of the same standout moments dressed up in modern disguises. Attenborough makes a cuddly Santa, but he isn’t quite given the support Edmund Gwenn had in the original. You can have all the colour and reindeer and pop music you like, but if you haven’t got Natalie Wood’s cheeky and sympathetic kid, you’re stumped from the out. Mara Wilson’s Susan is cute but a bit too much of a mocking know-it-all to be as likable. Wood played it very straight, with childish delight and a touch of puckish contempt. She’s exactly how you would expect a child of a career driven mother to be. Wilson is too modern and adult to elicit our all-round sympathy. It doesn’t help that her mother is Elisabeth Perkins and she is no Maureen O’Hara. So we have to rely on Attenborough’s good nature to help us through and he is really superb. I first watched this at Butlins Minehead on a wet New Year’s Eve afternoon, cuddling up with the girlfriend on the backrow of the small onsite cinema. Happy memories and it still brings a little tear to the old eye, just like it did back then. “You’re a soppy sod,” she told me with a touch of cynicism herself. And yes, I probably still am.
Oliver!-light musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol which lacks a musical theatre actor as capable as Ron Moody and a musical theatre composer with the skill of Lionel Bart, yet still succeeds in being entertaining in a snowy, Victorian Christmas card fashion. Costumes, sets and photography are all excellent. They ought to be: sets and costumes were nicked and reconstituted from the Oscar winning Oliver! and the same photographer [Oswald Morris] helms the lenses. Posh British Director Ronald Neame was starting to make big movies and he copes better than you’d expect with the constantly mobile staging, the jittery cast and the overt eventual sentimentality. Some credit must go to Albert Finney for a rambunctious yet gnarled interpretation of Ebenezer Scrooge, the world’s most famous miser. He takes after the Rex Harrison school of singing and sort of says his lines to the melody; that’s fair enough, but sometimes the actor’s glee becomes merely twee and slightly sickening. The Spirit of Christmas Present has a decent character song in I Like Life, but Finney’s weaselly intercessions completely undermine the jovial musical interpretation. Generally though, Finney’s miserly tone is in keeping with Dickens’ fable, which i suppose is the point. Kenneth More meanwhile is virtually unrecognisable as the Spirit. Alec Guinness pops up as Jacob Marley, but you rather wish he hadn’t and if you’ve seen enough movie versions of the story you inevitably end up wishing for Muppet puppets Waldorf and Stadler and their cheery turn as Marley & Marley.
Leslie Bricusse – one of ours, of course, as is Oswald Morris [TMWTGG] and actor Laurence Naismith [DAF] – probably overworked himself with book, lyrics and music, but he captures the essence of the moral story with his gentle and affecting tunes. The show stealing Thank You Very Much comes as a long overdue highlight, but Happiness, I Hate People and I Like Life offer some of the joy and also the cynicism you expect in a modern adaptation of Dickens’ sweetening tale.
Personally, I like this movie. I am aware it isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it suffers not only with that Oliver! comparison, but also by appearing at the end of a very fine decade for film adaptations of hit Broadway / West End musicals. It is strange how the big productions aimed at recapturing the Hollywood glamour of the originally conceived concept musical [Goodbye Mr Chips, Dr Doolittle, Half a Sixpence, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Thoroughly Modern Millie, etc] either didn’t work or only half worked. Even Mary Poppins errs to the overindulgent. The same thing occurs here a little and it is the star who occasionally looks the most uncomfortable, often when he’s supposed to be comfortable. I tend to forgive this: Scrooge of all heroes should be an uncomfortable watch otherwise his Damascene change won’t be rewarding; trouble is, unlike the British star Michael Caine in the Muppet version, Finney doesn’t noticeably alter his performance from pre to post revelation.
If you can’t stomach Albert Finney as Scrooge or refuse to accept the movie on its own merits, you are irretrievably hampered. Having watched many versions of this famous story, Scrooge is far closer to the source text – songs aside – than many [Disney’s A Christmas Carol, anyone?] and rewards the tolerant and patient viewer. They made a successful touring show of it in the 1990s starring Tommy Steele, a cute compliment, the reverse of its urchin cousin.
So, in the Spirit of Christmas, and especially Kenneth More’s Christmas Spirit, let’s roll up our sleeves, doff a cap, twirl a pipe and sing: Thank you very much, thank you very much, that’s the nicest thing that anyone’s ever done for me…
A film that isn’t very much to do with Christmas, but was aired over the festive season and is the kind of movie I like to watch at this time of year as it reminds me of better, simpler less noisy times.
The Big Sleep is the private eye movie to outdo all private eye movies. Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s downbeat detective, prowls the streets of Los Angeles investigating a curious case of blackmail. General Sternwood is an aging, dying cripple holed up in a big mansion on a hill. He spends his days in a sauna level hothouse surrounded by tropical plants while he ruminates on the activities of his errant daughters, divorcee Vivian Rutledge and the young nymphomaniac Carmen. It is the latter who is being blackmailed and to Marlowe it appears a simple case: pay the girl’s gambling debts and cut her loose. Sternwood hints at a darker alternative, one that involves a missing chauffeur and, indirectly, his other daughter. Marlowe’s enquiries turn over old stones that reveal the grimy cesspit underbelly of L.A. high society, one of licentiousness, greed and murder.
Packed full of magnificent scenes and a series of highly tuned dialogues which ripple off the cinema screen with delight and mischief, The Big Sleep kicks off with one bravura moment after another. Was Humphrey Bogart ever better than as the careworn, wisecracking, durable and inquisitive Philip Marlowe? Had he ever sparred better with Lauren Bacall as he does in their spiky moments here, where he teases her and she cuts him down to size, before they reverse the foreplay: sex is never far from their tongues and they positively smoulder with it, only the Hays Code allowing some decency. So too Martha Vickers’ teenage rebel, a girl up to her neck in debt, men, drugs, porno flicks and death. She is the archetypal woman-child, a toy for the men who abuse her, a dangerous weapon against those who adore her. Vickers is amazing in her few short scenes, suggesting far more wicked behaviours than we actually see; simply by sucking her thumb she mimics oral sex and all the fantasies that conjures! When the movie was remade by Micheal Winner, he included all the nudity as written by Chandler and the effect was less than impressive because actress Candy Clark isn’t as accomplished as Vickers.
There are also wonderful small roles for Dorothy Malone, Sonia Darrin and Joy Barlow – the latter two uncredited – as a bookstore salesgirl, a gangster’s moll and a taxi driver. Darrin’s role is the most immediately impressive, a nervy, angry woman out to wangle as much money from the men who surround her as she can while still retaining a veneer of respectability. She’s essentially the pimp-madam, but the script has to gloss over this, making her bitter and worldly. Marlowe initially disapproves, but his empathy with the ‘little guy’ allows him to let her exit free, although she retains her bitter edge. Darrin’s agent had a long running feud with studio head Jack Warner and her name was removed from the final credits. Joy Barlow humorous interlude as a saucy cabby tips a wink at the freedom women had in the immediate postwar years when they occupied jobs usually the preserve of men. Similarly, Dorothy Malone’s bespectacled, intelligent proprietress offers all the same seduction techniques as Martha Vickers only with her glasses and her mind and a bottle of rye. Marlowe seems enchanted by her intellect; she is enjoying the testy danger he brings with him as they observe the unscrupulous A.G. Geiger in the antique shop over the road.
Despite its popular hero, The Big Sleep is really a woman’s film. All the best roles are for women and they often have the best lines. It is unusual to have a movie where the female characters are so in control of their destinies, or at least believe they are. The screenwriters, of which there were far more than the three officially listed, make sterling and successful efforts to not turn them into caricatures: they are the forebears of the stereotypical roles which later became associated so closely with detective fiction and movies. Indeed the script itself is a thing of some beauty with so much good dialogue you almost forget they ought to be telling a story.
Famously most viewers can’t figure out what is happening and the convoluted plot is certainly unexplainable. I tried to expound the various relationships and motivations of the cast to my Dad, but having thought I was doing a decent job, stopped half way when I realised I’d left out a character and he didn’t fit into the narrative. Does it really matter that the storyline is flawed? The purist in me says it does, but the entertainer in me says it doesn’t. When a story is so thoroughly enjoyable and well-presented as this, I can forgive the occasional lapse in continuity. There are plot holes, but there is so much happening and so swiftly that any errors are soon forgotten in favour of another slice of screen magic from Humphrey Bogart and his assorted associated dames and dudes.
Director Howard Hawks was equally adept at drama and action as he was at wise cracking comedy. The Big Sleep demonstrates his skills to the full, heightening and lowering tension, often with the knowing quips alluding to both. Sidney Hickox’s photography is suitably shadowy, reminding us we are in the territory of film noir. Christian Nyby’s editing is crisp. Best of all is Bogart, demonstrating once again his immense ability to draw out great performances from the cast around him while still retaining his own star power. Here the very simply tactic of scratching an ear, a gambler’s tell that informs us Marlowe has realised something important, is enough to provide the depth of personality we need to identify with the lonely, intrigued detective. He shares an unrivalled onscreen chemistry with the young Lauren Bacall, who amazingly seems to have aged about ten years in the two since her debut in To Have and Have Not. The moment where she lights and swaps his cigarettes while he’s tied up in the bad guy’s apartment is one of their most recognisable flirtations.
The Big Sleep has not aged except in the use of everyday technology. The themes and machinations remain remarkably similar to detective fiction, to all fiction, we see played out in cinemas and on television. Without it, the subgenre of the private eye detective thriller probably wouldn’t exist so stridently today. The amateur wags at IMDB only rate this as a four star movie. They have no idea. The Big Sleep is a supreme achievement of five star filmmaking in any era.
Odd that this more recent movie should also have cropped up over Christmas and New Year:
OUT OF SIGHT (1998)
I like George Clooney. Politics, humanitarian and green issues aside, I think he is a much underrated actor and director who chooses projects that suit his affable, slightly cynical and carefully weathered character. He is smooth on the ear and easy on the eye. He has a natural turn of performance which allows an audience to invest themselves fully in the characters he plays. He is equally adept at drama, action or comedy. Over the course of the last three-plus decades he has featured in many significant or interesting roles. He rarely makes a bum film, even if they do not always make money. 1998’s Out of Sight solidified his cinema persona and combines several of his personality traits as well as his acting styles.
Clooney is Jack Foley, a bank robber who simply can’t quit. Foley piggy backs onto a daring break out from Florida’s Glades Correctional Facility, aided by his pal Buddy [Ving Rhames, excellent] and the unreliable dope smoking Glenn Micheals [Steve Zahn, also excellent], the latter of who has inside information on a house breaking heist which could net the gang $5m. Foley hasn’t counted on Federal Agent Karen Sisco [Jennifer Lopez, never better] fortuitously stopping to make a phone call during his escape. Bundled together in the trunk of her car, an uneasy, gentle, comedic romance develops between felon and cop. While Karen is determined to get her man back in the slammer, Foley is determined to get her into bed, but as their paths keep crossing their wishes start to intermingle and desire eeks out from under the stark Detroit skies. As the heist plans gather momentum, so do Foley and Karen’s determination to rediscover and reexplore the sudden intimacy of their initial trunk-bound encounter. He uncovers his own latent conscience among the cesspit of humanity, she sacrifices the moral high ground for the possibility of illicit love.
The film is beautifully constructed. Scott Frank’s screenplay, based on an Elmore Leonard novel, is so well-written the actors are able to garner our sympathy and understanding. Emotionally, we buy in. Even the bad guys – horrific in intent – capture our attention with their cod-street philosophy born from the wrong side of the tracks and the wrong kind of prison, a slick tongue being as good a weapon as a hatchet or a shotgun. Everyone, including the benign Buddy, whose sister prays for his soul while he commits burglaries, is after something bigger and better. We feel for these wayward, bottom of the rung personalities in the same manner we used to cheer for Humphrey Bogart’s hoodlums in films like Sirocco, Key Largo or High Sierra. George Clooney’s about-face as the story progresses is reminiscent of the kind of realisation experienced by Bogart’s cynical characters. The unforgiving viciousness of Don Cheadle’s Maurice Miller counters Foley’s broad likeability, a much more modern version of those Sydney Greenstreet or Peter Lorre arch manipulators. Jennifer Lopez is Bacall to Clooney’s Bogart, all cool, chic sheen, a beautiful woman to look offering spiky patter and a cutting half seductive stare beneath delicious, half shut eyelids and behind inquisitive half smiles. She’s all half this and half that, which makes her character believably confused – she has to be – and we know she yearns for something better because her boyfriend is loser narc cop Ray Nicolet [Micheal Keaton, briefly turning up to play the same role he did in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown]. For good measure, director Steven Soderbergh also throws in Samuel L. Jackson, Isiah Washington, Nancy Allen, Catherine Keener, Albert Brooks, Viola Davis, Luis Guzman and Dennis Farina. Not a single one of these brief or extended roles is a letdown. The cast is universally excellent and the rewards for us as an audience are many.
Just watch the interplay between Lopes and Zahn as she persuades him not once but twice to split on his pals, or the moment she is threatened by Washington’s rapist, or how Clooney wises up to Cheadle’s posturing extortionist, or Guzman and Keener discuss magic tricks during his arrest, or Brooks’s slimy Wall Street profiteerer promptly putting self-interest before friendship, or Cheadle choosing to steal clothes rather than gems, or Farina prodding and prying at his daughter’s private life; best of all the three scenes of disruptive intimacy between Clooney and Lopez in a car trunk, over a telephone line and in a hotel cocktail bar, where he seduces her and she seduces him, each with less of a twinkle in the eye than a knowing, anticipatory glint of sexual tension.
Gorgeously photographed by Eliot Davis and edited with studious panache by Anne Coates, Soderbergh ensures the tension rises and falls, both during the sudden bouts of violence and through the sensual chemistry of the lead protagonists. There genuinely isn’t a dull moment in the film, which entertains as a romance, as a comedy, as a thriller and as a social commentary – defining for us through crime how the rich stay richer and the poor stay poorer. It also has an excellent incidental score from David Holmes, which hints at lounge room classics without resorting to schmaltz. Even the song-track is low key, but bounced by a roster of Motown classics.
Clooney’s film career was stuttering at this point, but Out of Sight propelled him to the front of the queue and he has rarely been away from it since. I admire his work and always find him and his repertoire interesting. Out of Sight is one of my favourite movies of the nineties, switching on to Tarantino’s notion of crime being ‘cool’ but remembering to be delicate and observed about it, removing blanket pontification for simplicity of movement, dialogue and facial interpretation. It is a better than exceptional piece of filmmaking and long may it remain so in these eyes.
It's not generally known (I'm a Chandler geek) that there were two versions of this movie.
In the first, the plot is clearer (Marlowe explains most of it to the cops at one point), Vickers has more to do and Bacall less so there's not so much of the sexy dialogue. Apparently Bacall's agent worked on the studio for reshoots and edits leading to Bacall getting more lines including the famous horse racing dialogue with Bogart. Less Vickers, more Bacall, and more immortal dialogue = more confusing but more memorable and arguably better (I'd say so) film.
Thanks for that @Barbel - I was aware of this version, but have not seen it. Interestingly for Bond aficionados Bacall's agent was Charles Feldman who would go on to produce the 1967 version of Casino Royale.
I saw a few films on telly, but as one gets older you begin to realise that it's repeat viewing. As a teenager, popular culture is an untasted feast and there's a tendency to gorge. I enjoyed Some Like It Hot again, it's poignant this time because my Dad died in October aged 94 and normally when it comes up as Chicago 1929 on the opening caption, we's say 'Hey, Dad this film was set the year after you were born!' I mean, an old film that's set in the past, like ancient history. Only now, it really feels like it is.
Others things pop up, watching Where Eagles Dare, when Dad would moan about how the heroes' guns never ran out of bullets while the Nazis' couldn't hit a barn door at 20 paces. Actually, that film really was conspired as s comedy, a silly Boys Own Adventure but some forget that. Has Richard Burton and Donald Sinden who also pop up in once scene in The Longest Day, a WWII film of a different calibre.
I enjoyed North by Northwest again - it's name checked in Fleming's novel Thunderball. Again, it's a comedy albeit a Roger Moore type Bond film, serious when it has to be. I can now see why the Prince Charles might show it because it just looks great, the colour coordination of blues and greys look so stylish, on the big screen you would be immersed in that whole world for two hours or so. Thunderball the movie is a bit like that but really could have done with more of it even so. Ironic that NSNA could have been more like that with Connery not always looking unlike Grant in that, same age and tan. Odd that Grant really does look over 50 in this, albeit very handsome, while Eve Marie Saint's character is about 26, so half his age but she's a marital candidate. Crazy how that plane hits the oil tanker for no reason, but then again no according to my Dad, who'd comment how dare devil pilots could do crazy things. Chuckling at how Grant extricates himself from the tense auction scene.
The Wizard of Oz, and how Dad would comment how as a kid he felt the whole thing was an allegory for the Nazis about to sweep Europe.
I wouldn't say Christmas was too melancholy but watching the old films, the ghosts are at your elbow.
Yes, that is very true. I was visiting my Mum yesterday (her birthday) and she couldn't decide between "The Wizard Of Oz" and "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid". She was about halfway through the latter when the Bride and I left. "Wizard" brought back too many memories for her and watching "Butch" then "The Magnificent Seven" meant she couldn't watch "Singing In The Rain" - my late Dad's favourite, which would have had her in tears.
Following on from NBNW, it occurred to me that all the extras would have to be handpicked - my sister pointed out that none of them are ugly or overweight. Again, you get this with Bond films, nobody is out of line. We know of course that in a beach or swimming pool scene all the women will be in bikinis and hot, that's a given, but it applies almost everywhere else too. Is there ever a fat Bond villain, aside maybe from Auric Goldfinger and he's not that fat? I'm not sure there is. Perhaps the extras get dressed by the crew, in which case if they are of a certain size then there'll be easier to fit. Again, everyone on NBTW seems colour-coordinated and pre-thought out. It relaxes you so you go along with the plot holes, rather like the Bond films used to do. There is a scene quite early on where Grant could just turn the issue over to the police as he has definite evidence that something is up - he meets the real guy who owns the smart mansion and says he thinks it's been boarded up; as the police visited the place with Grant and met the staff, that gives a real jumping off point, even if the actual guy has just been knifed.
In some ways the Bond film it resembles is AVTAK, as in that Moore's Bond shows a marked reluctance to call it in despite having evidence against Zorin.
Comments
Indeed it was. I think if Lee had been involved then Drac would have had a bigger role than two minutes at the start and another two at the end which would certainly have improved things. As you say, Cushing is pretty much the only thing worth watching here and he's surprisingly energetic in some of the fight sequences for his age.
INVADERS FROM MARS (1953)
When little Jimmy Hunt wakes up in the middle of the night to see a flying saucer land nearby, no one will believe him, and he finds that most of the adults have been taken over by aliens. Though a low budget restricts the scale of things this a taut little sci-if thriller and some of the sets are really good. For a long one the twist ending was oddly removed from European prints but this one I saw has it, and it’s a nice ending.
Worth watching.
@CoolHandBond Wasn't this one originally in 3D? I think that is why the budget was so low as they spent it all on the expensive filming process.
@chrisno1, fyi Invaders From Mars was not shot or presented in 3D; Bwana Devil, which was also released in 1953, kick-started the 1950s 3D fad.
Rumour has it that it was intended for the 3-D format but the idea was rejected before filming began.
Jimmy Hunt plays a policeman in the Tobe Hooper 1986 remake.
Beverley Hills Cop (1984)
Our own Steven Berkoff was the 1980s rent-a-villain, along with Octopussy he was of course in Rambo II, and he's in this action comedy too. A starring vehicle for Eddie Murphy and highly effective, even if originally when you hear him speak you hear Donkey from the Shrek movies, that characteristic indignation and fretful outrage at some mistreatment.
Now a Bond fan checking out this new kid on the movie block may feel there's no real contest. The last two Bonds began with amazing aerial action - 007 hanging off a helicopter above London's Battersea, or piloting an Astrojet plane in some undiagnosed location. This? Undercover police officer Axel Foley is hanging off the back of a lorry as the low-life drug dealer makes his getaway in suburban Detroit, smashing up many cars as he does, to the sound of a contemporary slice of 80s pop. Still, it has a simplistic bravura feel to it. Maybe that's why the next Bond had the main guy tearing up San Franscisco in a fire engine the following year.
Comparisons are apples and oranges; BHC is meant to be a smart, credible flick unlike Bond's escapist fare. That said, the film soon reveals itself to be as far-fetched and escapist as any Moore Bond film as Murphy pulls up in his battered old car outside a fine Beverely Hills hotel (not the finest, it's pointed out, to be fair) and okay, he's smart casual but no Sidney Poitier, the young, eager doorman doesn't ask him to move on but asks if he'd like to check in and can he take his car. And it's kind of like that the whole way through, everyone is happy or about to be happy with each other, it's all rather lovely. It starts kind of slow and conventional but gathers momentum in a way that Bond films tend not to these days.
At no point does Murphy's character face any racial abuse even from the bad guys, the only time the 'n' word is used is by him to stoke up an imaginary row to blag something. Of course, he runs into a white female old pal and there's no sense of anything sexual having happened or about to happen, though she plays the damsel in distress role at one point, I guess it's too early to see a black lead make out with a white woman and still that seems to be the case, over half a century after Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? For all that, as with other 1980s movies such as Midnight Run and Die Hard, the lack of on-screen sexual shenanigans makes the film more wholesome and high-minded. Of course, the older cop Taggart in this went on to play Robert DeNiro's chain-smoking rival bounty hunter in Midnight Run, something it took me decades to learn. His boss is the main villain of course in Arnie's Total Recall.
It's not just Murphy who shoots Berkoff, but his boss too. Is that to alleviate the sense of a black guy taking a gun to a white guy? Or just a plot point to show that Murphy won't be made the fall guy? Do we see his character shoot many white folk in the movie? (For all that, it's good to see he has a black boss back in Detroit.) There's lots of silly gunfire from the bad guys in this where for the most part no bullets ever hit anyone.
Beverly Hllls Cop anticipates films like Crocodile Dundee and Die Hard with its fish out of water theme - Murphy is a Detroit cop heading to Beverley Hills to investigate a friend's death. And, to some extent, Lethal Weapon... the pleasing inter-racial harmony. The comedy grows nicely but to have room to do this, the plot is virtually nonexistent. We don't care much about Murphy's pal who died and just as well, we don't want that hanging over the movie, he's just a McGuffin. Much of the investgation consists of Murphy gatecrashing Berkoff's office, restaurant, factories etc in a manner that anticipates Ferris Bueller in his sausage king of Chicago mode, not to mention Riggs with the late Joss Ackland.
Pleasingly, I think all the players including Berkoff are still alive though of course we could have said that about Lethal Weapon 2 a few weeks ago.
The film spawned two belated sequels but never became a thing, though you'd imagine the Axel F theme - a big hit in the UK, one of the Top 30 best-selling records of the year - might compete with the James Bond Theme, that said, the former only does sneaky spying scenes while the latter is brilliant because it accompanies both spying scenes AND breakout triumphant action thanks to its chorus. The very title Beverley Hills Cop doesn't encourage a franchise as of course he's not one, he's a Detroit cop relocated and much of the entertainment lies in the culture clash; you can't do that twice, it's diminishing returns.
Bond fan Kingsley Amis dubbed this a 'comedy masterpiece' I think.
Edit: Turns out there'll be a Beverly Hills Cop 4 out next year, with much of the original cast rejoining.
Also, I knew I'd seen him, but the actor who plays Berkoff's main hitman in this, went to to play gruff fixer Mike Ermentrout in Breaking Bad... Jonathan Banks.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Napoleon (2023)
Ridley Scott's "Napoleon" starring Joachim Phoenix is my kind of movie! You may have noticed I'm a history nerd and I like seeing historical epics in the cinema instead of all the superhero movies. Obviously the movie has spectacular battle scenes and Scott does a great job giving each battle a seperate identity, such at battle on ice or battle in the rain. The battles are also very brutal as they must've been.
But the movie focuses even more on Napoleon's relationship with his Josephine. This works very well, giving the viewer pauses between the battles and does a lot to flesh out Napoleon's personality. Josephine is portrayed as a strong and interesting woman (not in a clishe way), who has lovers and the movie doesn't judge her for being unconventional.
While the movie shows Napoleon as a military genius, this isn't a portrait of a hero. He is shown as being immature, not to far from Phoenix' emperor in Gladiator. Phoenix does a great job, and so does Vanessa Kirby as Josephine.
The movie is about two and a half hours long, because Scott understands people need to go to the toilet. This means a lot of the story needs had to be cut. Italy and Spain are among the "small incidents" we don't get to see. But I think this is a good thing because the movie can't be five hours long. Stanley Kubrick tried to include everything in his planned Napoleon movie, but after years of research he didn't manage to finish it. Great movie!
Pig (2021) starring Nicolas Cage.
Cage is on restrained form as a vagrant-type woodsman in a shack who makes a living from his truffle pig, selling truffles. Said valuable pig is stolen, however.
To some extent this is an odd, OMG WTF movie so the less said about it the better, but if you see it coming up on Film4 again in the next fortnight I recommend it. You do wonder where it is going and after an hour or more it seemed to have been on only 15 minutes to me - a compliment. It just doesn't follow the usual by numbers filmmaking to me.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
The day the earth stood still (1951)
I have heard of this sci-fi classic for decades, but now is the first time I've watched it. An UFO lands in Washington D.C. I was glad to see the aliens favour the classic school of UFO design. Out comes an alien who looks like a human man and a gigant metal robot that can shoot with lasers from his head. Are they friend or foe?
The movie looks to me like it had a bigger budget than the typical 1950's sci-fi movie. I like the story and the acting is also largely okay. The actor playing the alien is tall, handsome, stoic and calm, much like Keanu Reeves in the moden re-make. His character also has some simularities with a certain JC (not John Cleese), but the director claims this was never on their minds making the movie.
The score sounds stereotypical 50's sci-fi now, but apparently it was groundbreaking then and I think it elevates the movie. Danny Elfman, Tim Burton's go-to musician, says this score was what inspired him to become a musician. The simularities are obvious.
I also think the special effects are good for the time and genere. There's scene that reminds me of a scene in DAF, and in my opinion the effects are at least as good in this movie.
There are reasons why this is a sci-fi classic, and if you're into that sort of thing you should watch this movie.
Hannibal Brooks (1969)
Another story about a man with strong affection for an animal, this time the man is Oliver Reed, a PoW zoo keeper in WWII (was that ever a thing?) while the animal is an elephant called Lucy. When the Munich zoo is bombed near the end of the war, he is asked to relocate the creature to a Innsbruck zoo by train. Carriage in said train is then commandeered by the Gestapo who suggest they make the journey by foot, presumably another train not being offered or made available (I only think of these plot holes once I type out the review).
However, events conspire to prompt Reed, or 'Brooksie', to make the journey part of an escape plan to Switzerland, across the Alps or something, hence the name (referenced only once in the film) owing something to the Roman commander of legend who led elephants into battle.
Some of us may recall seeing this film on the BBC in the late 70s and it holds up well in my view. Reed has the right amount of danger in his persona to make the film less cute or Disney than it might be. It seems to owe something to other 1960s films shown on telly from 76 onwards - The Sound of Music, The Great Escape, Goldfinger (the scenery, the blonde with a headscarf). There's even a bit of stuff with a cable car that owes something to Where Eagles Dare or that year's OHMSS, or especially Moonraker a decade later.
It's nonsense really but it has a certain charm. Michael Winner directs - he once joked about how he'd been offered a Bond movie once but turned it down and looking back didn't know why, and I can sort of see how he could do an 70s Bond film given this, rather than the Death Wish movies. I guess he might have wanted a bigger cut of the profits though, something the producers never wanted to offer. I could be wrong. Some of the explosions however, while a spectacle, didn't look quite realistic - they did look a bit too incendiary.
This sort of larky, visually appealing war comedy thriller was surely the last of its kind, before the grime and grit of the 70s kicked in.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
THE TITFIELD THUNDERBOLT (1953)
Stanley Holloway, George Relph, Hugh Griffith and John Gregson enjoy themselves immensely as locomotive enthusiasts who resurrect the local branch line railway from Titfield to Mallingford against opposition from the bus company and the national government. Sticking a finger up at the National Rail Network of the fifties, the movie is inspired by the true story of the Tallylyn Heritage Railway in Wales. Ultimately, this version is rather silly, but the good natured, harmless antics enchant and Douglas Slocombe’s colour photography offers a ravishing view of the English countryside, steam trains and all. Not one of the very best Ealing Comedies, but good nonetheless and a veritable pre-empting of the rural concerns which followed the Beeching report of 1962. A lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
TWISTED NERVE (1969)
Hywel Bennett gives a good performance as a young man with severe personality problems. When he is suffering from stress he goes back to being a 6-year old child and when it gets really bad he does really bad things like stabbing his stepfather to death. He becomes obsessed with his landlady’s daughter (Hayley Mills) and her life is suddenly in danger. Director Ray Boulting gives a Hitchcockian feel to the movie with some imaginative camera angles and a score by Bernard Herrmann. Hitchcock may well have seen this because Barry Foster and Billie Whitelaw both turn up in his 1972 movie, Frenzy.
Worth a look.
Unplanned double bill-
DRACULA (1931) Director Tod Browning
DRACULA (1958) Director Terence Fisher (US Title HORROR OF DRACULA)
Over two days I found myself watching the above two versions of the famed Bram Stoker novel, plus the first again with audio commentary (which explains why I know some of the obscure details below).
It’s unfair to judge the two against each other, but I think it might be the best way to discuss them. The earlier version came at the start of the talkies and Hollywood had still not solved all of the problems that came with sound movies, which does explain some of its drawbacks. For example, there is no music apart from over the titles (and a very quick snatch of classical music when Dracula attends a concert) which doesn’t help the atmosphere at all- but “Frankenstein”, released later that year, didn’t have a score either and it works a lot better.
Neither version is very faithful to Stoker, for different reasons. The 1931 Universal film doesn’t come directly from the novel but via the contemporary stage play (and it’s taken from the US version which was itself adapted from the British one) so changes from the novel were clearly going to happen. The 1958 Hammer film isn’t faithful for a different reason, Hammer’s usual one- money. It was shot on a very restricted budget which limited the number of locations, sets, and cast. No trips to Victorian London, sea journeys, etc, here.
Tod Browning was apparently not too interested in “Dracula” and it was reported later by the cast that very often he simply wasn’t there, leaving cinematographer Karl Freund to handle things. The opening sequences set in Transylvania are atmospheric, use a moving camera part of the time, and are the best in the whole thing. I’m prepared to believe that Freund was in charge of those scenes- a man whose CV includes “Metropolis” and the 1932 version of “The Mummy” is obviously capable. Browning, on the other hand, basically photographed a stage play- there’s a scene about halfway through involving Mina, Van Helsing, and Jonathan Harker where the camera stays stock still for four minutes of not very riveting dialogue.
For Hammer, Terence Fisher provided a lively mini-epic utilising his small budget wisely (with a lot of help from the production design, costumes, and set decoration). The plot keeps moving, and we see a lot of S/E Engla…. er, Transylvania. An easily spotted aspect of the budget restraints is that Dracula has only one (very attractive) “bride” while in the 1931 he has three, as per novel. Another is that we don’t see Harker’s initial coach ride, he simply tells us about it in narration.
Sex and violence: for a story with a strong and much written about sexual subtext (in some versions it is plain text, of course) which was made pre-code, the 1931 is very restrained and takes no chances with what it shows the audience. We don’t even see Van Helsing staking Dracula at the end (sorry if that spoils the plot for anyone who doesn’t know), just some groans from offscreen. Hammer don’t show us the actual stakings (yes, plural) that occur but they get a lot closer to it. The ladies in 1958 are also more explicitly sexual (Mina, part of one now restored scene being “lost” for over 50 years) and wearing less (the “bride”, whose cleavage was very daring for the time).
The supporting cast in both versions varies from unforgettable (Dwight Frye as Renfield in 1931) to hammy (Michael Gough as Arthur Holmwood in 1958) to moving wallpaper (David Manners as Jonathan Harker in 1931). The livelier performances tend to be in the later film, Frye aside. David Manners would play pretty much the same part in other films (“The Black Cat” in 1934, the aforementioned version of “The Mummy”) and he’s not alone in this.
Supporting cast aside, there are really only two parts which matter. Van Helsing in 1931 was played very stuffily by Edward Van Sloan, who had played the part on stage and would again (inexplicably as “Von” Helsing) in “Dracula’s Daughter”. As with Manners, he would play pretty much the same part in other films (Professor Waldman in “Frankenstein”, Dr Muller in “The Mummy”). They’re all interchangeable and while Van Sloan is not actually bad (*cough* Michael Gough *cough*) he doesn’t stick in the memory. Hammer had Peter Cushing. I should stop right there and admit (if anyone has been reading my movie reviews it’ll be no surprise) that I am an unashamed Cushing fanboy and could easily gush for several paragraphs. I’ll keep it brief- he knocks Van Sloan out of the room, gives later Van Helsing Anthony Hopkins some lessons in how to act, and hands even later Van Helsing Hugh Jackman his arse. He would be back as Van Helsing more than once- sometimes the film wouldn’t be up to much (“The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires”) but he remains superb.
And the other part, which for many is the only one that matters, is the Count himself. Bela Lugosi vs Christopher Lee? Really, I think it’s all down to personal taste or your experience. It’s been said here often that a fan’s favourite Bond is the one he saw first (and no, sit down the member shouting “Barry Nelson”- I’m not that old). Bela Lugosi died before I was born, and it was only much later that I watched his movies on late-night TV. By then I had seen Sir Christopher many times and it was he whose image (and that voice, of course) which imprinted itself indelibly on what passes for my brain as the incarnation of Count Dracula. Lugosi is great, of course, and I think that today he’s probably the only reason to watch the 1931 “Dracula”.
And I forgot to mention - we get The Cushing Finger!!!!
This trademark was, I believe, first mentioned by Christopher Lee who as Cushing's costar in over twenty movies would certainly know -
Whether he's warning Count Dracula, telling Dr Watson how elementary a clue is, or blackmailing Princess Leia
you can usually rely on The Cushing Finger to make an appearance.
Almost as powerful as the Harrison Ford 'finger of doom'.
😁😁😁
THE MUPPET CHRISTMAS CAROL (1992)
Not a film I would have chosen myself, but I ended up thoroughly enjoying it. It’s a surprisingly faithful version of the Charles Dickens classic, only with added Muppets. They play most of the main characters as well as lots of minor ones.
Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie, and company are all present and correct but their show is stolen by The Great Gonzo and his sidekick Rizzo The Rat who narrate as, respectively, Charles Dickens and, er, Rizzo The Rat.
Underpinning all the muppetry like a bass part in music is a serious and convincing performance by Sir Michael Caine. He’s one of the best Scrooges I’ve seen and holds this movie together, providing gravitas and pathos where needed.
It's my favorite version of the story. If you've held off on watching this due to the fact that it's a Muppet version, reconsider...Michael Caine came to deliver, and his Scrooge is absolutely my favorite iteration of the character. He absolutely could have phoned this performance in but, to his everlasting credit, he delivered 110% instead. It's marvelous.
This is my favourite version of A Christmas Carol also. I didn't watch it this year [was it on?] but have fond memories of the Sutton Empire in Dec 1992 surrounded by youngsters with parents who simply didn't get the jokes or the Dickensian references. Me and my mate Gavin were cracking up. Although the three pints of Guinness I sank before the show probably helped immensely. It's a real treat.
I have been out of touch a while with AJB as things at home have been tough. We are settling down though and as all funeral and bereavement arrangements are on hold over Christmas there was little to do than watch a few movies and eat lots of food.
I will offer a few of my thoughts over the next few days.
I reviewed this movie a couple of years ago, when I watched it with Mum. This year I watched it with Dad and he remarked how she would have liked the dancing sequences because you could see the dancer's legs and feet all the time - exactly my comment below in my reproduced review. I love this film, a quintessential timeless piece of yuletide entertainment:
WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954)
A film which needs no introduction. The sort of film they simply don’t make anymore. The first ever VistaVision Warner Bros production, totally studio bound. Lush photography anyway, the film looks as pristine as a roasted goose or a royal iced Christmas cake. Bing Crosby is in his 50s prime. Danny Kaye is also at the height of his fame. Rosemary Clooney is a post-war sweetheart. Elegant costumes. A script ridden with cliché and yet still an entertaining, spry affair with a character driven plot. Super dance numbers (The movie was meant to reteam Fred Astaire with Crosby to reprise their partnership from Holiday Inn, of which this is a remake.)
Michael Curtiz directs with assurance; he’s not flashy, he sets up the stage and rolls with it. Note to the camera directors on Strictly Come Dancing: we can see all the dancers feet all the time. Great songs from Irving Berlin. Great vaudeville style performances. A shamelessly sentimental story that pours the sugar on at the start and keeps on pouring. The worst and best of it is you know you are being emotionally manipulated and you don’t care. Oh. And that Christmas song. Here we go: I’m dreaming of a white Christmas / just like the ones I used to know....
Yeah. They really don't make movies as good hearted and beautifully crafted as this anymore.
THE BISHOP’S WIFE (1947)
Among all the assorted holiday fare churned out by Hallmark TV and shown from as early as July on Great Movies Christmas and the ilk, The Bishop’s Wife rather passes by without a mention. Made in the wake of It’s A Wonderful Life, compared unfavourably to it but based on a much earlier novel, Henry Koster’s quasi-religious fantasy is a little slice of Christmas bliss. Cary Grant is excellent as Dudley, the mischievous angel sent to ‘help’ David Niven’s troubled Bishop. The trouble is, Bishop Brougham doesn’t know what kind of help he wants. By advertently or inadvertently affecting the people who surround the Bishop, Dudley ensures a happy ending for all in time for Christmas Eve. Loretta Young is goodness personified as the Bishop’s titular wife. While the script touches on issues of faith and the struggle of religious service in the modern day, where selfishness – that epitome of the Deadly Sins – rears its head constantly, it doesn’t forget to tell the story with a little twinkle in the words. The screenplay was touched up by comic masters Billy Wilder & Charles Brackett, so the dialogue is deft and crisp and thus the actors can create believable characters among unbelievable situations, something which I struggle with when watching James Stewart having and escaping an emotional crisis in Wonderful Life. Here, the primary and underplayed emotion is happiness. This driving force for good is orchestrated through the joy of memories and a hefty amount of sherry drinking. Cary Grant enjoys himself immensely, one feels, as Dudley candidly observes, assists and thwarts David Niven’s evangelical plans. Primarily this involves Dudley’s pretend seduction of Loretta Young, which seems a little naughty of an angel. But then, as Grant says: “Not all angels have wings.” Beautiful photographed in black and white by the brilliant Gregg Toland, with a music score from Hugo Friedhofer which evokes Christmas carols and assured acting across the board, the film is gentle and amusing and prettily perfect. Several scenes demand our attention, both for their comic and emotional intensity. A rare treat, this film is one of the best Christmas movies, from during a time of many great Christmas movies. Perhaps the only downside is the clumsy ice skating sequence which couldn’t be performed without very obvious doubles. The special effects appear somewhat rudimentary, but they were state of the art in 1947. You can forget about the remake with Whitney Houston, it really isn’t worth watching after this.
Very good.
More festive fare... a double bill of Santas...
MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1947)
A Christmas cinematic classic offering no illusions about the fantasy it weaves for us as Edmund Gwenn’s Kris Kringle becomes employed as a stand-in Santa Claus by Macy’s department store and ushers in a whole new style of benevolent commercialism. A brilliant witty script and a whole plethora or teary moments keep the holiday magic alive, certainly in this house. If Edmund Gwenn deservedly won awards for his support role as the kindly and possibly genuine Santa Claus, it is little Natalie Wood as a child who doesn’t believe in Father Christmas who really excels. Just watch her coy and knowing glances when she first meets Mr Kringle, unsatisfied with his honest answers and believing him to be merely a very good actor. She’s equally good with the sugary stuff too, like monkey impersonations [“Don’t forget to scratch!”] and tearing up the driveway of her dream home – one her mother and future stepdad simply must end up buying because it has a swing in the yard and a candy cane in the corner. Watch her expression change from confusion to wonderment and back again as Kris Kringle explains ‘imagination’ to her. Just wonderful. The film isn’t all Christmas fluff, but it is neigh on close to it. Somehow you don’t seem to care. When Gwenn’s Santa talks Dutch to the war refugee, or discusses the goodness of Christmas with a youthful janitor, you simply revel in the joy. Maureen O’Hara is the promotions executive who hires Kringle and gets her and her daughter involved in a sleighful of trouble. John Payne is her lawyer boyfriend. George Seaton directs with a firm yet gentle hand. Amazingly the movie was originally released in the summer of 1947 as 20th Century Fox didn’t think the central story of putting Santa Claus on trial was very appropriate for a seasonal movie. How wrong they were. Delightful on many levels and a brilliant piece of filmmaking across the board.
MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1994)
There wasn’t really any need to remake this Christmas classic, but I am rather glad they did. As star Richard Attenborough explained, the remake delivers the sugary goods of the original but wraps it up in the pretty technicolour packaging of the 1990’s John Hughes generation. Some of the themes have changed too – there is more emphasis on the cynical edge of Christmas commercialism, as well a focus on the treatment of the mentally ill – but it is still the same basic story as before and features many of the same standout moments dressed up in modern disguises. Attenborough makes a cuddly Santa, but he isn’t quite given the support Edmund Gwenn had in the original. You can have all the colour and reindeer and pop music you like, but if you haven’t got Natalie Wood’s cheeky and sympathetic kid, you’re stumped from the out. Mara Wilson’s Susan is cute but a bit too much of a mocking know-it-all to be as likable. Wood played it very straight, with childish delight and a touch of puckish contempt. She’s exactly how you would expect a child of a career driven mother to be. Wilson is too modern and adult to elicit our all-round sympathy. It doesn’t help that her mother is Elisabeth Perkins and she is no Maureen O’Hara. So we have to rely on Attenborough’s good nature to help us through and he is really superb. I first watched this at Butlins Minehead on a wet New Year’s Eve afternoon, cuddling up with the girlfriend on the backrow of the small onsite cinema. Happy memories and it still brings a little tear to the old eye, just like it did back then. “You’re a soppy sod,” she told me with a touch of cynicism herself. And yes, I probably still am.
SCROOGE (1970)
Oliver!-light musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol which lacks a musical theatre actor as capable as Ron Moody and a musical theatre composer with the skill of Lionel Bart, yet still succeeds in being entertaining in a snowy, Victorian Christmas card fashion. Costumes, sets and photography are all excellent. They ought to be: sets and costumes were nicked and reconstituted from the Oscar winning Oliver! and the same photographer [Oswald Morris] helms the lenses. Posh British Director Ronald Neame was starting to make big movies and he copes better than you’d expect with the constantly mobile staging, the jittery cast and the overt eventual sentimentality. Some credit must go to Albert Finney for a rambunctious yet gnarled interpretation of Ebenezer Scrooge, the world’s most famous miser. He takes after the Rex Harrison school of singing and sort of says his lines to the melody; that’s fair enough, but sometimes the actor’s glee becomes merely twee and slightly sickening. The Spirit of Christmas Present has a decent character song in I Like Life, but Finney’s weaselly intercessions completely undermine the jovial musical interpretation. Generally though, Finney’s miserly tone is in keeping with Dickens’ fable, which i suppose is the point. Kenneth More meanwhile is virtually unrecognisable as the Spirit. Alec Guinness pops up as Jacob Marley, but you rather wish he hadn’t and if you’ve seen enough movie versions of the story you inevitably end up wishing for Muppet puppets Waldorf and Stadler and their cheery turn as Marley & Marley.
Leslie Bricusse – one of ours, of course, as is Oswald Morris [TMWTGG] and actor Laurence Naismith [DAF] – probably overworked himself with book, lyrics and music, but he captures the essence of the moral story with his gentle and affecting tunes. The show stealing Thank You Very Much comes as a long overdue highlight, but Happiness, I Hate People and I Like Life offer some of the joy and also the cynicism you expect in a modern adaptation of Dickens’ sweetening tale.
Personally, I like this movie. I am aware it isn’t to everyone’s taste, but it suffers not only with that Oliver! comparison, but also by appearing at the end of a very fine decade for film adaptations of hit Broadway / West End musicals. It is strange how the big productions aimed at recapturing the Hollywood glamour of the originally conceived concept musical [Goodbye Mr Chips, Dr Doolittle, Half a Sixpence, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Thoroughly Modern Millie, etc] either didn’t work or only half worked. Even Mary Poppins errs to the overindulgent. The same thing occurs here a little and it is the star who occasionally looks the most uncomfortable, often when he’s supposed to be comfortable. I tend to forgive this: Scrooge of all heroes should be an uncomfortable watch otherwise his Damascene change won’t be rewarding; trouble is, unlike the British star Michael Caine in the Muppet version, Finney doesn’t noticeably alter his performance from pre to post revelation.
If you can’t stomach Albert Finney as Scrooge or refuse to accept the movie on its own merits, you are irretrievably hampered. Having watched many versions of this famous story, Scrooge is far closer to the source text – songs aside – than many [Disney’s A Christmas Carol, anyone?] and rewards the tolerant and patient viewer. They made a successful touring show of it in the 1990s starring Tommy Steele, a cute compliment, the reverse of its urchin cousin.
So, in the Spirit of Christmas, and especially Kenneth More’s Christmas Spirit, let’s roll up our sleeves, doff a cap, twirl a pipe and sing: Thank you very much, thank you very much, that’s the nicest thing that anyone’s ever done for me…
THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
A film that isn’t very much to do with Christmas, but was aired over the festive season and is the kind of movie I like to watch at this time of year as it reminds me of better, simpler less noisy times.
The Big Sleep is the private eye movie to outdo all private eye movies. Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler’s downbeat detective, prowls the streets of Los Angeles investigating a curious case of blackmail. General Sternwood is an aging, dying cripple holed up in a big mansion on a hill. He spends his days in a sauna level hothouse surrounded by tropical plants while he ruminates on the activities of his errant daughters, divorcee Vivian Rutledge and the young nymphomaniac Carmen. It is the latter who is being blackmailed and to Marlowe it appears a simple case: pay the girl’s gambling debts and cut her loose. Sternwood hints at a darker alternative, one that involves a missing chauffeur and, indirectly, his other daughter. Marlowe’s enquiries turn over old stones that reveal the grimy cesspit underbelly of L.A. high society, one of licentiousness, greed and murder.
Packed full of magnificent scenes and a series of highly tuned dialogues which ripple off the cinema screen with delight and mischief, The Big Sleep kicks off with one bravura moment after another. Was Humphrey Bogart ever better than as the careworn, wisecracking, durable and inquisitive Philip Marlowe? Had he ever sparred better with Lauren Bacall as he does in their spiky moments here, where he teases her and she cuts him down to size, before they reverse the foreplay: sex is never far from their tongues and they positively smoulder with it, only the Hays Code allowing some decency. So too Martha Vickers’ teenage rebel, a girl up to her neck in debt, men, drugs, porno flicks and death. She is the archetypal woman-child, a toy for the men who abuse her, a dangerous weapon against those who adore her. Vickers is amazing in her few short scenes, suggesting far more wicked behaviours than we actually see; simply by sucking her thumb she mimics oral sex and all the fantasies that conjures! When the movie was remade by Micheal Winner, he included all the nudity as written by Chandler and the effect was less than impressive because actress Candy Clark isn’t as accomplished as Vickers.
There are also wonderful small roles for Dorothy Malone, Sonia Darrin and Joy Barlow – the latter two uncredited – as a bookstore salesgirl, a gangster’s moll and a taxi driver. Darrin’s role is the most immediately impressive, a nervy, angry woman out to wangle as much money from the men who surround her as she can while still retaining a veneer of respectability. She’s essentially the pimp-madam, but the script has to gloss over this, making her bitter and worldly. Marlowe initially disapproves, but his empathy with the ‘little guy’ allows him to let her exit free, although she retains her bitter edge. Darrin’s agent had a long running feud with studio head Jack Warner and her name was removed from the final credits. Joy Barlow humorous interlude as a saucy cabby tips a wink at the freedom women had in the immediate postwar years when they occupied jobs usually the preserve of men. Similarly, Dorothy Malone’s bespectacled, intelligent proprietress offers all the same seduction techniques as Martha Vickers only with her glasses and her mind and a bottle of rye. Marlowe seems enchanted by her intellect; she is enjoying the testy danger he brings with him as they observe the unscrupulous A.G. Geiger in the antique shop over the road.
Despite its popular hero, The Big Sleep is really a woman’s film. All the best roles are for women and they often have the best lines. It is unusual to have a movie where the female characters are so in control of their destinies, or at least believe they are. The screenwriters, of which there were far more than the three officially listed, make sterling and successful efforts to not turn them into caricatures: they are the forebears of the stereotypical roles which later became associated so closely with detective fiction and movies. Indeed the script itself is a thing of some beauty with so much good dialogue you almost forget they ought to be telling a story.
Famously most viewers can’t figure out what is happening and the convoluted plot is certainly unexplainable. I tried to expound the various relationships and motivations of the cast to my Dad, but having thought I was doing a decent job, stopped half way when I realised I’d left out a character and he didn’t fit into the narrative. Does it really matter that the storyline is flawed? The purist in me says it does, but the entertainer in me says it doesn’t. When a story is so thoroughly enjoyable and well-presented as this, I can forgive the occasional lapse in continuity. There are plot holes, but there is so much happening and so swiftly that any errors are soon forgotten in favour of another slice of screen magic from Humphrey Bogart and his assorted associated dames and dudes.
Director Howard Hawks was equally adept at drama and action as he was at wise cracking comedy. The Big Sleep demonstrates his skills to the full, heightening and lowering tension, often with the knowing quips alluding to both. Sidney Hickox’s photography is suitably shadowy, reminding us we are in the territory of film noir. Christian Nyby’s editing is crisp. Best of all is Bogart, demonstrating once again his immense ability to draw out great performances from the cast around him while still retaining his own star power. Here the very simply tactic of scratching an ear, a gambler’s tell that informs us Marlowe has realised something important, is enough to provide the depth of personality we need to identify with the lonely, intrigued detective. He shares an unrivalled onscreen chemistry with the young Lauren Bacall, who amazingly seems to have aged about ten years in the two since her debut in To Have and Have Not. The moment where she lights and swaps his cigarettes while he’s tied up in the bad guy’s apartment is one of their most recognisable flirtations.
The Big Sleep has not aged except in the use of everyday technology. The themes and machinations remain remarkably similar to detective fiction, to all fiction, we see played out in cinemas and on television. Without it, the subgenre of the private eye detective thriller probably wouldn’t exist so stridently today. The amateur wags at IMDB only rate this as a four star movie. They have no idea. The Big Sleep is a supreme achievement of five star filmmaking in any era.
Odd that this more recent movie should also have cropped up over Christmas and New Year:
OUT OF SIGHT (1998)
I like George Clooney. Politics, humanitarian and green issues aside, I think he is a much underrated actor and director who chooses projects that suit his affable, slightly cynical and carefully weathered character. He is smooth on the ear and easy on the eye. He has a natural turn of performance which allows an audience to invest themselves fully in the characters he plays. He is equally adept at drama, action or comedy. Over the course of the last three-plus decades he has featured in many significant or interesting roles. He rarely makes a bum film, even if they do not always make money. 1998’s Out of Sight solidified his cinema persona and combines several of his personality traits as well as his acting styles.
Clooney is Jack Foley, a bank robber who simply can’t quit. Foley piggy backs onto a daring break out from Florida’s Glades Correctional Facility, aided by his pal Buddy [Ving Rhames, excellent] and the unreliable dope smoking Glenn Micheals [Steve Zahn, also excellent], the latter of who has inside information on a house breaking heist which could net the gang $5m. Foley hasn’t counted on Federal Agent Karen Sisco [Jennifer Lopez, never better] fortuitously stopping to make a phone call during his escape. Bundled together in the trunk of her car, an uneasy, gentle, comedic romance develops between felon and cop. While Karen is determined to get her man back in the slammer, Foley is determined to get her into bed, but as their paths keep crossing their wishes start to intermingle and desire eeks out from under the stark Detroit skies. As the heist plans gather momentum, so do Foley and Karen’s determination to rediscover and reexplore the sudden intimacy of their initial trunk-bound encounter. He uncovers his own latent conscience among the cesspit of humanity, she sacrifices the moral high ground for the possibility of illicit love.
The film is beautifully constructed. Scott Frank’s screenplay, based on an Elmore Leonard novel, is so well-written the actors are able to garner our sympathy and understanding. Emotionally, we buy in. Even the bad guys – horrific in intent – capture our attention with their cod-street philosophy born from the wrong side of the tracks and the wrong kind of prison, a slick tongue being as good a weapon as a hatchet or a shotgun. Everyone, including the benign Buddy, whose sister prays for his soul while he commits burglaries, is after something bigger and better. We feel for these wayward, bottom of the rung personalities in the same manner we used to cheer for Humphrey Bogart’s hoodlums in films like Sirocco, Key Largo or High Sierra. George Clooney’s about-face as the story progresses is reminiscent of the kind of realisation experienced by Bogart’s cynical characters. The unforgiving viciousness of Don Cheadle’s Maurice Miller counters Foley’s broad likeability, a much more modern version of those Sydney Greenstreet or Peter Lorre arch manipulators. Jennifer Lopez is Bacall to Clooney’s Bogart, all cool, chic sheen, a beautiful woman to look offering spiky patter and a cutting half seductive stare beneath delicious, half shut eyelids and behind inquisitive half smiles. She’s all half this and half that, which makes her character believably confused – she has to be – and we know she yearns for something better because her boyfriend is loser narc cop Ray Nicolet [Micheal Keaton, briefly turning up to play the same role he did in Tarantino’s Jackie Brown]. For good measure, director Steven Soderbergh also throws in Samuel L. Jackson, Isiah Washington, Nancy Allen, Catherine Keener, Albert Brooks, Viola Davis, Luis Guzman and Dennis Farina. Not a single one of these brief or extended roles is a letdown. The cast is universally excellent and the rewards for us as an audience are many.
Just watch the interplay between Lopes and Zahn as she persuades him not once but twice to split on his pals, or the moment she is threatened by Washington’s rapist, or how Clooney wises up to Cheadle’s posturing extortionist, or Guzman and Keener discuss magic tricks during his arrest, or Brooks’s slimy Wall Street profiteerer promptly putting self-interest before friendship, or Cheadle choosing to steal clothes rather than gems, or Farina prodding and prying at his daughter’s private life; best of all the three scenes of disruptive intimacy between Clooney and Lopez in a car trunk, over a telephone line and in a hotel cocktail bar, where he seduces her and she seduces him, each with less of a twinkle in the eye than a knowing, anticipatory glint of sexual tension.
Gorgeously photographed by Eliot Davis and edited with studious panache by Anne Coates, Soderbergh ensures the tension rises and falls, both during the sudden bouts of violence and through the sensual chemistry of the lead protagonists. There genuinely isn’t a dull moment in the film, which entertains as a romance, as a comedy, as a thriller and as a social commentary – defining for us through crime how the rich stay richer and the poor stay poorer. It also has an excellent incidental score from David Holmes, which hints at lounge room classics without resorting to schmaltz. Even the song-track is low key, but bounced by a roster of Motown classics.
Clooney’s film career was stuttering at this point, but Out of Sight propelled him to the front of the queue and he has rarely been away from it since. I admire his work and always find him and his repertoire interesting. Out of Sight is one of my favourite movies of the nineties, switching on to Tarantino’s notion of crime being ‘cool’ but remembering to be delicate and observed about it, removing blanket pontification for simplicity of movement, dialogue and facial interpretation. It is a better than exceptional piece of filmmaking and long may it remain so in these eyes.
It's not generally known (I'm a Chandler geek) that there were two versions of this movie.
In the first, the plot is clearer (Marlowe explains most of it to the cops at one point), Vickers has more to do and Bacall less so there's not so much of the sexy dialogue. Apparently Bacall's agent worked on the studio for reshoots and edits leading to Bacall getting more lines including the famous horse racing dialogue with Bogart. Less Vickers, more Bacall, and more immortal dialogue = more confusing but more memorable and arguably better (I'd say so) film.
Thanks for that @Barbel - I was aware of this version, but have not seen it. Interestingly for Bond aficionados Bacall's agent was Charles Feldman who would go on to produce the 1967 version of Casino Royale.
I saw a few films on telly, but as one gets older you begin to realise that it's repeat viewing. As a teenager, popular culture is an untasted feast and there's a tendency to gorge. I enjoyed Some Like It Hot again, it's poignant this time because my Dad died in October aged 94 and normally when it comes up as Chicago 1929 on the opening caption, we's say 'Hey, Dad this film was set the year after you were born!' I mean, an old film that's set in the past, like ancient history. Only now, it really feels like it is.
Others things pop up, watching Where Eagles Dare, when Dad would moan about how the heroes' guns never ran out of bullets while the Nazis' couldn't hit a barn door at 20 paces. Actually, that film really was conspired as s comedy, a silly Boys Own Adventure but some forget that. Has Richard Burton and Donald Sinden who also pop up in once scene in The Longest Day, a WWII film of a different calibre.
I enjoyed North by Northwest again - it's name checked in Fleming's novel Thunderball. Again, it's a comedy albeit a Roger Moore type Bond film, serious when it has to be. I can now see why the Prince Charles might show it because it just looks great, the colour coordination of blues and greys look so stylish, on the big screen you would be immersed in that whole world for two hours or so. Thunderball the movie is a bit like that but really could have done with more of it even so. Ironic that NSNA could have been more like that with Connery not always looking unlike Grant in that, same age and tan. Odd that Grant really does look over 50 in this, albeit very handsome, while Eve Marie Saint's character is about 26, so half his age but she's a marital candidate. Crazy how that plane hits the oil tanker for no reason, but then again no according to my Dad, who'd comment how dare devil pilots could do crazy things. Chuckling at how Grant extricates himself from the tense auction scene.
The Wizard of Oz, and how Dad would comment how as a kid he felt the whole thing was an allegory for the Nazis about to sweep Europe.
I wouldn't say Christmas was too melancholy but watching the old films, the ghosts are at your elbow.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Yes, that is very true. I was visiting my Mum yesterday (her birthday) and she couldn't decide between "The Wizard Of Oz" and "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid". She was about halfway through the latter when the Bride and I left. "Wizard" brought back too many memories for her and watching "Butch" then "The Magnificent Seven" meant she couldn't watch "Singing In The Rain" - my late Dad's favourite, which would have had her in tears.
Butch Cassidy followed by The Magnificent Seven - your mum has seriously great taste, Barbel!
Following on from NBNW, it occurred to me that all the extras would have to be handpicked - my sister pointed out that none of them are ugly or overweight. Again, you get this with Bond films, nobody is out of line. We know of course that in a beach or swimming pool scene all the women will be in bikinis and hot, that's a given, but it applies almost everywhere else too. Is there ever a fat Bond villain, aside maybe from Auric Goldfinger and he's not that fat? I'm not sure there is. Perhaps the extras get dressed by the crew, in which case if they are of a certain size then there'll be easier to fit. Again, everyone on NBTW seems colour-coordinated and pre-thought out. It relaxes you so you go along with the plot holes, rather like the Bond films used to do. There is a scene quite early on where Grant could just turn the issue over to the police as he has definite evidence that something is up - he meets the real guy who owns the smart mansion and says he thinks it's been boarded up; as the police visited the place with Grant and met the staff, that gives a real jumping off point, even if the actual guy has just been knifed.
In some ways the Bond film it resembles is AVTAK, as in that Moore's Bond shows a marked reluctance to call it in despite having evidence against Zorin.
Roger Moore 1927-2017